Parable of the Talents (15 page)

Sometimes half a house falls into the sea. Sometimes it's several houses. Last night it was three of them. The people of Halstead were still fishing victims out of the sea. Worse, the community doctor had been deliver-ing a baby in one of the lost houses. That's why the com-munity was turning to Bankole for help. Bankole had been on good terms with their doctor. The people of Halstead trusted Bankole because their doctor had trusted him.

"What are you people thinking?" Bankole demanded of the weary, desperate Halstead men as he and I snatched up things he would need. He was adding to his medical bag. I was packing an overnight case for him. Marcus had looked from one of us to the other, then moved off to one side, out of the way.

"Why do you still have people living on the cliffs?"

Bankole demanded. He sounded angry. Unnecessary pain and death still made him angry. "How many times does this kind of thing have to happen before you get the idea?" he asked.

He shut his bag and grabbed the overnight case that I handed him. "Move the damned houses inland, for heaven's sake.

Make it a long-term community effort."

"We're doing what we can," a big red-haired man said, moving toward the door. He pushed his hair out of his face with a dirty, abraded hand. "We've moved some. Others refuse to have their houses moved. They think they'll be okay. We can't force mem."

Bankole shook his head, then kissed me. "This could take two or three days," he said. "Don't worry, and don't do any-thing foolish. Behave yourself!" And he went.

I sighed, and began to clear away the breakfast things.

"So he really is a doctor," Marcus said.

I paused and looked at him. "Yes, and he and I really are married," I said. "And I'm really pregnant. Did you think we were telling you lies?"

"... no. I don't know." He paused. "You can't change everything in your life all at once. You just can't"

"You can," I said. "We both have. It hurts. It's terrible. But you can do it"

He reached for the plate I was about to take, and scav-enged a few crumbs of Acorn bread from it "It tastes like Mama's," he said, and he looked up at me. "I didn't believe it was you at first Yesterday in that godforsaken shanty-town, I saw you, and I thought I had finally lost my mind. I remember, I thought, 'Good. Now I'm crazy. Now nothing matters. Maybe I'll see Mama, too. Maybe I'm dead'

But I could still feel the weight of the collar around my neck, so I knew I wasn't dead. Just crazy."

"Then you knew me," I said. "And you looked away be-fore Cougar could see that you knew me. I saw you."

He swallowed. Nodded. A long time later, he shut his eyes and leaned his face into his hand. "If you still want me to," he said, "I'll tell you what happened."

I managed not to sigh with relief. "Thank you."

"I mean, you've got to tell me things, too. Like how you wound up here. And how you wound up married to a man older than Dad."

"He's a year younger than Dad. And when we had both lost almost everything else and everyone else, we found each other. Laugh if you want to, but we were damned lucky."

"I'm not laughing. I found good people too, at first. Or rather, they found me."

I sat down opposite him, and waited. For a time, he stared at the wall, at nothing, at the past

"Everything was burning on that last night," he said. His voice was low and even. "There was so much shooting………Hordes of bald, painted people, mostly kids, had rammed their damned truck through our gate. They were every-where. And they had their fun with Ben and Greg and Mama and me. In all the confusion, Lauren, we didn't even know you were gone until we had almost reached the gate.

Then a blue-painted guy grabbed Ben—-just snatched him and tried to run off with him. I was too small to do any good fighting him one-on-one, but I was fast. I ran after him and tackled him. I might not have been able to bring him down by my-self, but Mama jumped on him too. We dragged him down, and when he fell, he hit his head on the concrete and he dropped Ben. Mama grabbed Ben and I grabbed Greg.

Greg had hurt his foot—stepped on a rock and twisted it—while we were running.

"This time, we made it out through the wrecked gate. I didn't know where we were going. I was just following Mama, and we were both looking around for you." He paused.

"What happened to you?"

