Parable of the Sower Read online

  Anyway, no one knows who did it to the Sims/Boyer families. No one saw anything, of course.

  And no one got out of the house. Odd, that. Eleven people, and no one got out.

  So about three days ago, Mrs. Sims shot herself. Dad said he’d heard from the cops that it was about three days ago. That would have been just two days after she heard about her son’s death. Dad went to see her this morning because she missed church yesterday. Cory forced herself to go along because she thought she should. I wish she hadn’t. To me, dead bodies are disgusting. They stink, and if they’re old enough, there are maggots. But what the hell? They’re dead. They aren’t suffering, and if you didn’t like them when they were alive, why get so upset about their being dead? Cory gets upset. She jumps on me for sharing pain with the living, but she tries to share it with the dead.

  I began writing this about Mrs. Sims because she killed herself. That’s what’s upset me. She believed, like Dad, that if you kill yourself, you go to hell and burn forever. She believed in a literal acceptance of everything in the Bible. Yet, when things got to be too much for her, she decided to trade pain for eternal pain in the hereafter.

  How could she do that?

  Did she really believe in anything at all? Was it all hypocrisy?

  Or maybe she just went crazy because her God was demanding too much of her. She was no Job. In real life, how many people are?

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2024

  I can’t get Mrs. Sims out of my mind. Somehow, she and her suicide have gotten tangled up with the astronaut and her death and her expulsion from heaven. I need to write about what I believe. I need to begin to put together the scattered verses that I’ve been writing about God since I was twelve. Most of them aren’t much good. They say what I need to say, but they don’t say it very well. A few are the way they should be. They press on me, too, like the two deaths. I try to hide in all the work there is to do here for the household, for my father’s church, and for the school Cory keeps to teach the neighborhood kids. The truth is, I don’t care about any of those things, but they keep me busy and make me tired, and most of the time, I sleep without dreaming. And Dad beams when people tell him how smart and industrious I am.

  I love him. He’s the best person I know, and I care what he thinks. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

  For whatever it’s worth, here’s what I believe. It took me a lot of time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right—just the way it has to be. In the past year, it’s gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the right one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to:

  God is Power—

  Infinite,

  Irresistible,

  Inexorable,

  Indifferent.

  And yet, God is Pliable—

  Trickster,

  Teacher,

  Chaos,

  Clay.

  God exists to be shaped.

  God is Change.

  This is the literal truth.

  God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that persons resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work with the shapes that God imposes on us. God is power, and in the end, God prevails.

  But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.

  That’s what I know. That’s some of it anyway. I’m not like Mrs. Sims. I’m not some kind of potential Job, long suffering, stiff necked, then, at last, either humble before an all-knowing almighty, or destroyed. My God doesn’t love me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty to my God. My God just is.

  Maybe I’ll be more like Alicia Leal, the astronaut. Like her, I believe in something that I think my dying, denying, backward-looking people need. I don’t have all of it yet. I don’t even know how to pass on what I do have. I’ve got to learn to do that. It scares me how many things I’ve got to learn. How will I learn them?

  Is any of this real?

  Dangerous question. Sometimes I don’t know the answer. I doubt myself. I doubt what I think I know. I try to forget about it. After all, if it’s real, why doesn’t anyone else know about it. Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism’s insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes (“To everything there is a season”), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom. But I don’t believe we’re dealing with all that that means. We haven’t even begun to deal with it.

  We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. Then we go on to create super-people—super-parents, super-kings and queens, super-cops—to be our gods and to look after us—to stand between us and God. Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba—or like a cancer. Chaos.

  Even so, why can’t I do what others have done—ignore the obvious. Live a normal life. It’s hard enough just to do that in this world.

  But this thing (This idea? Philosophy? New religion?) won’t let me alone, won’t let me forget it, won’t let me go. Maybe… Maybe it’s like my sharing: One more weirdness; one more crazy, deep-rooted delusion that I’m stuck with. I am stuck with it. And in time, I’ll have to do something about it. In spite of what my father will say or do to me, in spite of the poisonous rottenness outside the wall where I might be exiled, I’ll have to do something about it.

  That reality scares me to death.

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

  President William Turner Smith lost yesterdays election. Christopher Charles Morpeth Donner is our new President—President-elect. So what are we in for? Donner has already said that as soon as possible after his inauguration next year, he’ll begin to dismantle the “wasteful, pointless, unnecessary” moon and Mars programs. Near space programs dealing with communications and experimentation will be privatized—sold off.

  Also, Donner has a plan for putting people back to work. He hopes to get laws changed, suspend “overly restrictive” minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board.

  What’s adequate, I wonder: A house or apartment? A room? A bed in a shared room? A barracks bed? Space on a floor? Space on the ground? And what about people with big families? Won’t they be seen as bad investments? Won’t it make much more sense for companies to hire single people, childless couples, or, at most, people with only one or two kids? I wonder.

