Let's Go Play at the Adams'

Characteristically Barbara's thought of freedom-its nearness momentarily believed in--

come trailing any feelings of revenge. What she would do to and about the kids, seemed lost in

an unimportant and somewhat irrelevant part of her brain. Instead-wholly instead-the flash of

imagining herself free made her feel charitable, outgoing, philanthropic. It made her feel quite

close to guilty. She had never been understanding enough, sympathetic enough, free enough

with her warmth. What she would do when she was free again!

Let me go, Barbara said, just let me go and I'll .... The thought evaporated off into a rather

splendid bath of emotion. Let her go, and she would do some deed-or deeds-so fine and

unselfish that. ... Oh, damn it, Barbara said, if I could just remember this afterward. But she

knew she wouldn't-not entirely.

It was already fading.

Gently, irresistibly, the whole feeling dwindled until it was only a background glow against the

influx of a

204

new, quite cool caution, a caution of particulars. Caution, after all, was what Barbara

needed now; caution was temporarily better. Grand deeds another day.

When they let her go-if they let her go-but if and before they let her go, they did some

bargaining with her, made her promise certain things to do and not do, she would. That

was caution; that was sense. Oh, yes, she would; she would, indeed. The power and

authority over children that were hers in the outside world, might be passing back into her

hands-in sixty hours, it would be hers, no matter what-but then, those remaining sixty

hours or so were real time, Freedom Five time. This, she had no wish of experiencing; to

anything they set forth, she would agree.

Yes," I will, Barbara said, and listened but only heard the distant, indistinguishable mingle

of voices. There were no words. It was maddening: it was like listening to water. Not yet.

Release was not yet, but it might be coming. Thus, by silent turns, her emotion went from

illusion to reality to caution to a mild fear.

Normally Barbara was no more superstitious than she was open to overwhelming

emotional floods. Her world ran level and loving. Nonetheless the gates were now open. As

she had been saintly and exalted a moment or so ago, now she became tribal, deep,

mystic. It seemed that if she anticipated too much, wanted too much, ached too much-

particularly, right here toward the end-then somehow, it would not happen. Do not show

Fate the face of your longing; you will be disappointed.

Be good. Be undaring and cheerful. But above all, be good.

When the children finally did come down then, when they undid and redid her, when they

hobbled her and stood her on her own two legs, she went willingly. Willingly up the stairs

with no trouble, willingly to the bathroom, willingly to the toilet, and willingly thereafter to

the wash basin. The day before they had broken her, and today they could measure, if they

wished, the results of their work.

205

From the bathroom, however, they led her back down the stairs. Where she bad felt herself

at the edge of reprieve, she was instead resentenced to the basement room. They led her

to the workbench and put down a lunch-her first food in thirty-six hours-and left. All except

Cindy.

There was a white chicken sandwich again one-and a paper cup of some Cola. With her one

hand free from the waist, Barbara ate; indeed, she gobbled. She lifted up the plate and

awkwardly licked the crumbs and smearings, and then she drank.

"Can I have any more?" She was entirely used to begging for things from the children now.

Her stomach hurt worse than her pride. "Can I have another sandwich?"

"You only got that because Bobby wanted you to," Cindy said. In spite of the fact that

Dianne oversaw her and tried to keep her neat, Cindy had let her hair go. In the humidity of

the weather and the brackishness of the creek and river, it had reverted to its wonted

state; it curled, and the curls took curls, and the very ends went into spirals. She was frizzy

and bright and unable to keep secrets.

"Bobby?" Barbara said. "It's all low residue." "Low residue?"

"Bobby says you have to have something on your stomach when .... "

"Something on my stomach, when, what?" "Well," Cindy said importantly, "if you have a lot

in your stomach and you're hurt or scared, you mess yourself. You go poo-peee." Cindy

giggled. "But if you have just enough at the right time, you don't, and .nobody knows the

difference."

"Who's nobody?"

"The coroners." A bright smile. "Coroners!"

"That's what Bobby says."

"What do coroners have to do with it?" "They're doctors who .... "

206

"I know!"

"Well"-this delicious piece of knowledge, Cindy slipped out 'word by word-"they're going to

kill you, and you have to look like everything was OK before."

"They," Barbara said very quietly. "Well, us," Cindy said.

Barbara stiffened and looked at the empty, tongue-licked plate, the last offering. Then she

opened her mouth and began screaming. Every ounce of her being was concentrated in

every scream, and forth the screams came, sound after sound.

Freedom Five came down the stairs almost wearily. They knew their Cindy, and they were

not surprised.

John took Barbara's hair and jerked her head back until she could not close her mouth.

Dianne put the rag down in the hole from which the sound was coming, and Paul and

Bobby taped the lips and jaws. Afterward there was only a moaning sound. They did not

look at each other very much, and they could not seem to look at Barbara. Instead they put

Paul on watch and took Cindy with them back up into the house.

As they had done earlier in the day, Freedom Five looked at the sky and frowned. Above

them it was silky blue with summer puff clouds here and there, but to the west--out toward

the county road-it was brass colored and, still beyond that, there was a dim shadow just

over the tree line. The sun had lost its blinding light-you could look almost right at it

through the gathering haze-and its blistering edges bad become indistinct and pale; they

leaked off into the haze. There was no discernible wind, and the beat was unbearable. The

world was a box of discomfort.

Of the four kids sitting in the scant shade beside the river--only Paul, on guard, was absent-

Bobby frowned the most. Always the least likely of the conspirators, he was nonetheless

the most conscientious. Their joint problems weighed upon him.

207

While he really didn't _think it had been necessary to capture Barbara, strip her (he

wished they hadn't), or -toy with her, he· had gone along because everyone else wanted

to. What was to come, however, was disaster. He could smell it. He could smell it

coming a piece at a time.

Dianne's plan was neat enough. He acknowledged it. There was even the possibility

that on TV or something, an idea like that would work out. But everything had to go

perfectly, and already it wasn't.

"It's going to rain," he said finally. Every time he spoke now, he knew that he was

arguing uphill against all of the rest of them.

"It's really going to rain," Cindy said innocently.

 "So what?"

"Car tracks." "What?" John said.

"Car tracks"-Bobby shrugged-"Like if it rains, everything will be muddy tomorrow. If you

take her down to the tenant house, there'll be a set of car tracks to show it. It'll have to

be us."

"The Picker drove." "Fingerprints." (Again.)

"Anyhow, nobody ever drives down there." Surprisingly enough, Cindy understood the

technicalities of the plot now. .

They were quiet. In the trees between them and the house, the cicadas started up

again.

Dianne narrowed her gray eyes and agreed. "We'd better take her down before we go

home. If it rains, it'll wash out the tracks. If it doesn't, we can brush them away."

"It will," John said.

"And guard her there all night?" Bobby said.

"Uhnn-uh."

They knew what he meant. It was a frame house, old, cheap from the start, open-

chinked and almost windowless, spooky enough in the daytime (which is why they

valued it as a clubhouse) and unapproachable 208

at night. On top of it all, if it rained with lightning and thunder ....

"Why do we have to kill her there?" Cindy said With inspiration.

Bobby looked at his little sister with thanks but

said nothing.

"Because we do."

"Yeah. It ought to be there," John said.

There was nodded agreement. The tenant house was a non-place, a building where you

could do what you would not do in Dr. and Mrs. Adams' nice house. It was a point on the

fitness of certain things at certain times and places.

"Well, I'm not staying down there to guard her,"

Cindy said.

"You won't have to."

"And I’m not staying alone in my house either." "You have to do one or the other."

"I want Bobby with me, and I want to stay in my room."

"We could take Barbara down there and tie her up so good that she couldn't possibly get

away," John said.

"And leave her alone all night?" "Why not?"

"No way," Bobby said. "I don't see why not."

"What if someone tries to get in out of the rain and goes there?" Bobby said.

"Who's-?" John began and stopped. They all looked around at one another.

"Now do you want to stay down there and do the

guarding?" Bobby said.

"The Picker." "Yeah."

They looked at Dianne. She was mind-made-up.

"Well, we have to anyhow," she said.

"You heard what I said," Cindy was flat-foot adamant.

209

"You can come home with us and spend the

night," Dianne said.

"Why?"

"You just said you didn't want to stay here." Cindy lost her bearings. Her point was that she

was scared and did not want to be alone or guard in the tenant house. She was so intent on it

that any other thought got through to her only slowly.

"You can come home to dinner and spend the night with us," Dianne said. "We ... can bake a

cake to surprise Barbara and your parents with on Monday."

"But Barbara .... "

"That's what we're going to say," Dianne said. Cindy took slight hope. "Oh."

"It's a good idea," John said.

"But what about Bobby?"

Bobby looked at John.

If you ran down the roster of participants, there was no one left. Put Dianne, Paul, and Cindy in

the McVeigh house and Bobby guarding the prisoner alone, and there was only one spare-John.

Bobby looked at him.

"Maybe I could help," John said. "How?"

"I don't know. My folks wouldn't want me going out in the rain at night except to check the

boat or something, but they go to bed early."

Some things don't need to be spoken, but Bobby's

need was large. "Could you sneak out?" he said.

"I dunno. I guess so," John said. "Well-sure." "When?" Bobby said. "How soon? How long?"

"Umnn." John frowned.

"How soon can you get away from your parents?

How long can you guard?"

John tried to be honest. There was no room for horsing around. "I don't know. It all depends on

when they go to sleep. I guess I could get here around eleven or twelve, and I'd have to go

home about four. Something like that. Maybe a little bit later." John looked 210

_ around for sympathy. "Well, I just can't go banging around there any old time I want, you

know."

"And I can't sit up for two days straight," Bobby

said.

"Yeah."

"So are you coming over tonight or aren't you?" "I'll be here."

"When?"

"I said I'll be here."

"It's the last night, you know," Dianne said. They looked at her.

"I mean, this time tomorrow night, it'll all be over."

"Yeah, over," Bobby said.

211

9

The tenant house stood across the access road which came in from the mailbox to the

Adams' property and formed a turnaround. It was south on the away-side of the river and

perhaps seventy-five or more yards down into a field of well-picked-over and drought-

burned corn that now rustled and clattered in the lightest breeze. The height and the

smothering closeness of the dying crop-the field had been cultivated right up to the walls

of the house-hid the building up to the middle of the first-floor window frames, so that it

seemed to float like a gray, wooden island in a brown tide.

What was left to see was typical of the region. It was a weathered board-and-batten, two-

story, all square house whose pine sides had warped and curled and pulled out their rusty

nail fastenings, until the wasps could build nests in the walls, the squirrels run freely

through the attic, and the mice live rather comfortably under the floors. For the rest,

everything was in keeping: rusted-through, brick-red tin roof; rotted sills and window

frames; broken panes; a door that wouldn't close, and a path leading out from that door to

the turn-around.

Although the house had been the Adams' summer and weekend place until the new house

was finished, it had gone back downhill afterward. It was allowed to stand now because it

did no one any harm and because-in Dr. Adams' mind-it was a rich source of 212

oak "barn wood" that was becoming unavailable anywhere else. Also, it had always been

there.

Taken purely as a scenic object, it could be viewed two ways. Because of its age,

abandonment, weathered condition, and isolation in the field, it could appear-particularly

under a gathering squall-rather mournful, sad, and even ominous. Approached in another

way, it could-under similar conditions-be peaceful in the peculiar way that cemeteries are

peaceful, a reminder of the rural and distant past, of the simple virtues, of the quiet life

and the acquiescing, accepting of death.

These things were not lost on Freedom Five.

Though they could not express themselves on the subject-to them it was merely spooky

and sometimes "neat"-they felt the presence of time there. It was an old place; it lent

authority to their discussions. This, too, was one of the influences that contributed to its

becoming the obvious and "fitting" place to conclude the whole thing with Barbara. It was

right.

But Barbara did not go willingly.

Though they wrapped her in enough rope and clothesline to hold several hostages, the

children were nonetheless forced to leave her the writhing, twisting movements of a snake.

A number of purely practical things-her weight, going around corners, clearances

prevented them from carrying her on some sort of litter. And Barbara, desperate, was still

strong.

The struggle .began in the workshop-rec room and proceeded out the door, up the stairs,

into the carport, back over the cement to the rear of the gaping station wagon, and then

up into the rear of the car itself. John and Dianne began by carrying the weight of her body

by the shoulders: the three smaller youngsters carried her legs. Her convolutions and

twistings overpowered them all, however, so that Dianne had to trade places with Paul and

Cindy and let everything begin again. Several times they dropped her, and after a while

she was obviously skinned up and bruised.

"It's OK," Dianne said on the second occasion.

213

"When the rapist dragged her out of the house, the same thing happened."

"What do you mean?" The change in verb tense and levels of reality was confusing.

Bobby was clearly panting. "She means," he said, "that from now on, any marks on her

body would have happened anyhow. I mean ... "

"It fits the story." John was pale. Both the exertion and the obvious erotic influence of the

journey made his voice shake.

"The coroner's report," Bobby said.

"Oh." They did not understand-Paul and Cindy-but they weren't going to admit it.

"OK, let's go."

Beneath the pile-on of the kids, Barbara made sounds one does not hear in everyday life,

or at least not often. The various tones could be taken as sobbing, embarrassingly so.

Freedom Five, however, was becoming used to such things. Dianne found it rewarding; John

found it arousing (as, indeed, everything about Barbara was arousing); Bobby found it

unbearable; and Paul and Cindy found it irritating, they wanted to smack her one, anything

to shut her up.

"Come on."

Once again the kids untangled and tackled their squirming burden. Now they moved back

along the country-dusted sides of the wagon, bumping and sliding along its metal panels.

"Don't let her touch it. ••• " "We can't help it."

"Keep going. . .. "

"We'll have to wash the car." "Leave it out in the rain." "If it rains."

"It'll rain, all right." They looked up. "Hurry!"

"Get her around the corner now."

At the lowered rear gate of the station wagon, the major battle occurred. Barbara would

not be put in. 214

She kicked and squirmed; she tried to roll under the car; she butted with her head. She

could not be grabbed nor held, and the fight continued until at last, John, losing his

temper, hit her with all his might. He intended to wind her, but instead be hit up near

the joining of the rib cage, and Barbara went limp.

"What happened?" "John hit her."

"Oh, no." Bobby had seen it. He looked sick. "Oh, no, what? What could we do?"

"You don't ever hit anybody there." "Why?"

Bobby went quickly over the unconscious girt "Because," he said, "because you can

rupture their heart."

"Aw-w-w .... "

"Is she dead?"

"Let me see." Dianne knelt beside Bobby. John

went red. "Can you feel her pulse?"

