Heirloom (Seed Savers)

by Sandra Smith

  For being members of Seed Savers, you wouldn’t have known it by the meals at Meg and Aaron’s. Meg blamed the season, but Arturo and I knew that with the hydroponic setup, they could have grown whatever they wanted. Perhaps they were trying hard to stay under GRIM’s radar. But I had a hunch Meg enjoyed the ease of our packaged little food groups. Arturo convinced me it would be impolite to ask. We weren’t surprised, then, to be given a substantial “travel-pac” of processed foods in all five food groups. Arturo sighed, missing the real food he was used to.

  “It’s okay,” I said, patting his arm, “you’ll live.”

  Aaron speculated that because I had left the notes no one back home would panic and alert the authorities, thereby having given myself a head-start. Because I was undoubtedly under surveillance, however, after a few days suspicions would arise about my absence. GRIM would probably be able to track me to Plant City and maybe even trace me here. But I would still be ahead of them, and we all wanted to keep it that way.

  “It would be best if you two travel at night, like your friends, but this is an all terrain vehicle, so if it looks safe, no drones or people, you can go by day—it’s a lot easier to see the signs that way. Remember to use your nav-map for directions only as needed.”

  “Nice,” Arturo said, drawing out the vowel. A shiny silver vehicle sat in the driveway. Instead of two wheels, it had a continuous track, like on a tank. The treads reminded me of the yard robots advertised on the Monitor.

  “Like I said, all-terrain. This model is from the sixties, but it’s still in good shape.”

  “Yes,” agreed Arturo. “It looks great.” He had hopped on and was examining the control panel.

  “Hey, how old are you, anyway?” Aaron asked. “Are you sure you can drive this thing?”

  “Oh, man, yeah,” Arturo answered, maybe a bit too dramatically.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” Meg said. “You’ll be careful, won’t you, Arturo?” More of an assurance for Aaron and me than a question for Arturo.

  His face turned serious and he stood up taller. “Yes,” (still sounded like jess) “of course. I am protector of Lily,” he announced, to my embarrassment.

  CHAPTER 18

  Clare and Dante

  “So,” Clare said. “I told you my story, what about yours?” They were preparing raised beds for the first early plantings. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”

  “I’m so used to keeping secrets that it’s hard to talk about.” Jason stopped shoveling the compost and took off his gloves.

  “So you’ve been in Seed Savers awhile, then?”

  His mouth turned up, but his eyes were rock hard. “You could say that.”

  Clare sat down on the edge of the garden bed. “Where are your parents?”

  The skin on his face stiffened, only his lips moved slightly. “Jail.”

  Clare gasped. “Jail?”

  “We had a greenhouse. No one had seen GRIM around in years. We didn’t think the danger level was high. But I guess we were wrong. My twenty-year-old sister was also jailed. I was put in foster care because of my age. I left the same night they placed me, out the bedroom window.”

  Clare didn’t know what to say. Of course she should have expected this story, but she hadn’t. Somehow she imagined Jason had come with his family and maybe they had passed through the program more quickly; or then again, maybe she hadn’t given it much thought at all.

  “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” Had she somehow violated him by asking? But she couldn’t help it, more questions bubbled up. “So why are you in these classes if you already know how to garden?”

  “I crossed the border so I could train to be a leader. Hopefully I can learn more things here than I could at home … without fear of getting caught.” He lowered his voice as another student passed by.

  “Like in political history class?”

  He nodded. “And I do a lot of research on my own.”

  “You two need help?” It was Oscar, an older man who enjoyed talking. “I’ll help spread it.”

  “Sure, I’ll go get another load.” Jason turned and pushed the wheelbarrow toward the giant mound of compost.

  “How are you?” Oscar asked Clare.

  She smiled and answered, ready to hear Oscar’s latest musings.

  Dante joined Clare for the work session in the greenhouse. The beds were still too wet for planting, including for the onion starts. He got out the bright orange ruler, certain he would finally get to trim the onions.

  “Sorry, not quite,” Clare said. “Only nine centimeters.”

  “What? But Clare, it’s so close.”

  “Nope. The notes say ten centimeters.” She knew one centimeter probably didn’t matter, but this was as close to torturing her brother as she ever got. “Sorry.”

  Dante sighed. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Well, let’s plant more seeds.”

  Several other students milled around the greenhouse.

  “What needs done?” Clare asked a group of adults.

  “There’s a chart on the wall.” A man named Terry pointed at a chart with several lists of possibilities: seeds to plant, flowers to trim, plants to repot and separate. A few items already had thick, dark lines drawn through them.

  “Tell me again why we work with flowers?” Clare asked. “Aren’t we here to learn about food plants?”

  “It’s for the sale,” a woman answered. “They raise a lot of money in the spring with a plant sale. They sell more than just vegetable plants—flowers, shrubs, trees. The more money the Guardians make, the more of us they can train for free.”

