“And last night,” Doon whispered, “I went and found Tick, and I told him I knew, and he said—”
But at that moment, Mary Waters held up her hands for quiet. Doon stopped whispering and turned his eyes to the stage. The men had set the stretcher down and propped one end of it on a chair, so that Ben lay at a slant. A bandage covered one of his eyes. He glared out at the audience with the other.
When Mary spoke, there was a slight quaver in her deep voice.
“We are here to talk of serious matters,” she said. “Ben was badly injured yesterday, but he has insisted on coming. We all wish to speak with you face to face.” She paused. “First of all, I must tell you this.”
Doon felt his stomach lurch.
“We have realized,” Mary said, “that we cannot ask you to leave here. Your generosity yesterday has helped us remember our own.”
No one spoke, but the people of Ember glanced at each other and let out breaths of relief. Doon bumped his shoulder against Lina’s, and they grinned. “Yesterday,” Mary went on, “when our Weapon exploded and the fire went out of control, a child of Ember crossed the line that divided us from each other. We are grateful to her for leading the way.”
“Lina! Lina!” cried a few scattered voices—Lina thought she heard Maddy’s voice among them. Doon startled her by yelling, “Lina the brave!” right in her ear.
“I want to say,” Mary continued, “that we have made mistakes and we are sorry for them. We had good intentions, at the beginning. We did our best to help you. But when it got hard, we closed our hearts.”
Wilmer Dent smiled apologetically. “We were worried—” he began.
Ben interrupted him. His voice was hoarse and weak, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. Doon strained to hear him. “We were justifiably . . . concerned,” he croaked. “About critical . . . food shortages. Attempting to ensure . . . the safety of . . . our own people.” He made a kind of wheezing, gasping sound. “Under . . . standably,” he added.
Wilmer shrugged his shoulders, still smiling nervously. “It was just that we were—”
“Afraid,” said Mary. “We were afraid, let us say it right out. We were afraid that you would ruin everything for us. We were almost on the edge of prosperity. We feared that you would push us back into deprivation.”
There was a silence then in which no one knew what to say.
“So we tried to get rid of the problem instead of solving it,” Mary went on. “Fortunately, both our plans and yours were thwarted.” She stepped forward and gazed out at the crowd. Her eyes met Doon’s and held them for a second. “Just last night,” she said, “I learned two things that have changed my picture of what has happened here. The first is this: we still don’t know who wrote the muddy words on the plaza—we may never know—but the other attacks on the people of Ember, the ugly writings on the walls of the Pioneer and the poison oak on the doorstep, were not carried out by Sparks villagers at all.”
The Emberites turned to each other with puzzled looks and murmured confusedly. “But how could—” “But who would—” “What does she mean?”
“It was young Doon Harrow who explained it to me,” said Mary. “I’d like him to explain it to us all, if he will.” She nodded to Doon and gestured upward with her hand.
So Doon stood up. He told the assembled people the same thing he’d told Mary the night before when he came to her house late in the evening.
“It can’t be true!” someone cried out—Doon thought it was Allie Bright, who had been Tick’s right-hand man.
“It is true,” Doon said. “Tick told me himself last night. He said it was just good strategy. He said he knew there was going to be war, and he needed to raise a strong army. When people are attacked, he said, they get mad, and angry people are the best warriors. So he decided to make people angry. He told me he got a good idea for how to do it when he saw those muddy words in the plaza.”
At that, a roar swelled up and filled the ballroom. People shouted, “Where is he?” and twisted around to look for Tick. A few of them began barging through the audience trying to find him.
Doon called out, “Wait! Listen! He isn’t here.”
The commotion quieted down. People turned toward Doon.
“Last night when I talked to him, Tick was stuffing everything he owns into a sack,” said Doon. “He told me he was leaving. He said he couldn’t live anymore with cowards and traitors. He’d heard a roamer was coming through the village today, and he planned to catch a ride with him. Some others are going, too. They’re going to the settlement in the far south, Tick said, where they hope to have a better welcome than they got here.”
