Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

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 polygynous 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.

Is that the way it’s going to be, I wonder? Is that the future: Large numbers of people stuck in either President-elect Donner’s version of slavery or Richard Moss’s.

We rode our bikes to the top of River Street past the last neighborhood walls, past the last ragged, unwalled houses, past the last stretch of broken asphalt and rag and stick shacks of squatters and street poor who stare at us in their horrible, empty way, and then higher into the hills along a dirt road.

At last we dismounted and walked our bikes down the narrow trail into one of the canyons that we and others use for target practice. It looked all right this time, but we always have to be careful. People use canyons for a lot of things. If we find corpses in one, we stay away from it for a while. Dad tries to shield us from what goes on in the world, but he can’t.

Knowing that, he also tries to teach us to shield ourselves.

Most of us have practiced at home with BB guns on homemade targets or on squirrel and bird targets.

I’ve done all that. My aim is good, but I don’t like it with the birds and squirrels. Dad was the one who insisted on my learning to shoot them. He said moving targets would be good for my aim. I think there was more to it than that. I think he wanted to see whether or not I could do it— whether shooting a bird or a squirrel would trigger my hyperempathy.

It didn’t, quite. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t painful. It felt like a big, soft, strange ghost blow, like getting hit with a huge ball of air, but with no coolness, no feeling of wind. The blow, though still soft, was a little harder with squirrels and sometimes rats than with birds. All three had to be killed, though. They ate our food or ruined it. Tree-crops were their special victims: Peaches, plums, figs, persimmons, nuts… . And crops like strawberries, blackberries, grapes… . Whatever we planted, if they could get at it, they would. Birds are particular pests because they can fly in, yet I like them. I envy their ability to fly. Sometimes I get up and go out at dawn just so I can watch them without anyone scaring them or shooting them. Now that I’m old enough to go target shooting on Saturdays, I don’t intend to shoot any more birds, no matter what Dad says. Besides, just because I can shoot a bird or a squirrel doesn’t mean I could shoot a person— a thief like the ones who robbed Mrs. Sims. I don’t know whether I could do that. And if I did it, I don’t know what would happen to me. Would I die?

It’s my father’s fault that we pay so much attention to guns and shooting. He carries a nine millimeter automatic pistol whenever he leaves the neighborhood. He carries it on his hip where people can see it. He says that discourages mistakes.

Armed people do get killed— most often in crossfires or by snipers— but unarmed people get killed a lot more often.

Dad also has a silenced nine millimeter submachine gun. It stays at home with Cory in case something happens there while he’s away. Both guns are German— Heckler & Koch. Dad has never said where he got the submachine gun. It’s illegal, of course, so I don’t blame him. It must have cost a hell of a lot. He’s only had it away from home a few times so he, Cory, and I could get the feel of it. He’ll do the same for the boys when they’re older.

Cory has an old Smith & Wesson .38 revolver that she’s good with. She’s had it since before she married Dad. She loaned that one to me today. Ours aren’t the best or the newest guns in the neighborhood, but they all work. Dad and Cory keep them in good condition. I have to help with that now.

And they spend the necessary time on practice and money on ammunition.

At neighborhood association meetings, Dad used to push the adults of every household to own weapons, maintain them, and know how to use them. “Know how to use them so well,” he’s said more than once, “that you’re as able to defend yourself at two a.m. as you are at two p.m.”

At first there were a few neighbors who didn’t like that— older ones who said it was the job of the police to protect them, younger ones who worried that their little children would find their guns, and religious ones who didn’t think a minister of the gospel should need guns. This was several years ago.

“The police,” my father told them, “may be able to avenge you, but they can’t protect you. Things are getting worse. And as for your children… . Well, yes, there is risk. But you can put your guns out of their reach while they’re very young, and train them as they grow older. That’s what I mean to do. I believe they’ll have a better chance of growing up if you can protect them.” He paused, stared at the people, then went on. “I have a wife and five children,” he said. “I will pray for them all. I’ll also see to it that they know how to defend themselves.

And for as long as I can, I will stand between my family and any intruder.” He paused again. “Now that’s what I have to do. You all do what you have to do.”

By now there are at least two guns in every household. Dad says he suspects that some of them are so well hidden— like Mrs. Sims’s gun— that they wouldn’t be available in an emergency. He’s working on that.

All the kids who attend school at our house get gun handling instruction. Once they’ve passed that and turned fifteen, two or three of the neighborhood adults begin taking them to the hills for target practice. It’s a kind of rite of passage for us. My brother Keith has been whining to go along whenever someone gets a shooting group together, but the age rule is firm.

I worry about the way Keith wants to get his hands on the guns. Dad doesn’t seem to worry, but I do.

There are always a few groups of homeless people and packs of feral dogs living out beyond the last hillside shacks. People and dogs hunt rabbits, possums, squirrels, and each other. Both scavenge whatever dies. The dogs used to belong to people-or their ancestors did. But dogs eat meat. These days, no poor or middle class person who had an edible piece of meat would give it to a dog. Rich people still keep dogs, either because they like them or because they use them to guard estates, enclaves, and businesses. The rich have plenty of other security devices, but the dogs are extra insurance. Dogs scare people.

I did some shooting today, and I was leaning against a boulder, watching others shoot, when I realized there was a dog nearby, watching me. Just one dog— male, yellow-brown, sharp-eared, short-haired.