  “Oh, thank you.” While Clare appreciated being a beneficiary of the sale, she wasn’t at all interested in learning about growing flowers.

  “Let’s see what vegetables are on the list,” she whispered to Dante. Together they studied the chart on the wall.

  “Wow.” She started reading the list aloud. “Cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant … All of these we start in here?”

  “Like the onions,” shouted Dante.

  Clare continued reading the chart silently.

  “Okay, what do you want to plant?” she asked.

  “Everything!”

  “We can’t start with everything. Choose one.”

  He looked hard at the list. Without pictures, he didn’t really understand much. Even with pictures, his knowledge was limited. They had done book learning, and they’d enjoyed food at Gruff’s and more recently with the Woods, but some of these names still seemed foreign.

  “What are brussels sprouts and broccoli? Why aren’t green beans up there?”

  “Probably not the right time,” she said. “Or maybe you can’t start them inside.”

  His eyes scanned the list. He smiled.

  “Tomatoes,” he said with certainty, adding emphasis with two thumbs up.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lily

  It was tiring holding onto Arturo for so long, but we needed to get out of Florida. We left in the evening and traveled straight through until we were pretty sure we had crossed the state line. As best we could, we kept clear of my route south and the densely populated areas, not to mention the Green Swamp!

  It was after midnight when we finally stopped. The temperature had dropped comfortably, but it smelled and felt like rain, and the dampness stuck to us like gum on hot cement. A slight breeze rattled the leaves on the trees but failed to loosen their grip as they argued for an extended summer. The moon, when not obscured by clouds, was but a sliver, leaving us hidden in the dark night, and the tree canopy was alive with sound: a buzzing, chirping, cacophony of frogs, cicadas and other creatures, bombarding us with their late night symphony. At times the deafening noise reminded me of the rhythm of soldiers marching to battle. I looked around at the trees and shuddered, remembering the scary movies where trees changed into creepy nighttime monsters.

  “You okay?” Arturo asked.

/>   “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. Just tired, I guess.”

  He smoothed out a place on the ground for us to rest. I watched, then trying to be helpful, dug into the pack Meg had prepared.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  I chose some Snacks and handed Arturo the lightweight water repellant tarp. We sat on it, leaning against a log, and ate.

  “It’s so noisy,” I said. “It’s not like this at home.”

  He laughed. “Sure it is.”

  “No, it’s not,” I argued.

  “You prefer noise of cars, trains, sirens?” he asked.

  “It’s not the same; you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly.

  “What now?” I asked, and unable to stop myself, cut loose a gigantic yawn.

  “Sound like maybe you need sleep.”

  “But is it okay out here? I thought we were supposed to find Seed Savers to stay with.”

  “Lily, I cannot continue driving with you sleeping. You maybe fall off the bike.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  He looked me full in the face. I yawned again.

  “That is it! We sleep here. At least a little. Here is safe.”

  I turned in toward the log and closed my eyes for a short rest. I had learned that arguing with Arturo was tiresome and I was already tired. Soon, sleep carried me away into a dream that had me clinging to the back of a stranger as we rode through an empty and endless black night.

  The sound of a snapping twig woke me and when I opened my eyes I was surprised to find daybreak had outrun me. It took a moment to remember where I was, but the scent of the outdoors and the lump under my side brought it back quickly … just in time not to be startled by the male voice that greeted me.

  “Good morning—you sleep well, no?” He was standing next to the ATV, fiddling around with something.

  I groaned and turned farther away, but he had seen my movement, sensed my awakening. He laughed softly.

  I lay there, facing the log, a feeling of embarrassment overtaking me. Never had I woken up with just me and a guy. I wondered what I looked like after sleeping outside on the ground all night. The tinkering noises ended, and I heard the sound of his footsteps approaching. He crouched down and lay his hand on my shoulder.

  “We need to go,” he said simply.

  As instantly as the apprehension about my appearance arrived, so it left. After a bite of food and some Juice, we were traveling again. According to the nav-map (which Arturo had used briefly while I slept), it would be several hours before we reached the friends Aaron had suggested. As Arturo drove, I kept an eye out for drones. While the flat areas of farmland made easier passage, we felt safer in the forests.

  The ride was peaceful, and the speed of our bike helped ease the stifling humidity. There was nothing for me to do but hang on and look forward—both figuratively and literally. I smiled as I realized there was no going back. Yes, it was scary, but on the other hand, I was heading for my father. All my life I had loved this man I never knew, and now I was about to meet him. Every now and then a sneaky little thought whispered that I was missing school and would not be prepared for high school if I skipped too much of eighth grade. Whenever that happened, I reminded myself that I was involved in something larger, more important.

  As we edged closer to where we might find friends, I began to think there had been a mistake. We were in flat country, and I wasn’t seeing many homes. I tapped Arturo and gave him the signal to stop. He pulled under a large oak tree for shade.

  “How are we supposed to find friends out here, like this?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I thought this is your job.”