"I saw someone get shot," I said, remembering, shudder-ing with the memory. "I shared the pain of the gunshot, got caught up in the death. Then when I could get up, I found a gun. I took it from the hand of someone who was dead. That was good because a moment later, one of the paints grabbed me, and I had to shoot him. I shared his death, and in the confusion of that, I lost track of you guys and of time. When I could, I ran out of the gate and spent the rest of the night a few blocks north of our neighborhood huddling in some-one's half-burned garage. The next day I came back looking for you. That's when I found Harry and Zahra. We were all pretty beaten up. Zahra told me you guys were dead."

Marcus shook his head. "I wish we had been with you.

Then we could have been just 'beaten up.' Everything went wrong for us. Just as we went through the gate another group of paints arrived."

He paused. "You know, I met some paints later. Most of them killed themselves off, with their drugs, or with their drug-induced love of fire. But there are still a few around.

Anyway. . . I was collared with some a few months ago. They said their whole deal was to help the poor by killing off the rich and letting the poor take their stuff. If you lived in a place where the houses weren't falling down, and espe-cially if you had a wall around your neighborhood or your house, that meant you were rich. The crazy thing was, a lot of the paint kids really were rich. One of the girls I met, her family had more money than our whole neighborhood put together.

She had pretty much given up everything for the paints, but in the end her friends betrayed her. One day while she was spaced out on something, they sold her to be col-lared because she was still young and cute, and they needed money for drugs. But she still thought she'd done some good. We couldn't convince her. We figured the drugs had wiped out her mind.''

"She had to believe in something," I said. "And after all, what did she have left?"

"I guess. Anyway, we were caught between these two groups of goddamn saviors of the poor." He sighed. "They were shooting—most of them firing into the air at first—and waving torches

More fire We couldn't do anything but

run back in through the gate.

''Everything was crazy. Ben and Greg were crying. Peo-ple were running everywhere. All the houses were burning. Then someone shot me. I was knocked down, stunned. At first I didn't understand what had hit me. Then I felt this un-believable pain. I must have dropped Greg. I tried to look around for him. That's when I understood that I was down on the sidewalk. I felt slammed down, stomped, plus stabbed through the right shoulder and arm by a hot poker. I never knew who shot me or why. We didn't have guns. I guess they just shot us for fun.

"Then I saw Mama get shot The truth is, it all happened so fast—first me, then her, bang, bang. I know that But at the time 1 remember seeing it all, taking it all in as though I had plenty of time. And yet I was desperate to get out of there, and scared to death. Jesus God, there's no way I can make you know how bad it was.

"I saw Mama stagger and collapse She made a horrible noise, and I saw blood pouring from her neck. I knew then that. . . she. . . that she was dying. I knew it

"I tried to get up, tried to make myself go to her. But while I was struggling to stand, a green-painted woman ran up and shot her through the head.

"I slipped in my own blood and fell back. From the ground, I saw a red guy shoot Ben twice through the head, then step over him and shoot Greg. I saw him. I was yelling. The red guy had an automatic rifle—an old AK-47. He shot Ben while Ben was trying to get up. Ben's head. . . just... broke apart.

"But Greg was down on the sidewalk—moving, but down.

When the guy shot him, the bullets must have rico-cheted off the concrete. They hit another paint in the legs. He screamed and fell down. That made all the paints nearby mad. It was like they thought we had shot their man—like his being wounded was our fault. They grabbed all four of us and dragged us over to the Balter house. It was burning, and they threw us into the fire.

"They did that They threw us into the fire. I was the only one who was conscious. I was maybe the only one alive, but I couldn't stop them. Somehow, though, once they threw me in, I got up and ran out. I just ran, panicked out of my mind, blind with smoke and pain, not human anymore. I should have died.

"Later, I wished I had died. Later, all I wanted to do was die."

Marcus stopped and sat silent for several seconds.

"Someone must have helped you," I said when I thought the silence had gone on long enough. "You were only 14."

"I was only 14," he agreed. After another silence, he went on. "I think I must have fallen down in the Balter yard. I was on fire. I didn't think about rolling on the ground to put the fire out, but I must have done it. I was just scrambling around in panic and pain, and the fire did go off. Then all I could do was lie there. I must have passed out at some point. When I woke up—I have a clear memory of this—I was on a big wooden wagon on top of a lot of scorched clothes and some pots and pans and junk. I could see the sidewalk pass-ing under me—broken concrete, weeds growing in the holes and cracks, and I could see the backs of a man and woman walking ahead, leaning forward, pulling the wagon with rope harnesses. Then I passed out again.

