PREPARE YOURSELF

FOR A SHOCKING EXPERIENCE

Mendal W. Johnson's

LETS GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'

"The unbearable tension of a silent scream. Johnson is telling us some horrifying things

about the hidden recesses of the human psyche. Wonderfully skillful.''

-Detroit Free Press

"Proceeds at a breathless pace, as horror multiplies it� self in geometric progression.''

-Hartford Times

"A superb new novel of suspense, which will hold the reader in its grip of horror until

the last page."

-Atlantic City Presa

LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'

Mendal W. Johnson

To my wife, Ellen Argo Johnson

This low-priced Golden Apple Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new

plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITIED.

LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS'

A Golden Apple Publication I published by arrangement with Thomas Y. Crowell Company

Golden Apple edition I December 1984

Golden Apple i.J a trademark of Golden Apple Publishers All rights reserved.

Copyright � 1974 by Mendal W. Johnson.

Cover copyright � 1984 by Golden Apple Publishers.

Thi.s book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Golden Apple Publishers, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10103.

On the keyboard of a piano--in this case, it is an upright-are two neatly positioned pairs

of bands. To the right is the pair (at C above middle C) which may be fairly said to be

the hands of a girl. They are terribly slender-only girls, only the young have hands like

that-and they are firm and strong and tanned. There is a decorative ring on the right

hand but nothing on the left: the girl is not yet engaged or married. The hands are

spread into a C-major chord and waiting. They begin.

What they are playing-and well enough-is "The Happy Farmer." It's a rather insistent

small tune that goes, "Dum dum-boom, boom-dum dum boom, boom-dum dum dum

dum;" etc. It goes to a similar conclusion. It is an inevitable tune; people have been

toying with it for centuries.

The hands disappear. "OK, now you try it."

Now it is the tum of the other pair of hands, the ones to the left, the pudgy, sunburned

(but wellscrubbed) little hands. They strain awkwardly. They achieve the necessary

chord and begin: "Dum dum boom, boom (mistake).', They reposition themselves and

begin again.

"Come on now. You can do that after church." "Just let me. Just once more-now?''

"OK, but you come when I honk the horn. I don't want to be late." The longer, more

slender hands pull

1

on a pair of short white gloves that stop exactly at the wrist. "Now, where's Bobby?

Bob-eeef'

"I'm coming, But it's early. We never leave until-"

"Let me see your hands."

These hands are also more or less clean; but they are definitely boy's hands. Against

the white gloves that hold them, they look knuckle-barked, calloused and innately

grubby in spite of their recent washing. Nonetheless they pass inspection.

"OK, let's go, Cindy.''

"Com-ing, Miss Barbara." There is some trucu-

lence here.

"You don't have to use Miss with me." "Mommy said to."

"All right, if she said so."

The parents are in Europe, so that the children are driven to church by the baby-sitter.

They make a pleasant sight.

Cindy Adams, the smaller piano player, is an impish little girl of ten. She is pretty

enough, and she has brown hair cut rather short for summer, because with swimming

and moist heat, it wants to spring into curls and spirals and tangles and become

unmanageable. She

is the sort of child that grown-ups instinctively want to pat.

Bobby Adams, her brother, is oddly enough the beauty. He is about thirteen, thin and

fair, with high coloring to his cheeks and fine, blond hair that requires water and sticky

stuff to keep it from floating around his head in an unruly halo. He rarely smiles, and he

of- - ten stands in thought with his hands thrust straight down, as deep as they will go

in his pockets. This position, rare in a youngster, is an unconscious copy of the position

his surgeon father often takes in conversation.

The white-gloved hands that swing the family station wagon into the churchyard,

belong to the baby-sitter-pianist, Barbara. When she gets out of the car to let the

children out, it is with an athletic little leap. She is

2

probably twenty-not much more. She wears a white dress of extremely diplomatic

appeal. It is short enough to show off her legs and pass with her generation and yet

long enough to show her deference to the older generation and the social order of

things.

Barbara is also not pretty in the sense that movie professionals are pretty. She is better

than that: she is young and downy-or so you would say from looking at her face-and

she likes everyone. You can see it in the way she shepherds the children off to Sunday

School and in the way she is rather instantly accepted by the older, generally cautious

group in the churchyard, all of whom are strangers to her.

The morning passes easily enough. Downstairs in Sunday School-Cindy squirming,

Bobby sitting with that thoughtful look of his-they hear about how Our Lord cured

people. Upstairs they hear-Barbara sitting with white gloves folded neatly in her lap-

that in times �of change and uncertainty the words of Jesus have even more relevance

than before.

Afterward they all sing. It is a pretty and simple sound: "Jesus, our God and Father," and

so on and so forth.

When services are over, everyone stands in the shaded yard-it will be paved next year;

now it is all dust-and discusses the county news. Call it gossip.

The Adams are well known here, for all the fact that they are not natives. Dr. Adams has

contributed to the paint, the piano, and the plantings. Mrs. Adams has participated in

the cake bakes and fund-raising affairs.

There is a little cynicism in this, and there is a certain amount of friendliness. For

cynicism, everyone knows that the Adams are not godly people, at least not in the

sense of this county of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's all for show. Quite on the

other hand, everyone understands that by so participating in the church doings, the

Adams are doing their dead level best to be friends with their adopted community. Dr.

Adams' hand is extended and taken, and-in his absence-the hand of the community is

extended into the

3

4

slender one of the baby-sitter, Barbara, who stands daisy-white and bright outside beneath

the mimosas.

Tomorrow, or on some tomorrow, she will be a part of some community with children of her

own and plans and-well, sometimes we must-cake bakes. It is a soothing future, one which

she has considered all her life, or perhaps a picture instilled into her long ago. Nonetheless,

it is nice, and here she enjoys the vision.

Her thought-this is as close as it comes to - words-is, Who will he be who gives me all this?

Ted?

She frowns to herself.

So, everyone mills around until Sunday School lets out-late today-and the children come

out to claim parents. Because there are a lot of fond old-timers here today, there is also a

lot of ohing and ahing by the grandparents' groups, and this the children endure with as

much good grace as possible. After all, the Lord said to be kind. Then Bobby and Cindy and

Barbara get into the station wagon to go home and go swimming in the river on whose

banks the Adams house is built.

There is a last item. As they get into the rather flossy wagon-it is air-conditioned and has

tinted glass and pretty much the whole option sheet-they find their way out momentarily

blocked by pickers. This is a group of migrant workers walking along the country road on

foot.

Nearby-it is woodsy hereabouts-there are commercial orchards, and at this late time of

summer, the pickers arrive and harvest the fruit. It is hard work, back-bending work, and

very poorly paid. Nonetheless their arrival signals the end of the summer, and when they

have gone again like a flock of dark Latin birds, fall will begin.

"Who are they?" Barbara, with 425 cubic inches of piston displacement under her small

foot in the family wagon, is impatient.

"I dunno."

"Pickers," Bobby says. "Nobody."

Then the road is cleared, and the car spins gravel.

They pass the pickers without looking back.

"How long to get into the river?" Barbara says. "Fifteen minutes."

"Twelve." Cindy goes her brother three better. "Then let's go-o-o!" In white-dress and white-

glove exuberance-though she drives well, she rarely gets the chance to drive a powerful

car like this-Barbara floors the gas pedal for home. Clearly she feels a little naughty about

the surge of speed-there is that touch in her-and clearly she enjoys the squeal of tires

when they take pavement and accelerate.

It is afterward that it begins.

5

1

In the first moments, her mind floated up still webbed in memory of the most recent hours.

After seeing the children through baths into bed, she had made herself a small highball

with Dr. Adams' Scotch and sat out on the steps nearest the river-it was reward at the end

of the fourth day. Later she had showered and gone to bed.

Then, somewhere in the middle, there had been a commotion, something brief and

frightening-perhaps a bad dream-that seemed in the now clearing mind to have nearly

made her sick. Her thought in that fright had been the children, but instead of going to

them, she had fallen dreamlessly back into this sleep that released her so slowly.

Yes, the children. Get up.

She made all the drowsy efforts of rising but did not actually move at all. The mind

reaching consciousness understood few things at once, but these came first.

Daylight.

She was uncomfortable, stretched out in an odd position for sleep-flat on her back with her

arms and legs flung out. She was stiff and in some pain at her wrists and ankles. She could

not move. Her mouth was filled with wet. cloth-like terry cloth-and the lower part of her

face was covered with something stiff that hurt and pulled at her skin.

More struggle-quicker, more anxious now, more

6

coming awake-but nothing gave or changed. She was helpless, a condition caused by-a

nervous craning and twisting of her eyes showed her the reasons-rope, a gag, adhesive

tape. She was tied up. Beneath the sheet someone had thrown over her, she could see that

she was bound to the four posts of the bed and thus made entirely, tightly, a prisoner.

This, of course, was not acceptable fact: it simply couldn't be, particularly under the

circumstances. She was still in her bedroom at the Adams'; she hadn't been kidnapped or

moved. Beyond the tightness of rope, some stiffness, and a mild headache, she seemed

well: she hadn't been harmed or raped (or so she felt). Moreover young Bobby Adams was

asleep in a chair beside the bed.

In the early light, his young face was all innocent composure-blond hair, high pink on the

cheeks, full lips-a fine-looking boy at his dreams. Under the conditions-her helplessness:

his freedom-sober, reliable Bobby seemed perhaps a too young sentry sleeping off-duty at

the front.

All totally impossible.

Here was a familiar, late-summer morning, and the only thing out of its appropriate role

and place was Barbara, the incredible, incredulous prisoner. At once, her shock and

surprise turned to fully awakened indignation. It was as if she were victim of some cosmic

practical joke aimed at her alone, and she resented, rapidly hated it.

Getting Bobby to untie her was obvious, but with that inherent, adult feeling of superiority

over children, she struggled for herself first. Although the ropes were tight and her position

unfavorable, she arched and wrenched, jumped and pulled at her bonds. Athletic and

young, even she was impressed by her strength and the violence and coordination of her

movements. The bed itself complained at assault.

Some lessons teach quickly, however.

Though it worked and cracked, the bed did not yield. Though the rope slacked in her favor,

the slack

7

came out of the turns on her ankles and wrists, and these turns tightened like wire. Though

she tugged and twisted, she could breathe only through her nose and soon became winded

and weak. A minute, a minute and a half, and she fell back. The hunter, the captor,

whoever he was, had won for the moment. Still indignant, more indignant for being more

convinced, she nonetheless stopped spending her strength and lay still. Now she would

take help.

The noise, of course, had waked Bobby. Careful, constant Bobby-he stood up by her side in

detailed, somewhat sleepy confusion and alarm.

"Um I ee," she said through her gag, or tried to.

"Ere. Um I ee." Demandingly.

Bobby reacted quickly. His hands flew to hers but only to tighten the knots that held her.

He flung back the sheet-she was still in her shortie, she saw-and he checked the ropes on

her ankles.

This done, his face relaxed, changed. She saw it. - He suddenly realized what day this was!

"Cindy!" No longer his sober self but shouting as if it was Christmas, he ran from the room

toward his sister's.

Helpless, still breathing hard but now exquisitely attentive to what the children would say,

Barbara heard Cindy's usual morning complaints. "What is it? Hunhh ... ? Stop it, now!"

Then after an interval, there was , faster, lower conversation. "Don't you remember? Listen ...

l"

Then they came bounding back into the bedroom.

Bright and now energetically awake Cindy-she was tousled joy-jumped right up on the bed

and peered down at Barbara's helplessness. Convinced it was so, Cindy kissed her on the

nose and hugged her as if Barbara were the greatest present in the world.

"We got her," she yelled. Jumping down from the bed, she did a round circle dance with her

brother.

"We got her, we got her ... we got the baby-sitter!" She and Bobby hugged each other in

rare, delirious agreement. "And they won't be back for a week"

8

The girl on the bed was not stupid: the visible and physical fact was fact. In some way,

for some reason, she was the prisoner of children.

Beyond the reach of such logic, however, beyond reason's control, her habits of inner

being continued. Spirit, will, vitality, told the mind that it was wrong, and at their

command, the body continued its motion. She raised and turned her head and carefully

explored her ropes. She tested them again and again, finding first hope and then

disappointment in a constant, steady rotation. Straining, her fingers reached for

unreachable knots and curled back again. At length, unconvinced but impotent, her

inner self desisted. From discovery, shock, indignity, and astonishment, her mood by

induction grew angry. -

Lying there, she rethought the classic thoughts of the vengeful, disobeyed adult: Wait'll

I get my hands on them," and "Wait'll l tell the Adams."

However satisfying this might be, however, the now coming thought of how distant a

day that would be, made her pause. The Adams were leaving England today if she had

the itinerary right: later they would be in Paris. They were still in the "going-away"

phase of the trip: the bleakness of time and distance this thought summoned up, made

her consider further.

During the four days she had been here--one with Dr. and Mrs. Adams and three alone

with Bobby and Cindy-she had met few other adults. The Tillmans, who ran the general

store, one or two of the Adams' church friends, the mother of one of the kids the young

Adams played with, and that was the lot. Sooner or later perhaps, one or another of

them might stop by, but in three days, it hadn't happened yet. The web of reliance on

others, wisely or falsely taken for

- granted, was abruptly torn. She had momentarily slipped through the mesh entirely.

Finally there were no neighbors closer than half a mile across a field, some woods, and

then a stream that joined the river. This was gentleman farmer country the houses were

placed like islands so that the privilege

9

of privacy and view was maintained-and privacy was severely respected. Even if she were

to work her gag off, she could scream from this quiet, air-conditioned room for a month,

and no one would hear her, except, of course, the children. Everything came back to the

children.

As she lay there, she could hear them in the kitchen two rooms and a hallway distant. After

their dance of glee, they had fled as if in need to talk secrets and all sorts of delicious

mischief. Now they were heating frozen Pop-Ups in the toaster-she knew the sound-and

slamming the refrigerator door and giggling. The mood was exuberant, naughty and a lot

of fun, and it didn't promise to subside.

"Umnn!" It was Barbara's first sound of complaint, discomfort, exasperation. This all might

go on for some time.

Shifting her body to find relief that barely existed, she sighed. Then she closed her eyes.

All right, don't think about the time. Think about the children. Think about making them let

you go.

Think, Barbara Miller, age twenty, baby-sitter, money-needer, college junior, education

major, history minor, B-averager, free-style swimmer, prom chairman, sorority sister, dutiful

daughter, runner of errands, dreamer of lovely futures, think,

She tried.

Even given that thought was difficult in this all new, never-before-experienced situation,

however, the fact of the matter was that Barbara was just not the true thinking type. She

was intelligent and sensitive enough-perhaps a little too sensitive-but her instinctive

manner was to intuit life, to sense it, to feel where it was flowing and then run there. It

gave her a grace and liveliness, but it did not well fit her for the role of analyst and planner.

When faced by such a need, she always automatically said, "Mother, what do you think?

Daddy, what do you think?" or "Ted, what do you think about it?" "Terry, what's the best

thing to do?" The situation was

10

so recurrent with Terry-even unavoidable-that the resultant joke never lost its flavor. When

she was so interrupted, Terry had taken up the habit of turning back and mimicking, "Ter-

ree ... P" Barbara was never insulted; actually, she could barely stifle a giggle when she

saw Terry's irritation. "Well, what is it?"

Barbara and Terry had been KKGs and roommates at college for two years, and in that

time, Terry had advised, adjudicated, and planned things in almost every part of Barbara's

life. It was that way; Barbara kept things light and busy, and Terry kept them tracking.

"Terry, what'm I going to do?"

Barbara turned her cheek down on the pillow and closed her eyes; and of course, that very

question came to her mind. "Terry, what ... ?"

It wasn't hard to imagine what she'd say.

"But Barb, for godsakes, how?" Terry was headshaking amused. "You're bigger than they

are, you're stronger, you're smarter. How could you let them do a thing like this to you?"

"It was after .I went to sleep"-Barbara felt guilty at once--"Maybe I snored, and that's how

they knew I was sleeping, or something. Anyhow, the children or Bobby alone-I guess it had

to be Bobby-came into the room with something, drugs or something, in a rag. I had a bad

dream. That must've been when he was making me breathe it. Afterwards, they tied me

up."

"But why?,, Imagined Terry was unconcerned with sympathy. Her inaudible voice was

disbelieving, of course, but now equally amused. Possibly she smiled.

"I don't know."

"Then find out," Terry said simply. "They can't keep you gagged forever. You've got to eat

and drink-even they know that. Anyhow pretty soon they'll get curious, they'll want to know

what you think about their grand joke. And when they do ungag you, don't yell or scream or

lose your temper. You're three fourths of a teacher by now, you've read your learning

psych, you know how their minds work. Use some of

11

it. Talk to them; be interested in all this. There're only two of them, they know you, they

like you. Sooner or later they'll get bored silly and let you go."

Terry, as always, was hard to refute. Hers was a practical, a reasoning, an analytical

mind devoid of whims and enthusiasms. Moreover, at this moment, hers was a

welcome--if imagined-argument.

