Parable of the Talents

done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.' '

But to the servant who had done nothing with his silver talent except bury it in the ground to keep it safe, the lord said harsher words.' 'Thou wicked and slothful servant...' ' he began. And he ordered his men to, ' 'Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have in abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.' '

When my father has said these words, my mother van­ishes. I haven't even been able to see her whole face, and now she's gone.

I don't understand this. It scares me. I can see now that other people are vanishing too. Most have already gone. Beloved ghosts....

My father is gone. My stepmother calls out to him in Spanish the way she did sometimes when she was excited, 'No! How can we live now? They'll break in. They'll kill us all! We must build the wall higher!'

And she's gone. My brothers are gone. I'm alone—as I was alone that night five years ago. The house is ashes and rubble around me. It doesn't burn or crumble or even fade to ashes, but somehow, in an instant, it is a ruin, open to the night sky. I see stars, a quarter moon, and a streak of light, moving, rising into the sky like some life force escaping. By the light of all three of these, I see shadows, large, moving, threatening. I fear these shadows, but I see no way to escape them. The wall is still there, surrounding our neighborhood, looming over me much higher than it ever truly did. So much higher.... It was supposed to keep danger out. It failed years ago. Now it fails again. Danger is walled in with me. I want to run, to escape, to hide, but now my own hands, my feet begin to fade away. I hear thunder. I see the streak of light rise higher in the sky, grow brighter.

Then I scream. I fall. Too much of my body is gone, van­ished away. I can't stay upright, can't catch myself as I fall and fall and fall....

************************************

I awoke here in my cabin at Acorn, tangled in my blankets, half on and half off my bed. Had I screamed aloud? I didn't know. I never seem to have these nightmares when Bankole is with me, so he can't tell me how much noise I make. It's just as well. His practice already costs him enough sleep, and this night must be worse than most for him.

It's three in the morning now, but last night, just after dark, some group, some gang, perhaps, attacked the Dove-tree place just north of us. There were, yesterday at this time, 22 people living at Dovetree—the old man, his wife, and his two youngest daughters; his five married sons, their wives and their kids. All of these people are gone except for the two youngest wives and the three little children they were able to grab as they ran. Two of the kids are hurt, and one of the women has had a heart attack, of all things. Bankole has treated her before. He says she was born with a heart defect that should have been taken care of when she was a baby. But she's only twenty, and around the time she was born, her family, like most people, had little or no money. They worked hard themselves and put the strongest of their kids to work at ages eight or ten. Their daughter's heart problem was always either going to kill her or let her live. It wasn't going to be fixed.

Now it had nearly killed her. Bankole was sleeping—or more likely staying awake—in the clinic room of the school tonight, keeping an eye on her and the two injured kids. Thanks to my hyperempathy syndrome, he can't have his clinic here at the house. I pick up enough of other people's pain as things are, and he worries about it. He keeps want­ing to give me some stuff that prevents my sharing by keep­ing me sleepy, slow, and stupid. No, thanks!

So I awoke alone, soaked with sweat, and unable to get back to sleep. It's been years since I've had such a strong re­action to a dream. As I recall, the last time was five years ago right after we settled here, and it was this same damned dream. I suppose it's come back to me because of the attack on Dovetree.

That attack shouldn't have happened. Things have been quieting down over the past few years. There's still crime, of course—robberies, break-ins, abductions for ransom or for the slave trade. Worse, the poor still get arrested and inden­tured for indebtedness, vagrancy, loitering, and other 'crimes.' But this thing of raging into a community and killing and burning all that you don't steal seems to have gone out of fashion. I haven't heard of anything like this Dovetree raid for at least three years.

Granted, the Dovetrees did supply the area with home-distilled whiskey and homegrown marijuana, but they've been doing that since long before we arrived. In fact, they were the best-armed farm family in the area because their business was not only illegal, but lucrative. People have tried to rob them before, but only the quick, quiet burglar-types have had any success. Until now.

I questioned Aubrey, the healthy Dovetree wife, while Bankole was working on her son. He had already told her that the little boy would be all right, and I felt that we had to find out what she knew, no matter how upset she was. Hell, the Dovetree houses are only an hour's walk from here down the old logging road. Whoever hit Dovetree, we could be next on their list.

Aubrey told me the attackers wore strange clothing. She and I talked in the main room of the school, a single, smoky oil lamp