Parable of the Sower (11 page)

The two oldest Payne kids went with us for the first time. Bad luck for them. They weren’t scared off, though. Doyle and Margaret. There’s a toughness to them. They’re all right. Their uncle Wardell Parrish hadn’t wanted them to go. He had made nasty comments about Dad’s ego, about private armies and vigilantes, and about his taxes—how he had paid enough in his life to have a right to depend on the police to protect him. Blah, blah, blah. He’s a strange, solitary, whiny man. I’ve heard that he used to be wealthy. Dad agrees with me that he can’t be trusted. But he’s not Doyle and Margaret’s father, and their mother Rosalee Payne doesn’t like anyone telling her how to raise her five kids. The only power she has in the world is her authority over her children and her money. She does have a little money, inherited from her parents. Her brother has somehow lost his. So his trying to tell her what to do or what she shouldn’t let her kids do was a dumb move. He should have known better—though for the kids’ sake, I’m glad he didn’t.

My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He’ll turn thirteen in a few days—August 14—and the thought of waiting two more years until he’s 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand that. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there’s nothing you can do to make it happen faster. Poor Keith. Poor me.

At least Dad lets Keith shoot at birds and squirrels with the family BB gun, but Keith still complains. “It’s not fair,” he said today for the twentieth or thirtieth time. “Lauren’s a girl and you let her go. You always let her do things. I could learn to help you guard and scare off robbers…” He had once made the mistake of offering to help “shoot robbers” instead of scaring them off, and Dad all but preached him a sermon. Dad almost never hits us, but he can be scary without lifting a finger.

Keith didn’t go today, of course. And our practice went all right until we found the corpse. We didn’t see any dogs this time. Most upsetting to me, though, there were a few more rag, stick, cardboard, and palm frond shacks along the way into the hills along River Street. There always seem to be more. They’ve never bothered us beyond begging and cursing, but they always stare so. It gets harder to ride past them. They’re living skeletons, some of them. Skin and bones and a few teeth. They eat whatever they can find up there.

Sometimes I dream about the way they stare at us.

Back at home, my brother Keith slipped out of the neighborhood—out through the front gates and away. He stole Cory’s key and took off on his own. Dad and I didn’t know until we got home. Keith was still gone, and by then Cory knew he must be outside. She had checked with others in the neighborhood and two of the Dunn kids, twins Allison and Marie, age six, said they saw him go out the gate. That was when Cory went home and discovered that her key was gone.

Dad, tired and angry and scared, was going to go right back out to look for him, but Keith got home just as Dad was leaving. Cory, Marcus, and I had gone to the front porch with Dad, all three of us speculating about where Keith had gone, and Marcus and I volunteering to go with Dad to help search. It was almost dark.

“You get back in that house and stay there,” Dad said. “It’s bad enough to have one of you out there.” He checked the submachine gun, made sure it was fully loaded.

“Dad, look,” I said. I had spotted something moving three houses down—quick, shadowy movement alongside the Garfield porch. I didn’t know it was Keith. I was attracted by its furtiveness. Someone was sneaking around, trying to hide.

Dad was quick enough to see the movement before it was hidden by the Garfield house. He got up at once, took the gun, and went to check. The rest of us watched and waited.

Moments later Cory said she heard an odd noise in the house. I was too focused on Dad and what was going on outside to hear what she heard, or to pay any attention to her. She went in. Marcus and I were still on the porch when she screamed.

Marcus and I glanced at each other, then at the front door. Marcus lunged for the door. I yelled for Dad. Dad was out of sight, but I heard him answer my call.

“Come quick,” I shouted, then I ran into the house.

Cory, Marcus, Bennett, and Gregory were in the kitchen, clustered around Keith. Keith was sprawled, panting, on the floor, wearing only his underpants. He was scraped and bruised, bleeding, and filthy. Cory knelt beside him, examining him, questioning him, crying.

“What happened to you? Who did this? Why did you go outside? Where are your clothes? What—?”

