Parable of the Talents
Hidden away in the hills, there was a large, two-story wooden farmhouse set back off the road. It was much in need of paint. It had once been white. Now it was gray. Alongside it, a woman was weeding her large vegetable garden. Without telling Len what I meant to do, I walked off the road, went to her, and asked if we could do her weeding for a meal.
“We’ll do a good job,” I said. “We’ll satisfy you, or no food.”
She stared at us both with fear and suspicion. She seemed to be alone, but might not be. We were clearly armed, but offering no threat. I smiled. “Just a few sandwiches would be awfully welcome,” I said. “We’ll work hard for them.” I was dressed in loose clothing as a man. My hair was cut short. Len tells me I don’t make a bad-looking man. We were both reasonably clean.
The woman smiled in spite of herself—a tentative little smile. “Do you think you can tell the weeds from the vegetables?” she asked.
I laughed and said, “Yes, ma’am.” In my sleep, I thought. But Len was another matter. She had never done any gardening at all. Her father hired people to work in their gardens and orchards. She had thin, soft, uncallused hands and no knowledge of plants. I told her to watch me for a while. I pointed out the carrots, the various green vegetables, the herbs, then set her weeding the herbs on hands and knees. She’d have more control over what she pulled that way. I depended on her memory and her good sense. If she was angry with me, she would let me know about it later. Raging at people in public wasn’t her style. In fact, we had plenty of food in our packs, and we weren’t yet low on money. But I wanted to begin at once to reach out to people. Why not stop for a day on our way to Portland and leave a few words behind in this old gray house? It was good practice, if nothing else.
We worked hard and got the garden cleaned up. Len muttered and complained, but I didn’t get the impression that she was really suffering. In fact, she seemed interested in what she was doing and content to be doing it, although she complained about bugs and worms, about the way the weeds smelled, about the way the damp earth smelled, about getting dirty…
I realized that while Len had talked about experiences with her family and with the servants and experiences with her kidnappers and with living on her own, scavenging and stealing, she’s never talked about working. She must have done some small jobs for food, but working seems still to be a novelty for her. I’ll have to see that she gets more experience so that even if she decides to go off on her own, she’ll be better able to take care of herself.
Later in the day, when we had finished the weeding, the woman—who told us her name was Nia Cortez—gave us a plate of three kinds of sandwiches. There was egg, toasted cheese, and ham. And there was a bowl of strawberries, a bowl of oranges, and a pitcher of lemonade sweetened with honey. Nia sat with us on her side porch, and I got the impression that she was lonely, shy, and still more than a little afraid of us. What a solitary place the old house was, dropped amid grassy hills.
“This is beautiful country,” I said. “I sketch a little. These rolling hills, blond grasses, and green trees make me want to sit drawing all day.”
“You can draw?” Nia asked me with a little smile.
And I took my sketchpad from my pack and began to draw not the rolling hills but Nia’s own plump, pleasant face. She was in her late forties or early fifties and had dark brown hair streaked with gray. Drawn back into a long, thick horsetail, it hung almost to her waist. Her plumpness had helped her avoid wrinkles, and her smooth skin was tanned a good even brown—a nice, uncomplicated face. Her eyes were as clear as a baby’s, and the same dark brown as most of her hair. Drawing someone gives me an excellent excuse to study them and let myself feel what it seems to me that they feel. That’s what sharing is, after all, and it comes to me whether I want it or not. I might as well use it. In a rough and not altogether dependable way, drawing a person helps me become that person and, to be honest, it helps me manipulate that person. Everything teaches.
She was lonely, Nia was. And she was taking an uncomfortable interest in me-as-a-man. To curb that interest, I turned to Len, who was watching everything with sharp, intelligent interest.
“Wrap up a couple of sandwiches for me, would you?” I asked her. “I’d like to finish this while the light is right.”
Len gave me a sidelong glance and used paper napkins to wrap two sandwiches. Nia, on the other hand, looked at Len almost as though she had forgotten her. Then, in a moment of confusion, she looked down at her hands—tools of work, those hands. She seemed more contained, more restrained when she looked at me again.
I didn’t hurry with the drawing. I could have finished it much more quickly. But working on it, adding detail, gave me a chance to talk about Earthseed without seeming to proselytize. I quoted verses as though quoting any poetry to her until one verse caught her interest. That she could not conceal from me. To her credit, it was this verse:
“To shape God
With wisdom and forethought
To benefit your world,
Your people,
Your life.
Consider consequences.
Minimize harm.
Ask questions.
Seek answers.
Learn.
Teach.”
She had once been a teacher in a public school in San Francisco. The school had closed 15 years after she began teaching. That was during the early twenties when so many public school systems around the country gave up the ghost and closed their doors. Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending. Politicians shook their heads and said sadly that universal education was a failed experiment. Some companies began to educate the children of their workers at least well enough to enable them to become their next generation of workers. Company towns began then to come back into fashion. They offered security, employment, and education. That was all very well, but the company that educated you owned you until you paid off the debt you owed them. You were an indentured person, and if they couldn’t use you themselves, they could trade you off to another division of the company—or another company. You, like your education, became a commodity to be bought or sold.