"With her hands tied up that way?', "Her heart then."

Dianne inclined her ear and touched Barbara's naked chest. "Be quiet."

They all strained to hear what only she could hear.

 "It's beating,'' she said. "Listen."

Bobby, who did not like to touch Barbara at all, found nowhere to avert his eyes and not

see her at the moment of touching. Instead he shut his eyes and put his ear to her

body.

More silence.

After a moment or two lie said, "Yeah." "Boy"-John was relieved.

"Why?" Cindy said. "You're going to kill her anyway."

"Not like this," Dianne said. "That'd min everything." She straightened up. "OK, let's get

her in. Everything's all right."

They got her legs up on the tailgate, and then, 215

with them to support part of her body, they all got together and packed her up and in any

old way.

"She's all dirty now," Cindy said as if in criticism of their work.

"Not really."

"Yes, she is." Cindy bad her standards. "And her hair is all messed up."

Dianne looked at Cindy woman-to-woman, a first-time event, and agreed. "We'll have to

wash her."

"And brush her hair. That's what you make me do."

Bobby bad paid neither one of them any attention. "I'm going to take off her gag," he said.

"And let her start screaming all over the place

here?"

"We got to. She's not breathing very well." "No!"

"She won't scream," Bobby said.

"OK, then you do it. It'll be your fault."

"You want "her to die here? Now?" He needed help, and he got it. They straightened her out

in the back of the wagon, rolled her up on her side, and held her while Bobby removed tape

and cloth.

"Here, I'll take it." Dianne reached over. "Cindy, go get some more tape, the whole roll."

"Why?"

"Fingerprints. I'll have to. throw this away with the stuff that gets burned. And anyhow we

have to regag her."

Momentarily Bobby seemed to cut in on Dianne's thinking. "That's right. Tape is the best

fingerprint thing in the world. Do what she says." He returned his attention to his patient.

His face again turned to a miniature version of his surgeon father-grave, concerned. "She's

not breathing good enough yet." He was really worried.

"Why?"

-

"How should I know?" "What do we do?"

Bobby thought. He supposed that in a similar situ-

216

ation a real doctor would do something quick and smart-oxygen, - a stimulating injection, but

something. Unfortunately, he was only a doctor's son, not a doctor. There were none of those

things around. Then he remembered "Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

"Yeah." "Who?"

"John hit her .... '' "John?"

"OK," John said. (Actually they all could have done it to some extent. They had gotten

instruction in it at the Bryce pool from their water-oriented parents, and the older ones had it

still again in school.)

"Roll her to me." John climbed up into the wagon, and the rest of Freedom Five moved Barbara.

"We don't have an airway," he looked around as if apologizing for failure in advance.

"Just do it."

"We have to open her mouth."

"Here-" With some awkwardness Bobby managed to open Barbara's jaws. "Now."

As if reciting the lessons learned, John took a deep even breath, bent down, married his lips to

hers, and breathed steadily in. He recovered his wind and did it again. There was resistance.

"Hey, great! Keep it up." "It's working," Dianne said.

John inflated his athlete's lungs again and breathed into the girl again. Because it was Barbara,

he did it tenderly and perfectly (even though he was committed to help kill her tomorrow).

Now she actually complained. "Don't .... " He did it one more time.

"I don't need that." She tried to roll her face away, and since she was a swimmer, too, John

stopped. She would know when she was OK.

Cindy came back into the carport. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Dianne said reassuringly, reassured herself. "Everything's OK. Get in."

217

Four rode in the back of the station wagon with Barbara. Dianne drove.

She got self-consciously into the driver's seat, put the key in the ignition, pumped the

accelerator the way she did on their own Chevrolet, turned the key, and started the motor.

The station wagon came to expensive life: lights came on and went off, the air conditioner

started sighing, and they were ready.

"She OK?"

"Hurry up," John said. "The rain .... "

/

With the rigid expression of someone taking a

driver's license test, Dianne dropped into R, let o1f the hand brake, touched the

accelerator, and found herself moving. The car backed out into the drive, jockeyed roughly

once or twice, and then went around to the path that led to the tenant house. Here Dianne

stopped. "I can't back up to the house like I thought. The path's too narrow. It'd show."

"Carry her." "Drag her."

"Whatever we're going to do, for Christ's sake,

let's go." John again looked overhead.

"What if someone sees us?" "Who's here to see?',

"Too late for that now." They all piled out. Barbara seemed more than halfway back to real-

ity. She heard. She seemed to understand. Her eyes conveyed that she knew what she was

here for. "Please. . . . " The sound was exhausted, drawn-out, pleading.

"Gag her again," Dianne came around to the back. "Hurry."

They gagged her. It wasn't difficult; she was unresisting. New cloth replaced the old; new

tape sealed itself over her lips.

"Can we make her walk?" "No."

A sigh. With an all-together-now effort, they pulled her out onto the tailgate and sat her up.

Then, all five at the upper arms and shoulders, they dragged

218

her down the path toward the tenant house. Her bare heels left two parallel tracks behind

them.

At the door to the building, they bumped her up over the splintered and rotted sill into the

tiny, graycolored hall and let her drop. Although it was still midafternoon, the clouds from

the west were moving in, and the sun was prematurely fading into a dark blue haze. Inside

the house, it was oddly dark for that time of day and, as oddly, cool.

"Where?"

"Upstairs," Bobby said firmly. "Oh god, no."

"You can see in all the windows down here. Listen, John, you can climb in any one of them

you want to. You know that."

John was silent.

"If I have to guard her, I want it up there. That

way there's only the stairs to watch."

"You don't have to do it all night alone." "If you want to guard her then .... "

John slouched, but the nature of his resistance changed. From obstinacy he went to

grudging doubt and then agreement.

"Bobby's right," Dianne said. She was as tired as the rest.

"Yeah. OK."

Without further talk, they again took Barbara by the arms and began the steep creaking

ascent up the wooden stairs to the second floor. Barbara still resisted but more feebly. Even

so, along the way they had to set her down and take a breather. At the top they were

virtually in a state of collapse.

"Which room?"

"Either one, I guess," John said.

"No," Bobby said. "That one." _

They looked at him.

"The storm's coming from that way," be sighed.

"This room'll be the driest."

It was now growing quite dark for that time of the afternoon. A copper-colored light

pervaded the upper 219

rooms. Little animals-rats, squirrels?-scratched across the attic over their heads.

"OK.''

Now that they were near the end of the job, Freedom Five lifted and pulled with new strength

(and now that she had lost, Barbara seemed to go limp). They took her to the most protected

part of the southeast room and put her down almost gently for a change. It was done. They all

straightened up in relief.

"We've got to get the car back to the house and wipe it off."

"Inside too .... "

"And get some weeds and sweep off the tracks," Dianne said.

"And the path!"

"We can let that go until tomorrow. We'll be coming back," Bobby said.

"What about her?"

"She can't get away," Cindy giggled.

That seemed obvious enough. Barbara lay, shoulders and breasts mostly down against the

cracking, once-linoleumed floor, her hips up, her legs bent in an S shape. She was rather

ridiculously swathed in rope, but they weren't sure. Her escape was the one chance they could

not possibly take now that she knew.

"Well, maybe-" Bobby frowned.

In the end, they finished by rolling her completely face and stomach down and pulling her

ankles over behind her and tying them down to her wrists. No further movement or sound was

possible.

"That ought to do it until Bobby gets back."

Freedom Five bezan to cover its movements as quickly as possible. Dianne got in behind the

wheel of the wazon and whirled it back around to the main house. There she and Cindy and

Paul wiped it clean inch by inch. There was no sign that it had ever been used nor that Barbara

had ever been in it. Behind them John and Bobby swept back along the turnaround with

branches, removing the car tracks.

220

It was now premature night, however much too early, but nightlike all the same. The

classic signs of squall were in the distant but visible sky.

The west was an impenetrable blue and black; the sun had vanished; and there was just

the beginning of a faraway "beard"-little, dirty, soap sudsy clouds making up before the

storm. The children were indecisive. There was a lot on Dianne's schedule yet to be done,

but. ...

"We better split," John said. "It's going to plow hard."

"Yeah." With Barbara in the tenant house alone, Bobby didn't want to see them go. What

was going to happen, however, just had to happen.

"I'll be back tonight," John said, "but it may be late."

"What about Cindy?"

"I'll take care of it." Dianne, cool and polite as could be-what a wonderful daughter--called

home and got permission for Cindy to spend the night. With minimum time for niceties, she

scrubbed the little girl's face, brushed her hair-six licks to a side-threw some things in one

of Dr. Adams' flight bags, and was ready to go. Outside, John, Paul, and Bobby waited,

scuffling around in the dust and looking anxiously at the sky.

"Ready?"

"Ready." Dianne and Cindy came out of the kitchen and down the steps.

"Let's cut and run then," John said.

Freedom Five--down to four-took off at a fast trot down along the garden, across the field,

and into the trees along Oak Creek. By himself Bobby watched them go, sighed, squared

his thin shoulders, and went inside.

Without the kids and the magnetic presence of Barbara in the house, the rooms seemed

quite abnormally silent and empty. The electric motors whirred refrigerator, kitchen clock,

window air conditioner but that was all. Outside, even the cicadas were silent.

221

And, of course, there was the distant rumble of thunder.

He was lonely, self-pitying, and sad.

The loneliness was self-apparent and would continue until at least midnight. Bobby was not

optimistic; midnight would be the first he'd see of John, if then.

The self-pity was equally obvious. He had done the biggest share of the work and taking

risks all along, and they had had the fun. Now he was stuck with the worst job so far. For

hours it would be just him and her and a Picker out there-maybe-and the weather and the

rest.

The sadness was more difficult; he could not have explained it in any one way because it

was a thing of so many sharp-cornered parts. When he put his mind on it-and he did-things

became a blur too indistinct for

him to unsort.

Where, for instance, Bobby should have welcomed relief of any kind, in fact, be regretted

dreaded-the adventure's coming to an end, particularly the end planned. Like each other

one of Freedom Five, he had formed an individual relationship-s-if known only to himself-

with Barbara, and it was a dear one. After the initial capture, after the fears of her escaping

had passed, he had fallen to paying more and more attention to her for herself. Although

be did not feel any true body lust for her that could be consummated-indeed, his shyness

of her remained almost overpowering-still he was not so young that be could not observe

and admire. Barbara was beautiful.

Her shape-since she was his first experience, she both set and met all standards-was

pretty. Like Paul, Bobby was not without some idea of the female form-in a doctor's family,

surely not-and he found the girl's youthfulness and suppleness and slight immaturity all to

the good despite the many bruises that marred her now. Her grace even in the difficult

things they had made her do, her differentness from him and from them all, was

compelling. Her voice, her words, though she had been allowed to say little enough, were

quite enchanting. If he had a wish, it was that he could 222

keep her here for a long, long time-like a wild fawn or vixen, and train her and tame her-

until she could be let run free without a leash and come back at his call.

From here, Bobby's thoughts reached over toward an emotion a little too adult for him, but,

in fact, it was tenderness, protectiveness, what grown men feel for grown women. He

struggled with the feeling of wanting to cradle and shield her and found it just too complex.

Other things intruded.

Her struggles the morning she had waked up a prisoner, the ones that almost tore the bed

apart, her kickings and thrashings about, her attack on Dianne, her fight this afternoon,

told him well enough that the Barbara of his entirely private dreams was not there at all.

Inside of her was another person, indeed, and a possibly dangerous one.

Still beyond was his duty to Freedom Five, a duty that involved the penalty of not

performing the duty. Here again was a world he could not have been expected to

understand, that honor and responsibility became tangled up with loyalties which became

tangled up with requisites which-finally-involved personal pain and loss.

They could not keep her because his parents were coming home. For the same reason they

could not let her go free and be themselves caught. It all confused him and made him sad,

but as usual, be was in charge and there were things to be done. For the second time since

coming in the door to the kitchen, he squared up and set to work.

He closed all the windows against the advancing squall (his mother would be mad if the

wallpaper was streaked when she got home) and locked them all except one. That was

Bobby. He might want to get in unobserved some time later on. Then be went down to the

rec room and gathered up his rolled sleeping bag, his old windbreaker, and a good

flashlight. These he took upstairs and assembled neatly on the kitchen counter together

with his small shotgun (which he still favored for its short-range pattern spread) and extra

223

shells. Finally he ate. He didn't feel like it, but his father said that the body was like a

fireplace: if you put fuel into the thing, it would run; otherwise not. Further he made himself

a second sandwich, carefully wrapped it in plastic wrap, got a quart of soft drink from the

refrigerator, and rolled everything into a camper's pack.

Lights on or off? Bobby wondered.

After some thought, he decided to leave them off.

If the Picker-his chief caution now-was drawn to shelter from the rain, he might be inclined

to go for the darkened house rather than the tenant house where Bobby definitely intended

that there be at least some light. All this decided, all this accomplished, he took the back-

door key from its hook, shouldered his roll, locked his way out of the house, and went off

around by way of the vegetable garden.

It was cool and growing quite dark now-cooler than it had been in weeks-and fitful little

breezes stirred over dust that was strangely fragrant. The squall was both near and far

away. It was clearly 45 degrees up in the sky, but Bobby had seen them like that, squalls

that only grumbled around and went straight up into the air like last night. Again, they

could cover the remaining miles in ten minutes or less. He hurried a little.

Inside the tenant house, he paused only a moment to listen-there was nothing-and then he

resumed. He closed the door which would not latch and pushed Freedom Five's old meeting

table up against it more against the wind than against possible intrusion. It wouldn't hold

out Cindy. Then he went upstairs and. put his things down by what would be the driest wall

when the storm hit. Barbara, of course, had not moved except to somehow fling herself

over on her side. She raised her head and looked at him when he came in, and then

dropped back again, eyes once more closed. That was all. His sadness returned.

Leaving her nonetheless, Bobby went back down the dimming stairs and rummaged

around in some "junk" he kept in one of the closets his father had built

224

the summer they lived here. The object finally found, turned out to be a gasoline lantern with a

burnt and lopsided chimney, but a lantern that still worked. In keeping with his nature, Dr.

Adams had thrown it out the minute it became defective, and true to his own, Bobby had

salvaged and fixed it. He had also provided himself with matches in a jar. With a sense of the

woodsman's pride then, or as much as he could lay ' claim to, he got the lamp going, the

mantle adjusted, and the closet neatly closed. There remained the problem of where to put it.

Upstairs it would be comforting, but if anyone specifically, if the Picker-broke in, it would be

Bobby in the light unable to see and the Picker in the covering scary darkness. Still, Bobby did

not part with his lamp easily. Further thought. Finally be set it in the middle of the second

lowest step, so that it lit the front and only usable door and room while giving off at least a

little reflection upstairs. With this he could manage, and he climbed back upstairs to Barbara.

