Heirloom (Seed Savers)

by Sandra Smith

“Oh. I just accidentally met Abner and Evelyn,” I said. “I had a list of Seed Savers that a friend gave me, and it was raining hard…”

  Even to myself what I was saying made no sense. I sighed deeply and looked at Arturo for help.

  “Is too difficult for me, Lily. You need to start in beginning.”

  I scrutinized Sara Jane. Though I no longer trusted my ability to judge character, what other choice did I have? “Okay,” I said, “I’ll try to tell you everything. But …”

  “But?”

  “I’m really hungry. Do you think I could have breakfast first?”

  “Of course, of course.” She got up and scurried around, bringing me some Carbos, Protein, and Juice. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

  “I’m sorry for the food,” she said. “But as I said last night, it’s important I stay within the law.”

  “I understand,” I said politely, but I didn’t feel it.

  Since she and Arturo had already eaten, they sat watching me. I felt compelled to start explaining between bites. I started at the beginning, telling her about Clare and the seeds. Ana and tutoring. The raid and the kids’ disappearance. She nodded and murmured that she had heard something about that. Then, as I was chewing my last bite of Protein, a special light of recognition lit her eyes.

  “So you are Lily, the friend?”

  “Yes,” I said hesitantly. It seemed like a dumb question.

  “Lily Gardener.”

  I swallowed and nodded slowly.

  She was momentarily quiet, lost in thought, it seemed. “Aaron and Meg knew this?”

  “Not at first,” I admitted. “I didn’t tell Abner and Evie.”

  “Holy peaches.”

  I’d never heard that one before, but somehow it seemed appropriate.

  “How long were you with them?”

  “Just overnight.”

  “I’m surprised they let you stay that long. Excuse me.” She got up and paced back and forth across the floor, muttering to herself. An orange cat stood outside the glass door, lifting its paw, knocking to get in. Sara Jane let the cat in and continued her pacing. At last she returned to the table.

  “Go on,” she said. “Tell me the rest of your story.”

  I left out a few things; I didn’t think it was necessary to divulge about my gardening around town. I just said that without Clare and Dante, I’d made new friends in Arturo and Rose. I shared about visiting Ana’s home and my discovery of who I was, that my father was alive, what I learned about the history of Seed Savers. Sara Jane interjected with a few clarifying questions occasionally, whenever something didn’t make sense. I ended with Arturo and me in the alley where she found us.

  “That’s quite a story. Do you mind if I ask a few more questions?”

  I shook my head. “No, of course not.”

  “Where’s your mom in all this?”

  “My mom has never seemed to be anything but my mom. I know what everybody says she was like—a big part of the Movement and everything—but that seems like some other person. I guess the old Junko is gone.”

  Sara’s eyes were as unreadable as the depths of the ocean.

  “You haven’t been in touch with her since you left?”

  “No.”

  “You’re searching for your father?”

  I nodded.

  “But you don’t know where he is?”

  I nodded again.

  She turned to Arturo. “Arturo, can you do me a favor? The flowers need watering, and I like to do it early in the day. Come with me, please.” They got up and went out, Sara returning shortly.

  “What do you really know about him?” she asked, nodding toward the window through which we watched Arturo watering the bursts of purple flowers.

  “Arturo? I told you, me and Rose met him one day riding bikes. He always figured Rose was a snitch. He grows vegetables in his backyard and basement. He’s a good guy; he’s been helping me.”

  “Do any Seed Savers know him? What has he told you about himself?”

  “He, uh, he knows other people who save seeds and grow, but he said he didn’t know about the Seed Savers. He was born in California, but he grew up in Mexico.”

  “That’s it?”

  I narrowed my eyes and gave her my best “What’s that supposed to mean you’ve just royally offended me, lady” look.

  “Lily, you are the daughter of one of our Movement’s most prominent leaders—a leader who has recently broken out of prison—and some guy just shows up as your guardian angel and you don’t question it?”

  “Look—I had my doubts. But not anymore. I trust him. If you know where my father is, please help us. I’m not going without Arturo.”

  Our eyes followed Arturo across the yard. He wouldn’t be back in for several minutes.

  She pursed her lips. “Very well. But I hope you’re not making the same mistake your father made.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Lily

  “Thank you, Arturo,” Sara Jane said as Arturo reentered.

  “Man, is already getting hot,” he said. “Remind me of my place in Mexico.”

  “You’ll have to tell me more about your home.”

  “¿Habla Español?”

  “Sí, claro.”

  And then they took off in a long and animated conversation, neither of them feeling the need to stop and translate. I excused myself to brush my teeth, clearing the dishes as I left. I’m not sure what he said that changed her mind, and he never told me, but after their conversation, Sara Jane trusted Arturo. I was glad, of course, but somewhat irritated at being left out.

  Since there was no reason to linger at Sara Jane’s, we did what was needed—washed our clothes and restocked food—and continued on our journey. Once Sara Jane had decided to trust Arturo, she told us what we had come for: how to find my father.

