Parable of the Talents (9 page)

Once the welcoming was over, we moved on to the weekly discussion. Our Gatherings, aside from weddings, funerals, welcomings, or holiday celebrations, are discus-sions. They're problem-solving sessions, they're times of planning, healing, learning, creating, times of focusing, and reshaping ourselves.

They can cover anything at all to do with Earthseed or Acorn, past, present, or future, and anyone can speak.

During the first Gathering of the month, I lead a looking-back-looking-forward discussion to keep us aware of what we've done and what we must do, taking in any necessary changes, and taking advantage of any opportunities. And I encourage people to think about how the things we do help us to sustain purposeful religious community.

This morning Travis Douglas wanted to talk about ex-panding our community business, a subject dear to my own heart. First he read his chosen Earthseed texts—verses that, like any good texts, could be used to start any number of dif-ferent discussions.

"Civilization is to groups what

intelligence is to individuals.

Civilization provides ways of

combining the information,

experience, and creativity of the

many to achieve on-going group

adaptability."

And then,

"Any Change may bear seeds of benefit.

Seek them out.

Any Change may bear seeds of harm.

Beware.

God is infinitely malleable.

God is Change."

"We have an opportunity that we have to take advantage of," Travis said. "We have the truck, and we have no real competition. I've gone over the truck, and in spite of the way it looks, it's in damned good shape. The solar wings just drink sunlight—really efficient. If we recharge the batteries during the day, we should save a bundle in fuel. For short trips there isn't even any need to use anything but the batter-ies. We have the best vehicle in the area. We can do minor professional hauling. We can buy goods from our neighbors and sell them in the cities and towns. People will be glad to sell us their stuff for a little less if we're the ones who do the work of getting it to market. And we can contract to grow crops for businesses in Eureka-Arcata, maybe down in Garberville."

Several of us have talked about this off and on, but today was our first Gathering on the subject since we got the truck.

Travis, more than most of us, wanted to risk becoming more involved with our neighbors. We could contract with them to buy the specific handicrafts, tools, and crops that they produce well. We know by now who's good at what, who's dependable, and who's honest and sober at least most of the time.

Travis and I have already been asking around on our now more frequent trips to Eureka to see which merchants might be interested in contracting to buy specific produce from us.

Travis cleared his throat and spoke to the group again.

"With the truck," he said, "only our first truck if we're suc-cessful, we've got the beginnings of a wholesale business.

Then, instead of depending only on what we can produce and instead of only bartering with near neighbors, we can grow a business as well as a community and a movement It's important that we become a self-sustaining economic entity or we're liable never to move out of the nineteenth century!"

Well put, but not all that well received. We say "God is Change," but the truth is, we fear change as much as anyone does. We talk about changes at Gathering to ease our fears, to desensitize ourselves and to consider consequences.

"We're doing all right," Allie Gilchrist said. "Why should we take on more risk? And why, when this guy Jarret is li-able to win the election, should we draw attention to ourselves?" She had already lost her infant son and her sister.

She had only her adopted son Justin, and she would do al-most anything to protect him.

Michael surprised me. "We could do it, I suppose," he said, and I waited for the "but." There was bound to be one with Michael. He obliged. "But she's right about Jarret. If he gets elected, the last thing we'll need is higher visibility."

"Jarret is down in the polls!" Jorge said. "His people are scaring everyone to death with their burning churches, burn-ing people. He might not win."

"Who the hell do they poll these days?" Michael asked, shaking his head. And then, "We'd better keep an eye on Jar-ret anyway. Win or lose, he'll still have plenty of followers who are eager to create scapegoats."

Harry spoke up. "We aren't invisible now," he said.

"Peo-ple in the nearby towns know us, know what we are—or they think they do. I want my kids to have a chance at de-cent lives. Maybe this wholesaling idea will be the begin-ning of that chance."

Next to him, his wife Zahra nodded and said, "I'm for it too. We didn't settle here just to grub in the ground and live in log huts. We can do better."