Again, of course, she had not moved, and this time she didn't even lift her head. She seemed

as if already dead from the torturous position in which they had tied her, from fear, or from

exhaustion, and she seemed unnaturally white in the lightning flashes that successively lit the

room. In some alarm Bobby knelt and touched her. She was cold-poor circulation, he guessed-

but she moved at once and opened her eyes intelligently. Had she been dozing and dreaming,

and did she suddenly think that this was the morning? The morning, he reminded himself.

Running his fingers down her upper arm and feeling the ropes merely as ridges on her skin

because they had cut so deeply into her flesh, he felt that complicated emotion of tenderness.

He was sorry for Barbara, but he still had time to decide about all that.

Getting up, he went to the wall and unrolled his meager possessions. The soft drink he

carefully placed by the wall itself; the sandwich he put by its side; the flashlight he turned on;

and the shotgun he loaded and

225

stood in the corner. Then he took the sleeping bag over and unrolled it beside Barbara,

pushing it as far under her side as he could. After unzipping it and unfolding it, he took her

ankles and rolled her gently over from one side to the other so that she was off the floor

entirely and on the softness of the down. Finally he got busy loosening some of the ropes,

removing others, releasing her legs so that she could stretch out, and chafing the indents

on her arms and legs. When he had made her as comfortable as he dared, he covered her

with the top part of the sleeping bag and put his folded windbreaker under her head for a

pillow.

Being Bobby, he did not expect any flashing looks of gratitude. He would really have liked

to talk, to have her ease his loneliness by the sheer sound of her voice. Later he would give in

and do it, but he was still busy.

The front of the squall reached the Adams property perhaps an hour later. The little fitful

winds evaporated, and it became theatrically silent as if they were both beneath a

proscenium arch, as indeed they were. The low, dragging beard before the rain-Bobby saw

it only in flashes of lightning-seemed barely above the trees when it passed over. The

temperature dropped again, possibly ten or more degrees this time, and then the first, few

pelting raindrops hit the tin roof overhead. The attic-dwelling animals stirred, too, and then

the wind came.

It sighed through the distant trees, across the fields, and against the house as if testing,

simply testing. It paused a moment. Then it came like a sustained rising chord of noise,

beginning half the county away and rattling over the land like drumroll. When the first gust

hit, the tenant house physically gave before it. Half a thousand and more pieces of board

tugged at enlarged nailholes, plank grinding on plank in a many-voiced . complaint.

]"raveling inside the wind came the true rain; a sea of raindrops, shattered into tiny bits,

drove into the wood like shot. The sheets of tin that were the roof bumped up and down

and tried to fly and could not. 226

Gusts rumbled over them creating a sound equal to the thunder-thunder inside and

thunder above. Now that they were within the squall, moreover, what had seemed sullen

flares of lightning were revealed as branches, trees, rivers of energy discharging for miles

in every direction but always down toward where they were (or seemed to be). The old

building twisted in their light; rain drove in mist through the windows and across the room

even though they were on the lee side of the house. Bobby kept lighting his flashlight and

looking around. -

He understood these things. His father-always the researcher, the explainer-had told him

about this kind of squall. Somewhere up above him, stretching possibly several miles into

the sky was a "hole" leading up from the hot earth into the cold upper levels of the

atmosphere. There-by cold-hot air was separated into downpouring rain and freed.

Uprushing air pulled more in behind it. The electric charge of the uprising air-was it plus or

minus? Bobby could not remember-collected and redischarged back groundward. That was

the lightning. All very interesting to the boy's mind, and even possibly true. He

remembered standing out in the rain with Dr. Adams and listening to such explanations

and thinking that there just might be something to them after all. Nonetheless he had

never been exposed to one of these freakish squalls under such dramatic-if self-imposed--

circumstances. Children are children, and the fury of nature is ever the fury of nature.

There was a gust and the building moved; there was a gust and the building moved; there

was a gust and the building moved again. The repetition of it forced recognition of

insuperable forces. The boards beneath Bobby's feet slid in and out under the cracked

linoleum; the windows shrilled where the glass was broken; and the ceiling ran water like a

sieve. Nor was the sound confined to the room in which they waited.

In the other room of the upper floor-more open to the wind-the rain drove like bucketsful of

water

227

against the old oyster plaster. A closet door banged, and junk-who could remember what

had been lying around up here?--clattered over the floor. Downstairs the noise-as easily

heard where Bobby stood against the wall-was equal. There was a tinkle of glass-wet

cornstalks forcing an already cracked pane-things banging and flapping. At one instant,

there was a sudden, rumbling sound as if the house had been mortally wounded, but it was

the old, abandoned field gate being blown down from its leaning place against the building

wall. In the cold, Bobby perspired.

The sky sounds were of several subtle intensities.

There was the rain-dulled thunder that was far off. There was the unexpected, hand-smack

sound of very nearby lightning, a pause, and then the sound of a direct hit that never quite

was. The entire house tried to squat down beneath the explosion of winds above.

Thereafter there might be a lull, almost a toying, playful lull before the next bolt of

lightning and thunder. Near or close? Now or never? Bobby listened, felt, and waited.

His eyes particularly watched the field between the tenant house and the pine woods along

Oak Creek. Weather like this would have to drive any tin-can camping Picker for shelter

somewhere-assuming he had returned tonight-and the Adams place was closest. Would he

bypass the tenant house? Would he come here? Would he come in a straight line,

blundering through the growth toward protection, or would he skirt along the turnaround

and then make a dive for the building?

In one medium flash of lightning, there seemed to be nothing but dead corn beaten flat

and writhing under the rain like a vast muscle on the back of the earth. In another, more

brilliant flash, Bobby would think he saw a hunched, shadow-highlighted figure in the field.

He would hold his breath. He saw him; then he didn't, until with every eruption of light, he

saw men coming at the windows from every direction.

Bobby held on to Bobby, however; in this he was a remarkable boy. He jumped with

childish fright at 228

one explosion of lightning and then waited: when he had confirmed that there was nothing

there after all, he refastened his grip on things. It was all imagination. Nonetheless a tickle

in the corner of his eye would tell him that the Picker was really over there. To look again

was irresistible; he picked up his gun. Another flash-nothing. Perhaps the Picker was just

now coming out of the woods; perhaps he had been there all along on the other side of the

tenant house.

Forcing himself away from what he thought was the best lookout window there was, Bobby

made a trembling tour of the other three sides of the building in turn. The worst window,

the one directly open to the squall, he left for last. Edging up to it in splashes of light and

voids of blackness, holding his gun shielded behind him, he looked out straight into the

storm. There was nothing except those twitches in the bottom of his eyes.

_ The window was located over what bad once been a back porch and later merely a

sheltered lean-to for farm equipment and things not in use (junk). He looked down, his

sight slanting in under the broken edges of the tin roof, and saw in the next flash of

lightning the figure of a man. The eye's snapshot was indelible. Man . . . black, dark, shiny

wet shoes . . . dirt-colored trousers rolled up ... light shirt sticking to dark skin ... leaning

against post ... hand with handkerchief, wiping face . . . head turned up toward his own.

Then there was blackness again.

Lightning. Confirmation. He was there.

In the instant or two between flashes, Bobby flung himself away from the window and

against the dry wall of the four. With fingers as wobbly as soda straws, he felt the shotgun.

It would be easy enough to fire out the window over the roof and not be heard now, and it

might frighten the Picker away. Then he remembered Dianne's plan for the man. He didn't

know what to do. And Barbara was in there. In dilemma he behaved like

229

a real soldier; he peed red-hot urine into his already soaking jeans.

"God ... ," he said. Then he remembered what his father had told him, and what he told

himself every week at Sunday School.

He didn't believe in a pray-to god.

"Tum off the lights before you come rip." "And don't watch television all night."

"OK." John rose and kissed his mother on the forehead. He was already much taller than

she, and an obedient son. "If it quits raining before I go to bed, I'm going down and bail out

the boat."

"Don't go out while it's storming."

"I won't, don't worry. Anyhow, it's almost all over

now."

·

John watched his parents go upstairs and then went and got himself another Coke from the

fridge. He did so with a distant sense of guilt: he thought that Cokes gave him a stitch in

the side when he ran, and football practice began in another week. It was important to him

to make the real team this year.

Afterward he returned and took his father's chair in front of the TV and forced himself to

wait through two more segments of the movie. When he sensed that things upstairs had

settled for the night, he turned off the set and went and got his oilskin jacket with the

hood. Like Bobby he had made some preparations (in stealth and underneath his parents'

noses). He had a knife, a flashlight, and a whistle in his pockets, and he, too, had a

sandwich. He also had his own gun-a .22- in its gun case waiting for him under the house.

He was as ready as any scared boy can be.

He slipped out the front door quietly, pulled the gun out, and went down to the rowboat.

The grass was tall and full of water, so that as he walked, he kicked up moisture as high as

his shins. By the time he got out on the dock, his moccasins were soaked.

The boat was a third full of water. He guessed that they must have had several inches of

rain in the 230

brief two hours of the squall. Still, the job was there to be done. He laid the gun on the

dock, kicked off his shoes, and stepped down on the wet, wooden thwart barefooted. He

could feel every paint flake and plank edge separately; the boat rolled beneath him

soddenly, and anyone less experienced would have capsized it right there. His balance,

however, was perfect. He sat down gently in the very comer and began to bail quietly, one

coffee can after another. It was exasperatingly slow work, and he gained by the half inch.

When the boat was mostly dry, he gathered his things off the one-plank pier, slipped the

painter, and paddled-he did not risk the noise of rowing-himself across the creek to the

Adams' side. There he secured to the black, wet tree stump that was his normal mooring

and stepped down into the muck of the creek shoreline. Back at his own house, all was

black and silent and thus-good. With the cased gun in one band and his shoes in the other,

he climbed the bank and slipped into the woods.

There was still some wind sighing through the distant tops of the trees, and with every gust

the pines unloaded a fresh shower of water that splattered down through the needles onto

the path he walked. About twenty yards in, he halted, put on his shoes, shifted his gun to

the other hand, and got out his flashlight. It was dark, scary, and bug-stinging down in the

middle of nowhere. It was also now quite exciting. Not an hour before be had been

watching TV with his parents (at his age, almost the very word itself was repellent), and

now he was very much in the middle of something infinitely more exciting and real. Less

than half a mile away, the beautiful girl lay in captivity awaiting his coming. And it was

true. He wondered what his friends would think if they knew what he was doing right at this

minute.

At the edge of the field that virtually surrounded the Adams' place, he stopped. The main

house, lying squat and low beyond the vegetable garden, was entirely dark. The car-a

lump-sat out in the tum-

231

around illuminated only by the receding flares of lightning. The tenant house was nearly

invisible from where he stood. Only the dark, peaked roof stood out over the beaten com in

diminishing flares of lightning. There was no one around-at least, not near-and he felt oddly

courageous. It was one of those transient feelings.

Picking his way gingerly around the puddles, he came to the turnaround, crossed over the

grassy center of it to avoid leaving tracks in the mud, stopped to pull the sandspurs out of

his ankles, and crossed again to the path leading to the tenant house. There he stopped.

As he had more or less expected, there was a faintly wavering light from the broken front

windows-Bobby's gasoline lantern, he guessed-but to imagination's eye, it seemed

forbidding. At once, the finality of their adventure, rather than the erotic aspect of it, seized

him. Everything around here was terribly and specifically quiet. He could hear the trees

sighing in the dying wind, of course, the sodden clash of stiff cornstalks and the workings

inside his own body, but from the house not being Well, what did he expect? The Rolling

Stones?

What John had expected was to march up the path, like the good F.F. leader that he was,

and relieve the watch. Now instead, he faltered and entertained a number of fantasies and

possibilities in his mind. The Picker had come and overpowered Bobby and was waiting

inside for him . . . the Picker was somewhere close, watching the house as he was ... Bobby

was sitting behind that door with a gun ready to blow John's head off by mistake .... John

was not at home in bed, and that was being discovered this very moment These and other

thoughts-perhaps there was no Picker here at all tonight-jostled back and forth. Except for

the fact that Barbara was probably still in there, he would have gone straight home to bed.

Instead John took out his whistle and blew a measured sound-shrill where he was but not

calculated to carry home across Oak Creek-and be pulled out his .flashlight again. Getting

off the path, he moved wetly through the com to a place where he could sight

232

one of the front windows and yet hopefully be out of any normal line of fire Bobby might

choose. Now, he whistled twice and waited again. After a few seconds, he thought he beard

an answering whistle from inside, but there was enough instant thunder and weed noise to

make him unsure. Aiming the flashlight at the window, he sent the signal "F-F". Overhead,

the clouds were beginning to shred into streamers behind the squall. He looked up and

thought he saw a star.

At the tenant house, the door swung open a lighted inch. "John?" The voice sounded

smaller than Bobby's.

"Yeah." John bent forward and moved through the weeds and old com as quickly as he

could. His gun case was wet, and he set it with the contents of his pockets on the table.

The two boys looked at each other In the light of the gasoline lantern.

"He's here."

"Who?" John knew well enough.

"He's outside. Like we said. Getting in out of the rain. Under the shed," Bobby said. "I saw

him, and he saw me."

"Where were you?" "Upstairs."

"How's she?" Bobby shrugged.

"Does he know about it?',

"How could he unless he saw something last night?"

"Where's be now?"

"Like I told you,"-Bobby pointed through the unused room at the boarded windows in the

back"under the shed roof, I guess."

"Did he try and get in?"

"No. I was waiting." Bobby had, in fact, been holding his shotgun since he let John in the

house, something that seemed so normal to John that he hadn't seriously noticed. Now,

however, he unzipped the case on his own .22 and got it out.

"What're we going to do?"

233

John looked down at his own hands, clean, wet, boy hands, taking out the rifle, checking it,

loading it, and he shook his head. "I don't know .... "

On cue, thunder rumbled-still more distantly and the house echoed slightly. John shoved

the bolt

home and locked.

·

"Kill him? Shoot over his head?" Bobby said.

"Stay in here? I'm sleepy." One idea was as hopeless as the next, and Bobby's tone of voice

betrayed it.

"I dunno. Maybe talk to him. He sure can't hurt us."

Talk, reason, persuasion, the endless mouth-running of city people-chatter, understanding,

polemics, postponements-John felt his taste go sour even as he said it. Nonetheless, he

and Bobby were too young to handle a killing by themselves, and besides, Dianne wasn't

here to say what to do. Maybe she wouldn't even like it. But it would be fun. It would be like

real life, and it would solve the problem, too.