A great clamor greeted this announcement. Some people laughed, some shouted, “Good riddance,” and some just grumbled and shook their heads.
Finally Mary raised her hands again and called, “Please! Quiet! I have more to say.”
People grew silent again and listened.
“I said that I had learned two things,” she said. “The second is this: the incident that set off this chain of violent events did not happen as we thought. It was not Doon Harrow who destroyed those crates of tomatoes.”
This came as no surprise to the people of Ember, who had never believed Doon guilty in the first place. But the villagers at the meeting looked startled. Doon saw Martha Parton flick her eyes toward him, her eyebrows flying upward, and he saw Ordney give him a quizzical look. Behind them, Kenny smiled a sunny smile.
“Torren Crane has taken back the statement he made,” Mary said. “He did not, after all, see Doon Harrow throw those tomatoes. He still refuses to say who did throw them. We must make up our own minds about that. But I believe we can be sure that it was not a person from Ember.”
At that, a cheer arose from the crowd, a loud, disorderly cheer, and Doon was so astonished that he nearly fell over. Lina grabbed his arm. “I made him write it down on paper!” she yelled into his ear. “I took the paper to Mary last night!”
When the cheering subsided, Mary continued. “We should take note,” she said, “of how easy it is to bring out the worst in us. The actions of a few troubled individuals fanned resentments into violence. Only an accident kept us from murdering each other.”
She turned around to face Ben, whose head was lolling sideways, his eyelids drooping. “Ben has something to say now. Ben? Are you able?”
The doctor, standing next to Ben, nudged his shoulder gently, and Ben opened his eyes.
“Can you make your statement, Ben?” asked Mary.
Ben frowned at the ceiling. The audience waited. Finally he spoke. “I have been told,” he said, “. . . that Doon Harrow . . .” He stopped. Frowned again. “I wish to thank . . . young man named Doon Harrow . . .” He took a shaky breath. “For rescuing . . . foolish nephew.”
What? thought Doon. What’s he talking about?
Ben scowled. He appeared to be gathering his strength. “Foolish nephew Torren Crane,” he rasped, “in the . . . pine tree. Who could have been killed . . .” Ben’s voice sank to a whisper, and the audience strained to hear. “. . . By my foolish actions.”
Doon stood stunned. Torren was Ben’s nephew? That was a surprise. But it was even more of a surprise to hear Ben almost apologizing for what he’d done.
Lina was thumping Doon on the back. Someone behind him cried out, “Three cheers for Doon!” and three cheers rang out in the ballroom. Doon just stood there, with what he thought was probably a silly smile on his face.
Then Mary stepped forward and called for quiet again. Her voice grew steady and businesslike. “Now,” she said, “we must look to our future. You will not get everything you want. Neither will we. All of us will suffer, perhaps even be in danger. There will be more mouths to feed—but more hands to do the work, too. And though we may have a shortage of food, we have no shortage of work.” She paused. She smiled a little. Her eyes passed over the people in the room, and Doon felt her gaze almost like a reassuring touch. “The main thing,” she sa
id, “is this: we will refuse to be each other’s enemies. We will renounce violence, which is so easy to start but so hard to control. We will build a place where we can all live in peace. If we hold to that, everything is possible.”
Someone clapped. Doon turned around and saw his father, clapping with his hands held high in the air.
“There is much to be worked out,” Mary said. “It won’t be easy, but we’ll talk about it together.” She paused for a second, and a change came over her face—the beginning of a smile. “One more thing,” she said. “We will no longer speak of ‘the people of Sparks’ and ‘the people of Ember.’ From now on, we are all the people of Sparks.”
A rustle swept through the crowd. Both Doon and Lina felt a pang of sorrow. To call themselves people of Sparks meant leaving behind the last trace of their old home—its name. The villagers, too, felt a pang; for them it was a pang of fear. These were their people now? Could they really live peacefully together?