"A pair of scavengers, picking over the bones of our neighborhood had found me groaning—although I don't re-member groaning or being found—and they had loaded me onto their salvage wagon. They were a middle-aged couple named Duran, believe it or not. Maybe they were distant rel-atives or something. It's a pretty common name, though."

I nodded. Not unusual at all, but the only Duran I hap-pened to know was my stepmother. Duran was her maiden name. Well, if these Durans had saved my brother's life five years ago when he couldn't have lived without their help, I was more than willing to be related to them.

"They had had an 11-year old daughter kidnapped from them the year before they found me," Marcus said. "They never found her, never found out what happened to her, but I can guess. You could sell a pretty little girl for a lot then. Just like now. I've heard people say things are getting better.

Maybe so, but I haven't noticed. Anyway, the Durans were handsome people. Their daughter could have been really pretty."

He sighed. "The kid's name was Caridad. They said I looked enough like her to be her brother. The woman said that. Inez was her name. She was the one who insisted on collecting what was left of me and taking it home to nurse back to health.

"I'm surprised I even looked human when she found me.

My face wasn't too bad—blood and bruises from falling down a few times. But the rest of me was a hell of a mess.

"There was no way these people could afford a doctor—not even for themselves. So Inez herself worked on me. She worked so hard to save me—like a second mother. The man thought I would die. He thought it was stupid to waste time, effort, and valuable resources on me. But he loved her, so he let her have her way.

"These people were a lot poorer than we used to be, but they did what they could with what they had. For me that meant soap and water, aspirin and aloe vera. Why I didn't die of 20 infections I don't know. I goddamn sure wanted to die.

I'll tell you, I'd rather blow my own brains out than go through that again."

I shook my head. I had no medical training beyond first aid, and I doubt that I'd be much good administering that, but I'd lived with Bankole long enough to know how nasty burns could be. "No complications at all?" I demanded.

Marcus shook his head. "I don't know, really. Most of the time I was in so much pain I didn't know what was going on.

How could I tell a complication from the general run of misery?"

I shook my head, and wondered what Bankole would say when I told him. Soap and water and aspirin and aloe vera.

Well, a little humility would be good for him. To Marcus, I said, "What happened to the Durans?"

"Dead," he whispered. "At least I guess they're dead. So many died. I never found their bodies, though, and I tried. I did try."

Long silence.

"Marcus?" I reached over and put my hand on his.

He pulled away and put his hands to his face. I heard him sigh behind them. Then he began to talk again. "Four years after our neighborhood burned, the city of Robledo decided to clean itself up. The Durans and I were squatters. We shared a big, abandoned stucco house with five other fami-lies. That meant we were part of the trash that the new mayor, the city council, and the business community wanted to sweep out. It seemed to them that all the trouble of the past few years was our fault—poor people's fault, I mean.

Homeless people's fault. Squatters' fault. So they sent an army of cops to drive out everyone who couldn't prove they had a right to be where they were. You had to have rent re-ceipts, a deed, utility receipts, something. At first, there was a hell of a business in fake paper. I wrote some of it my-self—not for sale, but for the Durans and their friends. Most people couldn't read or write or at least not in English, so they needed help. I saw that some of them were paying hard currency for crap, so I started writing—rent receipts, mostly.

In the end, it was all for nothing. Between them, the city and the county owned most of the rotting buildings in our area, and the cops knew we didn't belong there, no matter what papers we had. They drove us all out—poor squatters, drug dealers, junkies, crazies, gangs, whores, you name it."

"Where were you living?" I asked. "What part of town?"

"Valley Street," Marcus said. "Old factory buildings, parking structures, ancient houses and stores, all packed with people."

"And vacant lots full of weeds and trash where people dump inconvenient dead bodies," I continued for him.