"Just talk to him." John recovered from reverie.

"Find out what's up. Talk to Dianne tomorrow."

"You mean just go around the house and start talking?"

"I've talked to him before. It isn't so bad." John - cautiously opened the door. Outside, of

course, there was no one. He put his foot out and into the weeds.

"Are we going to leave her here alone?" ''Have to."

"Uh-h-h ... now?" Bobby said.

"The longer we wait, the worse it gets. Coming?', "Yeah." Enormous lack of enthusiasm.

They went around the comer of the house, John leading, and stumbled on the gate, which

had been blown down. After that, there was no hope of surprise, and John turned on the

flashlight the rest of the way. The Picker-the man-was there as Bobby had said, waiting

for them to come. He was sitting up on a dirty, old, enameled table, which had once been

used in the kitchen, and in the flashlight's beam, he was watching them with rather lidded

eyes.

234

"Who're you?" For the boys, the mystery of the Picker was over, the fright half gone. Now

that they saw him, now that they had guns in their hands, the game was over.

"Cruz," he said carefully. "My name is Cruz." "What're you doing here?" John's voice was a

little high-pitched.

"De rain," he said and shrugged. He made no move to go. He was not alarmed.

John and Bobby stood where they were, out in the open, out of their fortress, in the mud

and a little uncertain. The Picker continued to sit where he sat, feet up out of the wet, back

solidly against the boards of the tenant house, arms folded across his large stomach. Of

the two parties, he was the more comfortable and - sheltered; the distribution of his weight

and his bulk advertised ease. Between him and the boys lay a noman's-land.

The boys were silent, and John, at least, was angry. They couldn't order the Picker out and

make it stick; they couldn't just walk up and beat the hell out of him; they couldn't shoot

him;· and they couldn't let him stay where he was. Barbara weighed on them too heavily.

What would Dianne do?

John lowered his gun and cradled it casually in

the bend of his arm. "Are you hungry?"

.

"Hungry?" There was amused disbelief in the Picker's voice, but there was a hint of

interest, too.

"Food." Bobby lowered his shotgun and patterned

himself after John.

"Where?" the Picker said. "Up at the house."

"What?" Everything the Picker said seemed to drag itself out, like the t-t-t-t of "what."

"I dunno. Different stuff. We're going to get something to eat. We're hungry." This was

nearly always true; it had the ring of sincerity to it.

"C'mon," Bobby added.

"To'd house?" There was the drawn-out sound se again.

235

"There's nobody there for a while." "They're out."

"We're just down here camping for the night." "Oh, camping." There was irony in the

Picker's

voice.

"Well, it's better than standing out here." In his bravest move of the evening, John turned

his back on the enemy and started back for the front of the tenant house. Taken in by the

show of confidence, Bobby did the same. "Let's go."

After the longest time, there was a sound behind them and the heavy bending of weeds

and corn into the mud. The Picker was following.

"It just might work," Bobby whispered ahead. "Shut up."

In the morning the grass and weeds were doubly heavy from the rain and dew, and Dianne

stood on John's small dock feeling soiled and not-perfect, Her long, stilt like legs were wet,

her white socks sagging, and there was mud on her sandals. Summer-end weeds and chaff

stuck damply to almost every part of her body, and even the fine white hair on her arms

held downy bits of field fluff loosened by the night's storm. Behind her, silent and

trembling, Paul stood-he was in a state that might be called anticipatory shock-and he was

equally rumpled and disorganized. His neat blue shorts, immaculate fifteen minutes ago,

were now black-streaked and wrinkled where he had pushed through the path to the

Randall house ahead of her. Behind him-the dock being narrow-Cindy sat on the lone wet

board swinging her feet overside and staring indefinitely off into space. For the morning of

the day it was going to happen, everything seemed unfair and conspiring, but Dianne held

her disappointment and waited in her stiff, self-held way.

John's bailing can scraped rustily along the paintfiaked chine of the boat. "He spent the

night there," he said.

236

"Where?" Everyone was speaking in stage whispers.

"In the rec room. On the floor. On a' sleeping bag." John emptied the can and continued

bailing without looking up. "Bobby stayed in his room with the gun, and I stayed down at

the tenant house with her."

Dianne looked at him, and when he said nothing more, assumed that their precious

prisoner remained just that way-captive, helpless and waiting. Nonetheless she felt bitter

and angry.

Through the night she had coped with strains far above the heads of most seventeen-year-

olds. There had been the business of helping Cindy make a cake for the Adams'

homecoming-(a project Cindy despised)-of smuggling Paul a sleeping pill and making him

take it, and of keeping herself cool and in command. Above all, however, there bad been

that problem of herself, almost of the person-within-the-person normally called Dianne.

. In a sense, it was a new phenomenon. Like everyone else, Dianne had always confided in

Dianne, self to self, intimately and privately, but the conversations or interming lings of

idea had always been controlled by the outward Dianne whom everyone thought to see.

The one Dianne proposed, and the other supplied: Dianne set forth the subject, the

fantasy, the daydream of the moment, and from within came the details, the variations,

the entire rich contents of cooperative, if inventive, imagination. This commonplace,

Dianne thought unique to herself-again she was seventeen and guarded it behind her pale

gray eyes as if it were some source of magic or wealth. As indeed it was. She rubbed the

lamp of what if, and the genie appeared.

During the Barbara adventure, however, from the moment she saw Barbara tied to the bed

and knew what Freedom Five controlled, Dianne's genie had not been so entirely docile.

The improbable having been done--she had first mentioned it to Paul, and he had blurted it

out to the rest of Freedom Five-the still more improbable suggested itself to her.

237

There was an inner spoken phrase connected with this. It had come to her almost as a

physical sensation, one of boundless joy and power, and it began with the words, "We

could .... " (Sometimes it occurred as "I could .... " The jinn of imagination spoke, and she

was momentarily blinded, blurred by the potential implicit in the beginning of the

sentence; her interest quickened, the tips of her fingers burned.

Later in the week-when she had been helping clean the Adams house or watching naked

Barbara or dreaming on the river beach-an amplification of this sentence came to her: "We

could do it so beautifully that . ... " And Dianne was startled. By those words sounding in her

mind, apparently independent of her will, she was informed: to the limitless if urgent realm

of possibility was added the factor of beauty and symmetrical completeness. Mythology.

Like in her book. It was as if the wandering, innocent hand, having begun to draw a

segment of arc, discovered-the line surely commanded and not the person-the inevitability

of the circle. To each fair beginning, solution and finality are promised.

"We could kill her so beautifully that. ... " Dianne had stood up-electric, rapt, visionary-and

nearly wept. "We could kill her so beautifully that .... " Her plans for the execution had

begun immediately. "We could kill her so beautifully that .... " She bad told Paul that.

Of course. Of-course!

The vision waned, the mystic transport of mind evaporated, and Dianne frowned. To give

her credit, she had thought a moment or two about the fact that if they were successful,

they would be killing a person like themselves. To the sort of credit she would prefer,

however, she dismissed the motion in favor of the grand design upon which they had-was

it unknowingly?-embarked. It was not a coldness.

Given the crisis, Dianne would have been one of those cool-headed persons who throw

themselves on the

238

bed and forcibly breathe life into a newborn baby still trailing-if knotted-the severed

umbilical cord. Given an adult life or the power over that life, she was equally disposed to

extinguish it.

Still standing, still frowning, Dianne had decided for Freedom Five (assent assumed) to kill

Barbara. The decision was not made on any basis of moral right or wrong, of human

sympathy or brotherhood, or even of cause and effect, crime and punishment. It was

simply that the great wheel dipped close, silently, unstoppably spinning, its bright, inner

workings momentarily visible and available to the touch. Put your finger here, and you

create life; put it there and you alter it; put it yet there and you erase it. Unguided,

untutored, unhindered, she reached out her hand-or was it drawn into the wheel?-and

touched. So much for Barbara, whoever she was. Dianne breathed deeply and guiltlessly.

"What're we going to do?" "What?" Dianne was startled.

"What're we going to-do about the Picker?" Cindy asked.

Dianne turned around in a sudden flush of emotion, of longing and desire and frustration

and anger all mixed together. They were so close to doing something marvelous now,

something out of sight, something real, that they couldn't let it be stopped. The design so

inadvertently discovered had to be completed, and so-in mind-she put out her hand and

touched the shiny spinning wheel again. "We'll kill him, too," she said.

"What?"

"It's part of the story .... "

"Cool it!" John whispered in a shout, or shouted in a whisper. "Mother might hear us down

here."

"Kill him"-Dianne immediately dropped to a whisper, too, but the words kept coming

out-"Like I said. If we go and let them out Sunday, and they tell us what happened to her,

and we go up in the field and find him with the body, we have to shoot him." She turned to

John. "Can you? You're the only one who can."

239

"Stop making so much noise," John said. "Let's wait until we're over in-the woods to

talk about it. On the other side."

"Yeah." Even Paul understood the tactics of secrecy.

"Yeah, let's," Cindy whispered. "But can you?" Dianne said. "Get in."

240

10

After the children left her in tlie tenant house alone, Barbara had struggled in a sorry

way with the ropes that held her, rocking and squirming around on the cracked

linoleum, trying to see if there was anything that might be useful for escape. Being left

unattended in a new place for an hour or two gave her hope. In all of this, however, she

accidentally rolled over, landirig with a hurt on her side, and that ended possibilities of

doing more. As Freedom Five had foreseen, getting away was out of the question.

Barbara let her head fall, cheek against shoulder, closed her eyes, and wished, not that

she were free now, but that she was .•••

The word was dead.

With any kind of true presence, of course, she might have dismissed the emotion. After

all, no} so much had been done to her. She had been captured and confined; she bad

been embarrassed; she had been forced to grant sexual intercourse-it was far short of

fatal-and she had been underfed and overguarded. The children had even hit her a few

times and yet, to a strong, athletic girl, the grand sum total of punishment could have

been endurable if spaced out. The body is a remarkable machine, her coaches had told

her; and it was true. In training and in swim meets she had hurt for periods of time, ten

seconds, thirty seconds, possibly a minute and then she had been able to give up and

spring back again.

Now there was no springing back, and the period

241

of that time reached beyond her imagination which reached only beyond the next

zillionth of a second. Time was a terrible curve in which the first second was two

seconds long; the second, five; the third, fifteen; the fourth, thirty; and so on. People in

pain live by a different clock, she thought; it never moves.

Her back, shoulders, arms, and legs were gathered together behind her in a web of

rope and unreachable knots. Heel ground on heel, ankle on ankle (and the flesh over

them was deeply bruised). Wrist ground on wrist, elbow on elbow, and her shoulders

arched in a bow-strung tenseness that could not be released. The weight of her head

bent the neck and forced her nose and forehead down on the dirty linoleum, and her

breasts, ribs, and belly ground against the rough floor.

It was the doling out, the unremitting constancy of pain-as a migraine is constant-that

had worn her down to a state near to hysteria. The very thoughts and emotions that

made Barbara, Barbara, were scarcely present any more: they were drowned out by the

single phrase, "I wish I were dead (rather than this)."

No! She raised her head suddenly and stared out across the dirty floor through the

window at the storm sky-never 'so free and violent and beautiful-seeming her eyes wide

at the horror of self-betrayal. No!

"Dead," in fact, was what was promised. They were going to do things to her-in pain she

could not conceive of more pain except in a blackness of mind that she pushed away

from herself-they were going to kill her or said they were. Such things happen.

The children had the power, opportunity, imagination, and more than an inclination, but

did they have. . . ? Barbara lowered her head and intensified a new ache somewhere in

her body. Were they that inhuman? Life just wouldn't be possible if a person had to go

around in the knowledge that the next person she met would-given any kind of chance-

kill her. But didn't they? Don't they, Barbara said. All the time? Every day?

242

I don't understand, Barbara said. I can't believe it. They're only innocent kids.

However, if not-knowingness and humbleness are the beginnings of religiosity, Barbara

was now more religious than she had been at any moment of her former, childlike faith.

And if wordless need and trust are prayer, she prayed.

No one is used to being operated. That is, no one is used to having their life lived for them,

to breathing only when someone allows them to breathe, moving only when the other

person allows them to move, gaining comfort-relative--only when another human being

grants it to them. Nonetheless, so broken to this system had Barbara become, that she was

absurdly thankful when Bobby spread down his own sleeping bag, rolled her over onto it,

slackened her bonds, and pillowed her bead on his windbreaker. Suddenly he was there in

the house again, and she was not alone. Suddenly there was at least softness against her

body. Suddenly there was privacy and a shred of human dignity beneath the sleeping bag

top. Suddenly kindness hurt her.

Barbara's legs, allowed to extend, did so with electric-seeming shocks, and pain long

blocked by numbness flashed through to her. She tried to stretch, to move her toes and

fingers, and could feel nothing but prickles and hotness. She throbbed both in relief and in

pain and thankfulness. They were good children, or at least this one was. Thank you,

Bobby, Barbara said.

He had removed the unnecessary ropes from around her upper arms and body; he had

eased her ankles away from her wrists, so that she could straighten herself; and he had

made his support for her head. At the sound of her sob, moreover, he looked at her with

alarm and sadness and offered the ultimate gift-he removed her gag.

From the beginning, gagging Barbara had been one of Freedom Five's problems. If they

hurt her too much, and she began crying and her nose filled up (how well they knew it as

coughy kids), she would not

243

be able to breathe and would suffocate behind that adhesive tape and rag. That-this being

the situation she would die of imposed anguish, self-pity, and so on, was irony lost on

Freedom Five. They simply knew that she could die if they did not take care. In their

watches they had listened to her breathing, and in their torments of her they had listened

with even greater care.

So it was that Bobby now ungagged her quickly and nimbly. The tape came off with an

audible, tearing sound, and the rag came out to lie at her side. Barbara sniffed and licked

her dry lips with a dry tongue. Outside, it had grown quite dark and still. Older girl, younger

boy, they were astonishingly-each felt it alone, and he had let her talk, and she couldn't

say a word.

Can words and eyes and tone of voice alone persuade? Can anyone convince anyone else

of anything at all? Is it ever possible to change the direction of things that are about to

happen?

What Barbara wanted to say was the everything of everything, the me of me, the absolute

necessity of necessity. Words, sentences, paragraphs, speeches, books, entire libraries of

appeal, should have filled her mind, but they would have boiled down to the one thing. I

must live. And would he understand even that? She looked at Bobby and knew that she

could not make him know. Not now. Not really. One day he might create life, and-tomorrow-

he might help end it, but be couldn't understand what it meant to lose it. He was too

young, too rich in life-yet-to-come. It wasn't that valuable, yet. What she actually said was,

"Can I have a drink or something, please? I don't need much. Just something?"

