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.So I know you know what it is to hurt.Maddy was eleven when I realized she was the stark spitting image of Georgie.I found him and played tic-tac-toe on his face with a nigger shiv.When I thought he'd die I took him to the hospital and bribed the administrators into putting 'car crash victim' on their records.When Georgie got out of the hospital he was a pitiful disfigured wreck.I begged him to forgive me, and I gave him money and I got him work tending my property and hauling rubbish for the city."I recalled thinking that Madeleine resembled neither of her parents; I remembered Jane Chambers mentioning Georgie's car crash and descent to stumblebum.So far, I believed Emmett's story."What about Georgie himself? Did you ever think he was crazy? Dangerous?"Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlEmmett tapped my knee, man-to-man empathy."Georgie's father was Redmond Tilden, quite a celebrated doctor in Scotland.He was an anatomist.The Kirk was still strong in Aberdeen back then, and Doc Redmond could only legally dissect the corpses of executed criminals and the child molesters the villagers caught and stoned.Georgie liked to touch the organs his dad threw out.I heard a tale when we were boys, and I credit it.It seems that Doc Redmond bought a stiff from some body snatchers.He cut into the heart, and it was still beating.Georgie saw it, and it thrilled him.I credit the tale because in the Argonne Georgie used to take his bayonet to the dead Jerries.I'm not sure, but I think he's burgled graves here in America.Scalps and inside organs.Ghastly, all of it."I saw an opening, a stab in the dark that might hit home.Jane Chambers had mentioned Georgie and Ramona filming pageants that centered on Emmett's World War I adventures, and two years ago at dinner, Ramona had said something about "Reenacting episodes out of Mr.Sprague's past he would rather forget." I swung out with my hunch: "How could you put up with someone so crazy?"Emmett said, "You've been idolized in your time, lad.You know how it is when a weak man needs you to look after him.It's a special bond, like having a daft little brother."I said, "I had a daft big brother once.I looked up to him."Emmett laughed--fraudulently."That's a side of the fence I've never been on.""Oh yeah? Eldridge Chambers says otherwise.He left a brief with the City Council before he died.It seems that he witnessed some of Ramona and Georgie's pageants back in the thirties.Little girls with soldier kilts and toy muskets, Georgie holding off the Germans, you turning tail and running like a goddamn chickenshit coward."Emmett flushed and tried to dredge up a smirk; his mouth twitched spastically with the effort.I shouted,"Coward!" and slapped him full force--and the hardcase Scotchman son of a bitch sobbed like a child.Madeleine came out of the bathroom, fresh makeup, clean clothes.She moved to the bed and embraced her "Daddy," holding him the way he'd held her just a few minutes before.I said, "Tell me, Emmett."The man wept on the shoulder of his ersatz daughter; she stroked him with ten times more tenderness than she'd ever given me.Finally he got out a shell-shocked whisper: "I couldn't let Georgie go because he saved my life.We got separated from our company, all alone in a big field of stiffs.A German patrol was reconnoitering, sticking bayonets in everything British, dead or alive.Georgie piled Germans on top of us.They were all in pieces from a mortar attack.Georgie made me crawl under all these arms and legs and guts and stay there, and when it was over he cleaned me up and talked about America to cheer me up.So you see I couldn't."Emmett's whisper died out.Madeleine caressed his shoulders, ruffled his hair.I said, "I know that the stag film with Betty and Linda Martin wasn't shot in TJ.Did Georgie have anything to do with it?"Madeleine's voice had the timbre Emmet's had earlier, when he was the one holding up the front."No
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