  And what about those suspended laws? Will it be legal to poison, mutilate, or infect people—as long as you provide them with food, water, and space to die?

  Dad decided not to vote for Donner after all. He didn’t vote for anyone. He said politicians turned his stomach.

  2025

  ❏ ❏ ❏

  INTELLIGENCE IS ONGOING, INDIVIDUAL adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.

  EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

  4

  ❏ ❏ ❏

  A victim of God may,

  Through learning adaption,

  Become a partner of God,

  A victim of God may,

  Through forethought and planning,

  Become a shaper of God.

  Or a victim of God may,

  Through shortsightedness and
fear,

  Remain God’s victim,

  God’s plaything,

  God’s prey.

  EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2025

  WE HAD A FIRE today. People worry so much about fire, but the little kids will play with it if they can. We were lucky with this fire. Amy Dunn, three years old, managed to start it in her family’s garage.

  Once the fire began to crawl up the wall, Amy got scared and ran into the house. She knew she had done something bad, so she didn’t tell anyone. She hid under her grandmother’s bed.

  Out back, the dry wood of the garage burned fast and hot. Robin Baiter saw the smoke and rang the emergency bell on the island in our street. Robin’s only ten, but she’s a bright little kid—one of my stepmother’s star students. She keeps her head. If she hadn’t alerted people as soon as she saw the smoke, the fire could have spread.

  I heard the bell and ran out like everyone else to see what was wrong. The Dunns live across the street from us, so I couldn’t miss the smoke.

  The fire plan worked the way it was supposed to. The adult men and women put the fire out with garden hoses, shovels, wet towels and blankets. Those without hoses beat at the edges of the fire and smothered them with dirt. Kids my age helped out where we were needed and put out any new fires started by flying embers. We brought buckets to fill with water, and shovels, blankets, and towels of our own. There were a lot of us, and we kept our eyes open. The very old people watched the little kids and kept them out of the way and out of trouble.

  No one missed Amy. No one had seen her in the Dunn back yard, so no one thought about her. Her grandmother found her much later and got the truth out of her.

  The garage was a total loss. Edwin Dunn salvaged some of his garden and carpentry equipment, but not much. The grapefruit tree next to the garage and the two peach trees behind it were half-burned, too, but they might survive. The carrot, squash, collard, and potato plants were a trampled mess.

  Of course, no one called the fire department. No one would take on fire service fees just to save an unoccupied garage. Most of our households couldn’t afford another big bill, anyway. The water wasted on putting out the fire was going to be hard enough to pay for.

  What will happen, I wonder, to poor little Amy Dunn. No one cares about her. Her family feeds her and, now and then, cleans her up, but they don’t love her or even like her. Her mother Tracy is only a year older than I am. She was 13 when Amy was born. She was 12 when her 27-year-old uncle who had been raping her for years managed to make her pregnant.

  Problem: Uncle Derek was a big, blond, handsome guy, funny and bright and well-liked. Tracy was, is, dull and homely, sulky and dirty-looking. Even when she’s clean, she looks splotchy, dirty. Some of her problems might have come from being raped by Uncle Derek for years. Uncle Derek was Tracy’s mother’s youngest brother, her favorite brother, but when people realized what he had been doing, the neighborhood men got together and suggested he go live somewhere else. People didn’t want him around their daughters. Irrational as usual, Tracy’s mother blamed Tracy for his exile, and for her own embarrassment. Not many girls in the neighborhood have babies before they drag some boy to my father and have him unite them in holy matrimony. But there was no one to marry Tracy, and no money for prenatal care or an abortion. And poor Amy, as she grew, looked more and more like Tracy: scrawny and splotchy with sparse, stringy hair. I don’t think she’ll ever be pretty.

  Tracy’s maternal instincts didn’t kick in, and I doubt that her mother Christmas Dunn has any. The Dunn family has a reputation for craziness. There are sixteen of them living in the Dunn house, and at least a third are nuts. Amy isn’t crazy, though. Not yet. She’s neglected and lonely, and like any little kid left on her own too much, she finds ways to amuse herself.

  I’ve never seen anyone hit Amy or curse her or anything like that. The Dunns do care what people think of them. But no one pays any attention to her, either. She spends most of her time playing alone in the dirt. She also eats the dirt and whatever she finds in it, including bugs. But not long ago, just out of curiosity, I took her to our house, sponged her off, taught her the alphabet, and showed her how to write her name. She loved it. She’s got a hungry, able little mind, and she loves attention.