"We might even improve things for ourselves with the neighbors," Travis said, "if more people in the area know us, know that we can be trusted, it might be a little harder for a rabble-rouser like Jarret or one of his local clones to make trouble for us."

I doubted that that would prove true—at least not on a large scale. We would meet more people, make more friends, and some of these would be loyal. The rest. . . well, the best we could hope for from them would be that they ig-nore us if we get into trouble. That might be the kindest ges-ture they could manage—to turn their backs and not join the mob.

Others, whether we thought of them as friends or not, would be all too willing to join the mob and to stomp us and rob us if stomping and robbing became a test of courage or a test of loyalty to country, religion, or race.

On the other hand, making more of the right kinds of friends couldn't hurt us. We've already made some that I trust—near neighbors, a couple of people in Prata, and a few more in Georgetown, the big squatter settlement outside Eu-reka. And the only way to make more good friends is to make more friends period.

Adela Ortiz spoke up in her quick, soft, little-girl voice.

She's only 16. "What if people think we're cheating them?"

she said. "People always think that. You know, like you're trying to be nice to them and they just think everybody's a liar and a thief but them."

I was sitting near her, so I answered. "People will think whatever they like." I said. "It's our job to show by our be-havior that we're not thieves, and we're not fools. We've got a good reputation so far. People know we don't steal.

They know better than to steal from us. And they know we're neighborly. In emergencies, we help out. Our school is open to their kids for a little hard currency, and their kids are safe while they're here." I shrugged. "We've made a good start."

"And you think this wholesaling business is the way for us to go?" Grayson Mora asked.

I looked over at him with surprise. He sometimes man-ages to get through a whole Gathering without saying any-thing.

He isn't shy at all, but he's quiet. He and his wife were slaves before they met. Each had lost family members to the effects and neglects of slavery. Now between them they have two girls and two boys. They're ferocious in guarding their children, and suspicious of anything new that might af-fect those children.

"I do," I said. I paused, glanced up at Travis who stood at the big handsome oak podium that Allie had built Then I continued. “1 believe we can do it as long as the truck holds up. You're our expert there, Travis. You've said the truck is in good shape, but can we afford to maintain it? What new, expensive part will it be needing soon?"

"By the time it needs anything expensive, we should be making more money," he said. "As of now, even the tires are good, and that's unusual." He leaned over the podium, look-ing confident and serious. "We can do this," he said.

"We should start small, study the possibilities, and figure out how we should grow. If we do this right, we should be able to buy another truck in a year or two. We're growing. We need to do this.''

Beside me, Bankole sighed. "If we're not careful," he said,

"our size and success will make us the castle on the hill—everyone's protector in this area. I don't think that's wise."

I do mink it's wise, but I didn't say so. Bankole still can't see this place as anything more than a temporary stop on the way to a "real" home in a "real" town—that is, an already es-tablished town. I don't know how long it will take for him to see that what we're building here is as real and at least as im-portant as anything he's likely to find in a town that's been around for a century or two.

I foresee a time when our settlement is not only "the cas-tle on the hill," but when most or all of our neighbors have joined us. Even if they don't like every aspect of Earthseed, I hope they'll like enough of it to recognize that they're bet-ter off with us than without us. I want them as allies and as members, not just as "friends." And as we absorb them, I also intend to either absorb some of the storekeeper, restau-rant, or hotel clients that we'll have—or I want us to open our own stores, restaurants, and hotels. I definitely want to begin Gathering Houses that are also schools in Eureka, Ar-cata, and some of the larger nearby towns. I want us to grow into the cities and towns in this natural, self-supporting way.

I don't know whether we can do all this, but I think we have to try. I think this is what a real beginning for Earth-seed looks like.

