Parable of the Talents (3 page)

Bankole had given him something to help him sleep. He did the same for her, so I won't be able to ask her anything more until she wakes up later this morning. I couldn't help won-dering, though, whether these people, with their crosses, had some connection with my current least favorite presidential candidate, Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret. It sounds like the sort of thing his people might do—a revival of something nasty out of the past. Did the Ku Klux Klan wear crosses—as well as burn them? The Nazis wore the swastika, which is a kind of cross, but I don't think they wore it on their chests. There were crosses all over the place during the Inquisition and before that, during the Crusades. So now we have another group that uses crosses and slaugh-ters people.

Jarret's people could be behind it. Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, "simpler" time.
Now
does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone be-lieved in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different There was never such a time in this coun-try. But these days when more than half the people in the country can't read at all, history is just one more vast un-known to them.

Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches.

Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, or even a Catholic.

A witch may also be an atheist, a "cultist," or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that's worth stealing. And "cultist" is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn't quite match Jarret's version of Christianity. Jarret's people have been known to beat or drive out Unitari-ans, for goodness' sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of "heathen houses of devil-worship," he has a simple answer: "Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again."

He's had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach.

Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of

your own sinful stubbornness is your prob-lem.
His opponent Vice President Edward Jay Smith calls him a demagogue, a rabble-rouser, and a hypocrite. Smith is right, of course, but Smith is such a tired, gray shadow of a man. Jarret, on the other hand, is a big, handsome, black-haired man with deep, clear blue eyes that seduce people and hold them. He has a voice that's a whole-body experi-ence, the way my father's was. In fact, I'm sorry to say, Jar-ret was once a Baptist minister like my father. But he left the Baptists behind years ago to begin his own "Christian Amer-ica" denomination. He no longer preaches regular CA ser-mons at CA churches or on the nets, but he's still recognized as head of the church.

It seems inevitable that people who can't read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should.

And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.

Jarret's people see alcohol and drugs as Satan's tools. Some of his more fanatical followers might very well be the tunic-and-cross gang who destroyed Dovetree.

And we are Earthseed. We're "that cult," "those strange people in the hills," "those crazy fools who pray to some kind of god of change." We are also, according to some rumors I've heard, "those devil-worshiping hill heathens who take in children.
And what do you suppose they do with them?''

Never mind that the trade in abducted or orphaned children or children sold by desperate parents goes on all over the country, and everyone knows it. No matter. The hint that some cult is taking in children for "questionable purposes" is enough to make some people irrational.

That's the kind of rumor that could hurt us even with peo-ple who aren't Jarret supporters. I've only heard it a couple of times, but it's still scary.

At this point, I just hope that the people who hit Dovetree were some new gang, disciplined and frightening, but only after profit. I hope

But I don't believe it. I do suspect that Jarret's people had something to do with this. And I think I'd better say so today at Gathering. With Dovetree fresh in everyone's mind, peo-ple will be ready to cooperate, have more drills and scatter more caches of money, food, weapons, records, and valu-ables. We can fight a gang. We've done that before when we were much less prepared than we are now. But we can't fight Jarret. In particular, we can't fight
President
Jarret.

Presi-dent Jarret, if the country is mad enough to elect him, could destroy us without even knowing we exist.

We are now 59 people—64 with the Dovetree women and children, if they stay. With numbers like that, we barely do exist. All the more reason, I suppose, for my dream.

My "talent," going back to the parable of the talents, is Earthseed. And although I haven't buried it in the ground, I have buried it here in these coastal mountains, where it can grow at about the same speed as our redwood trees. But what else could I have done? If I had somehow been as good at rabble-rousing as Jarret is, then Earthseed might be a big enough movement by now to be a real target. And would that be better?

I'm jumping to all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. At least I hope they're unwarranted. Between my horror at what's happened down at Dovetree and my hopes and fears for my own people, I'm upset and at loose ends and, per-haps, just imagining things.

? ? ?

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Chaos

Is God's most dangerous

face—

Amorphous, roiling, hungry.

Shape Chaos—

Shape God.

Act

Alter the speed

Or the direction of Change.

Vary the scope of Change.

Recombine the seeds of

Change.

Transmute the impact of

Change.

Seize Change.

Use it.

Adapt and grow.

THE ORIGINAL 13 SETTLERS of Acorn, and thus the original 13 members of Earthseed, were my mother, of course, and Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, who were also refugees from my mother's home neighborhood in Robledo.

There was Travis, Natividad, and Dominic Douglas, a young family who became my mother's first highway converts. She met them as both groups walked through Santa Barbara, California. She liked their looks, recognized their dangerous vulnerability— Dominic was only a few months old at the time—and con-vinced them to walk with Harry, Zahra, and her in their long trek north where they all hoped to find better lives.

Next came Allison Gilchrist and her sister Jillian—Allie and Jill. But Jill was killed later along the highway. At around the same time, my mother spotted my father and he spotted her. Neither of them was shy and both seemed willing to act on what they felt. My father joined the growing group. Justin Rohr became Justin Gilchrist when the group found him cry-ing alongside the body of his dead mother. He was about three at the time, and he and Allie wound up coming to-gether in another small family. Last came the two families of ex-slaves that joined together to become one growing family of sharers. These were Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe and Emery Solis and her daughter Tori.