  “The traveling won’t be as easy from here on out. The terrain gets rougher. But as you gain elevation, at least the temperature will cool. The national forests will provide cover. I’ll give you the coordinates because you’ll need them—but you ‘ll have to commit them to memory. No program-ming them into your ATV except for quick checks now and then to see if you are on course. And no pieces of paper. There’s too much at stake.” We nodded our agreement. I would have sworn there were grasshoppers in my belly. This was it; I was finally about to meet my father.

  Sara Jane unfolded a large map. Together we traced our desired route: northward, avoiding urban areas, crossing in and out of national forest lands, using OHV (off highway vehicle) trails where possible, and older, smaller highways when the mountains and rivers left no alternative, until we reached our final destination somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. I thought about my uncluttered, sterile, little apartment back home. I pictured Ma there, seated at the table folding her origami cranes. I tried to imagine my dad, a woolly mountain outlaw like on some old Monitor show. For one brief moment I pondered whose life I had stumbled into, because it sure didn’t seem like mine.

  We left early the second morning. The weather forecast favored us: dry with moderate temperatures day and night. If all went well, we would reach my father before nightfall.

  As we rode silently on, I was face to face with the reality of meeting my father. At Sara Jane’s I had taken a little time to dig out the mini-journal I’d carried along. I wrote only the briefest of entries—where we’d been and little snatches of our adventure—leaving out the names of people and exact locations. Mostly I reflected on my feelings, as I now did internally. What would it be like meeting him? What would I say? What would he say?

  Even as I pondered the change about to happen in my life, the landscape changed as well. The plains had morphed into rolling hills and narrow valleys, and the forested land had turned somehow wilder. Rushing rivers slowed our trek, forcing us to find ways around them; likewise, the large east-west interstates—sometimes more than eight lanes wide—were rivers of their own accord, proving a challenge to cross.

  About an hour from
Sara Jane’s we had reached the first national forest and found the OHV trails. Refreshed from two nights of good sleep, we felt optimistic. We stopped only to relieve ourselves. Occasionally we met other bikers and nodded our greeting, careful not to look at them directly, and grateful for the goggles and helmets that helped obscure our identity. Aside from the GRIM agents at the one place, we had no reason to believe anyone was on to us. The fact that Sara Jane hadn’t heard about my departure was a good sign.

  After a few hours, still deep in the forest, we took a break to eat lunch and rest.

  “Is slower now,” Arturo said, “the windy trails and hills is harder to climb.”

  “How long do you think until we find the village?”

  Sara Jane had told us my father was staying in a small mountain village. When pressed for details, she said she didn’t know the specifics and that it didn’t matter; we had the necessary information to find him.

  “Maybe two hours more,” he said. He had retrieved the map and was trying to figure out where we were.

  I looked around at the trees, the flowers growing wild, planted by no one, and heard my mother’s voice in the constant buzzing from above: Lily Amaya, a flower nurtured by the night rain. A bird, as blue as the July sky, flew low in front of me.

  “It’s beautiful here. Do we even have places like this at home?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

  He looked at me in disbelief.

  “What? Ma never took me out of the city. I went camping with Clare once, but the campground was crowded with people and it didn’t feel all naturey like here.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything, staring, instead, into the woods, the map abandoned.

  “Arturo?” I said, breaking the silence after a due amount of time.

  “Jess?”

  “Do you think my dad will like me?”

  I could tell by the way his expression changed that he hadn’t been expecting anything remotely related to the question I posed. There was surprise, then what—anger? And then a tenderness trying to hide under some kind of macho girl-don’t-talk-stupid attitude.

  “You are joking with me, right?”

  The worry I wore like a weight around my neck could not be hidden. I wasn’t crying or anything, but the closer we had gotten to my father, the more anxious I had become. It showed in the turned down corners of my mouth, the tightening of my grip around his waist as we rode. I had felt the changes, and so had he.

  “Of course your dad like you! You is his daughter. He love you!” He took on the macho demeanor again, shaking his head. “Silly Lily.”

  Something about the spontaneous rhyme made me giggle, lifting my spirits just enough to get me past the edge of despair on which I’d been perched. “Yeah,” I said. “What’s not to like, after all?”

  He smiled in relief. Chick disaster averted.

  “But, you know,” I continued. “I get the idea he doesn’t know I’m headed his way. And what if he and Ma have never communicated. He doesn’t know me, Arturo. What if me showing up just adds to his problems?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. HE SHRUGGED HIS SHOULDERS! I swear, if he didn’t have this language issue … then he excused himself to “take a walk,” which along the way had come to mean “sneak off and pee.”

  If you ask me, Arturo was gone entirely too long for “a walk.” By the time he returned, I had gotten everything back together and on the bike. I had even refolded the map, which if you’ve ever tried, you know how difficult it is. It’s my theory that it’s one of the reasons maps fell out of favor.

  Arturo mounted the bike and I hopped on behind. And sat.

  “What are we doing?” I finally asked, feeling dumb just sitting there, not moving.

  “Programming coordinates.”

  “But we aren’t supposed to do that!”