But the sorrow and the fear lasted only a few seconds. Everyone was tired of sorrow and fear. Whatever lay ahead, they thought, would probably be better. They were willing to try it.
After that, they turned to the practical details.
“Actually,” said Alma Hogan, the storehouse manager, “there’s a fair amount of food in the storehouse. It’s just that we never like to use it all up. This year, we’ll expect to use it all and hope we can replenish it next year. I’m afraid a great deal of it is pickles, though. By the end of winter, we may all be eating more pickles than anything else.”
Doon’s father mentioned politely that the hotel residents would have to have decent houses sooner or later. Mary said they would start building some of them now out behind the meadow. The best of Sparks’s builders would be in charge, and they would teach the Emberites construction. “The houses will be small,” Mary said, “and we’ll be able to build only a few before the rains come. Most of you will have to spend the winter in the hotel.”
Clary stood up to announce that her garden was producing well; in addition to cucumbers, melons, and peppers, she had grown nearly a hundred butternut squashes, which would keep well through the winter. That would help a little. The villagers looked at her curiously. Butternut squashes? They had never heard of them. “I grew them from seeds I brought from Ember,” Clary said. “I brought all the seeds I had, all kinds. Next year I’ll be able to grow more.”
Mrs. Murdo said she had learned a great deal in her time with the doctor. She would like to be Assistant Doctor. “It’s clear that this community needs more than one,” she said.
“I know something about plants,” said Maddy, speaking up for the first time. “I wish to be Assistant Hotel Gardener, with Clary Laine.”
Edward Pocket said he demanded to be made Official Librarian. Mary looked surprised. “We don’t have a library,” she said.
“Exactly right,” said Edward. “You have a dis-orderly heap of books. I have made great progress with them, however. I invite you to come by and see.”
Ben Barlow kept muttering dire warnings about crop failures and vitamin deficiencies and epidemics, but Mary said they would cope with those problems when and if they actually occurred.
Little by little, people began to feel interested in how this new arrangement was going to work. There were endless questions. What if there were arguments? How would they be settled? Would the Emberites go back to eating with their lunchtime families? Would they get enough for dinner and breakfast? What would happen when they needed things other than food, like shoes or soap or hats?
“The trouble is,” said Mrs. Polster, “we don’t have anything. We can’t trade for the goods at the market because we don’t have anything you’d want.”
But Doon saw the solution to this right away. “We do!” he said. Mrs. Polster raised her eyebrows at him. She wasn’t used to being contradicted. “We have one thing that you need,” said Doon. “Matches! We still have a lot left. We could use them to trade with, at least for a while. Two matches for a pair of shoes, say.”
People laughed and clapped—it was perfect. Ben said in his opinion a pair of shoes was worth at least five matches, but no one paid much attention.
“All of this has to be worked out,” Mary said. “It’s going to involve disagreement, and it’s going to involve hardship. But we have endured hardship before. We can do it again.”
Wilmer sighed. “It’s just that we hoped we wouldn’t have to,” he said.
Mary shot him a stern look. “We can do it again,” she repeated. “And we will.”
CHAPTER 29
Three Amazing Visits
Lina gave up on trying to persuade Mrs. Murdo to move to the hotel. Since they’d all have their own houses sooner or later, they might as well stay at the doctor’s house until then. Besides, Mrs. Murdo was so intent on learning to be Assistant Doctor that it seemed unkind to take her away.
Lina and Maddy took on the job of harvesting and preserving the produce from the doctor’s vegetable garden. Every morning they picked baskets of tomatoes and beans and peppers and corn and squash. Every afternoon, they sliced tomatoes and laid them in the sun to dry; they took dried beans out of their pods and put them in jars; they cooked peppers and packed them in olive oil; they tied bunches of herbs with string and hung them up to dry. Poppy puttered around their feet, “helping” by sprinkling dry leaves here and there or banging spoons on pots. Even Torren, whose feet were healing, often chose to hang around with Lina and Maddy. He said he knew how to make a garlic braid, so they gave him a basket of garlic, and he made one.
