Parable of the Talents

I stood still, not letting him move me. 'Listen,' I said in a more human voice. 'Listen, I know I'm dumping a lot on you, Marc, and I'm sorry.' I took a deep breath. 'It's just that you're the only person I've felt that I could dump it on. I need your help. I'm desperate.'

'Come on in.' He wasn't quite humoring me. He seemed to be in denial, but not speaking of it. He was trying to di­vert me, tempt me with meaningless comforts.

'Marc, if it's possible, I will never set foot in that poi­sonous place again. Now that I've found you, I shouldn't have to.'

'But these people will help you, Lauren. You're making some kind of mistake. I don't understand it, but you are. We would rather take in whole families than separate them. I've worked on the apartments that we're renovating to help get people off the streets. I know—'

Now he was humoring me. 'Have you ever heard of a place called Camp Christian?' I asked, letting the harshness come back into my voice. He was silent for a moment, but I knew before he spoke that the answer to my question was yes.

'I wouldn't have named it that,' he said. 'It's a reeduca­tion camp—one of the places where the worst people we handle are sent These are people who would go to prison if we didn't take them. Minor criminals, most of them— thieves, junkies, prostitutes, that kind of thing. We try to reach them, teach them skills and self-discipline, stop them from graduating to real prisons.'

I listened, shaking my head. He was either a great actor or he believed what he was saying. 'Camp Christian was a prison,' I said. 'For seventeen months it was a prison. Be­fore that, it was Acorn. My people and I built Acorn with our own hands, then your Christian America took it, stole it from us, and turned it into a prison camp.'

He just stood there, staring at me as though he didn't know what to believe or what to do.

'Back in September,' I said, keeping my voice low and even. 'Back in September of '33, they came with seven maggots, smashing through our thorn fence, picking off our watchers. I knew we couldn't fight a force like that. I sig­naled everyone to run like hell, scatter. You know we had drills—drills for fighting and drills for fading into the hills. None of it mattered. They gassed us. Three people might have gotten away: the mute woman named May and the two little Noyer girls. I don't know. They were the only ones we never heard anything about. The rest of us were captured, collared, and used for work and for sex. Our younger chil­dren were taken away. No one would tell us where. My Bankole, Zahra Balter, Teresa Lin, and some others were killed. If we asked anything, we were punished with the col­lars. If we were caught talking at all, we were punished. We slept on the floor or on shelves in the school. Your holy men took our houses. And they took us, too, when they felt like it. Listen!'

He had stopped looking at me and begun to look past me, looking over my right shoulder.

'They brought in street people and travelers and minor criminals and other mountain families, and they collared mem too,' I said. 'Marc! Do you hear me?'

'I don't believe you,' he said at last. 'I don't believe any of this!'

'Go and look at what's left of Acorn. Look for yourself. Go to one of the other so-called reeducation camps. I'll bet they're just as bad. Check them out.'

He began to shake his head. “This is not true! I know these people! They wouldn't do what you're accusing them of.'

'Maybe some of them wouldn't. But some of them did. All that we built they stole.'

'I don't believe you,' he said. But he did believe. 'You're making some kind of mistake.'

'Go and see for yourself,' I repeated. 'Be careful how you ask questions. I don't want you to get into trouble. These are dangerous, vicious people. Go and see.'

He said nothing for a few seconds. It bothered me that he was frowning, and again, not looking at me. 'You were col­lared?' he asked at last.

'For seventeen months. Forever.'

'How did you get away? Was your sentence up?'

'What? What sentence?'

'I mean did they let you go?'

'They never let anyone go. They killed quite a few of us, but they never released anyone. I don't know what their long-range