"That's right. ... " Encouraged, Barbara pursued the thought. "And they can't keep me

tied up forever. I've got to go to the bathroom and get some exercise and blood

circulation. That could be my excuse for getting up, and when. I do. . . . " In time,

however, she became aware that" she was thinking toward an absent audience. Terry

vanished-bored or called away on more important matters-and was gone. The room

was empty once more. On the other hand, it was perceptibly more bearable.

Reminded now, Barbara considered all the realities, the unpleasant and impossible

chores the children would face by themselves. Cooking, once the sweets were gone,

restarting the well-pump when it was airlocked (Dr. Adams had showed her how),

shopping, replacing fuses, fending off possible visitors, answering telephone calls,

making excuses for her own absence, even amusing themselves. They could never do it

all. It was an adults' world, and alone in it, two youngsters their age would soon

discover their weaknesses. Well then, wait it out, she told herself.

Periodically one or another of the pair came in to inspect her and make sure that she

was not freeing herself, then leave again. They were up and down the hall, in and out of

their rooms, back and forth outside and inside with the doors banging heedlessly

behind. The liquor of freedom was in them, and until it burned down, she could only lie

quietly and wait.

Finally, after about two agonizing hours, Bobby-now fully dressed--came into the room,

and after checking her security again, picked up the phone by her bed, and dialed.

There was a br-r-rttt at the other end of the line, and then conversation.

12

His face, which had been thoughtful, quickly assumed a Sunday-scrubbed smile (like

yesterday). "Good morning . . . Mrs. Randall? This is Bobby Adams. Is John there? ... May I

talk to him, please? �.. What, ma'am?" Bobby paused and then said with enthusiasm, "Real

great! And Barbara's taking us swimming in the river this afternoon, again. You should see

her swim; she's on the college team ... yeah. Yes, ma'am, we will ... OK, thank you." There

was silence.

Bobby put his hand over the receiver and yelled, "Cindy! Pick up the phone in the kitchen,

but keep your hand over the mouthpiece. OK?"

From far away, Cindy yelled, 1'0K."

After a moment more, Bobby removed his hand.

"John," he said cautiously. "Yeah, is your mother right there? ... OK." Again his face

changed, this time to very serious, almost possessed. His voice became imitation adult,

clipped. "Red Fox One to Freedom Leader, do you read me? Over."

Silence for a second or two.

"OK, Freedom Leader," be continued. "Mission

going OK so far ....Yeah, no kidding! Yeah, I told

you. We have her . Yeah, Code Urgent from now

on. No, I'm looking right at her right now just like we planned. Right, Red Fox Two?" He

yelled this last at Cindy (in the kitchen). "Yeah, see? OK, Cindy, get off the phone, now. Now

listen, John, can you do what you said about this morning? Yeah, you call the other kids and

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

patrol out." And he hung up.

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

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

she had imagined.

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

powerful, 13

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

looked up.

"It's John."

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

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

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

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

teeth, he whistled back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of some kind.

"Aren't you going to meet them?"

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

for reassurance.

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

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

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

14

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

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

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

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

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

and sister lived by it inflexibly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cottonmouth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

half tackling, half throwing himself at John.

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

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

for Di- 15

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

Wait'll you see it!"

"Was it hard?" Paul said.

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you keep the cholroform in the bag like I

told you?" Dianne said.

_

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

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

"Did it?"

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

and took the cloth out of the bag, and I sort of just .held it up in the air near her nose. And

I had to hold my own breath, I mean." They had reached the kitchen steps now and

stopped to hear Bobby finish. "And she sort of reached up and pushed my hand away."

"Really?" Paul's eyes spread wide with imagined

participation.

�

"Yeah, and when she touched me, I jammed it down over her mouth-" Bobby paused,

amazed in retrospect at his own courage.

"What'd she do then?" John said.

"Well, I guess she made a noise and really grabbed my hand, and I sort of jumped on her.

She kept pushing the rag away, and I kept getting it back, and then she just sort of gave

up and quit shoving at me."

"You were on top of her?" John said.

"Sort of like halfway, like wrestling," Bobby said.

"Boy, she's strong for a girl, even when she's asleep."

"So what then?"

"Well, anyhow, I held it over her face a little bit longer, and then put it back in the bag

again. I was

16

scared she might wake up, and I was scared I might give her too much. Then after that,

I got the rope from my room and tied her hands and feet, and then the rest was easy."

"Weren't you scared?" Paul was still deeply excited.

"Yeah, man. If she'd sneezed when I was creeping up on her, I'd have run right across

the river."

"But you haven't seen her yet," Cindy said.

"Come on!" She ran up the steps and opened the kitchen door. "Come on!"

Bobby, host in his own house, captor of the baby-sitter, hero of Freedom Five for the

moment, followed proudly. There was a barely perceptible hesitation in the other three.

It was as if they dare not see what they were going to see, but then John gruffly nod ded

his head and led the way behind Bobby.

When they emerged from the woods, John, Paul and Dianne had been carrying bathing

suits rolled up in towels. Now, in the coolness of the Adams kitchen, they dropped these

on the counter and muddled their way into the living room, their feet impelling them

forward, their caution holding them back. Cindy, however, was already down the hall-

had, in fact, been in and out of Barbara's room in her impatience.

"Well, come on," she said. "Are you scared or something? Bobby and me aren't."

She, of course, led the way. Bobby followed, succeeded by John, Paul, and Dianne. In

that order, they entered the bedroom and came to the foot of the bed. Silence followed.

Given that Bobby and Cindy had three to four hours' advantage, the fact was that until

today none of them had ever seen an adult human made helpless chained, pinioned,

bound, gagged, brought down beneath adult level. The sight itself was a fundamental

experience that, while it affected each differently, carried some common meaning for

them all.

Each person expects to grow up. Ascension to power is a given part of existence.

Usually, however, it 17

lies distantly ahead-we shall have power when we have the years, the means and

experience, for powerand meanwhile, we shall coast along being simply what we are and

no more. Now, of course, all of this was capsized. They had done the unbelievable thing,

they had captured a grown-up.

The baby-sitter was theirs, the Adams property was theirs, the next seven days-give them

luck!-were theirs, life for these hours they held it was theirs. It was like a dream, a wish, an

indolent fantasy, come all too suddenly true, for beyond the boldness, beyond the im-

petuosity, the success, lay inevitable tomorrow. Now they had done it, now it was fun, now

the adventure had begun, now they were really in for it. What now?

After some moments the trance was broken; the not-believable sight was believed. They

moved a foot, an arm-Paul scratched his nose---and they stirred from their frozen positions.

They looked; they moved around the bed; they breathed again.

"Y'see?" Bobby said.

"Her hands are all blue and purple," Paul said. "That's the ropes. Maybe they're too tight,"

Cindy

said.

Bobby sighed. "Aw~w-w, if they were looser, she

could get away."

"She has pretty feet," Paul said.

"You always say that." Cindy giggled.

"Cindy, get away from her," Bobby said. "If she grabs you, you'll know it."

John Randall, who alone had not moved from the foot of the bed, said, "I guess we better

have a meeting about this."

"A meeting, a meeting!" Cindy sang.

"No. You stay and watch her," Bobby said. "I don't want to. She isn't doing anything." "OK,

I'll watch, and you go to the meeting."

Now, Cindy was surprised. Under fang-and-claw rule, Bobby was in command here and

entitled to step on her, and he hadn't. She didn't even remember hav- � ing been nice to

him: she only knew that this was nice. 18

"Whatever you want," she said. Bobby looked at her, and they made an uncertain pact.

John Randall looked from one to the other. "It's OK," he said. "We can all come to the

meeting. We'll have it in the house, and then we can hear if she starts getting away."

Victorious through diplomacy (a rare act), Cindy smiled and skipped out first. Paul and the

rest followed.

Although the Adams living room had furniture, none of it seemed to suit the children. John,

who most needed big chairs, slumped instead on the coffee table, legs apart, elbows on

knees.

"OK, let's get going," he said. "We've got a lot to talk about."

Paul sat down before him, cross-legged on the rug; Bobby lounged against the edge of the

old captain's desk; and only Dianne sat in a chair, an overstuffed chair with rather regal

lines. Cindy flung herself full length along the 'back of the couch as if she were riding it

bareback; then she slowly let herself slide down the front side onto the cushions where she

rolled over once and lay staring up at the ceiling.

"Cindy, stop that," Bobby said. "You know you're not allowed to play on the furniture."

"We can do anything we want now," she said defiantly. "There's no one to stop us, and

you're not my father."

"No, we can't," John said. "That's why we're having a meeting. We've got to make a lot of

new rules about this thing."

"Like what?" Cindy was obviously against rules of any kind. Nonetheless, she sat up.

"Like, for one thing, we have to stand watch over her. Take turns," John said. "If she ever

gets loose .... "

"She can't get loose," Bobby said quickly. "I put the knots where she couldn't get them."

� "What if she found something sharp and cut the rope or reached over and knocked the

telephone over?" Cindy said.

19

"Aw, that's only like you see on television. Where could she get hold of anything sharp

enough to cut rope?"

"Just the same, we ought to watch her," John said stubbornly. "Take turns, one at a time."

"We ought to write this down like the other rules we used to have," Paul said. "Hey, Dianne,

get some paper .... "

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

"Where's something to write with?" Dianne, who at seventeen was slightly the oldest, got

up and went searching. There was an opening and slamming of drawers before she found a

telephone pad and a ballpoint pen. "OK," she said, "Number One: watch her."

"Right. Now, since Red Fox Patrol will have to watch her all night, Blue Fox Patrol will watch

her while we're here. OK?"

"Blue Fox, Roger," Paul said. "OK?" John looked at Dianne.

Dianne did not say Roger. In no way did she condescend to say it. "Certainly," she said

coolly.

"OK, and another thing," Bobby said. "We can't keep her tied in one place all the time.

How're we going to move her around?"

"Why move her?" Cindy said.

"She has to get some circulation sometime, and she has to go to the bathroom like

everybody else."

There was general giggling.

"Yeah, but she's strong," Bobby said. "You should have seen her this morning. Man, I

thought she � was going to tear the bed apart."

"Really?"

"We'd better all be here when we do have to move her," John said thoughtfully. The idea

didn't appear to cheer him. "There're five of us-we ought to be able to do it."

"I got some things figured out-" Bobby began. "Write that down," John ignored him.

"Then what about feeding her?" Cindy said. "Yeah, that's something, too."

20

"I think we ought to put her on bread and water once a day," Paul said quite seriously.

"You know, like a diet."

"Why?" Cindy said. "She's not fat."

"To make her weaker. Bobby says she's strong, so make her weak. Our mother diets.

She doesn't eat anything at all during the day, except for carrots and celery and

skimmed milk and junk like that, and she's always weak and tired out. Besides," he

said, "we can do anything we want with a prisoner."

"Does your mother really eat that stuff?"

"All grown-ups do. They're afraid of getting fat and dying."

"Aw, you only get that from smoking and cancer," Cindy said. "Don't you watch TV?"

"Shut up, Cindy," John said, but kindly enough.

"OK, how're we going to feed her? What happens if we take off the gag and she starts

doing a lot of yelling?"

"We've still got the chloroform from Bobby's father," Paul said. "We can tell her if she

screams, we'll put her to sleep and not feed her at all."

"There's enough stuff in the rag still." Bobby thought and had to agree. "I put it back in

a tight jar."

"No one could hear her way down here anyway," Dianne said coolly.

"I know! We'll tum up the TV like they do on �TV," Cindy's redundance was unconscious.

"That way, anybody'll think it's that."

"Well, at least we all ought to be here whenever we take off her gag," John said. "Five

are better than two. Write that down, Dianne."

"Another thing," Dianne spoke while she wrote.

"Bobby and Cindy are supposed to have a baby-sitter to do all the housework and keep

them clean," she looked up at Cindy. "If the house isn't neat and the yard's a mess and

the trash piles up, anybody stopping by'll want to come in and find out what's wrong."

"I'm not dirty," Cindy said.

"You ought to wash your face and brush your hair�

21

"Aw, I thought we were going to be free after her-"

"We are free, stupid," Bobby said, "but that doesn't mean you can do everything you

want."

"It specially doesn't mean you can do what you want," John said. "We've got to be extra

careful from here on. We have to do the things they usually do." They meant adults,

clearly the other team (and the children all understood this).

"Right. First of all, we have to stay neat. Don't / make a mess. Second, we all have to

chip in and help clean things up," Dianne said. "Well, we have to," she added to the

silence with which she was heard.

"I liked it better the other way-when she did all the work,'' Cindy said. "At least, she was

our friend and played with us."

"Friend," John scoffed. "She was plain bossy. HI was your age, I wouldn't want her to sit

for me."

"Besides, grow up," Bobby said. "We're too old to play all the time. Even you."

"What'd'ya mean?" Cindy sat up with the beginning of a tantrum in her voice. Whatever

brother-sister love they had shown earlier was erased just now.

"Leave her alone," John said. "Now what else?" "Phone calls," Dianne said.

"Yeah, we got to be careful about them-"

"And food," she said. "You've both got to eat for a week. We have to shop .... "

"That's easy," Bobby said. "We have a charge account at Tillman's. That's closest, and

he delivers. Somebody can phone in an order, and he'll bring it up on the porch and

leave it. He does all the time-"

"Arid he has Pop-Ups!" Cindy said.

Dianne looked at her with a frown. "And you

have to cook .... "

._

"We'll barbecue things on the grill like Daddy

does!'' Cindy was slowly rekindling some enthusiasm.

"And vegetables, too." "You're not my mother."

"Do what she says,'' Bobby said. "Eating has to

22

be just the same as always. Just as if nothing was wrong."

"Then why're we doing all of this?" Cindy's smile sort of stopped.

"You want to go swimming anytime you want to?" Bobby said. "You want to stay up late

and watch the movies on TV you're not allowed to see? You want to try some of Dad's

Scotch?"

"Well .... "

"It's just that there have to be rules." "Yeah, but that takes the fun out of it."

"No, it won't," Paul said with a tic. "C'mon, Just wait."

Cindy sighed and flounced up and went to the kitchen. She went as if she felt she

carried some immense veto power over the older kids. She let them wait. Then from

the kitchen-slam of the refrigerator door-she grudgingly acquiesced. "OK."

John snorted, but not without mild amusement.

"Well, OK. What're the rules so far?''

Dianne handed him the pad. On it, she had written in a neat, tiny hand:

1. Watch her.

2. All be here-move her.

3. All-gag out.

4. Be neat, clean up.

5. Watch telephone calls.

6. Eat-shop.

7. Cindy's hair.

"Yeah, what about the telephone?" John passed the pad to Paul. Bobby leaned down

over his shoulder and read with him.

"Tell everyone she's taking a bath," Dianne said. "Or she's down at the beach with the

rest of us,"

Paul said.

"Or she took Cindy up to Bryce," Bobby said. "OK." John was convinced. "Anything

else?" "Read your own rules," Dianne said. "First, let's

23

clean up what needs it, and then we can find out if she needs anything."

"I'll do the kitchen," Cindy said from the doorway.

"You wash your face and hands and put on a clean dress and brush your hair," Dianne

said.

"It hurts."

"All right, I'll brush it for you." "Still hurts-"

"Not if I do it."

"Cindy!" Bobby looked at her. He was the stronger.

"Aw-w-w-"

"Anyhow I'll do the kitchen with somebody. I know where everything's kept," Bobby

said. "Afterward we can get Barbara up."

"Cool," Paul said. "That's neat."

Barbara had guessed in advance who the rest of Freedom Five would be. She had taken

the same five children swimming the afternoon before-Sunday helping the boys with

their flailing Australian crawls, herding Cindy back from the part of the river where the

current was strongest, and getting in some workout herself. (Dianne had only waded

around a little and then withdrawn to sit on the bank and watch.)

Freedom Five was simply a community of kids well, call them children, Barbara thought-

stuck down in the country with no one else to play with except one with the other. And,

just as Barbara had characterized Bobby as manly and reliable and Cindy. as spoiled

and funny, so had she formed rapid, friendly opinions of the others.

John was quite big and strong for his age, which she took to be about sixteen. He was a

good-looking boy; his voice had settled down toward what would be its steady, mature

tone: he was mannerly and thoughtful toward the others even though-except for Di-

anne-they were younger, possibly irritatingly younger. Still, there was an air about him

which had to be called 24

vague, lost. Even in the short hours they had all been together at the small river beach

north of the Adams house, be had seemed now and then to drift away, to be thinking about

something else or, more accurately perhaps, to be trying to think of something beyond his

experience or present ability. Not to make too much of too little-particularly in the young-

Barbara assumed that since he was no longer one of the children and yet not an adult (as

she firmly felt herself to be), he was merely in the fashionable process of making himself,

of finding himself. It made him rather nice, and made her rather more kindly toward him.

Toward John, she had the Christian sort of superiority that made her want to help, made

her want to see him succeed.

Paul-poor little thing-was absolutely a mess.

