Whose Names Are Unknown

by Sanora Babb

Knowledge was dangerous because it created doubt. Doubt and question belonged to the charlatans. Endurance, acceptance, the sad hard experience belonged to the good. Religion was for the poor; this much was clear. To him, the crust of bread, the sip of wine was not the flesh and blood of Christ but a symbol of life—the inadequate, betrayed life of people everywhere on the earth.

Was not Christ a man, with blood in his veins and a heart for people? He did not die that they might be saved; he was murdered, as good as lynched, for his ideas that woke the poor enduring people like the ones now in this little church in town, he was killed for his ideas that threatened the enthroned greed of the times.

What things were in the world that he would never know or see because the simple needs of staying alive captured his life from sun to sun and year to year? Why was one man with leisure to waste and another with no hour to spare?

“If the world wasn’t going to hell I’d like to come back to earth a hunderd years from now and see the women.

“how we’re not really divided according to our nationalities, but by how much or how little money we have. Most of the differences are acquired, they depend on what money can buy you.

But school was important. It might give the children a weapon against this destiny that nipped at the heels of their parents in their desperate flight halfway across America, and up and down, down and up this long Pacific coast.

“If he would tell all the bugs what we’ve done to him, they could hurt us, but he is just a little bug by himself afraid of us two giants.” “Do you think he’ll tell them and they’ll get us?” asked Lonnie in wonder. “If they will, maybe we ought to kill him. I’m afraid of him.”

They’re looking out for the Almighty Dollar, and if they have to starve us to get more’n they can count, they can do it because there’s more where we come from;