Parable of the Talents

'Yeah?' he said.

'Yes.'

'Different kind of name.'

I sighed, glanced at him, liked the stubborn, unbeaten look of him, and said, 'Lauren.'

He gave me a quick grin. 'People call you Laurie?'

'Not if they expect me to answer,' I said.

I guess we were a little careless. Above, one of our 'teachers' lashed me hard, and I convulsed and fell. I've no­ticed before that if a collared man and woman are talking together, it's the woman who tends to be lashed. Women are temptresses, you see. We drag innocent men into trouble. From the time of Adam and Eve women have dragged inno­cent men into trouble. Anyway, I was lashed hard, but only once. After that, I was more careful.

Being lashed hard several times is enough to induce tem­porary coordination problems and memory loss. Day told me later that he'd seen a man lashed until the man didn't know his own name. I believe him. I know that when I saw Bankole's dead body, and I turned on my bearded guard, I had never in my life been more intent on killing another per­son. I was dropped where I stood with a hard shock, then lashed several more times, and Allie tells me that the way I jerked and flopped around the ground, she thought I'd break my bones. I woke up very sore, covered in bruises, sprains, abrasions, and bloody rock cuts, but that wasn't the worst

The worst was the way I felt afterward. I don't mean the physical pain. This place is a university of pain. I mean what I wrote before. I was a zombie for several days after the lashing. At first I couldn't even remember that Bankole was dead. Natividad and Allie had to tell me that all over again more than once. And I couldn't remember what had happened to Acorn, why we were all shut up in one room of our own school, where the men were, where the children were....

I haven't written about this until now. When I understood it, it scared me to death. It scared me into mewling in a cor­ner like a terrorized three-year-old.

After surviving Robledo, I knew that strangers could ap­pear and steal or destroy everything and everyone I loved. People and possessions could be snatched away. But some­how, it had not occurred to me that... that bits of my own mind could be snatched away too. I knew I could be killed. I've never had any illusions about that. I could be disabled.  I knew that too. But I had not thought that another person, just by pushing a small button, then smiling and pushing it again and again……………….

He did smile, my bearded teacher. That came back to me later. All of it came back to me. When it did……….Well, that's when I retreated to my corner, whimpering and moaning. The son of a bitch smiled and pressed his button over and over as though he were fucking me, and he grinned while he watched me groaning and thrashing.

My brother said a collar makes you envy the dead. As bad as that sounds, it didn't, couldn't, convey to me, how a col­lar makes you hate. It teaches you whole new magnitudes of utter hatred. I knew almost nothing about hate until this thing was put around my neck. Now, sometimes it's all I can do to stop myself from trying again to kill one of them and then dying the way Emery did.

I've been talking off and on to Day Turner. Whenever we can, when we pass one another or are put to work in the same general area, we've talked. I've encouraged Travis and Harry and the other men to talk to him. I think he'll tell us anything he can that will help us. This is a summary of what he's passed on to us so far:

Day had walked over the Sierras from his last dead-end, low-paying job in Reno, Nevada. He had drifted north and west, hoping to find at least a chance to work his way out of poverty. He had no family, but for protection, he walked with two friends. All had been well until he and his friends reached Eureka. There, they had heard that one of the churches offered overnight shelter and meals and temporary work to willing men. The church was, no surprise, the Church of Christian America.

The work was helping to repair and paint a couple of old houses that the church intended to use as part of their orphaned-children's home. There were no orphans on site— or none that Day saw, or I suppose we would all have bad­gered him to death about our own children. You would think that there were enough real orphans in this filthy world. How dare anything that calls itself a church create new or­phans with its maggots and its collars?

Anyway, Day and his friends liked the idea of doing something for kids and earning a few dollars as well as a bed and a few meals. But they were unlucky. While they slept on their first night in the church's men's dormitory, a small group of the men there tried to rob the place. Day says he had nothing to do with robbery. He says he doesn't give a damn whether we believe him or not, but that he's never stolen, except to eat, and he'd