This instant assessment rested not so much on his small skinny frame, thin lips, brown

hair, gnome like steelrimmed glasses, as upon his manner. Paul was squirmy. In girlish

reaction, Barbara was a little revolted: in motherly reaction, she was full of pity.

Paul twitched; he moved from foot to foot as if the ground was burning; he twisted his head

and craned his neck when he talked. It was as if he were straining to put into words and

actions some pouring torrent of ideas that could be neither checked nor investigated. His

voice cracked and warbled; his eyes darted about. He was obviously a creature in torment

caused again-by trying to translate back and forth between the world he found himself to

live in externally and the one within that was visible only to him. He would eventually grow

up to be something quick, bright, complicated, and comically deformed-a full professional

inventor of the useless, a doctor to computers, a teacher of the theoretical and distant. In

short, he too would become civilized, "normal," and useful, but that would be long after the

itch in him was tamed. For now, he remained squirmy.

Dianne, of course, was a stick. It wasn't unlikely that she was so considered by classmates

at school. Oldest of the five by possibly half a year, she ap-

25

preached her eighteenth birthday unblossomed, unfavored and, at this late date,

unpromising. Even Dianne, hopeful as she might allow herself to be in moments of

absolute privacy, must now begin to sense the cold cast of the future. Where other girls

had by this time begun to spread their child-bearing hips and lift out their breasts, she

remained a tall, thin girl with long, white feet, bony legs in which the knees were

prominent, absent hips, flat chest, prominent collarbone and sharp edged elbows and

wrists. Dianne rose� to some height, and then dangled down again. Probably to combat

this, she was agonizingly neat, quiet, withdrawn, undemonstrative, and chilly. Her hair

was severely pulled back-strand by strand, each exactly parallel; she was spotlessly

clean and smelled (nicely) of soap. She always stood a fastidious step apart, and only

by her occasional use of authority over the other children-an authority they seemed to

grant her willingly for some reason--did she reveal that there might be a person

within the stick.

"'

Because she felt superior-again-Barbara had felt her heart envelop the girl. She was

extra kind to her and wanted to be more so. She wanted to tell her things, coax her:

after all, no one need be that unattractive. But how to approach the wall Dianne had

around her? Well, that would come in time.

So it had been, so they had seemed; so they had all behaved on the bright Sunday-

yesterday-after church and a picnic on the beach and a swim. And among them,

Barbara had moved and directed with assumed, cheerful responsibility, already the

pretty new teacher with her first class of pupils. How different now.

By bright yesterday afternoon, Barbara realized now, her capture had all been fixed as

a plan, her indignity assured except for chance and error. Bobby would have had his

father's chloroform hidden away in a plastic sandwich bag in a jar, perhaps: there would

have .... been rope in his own closet in the dark. Even

26

Cindy would have been primed to silence in spite of her voluble, willful nature.

Seen in that light, how unreal their innocent splashings, their carefully taken

instructions, their casual obedience seemed. What a bad job new Teacher had done in

her analyses, how easily Teacher was made the fool. Beneath the glib little caricatures

she had drawn of the children, they were people--learn that! They were organized; they

could plan; they could keep their own counsel; they could execute; and now it appeared

that they could keep their composure once commitment had been made.

How quickly the tables were reversed. The children were children no more, and Teacher

was Teacher no more. With a neat, short plot, they had erased her advantages and

made her just a girl again, one who was now no better than they.

Less better!

Having heard the meeting which they took no trouble to keep secret, Barbara, of

course, knew her captivity was not intended to be short. The moment of release,

triumph, retribution, that she had felt to lie only a short while ahead, was not here or

even near. Only another hour lay beyond this hour, perhaps only another day beyond

this day.

With that conclusion, of course, she began to hurt.

Her flesh and her muscles and tendons and body began to hurt very much. Something

like her first panic almost returned.

No, Barbara said (remembering Terry's advice).

I'll be calm. I won't hurt myself. I won't scare them again. I'll be careful.

Help me, Barbara said.

For-anyone inclined to see humor, Freedom Five's second visit to their captive offered

subtle possibilities. They entered the room together-very closely together-and moved to

the bed in silence. It could be guessed from their manner and the sound of rapid shal-

27

low breathing that the wardens were more nervous than the prisoner.

The law had been broken, of course, and they had broken it. Since Barbara's capture

had been accomplished before, however-last night, offstage, remote from them-all

except Bobby might conveniently regard the crime as not theirs. The resulting

situation Barbara's helplessness, their ascent to power-might then be merely an

abstract, a set of conditions discovered on their awakening this morning. But with their

meeting, their decision to go on, their confrontation of the girl right now, things must

obviously change. Now they began to break the law hour by hour, deliberately,

forewarned of all the possible and unpleasant consequences. They became entirely

responsible and answerable for their own actions. The door to innocence, real or

pretended, had closed behind: from now on, there was no way to think of themselves

except as bad and wrong and to be punished. So clearly did this appear to impress

them, that they looked down at their prisoner but took care to avoid her eyes.

Barbara, of course, felt their tenseness and had the momentary, crazy impulse to

laugh-if she could have laughed-at the whole improbable scene. She saw it as one both

sees one's self and is one's self in dreams, the not-quite-Lilliputian captors and their

possibly dangerous captive, each afraid of the other and yet each locked in with the

other. Because it was true, of course, there was an hysterical edge to her thought.

Finding after several moments that Barbara indeed remained helpless, however,

Freedom Five gradually relaxed. All right, here they were, out in the open, breaking the

law between children and adults, and nothing was happening. They ignored the taboo,

and

no lightning fell.

�

"Well, what're we going to do?" John's voice was a little tight and dry, as if he were

having difficulty in speaking.

''We don't have to do anything if-"

"I thought we were going to ask her if she wanted

28

to go to the bathroom!" Cindy giggled at the idea. To her the capsizing of roles seemed

endlessly funny.

"If she wants to go," Dianne said. Then she said directly to Barbara, "Do you?''

"Umnn?"

"Do you want to go to the bathroom?" Dianne said with painful clarity. "We can take

you."

Barbara looked back up at her and then closed her eyes. The situation was, in actuality,

more desperately impossible than she had foreseen. Going to the bathroom with five

youngsters in tow! First, she thought that she'd never go to the toilet again rather than

this. On the other hand, caution slowed her the matter would have to be faced

sometime if they held to their plans, and anything was better than simply being forced

to lie here forever.

The other selfish thought skipped through her mind, of course. She hardly dared think it

lest the kids somehow intuit it. This might be a chance to break free.

"She wants to go," Paul said. Squirming from foot to foot, he now seemed to be

enjoying himself.

"OK, now. Like we talked about it," John said.

"Are you ready?"

�

"Yeah"-Bobby had some more rope in his hand-"but, remember, she's strong for a girl if

you let her get even a little bit loose."

"I won't." John rather squared himself. "Let's do

it."

"Well, OK, I'll tie her hand first."

With one piece of the new rope he had brought, Bobby tied her right wrist just above

the point where it was already tied. Then he took the free end of this new rope and

squatted down beside the bed. "Now, we'll run it through here-"

Her momentary objectivity gone, Barbara watched them a little apprehensively. She

could not see all they were doing, and she was afraid it might hurt.

Bobby straightened up. "OK, now, when I untie 29

her hand up here, you all hold her arm and move it down there and Paul pull on your end."

"All right," Dianne sighed. "Just do it, will you?" There was a moment's silence with Barbara

looking up at them, and John and Dianne looking down at her arm as if it had more-than-

human strength in it. Barbara despaired.

''OK, that's it." Bobby jumped up from the head of the bed. "Move her-hurry up." He went

around to help Paul.

The plan at last became clear to Barbara and everyone. At no time was she to be free.

When Bobby released her wrist from the headboard of the bed, it was already tied by a

longer rope to the lower part of the frame; all they had to do was to move her one defense-

less arm down more or less by her side while Paul took up the slack. She was helpless at

each instant of the operation.

"There, see? It did work." "Yeah ... "

They all straightened up.

Barbara now lay, legs still apart, one arm tied down by her side and the other up to the

headboard. It didn't really hurt, at least no more than before, but it was frustrating and

disappointing. At no time could she have done so much as free that one hand even for a

minute.

"She looks like she's doing semaphore," Paul gave her one of his squirmy little smiles and

looked around for approval.

"Or dancing," Cindy said critically. "Like Mrs.

Gulliver." She giggled.

"Miss Gulliver," Dianne said.

"OK, never mind that. Let's do the rest of it."

With the same engineering care, they brought her other hand down by her other side and

tied it, too. Her shoulders, stiff and sore from the hours of unnatural position, throbbed.

Here, at least, was circulation and movement.

"Now, she has to sit up."

30

"What if she won't?" Cindy said. "How're you going to make her do it?"

"She's the one who wants to go to the bathroom.

If she doesn't, we can always put her back the other way." It sounded reassuring when

John said it, but, in fact, Barbara had more freedom now than at any time since she had

awakened. She could do nothing with it, but she was more free.

"Yeah," Bobby said. "Sit up. You can if you want to." It was the first thing like a

command that they had given her, and he did so with hesitation in his voice.

For the same reason, Barbara just slightly held back. The lessons in this relationship

were painfully few, and yet she seemed to have so much trouble learning them. Were

the youngsters, on the one hand, demanding that she sit up and, on the other hand,

threatening to retie her if she did not? Indeed they were, indeed they would. Barbara

must realize that no matter bow far beneath her station she felt the kids to stand, they

were absolutely in command. There was no alternative with dignity. She would obey, or

she would be returned to a less pleasant position, and this would be repeated until she

submitted. Barbara sighed and then, being a swimmer in good condition, managed to

do the sit-up demanded.

They all looked at Bobby expectantly.

"OK, here-" He passed the rope around her body. "Now we tie her arms to her sides."

This was done. After that, her left wrist was released and tied up behind her back with a

rope that went up over her right shoulder, crossed her body between her breasts,

hooked under her elbow and returned to her wrist. For the left side alone, it was the

same position she would have been in had someone been "twisting her arm" except

that it was twisted and held there.

They were so cautious, everything took so much time and was so elaborately done that

Barbara began to grow irritated. All right, she was doing what they wanted; she couldn't

get away-she knew it, they knew

31

it-why so much fuss? When they got ready to move her legs together, she impatiently

did it for them, or

nearly did it before she fell over backward.

.

Cindy laughed, but Bobby, remembering his struggle this morning, quickly hobbled her

ankles before she took the notion to kick out at someone. He seemed almost fearful

when he released the last of the rope that held her to the bed.

. "What about her other hand?"

"She needs one free, stupid. Besides, she can't do much with the elbow tied like that."

"Can she get up now?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Actually they had to swing her feet over the side of the bed and help

her sit up

again.

.

"How're you going to make her go just where you want her to?"

"Well-" Bobby hadn't thought of that.

. "I know. Put a rope around her neck," Paul said.

As he did when speaking most of the time, he sort of ducked his head and came up

sideways like a myna bird struggling to say a difficult word.

"Yeah! That way, if she doesn't follow, we can choke her or at least pull her down."

"No, I've got a better idea," Bobby said. "Sit up," he told Barbara. He didn't hesitate this

time, nor did she. She actually leaned towards him.

"Here-" Bobby looped his last long length of rope around her neck with ends trailing in

front and in back. "One of us goes in front and one of us behind, and if she doesn't

behave, each one pulls:"

This was a little frightening. Barbara looked from one child to the other. She felt as if

her upper body were embalmed in clothesline. The shoulder of her shortie was no

longer on her shoulder, and she was a trifle bare-feeling.

"Choke her?" Cindy said.

"Don't worry. Not unless we have to." "I'll lead," Paul said quickly.

"No, you won't," Dianne said. "Let Bobby and

32

John do it, and you follow and just don't get in the way unless we tell you to."

More foolishness. All right, she would go. More than anything else now, Barbara wanted to

get this thing over with quickly. She looked at Freedom Five and made her only sound:

"Umnn?"

"OK, stand up."

She tried and found that she couldn't do it without the fear of falling forward. "Ull m.mnn,"

she said.

They looked at her blankly. All her sounds sounded the same.

"UH mmnn ! "

"Help me," Dianne translated. �

Obediently, John and Dianne took her bare arms and helped her to stand. Briefly, she

recorded the fact that they were much stronger than she would have guessed. Then Bobby

gave a timid tug on the rope around her neck-it worked as he had said-and she

turned and followed him, the rest coming behind. �

The trip down the hall was a mile and a half long.

Barbara was hobbled just above the ankles, and Bobby had tied his loops too tightly. When

she stood up and put her weight on her legs, they swelled and the ropes cut in. Moreover,

he had hobbled her too closely so that she advanced only by short little slides no more

than nine or ten inches a move. Finally, her feet finished each step nearly in line so that it

was like walking a tightrope. She was afraid of falling and kept her right hand out to steady

herself against the wall as they went.

When the slow procession reached the bathroom at last, Dianne told the rest, "You can't

see," and let Barbara slide in ahead. The whole time afterward, Dianne stood inside against

the wall near the door, her gaze primly averted.

"Well, we'll have to feed her sometime." John was sitting, elbows on table, heels hooked

over the rung of a kitchen chair. He chewed while he talked, and in front of him lay part of

a sandwich Dianne had made.

33

"How'll we get the gag back in her mouth if she doesn't want us to?" Cindy said. "She

might bite."

"First of all, what if she starts yelling, you mean?" "That's easy." Paul gave a twisted shrug.

"Let John have a pillow, and if she does, he wraps it over her face."

"She'd smother," Bobby said.

"Just for a little while, while we open the chloroform, and then we put her to sleep."

"How about the gag though?" Cindy persisted. "Same thing, stupid."

"I'm not stupid. You stop calling me that!"

"Why don't you leave her alone, Bobby?" John sighed.

"Somebody better stand guard and watch the road in case anyone drives in when she isn't

gagged."

"You want to do that, Cindy?"

"No, I want to watch." She lazily ate the icing oft

a piece of cake she had wheedled out of Dianne.

"I'll stay out here," Bobby said. "No, we might need you." �

"I'm only out here, for godsakes. Besides, it's Paul's tum to do something. If he wants to

chloroform her, let him try it for a change."

"Finish your sandwich, Paul. Hurry up"-Dianne was already straightening up-"It's getting

late."

"Yeah, and I want to go swimming after my � hour," Cindy licked her fingers slowly.

The kids approached Barbara more familiarly now. She was back in her room but sitting in

a chair to which they had tied her-amid endless debate and engineering discussion-over an

hour ago. It would be obvious to an outsider that half the rope would have done the job,

but that was not the point. The more they used, the safer they felt.

This was apparent in the way they lounged around while Dianne explained about the pillow

over the face and the chloroform and the lookout to watch the road. "Now, will you be quiet

if we take your gag out?"

34

Barbara nodded solemnly. Her jaws ached from being spread.

Since the boys never offered to touch Barbara unless they had work to do, Dianne removed

the adhesive tape. As usual, Bobby had used enough to set a broken bone, and it took a

long time to come off strip by strip, each one protested by Barbara. When they were finally

gone, balled up and discarded with the paper trash to be burned, Dianne reached in the

older girl's mouth and pulled out the damp terry-cloth wad. Barbara swallowed

immediately and painfully, and extended her tongue to touch her dry lips.

"Can I have a glass of water?"

At the sound of her voice, John and Paul stiffened slightly. This, clearly, was the beginning

of danger.

"I won't scream," Barbara said carefully.

Don't lose your head when they ungag you, Terry had said in her phantom conversation

this morning. Talk to them. Be calm.

"I'll get some," Cindy buzzed out.

"Turn on the TV-loud," John yelled behind her.

He was still quite nervous.

the hopeful soap she called it-and began lathering her face according to the rules

prescribed in all the womens' magazines. "For example"-she worked at her forehead with

rather short, strong fingers-"you think of me as your smart roommate who knows

everything in the world to get you out

55

of jams. Right? I mean, that's all I am. And the fact I just might be lonely or in need of

cheering up or worried about finding a man just doesn't get into your idea, right? You

miniaturize me and take the sweet part. Where 'serious' begins, you leave off."

"That's not true-"

"And if the boys smile at you, you like to think they're being friendly, and when they want

to put their hands on you it's not because they really want to take you to bed." Terry

plunged her face into handsful of water. "Barb, you're square."

Barbara said nothing.

Terry pulled down her towel and began to pat her face dry. "I mean, when did we ever

talk? The minute I say something that bothers me, I can just begin to see it coming-some

kind of blip goes off in your head. Your mind begins to wander. You change subjects and go

back to something stupid and safe. You just sort of slide away." Terry tossed the towel back

on the bar. Tomorrow, she would be sorry she hadn't spread it out to dry evenly, but just

now, she forgot it. Whatever good qualities she had were at least somewhat offset by the

fact that she was also sloppy.

"I can't help it," Barbara said more slowly and sleepily. "When people start to get too close

to me, it makes me feel-crawly." She paused, considering this fact.