There were still a few public school systems in the country, limping along, doing what they could, but these had more in common with city jails than with even the most mediocre private, religious, or company schools. It was the business of responsible parents to see to the education of their children, somehow. Those who did not were bad parents. It was to be hoped that social, legal, and religious pressures would sooner or later force even bad parents to do their duty toward their offspring.
“So,” Nia said, “poor, semiliterate, and illiterate people became financially responsible for their children’s elementary education. If they were alcoholics or addicts or prostitutes or if they had all they could do just to feed their kids and maybe keep some sort of roof over their heads, that was just too bad! And no one thought about what kind of society we were building with such stupid decisions. People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people’s children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn’t hurt them!”
Len sighed. “That sounds like the way my dad thinks. I’m his punishment, I guess—not that he cares!”
Nia gave her a look of chilly interest. “What? Your father?”
Len explained, and I watched as, almost against her will, Nia thawed. “I see.” She sighed. “I suppose I could have wound up homeless myself, but my aunt and uncle owned this house and surrounding farmland outright. This is mother’s family home. I came to live here and care for them when my job ended. They were old and not doing well anymore. Even then they were renting the farmland to neighboring farmers. They left the house, the land, and the rest of their possessions to me when they died. I keep a garden, some chickens, goats, rabbits. I rent the land. I survive.”
&
nbsp; I tried to ignore a sharp stab of envy and nostalgia.
Len said, “I like your garden.” She stared out at the long, neat rows of vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
“Do you?” Nia asked. “I heard you complaining out there.”
Len blushed, then looked at her hands. “I’ve never done that kind of thing before. I liked it, but it was hard work.”
I smiled. “She’s game, if nothing else. I’ve been doing work like that all my life.”
“You were a gardener?” Nia asked.
“No, it was just a matter of eating or not eating. I’ve done a number of things, including teach—although I’m not academically qualified to teach. But I’m literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.”
As she smiled her delight at hearing such agreement with her own thoughts, I handed her the drawing. On the lower right side of it I had written the first verse of Earthseed, “All that you touch, /You Change…” On the other I had written the “To shape God” verse that she liked.
She read the verses and looked at the picture for a long, long time. It was a detailed drawing, not just a sketch, and I felt almost pleased with it. Then she looked at me and said in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Thank you.”
She asked us to stay the night, offered to let us sleep in her barn, proving that she hadn’t altogether lost her fear of us. We stayed, and the next day I did a few odd repair jobs around the house for her. I could have stolen her blind if I’d wanted to, but what I had decided that I wanted from her, I couldn’t steal. She had to give it.
I told her that evening that I was a woman. First, though, I told her about Larkin. We were in her kitchen. She was cooking. She’d told me to sit down and talk to her. I’d worked hard, she said. I’d earned a rest.
I never took my eyes off her as I told her. It was important that she not feel foolish, frightened, or angry when she understood. A little confusion and mild embarrassment was inevitable, but that should be all.
She looked as though she might cry when she heard about my Larkin. That was all right. Len was in the living room, delighting in reading real books made of paper. She would not see any tears Nia shed—in case Nia was sensitive about that kind of thing. You could never be altogether sure what another person might feel as a humiliation or an invasion of privacy.
“What happened to…to the child’s mother?” Nia asked.
I didn’t answer until she turned to look at me. “It’s dangerous on the road,” I said. “You know that. People vanish out there. I walked from the Los Angeles area to Humboldt County in ʼ27, so I know it. Know it too well.”
“She vanished on the road? She was killed?”
“She vanished on the road to avoid being killed.” I paused. “She’s me, Nia.”
Silence. Confusion. “But…”
“You’ve trusted us. Now I’m trusting you. I’m a man on the road. I have to be. Two women out there would be everyone’s target.” There. I was not correcting her, not smiling at the joke I’d played on her. I was making myself vulnerable to her, and asking her to understand and keep my secret. Just right, I hoped. It felt right.
She blinked and then stared at me. She left her pots and came over to take a good look. “I can hardly believe you,” she whispered.
And I smiled. “You can, though. I wanted you to know.” I drew a deep breath. “Not that it’s safe for a man out there either. The people who took my child also killed my husband and wiped out my community—all in the name of God, of course.”
She sat down at the table with me. “Crusaders. I’ve heard of them, of course—that they rescue homeless orphans and…burn witches, for heaven’s sake. But I’ve never heard that they…just killed people and…stole their children.” But it seemed that what the Crusaders had done could not quite get her mind off what I had done. “But you…” she said. “I can’t get over it. I still feel… I still feel as though you were a man. I mean…”
“It’s all right.”
She sighed, put her head back and looked at me with a sad smile. “No, it isn’t.”