One afternoon, as she and Maddy were cutting green beans for dinner, Lina heard wheels crunching on the road outside. The next moment, she heard the whuffling of an ox, and then Torren sprang up and limped as fast as he could to the front of the house. Uh-oh, thought Lina. Is it who I think it is?
It was. There was Caspar’s battered truck, and there was Caspar just climbing out of it. He looked grubby. His mustache drooped. Torren ran toward him, crying, “Caspar! Caspar!” And Caspar smiled in a tired way.
“Hey, brother,” he said. He thumped Torren’s back a couple of times. Then he started toward the house. Lina and Maddy went out to meet him.
When he saw them, he stopped and glared. “Deserters,” he said. But he didn’t seem to have the energy to berate them further. He trudged into the house and plunked down on the couch. Torren plunked down beside him.
“I’ve been waiting and waiting for you,” Torren said. “Why didn’t you come back with them?” He flicked his hand toward Lina and Maddy.
“I had important work to do,” said Caspar. “Which they didn’t want to help with.”
“And what happened with your work?” asked Maddy, standing by the door. “Did you find what you wanted to find?”
Caspar didn’t even look at her. He closed his eyes and slumped against the back of the couch. “My numbers,” he said, “need readjusting. They were completely right except for one thing.”
“What thing was that?” asked Maddy.
“Wrong city,” said Caspar, still without opening his eyes. “I have reworked the numbers. Tomorrow I head north.”
Maddy and Lina exchanged a look.
Caspar turned his head toward Maddy and squinted at her. “I don’t suppose you want to come,” he said.
“No, thank you,” said Maddy. “I plan to stay here, where something with real potential is beginning.”
Torren tugged on Caspar’s arm. “Did you bring me something this time?” he asked.
Caspar opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling for a while. “Well, yes,” he said. “I did.”
“What?” shrieked Torren. “What is it? Can I have it now?”
“It’s out in the truck,” said Caspar. “I found a whole crate of them, very unusual. You can have one.”
“One what? Let’s go get it!” Torren darted to the door.
Caspar heaved himself up and they went outside. Lina watched as Caspar rooted around in one
of his crates. He came up with something she recognized with a start. She hadn’t seen one for a long time—it was like seeing something that belonged to an old friend, now dead.
“What is it?” said Torren.
“A light bulb,” said Caspar. “I found a case of forty-eight of them, all unused.”
“But what does it do?” Torren asked, peering into the light bulb as if he expected to see something alive in there. He tapped the glass with his fingernail.
“It gives light,” said Caspar. “If you have electricity.”
“But we don’t have electricity.”
“That’s right,” Caspar said wearily. “So you hold on to it, in case someday we do.”
Torren went to the window seat and sat there turning the bulb around and around in his hands. Lina watched him, thinking about Ember. People had figured it out once, she thought. They could figure it out again.
A few days after Caspar left, there was another visitor to the doctor’s house. Lina was out in the courtyard at the time, cracking walnuts with a rock. She saw someone approaching the gate, a bent figure walking slowly and somehow crookedly. She stood up. The person seemed to be having trouble with the gate latch, so she went to help, and that was when she realized it was Ben Barlow. His injured arm was bandaged and strapped to his side, and the jacket he wore was draped over it with the sleeve hanging empty. That was why he looked lopsided.
“Good afternoon,” said Ben. “I wonder if Torren is here.”
“He is,” said Lina. “I’ll get him.”
She found Torren out in back of the house, sitting under a tree, eating a hunk of bread. “Your uncle has come to see you,” she said.
Torren stared at her. “My uncle?” He sounded both excited and scared. He jumped up, shoving the bread into his pocket.
When Ben saw Torren coming toward him, he frowned. Then, as if catching himself, he changed his expression to a smile. “Hello, nephew,” he said. “How are you getting on?”