  It infuriated me when he said dumb stuff like that. I guess my face said as much.

  “What’s wrong? You seem angry.”

  “I—I just don’t get how we are supposed to see the signs when we’re traveling cross-country like this. I mean, there are hardly any houses out here. Houses live next to roads.”

  “Houses live next to roads,” he repeated, laughing.

  Seeing my angry face turning angrier stopped his laugh, cold. He cleared his throat in an effort to regain a serious demeanor. “Well,” he said, looking around and pointing, “there is a house over there.”

  I followed his finger with my eyes, barely locating the structure off in the distance.

  “We go over there? There should be road, yes?”

  It made sense.

  He pointed to a ribbon of darker green vegetation snaking through the countryside. “Is a river, Lily. Small river—how you say?”

  “Creek,” I said. “Stream, brook, tributary.

  He scowled. “English,” he muttered. “So. After we go near the house and follow along river, maybe we find other houses. And there are roads, only small, dirt roads. Is the country, Lily-billy. See?” He pointed at reddish lines cutting through the countryside. I had noticed these discolorations in the landscape, but hadn’t seen any cars on them. It hadn’t occurred to me that these paths were actual roads.

  Approaching the house we saw no signs of life. In fact, the closer we drew, the more obvious it became that it was uninhabited. Maybe this had been a place where folks had once grown food on a small scale and the government had shut them down. Or maybe they had refused to grow in cooperation with the dominant Agribusiness and lost the farm. Or perhaps Mother Nature had turned her back on the area. Whatever the reason for abandonment, viney plants had swallowed up nearly the entire house, along with the garage and several trees in the yard. Despite the consuming green vines, however, the walls and porch roof held firm, and two cane rocking chairs still relaxed casually near the front door. It was impossible to tell how old the place was or for how long it had stood vacant.

  Arturo stopped the bike a good distance away and started to dismount.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s creepy. Let’s keep going. No one lives there.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, starting the engine and pointing us toward the trees on the horizon.

  CHAPTER 20

  Lily

  Arturo was wary of damaging the ATV, and at the same time, he began feeling less fearful of traveling the dirt roads that ran in straight lines through the flat plains and forests. The idea of following the creek was abandoned once we saw how little water flowed and that no other homes were around.

  “Are you sure we should be on roads?” I asked.

  “Do you see many people?”

  “No.”

  “Traffic-cams?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he answered, shrugging.

  I said nothing. To tell the truth, I was surprised at the amount of forested land we had encountered. It made sense, though. Our wood and paper products had to come from trees somewhere. But these trees seemed so small, so thin. The ground underneath was relatively clear and bare. As we continued on, however, it changed. Some places were different—older, denser. I wanted to know more: What was the story here? Were some forests real forests, wild and untamed, and others just crops? And what was this green vine with the heart-shaped leaves that in places took over entire sections of the forest, covering trees and bushes like an out-of-control Chia pet?

  At times, the treed land ended abruptly, and we found ourselves in open fields of plants I could not identify.

  “I wish I knew what this was,” I said.

  “What?” Arturo called over the sound of the rushing air and crunching of our treads.

  “I said, I wish I knew what was growing here.”

  “Grow here?” He asked, taking one hand from the wheel and pointing.

  “Yes.”

  “Cacahuate.”

  “What?”

  “In Spanish, cacahuate.”

  “Oh,” I said sarcastically, “thanks so much.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’
t know how you say in English. And you don’t know food.”

  He was right, of course, but I had learned a lot. Not to be minimized, I started saying every veggie word I could remember.

  “Beans?”

  “No.”

  “Peas?”

  “No.”

  “Carrots?”

  “No.”

  “Zucchini?” I loved saying zucchini, it was one of my favorites, even if I hadn’t exactly liked the way it tasted.

  “I don’t know zucchini,” he said.

  We went on like that for as long as it took me to exhaust my list of new food words—not very long as it turned out.

  “Lily, you don’t know it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because. Because this don’t grow in north. Your friend—mmm—she maybe not teach you.”

  And why hadn’t he mentioned this sooner? “Oh. Is it good?” I asked, determined not to feel defeated.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Is very good.”

  After another hour or so, we knew we had missed whatever friends we were supposed to find. And we hadn’t seen any homes abloom with purple flowers; but aside from the spooky overgrown one we’d encountered, we didn’t really go out of our way to find any, either. At one of our snack and leg-stretching breaks we agreed to keep riding north. We were hopeful that if we could get farther north and higher up, some of the stifling heat and humidity might lessen. We decided we would try harder to find friends further along. The going was pretty easy—flat, sparsely populated land. My main concern was that we wouldn’t find out about my dad as soon. What if we passed him by? Arturo consoled me by saying we could always turn back. “Además,” he had said, “your Papa probably don’t like hot here. Maybe remind him of Cuba. Maybe he go far north. Escape to Canada.”