Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (15 page)

“Mine were correct,” I said. I had double-checked all the numbers in my head against the register totals. Even though I had been tired, I was sure I hadn't made a mistake.

“Right, because it's always somebody else's fault,” Felicia snapped at me, her eyes blazing.

“Whoa, Felicia, go easy,” said V. “The sun's barely up. Come on, Starbird, let's put our stuff down.”

I followed V toward the office. I was shocked, and hurt, by Felicia's reaction. No one had ever spoken to me that way on the Farm, even if I had made a mistake. The red blotches started to spread over my chest, and I reminded myself it was only a few days until I could go home. As I walked past the counter, Devin looked at me, pulled his shirt collar away from his neck, and made a choking sound.

“She's just like that.” V parted the beaded curtain. “I know it isn't what you're used to, but we need her. Well, I need her.”

 
 

V trained me on the register for real before we opened. When the rush started, I did better at busing tables, but I still mixed up regular and decaf, and one woman was manic and angry after her third cup of caffeinated drip. I screwed up three drink orders before V said, “Why don't you ring up my checks and I'll handle beverages? Don't forget to eat something during your shift. I'm surprised you didn't stab anyone with a fork yesterday.”

On her advice, I went to the dish room to eat some bread while Sun washed bowls. With his blond hair and bronzed skin, Sun didn't seem to belong in the cloudy world of the Pacific Northwest. He was older than the other cooks, probably in his forties, and handsome with a strong jaw. His back was to me as he rinsed dishes with the industrial nozzle on the faucet hose.

“It's even busier than yesterday.” I tore off a bite of my roll.

Sun nodded and washed.

“Do you like working in the kitchen?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“What's your second name, Sun?”

“Just Sun.”

“EARTH didn't give you a second name?”

He stopped rinsing and sighed. Then he started rinsing again without answering. I ate the rest of my bread in silence.
Even Family members on the Outside are more isolated and sad. It must be their exposure to Outsiders. I need to get back to the Farm. I can't let that happen to me
.

Ephraim came in around eleven and worked in the office. When my shift ended, he asked for me and V. She squeezed into the tiny space by the aprons, and I stood in the doorway.

“Let's start Starbird with four shifts a week.” His voice sounded raspy and thin like a wooden flute with a crack in it. “She'll need some nights off for schoolwork. I'm thinking Thursday to Sunday.

“I'll work with her the first weekday so she isn't the only waitress.” V adjusted Ephraim's scarf to fit more tightly around his neck. “Are you warm enough?”

Ephraim patted her hand. “Did you tell her about paychecks and tips?”

V spoke softer. “You'll get a paycheck every two weeks because we need to show that we're paying documented workers, but you will deposit your check and then give the money back to Ephraim for living expenses at Beacon House. You get to keep five dollars in tips every shift you work.”

“Didn't you tell him I want to go home?”

“Home?” said Ephraim, looking up from his papers, his reading glasses making his eyes seem magnified on his face. “You are home. You're with Family here.”

“I know, but—”

“Homesickness,” said V.

“You just need to adjust is all,” said Ephraim.

“I just don't think it's right—”

“Well, we definitely need you here. I think that if EARTH were here, he would say—”

“But he's not here!”

They both stared at me.

“Okay.” Ephraim took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “If you want to go back to the Farm, you can go with Cham when he does the pickup on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday? I thought it was Tuesday.”

“Had to change it. Oh, here, I made a copy of your birth certificate,” said Ephraim, returning the brown envelope I had given him earlier. “I didn't know you were Iron's child. Iron's a wondrous soul. One of my favorite non-Believers.”

“He's not my father. I mean, he probably isn't. He just helped my mom with the paperwork,” I said, shoving the envelope into the pocket of my wool sweater on its hook.

“Sure,” said Ephraim, not looking up from the papers in front of him.

“He might be. No one can say,” I said.

“All right,” said Ephraim.

“What do I do with the five dollars?”

V and Ephraim both laughed, causing Ephraim to start coughing. “Take the bus, buy a candy bar, whatever sixteen-year-olds do,” said V. “Just don't mention it to Felicia. Her tips work differently.”