No, it wasn’t. But I went to her and hugged her and held her. Like Len, she needed to be hugged and held, needed to cry in someone’s arms. She’d been alone far too long. To my own surprise, I realized that under other circumstances, I might have taken her to bed. I had gone through 17 months at Camp Christian without wanting to be with anyone. I missed Bankole—missed him so much sometimes that it was an almost physical pain. And I had never been tempted to want to make love with a woman. Now, I found myself almost wanting to. And she almost wanted me to. But that wasn’t the relationship that I needed between us.
I mean to see her again, this kind, lonely woman in her large, empty, shabby house. I need people like her. Until I met her, I had not realized how much I needed such people. Len had been right about what I should be doing, although she had known no more than I about how it must be done. I still don’t know enough. But there’s no manual for this kind of thing. I suppose that I’ll be learning what to do and how to do it until the day I die.
The three of us talked about Earthseed again over dinner. Most often we talked of it from the point of view of education. By the time we parted for the night, I could speak of it as Earthseed without worrying that Nia would feel harassed or proselytized. We stayed one more day and I told her more about Acorn, and about the children of Acorn. I held her once more when she cried. I kissed her lonely mouth, then put her away from me.
I did two more sketches, each accompanied by verses, and I let her offer to look after any of the children of Acorn that I could find until their parents could be contacted. I never suggested it, but I did all I could to open ways for her to suggest it. She was afraid of the children of the road, light-fingered and often violent. But she was not, in theory at least, afraid of the children of Acorn. They were connected with me, and after three days, she had no fear at all of me. That was very compelling, somehow, that complete acceptance and trust. It was hard for me to leave her.
By the time we did leave, she was as much with me as Len was. The verses and the sketches and memories will keep her with me for a while. I’ll have to visit her again soon—say within the year—to hold on to her, and I intend to do that. I hope I’ll soon be bringing her a child or two to protect and teach—one of Acorn’s or not. She needs purpose as much as I need to give it to her.
“That was fascinating,” Len said to me this morning as we got under way again, “I enjoyed watching you work.”
I glanced at her. “Thank you for working with me.”
She smiled, then stopped smiling. “You seduce people. My God, you’re always at it, aren’t you?”
“People fascinate me,” I said. “I care about them. If I didn’t, Earthseed wouldn’t mean anything at all to me.”
“Are you really going to bring that poor woman children to look after?”
“I hope to.”
“She can barely look after herself. That house looks as though the next storm will knock it over.”
“Yes. I’ll have to see what I can do about that, too.”
“Do you have that kind of money?”
“No, of course not. But someone does. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, Len, but the world is full of needy people. They don’t all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.”
“What about Larkin?”
“I’ll find her. If she’s alive, I’ll find her. I’ve sworn that.”
We walked in silence for a while. There were a few other walkers in clusters, passing us or walking far ahead or behind us. The broad highway was broken and old and stretched long in front of us, but it wasn’t threatening, somehow. Not now.
After a while, Len caught my arm and I turned to look at her. It was good to be walking with someone. Good to have another pair of eyes, another pair of hands. Good to hear another voice say my name, another brain questioning, demanding, even sneering.
/> “What do you want of me?” she asked. “What is it that you want me to do? You have to tell me that.”
“Help me reach people,” I said. “Go on working with me, and helping me. There’s so much to be done.”
THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2035
As my father used to quote from his old King James Bible, “Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall.” He liked to be accurate about his quotes.
I’m bruised and wounded about the pride, but not destroyed, at least.
I decided yesterday that things had worked out so well with Nia that I could go on recruiting people as we walked toward Portland. Walking through a roadside town that seemed big enough for people not to be alarmed at the sight of a stranger, I stopped to ask a woman who was sweeping her front porch whether we could do some yard work for a meal. With no warning, she opened her front door, called her two big dogs, and told them to get us. We barely got out of her yard in time to avoid being bitten. Interesting that neither of us drew a gun or uttered a sound. It turns out that Len’s fear of dogs is as strong as mine. Last night, she showed me some scars given her by a dog that her former owners had allowed to get too close.
Anyway, the woman with the two dogs cursed us, called us “thieves, killers, heathens, and witches.” She promised to call the cops on us.
“All that just because you asked for work,” Len said. “Thank heavens you didn’t try to tell her about Earthseed!” She was cleaning a long, deep scratch on her arm. It came from a nail that stuck out from the woman’s wooden gate. I had spotted the dogs in time to shove her back through the gate, dive through myself, then slam the gate by grabbing a bottom slat and yanking. I only just let go in time to avoid a lot of long, sharp teeth, and damned if the dog didn’t bite one of the wooden slats of the fence in frustration at not being able to get at me. I had skinned hands and a bruised hip. Len had her long scratch, which hurt and bled enough to scare me. Later, I treated us both to tetanus skin tabs. They cost more than they should, but neither of us is up-to-date on our immunizations anymore. Best not to take unnecessary chances.