The ache in her body that she had foreseen had set in now. Muscles must be extended and

tried--as a swimmer she had absorbed a lot of coaching-and then they must slack and relax

again. Her muscles could not. She was extended tightly, permanently, and immovably, and

now the muscles protested.

"That's silly." _Barbara drowsed. ''This shouldn't really hurt anyone in condition. But it does-

it hurts � like hell. Anyhow we were really talking about the children and I didn't really like

them, right?"

"Terry ... ?"

''I'm here." Terry turned off the bathroom light

56

and came out to finish undressing. Barbara was relieved that she was still there.

"So?"

"Well, you didn't like them, and you didn't land on them either. You just horsed around, and

you lost respect. They weren't afraid of you." Terry pulled her slip over her head and

dropped it negligently on the chair. "You were just a kind of super playmate, and so you got

pulled down into their games. You're just a Barbie Doll-you walk, you talk, you wet, you say

real words. If they want to tie you up and play monster, why not?'' A certain, ritual modesty

made Terry tum her back when she took off her bra and slipped on her nightgown. Only

then did she pull off her panties and toss them with everything else on the chair. "You're

more naive than they are and a lot less tough. You're just bigger, that's all."

Barbara was silent. Imagination's game, imagination's conversation, required more effort of

mind than she now had left to give.

Terry pulled down the covers and slipped into a largely unmade bed (she had only pulled

the bedspread up over it to hide the disorder on whatever morning it had been before).

"Anyhow you were in charge here last night, and now the kids are. Why?"

"They're a bunch of little animals." Barbara seemed to have to rise from a long way down

to even reply to this. Everything else was ache and oncoming exhaustion.

"You're going to make a lousy teacher."

"Monsters then. Let me alone. I want to sleep.

God, I want to sleep."

Terry said nothing. Released, blurred out somehow, she was silent at last. Barbara

imagined, however, that she was still over there, asleep in her own bed, and the

comforting fantasy made everything better.

"Good night .... "

"Wait a minute. You can't go anywhere looking like that," Barbara's mother said.

She was right.

57

Barbara had been going into town just to get away for a few hours-near/far away, she

could see where she wanted to go-but Mother was right. She was still in her nightgown,

and it was too small. It hurt. She'd have to change into something else as soon as the

car coming down the road had passed. Its headlights were too bright to do it here.

Then Barbara opened her eyes.

Young Bobby Adams, sleepy, sober, subdued looking, was standing beside the bed in

the light of the night lamp he had just turned on. He inspected her bonds carefully,

hand and foot, and then thoughtfully pulled the sheet up over her. Afterward he went

out to the kitchen. She could hear him rummaging around for a snack.

Oh, god, at least turn the light back off, she said.

58

3

The kids arrived earlier the next morning. Awake and squirming for hours, Barbara heard

them yelling their way through the woods, heard the morning's exchange of news on the

back steps and heard them come clumping into the kitchen. Anxiously, she watched them

fan into her room. She was frantic to be allowed some movement, and it was at the top of

her mind that she would not be allowed so much as a twitch if she frightened them. She lay

very still and very docile.

At once it was apparent that whatever else had happened in the twenty-four hours or so

that she had been captive, her jailers at least had lost their nervousness. To the extent that

this downgraded her in relation to the children, it was discouraging. To the extent that it

speeded things up, it was a godsend.

"Shall we do it the way we did yesterday?" John said.

"Yeah." Bobby was a little sleepy and out of tune, but he remained conscientious. "Only this

time, I'm going to put two turns of rope around her neck when she walks.',

"Why?"

"Oh,'-there was no malice in his tone-"it'd hurt more."

(Barbara agreed.)

"Let me pull her today." Paul's eyes darted with morning energy from Bobby to John.

59

"You don't pull. You just walk in front of her," Dianne said. "You only pull if she doesn't

follow."

"He wants to choke her." Cindy gave, for her, a

very sly and knowing smile.

"I do not!" "Do so."

"It's OK." Though he spoke to the bickerers, John turned his eyes squarely to the girl on

the bed. "Let him lead. He can. Bobby can follow; I don't care. Get the rope."

Far more quickly than yesterday, they had Barbara on her feet, elbows tied to her sides,

one hand tied up behind and almost between her shoulder blades, her ankles hobbled.

They were rougher, quicker, surer- they seemed to have no further fear that she might

somehow escape or overpower them-and Barbara made no resistance except that

when she finally sat up and before she stood up, she bent forward and eased her

hurting back a moment. This, they allowed her, and like any prisoner, she supposed,

she did not prolong her pleasure. She stood up stiffly; she moved as they wished; and

she cooperated fully. What had been humiliating and infuriating yesterday was simply

more expedient, less painful today. Moreover it avoided the futile defeat a one-handed

struggle would bring against

five determined youngsters.

�

Barbara began to realize how people could be broken. It would be just the way you read

about it in books. Everything would be brought down to the tiniest little pleasures

measured out by the cc. from the tiniest little eyedropper. Drop, pleasure; no drop,

misery. Someone else's hand would be on the little bulb, and you'd do anything to

please them. Even as the recognition occurred to her, moreover, she was padding out

of the room behind her captors.

They shuffled her to the bathroom where Dianne once more stood guard. Then they put

her in her chair with yards of cordage around her, and gave her the same breakfast of

cereal and juice except that they let her feed herself. Awkwardly. One hand was free

from 60

the elbow down, and she was gagged, of course. She had to bend and strain and more or

less slurp. Quite naturally she dribbled, and Dianne was there to wipe her gown as you

might wipe a baby's. She slid her hand inside the shortie top and held the cloth away so

that she could dab it with a dampened napkin. Barbara would have given up, bent over,

and wept for her own helplessness in all of this had it not been that she was now terribly

hungry and that this little meal was one of the pleasures she had been thinking about.

Afterward-and she pleaded for this-the children even allowed her to remain ungagged,

though her free hand was once again bound up with the other behind her back and the rag

and chloroform were left in plain sight to remind her of the children's power. It was another

little pleasure. Speech.

"Why are you doing it, Dianne?"

"Hrnnn?" Dianne' had finished her share of the morning's chores and settled down on

Barbara's bed (which she had neatly made) with her rather lewd book on ancient

practices--or so Barbara thought of it. When Barbara spoke, she looked up coolly.

"Me. Why are you keeping me tied up? Why did you do it in the first place?'' Barbara was

sitting faced away from Dianne, but she could see her in the vanity mirror.

"I don't know. It's only a game-s-" Dianne spoke offhandedly.

It stabbed Barbara. They did not know how much they were hurting her; even she did not

entirely know. It was only just beginning to pile up. Last night had been-appropriately-a

nightmare.

"It's only a game," Dianne said, "and besides, we aren't hurting you."

"You are, too," Barbara said, definitely.

"I haven't heard any crying and moaning and groaning."

"How could I?" "It isn't hard."

61

"How do you know?"

"The same way." Dianne continued to cradle her book though she had given up any

pretense of reading. "They've tied me up. Worse than you. We've all taken turns."

"You? The five of you? All of you?"

"Um." Dianne was nonchalant. "It's a game we used to play. One time I let them tie my

hands to a tree limb, and they left me there most all the afternoon. In the woods. That

really hurts."

"And that's a game?"

"Um." Dianne shrugged again.

"Where did you ever get the idea to do something silly like that?" Barbara almost said "like

this."

"I don't know. You see it on TV or in the comics." She looked down at her book. "Do you

know what people used to do when they were binding up the last sheaf of wheat in the fall

and somebody came by the threshing floor while they were doing it? You know what they

did to a king of England with a red-hot poker? Do you read very much in college?"

"Yes," Barbara yearned upward toward the ceiling and tried to stretch her shoulder

muscles. They had tied her overtight again. It hurt. Still, she was careful; at least, she

didn't have a gag in her mouth. "Not that, though."

"Oh." Dianne seemed disappointed. It was as if college wasn't going to be for her. "Anyhow,

playing Prisoner's not all that great an idea. You used to do stuff like that when you were

young yourself."

"No, I didn't.� Barbara wasn't used to being included in some older generation. It startled

her.

"Hmnn." Dianne barely made the sound at all, but she looked at the captive closely.

Barbara felt the scrutiny. Looking up into the mirror, she met Dianne's eyes. Perhaps

Dianne didn't believe her, or perhaps she did and thought it odd. Whatever the cause,

there was a degree of contempt in her look, and Barbara lowered her head and broke off

the match.

62

In fact, Dianne's question had started up a memory. Barbara had been raised in an apartment

building until nearly her senior year of high school. What she remembered now was an entire

and uncomfortable relationship with the other kids in the immediate-and crowded-

neighborhood. Specifically she remembered the whispering and sniggering of kids at one end

of the

-apartment parking lot at twilight after dinner in the summer, a low, confidential murmur that

dropped and turned to hostility if she approached. "Been helping your mother with the

dishes?" "Hey, Barb, what d'ya do for fun?" "I know what I'd like to do with her-" Guffaws in

the grand old manner.

If she had been walking toward them, inwardly anxious to be folded into the warmth of the

group that laughed and talked so intimately, this immediately repelled her. She might try to

face it out by asking one of the girls her age a question, or she might veer off and pretend to

be going somewhere else on an errand, but either way she would hear over her shoulder the

resumption of confidences and giggles.

They wanted her. She felt that boys and girls alike wanted her to do something or that they

wanted to do something to her, and afterward, form had it, she would be one of them. Barbara

didn't know what this suspected ritual act of initiation was-in her imagination, it was variously

any number of wild things-but she felt it would take place somewhere far from help, that it

would be in a crowd with a lot of snuggling up and hands on her body and the same knowing

sniggers the next day, and she knew that even if she forced herself to begin, she would cry or

get frightened in the middle of it and so wind up farther away from the group than now. Thus

the wall of privacy and selfness that the others wanted to break down in her was thickened.

She moved as closely to the other kids as she dared, but in the end she went her own sweet

and deliberately shining way. Barbara would not be dirtied. It wasn't anything that had been

taught her; it was just her own way.

63

"I don't know what the other kids did," she said to Dianne. "I never played that way."

Something of what Barbara had been thinking in her moment of silence-perhaps it was

conveyed simply by the set of her face=-seemed to reach Dianne. Her mirror image smiled a

faintly contemptuous smile, and Barbara thought how like one of the parking-lot gigglers

Dianne was at that.

At lunch they had been talking about her, though all they said, Barbara could not hear.

Afterward, when John came to take his tum at guard, he brought with him a certain tension

that quickly filled the space between them. It was so real that although she was still ungagged,

Barbara said nothing at first.

John came over and needlessly checked her ropes.

Then he moved to the room's other chair, which was out of her comfortable line of vision and

beyond the mirror's angle. Barbara heard him sit down, and then it was quiet again, except

that the room still held that tension.

After a while, Barbara turned her head back to the left and saw from the corner of her eye that

John was knotting one of the unused pieces of rope (it amazed her that there were any).

"What're you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure." He looked up, mildly surprised. "What did you think I was doing?"

Barbara frowned and faced forward again, definitely a little nervous now. There was something

in the air that just wouldn't go away. When John said or did nothing, however, she said, "John,

why're you doing this to me?"

"I don't know." He was quiet a long moment.

"We thought it'd be fun, I guess."

"Is it fun, hurting people?"

There was no answer, but the tension in the room tightened still more.

Barbara sighed. Yesterday the kids had not no-

64

ticed or cared that she hurt. Now she was telling them. It seemed to make no difference

one way or the other. What she could not understand was why-all right, so they were going

to go on with it-but why she couldn't raise even a hint of guilt or sympathy or fear of

punishment from any of them. Dianne was barely polite.

I just can't get through, Barbara thought. They don't care. In fact, I�m getting farther from

them all the time. But it isn't my fault, is it? Barbara thought about it for some minutes.

When you got right down to it, what did fault have to do with anything, anyhow? What she

wanted was results, relief. Maybe she had been embarrassing them. Taking a deep breath,

she contritely said, "I'm sorry, John. I won't ask you that anymore."

John seemed somewhat relieved. The tension in the room seemed to drop a degree. "Aw,

that's OK," he said, "there's nothing to be sorry about." When Barbara remained silent, he

said, "Is it too tight?"

There! Sympathy!

Barbara was astonished. She almost held her breath so that she wouldn't frighten the

discovery away. Something had happened. Something was happening; she could feel the

tension definitely lowering now. By accident, she had touched some control, and now the

situation was better/possible. But what was happening?

Think, Barbara said (as usual). It was there, it was just out there. No, I won't, she said. I

don't like it Nonetheless her mind like a piece of photographic paper received a pale

impression, and she suddenly saw a pattern in all of this. It seemed incredible for these

subteen and teen-aged children and yet the truth of the matter was that the kiddies had

fallen in love with Teacher and determined to play an erotic game with her. I don't believe

it, she said. But she did.

Children, pupils, students falling in love with their teachers-it was &.11 in something she'd

read for some course or other, nothing more than a footnote but there. Here. The feeling

she was getting from John, the

65

one she had not been able to understand when he came in, was in fact the same feeling

she got from older men who thought they just might have the chance to make her. It was

the thing of the party traps, the automobile traps, the arm around the shoulder traps-how

well she knew them, how carefully she avoided them (usually)-and here it was again.

Absolutely. No mistaking it at all.

Dear god, Barbara thought a little wildly, what now? If she continued to be complaining,

accusatory, aloof, it would spoil their game, she supposed, but would it make them tum her

loose? From somewhere inside her came a nice, neat answer: no. Where did that come

from? Old "Group Needs and Interaction?" From experience? Never mind. People and

animals in packs were socially merciless. What was more likely was if she continued the

way she was going, they'd tum angry and vengeful. Like the gang of children snow-balling

the odd-child-out on the playground, they'd punish her: as the parking-lot sniggerers had

never been able to do, these kids would make her play the game. But they couldn't,

Barbara Miller said to herself. Oh yes 'they could, said another voice within her, one that

sounded very much like Terry.

On the other hand, Barbara said, on the other hand ....

No. This was a direction in which her mind moved only with reluctance. The path of thought

was dark and impeded by a lifetime of avoidance.

On the other hand, Barbara still said, if I changed myself somehow, if I was a little bit more

like what they want me to be, what would happen then? She rapidly imagined herself

through the day or days ahead and thought that perhaps she saw a time when one of the

youngsters in a fondness then returned, would become sorry for her and let her go. After

all, Barbara said, what have I got to lose? �

Still a nicety held her back.

Deep inside of her in a place she delicately arid indistinctly located below her navel and

above her knees

66

(associations like that are Freudian, Terry always said) was another, separate and very

neatly independent Barbara who had always been there. Not unusual. Not unusual at all

if what Barbara read in her psych courses was even nearly right. Over the years,

Barbara had located, recognized and isolated this shadow self that she called Sexy

Barbara.

To the extent that Sexy Barbara had individual existence at all, she appeared as a

slightly slipped image of the self that necessarily followed but did not always exactly

obey her mistress. Where real Barbara conventionally waited for love to find her, Sexy

Barbara was almost anxious to try sex and adventure for themselves. Where rea1

Barbara went her own way believing that her essential worth and merit would

eventually be discovered, Sexy Barbara bleached real Barbara's short hair: darkened

her eyebrows and lashes, chose padded bras, shortened her skirts, walked in a certain

way at certain times and for certain other people. She invited closer investigation.

The way it came out, Sexy Barbara-everything mock-adult, mock-dangerous, mock-

heavy-was a plain hazard to have around, and the relationship between the two Ms.

Millers had to be clear all the time. Real Barbara controlled, and Sexy Barbara was forci-

bly submerged, a willful creature who day- and night dreamed and occasionally slipped

out to be a trouble. Now, however, Sexy Barbara might be just what was needed.

If Freedom Five liked Barbara the way she was now, if John had a thing on about her,

what in the world would they think of Sexy Barbara? What would the chemistry be?

Well, anyhow, her mind was made up about it. The only problem was that after a

lifetime of suppression, Sexy Barbara wasn't the easiest thing in the world to just turn

on. Besides, she didn't respond to everyone anymore than did Barbara herself. Oh, well.

These rather complicated considerations did not, of course, come to Barbara as any

neat, little mental essay. The component ideas were there, they had been 67

there forever, and they simply flashed into a vague plan. She went from insight to surprise

to possibility to conclusion in a very few seconds. Her only question to herself was, Can I?

"Is it too tight?" John said it again as if somehow he was now the one who had offended her.

Barbara made several experimental, anguished, twisting movements in her chair and

permitted herself the smallest sound of someone in pain. She felt rather , amateurish

about it, but it was a beginning. "Yes," she said, and said it very meekly.

John dropped the rope he had been fiddling with and sat up indecisively. Perhaps he was

even timid.

"Come feel for yourself. Please, John."

He got up and came over behind her. "What is it?

Your hands?"

She was able to use the vanity mirror to both bend down away from him physically-as if in

fear? pain?-and yet look up at him through her eyelashes (unfortunately not made-up).

"Mostly," she said. "Couldn't you loosen up just a little bit or untie one hand and let me

move it around and get some circulation? You're going to really hurt me badly if you keep

this up."

