Little House on the Wasteland

Twenty-Five: Beyond the Suri

Laura picked up the jar once more and held it up, letting the sunbeams bend around and through the curved, lectricmade glass, illuminating the layers within.

Pa was very happy with those layers. He had returned from the Wastes exhausted but triumphant.

It was only after telling Pa all about the miraculous improvement in Mary's condition that they had finally asked him about his expedition. In response, Pa had pulled the jar from his satchel without explanation and laid it at their feet like a trophy.

"What is it, Pa?" Laura had asked.

"It's home," he replied.

When Laura lifted the jar towards the sun, the murky water at the top of the jar glowed with a happy chestnut hue. But it wasn't the water but rather what had settled to the bottom of the jar that interested Pa. At first glance, it just looked like plain dirt. Holding the jar up at eye level, though, Laura could see the distinct layers that Pa pointed out.

At the very bottom, the dirt was yellow and gritty. This was sand. A crooked line cut across the top of the sand, separating it from a layer of darker, finer dirt. This layer was called silt. Finally, there was a top layer. It was lighter than the silt and looked almost creamy compared to the coarse sand. That was the clay.

The three layers were nearly equal in size. Pa said that meant good soil.

He had nearly despaired of finding a good piece of land on which to file a claim, Pa told them. By his fifth day out in the Wastes, he'd found a few spots that might support a homestead, but none of them had been quite right. He knew he needed to turn around, but something kept telling him to go just a little further.

"So I tacked east a ways," he told them. "All the while thinking to myself 'Ingalls, you're a blasted fool. If you don't turn around soon, that beautiful wife of yours is going to wring your neck when she sees you again.' But also thinking 'maybe just a little farther. Just another kim or so to see what's over the next horizon.' And then, just when I was about to yield to my more sensible notions, there it was.

"There's a creek nearby. Not big, but big enough for us, at least until I can get a well dug. There's a billabong a ways upstream with a bit of shrubland surrounding. A rare enough sight out on the Wastes I can tell you. 'Wattle' the little trees on the banks are called. Decent wood if you can harvest enough of it I'm told, and the bean pods are edible. There's a few ruins as well scattered about the wattle, half-buried mostly. No one's come within fifty kims of that place since before the Hard Years I'd reckon. Nothing much to look at. But there's materials enough to scav for a simple lean-to I reckon. That'll give us a bit of shelter until I can return to Lildaka for supplies and build you a real house.

"We won't have an easy time of it. Not at first. But just have a look at that soil. Uncle Freddie'd have been pleased to find soil half that rich back in Upstate, and I'd stake it any day against those rocky patches we scrabbled over for so long back in the Wisconsin. Comes of the land sitting untouched so long, that's what I put it down to. Why, even late in the season as we are, if this soil's as fertile as it looks, we may yet manage a harvest this year to see us through the winter."

"It sounds perfect," said Ma. "It must have been the Prezdent Above guiding your footsteps for you to find it as you did."

Pa scratched his beard at that. Ma said these kinds of things more often lately. She had been going to prayer meetings led by Lildaka's conduit, a woman named Mother Imani. It had been at Ms. Aguilar's invitation at first, but Ma continued attending on her own even after Mr. and Ms. Aguilar left for their claim. The meetings had seemed to bring her comfort during Mary's illness, but Pa always seemed unsure how to respond to Ma's newfound piety.