What he said was, "All I've got is a soft drink."

Still, be got it for her, opened it, lifted her grown head in the bend of his arm, and let her

drink. When it dribbled down the side of her cheek, be wiped it with his hand and then

wiped his hand on the sleeping bag. She coughed.

"I'm sorry," be said. "Is everything OK?"

244

The absolute monstrousness of the question, she ignored. They were going to kill her-

Bobby, too-and he was being nice. Unbelievable. Nonetheless that was the situation that

they were in. Reality has its force; God helps those who help themselves.

"Bobby," she said, "are they really going to kill me? Are you going to kill me?"

Bobby pulled the sleeping bag top around her shoulders and sat back on his heels. She

looked up, and be seemed very far above her: he was a boy-god. "I dunno," he said

seriously. "I really don't know. I guess so." He seemed thoughtful enough, even unsure.

Barbara stared at him with an intensity that she had never put forth in her life. There was

goodness in Bobby. It seemed strange under the circumstances to recognize it, but she had

been right. He could be appealed to. He had breeding, nobility, courage to work hard, and

give up things, and he was sweet. Among his peers he would shine out-had shone out-

among children he was the one a prospective parent might pick for her own. Some day he

would be a credit to the human race, and yet he was ready to kill. That was the one thing

he could not be made to know. When she died, everything stopped: it didn't, of course, but to

her, it did. She considered infinity while he balanced units and percentile figures.

"Why?" she said. "Why, Bobby?"

He shrugged. He encompassed the entire history of oratory in his shrug. "I dunno," he said

again. "I really don't know. Honest."

"Bobby ... " Her ropes held her, her nakedness held her, her helplessness held her. "Bobby,

think a minute."

"Yeah. OK."

The thunder came closer and the first advance drops of rain hit the tin roof. This is insane.

I'm dying, Barbara said. "Bobby, think about it carefully."

"I said OK."

All of the time that he sat there-back on heels, fair, young face alight, consideration at the

forefront- 245

he still seemed remote. Bobby's compassion and humanity were under a strange

control. It seemed charity against getting caught, kindness against duty. She was only

relative on his scale of things, and she had never realized that such a thing was

possible between people. He was on the other side, a side she had never considered to

exist at all-another race of human beings entirely separate from herself-and yet the

separation was blade clean.

The hopeless, alien strangeness of another complete, isolated human being, another

person-the other person-engulfed her. She did not think it in words, but the feeling

chilled her nonetheless: we are not alike. The way I think is not the way he thinks. What

works for me doesn't work for him at all. He's other. I'm other to him.

At the thought Barbara's friendly and trusting life did finally come to an end. The rather

sweet, milky, vague possibilities of general love diminished and vanished. The cruelties

of captivity endured were real, not play. They were planned and intended. The fact that

they were administered by children did not count at all. Long ignored, a certain

coldness and uncaringness, running through all life, appeared to her. She understood;

she wished to tell Terry.

We're alone, Terry, she said. There's nobody here but people, and the closer we get, the

more we're alone.

Terry was silent.

"Bobby," Barbara said, "you're hurting me. I can't move. It hurts so much I can't even

think straight." She let her head sink onto his windbreaker and closed her eyes. "Bobby-

one last try-why did you do this to begin with? Really? In the beginning?"

"I dunno," he said for the third time. He shifted himself around and sat down cross-

legged. "Because we could, I guess. It seemed like fun."

She opened her eyes and looked up. He seemed so innocent and pretty that Barbara

almost understood what be meant. "It's not true."

"What?"

246

"Fun."

Bobby said nothing. "Is it? Is it now?"

"Well ... not so much, I guess."

But he wasn't going to untie her, not yet. He wasn't ready to let her live. Barbara said

nothing.

Thunder came again. A nervous puff of wind shook the tenant house. Bobby looked over

his shoulder and out the window and then composed himself a while longer. He seemed as

lonely as she " .•• not so much," he echoed himself. "It's funny."

"What's funny?"

"Like the way it didn't come out that way," be said. "Like when we were all figuring out if we

could do it, it seemed like something we had to do. You know? Like if you think you can do

something, you have to.

"You don't have to do anything. You don't have to hurt people."

"I know what you're going to say, but-" Bobby suddenly clamped-down in stubbornness.

"I'm sorry." Barbara was stretched out and comforted, and she was allowed to talk. I can't

let him stop now, Barbara said.

"It's OK," he said.

She nearly died with relief.

He didn't notice. "I dunno, it was like something that ought to be done. Like we couldn't

help it." He stopped and looked at her moodily. "And it was OK at the beginning. Then it

was a drag. Now ... " this was a long speech for Bobby, and he suddenly seemed to realize

it. "The reason I took off your gag is that I'm sorry."

"About what?" "That it's you."

"But it is me." Something in Barbara let go, and with all her strength she pulled at the

cords and knots that held her. "I'm me." She collapsed again. "I'mme. You like me. You

don't have anything against me. Just let-me-go. Please!"

247

~·1 would," he said, but I can't." He seemed :finished with the talk; be had known what

she was going to say anyhow. He put his bands on the floor to get up.

"Bobby, don't go."

"I'm not going anywhere. I mean, not away from here. Just around"-he actually seemed

solicitous"Don't be scared."

Monstrous, again.

"I am scared," she said. And she was. In pulling against her ropes, she had hurt herself

again, and the hurt- would not stop. In pulling against Bobby's orderly but other-oriented

mind, she had seen the possible future, and that hurt would not stop, either. Desolation.

She raised her head and shouted his name, and that didn't help either. She let her head fall

and cried.

In all the time and through all the things the children had done to her, Barbara had never

really cried. Adult dignity had held out that far. But now she cried, and it was ugly. Her

diaphragm heaved; her nose ran; her face streamed water; she made unmaidenly sounds:

she cried.

Bobby watched her-she saw him watching her and not doing anything for her-and he

appeared distressed. When the crying did not stop--she could not stop it-be got up with his

small shotgun and went someplace else. It was beginning to rain now. The boards and

nails, the floors of the tenant house, everything moved beneath her. There was no solidity

anywhere in the world. They were going to kill her if they could; all of this world would

cease all too soon. Her mind could hardly encompass the thought.

Yet so tough is the human creature, that the crying eventually stopped. The body-

unbidden-ignored its pain and despair and repaired: it fought for itself. She subsided alone

and lay sniffling alone, and after a bit, Bobby came back and bent over her. He took a

damp, crumpled paper napkin-it smelled "sandwich"-out of his shorts pocket and let her

blow her nose on it, and afterward be wiped her eyes with the same piece of paper. She

looked up at him.

248

"Bobby-" How much can be put into a word?

How can you convey the end of the end? "Bobby, just tell me. Why won't you let me go?

Now? What's stopping you? I don't want to die."

He looked-aside from his concern with the squall and everything else-Bobby looked

contrite. He said, "They wouldn't like it."

"They," Barbara said. The rain swept over the building and a livid streak of lightning

seemed to hit quite nearby. "They is nobody, Bobby. You're the one who's doing it. You're

doing this to me. You started it. You're responsible." Oh, god, tell it to a wall.

"We voted," he said, "and I lost." Duty, democratic principle, morality, desire, confusion.

He seemed genuinely tragic enough, a young boy caught up in a large web of philosophy

and religion and man and forever and all of that. "I tried all along. I was on your side," he

said, "but I can't help it now."

"YOU canl"

"Well ... I could, I guess." "You can! Do it."

"Not yet, anyhow," he said. Bobby was getting more and more nervous as the storm grew.

He kept darting his eyes around. He was ready to leave again.

She desperately tried to hold that attention on herself. "Bobby, what's more important, me

or those other kids?"

"Well, I said I'd do my part .••• " "Me or them?"

"Them."

Afterward before lie left her, lie put the gag back in her mouth. First he reached for the

chloroform, but she protested, and so they agreed. He stuffed the rag back in her mouth,

down the tongue where it nearly made her retch, and then he retaped her.

Help me/ What help?

The squall brought the night. There would be no swift passage and then the reprieve of

sunset that so often followed these summer storms. Rain gusted through

249

the broken windows of the upper rooms of the tenant house and made thin mud of the

linoleum floors. It grew cold and quite black. Bobby patrolled and then repatrolled the

windows on the second floor, his shotgun in arm. Barbara watched him until there was

barely enough glow from the stairway lantern to see anymore, and then she listened to

him come and go.

Listening, she strained. Little terrors went up and down.

Thunder and lightning and gusts of wind were bad; they increased her desolation.

Footsteps were good; he was back again. The sealike sound of wind and rain curling

over the tin roof was the worst. She listened for more, anything more, and there was

more but only by intervals.

She heard Bobby make a sound in the other room.

She sensed his fright. She heard the silence after the squall that was so thinly stretched

that a cricket sound would have sounded like an explosion. She heard John's whistle

when he came; she heard the whispered conversation between boys downstairs. She

could hear them talking to the Picker and then, a long while later, she heard John

coming back into the tenant house, up the stairs to guard her. He brought the gasoline

lantern with him, its mantle still turned low. He put it on the floor by the wall that was

dry, and it underlit him, sending long shadows the wrong way up his body and face.

Where Bobby had seemed sad, however, even consoling, John seemed a number of-and

conflicting-other things. Barbara looked up from the zippery pillow for her bead that

Bobby had made and thought that John looked frightened, and of course this height-

ened the fear In her. He did not seem to be afraid of anything concrete, such as the

man he and Bobby bad found outside (now that it was over, at any rate), as he was-

perhaps-by this entire situation which would be followed by tomorrow's entire situation.

Again, the word was death as approached by the young and unready.

John's whole posture-his baby eyes shone in the 250

lantern light-indicated that something big was going to happen that would change the

world, the entire world as he experienced it. He dreaded it, and yet he awaited it. He told

Barbara that, yes, she would die, and did so by doing no more than standing still and

looking down at her, his cut-off shorts and blue chambray shirt black from the rain, his

blond hair slightly down over his eyes.

John also told her something else-how much is exchanged by an instant glance-he told her

that he valued her for the purse between her legs and that he wanted her tonight. Though

he might become one of her killers, though he was terrified at the prospect and the

imaginings of what might happen afterward, though be had the world to think about in a

very fundamental way, it was all overridden by a kind of doggy, randy, panting look around

the eyes. She saw it and knew men.

John toured the house perfunctorily; he looked out the windows; he checked his unfired

gun. Then after whatever time it took him to work up his resolution, he came to her and

uncovered her. He handled every part of her body, and then he moved her.

In the last few days John had learned his trade of jailer well. He tied each of her calves to

its thigh, released her feet so that her legs could be parted, and rolled her over on her

back. She was presented to him belly up, hips supported by bound hands, knees ajar, open

and prepared for the act of rape. So he had intended, so he would perform. He began to

take off his few rain-wet _clothes, and she watched-what he had done, what he intended to

do, she now understood well enough-and she waited for him.

A number of things went through her mind. Nothing superseded the central fact that the

children had voted to kill her, and yet a number of other things went through her mind

unbidden. They were simultaneous and not clearly separated, one from the other.

He's going to hurt me, Barbara said. It was strange to think of so little a thing as a vaginal

hurt when death 251

was the next step in the process, and yet such was the self-protective concern of the body,

that in fact, she did think, he's going to hurt me. And he isn't going to care.

None of them will, Barbara said. None of them ever will. It was an odd thought.

Because of John, Barbara was no longer virgin: because of him, her only experience had

been painful. Yet because of John, the world of beyond virginity had at least been disclosed.

From this point, a wider view was possible. The lovers-so she categorized the yet faceless,

somehow powerful and (hopefully) compelling men who might inhabit her life if she was to

have one-the other lovers stood invisibly behind John. And they wouldn't care either.

Even now-when she couldn't know who (or even if) they would be-she knew that. They were

simply

waiting their tum at her.

·

Barbara did not say, I am outraged. It's unlikely that anyone ever does. She saw John and

understood what she thought to understand, and simply was, thereby, outraged. I am for

using. Moreover, she consented. John, the parking-lot sniggerers, the blank-faced lovers all

in a line, were too much. The weight was too much. They would have her; they would

unstoppably pour into her. Whether I want or not, she said.

He's handsome enough, Barbara said, and this was an even more impossible thought. John

was prone . to fat after a lazy summer, and the hard, muscular, tendon-sharp comers of his

future shape were still encapsulated in softness and roundness and unformedness. Man-

child, child-man, he was frosted in baby-fine body hair. And yet he was tall, as tall as she:

and yet he was strong even now, stronger perhaps than she. And he was here, and he was

going to do it to her. (Her never-anything-but-polite mind could not translate the exact

term describing-sexual intercourse into any other word but it.)

He's the only one, she thought, the one and only, first and maybe-it now became terribly

possible-maybe the last person who would ever enter my body. 252

The waste, the waste. How much I have to give and never knew it. I can give, I can do, I

can be. I could be.

He's going to kill me, Barbara said, her thought cycling back to the one central issue

between them. He might be the one who, in the end, did the real 'it' to her, somehow and

by means of his own choice. The rape-to-be was only a premature killing. We are enemies.

Men and women are enemies, Barbara thought.

If she lived, if through some careless charity of unknowing children, she was allowed to

live, that part would still be the same. A man would change her life, lift her out of being

into motherhood, and being something else and having done so, would not himself be

changed. Men altered women; it was the female sentence. In the now-case, she might be

altered to "dead."

I have power over him, Barbara said. By just being me. Right now he couldn't live without

my living. It was clear.

John, looking down on the helpless her, was himself made helpless enough. He was

compelled. His nose flared; be breathed in short breaths as he got out of his shorts and

stood naked. His rubbery thing rose (Barbara's nicety again). It led him; he' must do it. He

seemed confused and blank-eyed. He was not in control of himself, and it was because of

her. Whatever happened hours from now, she directed him for the moment, and· in that

moment and in that direction, might somehow escape.

This all occurred to her, not as sequential thought, but as a flash of recognition and hope

when she looked up into his eyes. All at once. She realized that she did not know how to

act nor had any time to learn.

She did not know whether she pleased him more as resisting slave or as cooperative lover.

She had as little idea of how to please him as he had of her. And yet she had to please-it

was the key word-to become valuable, too valuable to kill. I wish I knew how whores do it,

Barbara thought desperately.

It was all going too fast.

