Let's Go Play at the Adams'

forehead. Her movements were as assured and positive as those of the various machines she

employed. The rest of Freedom Five followed and stood milling around, watching her anxiously.

Although Dianne had not been knocked unconscious, there had been a moment when all time

to that instant had stopped and then resumed. There was a short, blank space in her life. On

one side of this interruption matters had appeared one way, and now on the other side, they

appeared quite different.

For one thing, the faces of the other kids were altered, they seemed younger and less certain

than be-

153

fore. Paul was trembling, Bobby was deeply shook, Cindy was silent and submissive, and

even John on whom she depended, was uncertain and silent. About the four of them hung a

common aura; they were waiting for her to speak. ·

It suddenly occurred to Dianne that they were waiting for her to speak.

The first thing she said-she knew it-would be jumped upon, acted upon regardless of what

it was. It would seem a command, and it would be carried out. Freedom Five, disturbed and

directionless for the last few minutes, had become hers to direct entirely. She felt full

authority-it took but the thousandth part of a second-pass into her hands.

Still standing, still silent, still not more than a breath later, Dianne felt a slow, exquisitely

sweet sense of freedom engulf her. She took the iced cloth from her head, dumped it out in

the sink, wrung it out, and hung it to dry over the swing faucet. She surveyed the kitchen

and found it neat enough.

"What're we going to do, now?" "Take her downstairs," Dianne said.

The present Adams house had been begun when Cindy was six-four years ago-and in those

seemingly ancient times, they had all lived in· the tenant house in the field. They had

driven down from Baltimore on Friday nights, stopping to let the children eat at Howard

Johnson's and arriving at the farm fairly late. Black night or not, the first thing Dr. Adams

always did was walk up the ridge along the river and see what the contractors had done

since he had last been there: the house was his artwork of the moment. Cindy

remembered it all quite clearly.

First came the bulldozers ripping out a long deep trench just behind the rise overlooking

the water. Then came the cement trucks and block-layers building a fort. Afterward the

machines came back and graded the earth up to the top on the outside. On top of this

sunken, dark place, the weathered siding house was 154 .

slowly built, and though it had come first, the basement had never been entirely finished. Dr.

Adams had specified that the contractor leave him a toy of his own.

To reach the basement, you went down one flight of stairs set to the southwest end of the hall

that ran the landward length of the building. Once down, you turned left to three choices. To

the left was the utility and laundry room: ahead was the storage area: to the right was Dr.

Adams' recreation room-to-be. By plan, this room was to serve for about five years as his shop,

and so it had. A surgeon specializing in the problems of the wealthy, the doctor had as well a

carpenter's flair about him. It was here that he cut, shaped, mortised and glued up the shelves

and odds and ends of furniture intended for the upstairs. Here repairs were made; here

Christmas presents were built; here Bobby tinkered on rainy days; here the guns and yard

things were stored; here-in short-everything rough was done.

At the end of five years, the room was to be converted into a special sort of room Dr. Adams

was still creating. So far, in his spare time, he had begun to convert exposed overhead joists

into imagined ship's beams with knees and ringbolts and painted-in scarfs, had begun to

experiment with barn siding for wans and decks. When finished, it would probably look like an

expensive restaurant without tables, the sort of thing the Washington Post would someday run

in its Style section on Sunday. For now, however, it was semicomfortable chaos, a place of

tools and spades and camping and boating gear, piled-up lumber, and barbecue grills (there

were two).

Cindy had never like the room. The smell of paint and wood and tar and cement did nothing for

her at aJI. With feminine disdain she never went in unless it was to ask a favor or get a toy of

her own fixed by Bobby or Daddy. There was too much dead there-unused furniture, rusty

equipment, dust, and a kind of wet feeling-and it reminded her of the deep pit of the well when

it was open and the men were fixing the motor or something, Nonetheless, when Dianne

spoke,

155

Cindy immediately understood the appropriateness; it was a little bit like a torture

chamber.

If Freedom Five had been cautious about handling Barbara at first, then more confident,

now they were rough and vengeful. She had startled them, attacked them even-they