Parable of the Talents

  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 especially 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 collared 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. People 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 unbelievable 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… I 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 ricocheted 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 out. 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 passing 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 remember 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 relatives or something. It’s a pretty common name, though.”

  I nodded. Not unusual at all, but the only Duran I happened 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 families. 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 cou
ldn’t prove they had a right to be where they were. You had to have rent receipts, a deed, utility receipts, something. At first, there was a hell of a business in fake paper. I wrote some of it myself—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.

  “That’s the area, yes. The Durans were poor. They worked all the time, but sometimes they didn’t even get enough to eat—especially sharing with me. When I was well enough, I worked with them. We cleaned, repaired, and sold anything we could salvage. We took whatever jobs we could get—cleaning, assembling, constructing, repairing. They never lasted long. There were a lot of people like us and not so many jobs, so wages were terrible. Just food and water sometimes, or some old clothes or shoes or something. They’d even pay you in American money if they thought they could get away with palming it off on you. Hard currency if they gave a damn about treating you right. Most didn’t. Also, hard currency if they were a little bit afraid of you or of your friends.

  “In spite of all our efforts, there was no way we could afford to rent even a shabby little apartment or house. We lived on Valley Street because we couldn’t do any better. With all that, though, it probably wasn’t as bad as you think. People looked after one another there, except for the worst junkies and thugs. Everyone knew who they were. I did reading and writing for people even before the fake-paper craze. They paid me what they could. And… I helped some of them hold church on Sundays. There was an old carport behind the house we lived in. It projected from a garage where three families lived, but as it happened, no one lived under the carport. We met for church there and I would preach and teach as best I could. They let me do it. They came to hear me even though I was a kid. I taught them songs and everything. They said I had a gift, a calling. The truth was, thanks to Dad, I knew more about the Bible than any of them, and more about real church.”

  He paused, looked at me. “I liked it, you know? I prayed with them, helped them any way I could. Their lives were so terrible. There wasn’t much I could do, but I did what I could. It was important to them that I had recovered from burns and gunshots. A lot of them had seen me back when I looked like vomit. They thought if I could recover from that, God must have something in mind for me.

  “The Durans were proud of me. They gave me their name. I was Marcos Duran. That’s who I was during my four years with them. That’s who I still am. I found a real home there.

  “Then the cops came and drove us into the street. Behind them came demolition crews to push down the houses, blow up the buildings, and destroy everything we had been forced to leave behind. People were dragged or driven into the street without all kinds of things—spare clothing, money, pictures, personal papers… Some people who couldn’t speak English were even driven out without relatives who had managed to hide or who were too sick or disabled to run. The cops dragged some of these out and put them in trucks. They didn’t find them all. I sent them to get seven that I knew of, and they brought them out.

  “But everything was chaos. People kept trying to run back to get their things, and the cops kept stopping them—or trying to. Some of the cops were in armored personnel carriers. The ones on foot had full body armor, masks, shields, automatic rifles, gas, whips, clubs, you name it, but still, some people tried to stop them, or at least to hurt them. The people threw rocks, bottles, even precious cans of food.

  “Then someone fired three shots, and one of the cops went down. I don’t know whether he was wounded or he tripped, but there were the shots, and he fell. And that was that. Everything went to hell.

  “The cops started shooting. People ran, screamed, shot back if they had guns. I got separated from the Durans. I started looking for them even before the shooting stopped. No one shot me this time, but I didn’t find the Durans. I never found them. I tried for days. I looked at as many dead bodies as I could before they were collected. I did everything I could think of, but they were gone. After a while, I knew they must be dead, and I was alone again.”

  Marcus sat still, staring into space. “I loved them,” he said, his voice soft and filled with pain. “And I loved being Marcos Duran—the little preacher. People trusted me, respected me… It was a good life. Most of them were good people—just poor. They deserved so much better than they got.” He shook his head.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he continued after a moment. “I hung around the Valley Street area for two more weeks, saw all the buildings go down and the rubble carried away. I stole food where I could, avoided the cops, and kept looking for the Durans. I’d said they were dead, and on some level, I believed they were, but I couldn’t stop looking.

  “But there was nothing. No one.” He hesitated. “No, that’s not quite right. Some people from my poor, half-assed church came back to see what was left. I met three families of them. They all asked me to stay with them. They had relatives squatting in other hovels, overcrowded like you wouldn’t believe, but they figured they could take in one more. I had nothing, but they wanted me. I should have gone with them. I probably would have set up another church outside of town, gotten married, and raised a family—Dad all over again. I would have been okay. Poor, but okay. Poor doesn’t matter as much if you can make a place for yourself and be respected. I know that now, but I didn’t then.

  “I was 18. I figured it was time for me to be a man, get out on my own. I figured there was nothing for me in southern California. It was a place where you could only be poor unless you were born rich or you were a really successful crook. I thought that meant I had to go north. There was always a river of people walking north on the freeway. I thought they must know something. I talked to people about Alaska, Canada, Washington, Oregon… I never intended to stay in California.”

  “Neither did I,” I said.

  “You walked up?”

  “I did. So did Bankole, Harry, Zahra… A lot of us did.”

  “Nobody bothered you?”

  “A lot of people bothered us. Harry, Zahra, and I survived because we stuck together and one of us always kept watch. We started out with my one gun. We gathered more people and more guns along the way. I lost count of the number of times we were nearly killed. One of us was killed. There may be an easy way to get here, but we didn’t find it.”

  “Neither did I. But why did you come here? I mean, why didn’t you keep going to Oregon or someplace?”

  “Bankole owns this land,” I said. “By the time we got near here, well, he and I wanted to stay together, but I also wanted… I wanted to keep the rest of the group together. I was building a community—a group of families and single people who were still human.”

  “You walk the roads for a while, and you wonder if anyone is still human.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The people you brought here—they built this place?”

  I nodded. “There was nothing here when we got here but the ashes of a house, the bones of Bankole’s relatives, some untended crops and trees, and a well. There were only 13 of us then. There are 66 of us now—67 with you.”

  “You just let people come here and stay? What if they rob you, cheat you, kill you? What if they’re crazy?”

  “Give me some credit, Marc.”

  His face changed in an odd way. “You. You personally.” He paused. “
I thought at first this was Bankole’s place, that he’d taken you in.”

  “I told you, this is his land.”

  “But it’s your place.”

  “It’s our place. I’ve shaped it, but it doesn’t belong to me. I’ve invited people to come here and build lives for themselves, to join us.” I hesitated, wondering how much he still believed in religion as our father had taught it to us. When he was little, he always seemed to take Dad’s religion as real, as obvious, as a given. But what did he believe now that he had suffered the destruction of two homes and the loss of two families, then endured prostitution and slavery? He still had not talked about that last part of his story. Had his religion given him hope, or had it withered and fallen away when his God did not rescue him? Back in Robledo, he had run a simple outdoor church, had been serious about it. But where was he now? I made myself continue. “And I’ve given them a belief system to help them deal with the world as it is and the world as it can be—as people like them can make it.”

  “You mean you’re their preacher?” he asked.

  I nodded. “We don’t call it that, but yes.”

  He looked surprised, then gave a short bark of laughter. “Religion is in our genes,” he said. “It must be. Either that or Dad did a hell of a job on us.”

  “We call our system Earthseed,” I said. “My actual title is ‘Shaper.’ ”

  He stared at me for several seconds, saying nothing. He still looked surprised, and now confused. “Earthseed?” he said at last. “My god, I’ve heard of you guys. You’re that cult!”