253

Barbara-the body of Barbara-writhed in girlish fear and directly for his benefit. It was sincere

enough at root Never in her life had the feeling of being truly afraid had any semblance of

reality at all, but it was real enough now. It was also accentuated: Sexy Barbara (who was,

after all, barely amateur) helped. Her notso-exciting breasts heaved; her more-than-enough

hips strained upward; her less-than-killing eyes flickered. Is that it? Barbara wondered. Is if

enough? She flung her head sideways and closed her eyes in a not entirely acted anguish, and

she waited.

John knelt in a state of adolescent reverence, the boy for the girl. He parted her doubled legs

and lay down on top of her and kissed her and was lost. That was it. I have him, Barbara

thought. It was not that she would not have been forced anyhow; it was that she bad elicited a

measure of affection aside from and above simple lust.

They nuzzled, everything at .his instigation. That is, he rubbed his face into her, and to what

extent seemed likely to her-after all, there was no precedent to follow-she accommodated him.

A neck against a face, a taped mouth against a chest, a breast for a mouth. They rolled. When

it was time at last, he used spit-how necessary and instinctive such acts are-and it was done

by a young-people, short and friction-tom intrusion.

It did hurt for a bit, but it was done-had been going to be that way anyhow-and within her, he

rested securely. The interrupting penis was like a thing of her own deep up within her, its tip

against the unexplored inner tip of her body. She fisted her bound hands beneath her and

waited-pretty child, silly boy, killer-man-and lowered her eyes.

John rested that way, long and disciplined for someone with only one experience and then he

began to pump her. Barbara thought of the old description, the town pumphouse. John was

pumping her with that distant look in his eyes-asking-and by such direct 254

means, he would probably get. There was no way now to reach him, no, plead with him

later.

Her flesh grudgingly slipped outward, and her flesh grudging slipped inward. It was pulled

as it was pulled. Someone else was within her as deep as she could imagine that deep

could go. Beyond the thrust of his penis was only the her of her, and it did not hurt as

much as before. In view of the fact that her lover was her rapist and possibly her killer, her

body's complaisance shocked her.

I will not, Barbara said. I will not; I will not; I will not.

- Oh god, I might, Barbara discovered. Sometimes it

is possible to be made to enjoy.

Please, not.

John gave a sound and completely expended himself in her-she sensed it more than felt it-

and then fell on her. There was a pressure that thrust as high up as-her navel.

I can't, Barbara said. Not if he's going to kill me. Hold on, Barbara said, just another

second. . .• As slowly as Christmas coming, John removed the

tape and rag from her mouth and kissed her as he should have done days ago. They lay

together, and he kissed her, and every possible part of his body was touching and sticking

to every possible part of hers. _

Now, now, Barbara thought. No, dammit, not now. Not ever with him.

They were loving enemies, and he extended a trusting tongue into her mouth and along

her teeth, and again she absorbed him, She did not bite. She reached inside of him and

explored all the hardness of his mouth.

Oh, no, not love now, Barbara thought. I don't want it. Don't give me any part of it.

Yes, now, Barbara admitted.

It is not possible to describe an orgasm, certainly not possible to describe the first, possibly

only and last orgasm of a beginning lifetime. It is a death as bas been agreed upon; it is a

death which may-with

255

luck-be repeated. It is a death to be extended deathlessly, a death to be sought, a

death one willingly dies.

Stop it, Barbara thought, and could not stop it. John was talking something to her and

kissing her, and she was kissing him back and could not have cared less in any

situation. Oh, John, stop it and let it be.

"Oh . . . ," this was the principal, intelligible sound that came from his mouth. She

understood.

"Oh ... " was similarly the only decent reply, and still he rested within her and on her

and seemingly all around her. "Oh ... ," and then they collapsed.

Each one collapsed, and they lay still and one together, and looked out across the

wetted room and the mud of dust on linoleum and the cracked plaster ceiling and the

streaked plaster walls. And since there had been a squall-how far away it seemed now-

there was in addition the thunder of distant thunder to be heard.

"John"-she kissed his cheek-"Johnny?" "What?" He spoke from beneath her ear, in her

hair.

"John, why are you going to kill me?"

He was silent. He thought or seemed to be thinking. In the hesitation alone -was

danger. It was not a matter of whether but-to arrive at the exact pointone of answering

her question of Why.

"John .... " "I know."

"John"-she kissed his ear-"why when you can be like this instead?"

"I don't know"-he kept his face buried in the

tum of her neck.

"John, don't do that now." He said nothing.

"Just tell me, if you're going to do it to me." "I said I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

"Not really."

"Do."

Some women move their inner organs to please a man; others to defend. Barbara

didn't know that this

256

could be done, but she did it with ancient instinct and expelled him. · "W - h - y?"

For a moment, he seemed extinguished. He lay on her as a dead weight and hurt her

bound hands that held them both. Then-how quickly the young revive-she felt the

movement of his arms. He gathered himself and raised up on elbow to look at her. "Be-

cause it's the next thing that happens."

"I won't tell. I've promised that. .•• " "I don't mean about telling."

"I mean, I won't tell anybody."

"Oh .... " He raised his head, looked beyond her and sighed. "That doesn't matter so

much anymore."

"Then what does?" Barbara said. "John, I'm me. I’m a person. I have a right to go on

being me. That's what counts."

"I guess so."

"What do you mean, you guess so?"

"I guess it's pretty hard. I'm sorry." He seemed so. He hugged her with seemingly

genuine enough affection. His strong baby-arms went around her shoulders, and he

kissed her on the forehead, but all of that was over now.

Barbara could not even act for him. She said over his shoulder, ''Then why does it have

to be the next thing that happens?"

"I dunno. I ... guess it just went too far." He released her and very slowly sat up and

back on his heels.

She was cold where he had covered her. "The game.''

"Yeah." He reached over for his shorts, got up, and started putting them on.

"How, for God's sake?"

"Well ... like when you came, the first thing was could we do it, and that's all anybody

thought about it. And then when that happened and it was boring, the next thing was

.••• " He shrugged. By the movement he

257

indicated her nakedness, her just-past rape, her fear. " ... this."

For every step, there had been another step.

Bobby had been right: it began because it could. The sheer possibility was irresistibly

compulsive, addictive. Was that all anybody needed to become torturer, rapist, killer, just

the possibility and then the power and then a way out-free? Barbara saw back over the

past days as a single, horrible revelation. "Oh."

John picked up his damp shirt and put it on. He said nothing.

"But why didn't you stop? You could see what was happening, you can see what's

happening now. It's still going on."

"Because we didn't know, I guess." "But you do now!"

"Yeah, I guess so." He finished buttoning up and

stepped into his moccasins.

"Then stop it now." "I can't."

"Yes-you-can!" Barbara shouted. "Let me go.

Now. Right this minute. It won't even take a minute. And then it'll all be over, and you'll be

safe. It's your life, too, you know. They'll catch you no matter what you've thought up and

you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. You know that."

John's expression showed that he had, indeed, considered the matter, still had to consider

it, of course. It also showed that the risk had been accepted.

"You won't. Oh, god! You can, and you won't."

Barbara began to cry again. "He won't," she said aloud to the world around, "he won't, he

won't, he won't ... "

"It's too late." The regret was fading from John's voice. She had lost him for the last time.

Barbara looked up, and though John's face was water-blurry to her, she saw where his

thoughts had begun to wander. It was so horrible that she wet the sleeping bag and herself.

He was thinking about-about a world she would never know, a time (could it be as

258

little as twelve hours from now?) that was beyond any time she would ever experience. He

was thinking beyond her lifetime.

It was impossible. He was thinking of something as ordinary as Saturday afternoon or

Sunday, perhaps, and it was all beyond her lifetime. And where would she be? In the

heaven she'd been told about? Cold and stiff in death and half hidden by the weeds of a

country ditch? Sunk in the river? Buried?

She could not even become hysterical. The look on his face, though not really intended for

her, was too numbing for there to be anything save the reactive spurt of urine all over her

legs. She even stopped crying. It was like being in shock. She went dead-cold; she

trembled uncontrollably; her breathing was irregular; she felt that she had forgotten how to

blink her eyes. They felt dry and wide open and unfocussed. She barely felt what was being

done to her.

John almost idly bound her ankles together again and them to her wrists again. He rolled

her on her side and closed the sleeping bag over her up to the neck, and then he passed

clothesline around the sleeping bag until she was cocooned. Then be gathered up his

things, looked around carefully for mistakes, gagged her, and left. She could hear him

going down the stairs and then gone.

Barbara understood.

She wasn't going to escape; she wouldn't die; and the prowler, whoever he had been, had

gone. There was no longer any need to guard her.

Nobody was coming.

Late in the morning Dianne came. Dianne came up the stairs of the tenant house and knelt

beside Barbara.

The dawn had come kindly over an unkind world for Barbara. The rain of the night had

washed out the dust and the haze and the mosquitoes from the air-and through the

window-the sky had been as green and clear and blameless as the sea, as green and cold-

blue

259

as autumn, or the promise of autumn (which it was). There were comers and edges of

unbelievably soft, white-gray clouds which she could see through the win-

. dow. Bound, naked,. shivering even Within the sleeping bag, she had seen and felt the

chillness of the dawn and of the promised fall.

The day-to her limited field of vision-had grown in the same way, grown into a great,

white towering day of the change of seasons, summer and yet not any more summer,

not winter and yet winter to come. The day had grown into something of indescribable

beauty to her, something inscrutable, ironic, cruel, and yet still beautiful.

Is this the last and only one? Barbara said.

She had the hungry desire to be outside and in it, free and naked and bowed on her

knees, her forehead to the earth: she had the ravenous want to open her mouth and

bite the wholesome dirt, to feel the cool, damp grit and sand in her mouth and between

her teeth. It was a more ancient form of prayer than she had known before. I want the

dirt in my mouth, and then it will be all right, she thought. I want the dirt on my whole

face, dirt in iny hair, dirt against my whole body and then I'll be safe. On the earth, with

the grass and weeds lay anonymity, oneness, inviolability.

Is this the last and only day? Dirt, I pray to you. And a little while later, Dianne came up

the stairs.

She came slowly and coolly and quietly, and she carried impossible things. 'She carried

a pitcher of watercountry style-a washrag, a fresh, bristly nylon hairbrush, and-as

Barbara saw-cologne.

Before anything else, Dianne set these things down and took off her shorts and blouse.

This was done primly, obviously more out of a want to stay neat than from any near

attempt at disclosure. (It was diffi.-

, cult to imagine Dianne ever being naked entirely. Perhaps she never was.) Afterward,

Dianne knelt down and mostly untied Barbara. She undid the ropes around the

sleeping bag, opened it and undid the rope that John had put on hours earlier until

only three were left-ankles, wrists, upper arms. Everything else lay on

260

the floor around them. Blood pushed through bruised arteries and again burned in

Barbara's body. Dianne was good. It was a simple thank you: Dianne might be going to help

kill her, but Dianne was kind. Barbara straightened out stiffly. Then Dianne began to bathe

her.

She did it with knowingness and gentleness and womanliness. So completely knowing was

Dianne's touch that Barbara had the feeling it was her own hands touching herself. She

bathed Barbara's streaked face and her neck and upper body and rinsed them softly. She

reached between Barbara's legs where John had forced her to orgasm and where she had

peed on herself, and washed her gently there. She washed her legs and feet and dried

them, and afterward she patted on the cologne she had brought. Finally she took Barbara's

head in her lap and brushed her hair.

There was sensuousness in it. The soap was mild and scented, and the wash cloth was

from an expensive monogrammed set. The cologne was summery, and the stroke of the

brush was gentle and lulling. Feeling all of it and knowing that she could be killed soon

now, Barbara took these little pleasures in bitterness.

If nothing happens, she said-what a big "if," what a steadily vanishing "if," what a never-

was-there "if," what a totally, impossible "if"-if nothing happens to stop what is happening,

I'm going to die. And 0 god, the sun's already up that high, the morning's going, help is

far-off, and I can die at that. I really can. Barbara, feeling the sensuous strokes of the

hairbrush said, maybe there's no way out after all.

But I didn't live long enough, Barbara said. I never lived at all. Not until now, and why now?

Why at the last minute?

No.

I will not be dead, Barbara said. No matter what they say and no matter what they do, I'll

live. I have to live. I've been fooled. The horror of what they call horrible just isn't all that

bad. No matter what they do, I'll endure it and live. I've been fooled. It doesn't even

261

-

fiave to be my way: I'll give them that, too. I lost and I

need.

I - will - do - anything .. to - live.

And the brush stroked her hair, and it continued.

Dianne went on stroking her hair with the brush-right and left, back and front; Barbara

could not resist-until the short, springy hair became as fine and airy as the webs of

spiders that spin silver webs. It lifted. Barbara rested her side-of-face against Dianne's

thin, tanned thighs and let it happen because she could do nothing else. I'm dead

beautiful, she said.

I'm not dead, and I won't ever be.

Forever is long, and I'll live forever, and I'm afraid.

The closeness of death, the sensuousness of death, the utter sensuousness of now-it's-

coming-and-I-wi.11- be-gone death, the soft, pulling stroke of the hairbrush against her

hair and the closeness of her face to Dianne's body, created a bond between them.

Barbara felt that her part-killer loved her. So much, loving kindness.

Barbara felt that Dianne loved her and envied her, envied her in her dying. I can't

understand it, Barbara said. I can't understand and I'll never understand how you could

want to kill anyone and at the same time envy them and yet I do understand. It's the

big experience, the biggest one you can think of, and I'm going to do it--die-and Dianne

cannot. Each eye filled with one big smeary tear.

"Don't" Dianne said soothingly, "not now." She dabbed at Barbara's eyes, put down the

cloth, and removed the gag. Then she dabbed around Barbara's mouth. "It won't help."

She might be speaking to Paul or Cindy wbo had just skinned a knee.

For once, Barbara wasn't thirsty. She might never be thirsty again. Held right and left,

hand and foot, she lifted her eyes and said, "Why?" She sighed. "Just why, Dianne? Is it

because you think you'll like killing me? You'll see something new, feel something new,

become something new?"

"No-o-o ..."

262

"Then"-Barbara wrenched in (to her) unexpected frenzy and still could not move-"then (0

god) why, Dianne?"

Dianne was not afraid, and she did not throw words. She looked down at Barbara-they were

upside down to one another-but she looked down and with elementary slowness said,

"Because somebody has to win, and somebody bas to lose."

"Win what?" Now Barbara no longer spoke loudly to anyone, not to Bobby or Paul or Cindy

or John or even to herself. Nonetheless the urgent need to know was in her voice. Oh, the

pretty day. "Win what?"

"The game,'' Dianne said.