“Where’s the key you stole?” Dad cut in. “Did they take it from you?”

Everyone jumped, looked up at Dad, then down at Keith.

“I couldn’t help it,” Keith said, still panting. “I couldn’t, Daddy. There were five guys.”

“So they got the key.”

Keith nodded, careful not to meet Dad’s eyes.

Dad turned and strode out of the house, almost at a run. It was too late now to get George or Brian Hsu to change the gate lock. That would have to be done tomorrow, and new keys made and passed out. I thought Dad must be going out to warn people and to put more watchers on duty. I wanted to offer to help alert people, but I didn’t. Dad looked too angry to accept help from one of his kids right then. And when he got back, Keith was in for it. Was he ever in for it. A pair of pants gone, and a shirt and
a pair of shoes.
Cory had never been willing to let us run around barefoot the way a lot of kids did, except in the house. Her definitions of being civilized did not involve dirty, heavily callused feet any more than they involved dirty, diseased skin. Shoes were expensive, and we were always growing out of ours, but Cory insisted. Each of us had at least one pair of wearable shoes, in spite of what they cost, and they cost a lot. Now money would have to be found to get an extra pair for Keith.

Keith curled up on the floor, smudging the tile with blood from his nose and mouth, hugging himself and crying now that Dad was gone. It took Cory two or three minutes to get him up and half carry him to the bathroom. I tried to help her, but she stared at me like I was the one who beat him up, so I let them alone. It wasn’t as though I wanted to help. I just thought I should. Keith was in real pain, and it was hard for me to endure sharing it.

I cleaned up the blood so no one would slip in it or track it around. Then I fixed dinner, ate, fed the three younger boys, and put the rest aside for Dad, Cory, and Keith.

S
UNDAY
, A
UGUST
3, 2025

Keith had to confess what he had done this morning at church. He had to stand up in front of the whole congregation and tell them everything, including what the five thugs had done to him. Then he had to apologize—to God, to his parents, and to the congregation that he had endangered and inconvenienced. Dad made him do that over Cory’s objections.

Dad never hit him, though last night he must have been tempted. “Why would you do such a thing!” he kept demanding. “How could any son of mine be so stupid! Where are your brains, boy? What did you think you were doing? I’m talking to you! Answer me!”

Keith answered and answered and answered, but the answers never seemed to make much sense to Dad. “I ain’t no baby no more,” he wept. Or, “I wanted to show you. Just wanted to show you! You always let Lauren do stuff!” Or, “I’m a man! I shouldn’t be hiding in the house, hiding in the wall; I’m a man!”

It went on and on because Keith refused to admit he had done anything wrong. He wanted to show he was a man, not a scared girl. It wasn’t his fault that a gang of guys jumped him, beat him, robbed him. He didn’t do anything. It wasn’t his fault.

Dad stared at him in utter disgust. “You disobeyed,” he said. “You stole. You endangered the lives and the property of everyone here, including your mother, your sister, and your little brothers. If you were the man you think you are, I’d beat the hell out of you!”

Keith stared straight ahead. “Bad guys come in even if they don’t have a key,” he muttered. “They come in and steal stuff. It’s not my fault!”

It took Dad two hours to get Keith to admit that it was his fault, no excuses. He’d done wrong. He wouldn’t do it again.

My brother isn’t very smart, but he makes up for it in pure stubbornness. My father is smart and stubborn. Keith didn’t have a chance, but he made Dad work for his victory. The next morning, Dad had his revenge. I don’t believe he thought of Keith’s forced confession that way, but Keith’s expression told me that he did.

“How do I get out of this family,” Marcus muttered to me as we watched. I sympathized. He had to share a room with Keith, and the two of them, only a year apart in age, fought all the time. Now things would be worse.

Keith is Cory’s favorite. If you asked her, she would say she didn’t have a favorite, but she does. She babies him and lets him get away with skipping chores, a little lying, a little stealing… Maybe that’s why Keith thinks when he screws up, it’s okay.

