Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

“We can go to Rockville and ask,” Julie blurted. “If Hildale had it, then Rockville will have it.” Her eyes stood out like the ragged eyes of leg-broke cat.

“Slow down,” Isaiah urged. “We need to think. Balance risks against benefit. Rockville does have a dispensary, but they’re probably not going to share with us. We could get shot for even asking.”

Cameron knew he should take control of the situation. He was the father, but his hunger coupled with his terror left him mute.

“I’ll go,” he blurted out. Cameron grabbed the Mosin-Nagant from against the wall.

“No, wait a second.” Isaiah urged with his hands. “They always had roundworm here. I think the Mormon settlers had a remedy from the Indians.” His eyes went vacant and he rubbed his chin for a moment, deep in thought. Then he was back. “I think I remember. Give me an hour before you do anything, okay? I need to check on something. Promise me you’ll wait an hour before you go into Rockville, Cameron.”

Cameron nodded, then stormed back to the homestead, to suffer with his son.

Isaiah returned with Leah, both bent over under bulging cloth wraps.

“We need help,” Isaiah blurted as he dumped his pack on the table. He pulled open the knots in the cloth and shook out over a hundred dried gourds, like mottled-yellow racquetballs onto the tabletop. Leah did the same. Dozens overflowed onto the floor and rolled around the cabin.

“Crack these open and separate the seeds from the duff,” Isaiah urged.

Everyone except the sick boy jumped to cracking the dry gourds on the floor or the table and separating out the loose, dry seeds.

“Why weren’t we eating these?” Julie stuck some in her mouth.

Isaiah shook his head, “They were all dried up. It’s not the season. I didn’t think about the seeds. But don’t eat them yet. We need them for medicine, for Denny. Leah—stop what you’re doing and go find a rock and a board. We need to grind these up into powder. I remember the Natives used pumpkin seeds to get rid of parasites. These should work the same.”

The boy moaned on the floor, rocking back and forth inside the sleeping bag. Cameron clawed at his hair in desperation. He’d never felt so helpless.

The turd Ruth had dug from the privy had been riven with worms, almost a rope of them coiled around what little nutrition the boy had left in his poop. Cameron pictured the worms in his son’s intestines, writhing, sucking, hunting for nutrition.

“Focus, Cameron!” Isaiah almost shouted. “Open these and pick out the seeds. Stop fretting and work.”

Cameron blinked back the desolation that threatened to swamp him and focused on the gourds that Isaiah swept off the table and dumped into his lap.

Crack, split, dump. He forced his hands to the simple labor, though his senses drowned in liquid terror. A knot formed in his stomach, and Cameron pictured it as his own parasite chewing him from the inside out. He welcomed the pain. He imagined it drawing agony away from the boy, taking it into his own stomach.

Crack, split, dump. The crashing waves of love and terror could not be contained, but he could execute the gross functions of smashing the tiny, smelly pumpkins. The girl, Leah, knelt beside him and picked the clustered seeds out of the dry pile of fiber in front of his aching knees. It was good that she did because his fingers buzzed with adrenaline—insensate and thuggish. He couldn’t force them to pick out the seeds if he tried.

There was no escaping the truth: his family was completely exposed to the horrors or Mother Earth unbound. She was revealed, vengeful and cruel, and Cameron knew she wouldn’t hesitate to devour his son from the guts out. His son suffered, and Cameron could marshall no salvation but to follow the orders of the awkward polygamist.

Fifty-foot waves of crushing love swelled and then dropped into hundred-foot troughs of despair. Cameron hated himself for hating Isaiah. If he repented for his abuse of the polygamist family, maybe God would save Denny.

They were all so hungry, so close to the edge of oblivion. Denny had become a bony, stick-figure version of the Little League shortstop he’d been four months before. He would not survive an onslaught of parasites. Like the rest of them, he was dying by degrees already.

Crack, split, dump. In the hazy hunger and arrhythmic thumping of gourds on the floor of the dim room, Cameron despaired. His sin had brought them here. He had succumbed to slavery and abuse, at least in his heart. So, the devil feasted on his family, given leave by God because Cameron had abandoned decency. He was like Job in the Bible, if Job had been a soulless sonofabitch.

“I’m sorry,” Cameron heaved the words out. The saliva in his mouth turned to slurry. He’d been weeping without realizing it. Everyone paused their thumping and cracking. “I’m sorry, Isaiah,” he repeated. “I’ve been a dick.”

The pause lingered. Isaiah looked up and nodded acknowledgement, but he was probably too tired from collecting the gourds to speak. One-by-one, they went back to thumping and cracking.

8 Sage Ross

Elgin, Oregon

C-Zers Drive-thru

Sage hadn’t ever been to a job interview before. It probably wasn’t good that his first-ever job interview would be live-or-die.

They’d moved him to the dining area of a drive-through burger shack, and given him a burger, which felt about as strange as being interviewed naked. Over the last two months of eating rattlesnake, wild rabbit and shriveled, discarded onions, he’d assumed hamburgers had gone extinct.

The police captain pulled into the parking lot of the burger joint in his cruiser. He got out and shook hands with the militia officer supervising Sage. The two bullshitted for a bit. Sage couldn’t hear what they were saying through the glass, but he watched as they guffawed and knee-slapped like old fishing buddies, which they might have been.

Sage