Dianne was as cool as when they had met. Barbara said it very slowly: "W-h-a-t g-a-m-e?u

Dianne touched Barbara's cheek with her fingers.

"The one that everyone plays," she said. "The game of who wins the game." She seemed

content with her circular and unapproachable logic. "People kill people,', she said. "Losers

lose."

"But you made up the game,', Barbara said. "You made up this game."

"No, we didn't"-Dianne put down the brush-"! told you that. Everybody's always been doing

it, and we're doing it, I guess. It's nothing all that new."

"But you're children ... l"

"What difference does that make? Anyhow we're not as dumb as you think."

Barbara was nearly defeated. She said, "Dianne, why do you hate me?"

"We don't bate you," Dianne stroked Barbara's hair. "Paul doesn't bate you, or John or Cindy

or Bobby or me. It's funny."

"What's funny?"

"We like you. John's sort of in love with you.

Well"-she looked a little sad-"I guess you know. But we all like you."

"Like me?"

"Umnn," Dianne nodded. "I never thought it would be like that with somebody .••• "

263

Barbara finished the sentence for her, " •.• that you were going to kill."

Dianne nodded again. "That's why it's got to be pretty, as pretty as I can make it.''

"Why pretty?"

"Ob .... Because you're pretty and it's a nice day

and we have the time."

"Time for what?" "You know."

"Dianne," Barbara ignored this because of her fear, "Dianne, listen. Why don't you have a

meeting? With me there? Just one more meeting? There's time;

id .

"

you sai it. ...

"why?" Dianne was astonished.

"If I could talk to you all at one time instead of just one by one, if we could all be together

just once, if you'd all listen to me for just a few minutes .••• '' "Well, we won't!"

Without warning, Dianne dropped her loving mood. She emerged out of her seemingly

mental cage with fury. "Well, we won't. How do you like that?'' "Dianne. . .. ''

"You think you're so pretty and so smart and have all the answers," Dianne said. "You come

down here and"-here she mimicked Barbara's voice in the old schoolyard way, the Miss

Sassy-Frassy way-"you come down here with, 'Why don't we all get together after church?'

and 'Why don't we all go swimming?' and 'It'd be more fun if we all did it this way or that

way.' " Dianne dropped Barbara's bead on the windbreaker and stood up.

"Well, we 'won't all just' do anything, not this or that or anything else. Not anything at all

for anybody. Never. Why should we? Do you know who you're talking to?"

"No."

"Us. We're us, and we have a right to be us.

We're going to go right on being us, and you know why

we're going to kill you?"

"'

"No."

"Well, we may like you OK, but we hate you.

264

You make everything bad with your love, love, Ioveydove talk. That's not the way it is. It's

not the way we are, and we're going to show you. We're going to prove it. You'll see. You're

going to get it." And she gathered her things all neatly together by the door and began

putting on her shorts and blouse.

"I do see." 0 day, Barbara thought. She looked out the inescapable window at the day. "It

isn't right, you know." She felt herself losing fight. To one extent, Dianne was correct; here,

at least, love was in poor cartel. "It really isn't."

"You're a teacher, all right." Dianne had her back turned to Barbara. She appeared to be

buttoning her blouse. "You'd make a good one like all the rest and tell us lies about what

isn't so."

"Then what is so?" Barbara could not stand to look at the day she could not live, and she

shut her eyes. "What is so, Dianne?"

"Well .... " Dianne neatly tucked her blouse below the waistband of her shorts and zipped

up the side and buttoned the flap. "It's like on a beach when people go walking along and

pass each other and hate each other. You know? Paul and I were on the beach hunting for

shells last summer, and these kids came walking up from the other way, and when we

passed-without anybody ever saying anything-we were all looking around for something to

throw or a stick or a board or something. And I'd never seen them. Neither had Paul. I

mean, we just hated each other because it was right, and it was fun, and I was scared, and

some of the other kids were a little scared of Paul and me. That's the way I mean."

"Do you like it that way, Dianne?" Barbara rested and did not open her eyes.

"I don't like to use modem words.''

"Modem words?" Barbara did look up at her now.

"Groovy. That's just a word little kids use. It isn't real. But it was groovy."

"Dianne .... " By inflection and tone of voice, Barbara somewhat changed the subject. "If

this was all

265

the other way around and you were me and I was you, would you want me to kill you?"

"I wouldn't want you to .... " "Would you think I ought to?"

"You'd be winners. It'd be up to you." Dianne was fully dressed again and cooler again. "But

I wouldn't be worried." She faced around.

"Why?"

"Because I don't mope and groan and cry around like you do, and anyhow, you wouldn't do

it You're not good enough."

"Good enough!"

"Brave enough," Dianne said. "In the end, you'd let me go, and then rd win anyhow. Sooner

or later. All that stuff you believe in that isn't true-I'd win sooner or later even if you were

on top."

There was truth there. She's right, Barbara said. rd do it. rd let her go. And why? At the

enormity of the question Barbara became very nearly sorry that she had ever been

Barbara at all. In no way did she agree with Dianne, and yet in no way could she disagree

with the girl. There were more Diannes in the world than Barbaras, and the child was right;

the Diannes won every time. It was a matter of when and where and how. It had always

been going to happen, and now it was a matter of negotiating the way out, and Barbara

said, ''Kill me."

Dianne, having touched her hair, looked down

with clarity and alertness. She said nothing.

"Dianne, kill me. Now. Here. Please." "What?"

"Listen."

Dianne was still.

"Kill me."

Bound, Barbara looked up in helpless appeal.

"Kill me," Barbara said. "Kill me right here and now. There's the bottle of stuff over there

and a rag in it, and if I breathe enough of it, you'll kill me. You win. You can do it yourself

and win. And I ask you to do it. Please. If ever anybody ever asked anybody for anything, I

ask you, Dianne. Just do it for me now."

266

Dianne's pale smooth forehead wrinkled. "Please," Barbara said. "Be kind."

"I can't," Dianne said. "That won't be for an hour yet."

Words, words, words. Somebody said that, Barbara thought. They said, "Words, words,

words .... "It comes out of a poem or play. Maybe Shakespeare, Barbara thought. Probably

Shakespeare. Words, words, words.

Words.

If you think about the word that means "word," it all falls apart. It's an ugly sound that

doesn't do anything, and if it doesn't, then I can't tell her. Ever.

I'm going crazy, Barbara thought. I'm going insane because I'm so frightened and I'm going

to be killed and what is the word that means "help" so that she can understand it. Or the

word that means me not being any more. She looked up at Dianne standing above her and

knew there was none. I'll never understand her, Barbara thought, and she'll never under-

stand me. It wasn't right, and she didn't understand it, but it was so, and that left only the

matter of mercy.

Barbara lay her head back down on the pillow Bobby had provided; it was the only

kindness around her. What was the word for mercy? How could she die gracefully? How

could she hasten toward the vague, wavery god she both believed in and no longer

believed . ?

m.

"Dianne, kill me. Really," Barbara said again.

"You've got to."

Dianne's face was cool and white and curious. "No, you're wrong," Barbara said. "You think

I'm pretty, but I'm not. You think I'm grown-up and all with all the answers, but I'm not. You

think I go around being nice and kind because I want to do something to you-change your

mind or something-but I don't. You think it's right to kill me, but it's not. You're wrong,

wrong, wrong. I can't tell you bow wrong you are, but you're going to do it anyway," Bar-

bara said. "Anyway.

"So kill me now," Barbara said. "Do it the nice

267

way between us. You can, and I won't feel anything except what anyone feels." She

breathed deeply.

What more can I say? Barbara thought.

"I don't want them to cut me or burn me or whip me and laugh at it," she said. "You're a

woman, Dianne. You know that ... " And the day outside was in the act of becoming a

golden noon that filled the whole universe and shined in on the muddy floor of the tenant

house. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," Dianne said. She did. "I rea1ly do, but I 'just won't' do it. You won't get out of it just

by sniffing a funny bottle. That's that."

"I don't know.'' Barbara rolled her head and shoulders back so that she could look up and

see Dianne clearly, really clearly. Now that all the rest was over-had it bored Dianne?-now

that it was almost time, there was a rather subtle animation about Dianne's thin face. She

had begun to look forward to it, Barbara could see it in her whole attitude. So there was a

way to like hurting and killing people: there really was another kind of person in the world

after all. And how many other kinds after that? "I just don't know." She closed her eyes.

"How are you going to do it?"

"That would be telling." The child's phrase was not Dianne's. It was used with sarcasm.

"You know," Barbara said into the darkness behind her eyelids, "if anything happened so

that I'd live, I'd hate you the rest of my life. I'd bate it all. I'd hate and I'd hate and I'd bate."

"That's right!" Dianne's voice sounded both surprised and pleased, that of a teacher with a

slow pupil who has managed to grasp something at last. "That's what I've been telling you.

That's the way it is."

Somehow in the end-or very nearly in the end Barbara bad made the girl happy.

It was later than noon. Because of the washed air and quiet breeze, it was a blinding, blue-

white afternoon and strangely cool, and now it was time for the children to come and get

her, and they came up the stairs and got ready. They had already regagged her,

268

.

but in a different way. They had wrapped rope around and around her mouth until the

pressure of it forced her lips and teeth apart, and the rope slid into her mouth and held her

tongue down tightly.

"It's going to hurt," Dianne had said, "and you're going to cry a lot. You have to be able to

breathe through your mouth. I’m sorry."

Then, they had picked her up to go, and they had learned even since yesterday. Bobby had

invented the means and instructed them. They simply picked up the sleeping bag on which

she was lying-five pairs of hands-and she left the room of the tenant house as if on a litter.

When there was still even a little time left-she didn't know bow much, one hour, two--

Barbara desperately hoped. Her thoughts centered on the last three possibilities. The first

was that the prowler, the man she had never seen, was still around and would somehow

interrupt.

This was destroyed when she heard him. Below, outside, the children came chatting down

the path to the house and she heard the man's deep voice.

"Here?" He sounded odd. The re sound seemed to trail out to some length. There had been

a metal clanking sound.

"Yeah, that's OK." "Thanks."

"And come back tomorrow morning and help us clean up," this had been Dianne. "There'll

probably be a few more things to do."

"S!, I will." The ll was again a drawn-out, soft sound, and, then-how could Barbara know?-he

was gone. The children had him in tow as completely as they had her.

The second possibility, the one that had always been there and always been disappointed,

was the chance of outside visitors. She had listened for a car. Never in her life had she ever

so much wanted to hear the sound of a car, the sound of a horn, but none

269

came. There were only the sounds of the country nearly asleep on a Saturday afternoon.

Then, with revulsion, she had heard brief flames and had smelled smoke, and this had

crossed out the last chance. There would be no last-second change of plans by Freedom

Five, not even any quick thing like

. shooting her. It too had all been thought out: it was

going to be like they always played. .

The children had done well not to feed Barbara.

Her bowels heaved but were empty. She retched interior, but it was only a dry convulsion.

Then they came and got her.

Freedom Five took Barbara down the stairs somewhat twisted around on the sleeping bag.

It bumped; she bumped; but they finally got her down into the space beside the tenant

house and got her to the big field gate that had blown down during the night. They bound

her to it, all four limbs spread-it took a while and a fight-and bound her to it tightly.

There was a surburban-pressed and painted metal type of barbeque grill set beside the

gate, and it was smoking, and on top of the coals was the living room poker from the

Adams house. Everything had the Picker's fingerprints on it, because he had been paid five

dollars from Barbara's meager change purse to clean the inside of the house (leave

fingerprints there) and bring the grill down. To preserve all this, Freedom Five had several

pairs of gardening and work gloves there.

The lazy white smoke rose and dissipated for a time, and they looked down into the grill.

Finally they were ready.

They squatted; they hunkered. They looked at Barbara and at her unmarked skin like

students on a field trip. Innocent curiosity. Something new. And then Paul picked up the

poker and found it nearly red-hot.

Cindy, in her ten-year-old judgment had been quite correct. Paul had a fetish: he lived

convinced that a woman's psyche was to be found in the bottoms of her bare feet. This

being the case and Paul having the 270

first "touch"-unanimously Freedom Five had granted it to the weakest-he put the poker

to the pale sole of the girl they had known as Barbara. The result was startling, even to

them.

The heated metal went in and in. It might have no end to its course. It went through the

skin, through the subcutaneous layer, through the nerve endings and blood vessels to

the swimmer's tendons and nearly into them. And when it came away, it came pulling

black flesh. Afterward the wound bled, but not as much as Freedom Five had expected.

It was nearly cauterized, and most of the blood came slowly and thickly.

Paul was rewarded in all of this.

The victim, whoever she was, spasmed in an unimaginable way and made a sound

utterly wonderful to him. He had never heard it before and would probably never hear it

again, but it was gratifying and altogether satisfying. He would have done it again, but

he had to pass the "touch'' to John, who returned the iron to the fire for a minute or two.

The other kids, excited faces alight with learning, squatted and leaned closer. Then

finally John was ready. He swallowed.

0 day, 0 day, Barbara said. When she had finished fighting, and the children had her

fast to the gate, she said, 0 day, 0 day. It's not only the last one, but it's the last minute

of the last and only one.

Oh, she said. I want to fall up off the earth into the sky and just disappear. It might hurt,

but then it would all be over, and I wouldn't have to be human anymore. No one can

bear to know humans and bear being human.

But it won't happen. It never happens when you need it.

So it began.

Barbara raised her head and saw most of what was going to occur.

Paul took the metal from the fire and looked at her with the clearest, the most curious

and terrifying eyes she had ever seen. Innocence is the most frightening sight of all

271

He quite truly seemed to want to know what he didn't know, and he truly felt unsure

about the result. He turned and bent, and the iron disappeared behind her own foot,

which she moved-it could move a frantic inch or two-as best she could. If he did that,

then he and the others would do what she could not even imagine. And behind Paul all

the rest of them stood invisibly: the parking-lot sniggerers, Terry, Ted, the rest -the

practical ones-not as torturers but as notaries. However they might later hear of it-

really--she saw them impassively gather to certify what happened to people like her.

End, she thought. End, end, end.

But nobody ever comes to the real end, do they?

We talk about it, but it never really happens to really us, does it?

Then it all went swiftly.

She felt the poker touching, going through her, into her and then back out again, and

she felt all that happened in the process. But, it occurred as a sudden, nearly fatal

blackness of the mind after which nothing could ever be the same again.

This is the end; this is what the end looks like and feels like and oh, god, he's still got it

in me. And after Paul regretfully removed the iron, she still felt it in her. She would

forever as long as forever could last.

The wound was born inside of her like another personality whose power overcame all of

her own, virtually wiped out all of her own. She shuddered as if in electric shock.