That was it: four children, four men, and five women.

They should have died. That they survived at all in the un-forgiving world of the Pox might qualify as a miracle—al-though of course, Earthseed does not encourage belief in miracles.

No doubt the group's isolated location—well away from towns and paved roads—helped keep it safe from much of the violence of the time. The land it settled on belonged to my father. There was on that land when the group arrived one dependable well, a half-ruined garden, a number of fruit and nut trees, and groves of oaks, pines, and redwoods. Once the members of the group had pooled their money and bought handcarts, seed, small livestock, hand tools, and other necessities, they were almost independent. They van-ished into their hills and increased their numbers by birth, by adoption of orphans, and by conversion of needy adults.

They scavenged what they could from abandoned farms and settlements, they traded at street markets and traded with their neighbors. One of the most valuable things they traded with one another was knowledge.

Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English, since those were the two most useful. Anyone who joined the group, child or adult, had to begin at once to learn these basics and to acquire a trade. Anyone who had a trade was always in the process of teaching it to someone else. My mother insisted on this, and it does seem sensible. Public schools had become rare in those days when ten-year-old chil-dren could be put to work. Education was no longer free, but it was still mandatory according to the law. The problem was, no one was enforcing such laws, just as no one was protect-ing child laborers.

My father had the most valuable skills in the group. By the time he married my mother, he had been practicing medicine for almost 30 years. He was a multiple rarity for their loca-tion: well educated, professional, and Black. Black people in particular were rare in the mountains. People wondered about him. Why was he there? He could have been making a better living in some small, established town. The area was littered with tiny towns that would be glad to have any doc-tor. Was he competent? Was he honest? Was he clean? Could he be trusted looking after wives and daughters?

How could they be sure he was really a doctor at all? My father appar-ently wrote nothing at all about this, but my mother wrote about everything.

She says at one point: "Bankole heard the same whispers and rumors I did at the various street markets and in occa-sional meetings with neighbors, and he shrugged. He had us to keep healthy and our work-related injuries to treat.

Other people had their first aid kits, their satellite phone nets, and, if they were lucky, their cars or trucks. These vehicles tended to be old and undependable, but some people had them. Whether or not they called Bankole was their business.

"Then, thanks to someone else's misfortune, things im-proved. Jean Holly's appendix flared up and all but ruptured, and the Holly family, our eastern neighbors, decided that they had better take a chance on Bankole.

"Once Bankole had saved the woman's life, he had a talk with the family. He told them exactly what he thought of them for waiting so long to call him, for almost letting a woman with five young children die. He spoke with that in-tense quiet courtesy of his that makes people squirm. The Hollys took it. He became their doctor.

"And the Hollys mentioned him to their friends the Sullivans, and the Sullivans mentioned him to their daughter who had married into the Gama family, and the Gamas told the Dovetrees because old Mrs. Dovetree—the

matriarch—had been a Gama. That was when we began to get to know our nearest neighbors, the Dovetrees."

Speaking of knowing people, I wish more than ever that I could have known my father. He seems to have been an im-pressive man. And, perhaps, it would have been good for me to know this version of my mother, struggling, focused, but very young, very human. I might have liked these people.

FROM
The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER
27, 2032

I'm not sure how to talk about today. It was intended to be a quiet day of salvaging and plant collecting after yesterday's uncomfortable Gathering and determined anniversary cele-bration. We have, it seems, a few people who think Jarret may be just what the country needs—apart from his religious nonsense. The thing is, you can't separate Jarret from the "religious nonsense." You take Jarret and you get beat-ings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They're a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. Jar-ret's supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret's talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.

Nevertheless, some of our people—the Peralta and Fair-cloth families in particular—might be leaving us soon.

"I've got four kids left alive," Ramiro Peralta said yester-day at Gathering. "Maybe with a strong leader like Jarret running things, they'll have a chance to stay alive."

He's a good guy, Ramiro is, but he's desperate for solu-tions, for order and stability. I understand that. He used to have seven kids and a wife. He'd lost three of his kids and his wife to a fire set by an angry, frightened, ignorant mob who decided to cure a nasty cholera epidemic down in Los Angeles by burning down the area of the city where they thought the epidemic had begun. I kept that in mind as I an-swered him. "Think, Ramiro," I said. "Jarret doesn't have any answers! How will lynching people, burning their churches, and starting wars help your kids to live?"

Ramiro Peralta only turned away from me in anger. He and Alan Faircloth looked across the Gathering room—the school room—at one another. They're both afraid. They look at their children—Alan has four kids, too—and they're afraid and ashamed of their fear, ashamed of their power-lessness. And they're tired. There are millions of people like them—people who are frightened and just plain tired of all the chaos. They want someone to do something. Fix things. Now!

Anyway, we had a stormy Gathering and an uneasy an-niversary celebration. Interesting that they fear Edward Jay Smith's supposed incompetence more than they fear Jarret's obvious tyranny.