This morning’s sermon was on the ten commandments with extra emphasis on “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and “Thou shalt not steal.” I think Dad got rid of a lot of anger and frustration, preaching that sermon. Keith, tall, stone-faced, looking older than his thirteen years, kept his anger. I could see him keeping it inside, holding it down, choking on it.

❏ ❏ ❏

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

S
UNDAY
, A
UGUST
17, 2025

M
Y PARENTS
’
USUAL GOOD
judgment failed them this week on my brother Keith’s birthday. They gave him his own BB gun. It wasn’t new, but it worked, and it looked much more dangerous than it was. And it was his. He didn’t have to share it. I suppose it was intended to make him feel better about the two years he still, had to wait until he got his hands on the Smith & Wesson, or better yet, the Heckler & Koch. And, of course, it was supposed to help him get over his stupid desire to sneak out, and the humiliation of his public confession.

Keith shot a few more pigeons and crows, threatened to shoot Marcus—Marcus just told me about that tonight—then yesterday, he took off for parts unknown. He took the BB gun with him, of course. No one has seen him for about eighteen hours, and there’s not much doubt that he’s gone outside again.

M
ONDAY
, A
UGUST
18, 2025

Dad went out looking for Keith today. He even called in the police. He says he doesn’t know how we’ll afford the fee, but he’s scared. The longer Keith is gone, the more likely he is to get hurt or killed. Marcus says he thinks Keith went looking for the guys who beat him up. I don’t believe it. Not even Keith would go looking for five guys—or even one guy—with nothing but a BB gun.

Cory’s even more upset than Dad. She’s scared and jumpy and sick to her stomach, and she keeps crying. I talked her into going back to bed, then taught her classes myself. I’ve done that four or five times before when she was sick, so it wasn’t too weird for the kids. I just used Cory’s lesson plans, and during the first part of the day, I partnered the older kids with my kindergartners and let everyone get a taste of teaching or learning from someone different. Some of my students are my age and older, and a couple of these—Aura Moss and Michael Talcott—got up and left. They knew I understood the work. I got the last of my high school work and tests out of the way almost two years ago. Since then I’ve done uncredited (free) college work with Dad. Michael and Aura know all that, but they’re much too grown up to learn anything from the likes of me. The hell with them. It’s a pity, though, that my Curtis has to have a brother like Michael—not that any of us gets to choose our brothers.

T
UESDAY
, A
UGUST
19, 2025

No sign of Keith. I think Cory has gone into mourning for him. I handled classes again today, and Dad went out searching again. He came home looking exhausted tonight, and Cory wept and shouted at him.

“You didn’t try!” she said with me and all three of my brothers looking on. We’d all come to see whether Dad had brought Keith back. “You could have found him if you’d tried!”

Dad tried to go to her, but she backed away, still shouting: “If it were your precious Lauren out there alone, you would have found her by now! You don’t care about Keith.”

She’s never said anything like that before.

I mean, we were always Cory and Lauren. She never asked me to call her “mother,” and I never thought to do it. I always knew she was my stepmother. But still… I always loved her. It mystified me that Keith was her favorite, but it didn’t make me love her any less. I was her kid, but not her kid. Not quite. Not really. But I always thought she loved me.

Dad shooed us all off to bed. He quieted Cory and took her back to their room. A few minutes ago, he came to see me.

“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She loves you as though you were her daughter, Lauren.”

I just looked at him.

“She wants you to know she’s sorry.”

I nodded, and after a few more assurances, he went.

Is she sorry? I don’t think so.

Did she mean it. She did. Oh, yes, she meant it. Shit.

T
HURSDAY
, A
UGUST
30, 2025

Keith came back last night.

He just walked into the house during dinner, as though he’d been outside playing football instead of gone since Saturday. And this time he looked fine. Not a mark on him. He was wearing a clean new set of clothing—even new shoes. All of it was of much better quality than he had when he left, and much more expensive than we could have afforded.