Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,94

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 never in his life steal from a church. He was raised by a very religious uncle and aunt, now dead, and thanks to their early training, there were some things he just wouldn’t do. But the thieves were said to be Black, and Day and his friends were Black, so Day and his friends were presumed guilty.

I found myself believing him. That may be stupid of me, but I like him, and he doesn’t strike me as a liar or a church robber.

He says the church’s security people swarmed over the dormitories, and the men awoke and ran in all directions. They were all free poor men. When trouble erupted, and there was no real profit to be had, most of them never thought of doing anything other than getting away—especially when the shooting started.

Day didn’t have a gun. One of his friends did, but the three of them got separated. Then they all got caught.

He and 18 or 20 other men were caught, and all the Black ones went to jail. Some were charged with violent crimes—armed robbery and assault. The rest were charged with vagrancy—which is a far more serious crime than it once was. The vagrants were found guilty and indentured to the Church of Christian America. Day’s friends were charged with felonies as part of the first group because they were found together and one had a gun. Day was in the vagrant group. He had been indentured to work for 30 days for the church. He had already been shifted around and forced to work for more than two months. They lashed him when he complained that his sentence was up. At first they said he could go free if he could prove he had a job waiting for him outside. Of course since he was a stranger to the area, and since he had no free time to look for a job, it was impossible for him to get outside work. Local vagrants, on the other hand, were, one by one, rescued by relatives and friends, who promised to either give them jobs or feed and house them so that they would no longer be vagrant.

Day had done construction work, painting, groundskeeping, and janitorial work. He had been given a thorough