  Tonight I asked Cory if Amy could start school early. Cory doesn’t take kids until they’re five or close to five, but she said she’d let Amy in if I would take charge of her. I expected that, though I don’t like it. I help with the five and six year olds, anyway. I’ve been taking care of little kids since I was one, and I’m tired of it. I think, though, that if someone doesn’t help Amy now, someday she’ll do something a lot worse than burning down her family’s garage.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2025

  Some cousins of old Mrs. Sims have inherited her house. They’re lucky there’s still a house to inherit. If it weren’t for our wall, the house would have been gutted, taken over by squatters, or torched as soon as it was empty. As it was, all people did was take back things they had given to Mrs. Sims after she was robbed, and take whatever food she had in the house. No sense letting it rot. We didn’t take her furniture or her rugs or her appliances. We could have, but we didn’t. We aren’t thieves.

  Wardell Parrish and Rosalee Payne think otherwise. They’re both small, rust-brown, sour-looking people like Mrs. Sims. They’re the children of a first cousin that Mrs. Sims had managed to keep contact and good relations with. He’s a widower twice over, no kids, and she’s been widowed once, seven kids. They’re not only brother and sister, but twins. Maybe that helps them get along with each other. They damn sure won’t get along with anyone else.

  They’re moving in today. They’ve been here a couple of times before to look the place over, and I guess they must have liked it better than their parents’ house. They shared that with 18 other people. I was busy in the den with my class of younger school kids, so I didn’t meet them until today, though I’ve heard Dad talking to them—heard them sit in our living room and insinuate that we had cleaned out Mrs. Sims house before they arrived.

  Dad kept his temper. “You know she was robbed during the month before she died,” he said. “You can check with the police about that—if you haven’t already. Since then the community has protected the house. We haven’t used it or stripped it. If you choose to live among us, you should understand that. We help each other, and we don’t steal.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to say you did,” Wardell Parrish muttered.

  His sister jumped in before he could say more. “We’re not accusing anyone of anything,” she lied. “We just wondered… We knew Cousin Marjorie had some nice things—jewelry that she inherited from her mother… Very valuable…”

  “Check with the police,” my father said.

  “Well, yes, I know, but…”

  “This is a small community,” my father said. “We all know each other here. We depend on each other.”

  There was a silence. Perhaps the twins were getting the message.

  “We’re not very social,” Wardell Parrish said. “We mind our own business.”

  Again his sister jumped in before he could go on. “I’m sure everything will be all right,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

  I didn’t like them when I heard them. I liked them even less when I met them. They look at us as though we smell and they don’t. Of course, it doesn’t matter whether I like them or not. There are other people in the neighborhood whom I don’t like. But I don’t trust the Payne-Parrishes. The kids seem all right, but the adults… I wouldn’t want to have to depend on them. Not even for little things.

  Payne and Parrish. What perfect names they have.

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2025

  We ran into a pack of feral dogs today. We went to the hills today for target practice—me, my father, Joanne Garfield, her cousin and boyfriend Harold—Harry—Baiter, my boyfriend Curtis Talcott, his brother Michael, Aura Moss a
nd her brother Peter. Our other adult Guardian was Joanne’s father Jay. He’s a good guy and a good shot. Dad likes to work with him, although sometimes there are problems. The Garfields and the Baiters are white, and the rest of us are black. That can be dangerous these days. On the street, people are expected to fear and hate everyone but their own kind, but with all of us armed and watchful, people stared, but they let us alone. Our neighborhood is too small for us to play those kinds of games.

  Everything went as usual at first. The Talcotts got into an argument first with each other, then with the Mosses. The Mosses are always blaming other people for whatever they do wrong, so they tend to have disputes outstanding with most of us. Peter Moss is the worst because he’s always trying to be like his father, and his father is a total shit. His father has three wives. All at once, Karen, Natalie, and Zahra. They’ve all got kids by him, though so far, Zahra, the youngest and prettiest, only has one. Karen is the one with the marriage license, but she let him get away with bringing in first one, then another new woman into the house and calling them his wives. I guess the way things are, she didn’t think she could make it on her own with three kids when he brought in Natalie and five by the time he found Zahra.

  The Mosses don’t come to church. Richard Moss has put together his own religion—a combination of the Old Testament and historical West African practices. He claims that God wants men to be patriarchs, rulers and protectors of women, and fathers of as many children as possible. He’s an engineer for one of the big commercial water companies, so he can afford to pick up beautiful, young homeless women and live with them in polygamous relationships. He could pick up twenty women like that if he could afford to feed them. I hear there’s a lot of that kind of thing going on in other neighborhoods. Some middle class men prove they’re men by having a lot of wives in temporary or permanent relationships. Some upper class men prove they’re men by having one wife and a lot of beautiful, disposable young servant girls. Nasty. When the girls get pregnant, if their rich employers won’t protect them, the employers’ wives throw them out to starve.