John could see that this was true, Only her one wrist had been free that morning and now it

was tacked up behind her again. Besides, keeping her sitting up had been his own idea.

"Hmnn-" He considered and savored a bit. "Think of something, please? I couldn't get

away if I wanted."

"OK," he said with magnanimity. Going to where he had been sitting, he brought back the

spare piece of rope and bound her upper body more securely to the chair back. Then,

however, he released her wrists, both of them, one by one.

"Oh! Oh-h-h-" The sound she made was sincere enough. There had been rope on her wrists

almost without relief for over thirty-six hours. As she disbelievingly allowed her hands to

fall by her sides, it was

68

like when she was a child and her hands were cold from playing in the snow and burned

when she came in the house. Blood seemed to rocket straight out to the ends of her fingers

and pulse there. She flexed gently and brought her hands up to her lap where she could

see them (rope around her body prevented her from doing more). They were red splotched

with little white freckles in the palms and blue veins on top, and there were deep indents in

the wrists where the cord had been.

If her complaint was real, however, the accompanying gestures were not. She closed her

eyes and bit her lower lip and furrowed her forehead. Unfortunately she was not an actress

and could not cry on demand. It was outcby enough (a term they used on the swim team),

but it wasn't going to kill her nor could she pretend that it would.

"Umnn-" She tried to stroke her sore bands, but one would not quite reach the other.

"What is it?"

"The blood's starting to run back. It burns." She moved her fingers like someone rubbing

sand or powder between them.

"Is it better, though?"

"Yes." She bit her lip again. Bravely this time. Impulsively, even daringly, John reached

down

and took one of her free hands in his and began massaging the inside of her wrist. -

"Ow!"

"Does it hurt?"

"No." In fact, it did. What her hands really needed was just to be let alone, but she did not

say it. "That's nice, but be gentler. Please?" She looked up at him briefly and then lowered

her eyes again. She made an effort to relax. That was going to be the nicest, softest, most

maidenly hand that any boy ever stroked, even if it killed her. It worked, and after a while,

he took her other hand and chafed some color back into it. Such a game could not go on

forever, however.

At length he stood back. "What about your legs?"

69

Sexy Barbara looked up at him demurely, and he colored a bit.

"Oh, I see. Only my ankles. The comer of the chair legs-" In the morning, Bobby had tied

her upper legs together above the knees and then tied each foot out to its own chair leg,

and the chair legs were uncompromisingly square and sharp (to her). This, John proceeded

to change, eyes discreetly upon his work which nonetheless seemed to go slowly. He untied

each ankle and then retied them-Ioosely-_together in front of her but not to the chair. She

could swing her legs up and down like a child in a swing if she wanted to, but she did not.

Afterward he slightly eased the rope about her bare knees.

During all of this, Barbara-both Barbaras-had the opportunity to examine her captor more

closely. He was, as she had noticed straight along, a manly boy but more manly than she

had taken the time to see before. He had strong, suntanned shoulders and arms, smooth

and babylike perhaps, but definitely developed. And he was a clean boy with none of the

acrid smells she associated with men on the make. He was like a big, strong pup.

No, stop that, Barbara said. The whole mental sequence, her entire imagined conversation

with Terry came back to her. You don't tum people into bunny rabbits. They are people;

John is nearly a man. He's bigger than I am, stronger than I am, and he can do a lot of

things to me that I can't stop--now. And why stop it, Sexy Barbara said.

Sexy Barbara, indeed, allowed herself to be handled with grace and opportunism (such as

was allowed her). She flexed her toes and rubbed her feet-sole on top of top-together when

she was free, and docilely pressed her heels together when he retied them. She moved her

legs together as if there was pleasure when he eased the line above her knees-actually,

she could barely feel the difference-and sighed with gratefulness when he was done. There

was truthfulness in this, and there was manliness in John.

70

Moreover John Randall seemed to have a streak of kindness in him. After the preceding day

and a half, he was the only one who had now gone out of his way to help her. Both

Barbaras found this his most endearing trait. While she was not any more free--she could

not have gotten free in a month of uninterrupted labor-she was suddenly in a state

approaching endurability, and she was making progress.

"Thank you, John." Sexy Barbara flashed him another calculatedly shy look from beneath

eyelashes and

held up her right hand a bit.

-

For a moment he seemed about to shake it, but at the last instant, he clumsily squeezed

her fingers as he had seen polite adults do. There was about it a touch of the minuet. "You

can stay that way while I'm here," he said.

"That'll be nice," Barbara said. "Wait a minute don't go away."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"I mean, don't go over there in the corner where I can't see you. Stay here and talk to me."

"Well ... what about?"

"Anything," Sexy Barbara said. "Just don't leave me alone."

John wavered. Then he sat down on the dresser, one leg along the top, one leg extended

1

down to sup-

port himself.

"Well ... where do you go to school?'' "Here. Bryce High."

"Junior?"

�:

"Next year. I mean, next month." "Do you go out for sports?" "Yeah, football."

"Do you get to play?"

"I played JV last year. I'm supposed to go up to varsity now."

"Do you like it?"

"I dunno." He shrugged. "It gives you something else to think about."

"You ought to be good at it. You're big enough."

71

"Pm not very fast." Nonetheless John accepted

the compliment with a faint coloring.

"Do you go steady?" "No."

"Do you have a girl you like?' "Well ... yeah, I guess so." "What's her name?"

"Sue," he said. 'Susan." "What's she like?"

"It's hard to just say. Usual, I guess. Brown hair." "Does she know you like her?"

"I suppose so. I've taken her to a couple of the school dances. We go to the movies

sometimes. It's pretty dull being stuck down here all the time. There's not much to do."

"Oh." Barbara paused, somewhat defeated. During the silence, she twisted back and forth

several times in a way that emphasized her (unfortunately) not-large breasts.

"Is it still too tight?"

"Oh ... I guess I'm all right." Tiredly.

''When you're at college, do you go steady?" John

became a little more sympathetic.

"No, not really." ''Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I don't want to." Since this was not quite correct, she amended it. "I

mean, nobody's asked me to that I like enough. Anyhow it's more fun to go with a lot of

different people."

"Yeah," he was unconvinced. "What do you do on dates?"

"Well . . . unless there's something big going on somewhere over the weekend, I guess we

do about the same things you do. Get off campus, go downtown for dinner. Have a few

drinks at a place where everybody likes to hang out. Go to dances. You know."

"Does everybody have a car?" "A lot of them do."

"I wish I did." And then as if the thought instantly

72

gave rise to another, he said, "Do they try to kiss you afterward?"

Barbara looked up quickly and caught him faintly blushing again at what he must

consider boldness. Found out, however, John did not give in to his shyness. He

continued to wait for his answer with interest, and it was Barbara who dropped her eyes

first.

Looking down at her useless hands lying beside her bare legs, she actually felt her

femaleness in relation to John no longer a matter of amusement or disbelief. It had

taken Sexy Barbara only a few minutes to prove suspicion right. The youngsters-this

one, at any rate--most definitely did regard her as having a sex, and from old habit, she

stiffened slightly. Enough of the come-on.

"Some of them do," she said with what of a shrug

she could manage.

"Do you let them?" "No."

"Really? Never? Not even when you were in high school? We do."

"Well ... ," Barbara was forced to nod. "Every once in awhile if it's someone I really like."

"I thought you didn't like any one person very much."

"Oh, you know," she said shortly, "what I mean is nice boys. Some of them are so-" She

made a wry face. "It's like wrestling a bear or something."

"Wrestling?" John was curious and interested. "Not wrestling. Just . . . grabbing and

pawing.

Girls don't like that," she said. "I hate it."

"Can I kiss you?"

"No, John, I don't want to." "Why?"

"It's silly. It doesn't mean anything that way." "Yes, it does."

''How can it?"

"Well-I like you-"

"Ah." There were a great many directions in which Barbara suddenly did not want to

see this little

73

conversation develop, and in self-defense and puzzlement she fell silent.

- "Are you mad or something?"

"No," Barbara said quickly. "No. Really. It's ..� nice. I'm glad you like me but. ... "

"You still don't want to."

"Well, it's not very romantic for me"-she was a

little short-"like this."

"You couldn't stop me." "That makes it worse."

John slid to his feet and stood beside her and very much over her.

Barbara turned and looked the other way but said nothing. It was suddenly very quiet-to

her, at any rate. She expected any second for him to put the moves on her, grab her hair,

pull at her gown-it could be anything-and she decided not to make a fuss. He was right;

she couldn't stop him anyhow.

Instead, however, she felt him take her wrist and pull it around behind the back of the chair

again. "Give me your other hand."

"Oh, John, no. Please." "Give it to me."

"I don't want to. Please! It's early yet." "All right, then, don't give it to me."

"Ouch! Ow! I will, I will. But don't make it so

tight. You're doing it worse than it was."

"No, I'm not."

"But my hands are sore now .... " "I can't help it."

"Please stop. You can kiss me if you want to. I don't mind."

He had begun tightening the rope around her body and the chair. When he spoke, he

hesitated only a second and then went on with his work. Afterward and silently, he retied

her ankles to the cornered legs of the chair, cinching up on them vengefully.

Ouch, Barbara said. Damn. I pushed him away and made him mad. He's just like a man, or

men are just like children. They try and grab you and kiss you

74

and run their hand up under your dress with that terribly randy look in their eyes, and you

might even let them if it weren't for green teeth braces or pimples or if a kiss would get rid

of them. The trouble is, Barbara said, a kiss never ends anything but an old movie. Quite

the contrary, she had found out: it was a place to begin with the other hand coming around

under your breast and fumbling with buttons and all the rest. And if you stopped them,

they went back to the frat house or wherever and called you frigid or did something mean

when they got the chance. Men had just one use for women, and women-Barbara, most

certainly-wanted so much more.

She watched John stand up, obviously satisfied with his work. He hurt me, he is hurting me,

that'll teach me. She thought. Moreover, he wouldn't kiss me now if I begged him. I'm dirt.

Instead he's going to let me learn my lesson well, hours of it. Barbara would have liked to

do any number of womanish things-slam doors, yell, throw something at him, slap him-but

none, of course, were possible. Instead she bowed her head, chastised, and weakly said,

"I'm sorry, John." The tone of her voice was very soft and nice, but it didn't regain anything.

Instead he was the silent one now. He stood looking her over-Barbara did not raise her

head but she could feel it--on an almost inch-by-inch basis. After a long while, he said, "I'll

be back later." Quickly, Barbara heard him out in the living room, rummaging around in Dr.

Adams' liquor cabinet. Although he had not done anything like it so far, he was obviously

going to take a drink and get himself into a teen-aged mood, So much for Sexy Barbara's

activities.

I could never be a sexy person, anyhow, Barbara said. I just don't like what happens when

everybody gets going like that.

An hour later, when Cindy came in so that he could take a swim, John's conversation with

Barbara no longer seemed as disappointing to him as it had.

75

Unaccustomedly expansive after several ounces of Scotch, he even considered the talk

something of a success. Pulling on the chopped-off jeans he used for swimming, he reviewed

the afternoon with even a degree of satisfaction.

It was as good as yesterday. Again he had felt the new, the still heady mixture of the girl's

submissiveness and his own mastery, but today he had used that mastery. He bad discovered

that he could tie and untie her, himself. It changed a lot.

John did not think these thoughts out in sequential manner, but he understood what he had

learned well enough. For favors which he was able to give, she more or less had to consent to

being handled. For things he wanted which she could give; he could withhold his favors. That

the favor to be traded was the giving or taking away of pain-he had no doubt that she was

right: it hurt-was a very interesting bonus The most clear kind of power. As with yesterday, he

felt that he had lived through, been shown something terribly fundamental and important, not

simply about himself and Barbara, but about life itself.

Swinging out the kitchen door and jogging down the steps, he paused a moment at the bottom

loosely swinging his towel in one band. It was another burning afternoon, summer-humid and

hazy, the kind of day that usually produced thunderstorms in the evening but had not done so

now for over a month. At his feet, brown, hard-shelled insects jumped and buzzed through the

weeds, busy at trying to survive their baked existence. There wasn't a breeze nor the hope of

one. Everything seemed hanging and waiting, but he hardly noticed it.

Tomorrow he might leave Barbara gagged or he might not. She was a dumb person to talk to

anyhow: he preferred her muffled sounds and eye movements to her words by far. In any event

tomorrow he would bargain far more shrewdly. If she wished more freedom, she would really

have to beg for it: if she wished to be ungagged, she would also have to be kissed. And other

76

things. As the interesting details of these adventures to come eased through his mind, John

Randall understood that he was making progress. Progress toward what, however?

John's sex education had been sufficiently liberal and vivid that he knew-in theory at least-

exactly what the act of sexual intercourse involved. When in imagination, he approached

the matter flat-footed, straight out--call it fucking (a word that actually, somewhat

embarrassed him)-his mind imposed a near mythic taboo. He was not exactly afraid, but

the act was something that lay ahead in a not-now time. Moreover he expected that once it

had been done the first time, some cataclysmic change would come over the world and

that nothing would ever be the same again.

To ease the slight pall this thought brought over the otherwise successful afternoon, he

broke into a trot across the field, leaped down the sandy bank, crossed the river beach in

two strides and threw himself out across the water in a shallow surface dive. The brown,

tepid water closed over him and burst back again, cooling but not entirely erasing his mild

foreboding.

Afterward, p1easant1y winded from a short but furious swim, he waded up the beach and

stood toweling off near Paul and Bobby. "Aren't you going in?"

"We've been." "Where's Dianne?" �

"She's putting the laundry in the dryer. We have to go pretty soon .... "

"Yeah. We'll have to move her again."

"That's easy." Bobby stretched out on his back and looked up at the sky. "She can't get

away anymore, anyhow."

"Yeah." Paul twitched unconsciously. John sat down and was quiet.

After a while, Bobby sighed. "This is boring." "What?"

"This. Her. AH of it," he sat up impatiently.

"I think it's neat." Paul twitched again. "How 77

many kids you know have ever done something like it?"

"What's the point, though? Move her here, move her there, feed her, and do the same

thing over again the next day."

"I think it's fun."

"What's fun? You don't have to sit up half the night every night."

"Well, OK. Not that part maybe." Paul leaned over and began to draw idly in the sand with

his finger. "But what'd be tough would be if we could do all the things you do to real

prisoners."

"Like what?" John said.

"Aw-w-w, like we used to pretend. You know.

Only really. Take off all her clothes ... and whip her and stuff like that." He let his voice trail

off nervously.

"We can't do that," Bobby said. "I don't know why not. Really."

"Yes, you do. We're in enough trouble as it is." "What do you want to do with her? Turn her

loose? Then you'd really find out what trouble was."

"Anyhow, how would you do it?" John said care-

fully.

-

"Easy."

"How?"

"Scissors." For all its pinched and twisted features, Paul's small face took on a look of

angelic radiance. He was imagining things.

"What?" Bobby said.

"Scissors. Dianne has it all figured out." Paul began one of his rapid-paced, squirming

explanations. The angelic expression faded to one of intensity. "When we come in the

morning, she's all spread out and tied up, right? And before we untie her, Dianne just cuts

the things over her shoulder and along the side and ... and ... opens her up." His pupils

seemed to grow tiny and bright.

"Aw, she wears underpants, too. I've seen 'em." "It's the same thing. Two sides."

"Yeah. Maybe." John admired.

78

"Then what? What'd Dianne say?" I

"Nothing. But we could think of the rest."

Bobby, looking at John, became suddenly unhappy. He assumed his father's thoughtful

frown again, more so because John seemed to be entertaining the idea. John seemed silly

and far off.

"But after that," Paul was encouraged by the silence, "we could do all other kinds of cool

stuff to her . . . " He stopped. They had all played together for several years. They knew

what he meant.

"No, you couldn't," Bobby said. "It'd make everything twice as bad as it already is."

"Why not?" All the world of his odd imagination seemed open to Paul at the minute. He saw

things the other two could not.

"Shut up," Bobby said. "Dianne said that-" "Shut up!"

"John?" Paul appealed for help.

John avoided his glance and scowled across the river for a moment. Since they had all first

become a gang together, he had been the leader. He was the biggest, strongest, and he

had lived in the neighborhood the longest.

Among the things John had gradually learned to accept, however, was that he seldom led,

that is, invented the things to do. The whole thing was really like following from ahead. You

sort of knew what everybody wanted, what was going to happen anyhow, so for better or

worse, you gave it a reason for occurring, helped it to become. Further, John had learned-

and in this, he self-confessed a certain lack of imagination-that if no suggestion or solution

appeared, you simply pulled your chin and looked gravely down at the ground. Someone

else came up with the proper idea.

In this case, it was Paul-how often it seemed to be Paul-who, for being younger and

possibly less embarrassed by what he was saying, had put into words exactly what John

vaguely wanted but dared not face alone. Moreover the suggestion came complete with a

79

plan-Dianne would do it, John and Paul would help if necessary, Cindy would stay out of the

way-and that left only Bobby. There was a peculiar air of fate about the whole thing, as if

from the first day they saw Barbara, they knew they were going to capture her, as if from

that moment on, they had been moving toward this further heightening of the adventure.