Nothing 'could allow life to go on being as it was at that instant. She raised her head

looking for something-anything-to stop it, and saw John bending over her.

He put the horrible metal to her breast; then Dianne laid a vivid stripe across her belly.

Even Bobby and Cindy took their tum dabbing at her and were thereby edified.

Afterward, the last inhibitions gone, they did all the things to her-under the

circumstances-that they had ever imagined doing to all the invisible, meaningless 272

people of their imagination, and while it was far different from what they had imagined,

they persisted. It all took a while.

Approximately halfway through the program, Barbara cheated them. She ceased to leap

and make appropriate sounds, and lay still and did not react to their torture. After a while,

Freedom Five's game became boring-as usual-and so they killed her and got done with it.

They twisted a rope around her neck and put a piece of wood in it and twisted until the

rope cut into her throat and no breath was possible. This had been thought out before, and

the hands that did it were gloved, and there was only the traceless rope constricting what

was left of life.

At the end, at the very end, when it would least have been expected, Barbara surprised

them one more time. Her long-closed eyes popped open, wide and staring but suddenly

extremely intelligent and clear, and she stared at them. She didn't stare at any one of

them in particular-her eyes seemed to include them all without moving-but she stared at

them as a human to humans, and her eyes formed the shape of the letter 0. And their

mouths and eyes opened in silent answer and formed the same, silent letter 0.

Then that part of it was complete. Freedom Five wept.

Oddly, with love.

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One event inevitably fathers another and other events. Some of them are worth note in

this case.

The people who get most of their adventurous life from the news led very interesting lives

for several days after Barbara's death. It is barely possible to turn away from such

headlines. (It is conjectural to wonder about those who read: elderly ladies in homes, train-

commuting husbands going to town, secretaries on coffee break, housewives yawning

before the real day begins, the kids who throw out the evening papers? The thread

continues forever.) Some of them read:

BOYS AVENGE BABY-SI'ITER'S TORTURE SLAYING IN MD.

LOCAL GIRL DIES IN BIZARRE CASE SUSPECTED KILLER SHOT BY BOYS

As a follow-up:

SLAIN CO-ED TOOK HOURS TO DIE

And so on, and so forth.

Cruz, of course, was killed. It was as planned.

John visited the Adams' house Sunday after church and let the kids out of the closet (Cindy

was a wreck). He and Bobby waited for Cruz and told him to go down

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and bring back the barbecue, and they followed him

with guns.

The tragic look on Cruz's face was less for his own death-be never anticipated that-it was

for what be bad seen just before be turned around to look at the boys, his mouth in the

shape of a soundless 0. He had never known, and when he finally knew, could not believe.

They very nearly cut him in half at close range.

He got a very small notice in the papers.

After they had strangled Barbara, Freedom Five still had to clean up. The sleeping bag had

to go back; the gloves be returned; and the house and path swept down, so that only

Cruz's footprints would be clear the next day. They went about it robot like, pale, silent,

talking in whispers. Dianne was the last one out of the tenant house, and she swept her

way downstairs with a handful of weeds and with tears running out of her eyes. (They had

to give Paul a shot of Scotch to get him moving home, but he came around when he had

to.)

Freedom Five-all of them, of course-were questioned.

Dianne, her eyes carefully cooled back down to pale gray, could tell them very little. She

and her brother, Paul, and John Randall went over to the Adams' every day and used their

beach to go swimming. The middle of last week, Bobby Adams had mentioned that there

was someone camping down just beyond the pines, but she had never seen whoever it

was, and besides, none of them thought much about it. Not even Barbara. After all, where

was the harm? (And she did mention Cindy coming over and their baking a cake for Dr. and

Mrs. Adams' return and all the rest of it.) Throughout, she remained very thoughtful and

tried to remember everything she could, but she was still just a teen-ager, and there was

only so much to remember.

The questioning of Paul was given up as not only

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useless but possibly harmful to the boy. The detective was the only one of the Bryce Police

Department so designated and was, of course, a part of the community. He knew the

McVeigh family and the doctor who attended them, and in the end he knew Paul quite well.

The boy was very delicately balanced--on the verge of insanity to the detective's mind-and

so the questioning took the form of a friendly casual chat, which was terminated when Paul

literally went into spasm. Barbara's death was hard enough for adults to stomach, much

less a nervous young· boy. The detective thought in pity that the thing might have marked

Paul for life.

The questioning of John took place as that of one athlete talking to another. The detective

had-not all that long ago-played football for the same high school that John now attended.

He followed the teams of his alma mater with year-around fervor. In the summer he

followed the fortunes of the Baltimore Orioles, who at the time were richly rewarding his

interest with another pennant. The detective didn't think John was great, but then John was

young. He could stand watching for good things.

John told him as little as the rest of the kids.

There was this guy camping down in the woods, and no one thought much about it. Then

the Adams kids didn't show up for Sunday school, so afterward he went home and changed

clothes and rowed over to see what was with them.

They were locked in a closet, and so forth. He and Bobby had each taken a gun from Dr.

Adams' rec room because they were afraid, and they'd gone out to see what there was to

be seen. Eventually they found Barbara, and there was a man with her. That is, there was a

crazy-looking man in the tenant house near her.

The point was gone over closely. Had John seen the body? Yes. What did he think? He

wanted to throw up. Was he emotionally disturbed at the time? Certainly. He had raised

and fired his gun at the man that Bobby said was the man.

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Good for you, the detective thought. That took guts for a sixteen-year-old kid.

The detective had seen Barbara's blackened, flycovered body. He had seen a number of

deceased in his day, and this particular deceased was no glory. Nonetheless the detective

had marked out the blonde hair, the freckles (which had faded in death), the daintiness of

the girl in general, and there had been a pressure at the inside comers of the eyes that

meant unmanliness. He could see an adolescent boy doing what he did.

The questioning of Bobby and Cindy was close but short. Dr. Adams was there to see that

they were not overtaxed.

Bobby, who was the more reliable observer, detailed the man who came in with a knife

(Cruz had one; the children had found it) and forced Barbara to lock them in the closet.

That was it until John came and let them out. In every other way his story corresponded

with the other kids' stories.

The detective looked over at Dr. Adams and decided to question no further. People like that

shouldn't be put through criminal proceedings.

Cindy went last, and she seemed the most untouched. By this time the detective bad heard

how she had sobbed and cried in the closet all night because she was afraid. It certainly

didn't show in questioning.

Now she was out, and the detective noted how swiftly things pass with the young. Her

mischievous little eyes sparkled: she almost seemed to enjoy the attention of being

questioned. She seemed already a woman with secrets. She was coy and cute. Even if

Dianne were included, the little girl seemed to be the least scared of any of the children

who had been with the deceased. What was odder yet-this was the detective's opinion

only-if Cindy could have her dearest wish, she would want to look like and be like her dead

baby-sitter.

The Pickers in the county were also questioned, and they answered evasively and

nervously. Yes, some of them knew Cruz. No, he wasn't a troublemaker ex-

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actly, but he was funny. He refused the wage sometimes, and he refused to live in the

quarters provided. He went off by himself sometimes, they never knew where. Yes, they

had seen him just before the white girl was killed; he hadn't been working, but he had

money to spend at Tillman's store. Go him with god.

The detective talked with the county coroner. The girl had been sexually assaulted,

tortured, and killed by strangulation at or within a time that corresponded with the five

kids' stories. There was no way of telling if the man, Cruz, had done it; the coroner had to

examine him in virtually two halves. The detective could go for the rest of his evidence to

the fingerprint material supplied by the state police. (The place stunk of fingerprints: only

someone stupid would have left them in so many places, they said.) That closed the case;

the detective's work was done.

The girl's body lay in the morgue, waiting for her parents. Not far away lay the body of her

killer.

Stupid waste, the detective thought.

The Adams came home, of course, but they knew about Barbara's death before they got

there. Dr. Adams had called from New York with the happy news of their arrival, and he had

gotten the unhappy news from a neighbor who was substituting for the dead baby-sitter

that Barbara was dead. And the children were all right so far, but get home fast.

So the long-awaited-awaited by so many people for so many reasons-took place. The

Adams came into Baltimore on the shuttle down from New York and were met by another

neighbor, Mr. Tillman, and driven to a desolate home and crying children.

Within the year they moved.

The house was drenched in sorrow. The trees hung that winter; the sky hung overhead; and

it rained all spring. Pretty, springy, athletic Barbara in the blue cotton dress with the floral

print, the girl who got off the bus in Bryce, had been killed there, and the whole land was

sick. Dr. Adams moved, and afterward the

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house stood vacant nearly half a year-weeds grew up through the kitchen steps by the

river; the rooms (Barbara's, of course) and the hall and bathroom and in· tended rec room,

fell to dustiness-and eventually it was sold to a new group from Wilmington with noisy dogs

and drinking friends who loved the place, but they were never very happy there. A

fundamental sorrow infected the very ground. (This was true, although they razed the

tenant house, and planted over it the second season following.)

The children, of course, had future lives that began immediately. What would happen as

their future histories unrolled is open to wonder.

Did Paul crack? That would be a question. And if he began to show signs of it, did Dianne

have to take steps to stop it?

A more mundane thought. Did John make the varsity, and if so, what did he think about

during that season? And if he did and found a girl who liked foot· ball players, whom did he

think of when he kissed her, and what did his eyes look like to her then?

Bobby and Cindy-Cindy with her love of telling things sooner or later-what became of

them? When Bobby's sense of duty=-excellently executed-was balanced against his later

judgment on what he might have done, what became of him? When-possibly years later-he

had the intellectual tools to think about god and man and philosophy and what-ought-to-

be-done, what did he do then? How did it affect him?

Cindy, when she became the housewife and silken pussy cat on a cushion she was always

going to be, did she drink too much? Did the failing of telling secrets come to the fore?

Did Freedom Five ever meet again per se? What did they talk about? Did they ever play the

game again? Even years later when they were grown-ups themselves with more adequate

means? Or did life complicate and close them off forever?

Touch the petal of a flower and shake a star.

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Little things intrude.

What of Barbara's role afterward? Barbara, who thinks of you?

Barbara's mother and father were, of course, equally killed. It is not possible to lose a child;

it runs against the current of things. Barbara's parents went on living, but only because

they had to; they kept pictures of her around their ever silent house.

Barbara's nominal boyfriend, Ted, read about her death in the newspapers and had a very

unpleasant thought. He was shocked, unbelieving, sad, deprived of something in his life,

and he was genuinely sorry for Barbara. Since he had never had her, however (in fact, he

had only had one girl so far and paid for that), she exited from his life as the forever

unattainable girl. Her worth was heightened, and he wondered what it would have been

like to do that to her. Simply by having the thought, he changed his own life. He knew

himself, and that is a sort of death in itself.

He would have made a good but rather a strange husband for her.

Terry-this would certainly have astonished Barbara-was the most nearly destroyed of them

all. She heard about it when she got back from her summer at the Cape. She went down to

the newspaper and dug up the stories of Barbara's death and then went home to fling

herself on the bed and cry in a way that people rarely cry.

Barbara, you were the prettiest thing in the world (it's strange how people thought of

Barbara-in-death as beautiful when they never thought to do so during her life), but you

were the nicest, dumbest thing in the world, and now that world is gone. Terry could barely

think of her.

It stirred up memories of Barbara washing her hair in the bathroom when Terry wanted to

get in there. It stirred up memories of swimming meets that Terry had attended and so

seen Barbara when Barbara felt most alone--thin and tanned and white-lipped, and about

to throw up before her event. It stirred up all the

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things not thought about someone until that person is dead.

It stirred up everything, and Terry was nearly destroyed, One thing held her.

Barbara, Terry said, you dumb-ass. You're the thing I wanted to be and never knew it until I

met you. You're the one thing in the world that was worth being, and now you're dead.

Terry felt that Barbara had cheated her.

Barbara, there are so many things I wanted to talk to you about this year. I think I was

getting it, but now I can't. You got away from me: you got yourself killed.

I don't know why I'm not more surprised, Terry said. I'll miss you the rest of my life, but I

don't know why I'm not more surprised.

Barbara-and here, Terry echoed the unknown Dianne's thought-Barbara, I hated you for

being so easy and simple and happy. You deserved it (and here she again echoed the

unknown Dianne who· continued to feel the same), I hated you, too.

What will I do without you? I hate you.

Goodness, go out of the world.

I knew goodness, Terry said. I knew it and lived with it and never knew it until it was

gone. Goodness, go out of the world. Barbara, go home to wherever home is. Get yourself

out of my life, Terry said, for god sake get off my back (by now, she had nearly cried herself

out). We have enough to do without you, too.

I'm me, and we're us, and we're all us, and we can't be anything else. Get off our backs,

Beauty, and go home and be done. We don't want you.

You ruin everything and make everyone think it's possible to be what's impossible. We

shouldn't be tempted, and you're responsible.

Beauty, go away, go away home and be finished. I knew you, and I never want to see you

again. It's just not right.

Goodness, go out of the world so that we can live in it.

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Barbara, go to bell.

If any chilly, marginally reasonable stance is taken, it is impossible to imagine Barbara in

apotheosis. After all, Barbara is done; that is clear.

Still ... and still.

It is possible-the mind will be tempted-to picture her as yet present, looking down and back

on her brief experience as a human being. Everyone once was.

She looks at the people who were once her fellow people, all of them (to her this is

possible). Now, of course, her face floats free of the normal boundaries of imagination and

sits high and omnipresent in the mind. It is there. .

Her mouth is taped, and she is silent. Though she cannot be seen below the shoulders, it is

presumed that she is bound as she last was, unable to intrude further on anyone's life. It is

in this state that she looks out on her former, related human beings.

There is a look of recognition in her eyes. I know you now.

The look-the meaning of it can only be guessed at by inspection of the eyes-is rather

uncomfortable to bear: I know you, now; I didn't, but I do now.

No words come, of course. They are not possible.

Nonetheless, it is imaginable to hear her saying, "You

are

... you are ....

Even if she were allowed, she could not say it.

We are through. Beauty, go home.

I am gone. I go willingly.

I never meant to harm you.

Now she is gone. What follows, quite naturally, is emptiness.

This is not the end, either. Despite human protest, the end of the end goes on forever.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MENDAL W. JOHNSON has written for a variety of newspapers and magazines. He and his family live in Annapolis,

Maryland, where he is able to indulge in his favorite hobby of sailing. This is his first novel.

That's what Borboro. a lovely twenty-year-old baby sitter told herself when she awoke bound and

gagged. Gut the knots were tight and painful and the children would not let her go.

she told herself again.

Gut the terror was real ... and deadly!