I don't know how to do it That scares me to death some-times—always feeling driven to do something I don't know how to do. But I'm learning as I go along. And I've learned that I have to be careful how I talk about all this, even to Acorn. Bankole isn't the only one of us who doesn't see the possibility of doing anything he hasn't seen done by others. And. . . although Bankole would never say this, I suspect that somewhere inside himself, he believes that large, im-portant things are done only by powerful people in high positions far away from here. Therefore, what we do is, by definition, small and unimportant. This is odd, because in other ways, Bankole has a healthy ego. He didn't let self-doubt or the doubts of his family or the laughter of his friends stop him from going to college, and then medical school, surviving by way of a combination of scholarships, jobs, and huge debts. He began as a quietly arrogant Black boy of no particular distinction, and he ended as a physician.

But in a way, I suppose that's normal. I mean, it had been done before. Bankole himself had been taken to a Black woman pediatrician when he was a child.

What I'm trying to do isn't quite normal. It's been done.

New belief systems have been introduced. But mere's no standard way of introducing them—no way that can be depended on to work. What I'm trying to do is, I'm afraid, a crazy, difficult, dangerous undertaking. Best to talk about it only a little bit at a time.

Noriko, Michael's wife, spoke up. "I'm afraid for us to get involved in this new business," she said, "but I think we have to do it This is a good community, but how long can it last, how long can it grow before we begin to have trouble feeding ourselves?"

People nodded. Noriko has more courage than she gives herself credit for. She can be shaking with fear, but she still does what she thinks she should do.

"We can grow or we can wither," I agreed. "That's what Earthseed is about on a larger scale, after all."

"I wish it weren't," Emery Mora said. "I wish we could just hide here and stay out of everything else. I know we can't, but I wish It's been so good here." Before she escaped slavery, she'd had two young sons taken from her and sold.

And she's a sharer. She and Gray and his daughter Doe and her daughter Tori and their sons Carlos and Antonio—all sharers. No other family is so afflicted. No other family has more reason to want to hide.

We talked on for a while, Travis listening as people protested, then either answering their protests or letting oth-ers answer them. Then he asked for a vote: Should we ex-pand our business? The vote was "yes" with everyone over 15 voting. Only Allie Gilchrist, Alan Faircloth, Ramiro Per-alta, and Ramiro's oldest daughter Pilar voted "no."

Aubrey Dovetree, who couldn't vote because she was not yet a member, made it clear that she would have voted "no" if she could have.

"Remember what happened to us!" she said.

We all remembered. But we had no intention of trading in illegal goods. We're farther from the highway than Dovetree was, and we couldn't refuse this opportunity just because Dovetree had been hit.

We would expand our business, then. Travis would put to-gether a team, and the team would talk to our neighbors—those without cars or trucks first—and talk to more merchants in the cities and towns. We need to know what's possible now. We know we can sell more at street markets because now with the track we can go to more street mar-kets. So even if we don't manage to get contracts at first, we'll be able to sell what we buy from our neighbors. We've begun.

When the Gathering was over, we shared a Gathering Day meal. We spread ourselves around the two large rooms of the school for food, indoor games, talk, and music. At the front of the room near the podium, Dolores Figueroa Castro was planning to read a story to a group of small children who would sit at her feet. Dolores is Lucio's niece, Marta's daughter. She's only 12, but she likes reading to the younger kids, and since she reads well and has a nice voice, the kids like to listen. For the adults and older kids, we were to have an original play, written by Emery Mora, of all people. She's too shy to act, but she loves to write and she loves to watch plays.

Lucia Figueroa has discovered that he enjoys staging plays, shaping fictional worlds. Jorge and a few others are hams and love acting in plays. Travis and Gray provide any needed music. The rest of us enjoy watching. We all feed one another's hungers.

Dan Noyer came over to me as I helped myself to fried rabbit, baked potato, a mix of steamed vegetables with a spicy sauce, and a little goat cheese. There were also pine nut cookies, acorn bread, and sweet potato pie. On Gather-ing Day. the rule is, we eat only what we've raised and pre-pared.