'Is the Doctor dead?'
'Yes. He's dead.'
'Oh.' He had begun to cry. He had not been crying over his own injuries, but he cried for my Bankole. I took his hand and we walked up the hill to George's.
Like the rest of us, Allie has been working for Dolores George. I never worried about my own ability to earn my way. I worried about Harry's depression, but not about his resourcefulness. He would have little trouble. Nina Noyer didn't give me time to worry about her. She arrived at Georgetown and almost immediately fell in love with one of the younger George sons. In spite of her two lost sisters, in spite of Dolores George's disapproval, Nina and the boy are so intense, so wrapped up in one another that Dolores knows she could only alienate her son by objecting. She hopes the sudden passion will bum itself out. I'm not so sure.
But I worried about Allie. She is healing. She talks now as much as she ever did—which is to say, not a lot She can think and reason. But not all of her memory has come back. For that reason, I told Dolores some of her story and hoped aloud that some permanent job could be found for her. Dolores first gave her small jobs to do, cleaning floors, repairing steps, painting railings When she saw that Allie worked well and made no trouble, she said Allie could stay as long as she wanted to. No salary, just room and board.
I stopped at a tree stump about halfway up the hill and sat down and took both of Justin's hands between mine. His face looked bad, and it was hard to look at him, but I made myself do it. 'Jus, they hurt your mother.'
He began to look afraid. 'Hurt her how?'
'They put a collar on her. They put collars on all of us. They hurt her with the collar. I don't know whether you've ever seen—'
'I have. I saw collar gangs working on the highway and in Eureka, fixing potholes, pulling weeds, stuff like that. I saw how a collar can hurt you and make you fall down and twitch and scream.'
I nodded. 'Collars can do more than that. Someone got really mad at your mother and used the collar to hurt her badly. She's almost okay now, but she's still having some trouble with her memory.'
'Amnesia?'
'Yes. Most of what she's lost is what happened in the weeks and months just before she was hurt. That was a bad time for us all, and it may be a mercy that she's lost it. But don't be surprised if you ask her about something and she doesn't remember. She can't help it.'
He thought about that for a while, then asked in almost a whisper, 'Will she remember me?'
'Absolutely. We've been in contact with all sorts of people trying to find out where you and the others were.' Then I couldn't help myself. I had to ask a few questions for myself. 'Justin, were you with any of the other kids? Were you with Larkin?'
He shook his head. 'They took us all to Arcata to the church there. Then they made us all separate. They said we were going to have new Christian American families. They said... they said you were all dead. I believed them at first, and I didn't know what to do. But then I saw how they would lie whenever they felt like it. They would say things about us and about Acorn that were nothing but lies. Then I didn't know what to believe.'
'Do you know where they sent Larkin—or any of the others?'
He shook his head again. 'They made me go with some people who had a girl and a boy of their own. I was almost the first one to go. I didn't get to see who got the other kids. I guess they went with other families. The people who got me, the man was a deacon. He said it was his duty to take me. I guess it was his duty to beat me up, too!'
'Did he do this to your face?'
Justin nodded. 'He did and his son—Carl. Carl said my mother was a devil worshiper and a witch. He was always saying that. He's 12, and he thinks he knows everything. Then a few days ago, he said she was a... a whore. And I hit him. We got into a big fight and his father came out and called me an ungrateful little devil-worshiping bastard. Then they both beat the hell out of me. They locked up me in my room and I went out the window. Then I didn't know where to go, so I just went south, out of town, down toward Acorn. The deacon had said it wasn't there anymore, but I had to see for myself. Then a woman saw me on the road and she brought me here. She gave me some food and put some medicine on my face. She had a lot of kids, but she let me stay with her for a couple of days. I guess she would have let me live there. But I wanted to go home.'
I listened to all this, then sighed. 'Acorn really is gone,' I said. 'When we finally broke free, we burned what was left of it'