At this, the faintest worry clouded John's thoughts, and yet what he must say and do was

somehow foregone. Choice, if it ever existed, had simply slipped away.

"We'll have to make some new rules," he said finally.

"When?"

"About what?" Bobby was negative. "After Dianne takes off her clothes."

"What kind of rules?" Paul went into a trembling

spasm.

"Wait a minute .... "

"Well, we still have to watch her-stand guard." "Sure .... "

"But we ought to-be able to say what we want, and everybody should help. You know, like

if you want her gagged when it's your turn, OK. If you don't, OK. If you want her in the

chair, OK, and if you want her. in bed or anything else, OK. What the person guarding

wants, we all agree to. And we help. If you want the door closed, OK."

"The door?" "Hers-Barbara's." "Why close the door?"

"Just if you want to," John shrugged. "No!" Bobby jumped to his feet.

"No, what?"

"You're not going to get Cindy'n me in any more trouble."

"It's the same for everybody."

"No, it isn't. It's my house and my parents and my-" He waved his hands in exasperation.

"It's our sitter. If it wasn't for me, we wouldn't be doing this at all and you're not going to

take off anybody's clothes." 80

"Dianne is."

"No, she isn't either!"

"Who's going to stop it, then?', When he got to his own feet, John's size and weight

advantage over Bobby were unarguable. For a second, they stood face to face.

� "Let me alone!" Before a blow was struck, Bobby quailed. Tears of anger and

frustration made him blink and brush his eyes. "Let me alone now!"

"I haven't touched you.',

"Then get away from me. This is my beach, tool" "Well, are you going to help us then?',

"No!" Ducking to the side, Bobby suddenly ran across the sand toward the bank.

"Get him!" Paul did a little dance of excitement. John caught Bobby as he tried' to

scramble upward and dragged him back down on the beach, kicking and screaming.

After a short wrestle, he got Bobby's arm twisted around behind his back and gave it a

hard tweak. He got Bobby's face down in the sand and held it there. It made him less

noisy.

Bobby began blubbering harder. "Ouch! Damn it, stop it, John. You don't have to do it

that hard. Ow-ww-w! Please.',

"Down then. Shut up."

Bobby lowered his face right on the sand and quieted, hurting badly.

"Now, are you going to help us or not?" "No--yes-s-s!-no. I can't, John. Don't make me."

He was sobbing now.

For the second time that afternoon, John felt a sense of cosmic power. The only

difference was that this time, it frightened him a little, and he slowly eased up on

Bobby. There had been the barest moment when if Bobby had stood between him and

Barbara, he might actually have hurt him. At length John even released him.

Bobby rolled over slowly and sat, sobbing and cradling his arm in his lap and trying to

get the sand out of his eyes at the same time. John and Paul sat on 81

their heels and watched him cry himself out. It took a while.

"What are you going to do? Give all this up?"

Paul said.

"Nope," John said, "we'll just have to make him a prisoner, too."

Bobby looked up now. Both their faces were slightly wolfish, and it was apparent that they

were ready to pounce. Somewhat like Barbara, Bobby was no fool for his age. The notion

that they could take virtually everybody captive and do everything was out of the question.

"Everybody" was a terribly vague thing: however, to him, they could do it, even to Cindy,

and a lot of bad things could happen before it got better. Memory of Paul's cruel streak

alone made him more afraid of Freedom Five than of any adult power ever to come.

''Make up your mind. Hurry up." Bobby sighed, still sniffling a little.

"OK, get the rope, Paul. I'll watch him." "No, wait a minute ... "

"What?"

''OK, OK, I'll do it. I'll help you."

Paul dropped back on his heels, a little disappointed.

"No telling lies and then letting her go by yourself some night?"

"No."

"Because if you do, when everything's blown over, we're really going to get you."

"Yeah. OK," Bobby said dispiritedly. Something of the sort had been going through his mind.

"But I'm still scared."

Paul gave a yell of triumph and leaped to his feet "Man, this is really neat!"

"Yeah, all right," John sighed and rose, too. "We can talk to Dianne about it on the way

home."

Bobby-humiliated, still sitting, still cradling his arm (it still hurt like hell), still occasionally

brushing tears and sand from his eyes--encountered the

82

dilemma so known to adults and so unknown and even unsuspected by him-conflicting

loyalties. On the one hand, he had promised to do what he knew he must do to survive-be

loyal to the kids, to Freedom Five-while on the other, the same pledge had committed him

to see and accept the stripping and humiliation of someone from the adult world (Barbara

was certainly that) to which he owed equal loyalty.

Well, there was that other thing.

Bobby liked Barbara, and she wasn't entirely just "adult." He liked her for reasons unknown

to himself, but then he did and that was that. In submitting to loyalty to Freedom Five to

escape pain and punishment directed from them toward himself, he had equally submitted

her to their whims.

Bobby Adams did not know what manly meant nor did he remotely know what unmanly

meant. In not letting John break his arm, in agreeing to everything, in abandoning Barbara,

in not sharing her fate, Bobby Adams had done something that made him extremely

ashamed and sad. He did not know why. It was sensible not to let yourself be hurt, and it

was senseless to let Barbara get hurt, and the two arguments collided. Hegel had a

thought on the matter, but Bobby Adams had never heard it and would little understand it

if he had.

What Barbara thought of as her second night in captivity-actually it was the third, but she

had been unconscious Sunday night-began about four-thirty in the afternoon when the

McVeigh children and John Randall were ready-to go home for supper. Then, with their

endless caution-each of her limbs was always tied to something or other-they fed her, got

her to bed spread-eagled, and bound her tightly again. Afterward began the impossible

hours between daylight and her distant release into troubled sleep, hours when she could

only look up at the ceiling and mark the slow fading of August twilight. -

During the forty some hours that she had been a 83

prisoner, Barbara had passed far beyond shock or injured dignity. Her mind, if not her

active body, accepted the idea that there would be no early escape or release now. She

was the it of a children's game that had not run its course yet and might well become

worse. The matter was simply how to endure.

Of the two main problems, the first was mental, of course. In her survey psych course

at school, she had heard the classic example of the prisoner in the round gray room

with nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see, nothing to attract his attention-the

ancient case of the man who went insane from boredom. Her own situation, she

considered neatly parallel. Her room at the Adams' was neither round nor unfurnished,

but with the ever-humming air conditioner and the pale curtains covering the window, it

was dimly and evenly lit at the brightest time of day. Moreover, the walls were a light

blue which could easily be considered gray if you wished it. To further the similarity,

while the textbook prisoner could at least move-amuse himself with the flow of sinew

and muscle-she was forbidden even this distraction. The challenge to the normal, in-

telligent person not to go mad was strikingly real.

With-for her-unaccustomed objectivity, she realized that she spent most of her time in

fantasy. From the beginning she had been able to imagine the voice and, at times, the

person of her roommate, Terry. Last night Terry had been quite real, .but there had been

a wall between them even then-Barbara here, Terry there. Now the wall thinned: it was

easier tonight than last night to call Terry forth, and when she came, she was no longer

in their room at school but almost here, almost real.

Pretty soon, she'll start coming here without my asking, and I'll really be out of it,

Barbara thought.

The longer she remained a captive, however, the more fantasies crowded in with Terry

and the more real they were. Barbara was doing laps in the pool, and it was so vivid

that she could feel the curdly water resisting as she kicked, could smell the chlorine and

84

hear the echoes around the pool building. She was in her room at home, and it was last

week again; her mother had put flowers on the dresser, and they were pretty. She was

at the Refugee Bar, and Ted was buying her a beer and talking long and seriously about

trying to get a job abroad. In detail, in color, feel, smell, and taste, the pictures of her

normal life crowded in and, being more interesting than her present immobility, claimed

equal reality with the actual world. Moreover, they cascaded, toppled, spilled -across

her mind out of sequence, out of context, even simultaneously until her head hurt with

the many attentions required of it. The mind, deprived of normal stimulus, was be-

ginning to create its own out of itself.

If they keep me here long enough, they'll have a real tripper on their hands, she

thought. Wild imaginings of a female Rip Van Winkle emerging back into the world, out

of time, out of place, invaded her imagination. Aloud-within the mind-she said, No, stop

that! And like startled birds, her fantasies scattered into air only to perch again nearby,

in the safe, dim periphery of active thought.

Mingled with this totally mental struggle, � was a second-the physical.

The mind, of course, received messages from the body-- Teacher bad studied that well

enough. In the case of being prisoner, however, she found these messages to be of a

new and unknown kind. Held fast, unmoving, suddenly stopped after twenty years of

waking and even sleeping action-willful, selfish, unhindered movement-the body

became capable of panic of its own. Yesterday, last night, she had been seized with

spasms of irrational, physical, non-thought terror in which her arms and legs wrenched

at ropes that her mind knew would not give. It produced needless pain, tightened loops

which would remain tight until they were untied hours later, and yet as well as she

recognized this, she still could not stop her body's fearing movements.

This afternoon, this evening, she seemed to have

85

gained some control over these struggles. Occasionally, she was still overwhelmed by the

desire to break ropes, push down walls, demolish houses, sweep away all physical

restraints with the irresistible swing of gloriously free arms, free legs. With effort and

attention, however, she was able to restrain herself. Biting down on the rag between her

teeth, she willed herself to lie quietly. In this enforced motionlessness, however, came

another sensation.

Emanating from the body, inarticulate, thoughtless and blind, it nonetheless arose within

her. Mankind's grip on life, on nature, is secured only by unceasing alertness, thought and

action. Stopped, held fast, we watch helplessly as the weeds and jungle creep back in over

the land, as the home untended falls to rot, as the garden unwatered withers to straw.

Made prisoner, isolated, held immobile, we lose our claim on, our place in life and begin to

sink.

Barbara, of course, thought little enough about mankind, gardens and a11 that

Nonetheless she understood it all. In willing herself to stillness, she felt the bed beneath

her back grow cold, as if she were lying on a black, tidal flat whose slowly rising tides

would climb until they drowned her and took her back into nothingness again.

This thought, more frightening than the loss of mental control, brought her close to tears

she could not cry with a gag in her mouth. I can't, she said, not caring which of the terrors

she defied. I just can't let go.

Against this and from another side of her mind came the interrupting thought, I'm free

when I�m asleep. And she prayed for sleep which was many hours away in exhaustion.

As the evening grew darker, it became more sullen. The trees drooped; an early dew

developed; and it became still enough to hear the wing whir of swifts and bats hunting in

the deepening dusk. At full dark, nervous spasms of heat lightning flared back and forth

above the trees, the silent river, and the fields beyond.

86

Briefly illuminated by these glows, heavy black clouds stood down the distant bay

toward the ocean to the east. The giants were walking again.

Sitting alone on the back steps, barefoot, ragamuffin, knees and elbows together, chin

on palms, Cindy watched the growing fullness of night with ancient unease. Now that

she was ten, Cindy was no longer afraid of lightning and thunder as such, yet they still

reminded her of the time when she was little and when, in the second's flash of

lightning, she always thought she saw the dim forms of nameless, terrible gods stalking

across the sky. In the next moment their eyes might fall on her, their great strides crush

her into the earth. She had cried and demanded much comforting.

Now, these things better understood, she endured squalls and storms as well as

anyone-outwardly. Giants in the sky, there were none. But on those nights, there was

something abroad in the world, something always there but rarely seen by eye. In the

approach of thunder, wind, and rain, she remembered it coming and she remembered

crying.

Tonight she felt the giants might not come. The amber, faraway play of lightning was

dim and remote. Nonetheless, she was lonely. The older kids had been gone for hours;

she and Bobby had eaten; and he was trying to sleep until his watch. Television was

more boring than ever, and she was left by herself to watch the night in blackness. The

responsibility and solitariness were unendurable. She lifted her head and put her palms

down on the step restlessly. How to escape freedom?

The answer was the same now as on the more gentle night before: Barbara.

Though she was not as spoiled as people thought-indeed she was as spoiled or as

obedient as she thought the traffic would bear-still Cindy knew with a child's certainty

that while one foot was planted in her life and doings, the other was firmly anchored in

the adults' distant world. She depended upon it and wished it so, particularly when she

felt like this. And

87

when the problem was solvable-as now-it was frustrating not to be allowed to do anything.

John and Dianne and Bobby and Paul might move Barbara as they would, but Cindy could

only watch. Her own existence within the group, in fact, was based on the understanding

that all she could do was watch. Thus Barbara, dearer to her than to any of them, was just

as removed as if she were the one in Europe. This, too, was unendurable, and with her

mind half on the grumbling evening and half on her own needs, Cindy imagined what she

might do.

No more than Bobby did she dare turn Barbara loose. No more than John or Dianne would

she move her alone. Still-if Barbara agreed-she might remove the gag and at least talk to

her, and that's all she really wanted just this minute. It was a dangerous thing; it was

daring; and yet without it, how could Cindy live until it was time for Bobby to take over?

With resolution, even with a smile, Cindy rose and entered the kitchen with a screen-

banging crash.

Barbara was awake.

At the quiet click of the overhead light, she blinked her eyes and turned them toward

Cindy, who in turn assured herself that all was safe, that the prisoner was still imprisoned.

This silent, if mutual acknowledgment completed, Cindy walked to the side of the bed and

then, with sudden courage, sat down on its edge,

her hands in her lap.

-

There was a brief moment in which child and girl, captor and captive, met with eyes and

attention. Then Cindy said, "Are you awake?"

Nod-yes.

"Do you want to talk?"

Barbara did nothing for a moment. She could not shrug, but after a bit she tossed her head

in an imitation of I don't care.

The gesture seemed weary, and Cindy suddenly felt sorry for her. Nonetheless, Cindy's

problem came first. "Will you make a lot of noise if I take off your gag?"

88

Tired nod-no.

Cindy reached up to the back of her own head and, taking a curl of her own short hair,

twined it around her finger sensuously. She smiled, "Will you let me put it back when we're

through?"

Yes-yes. A nod, a nod.

Cindy hesitated just another moment, feeling both frightened and daring, righteous and

naughty. Then she leaned down over Barbara. "OK, turn your head a little .... " Putting her

small fingers on Barbara's cheek, she managed to get her nails under the adhesive tape

and pull. It was something she had seen the older kids do, but until this minute, she had

never realized how sticky the tape was and how Barbara's skin pulled up with it.

Nonetheless she persisted, and slowly, slowly, the adhesive strap came away until it parted

from the other side of Barbara's face.

"Umnn-" Barbara opened her mouth and at least partially disgorged the scrap of folded

terry cloth she was forced to accept each time they gagged her.

It looked disgusting to Cindy-it was like some obscene, unknown-to-children bodily

function-and yet she daintily reached down and pulled it out and laid it aside on the night

table. Barbara licked her lips.

"Are you OK?"

"No. I'm stiff. I hurt all over," Barbara tried to shift the smallest bit and obviously could not.

"Just untie me."

"I'm sorry-" and Cindy truly was. They looked at each other a minute,

"Well, I'm hungry." Since the children had never cared about this, Barbara said it in a bored

voice. "Thirsty."

"We've eaten everything that's good-Dianne's going to shop for us tomorrow-but I can

make you a peanut-butter sandwich and a Coke."

Barbara sighed. "OK?"

"OK."

Cindy rose and went to the door. There she

89

turned primly and said, "Would you like jelly with the peanut butter?"

"Fine. Anything."

In the kitchen, Cindy self-importantly fulfilled her promise, and neatly. The realization that

adults would not be in to clean up after her was gradually imbuing her with a sense of

proprietorship. Cindy was for the moment mistress of the house and keeper of the prisoner. It

was a demanding role. When she had made the sandwich, she put the bread, jelly, peanut

butter, and knife away and wiped up the crumbs. She put the Coke in a glass with a bendable

straw and everything together on a little tray her mother used if someone was ill and had to

eat in bed. Returning to Barbara's room, she was even somewhat proud of herself.

There was a great deal of clearing things and making room for the tray and adjusting of the

light. Finally she said, "What do you want first, the sandwich or the Coke?"

Barbara drank greedily and then ate a little more slowly, Cindy administering to her as if she

were a child. After a few sips and bites, they had everything worked out tidily-no crumbs, no

spills. When they were done, Cindy carried the tray back to the kitchen, but there she

abandoned her neatness. She just banged the tray on the counter and ran back to Barbara's

room. This was fun! Or, at least, it was something. It would've been more fun if they could just

have sort of sat cross-legged on the bed and talked like real friends or sisters or something

instead of this.

"Does it really hurt that much, being tied up all the time?" Cindy sat down gently on the edge

of the bed.

"Yes.',

"I thought so." Cindy frowned as if confirmed in some private suspicion of her own that had

been nagging her. "It does me, too," she said, "or it did."

"You?"

"When we used to play that way. I didn't do it much, but once in a while they let me go with

them."

90

"Where?"

"In the woods, down in the tenant house, wherever they wanted to play Prisoner."