  “Just for now. I want see exactly where we are. Is easy—mmm—get lost with many turns in mountains. After, I will clear.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  The mountainous terrain was hard on the bike, but it was up to the task. As expected, it took longer to cover the same number of miles as when we had traversed the flatlands, my anticipation adding to what seemed by now an unending journey. Arturo committed to memory our destination coordinates and had calculated how we would know when we were almost there. The many miles in the national forests on the sometimes well-kept trails had been easy. But once we were out in the wild it was trickier. In fact, we found it impossible to penetrate the mountains and forests. After starting and stopping too many times, Arturo gave up in exasperation.

  “Too hard,” he said. “We have to find road.”

  I couldn’t argue. The land had grown too powerful, dark and impassable. And even if it hadn’t, I had the feeling we were lost and might never find our way back to civilization. Out in the wilderness, in these mountains and trees, there were no signs telling us how far to the next destination, no mile markers to keep track of. It’s just you and the trees and birds and wildflowers and it all looks the same for miles and miles. Who knew there was this much land in America with no human inhabitants?

  I didn’t.

  “Where is map?” he asked.

  I handed it to him. His finger found a red line. “Highway,” he said. “Is not interstate.” He looked up and squinted his eyes, peering into the distance. He shook his head. “Is strange.”

  “What? What’s strange?”

  “I think road should be there,” he pointed. “But I don’t seeing cars.” He nodded. “We go—okay with you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay by me. If GRIM has drones this far in, then more power to them. I’m impressed. We deserve to be caught.” I was on a roll. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the stress. He gave me a funny look, turned, and off we sped toward where he thought the highway should be.

  Arturo was right. We had been close to the highway. With the mountains and valleys as they were, we had naturally gravitated to the easiest places to pass. He had also been right about the lack of traffic. We hadn’t known that in some places, where states and cities had gone broke, highways in rural mountainous regions had ceased to be maintained except by private individuals. And the green vine we’d seen earlier, further south, had crept northward, consuming everything in its path. No wonder we hadn’t noticed the highway, it was but a silent green lane of carpet between the edge of the forest and the river. We rolled quietly over it, transfixed. In some places we could make out the forms of buildings completely eaten by the plant, and the green shapes of picnic tables along the road’s edge. At times the vines stretched all the way across the river, which rushed on underneath not to be overtaken.

  “Ay yay yay. Ay yay yay,” Arturo said over and over again.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the vines started loosening their grip and were gradually beaten back. The pavement was bare, though in disrepair, and a few clearly occupied homes began cropping up along its edge. Abandoned vehicles and houses left in the vine’s grip were still a part of the landscape, but there was also life. I didn’t know whether to scream or to rejoice when a group of barking dogs came running down a driveway, trailing after us.

  Along the highway, a large handmade sign caught our attention: “THIS ROAD IS MAINTAINED BY THE ABERNATHY AND STILES FAMILIES. PLEASE STOP BY AND THANK THEM.”

  “Thank you,” Arturo said.

  We rolled on, passing the rare car or truck, occasionally seeing someone out in a yard.

  “Gardens,” Arturo said, nodding off to the side.

  Sure enough, people here appeared to be illegally growing, right out in the open. Okay, maybe not “out in the open” since we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, the ends of the earth and all that.

  “Wanna stop?” he asked.

  I did. I wanted to. “Better not,” I answered. “We should keep going.”

  I lost track of the time, riding through this stunning, yet somewhat frightening terrain, part reclaimed wilderness, part inhabited. After a
while the road had dead-ended into an active, alive highway. We made a decision to turn left, but I grew anxious as we passed more and more well-maintained homes, mostly built out of brick. A good choice, I couldn’t help thinking, to withstand Nature.

  “I don’t like this,” I called.

  “Si, yes, I agree.”

  Eventually we came to a dirt road jutting up the side of the mountain. We passed it at first, but Arturo turned around, went back, stopped, and took a swig of water, offering some to me.

  “Is this a road?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I looked up and down it and all around.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe a logging road. For cut trees,” he explained, having seen my blank response. “Or maybe some people live there.” He shrugged. “But is okay, I think. How about you?”

  I shrugged back, looking up toward where the road ran—nothing but trees and a mountain for all I could tell. “Sure,” I said. After what we had just been through, a tiny dirt road scaling a mountain wasn’t about to intimidate me.

  The climb up the mountain was fierce, but Bronco was up to it. Arturo had decided to name the ATV during our last stint through the wilderness, and I didn’t protest. That little bike was like an ant scurrying up an anthill.

  As our elevation grew, the forest thinned. At the summit a tall structure peaked above the scrubby trees.

  “What’s that?”

  He tilted his head. “Fire tower?” We had stopped. A little road ran in the direction of the tower. “Wanna see?” He didn’t wait for my reply, pointing Bronco down the road. Already, the view from the summit was magnificent—up there above the trees and along the crest of the mountains.

  We let the bike drop and ran to the structure. Happy to be off Bronco, we scrambled up the stairs. To our disappointment, the door at the top was locked, so we hung from the stairs, making the best of the view we had.

  “‘S cool.”

  “Yeah.” Sometimes words escaped me.