Let's Go Play at the Adams'

and let you out, and you're going to tell us what you remember." She stopped.

"The Picker?" Bobby said.

"That's the way it's going to look." John was sell-

ing.

"I have to spend the night in a closet?" Cindy was

dismayed.

"It's only like playing." Paul twitched. "I don't want to."

"You want to get a beating instead?" Cindy said nothing.

"I want another Coke." Bobby got up and walked out into the kitchen, and the others

gradually rose and followed him. It was hot in the house. When they had all come back and

settled down, Bobby looked at Dianne and said, "What you mean is we're going to make up

a story about it."

"Right."

"It won't work."

"Listen to it," John said.

"Well"-Dianne seemed to rehearse for a moment-"Well, we use the station wagon to take

her down to the tenant house. Then we . . . well, we do whatever we do."

"Kill her." "Right," Paul said.

"Anyhow that's the easy part," Dianne said. "After we clean up, and it's all over, we come

back here and lock you and Cindy in the closet. Sunday morning, 195

when you're not at church, we raise a ruckus, and you get found and tell everybody what I

just said."

"Up to getting in the closet," John said. "After that, you don't know nothing." (He was

deliberately ungrammatical here.)

"That's right, nothing else," Dianne said. "Then somebody goes over in the field and finds

the body and calls the police and-" She shrugged.

"It still won't work." Bobby's tone, however, held some reluctant giving way before the

idea.

"You couldn't have done it; you were locked in

the closet." Dianne was reassuring.

"What about you?"

"We were home before it happened." "Fingerprints."

"Wipe them off. We never used the car." "Footprints," Bobby said a little desperately. "Rub

them out with weeds."

"Time of death," he said. It was a sophisticated question for a thirteen-year-old-boy; it

arose from TV watching and being a doctor's son.

"Yeah," John said.

"It'll be close," Dianne said. "That's where we're just going to have to depend that grown-

ups won't suspect us. If we just go home on time and act completely natural"-here she

looked- at Paul-"the folks will never know. They don't know half of anything anyhow."

Bobby sighed an absolutely monumental sigh. He said very simply, "The Picker'll say he

didn't do it because be didn't. He'll be somewhere else at the time. Then it'll have to be

us."

''Not if we have him up around here doing some work and getting his fingerprints on

everything." Dianne had waited for Bobby's top card with her ace. She smiled triumph.

Bobby was overwhelmed. Dianne was really mean.

She had a twisted mind. Weakly, feeling the tide against him, be said, "He'll still say he

didn't do it."

"They'll pick him up and beat him or whatever

196

they do." (Dianne had a rather nasty idea about police work.) "And no matter what he says,

they won't believe him."

"Why?"

"Who cares what a Picker says?"

"Adults don't believe each other anyway." "Fingerprints"-Dianne came back at Bobby with

his own questions-"time of death .... " She let it linger.

"I dunno .... "

"You mean you will?" Paul said. "No."

"But you would, if you could get away with it." "We can't."

"Why?"

"Us." Without prior notice, tears appeared and began quickly running down Bobby's face.

"We're just kids. Some one'll blow up and start blabbing the first time a grown-up get his

hands on him."

"Chicken?" Paul said.

"If they can't make the Picker admit he did it, we won't admit it either," John said. "They'll

have to choose between us and him."

"I think we can count on our folks to help," Dianne said judiciously. "If we say we didn't and

cry a lot, they'll believe us."

"Paul'll tell."

"Who'd believe him?" John said. Dianne sat silent.

On this point, there was a curious agreement among the children: Paul was different, quite

different. They couldn't be rid of him in any way; they simply made a place for him, cripple

though he seemed to be. But he was batty.

"No one," Cindy said, and it was true.

Paul jumped up in fury. Whatever else was odd about him, he wasn't stupid. He shouted in

refute, "I

... I ... I .... ''

Paul wished to say something that could not be put into words, that much was clear. Had

he looked

197

around, he would even have found sympathy; they were all in various stages of self-

concern. But he didn't look, and he couldn't speak. Instead, words failing, be lowered his

head like a little bull and ran with full self-destruction straight at the living-room wall. He hit

with enough force to make a sound that could be heard and fell to the floor, but he did not

knock himself out. With that fragile-seeming and yet incredible energy, he appeared

slightly "still there."

Freedom Five (or three of them anyhow) were stopped. They bad heard of Paul's suicidal

head charges, but no one except Dianne had ever seen one. They stared at him absolutely

astonished.