the two men took a table together off to one side to back me up in case anything unexpected happened between the slaver and me. People didn't start trouble inside George's Cafe if they were sensible, but you never knew when you were dealing with fools.
Dolores directed us to a tall, lean, ugly man dressed completely in black, and working hard to look contemptuous of the world in general and George's Cafe in particular. He wore a kind of permanent sneer.
He sat alone as we had agreed, so I went over to him alone and introduced myself. I didn't like his dry, papery voice or his tan, almost yellow eyes. He used them to try to stare me down. Even his smell repelled me. He wore some aftershave or cologne that gave him a heavy, nasty, sweet scent. Honest sweat would have been less offensive. He was bald, clean-shaved, beak-nosed, and so neutral-colored that he could have been a pale-skinned Black man, a Latino, or a dark-skinned White. He wore, aside from his black pants and shirt, an impressive pair of black leather boots—no expense spared—and a wide heavy leather belt decorated with what I first thought were jewels. It took me a moment to realize that this was a control belt—the kind of thing you use when you're moving around a lot and controlling several people through slave collars. I had never seen one before, but I'd heard descriptions of them.
Hateful bastard.
'Cougar,' he said.
Crock of shit, I thought. But I said, 'Olamina.'
'The girl's outside with some friends of mine.'
'Let's go see her.'
We walked out of the cafe together, followed by my friends and his. Two guys sitting at the table off to his right got up when he did. It was all a ridiculous dance.
Outside, near the big, mutilated, dead stump of a redwood tree, several kids waited, guarded by two more men. The kids, to my surprise, looked like kids. They were not made up to look older or, for that matter, younger. The boys—one looked no older than 10—wore clean jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Three of the girls wore skirts and blouses, and three wore shorts and T-shirts. All the jeans were a little too tight, and the skirts were a little too short, but none were really worse than things free kids of the same ages wore.
The slaves were clean and they looked alert and wary. None of them looked sick or beaten, but they all kept an eye on Cougar. They looked at him as he emerged from the cafe, then looked away so that they could watch him without seeming to. They weren't really good at this yet, so I couldn't help noticing. I looked around at Dan, who had followed us out with Bankole and Travis. Dan looked at the slave kids, stopped for a second as his gaze swept over the older girls, then shook his head.
'None of them are her,' he said. 'She's not here!'
'Hold on,' Cougar said. He tapped his belt and four more kids came around the great trunk of the tree—two boys and two girls. These were a little older—mid-to-late teens. They were beautiful kids—the most beautiful I had ever seen. I found myself staring at one of them.
Somewhere behind me, Dan was whimpering, 'No, no, she's still not here! Why did you say she was here? She's not!' He sounded much younger than his IS years.
And I heard Bankole talking to him, trying to calm him, but I stood frozen, staring at one of the boys—a young man, really. The young man stared back at me then looked away. Perhaps he had not recognized me. On the other hand, perhaps he was warning me. I was late taking the warning.
'Like that one, do you?' Cougar purred.
Shit
'He's one of my best. Young and strong. Take him instead of a girl.'
I made myself look at the girls. One of them did look like the description we had given out of Dan's sisters: small, dark-haired, pretty, 12 and 13 years old. Nina had a scar just at the hairline where she had been burned when she was four and she and Paula and Dan had found some matches to play with. Some of her hair had caught fire. Paula had a mole— she called it a beauty mark—on the left side of her face near her nose. The girl that Cougar hoped we would buy did have a scar just at the hairline like Nina. She even resembled little Mercy Noyer quite a bit. Same heart-shaped face.
'Did she say she was Nina Noyer?' I asked Cougar.
He grinned. 'Can't talk,' he said. 'Can't write either. Best kind of female. She must have said something bad to somebody, though, back when she could talk. Because before I bought her, somebody cut her tongue off.'
I didn't let myself react, but there was no way I could avoid thinking of our May back at Acorn. We still don't know whose work this tongue cutting is, but we know that some Christian America types would be