 
 

If it was possible, I was even more tired when we got home from the café the second day. Cham was watching Eris and Kale, so no one stopped me as I climbed the stairs to my room. I thought I would fall asleep instantly, but I didn't. I lay in bed teetering on sleep. I was thinking about Indus, and then about Kale running her plastic horse around the house, and then the two images blended together and Indus was a pale horse running through the apple orchard on the Farm, and I was trying to run after him on the thin, tired legs of a girl. My thoughts mixed into a dream, and Indus the horse was moving briskly and gracefully through the trees while I was running after him through quicksand. Even in the dream I knew: I had to catch him.

 13 

I
woke just before sunrise and expected to hear Chocolate crow before I remembered that Chocolate was two hundred miles away. I rolled over toward the window and saw Io sleeping on her back, her hands clutching the blanket. I wanted to go back to sleep, too. It would be hours until the alarm rang for me to get up and go enroll in public school, but my internal clock was still set to Farm time, and my body was ready to start working.

I rolled over and faced the door, closed my eyes, and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking.
Why bother enrolling in school if I'm just going to go back to the Farm on Wednesday? Do I really want to go back?
My mind drifted back to another morning just before sunrise, when I was eleven and Doug Fir woke me up before the rooster.

“Starbird.” He jostled my shoulder. “Wake up. EARTH is calling a sunrise Translation.”

Fern was already moving around the yurt, putting on a sweater and rubbing her eyes. “Why this morning?” she asked Doug. “He hasn't done one in years.”

“He just told me to gather everyone.”

“Were you up all night with him again?” she asked.

“I've got to wake the others.” Doug pulled off the shirt he was wearing and tossed it onto his cot before grabbing a fresh one and leaving the yurt. He left the door open, and I could see other Family members moving around in the dusky light outside. It was July and the air was cool but sweet. I put on a sweater over my pajamas and went out with Fern.

There was a line at the outhouse. Firmament Rise was in front of us.

“Haven't had a sunrise Translation in years,” he said, stretching his arms overhead. “Feels like the old days.” Firmament pulled his wiry gray hair back into a long ponytail and then bent down into a yogic chair pose.

The first bit of actual sunlight popped into view above the mountains and Fern said, “We'd better hurry.” Our old rooster, Ringer, crowed from the coop.

Ten minutes later, we found our seats in one of the outer orbits of the Sanctuary. Adeona was still laying out cushions, and there was a sleepy, rumbling murmur throughout the barn. Doug was onstage pouring water into a glass on the table next to EARTH's pillows. Hazy yellow light fell through the hayloft window and pooled on the platform.

Finally, Mars Wolf entered through the north door. That was the summer he let his beard get long, and it looked like a wire horse brush was growing on his chin. Family members were still arranging their seats and getting comfortable as he started our customary words.

“Our Family was summoned together in 1970 by the Cosmic Imagination that Called the eight principal elders to witness the first Translation by our interpreter, EARTH . . .”

While Mars spoke,
Family members were still arriving with their mugs of tea and coffee. None of the Farm visitors who came to Sunday Translations was there. It was only those of us who lived on the Farm, maybe a hundred people.

“. . . We live by these Principles because We are the Family and We are Free.”

“The Family is Free,” we chanted together.

When he finished, Mars sat down on some pillows on the edge of the platform, and the north door opened. EARTH walked in.

EARTH wasn't wearing his usual robes. He was wearing a thin pair of cotton pants that he often wore during Family yoga sessions and a loose brown shirt. He didn't walk contemplatively across the platform, but quickly, rubbing his hands together. He didn't take a seat on the cushions laid out for him, but instead he walked to the center of the stage, held his arms out straight at this sides, and said, “I am not your messiah.”

Any rustling in the room stopped. No one took a sip of coffee. Next to me, Fern froze in place.

EARTH grinned his sweetest smile. Sunlight poured through the window above him. His eyes looked red and squinty.

“I'm not your savior.” EARTH still had both arms raised. His bare feet gripped the plywood below him. “Don't worship me. Don't
believe
in me. Don't place me above you in any way.” EARTH turned a slow circle all the way around on the platform, as if to show us every side of himself. “Am I anything other than a man?”

No one in the congregation answered him, but I noticed a few people shaking their heads. Ringer crowed out by the chicken coop and EARTH threw back his head and took a deep breath. I started to feel anxious. This was nothing like a Sunday morning Translation.