"They did it to you, too? You must have been too little."

"Yeah," Cindy agreed. "But everybody took turns-it was part of the game." Cindy was

flattered that Barbara suddenly looked more interested.

"What was the game, really?"

"I don't remember all that much about it." Cindy tried, however. "John was king, and

Dianne was queen, of course. And Bobby was the general-we all had things to do. We had

maps of the country and everything."

"And that's when you captured prisoners?" Barbara said.

"Yeah," Cindy twirled a ringlet of hair in her finger again. She would have put it in her

mouth if it had been long enough to reach: instead she just tugged it down the side of her

face and stared off into space a little wistfully. "After a while it got boring."

"Then that's not what you're playing now?" Barbara was coaxing.

"Um mnnn!" Cindy was emphatic. She shook her head and continued to look off

somewhere above and behind Barbara's bed. ''I guess this is Freedom Five. Paul invented

it; it's more fun. We're a bunch of guerrilla fighters living in the woods and shooting people

and blowing up trains and stuff."

''Oh .... "

Cindy smiled down. It did seem to her that Barbara more or less understood what was a

rather complicated history. "And we kidnap hostages and take prisoners and torture them

and stuff. It's kind of fun."

"Fun!"

"Well"-Cindy was a little apologetic-"when it isn't your tum to be caught. Even then, it isn't

too bad most of the time. Paul's the really mean one though. When he's jailer, watch out."

"How?"

91

"Oh ... he's always thinking up new things to do.

Once he tied me up so tight he even tied my toes together. Then he tickled me."

"But where were the rest of them?" "There. It was just my turn." "Didn't they do anything?''

"Yeah. After a while I started yelling and crying-I was littler then-and they had to let me go.

They were afraid I'd tell."

"Oh."

For a moment neither of them spoke. Pursuing her own thoughts, Cindy didn't notice at

first. When .she did, she resumed where-to her-they had left off.

"Paul likes girls' feet," she giggled. "He's the best at torturing."

"Real or pretend?" Barbara said levelly.

She really did understand, Cindy decided. That was just the way Freedom Five talked about

it. "Both," she said brightly.

"Well, they better not torture me!"

"No," Cindy conceded. "I guess not. Mommy and Daddy are coming home, and you have to

go back to college. It's too bad, though .... "

"What's too bad?" Barbara seemed like she was beginning to get mad slowly the way

grown-ups do.

Cindy sought to placate her. "I dunno. It's just

kind of fun having you here to play with us, too."

"I'm-not-playing." "Well, you are, sort of."

"I'm not at all. What I want to know is when you're going to let me go again. This hurts."

"Well, they won't do it until after tomorrow anyhow. I guess."

"Why tomorrow?" Barbara seemed to have calmed down again. At any rate she was�

sweeter.

"They're going to take off your nightie."

"What?" Barbara suddenly lifted her head from the pillow and stared straight at the little

girl. You could almost hear the individual letters coming out of her mouth: W-h-a-t. "What?"

92

"It's just like the 'nitiation," Cindy jumped back a little.

Cindy could enunciate as well as anyone else and even be prim and clipped about it if she was

angry. When she was just noodling along, however, she slurred childishly (and sometimes to be

cute). "Guerrilla" came out at "gorilla"; "initiation" came out as " 'nitiation."

"We've all done it," she said. "It isn't all that bad anyhow. Well-it's bad when it's you and

everybody's laughing and all, but when it's somebody else, it's funny. Boys look-"

"Where did you hear this?" Barbara didn't raise her voice, but she suddenly had that adult

sound of now-you're-going-to-get-it.

Cindy got up off the bed and backed away to safety. "Bobby said so at dinner. He'd been

crying. They beat him up and made him promise to help."

"Well, that's the end!" Barbara 'looked up at her wrists in turn and jerked on her ropes angrily.

"You get Bobby in here right now, and I mean now, or I'll start screaming."

"But you're not supposed to be ungagged," Cindy quailed, her heart suddenly thumping. She

was thinking trouble ... trouble ... trouble.

"I said now!"

Cindy sighed unhappily. This was unexpected, uncontrollable. The other kids would get her for

it.

"Bobby! Bob-bee-e-e!" Barbara shouted. "Bobby, get up!" Then she screamed. It was not a

completely abandoned shriek-she had little practice at screaming-but it was loud enough for

openers.

Badly scared now, Cindy ran out of the room for Bobby, followed by another scream this time a

little higher. In the hall she all but knocked him down.

White, rumpled, wide-eyed and only half seeing and understanding, he more or less danced

back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to get by her. "What is it?"

"Hurry-yup!" Cindy said.

93

"Is she loose?" Bobby pulled back sharply, ready to run.

"No. No! She wants to talk to you. Come on!"

Cindy finally got him moving, and together they stumbled into Barbara's room.

She was still wrenching at her cords and shaking the whole bed. "Bobby, let me go right

now. I mean it. Untie me." �

Caught by the terrible unanswerable tone of adult anger and command and yet unable to

obey-quite Bobby froze.

"I said untie me!"

"The bottle, the bottle!" Cindy was quick thinking in her terror. "Give her the bottle of

stuff."

Instead Bobby turned on her-for once, he had lost composure-and began yelling, too. "You

ungagged her. You did it. Now we're going to get it. We all are."

Then Barbara screamed again. This time it was right on; it was abandoned and shrill and

animal and prolonged. It galvanized Bobby.

He ran over, pulled the pillow out from beneath Barbara's head, and threw it down across

her face and held it there. "The bottle's on the dresser. The dresser, not the vanity!"

Cindy turned around twice before she saw it. Behind her was a frightening chaos she

preferred not to see. The bed was tossing like something in a high wind. On it Bobby rode a

pillow life raft, his face lip-bitten and determined.

"Bring it here," he yelled.

From beneath the pillow came muffled sounds of desperation.

"Now hold the pillow. You can't be afraid now!

Hold it."

Cindy did, but badly and weakly. Barbara was able to turn her head underneath it and

shout-it was now muffled-s- in a kind of terror of her own.

"Stop it. Stop it! You're going to smother me. I can't-stop it!" It was all ugly to Cindy.

With shaking hands her brother finally -got the

94

bottle open and pulled out the reeking rag. "Keep holding her. I don't care what she says."

He bent over and pushed the rag under the pillow where the noise was coming from and

threw himself down beside Cindy to hold it there. After a while, the nightmare subsided and

Barbara went limp. Afterward, still shaking badly, Bobby threw the pillow off and let her get

some air. She was still breathing; in a little while, the breathing became more or less

regular. Even so, he sat by the bed and waited a long time more before replacing the gag

doubly secure.

By the door, ready to run if things got worse, Cindy said, "Is she all right?"

"You still there?" Bobby seemed to have forgotten her. "Yeah." He turned around still pale.

The high pink spots on his cheeks were scarlet. "She's out."

Cindy came back cautiously. "Look, she hurt herself."

In fact, she was right. Barbara's wrenching at her ropes had slid them down to her wrists,

leaving bare, scraped, red places on her arms and flaked, roughened skin. Bobby pulled

down the wrinkled sheet and saw that she had actually scraped down to blood on one an-.

Ide, but nothing looked serious. He sighed.

"She's OK enough"; and he went outside on the back steps and sat down.

After a little interval of not knowing what to do, Cindy-still frightened and now remorseful-

went out and sat down beside him wordlessly. She watched the giants walking around in

the sky-now they were more distant-and waited for the police or the sheriff or the FBI to

come and get them for all that screaming .. When they did not, she surrendered to the

need to sleep and went off to hide under the covers.

95

Barbara awoke with sudden fear. The gag and tape were like the hand and rag on her

mouth. She couldn't breathe. She felt she was being suffocated again; the pillow was back

over her head. Jerking her eyes open wide in fear, she raised her head and strained as if

struggling to reach the top of the water after a deep dive, and then, of course,

remembered. There was the room; there was the ceiling; there was-she turned her head-

Bobby sleeping exhaustedly. There was the whole world again. This was only another day,

the third day like this. Everything else had been last night.

Lowering her head and closing her eyes again, she took in long slow breaths of air the way

she tried to do before a swimming event. She had a headache-oxygen was the answer-

because Bobby had forced her to breathe too much chloroform last night. Moreover. her

wrists and ankles hurt where she had scraped them raw in her struggles with him. Her

hands and feet were icy cold and numb; she was stiff and muscle-sore all over, and later

on, they were going to take off her nightie somehow. It all leapt back to mind:

Each day instead of beginning newly, as it did when you were normally free, seemed-to her

in helplessness-to begin with the weight of the previous days upon it, almost as if she

hadn't slept at all. Unconsciousness was merely unconsciousness; it didn't restore. When

she awoke, she was that many more steps down 96

a road, down a process, down a ladder whose bottom she could not see.

As the weight of this realization, this particular hour, resumed its place on her shoulders,

she was overcome by a peculiar sorrow and loneliness, something almost akin to the

feeling of being lost. Outside it was going to be another calm summer day. The lightning,

the threatened night squalls, had passed once more, and there was a soft light in the sky-

she could tell by its presence in the room-and the birds were singing around the house as

they did only at the very early morning. The river would be sparkly, and it would be so

pretty from the kitchen.

If I could just. ...

Barbara formed a thought of freedom so wide that no words could even suggest it. She saw

herself sitting up on the side of the bed, somehow miraculously released, rubbing her

wrists in disbelief. Then she was getting up, walking free, almost running to everywhere her

mind would imagine her to go. So simple a thing was freedom. The little scene, so

enchanting and unattainable, was also so sweet that she repeated it to herself several

times. Then, of course, it faded.

If someone would only just find me, Barbara said.

Help me. Please help me.

This was given a little in the tone of her childhood prayers. "God, please let me find my

new wristwatch that Daddy gave me." "God, please let me get [whatever] for Christmas."

"God, please .... "

In fact, and naturally �(Dough, Barbara had had poor service from God. Though her nature

required Him, she had long ago made the young's private conclusion that He was no short-

order solver of small problems. One might conclude (to save the respect) that He was too

busy or too remote there, at some higher level of management.

"God helps those who help themselves," her mother had said, and Barbara had always

tried to' help herself. Cheerful Barbara, busy Barbara: she had found, indeed, that God did

help them who helped

97

themselves. Good things happen. It was square, and it was also an article of faith with her.

No one was going to find her, no one was going to help her unless she helped the event to

occur herself. At this moment-if she were awake-Mother was probably thinking how nice it was

for Barbara to be down in the country for two weeks. The Adams were thinking how lucky they

were to have such a competent young baby-sitter. God was thinking his thoughts, and Barbara

must think hers.

Squirming around for the elusive comfort that was never there, Barbara said, OK, I'm part of a

game. It probably began a long time ago with dolls and toy soldiers and stories the kids made

up themselves out of what they saw and heard. Then when they got older and toys faded a

little, they moved outside to more freedom, but the game went on. That is, they moved into

the dolls' roles; they became the dolls-playing is practice living: this was rote for teachers-and

made themselves a bigger kingdom to rule over. And it was unsupervised-another teacherly

word-and completely outside the adult world. Barbara could understand this. Who has not had

a private kingdom at one time or another? She almost saw the way they would jealously keep

its secret integrity against the grown-ups' environment, the one in which they were powerless.

But age and knowledge corrode. There had come the time when they no longer believed in

kings and queens, when new models were needed, and the game moved on.

It moved on, Barbara said. It moved on idly, whimsically, almost as if it were an accident

(which she thought it was not). Still, from the kids' point of view, it would be that one day they

were playing this game, the next day they were bored and irritable, and the third day they

were playing something new (which was not new at all). They withdrew into the hills and

woods and became their ex-kingdom's harried guerrilla fighters, its Resistance Movement. And

then that got boring-hadn't Cindy said they hadn't played much until now?-and then Barbara

came along.

98

And then I came along, Barbara said. Something in the sentence attracted her. And then I

came along. It was all so bitterly clear. I am the fourth level of the game.

The parents were gone; they were to be gone for quite a while by children's standards. Now

the children could, now they could-what? Who knows? And the only thing to prevent it was silly

Barbara, dumb Teacher, who had come flouncing onto the scene in a blue summer dress and

not much else. How easily the children's impatient imaginings and the opportunity of

Barbara/target would come together with a bang. Now they could really play the game.

If they could. If they dared. And they dared.

But what was the fourth level of the game? Something chilly and dark passed just behind Bar-

bara's immediate attention and then waited somewhere in the out-of-reach part of her mind.

An intimation.

She thought.

OK, I am their new toy. Like Terry said. I walk, I talk when they let me. They can move my arms

and legs. They can even dress and undress me if they want. But how do they play with dolls?

One could imagine and find no harm in the imagined scene of a~ child like Cindy-in tantrum- -

hurling her doll across the room in fury. Tears would pass: if the doll was broken, someone

would fix it or buy her a new one. Cindy would thereby learn not to break things anymore. But

what if one were suddenly the doll itself? At the thought Cindy's face grew huge in Doll

Barbara's imagination; Cindy's clear, curious, simple eyes became as threatening as a cat's in

their uncaringness.

Again one could see and find little harm in Paul's marching his toy soldiers to the dungeon and

tieing them to twig stakes with string and shooting them on command. �Paul was working out

his boy aggressions. Anyhow tomorrow morning, metal-smart and cast-to-attention, they would

be ready to fight and lose and be executed again. Real soldiers, real people, of course,

99

are only executed once. Once. In Barbara's mind, Paul suddenly became even more a horrible

little boy.

And in the woods, in the disused tenant-house gathering place of Freedom Five, hadn't Cindy

said they took prisoners and hostages and tortured them for secrets? Even here, little enough

harm. Erotic play, discovery, a sorting out of values. The next day, the next raid, the prisoners

would be back intact, surly and unwilling to tell, and hence ready for torture again. But if the

prisoners, if the prisoner were real?

At this point the logical step was obvious. At the fourth level of the game five kids just-before-

teen or crossing through their teens, were going to torture Barbara to a slow death. Barbara

dismissed this out of hand. She wasn't a toy; they were not free to do as they wished, and the

world of spankings, punishment, and authority remained. It only troubled her that they might

think about it.

- She was also troubled as to why they should think about it

In play, children acted out life as they believed or wanted it to be--that had been back in

freshman year that she had learned that-but if what Teacher Barbara had been taught was

true, why did these children want to believe life to be this way? The rope, the adhesive tape,

and all the hurt went into the thought.

Children's materials are all the materials they can see and imagine and imitate. Their whole

world. N<r body says there isn't too much war and crime and trash for them to pick up, Barbara

said. Lord, they've even criticized fairy tales for being too violent, But there are other things

too, the total- environment of love and Warmth and fun and helping. These children have cer-

tainly had that, and money as well (I wish I had as much, Barbara said). So why, given the

everything of life, would these kids choose the darkest parts for their most interesting games?

Were they naturally bad? And if they were, who then wasn't a little naturally bad? What would

Terry say?

Terry said (without bothering to materialize completely), Maybe they don't like what they see

of what

100

we think is the "pretty" world. Maybe it's too complicated or too dull or too hard or too

something. Maybe they feel they have to hold themselves in too much in order to be a part

of it. Maybe what we think of as rewards are only penances of different kinds to them.

Maybe they don't want to grow up at all. Maybe the world is closed off now, and there's no

place left to live.

Barbara said nothing.

Do you want to grow up, Barb? Again Barbara said nothing.

You think these kids are oddball and different and dirty, but how do you know they're all

that different from the rest? What did you think of them when you came here? You thought

they were pretty and fun. What did you think of them when you took them over to Sunday

school? You wished they were yours by some handsome, well-known man like your Dr.

Adams. What did you think of the way they obeyed and had fun when you took them

swimming? You were all over yourself with love, love, love, Terry said.

You make me sick, Terry said. A person's a package deal. Prime ministers probably go to

bed at night and play with themselves. What these kids are doing to you is the rest of their

playtime; it all goes together. What they're doing is natural enough.

Barbara shook her head silently. Again the logical airy step invited, and again she refused

to take it. I don't believe you, she said. All kids aren't this way. We

weren't.

�

Weren't we?

Barbara stopped. Something in imagined Terry's tone summoned to her mind the

remembered image of the parking-lot sniggerers of her own early teens. She saw them

clearly again, heard them clearly again. Their faces moved back and forth interchangeably

with those of John and Dianne and Paul, Cindy and Bobby.

No! They didn't do anything like this though.

No chutzpah, Terry shrugged.

.

Well, maybe, Barbara granted. What would they really have done? What would any person

do given entire power over another person? What-in particu-

101

lar-wou1d inexperienced children do? Who knows what people think when they're children

and we haven't broken them yet?

It was high, shimmering, full day.

Barbara no longer doubted that the children would strip her naked. It wasn't that difficult;

the kids were getting more confident, and in final count, it would hardly be fatal.

I've been naked before, Barbara said, but as she waited, she continued uneasy-squeamish.

