Let's Go Play at the Adams'

"I can't." For the first time, Dianne didn't use the word "we" when speaking of Freedom

Five's joint action. She took the decision to herself, and Cindy

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thought-also for the first time-that Dianne was a very strange girl.

Barbara accepted the ruling in silence.

"Do you want your sandwich or not?" Dianne said.

"I'd throw it up," Barbara said. Her head dropped forward, and Cindy thought she might

really begin to cry, but she didn't-quite. "Just go away and leave me alone."

A few minutes later, with a display of temper on both sides, Freedom Five gagged their

prisoner again, forced her to bed, and tied her down. Very tightly. The sandwich sat

uneaten and drying in the air; eventually Bobby and Cindy split it between themselves and

washed the plate clean.

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5

As on the night before, it was hot, still, and humid. The marsh mosquitoes-obviously infuriated-

whined about his bead. And again, as on the night before, the end-of-day squall bad gathered,

threatened and then dissipated without giving rain. Remnant clouds sat high in the distant

darkness, a castle of corridors and halls through which dim lightning and dull thunder wan-

dered without giving any true action. Unlike Cindy, John Randall had never had any

superstitions about storms. Instead, he cast a sailorly eye aloft and concluded that the rain, if

any, would fall on the lower Eastern Shore or even drop wastefully into the ocean beyond. He

dismissed the intruding consideration and returned to his first-it could be said his utterly con-

suming-passion. Barbara and/ or the thoughts provoked by her.

Considering that he had helped capture a girl and hold her prisoner, that he had raped her,

that the punishment for this was going to be so severe that he had literally destroyed himself,

he was singularly elated. He. had broken out of the prison of childhood; he was no longer

someone just to be ordered around, he had solved what he too considered the "mystery." He

could do it from here on as well as any grown-up--he could fuck: what all the others talked

about-and he had done it. With a defiant, self-immolatory glee, he was absolutely delighted

with himself. He had executed a real, fundamental, human act: he had entered life in

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spite of them all. (Them be defined as adults-those tedious, living pains-in-the-ass who held

you down so long and took such pleasure in doing it.) And he had sampled something of

love as well, not simply the physical side, but the spiritual and revelatory side, too. He saw

now-at last-the possibility of falling in love himself someday. To that extent, his thoughts

were both characteristic of the male and quite uncharitable.

When he had lain beside /and then atop Barbara, he had loved and admired her-quite more

than that, he had been nearly rabid with passion-but the insertion accomplished, the deed

done, everything had faded rapidly. Old Barbara's body was pretty much OK; what you

could expect, he guessed; but in retrospect, he had to remember that under the tape and

blindfold was only the girl herself, the goody one with something to say about everything.

Her undeniable appeal and submissiveness were enforced, almost created by the kids -

Freedom Five-and, of course, only temporary. In her place, John Randall would far rather

have-at the same, harsh terms-any number of girls at school and around here, girls at

home with their parents right now, girls not knowing that his thought like a closely defined

spotlight was picking them out one by one. John swatted at a mosquito, shifted position on

the back steps, and sighed. Life was going to be endless and suddenly wonderful.

John Randall, his punishment for present sins served out, was going to plough through the

world screwing everything he could get his hands on. Never mind love or babies or God or

any of that crap. His mind focused on the moment-of-first-clutch. Just exactly there. That

much, Barbara had taught him. And, if in the end, he did marry, it was going to be a mild,

sweet, meek girl he could do anything with that he wanted. That much more, Barbara had

also taught him-no smart-asses. Meanwhile he had better things to think about (in truth,

the same thing but in more particular terms).

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"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," Macbeth had said-it was one of the few things

John's memory had salvaged from endless, boring English classes-and it entirely suited

John's present mood. Tomorrow, indeed. Tomorrow he was going to rape a girl captive.

Again. Few men alive could say as much: few people knew as little about technique

required as the impatient re-rapist.

Dianne had said-another bossy girl-that the woman's knees should be raised and parted to

open the vagina. At least, if you were electing that position. She had read it in a marriage

manual her progressive, not to say permissive, parents had thrust on her shortly after she

began to menstruate. This John now took in with great and attentive care. It could explain a

number of things.