Let's Go Play at the Adams'

belong to the baby-sitter-pianist, Barbara. When she gets out of the car to let the

children out, it is with an athletic little leap. She is

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probably twenty-not much more. She wears a white dress of extremely diplomatic

appeal. It is short enough to show off her legs and pass with her generation and yet

long enough to show her deference to the older generation and the social order of

things.

Barbara is also not pretty in the sense that movie professionals are pretty. She is better

than that: she is young and downy-or so you would say from looking at her face-and

she likes everyone. You can see it in the way she shepherds the children off to Sunday

School and in the way she is rather instantly accepted by the older, generally cautious

group in the churchyard, all of whom are strangers to her.

The morning passes easily enough. Downstairs in Sunday School-Cindy squirming,

Bobby sitting with that thoughtful look of his-they hear about how Our Lord cured

people. Upstairs they hear-Barbara sitting with white gloves folded neatly in her lap-

that in times ·of change and uncertainty the words of Jesus have even more relevance

than before.

Afterward they all sing. It is a pretty and simple sound: "Jesus, our God and Father," and

so on and so forth.

When services are over, everyone stands in the shaded yard-it will be paved next year;

now it is all dust-and discusses the county news. Call it gossip.

The Adams are well known here, for all the fact that they are not natives. Dr. Adams has

contributed to the paint, the piano, and the plantings. Mrs. Adams has participated in

the cake bakes and fund-raising affairs.

There is a little cynicism in this, and there is a certain amount of friendliness. For

cynicism, everyone knows that the Adams are not godly people, at least not in the

sense of this county of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's all for show. Quite on the

other hand, everyone understands that by so participating in the church doings, the

Adams are doing their dead level best to be friends with their adopted community. Dr.

Adams' hand is extended and taken, and-in his absence-the hand of the community is

extended into the

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slender one of the baby-sitter, Barbara, who stands daisy-white and bright outside beneath

the mimosas.

Tomorrow, or on some tomorrow, she will be a part of some community with children of her

own and plans and-well, sometimes we must-cake bakes. It is a soothing future, one which

she has considered all her life, or perhaps a picture instilled into her long ago. Nonetheless,

it is nice, and here she enjoys the vision.

Her thought-this is as close as it comes to - words-is, Who will he be who gives me all this?

Ted?

She frowns to herself.

So, everyone mills around until Sunday School lets out-late today-and the children come

out to claim parents. Because there are a lot of fond old-timers here today, there is also a

lot of ohing and ahing by the grandparents' groups, and this the children endure with as

much good grace as possible. After all, the Lord said to be kind. Then Bobby and Cindy and

Barbara get into the station wagon to go home and go swimming in the river on whose

banks the Adams house is built.

There is a last item. As they get into the rather flossy wagon-it is air-conditioned and has

tinted glass and pretty much the whole option sheet-they find their way out momentarily

blocked by pickers. This is a group of migrant workers walking along the country road on

foot.

Nearby-it is woodsy hereabouts-there are commercial orchards, and at this late time of

summer, the pickers arrive and harvest the fruit. It is hard work, back-bending work, and

very poorly paid. Nonetheless their arrival signals the end of the summer, and when they

have gone again like a flock of dark Latin birds, fall will begin.

"Who are they?" Barbara, with 425 cubic inches of piston displacement under her small

foot in the family wagon, is impatient.

"I dunno."

"Pickers," Bobby says. "Nobody."

Then the road is cleared, and the car spins gravel.

They pass the pickers without looking back.

"How long to get into the river?" Barbara says. "Fifteen minutes."

"Twelve." Cindy goes her brother three better. "Then let's go-o-o!" In white-dress and white-

glove exuberance-though she drives well, she rarely gets the chance to drive a powerful

car like this-Barbara floors the gas pedal for home. Clearly she feels a little naughty about

the surge of speed-there is that touch in her-and clearly she enjoys the squeal of tires

when they take pavement and accelerate.

It is afterward that it begins.

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In the first moments, her mind floated up still webbed in memory of the most recent hours.

After seeing the children through baths into bed, she had made herself a small highball

with Dr. Adams' Scotch and sat out on the steps nearest the river-it was reward at the end

of the fourth day. Later she had showered and gone to bed.