Parable of the Talents

with children could lose custody of the children, unless they were able to establish homes for them within a specified period of time. In some counties, job-placement help was available from churches and local businesses, and the jobs had to provide at least room and board for the family, even if there were no salary. Vagrant women often became un­salaried household help or poorly paid surrogate mothers. In other counties, there was no help at all for vagrants. They had to make a proper home for their children or their chil­dren would be rescued from their inadequate, unfit hands.

Not surprisingly, children were 'rescued' this way much more often from vagrants who were considered heathens than from those who were seen as acceptable Christians. And 'heathens' who were poor, but not true vagrants, not homeless, might find themselves reclassified as vagrants so that their children could be placed in good Christian Amer­ica homes. The idea, of course, was to make good Christian Americans of them in spite of the wickedness, or at best, the errors of their parents.

It's hard to believe that kind of thing happened here, in the United States in the twenty-first century, but it did. It shouldn't have happened, in spite of all the chaos that had gone before. Things were healing. People like my mother were starting small businesses, living simply, becoming more prosperous. Crime was down in spite of the sad things that happened to the Noyer family and to Uncle Marc. Even my mother said that things were improving. Yet Andrew Steele Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.

For people like my mother, Jarret's fanatical followers were the greater danger. During Jarret's first year in office, the worst of his followers ran amok. Filled with righteous superiority and popular among the many frightened, ordi­nary citizens who only wanted order and stability, the fa­natics set up the camps. Meanwhile, Jarret himself was busy with the ridiculous, obscene Al-Can war. If Jarret's thugs weren't locking poor people into collars, Jarret himself was seducing them into the military and feeding them into what turned out to be a useless, stupid exercise in destruction. The already-weakened country all but collapsed. Too many Americans, whether or not they belonged to CA, had family and friends in both Canada and Alaska. People deserted or left the country to avoid the draft—there was one, at last— and the saying was, during the war, that healthy young men were America's biggest export.

There was much slaughter on both sides of the Canadian border and there were air and naval attacks on the coastal cities of Alaska. The war was like an exaggeration of the attempted breakout at Camp Christian. Much blood was shed, but little was accomplished. The war began in anger, bitter­ness, and envy at nations who appeared to be on their way up just as our country seemed to be on a downward slide.

Then the war just petered out. At first, there was much fighting, much destruction, much screaming and flag-waving. Then, gradually, over 2034, a terrible, bitter weari­ness seemed to creep over people. Poor families saw their sons drafted and killed, as they said, 'for nothing!' It was harder than ever to buy decent food. Much of our grain over the past few years of climate change and chaos had been im­ported from Canada, after all. In the end, in late 2034, peace talks began. After that, except for a lot of hard feelings and occasional nasty incidents, the war was over. The border be­tween Canada and America stayed where it had been, and Alaska remained an independent country. It was the first state to officially, completely, successfully secede from the union. People were saying that Jarret's home state of Texas would be next.

In less than a year, Jarret went from being our savior, al­most the Second Coming in some people's minds, to being an incompetent son of a bitch who was wasting our substance on things that didn't matter. I don't mean that everyone changed their feelings toward him. Many people never did. My adopted parents never did, even though he cost them a beautiful, intelligent, loving daughter. I grew up hearing about that daughter endlessly. Her name was Kamaria, and she was perfect. I know this because my mother told me about her at least once during every day of my childhood. I could never look as good as Kamaria did or straighten my room as well or do as well with my studies or even clean a toilet as well—although I find it difficult to believe the perfect little bitch ever cleaned a toilet—or used one.

I didn't know I was still bitter enough to write a thing like that. I shouldn't be. It's foolish to hate someone you've never met, someone who's never harmed you. 1 believe now that I shifted my resentment safely onto Kamaria, who wasn't there, so that at least until my adolescence, I could love Kayce Alexander. She was, after all, the only mother I knew.

Kamaria Alexander died in a missile attack on Seattle when she was 11 years old, and my adopted parents never stopped blaming—and hating—the Canadians in their grief for her. But they never blamed Jarret—'that good man,' 'that fine man,' 'that man of God.' Kayce talked that way. So did her friends when she finally moved back to them in Seattle where her neighborhood and her church were scarred, but still standing. Madison Alexander barely spoke at all. He murmured agreement with whatever Kayce said, and he felt me up a lot, but apart from that, he was quiet.  My strongest memory of him, when I was four or five, was of his picking me up, putting me in his lap, and feeling me. I didn't know why I didn't like this. I just learned early to stay out of his way as much as I could.

 

from The Journals of