Let's Go Play at the Adams'

certain direction.

For him she reserved her tales of the Nazi atrocities, the Salem witch trials, the fate of the

early Christian martyrs, or the human sacrifices of primitive peoples, and when she did so,

her cool gray eyes became abnormally large and intense. Paul ate it up. He saw, he saw it

all as she talked. He saw the small iron cage

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hoisted by rattling chains, up, out, over, and then down into the waiting bonfire built in the

medieval town square. He heard the shrieks, saw the dimly lit figure in the cage flinging itself

around in captive agony, heard the flesh crackle like bacon in a skillet (his simile), saw the iron

grow red until its content was entirely consumed. Paul nearly fainted at the force of his-tu-

tored-imaginings. This wasn't a make-believe story, this wasn't the comics or TV-they were all

tame and boring-this was what had happened to real people, done by real people.

It was too much for a small boy, and yet from the time he could think, Dianne had treated him

to such fare. (In fairness to her, it must be said that he bad never put his fingers in his ears. He

listened.) Their natures coincided at this point, and the Freedom Five "game" insofar as they

were able to influence it, was their game. (In fairness again, it must be admitted that though

the others might change the plot here and there, they played. They liked it.)

Thus, when Paul considered tomorrow and the prisoner they called Barbara, he considered it

from a most special point of view. He lay in the darkness of his room turning over all the

possibilities. Actually you ought to have more than just a knife to do any good.

Bobby, awakened on the same night, hardly knew what to think. Cindy, sleepy and untalkative,

shook him to consciousness and then went stomping off to bed, fell in, and was almost

instantly asleep, knotted hair, dirty dress, dirty pants, dirty socks, and all. In the smoothly

purring automated house, Bobby was alone again. Though he did not think of the house in just

those terms, it seemed a ship. The flavor of the hour was easily assimilated. It was a ship on

which he was at once both master and passenger-the black night sailed by outside. He had his

duties and his burdens.

After he bad yawned and scratched himself to life, Bobby made a cursory inspection of the

prisoner, though it was hardly necessary on this fourth night.

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He had observed-excepting when Cindy ungagged the captive-nothing more from Barbara than

the occasional movement of a hand, the turn of the head, an occasional opening and closing of

the eyes, or a twisting of this foot or that. She simply could not escape, and each tieing up

made it less likely. The children steadily improved as wardens, and Bobby was the best of all.

The difference tonight-her nakedness-did not much affect Bobby. Barbara appeared to be

sweet, defenseless, and all that, but to him, she was also a trifle repugnant. The raw thrust of

genitals and hair was a little too much for him at his age; everything was overscale compared

to his own slight build. Her nudeness was simply another grotesque item in Bobby's troubled

week.

Nonetheless, walking into her room and finding all of this so-still so--Bobby felt a true

sympathy for Barbara. They were hurting her. She had not put on makeup in days, so that her

eyes were as naked as her body; nothing was left to imagination, and in her eyes he saw the

change the Freedom Five had caused. There were dark smudges under those eyes. He knew

Barbara had slept, but she seemed not to have slept in a long time. Her eyes-possibly from

sleeplessness-were red with irritation, and wide open and dry, and the pupils were abnormally

dark (or so it seemed to Bobby). Her wrists and ankles were chafed and scraped from the rope;

her hands which he did not dare touch and her feet (he touched one foot knowing what he

would find) were dark colored and cold. Circulation. Her stomach was flat, not to say hollow.

The torture was beginning to show.

Bobby knew what he would do if it were up to him, what he could do even now-the sooner the

better. Son of a surgeon, he had sat around enough dinner tables

·listening to his father talk about patients. Bobby would untie her, get some circulation going,

feed her, cover her up, and let her sleep in absolute secure peace until she wanted to get up

and become some part of Barbara

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again. He remembered asking his father some question about his work and hearing Dr. Adams

tell him, "We stop a person from getting sicker and make him comfortable, but patients get

well by themselves. All you can do is to try and help."

And Bobby did want to help her, but it wasn't one of tonight's possibilities. Boy fears were at

war.

Free Barbara, and in all probability she would beat him half to death. If she did not, Freedom

Five (only then it would be three) would do it for her later, Leave her prisoner and let the