Let's Go Play at the Adams'

meet us here as soon as you can get over, right? ... Cool, man ... OK. Roger. This is Red Fox

patrol out." And he hung up.

For a few seconds, Bobby stared off into space above Barbara's head. Eventually, he

dropped his glance to her, and Barbara understood that there was a lot more to this than

she had imagined.

About midmorning, they heard the sound of someone whistling through his teeth-shrill,

powerful, 13

outdoors, some distance away. Cindy, who was desultorily working on a dress for her doll,

looked up.

"It's John."

"It's them!" Bobby had been moving restlessly around the living room. Now he hurried

through the kitchen to the river door and out onto the steps. Being thirteen and being

Bobby, he did not accomplish this without a certain clumping, banging, and thumping, and

he arrived on the second step down with a thud. Then, putting his fingers between his own

teeth, he whistled back.

From down in the woods at the northeast end of the Adams property-maybe beyond the

woods from Oak Creek-there came a shout. The sound rose and fell. There were words in it

which couldn't be understood at the distance, but Bobby knew them by heart.

"Freedom-m-m Five!" His first shout drunk up by the vastness of sky that hung above the

river and land, Bobby gathered his biggest lungful of air and yelled again. "Freedom-m-m

Five!" He panted. "This is Red Fox One!"

There was quick reply-whistles, shouts-slowly coming closer.

Bobby jumped down the steps and started along beside the vegetable garden with Cindy

down the steps .one clump behind him. Then he stopped. From the outside it would have

been possible to see, perhaps, a look of caution,. of newfound responsibility, on his face.

He was discernibly proud of what he had done, possessive, nervous: it wouldn't do if at this

last minute his captive escaped and descended on Freedom Five like an avenging goddess

of some kind.

"Aren't you going to meet them?"

"You go on. I'll stay here." But he put his fingers between his teeth and whistled once more

for reassurance.

Tom between the desire to run and tell everything first, and a new feeling of duty to her

brother, Cindy hesitated. Then she turned back. "OK, I'll wait, too."

Bobby was a little startled. Being a girl, being little,

14

being the darling, Cindy could get to Bobby politically about as often as she wished, and

she wished often. She cried and accused him, she tattled, she tempted and set female

snares, she rushed out and told all the good news first, and so on and so forth. Bobby was

used to this and used to the discipline that followed if he so much as tried to defend

himself against her. Though they had not invented the fabled law of fang and claw, brother

and sister lived by it inflexibly.

"Why?" Like any man, Bobby was dumbfounded by this offer of peace.

"I dunno"-she shrugged it away quite lightly"! just will, that's all."

Touched (unknowingly), Bobby smiled, and so they went back and settled down, Cindy on

the bottom step-nearest the coming action-and Bobby sort of hanging on the railing, one

foot swinging impatiently over it beneath him. "Do what you want," he said. There was

something almost managerial about Bobby: he took his truces where he found them and

enjoyed them while they lasted, and he trusted his sister about the way he would a

cottonmouth.

At last, the other three kids appeared from the shadows of the woods. They were walking

slowly because the mowed stubble between the ending of the tree line and the vegetable

garden was August-hot, splintery, and dusty. John Randall, the biggest-be was seventeen-

led the way. Behind him (protectively in the middle) came Paul McVeigh, thirteen, and

following, his daintily stepping (excessively thin) sister, Dianne.

Something about their steady, collective approach seemed to relieve Bobby. When they

reached the edge of the garden, he deserted his place on the steps and ran to meet them,

half tackling, half throwing himself at John.

There was something like a ritual dance (again). "Did'ja really do it?"

"Yeah! Really!" Then they were all bobbing around, slapping backs, and laughing, except

for Di- 15

anne who at seventeen plus stood an even one step aside. "Barbara's in there right now.

Wait'll you see it!"

"Was it hard?" Paul said.

"It was real cool," Bobby said. "Just like TV. I swear it must've taken me an hour just to get

in from the door to her bed." They all came along now, Bobby waving his hands and

talking, Cindy jumping ahead like something on springs. "She kept turning over and waking

up and yawning and stuff like that. I was scared she was going to turn on the light or get

out of bed and step on me or something like that. ... "

"Did you keep the cholroform in the bag like I

told you?" Dianne said.

_

"Yeah, but you could smell it all over the place.

At least, I could. And I kept thinking, boy, if this doesn't work, we're really going to get it."

"Did it?"

"Well, when I finally got there, see, I stood up