Only upside to today being Harvest Home is that nobody else is out there. Everybody’s here to eat, drink, watch the youngins get Obligated, and then finish the night with a Lottery that none of them will likely win. Cael walks to the festival with his father and several other families who live down the old Creamery Road. John Redskirt and his wife, Lula Belle. Ed and Sigma Tyrus with their baby, Nicolaus, whose left eye is already given over to a milky cataract. Burt and Bessie Greene, smiling as if this is the first day of a brand-new earth, bless the Lord and the Lady and all their works. They share stories as they walk. All Ed and Sigma want to talk about is the “hobo problem.” She keeps hearing reports of vagrants and vagabonds rising up in the Heartland. He says they’re probably joining up with the Sleeping Dog raiders—after all, wasn’t the town of White Truck hit just a few months ago by the Sleeping Dogs? She says hobos are like cockroaches and shuck rats: once you find one, you’ll find a dozen more living in the corn, eating your life’s work.
