Let's Go Play at the Adams'

wading around naked in the creek in the middle of the night anyhow?

"You ... up the house?" The Picker's calm, deep

172

voice came again. The se sound hung in the air menacingly near.

"Yeah-no," John said nervously. "The other house."

Silence.

"A lot nice house around here," the Picker said at last. To John the words sounded

contemplative, those of the fox regarding the surprising number of chicken coops nearby.

"Nice," the Picker said judiciously. Everything hung; this time it was the ce sound. He might

have had a black moustache and beard; he seemed to pull his chin thoughtfully. "Quiet."

"Yeah," John said again. This time he began rowing slowly upstream but without show of alarm.

At the sand bar above the pool, the boat grounded and John had to step out and pull it

upstream into fair water again. He didn't dare look around or appear hurried. Here was where

the Picker could simply wade out in three decent steps and get him. (Why? They were

enemies-that was enough.) John tugged. Sweat ran down into his eyes. He struggled with

panic, and then the boat came across and floated again. Looking up, however, John could not

see the Picker, he just simply wasn't there any more. Feeling terribly stupid, John called back

into the emptiness, "See ya," and got back in the boat.

Nothing answered. It was scary.

Another fifty or sixty yards up the narrowing stream, he came to a sort of unofficial dumping

ground-his own family put their cans and bottles there in a low place-and pulled into the bank.

Making fast to a tree limb, he splashed ashore and quickly clambered over to the private road

and driveway that ran back down his side of the creek to the Randall house. Once out on the

dusty, two-track lane, he turned left and broke into a solid trot swinging his head left and right

as he went.

John might feel big and strong around Freedom Five and even around an older girl if she was

com-

173

pletely tied up, but in the Picker, he had seen what men are and boys only hope to be. The

broad, powerful shape tried against fields and orchards, white where random lightning

illuminated it, otherwise only a black voice from the woods, frightened him. The darkness

sweated danger simply because he was there, and John wondered if he should tell his father

about it. The nearer he got to home, however, the less he thought of the idea.

John was in; John was safe, and he had distracted the Picker a little. He just hoped Bobby

wouldn't have to face that man alone.

Like the Adams, the McVeighs were not natives of the Eastern Shore. They had transplanted

down from Philadelphia and after almost ten years still looked upon their move from the city as

something on the order of Darwin's voyage in the Beagle, and life in the country a

sophisticate's comic novel. Owning: more. land than their neighbors, they had acquired a few

animals which they carefully named and endowed with imagined personalities; they had a local

neighbor who cropped their field along with his own and who, all unknowing, became the folk

hero of witty letters back to friends and family. Edna McVeigh still spoke of shopping in Bryce

as "going into the village to do a few errands," and she always wore little checked, shirtwaist

dresses that struck (to her) just the right note between chic and condescension. Mr. McVeigh

often spoke of going to his office (he had been admitted to the local bar) as "going down to the

feed store."

As one of their rituals, they drove out after dinner and up to the crossing of the U.S. highway

and state road that ran nearby. Getting ice cream there fit the pattern of summer: it relieved

monotony and gave them a droll, bucolic sense of adventure.

Dianne, when she went along (it was often beneath her) was allowed to drive the car as far as

the state road and, from there, home again on the return trip. After two years of this, the

novelty and privilege 174

had worn off. She was a good driver, had learned quickly, and ordinarily had good

judgment even when looking at headlights at night.

Tonight, however, she wasn't concentrating on her innocent little drive. Seeing her at the

wheel, you would notice her overerect, overstiff. She swerved suddenly at things that

weren't even near the road, moved the wheel when it didn't have to be moved, and braked

nervous yards before the stop sign. Even later, under the buggy, stinging blue-and-white

neon of the malt stand-drive-in, she only absently ordered ice cream and only absently

licked it with a dainty tongue. Instead she looked across the highway and appeared to be

studying the slow, lazy heat lightning that silhouetted the trees beyond.

Whether or not leadership of Freedom Five had actually passed to Dianne Mc Veigh in the

morning, she no longer knew. John, after all, was still the larger and stronger. What had