“If you came here,” said EARTH, his head still tipped back, looking at the ceiling, “looking for someone to follow, you should leave.” He pointed toward the Sanctuary door at the south end of the room. “If you want a mystic to tell you how to live your life”—now EARTH lowered his head and looked around at all of us gathered—“then
leave this Sanctuary right now
!”

I gripped my cushion, then inched closer to Fern, lacing my arm through hers. Fern gave my arm a reassuring pat, but I could tell by her expression that she was worried, too. I glanced over at Doug, who was seated on the platform to the right of EARTH. His hands were clasped together in his lap and his back was straight as a board. He was looking down at his knees.

No one moved or spoke. Hay particles and dust danced in the light of dawn. EARTH smiled again.

“What is the greatest human need?” He looked around the room, his hands now lowered to his sides. “What is it? Is it money?”

A few heads shook. One woman muttered, “No.”

“No, it isn't money. It could be food. We all need food to live, right? Is it our
greatest
need?”

Heads shook again, tentatively, but no one spoke.

“What about shelter? What about love? What about sex? Is sex our greatest need as humans?”

“No,” said a few people in the crowd. I glanced at Fern Moon. Her hair was hanging long and loose because she hadn't bothered to braid it. She chewed her thumbnail.

“What human beings long for”—EARTH raised his arms again, as if he were holding a large, invisible moon over his head—“what we all need more than we need money or food or sex or recognition or accomplishment or any of the other stuff that the Outsiders tell us we need, our strongest desire and deepest goal, is
belonging
. BE-LONG-ING. We
long
to
belong
.”

A woman behind me whispered, “Yes, yes.”

“It's what all the Outsiders are after, they just don't
get it
yet,” he said. “What we get here”—EARTH gestured to the floor—“what they don't get out there, with their separation into countries and religions and ethnic groups and identities and households and cubicles and
selves
, is that separation is what's making them so miserable.” EARTH started to pace slowly along the front edge of the stage, holding his hands to his chest now. “The division of individual ownership is killing them inside.

“And when you really open your eyes, when you see what is true underneath all of the borders and the false walls that we think we're building to protect ourselves, it's all bullshit. Because we're all the same. You can't worship me, because my self isn't different from your self. We're the same person.”

EARTH stepped off the front of the platform and started walking through the rows of pillows. As he passed each Family member, he touched them in some way, on the shoulder, arm, or head. But he kept his eyes moving around the crowd.

“All our human fates are linked. The Outsiders need only one great epidemic to learn that lesson. We call ourselves the Family and we call them the Outsiders not because we aren't them and they aren't us, but just because they don't
get it
yet. They haven't seen the truth. They're bent on building walls and we're bent on belonging. What they don't know yet is that belonging is the easiest thing in the world. Everyone is eventually going to
get it
and then we're all, all of the human race, going to be part of the Family.” EARTH started talking faster and moving more quickly through the room, touching each Family member as he went. Some touched him back or sighed. Adeona burst into tears as EARTH touched her shoulder. She crumpled onto her cushion.

“You can't worship me, because you are me,” EARTH said, nearly running through the room, hopping between the orbits, touching people like he was tagging them in a game of chase.

“Say it. I don't worship EARTH! I don't worship EARTH!” he said.

“I don't worship EARTH.”
We chanted. “I don't worship EARTH.”

He circled closer to our row, touching members, now only a few steps from me. I braced myself for the touch I knew was coming while I chanted, “I don't worship EARTH. I don't worship EARTH.”

And then he touched me. He reached out a hand and placed it down on my shoulder, and it felt like the sunrise was happening in my soul, like a spirit entered through my arm and spread its wings in my heart. I was one with everyone in the room, and the sun came in through the hayloft window and backlit everyone's hair so everyone appeared to have a halo, and the chanting shook the barn and I pounded my fists on my legs to keep rhythm with the chant, and others started pounding on the walls or the floors. And when EARTH had made it to the back of the room and touched the very last person in the last orbit, he kept going and he ran right out the door. But we kept chanting without him after he left. The door of the barn stood open and we chanted to the sunrise.
I don't worship EARTH. I don't worship EARTH
.