. On the swimming team, in dormitory life, with doctors and-by accident, of course-with the

family, she had certainly been seen without clothes on. These transactional occasions,

however, had been brief, businesslike and not particularly pleasant. In a generation that at

least vocally favored frankness, skin, and more natural sex, she remained private and self-

possessed, avoiding exposure and usually averting her eyes from the exposure of others.

Naturally she worried that she was a prude-it was a death sentence in her age group-that

in the imminent upswarming flight of love and mating she would somehow be kept out of

the action by being timid and hesitant. None of this, however, seemed to internally alter

the rather maidenly shyness, the almost wordless taboo that inhibited her.

Rationalizing, she told herself that it was only a matter of time, place, and values. She

could see-if no one else told her, Sexy Barbara did-that in a moment of faith, trust, and

love, it could be joyous to free the body and live. There was an element of confession,

submission, of oneness about it. Indeed she had had a good many girlish dreams on the

subject. It was just that the occurrence hadn't come along quite yet, and that, as a result,

she was getting nearer a time when she could look back and find that she had "saved

herself for her husband'' or at least a serious affair-surely an old-fashioned approach-but

one that was rather nice in a way, or so she felt as she got older.

Today's indecency, however, had nothing to do with necessity, love, confession, or the

unfolding of

102

sweet offerings. What disgusted her, made her feel crawly, was that there was dirt and

malice in it, sneakiness, a shades-drawn, sex in a rented-room furtiveness about it. She

was being hauled back into a primitive stupid world of grayness and feeling around and

smirking and giggling. The object was torment, and she was afraid she would show how

well it was succeeding.

Actually, the event itself was at least quick and sparing of the lewd pawings she had

imagined. The kids arrived a bit earlier than their usual midmorning, and after some

whispered conversations in the kitchen, sauntered into her room with affected casualness.

They knew that she knew that Cindy had told her, and so it was all straightforward

between all of them. Dianne had brought a small pair of sewing scissors in her lunch bag,

and while the others stood back, she used them carefully.

Folding back the cotton lace of the shoulder straps of Barbara's summer nightgown, she

cut almost on the seams concealed there, right and left. Barbara could not see what

Dianne was doing, but she felt the metal go carefully along, dull edge of the scissors

against her skin, and she sensed that it was a proper job. Among her other talents, Dianne

apparently sewed as well. Having then bared Barbara's shoulders (Barbara felt a loss even

here), she went on with it.

Beginning at the hip, Dianne cut up the side seam to the armhole on the right side. It was

all very much like opening a pretty Christmas package and trying not to spoil the

wrappings.

When she felt the gown being lifted off her body, Barbara closed her eyes and felt the tears

she had so much wanted not to show them. In another minute, the side seams of her bikini

pants had been cut, and she - was as awkwardly, gracelessly, naked and helpless as it was

possible to be. Of course there were giggles-she could hear each one separately-and she

thought, It finally did happen. After all. Every woman has thought the same under some

circumstance. Now they would begin to do things to her.

When nothing further happened, however, she

103

opened her eyes, still teary wet, and raised her head. The children were caught as in a

frieze=-Cindy half bent in mirth, two small hands covering her mouth to stifle laughter,

bright eyes half-peeking through her fingers; Bobby solemn; Paul in spasm; Dianne still

holding the scissors; John unable to raise his head for some reason-and seeing them,

Barbara was partially calmed.

Outside of the shock of seeing and feeling herself naked, there was yet no real harm in all

of this. Hers was hardly the kind of beauty that would drive beholders to madness anyhow.

Then John raised his head

at last, and she saw his eyes.

111

his present game, he let the point of his knife trickle down between them to her navel and

her pale white belly where he pressed in just hard enough to make her wince and squirm.

Then a new� game began. Stick her here and make her twist that way; stick her there and

make her twist back again. This way, that way. Harder.

When he finally straightened up, it seemed that he had been holding his breath for a

hundred years. He let it out slowly and listened. The life of the house went on as usual. He

could hear the other kids' voices somewhere, but they didn't seem to be caring. It was

better than he'd dare think, and his turn at guarding wasn't half over. He looked at

Barbara-the complicity of victim and tormentor-and he smiled.

Much more slowly now, with much less fear, he began to test her whole body with his knife.

He found that by keeping the blade flat and pressing in on the point, he could leave a faint

white line on her skin wherever he drew. He could make designs even if they lasted but a

moment. They were chanting in the cave now: by the flickering light of greasy, animal oil

torches stuck in the rocks, Paul prepared the victim for the final act. Even he trembled

when he thought of it.

When Paul straightened up a second time, he found he had been lost in his dreams for

nearly an hour. Barbara's body was crossed and marked with a number of now-pink lines

that were slowly becoming more vivid. After that, they would fade; at least, he guessed

that they would. He found, however, that he really didn't care. There would be no beating

for this tonight, and the remoteness of punishment plus the number of possibilities formed

something like an inescapable corridor down which he must go, each step leading to the

next. He had to do what he was doing.

Barbara, too, was thinking. Paul was glad he didn't know what. She still didn't seem very

much afraid-though she understood it well enough when he hurt her-and she was still

angry. But there was something else. She kept looking at him as if she just couldn't

understand any of this, as if she were trying to look inside of him and figure it all out. He

bore this

112

uncomfortably while he regained his normal breathing: she was spoiling things. Then he

had an inspiration.

Going to the chest, he opened the drawers one after another until he found the one with

her own things in it. As he had hoped, there were several summer scarves neatly folded

and stacked to the side. Taking one and laying it on the bed, he refolded it from corner to

comer and then again and again until it was no wider than a belt. He had a blindfold.

Barbara saw him coming and would have no part of it. She shook her head no-no and

twisted away from him violently. Nonetheless, by putting the blindfold under her chin and

trapping the back of her head against his skinny chest, he was able to work the cloth up

over her eyes and tie it in place. It took several tries and some struggle, and when be had

finished, they were both breathing bard again. The change in things, however, was

remarkable.

Instead of Barbara's put-down looks, there was nothing. It was as if she bad left the room.

The prisoner was anonymous-like the ones they used to do things to down in the woods:

nonexistent-and the taboo over her was gone.

Taking his knife again, Paul McVeigh reopened his game, this time pressing in here and

there as if daring himself to break the skin and draw blood. Now. That ought to hurt for a

change. He even touched her breast. When lightning did not strike him dead-like John, he

rather saw lightning as the all-avenging blast that evened justice out-he put the point of his

knife on her breast and ran it luxuriously down to the nipple. Hers were bigger than his,

bigger even than Dianne's, and they had little bumps in the pink part and he bad a long

time to go yet, and so he toyed with his knife point.

/

John, too, was half-afraid when it came his turn to guard Barbara. Though be felt himself to

be the leader in most things, be was all the more shy about saying what he wanted done

with her. It would be like a pane of glass-everyone would know then-and he almost

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let the whole thing pass. Then he called himself coward, and faced the whole matter down.

"I want her back in bed. Like she always is." "OK," Paul twitched. He had just joined them

on the kitchen steps. He seemed pale and a little breathless.

"It's too early," Dianne said logically. "We'd only have to go to the trouble of getting her up

again to eat. And then put her down again."

"Yeah. Anyhow, that's no fun," Bobby said. "It's my turn to say."

"OK. All right," Dianne sighed and got up. The rest of them followed her.

This time Barbara resisted. When they released her from the chair and got her to her feet,

she refused to move, and when they pushed her, she knelt down on her knees and doubled

up and let them choke her with their halter. When they grabbed her upper arms and tried

to lift her, she squirmed free, rolled over and shot out her hobbled ankles, hitting John and

nearly knocking him down. Blindfolded, she continued to kick out in all directions until they

finally caught her bare legs and pinned her down. In the end, it took all five of them to drag

her up onto the bed and tie her wrists and ankles to its four corners again. Bobby and Paul

got knocked back several times; Dianne got scratched; and John nearly lost his hold on her

once or twice. When it was over and the other kids had left, he sat down to catch his

breath and think a moment. The fact was that he was still afraid of what he had dared

himself to do.

There were so many Barbaras in his mind. The first one, the one he had met when she first

came to sit for the Adams kids, was busy, athletic, and bright. She ticked him off the way

she whipped the Adams kids around in the station wagon as if she owned it. She wasn't

anywhere near a grown-up, and yet she acted more like a mother than Mrs. Adams did. She

ticked him off the way she let the old ladies at the church make over her and take her in.

Barbara could swim better, run as fast, manage twice as well, talk better she knew

everything-and all the time that she was

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being so smart-ass and bossy, she knew that she was pretty and that all the guys were

watching her out of the corner of their eyes. Even the old men. She had that look-and-eat-

your-heart-out manner. It made it easy to want to take her down a couple of notches-as,

indeed, they had-but remembering that girl did not make it any more easy to approach her.

Then there was Barbara the first day after they captured her, not stuck-up and busy

anymore, but finally silent, gagged, helpless, and bewildered. She was still recognizable,

but it was an improvement.

Yesterday there had been a friendlier Barbara. He now realized that she had been putting

him on with all that talk about his school and his girl and all-what did she care anyway?

That was all kid stuff to herbut, in fact, he had enjoyed it. He wished now that he had

kissed her when she gave up: he wished now that he dared ungag her and talk to her some

more, but her kicking around said enough for her mood.

So that he got down to Barbara today, naked for him to do anything with that he wished,

and he was still scared, actually scared. John Randall was also disgusted with himself.

When Dianne had cut off Barbara's nightgown this morning-I ohn, of course, consenting-he

had thought he would go blind. She was so pretty. A kind of blankness came over his mind;

he hardly seemed able to look. His legs were all sort of weak on the insides: he thought he

was going to do it again, right then and there. Did just looking at a girl do that to you?

Nobody had ever told him about that before, and he felt a little betrayed. It was unfair that

women had that advantage over you. It had dismanned him the rest of the day, right up

until now.

Now.

He swallowed with some noise.

Just now, as a matter of fact, he would have liked to get up and go out of the room, but he

couldn't. He was trapped. On the one hand were the rest of the kids who would laugh at

him: on the other there was the reason for it all-Barbara. OK, he managed to look at her

long and steadily from where he sat, and while he

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still felt a little bit of that heady, half-blindedness, he found that he had some self-control.

He even found, at length, that he could stand-a better view-and that he could walk as if in

a dream, half stuck to the floor, half gliding. He found that he was able to move to the side

of the bed and sit down on it beside her and endure that, too.

At such close range, he felt he was in the path of some kind of death ray. Something was

happening inside him. He was irresolute: it was difficult to breathe. Very hesitatingly, he

touched the inside of her calf and moved his fingers up her leg-John Randall enormously

avoided what he considered Barbara's "private parts" (despite the fact that on the team,

the word "cunt" was used standardly)-across her fiat stomach and down again.

Of course, the stroke was lustful. To the extent that he felt or understood lust per se, he

wanted the girl. But there was much more in his hand: his fingers traveled with a truly

admiring caress and one of understandable wonderment. Barbara was so different from him

and from his experience. The obvious but suddenly made discovery filled him with awe. By

revelation, he came to understand something about love. I mean, John said, if it wasn't this

way and we were really friendly and she didn't mind me touching her this way, then it

would really be great. In fact, given that possibility, he would have freed her on the instant

and knelt before her upright body. His mind could barely hold the many possibilities that

followed. But it wasn't like that.

Instead she was in there, inside her own skin, inside of her own mind, inside of the gag, the

rope, the adhesive tape and all, and he was out here inside of himself as well. The mutual

isolation was complete, and to John, it was quite honestly sad. I don't want �to do this to

you, John said, but how could I any other way?

No way.

What was left was at least bittersweet. If he couldn't be her grown-up, voluptuously

welcomed lover, it was sad and nice at least to touch what he

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loved, and-like Paul-he, too, lost some of his fearfulness. Increasingly his hand moved over

all of the parts of a woman's body that he had only daydreamed about, and moved gently,

almost protectively. There was nowhere he could look and not be dumbfounded by a

sixteen-year-old joy.

The sharpness of ankle running over the thinness of shin to the strength of knee; the

fullness of inner thigh merging into the complex of hips, belly, navel; the body, the

breasts, the nipples (as if in defiance, they were cold, tiny, and shrunken); the slenderness

of throat, the chin line, Barbara's hair. John loved. For the moment, he rather desperately

loved.

Throughout all of this, Barbara lay absolutely rigid. It wasn't simply that she was bound but

that there was an inner rigidity that was somehow her hopeless defense against him. Her

nearly covered face-taped and blindfolded-was turned away from him. No matter what he

did, he received no response at all. He was not there. Thus he arrived at the second part of

last night's plan rather defeated and elated all at the same time.

How easy it had seemed then. How he had tossed and turned with impatience. Now, as it

turned out, his hands were shaking as he stood up, unbuttoned his cutoffs, kicked off his

moccasins, and fearfully lay down beside her. Don't be mad, John Randall said, don't be

mad; and he turned against her.

Barbara's flung-out position made the whole episode difficult. Nevertheless there was an

instant touching of his whole body-even the parts he rarely had occasion to touch himself-

with hers, the conjugal experience never before felt or imagined. It wasn't her nakedness

that so impressed him but his own, and yet not so much his own but theirs. Although it was

wrong, that is, although the moment was gained by theft in a borrowed hour at the Adams'

house with an older girl who was helpless to reject him, although the sureness of

punishment came steadily closer, still the feeling changed his life forever. As he knew it

would. He loved her, and he felt himself rising in proof. Getting up on all

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fours--elbows and knees-he crossed to between her legs. At last she acknowledged him,

shaking her head violently from side to side, No, No, No. That was when he did it to her.

Dianne had the last guard duty of the day. When she looked at her tiny silvery watch and

got up and left the beach, it meant that Cindy and the rest of them (except for John, who

was on watch) had to come out of the water, dry off, and follow her up to the house.

Afterward there was always the elaborate and possibly dangerous business of moving

Barbara and feeding her, the dull thing of getting out of wet bathing suits and hanging

them to dry, and then the unhappy part of having to watch everybody go home. The sun

was still high up and all, but it was the end of the day, and Cindy hated it.

Not only was the boredom of spending nights alone with nobody to talk to, becoming

harder to endure, but each finished day was one closer. Reckoning time was coming.

For Cindy, of course, time did not race by with adult speed. Preoccupations, duties,

schedules, arrangements, meetings were no part of her life. Instead she drifted, sometimes

pleasantly, sometimes petulantly, in a vague continuum of night-day-night needing only

amusement, approval and a little petting to be happy. Nonetheless she marked treats and

punishments accurately enough. Mommy and Daddy would be home this Monday, and

today was the end of Wednesday. Five more days.

Presumably by then, the kids would have let Barbara go, and she would have turned

around and let them have it good. The first time. Afterward she would tell Mommy and

Daddy. What would happen then, Cindy couldn't even guess-she had never been so bad-

and it worried her.

Immersed in this mood with a child's singular intensity, she banged into the house and

down the hall unaware of low serious conversation ahead of her. Not until she reached

Barbara's room did she realize that

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anything different was happening. Then she stopped at the door, dirty, dragging beach

towel coming to a stop on the floor behind her. John and Dianne were talking.

"What did you do to her?" Dianne was angry. John glanced down at Cindy and back again.

"Everything,'' he said.

There was an extra second's hesitation in which Cindy thought that they looked at each

other with a kind of secretiveness; certainly, they weren't including her, at all. Then she

looked at the bed and saw a small amount of blood on the sheet between Barbara's legs,

right there.

For a child of her age, Cindy was singularly unshocked. She bad seen it before. Sometimes

there was blood on the sheet where Mommy slept. Mommy had explained it to her-

needlessly; Cindy didn't care much one way or the other-that it was something which

happened regularly and normally to a woman once a month, but Cindy knew better. She

herself was a woman, that is, female, and it didn't happen to her nor could she believe that

it ever would. Cindy would be careful; she wouldn't let it happen. It would be easy.

Straight out, the blood on the bed had something to do with what men and women did

alone in the dark of night, had something to do with the whisperings and smiles of the

older kids-the "mystery." Had she been possessed with adult vocabulary, Cindy would have

said something like, "Oh, the hell with it." So John had done it to Barbara. Cindy's only

reaction was mild surprise; she didn't think either one of them was that old. After all, they

weren't married, and that had something to do with it. She looked at John and Dianne.

"How did you move her legs?"

John looked odd for a moment. "I didn't." "Then you couldn't have done it," Dianne said.

"But I did."

'

Dianne looked at Barbara and bit her lip. "Well, you did something anyway."

"Are you going to let her get up?" "We ought to feed her."

119

"She's going to be mad again .... "

"Oh." Dianne seemed to think for a moment.

Then she shrugged, still upset. Going over to the bed, she removed Barbara's blindfold:

Cindy watched her and saw that Barbara's eyes were wet, not with sorrow, not with

happiness, nor with any other emotion she had ever seen before. Maybe what men and

women did, hurt.

"Vmnn-umnnn!" Barbara couldn't talk, but she did. She looked at Dianne, raised her

head, looked down at herself, over at the door, and back up again. She wanted to go to the

bathroom. Even Cindy could understand that, and so could Dianne.

"We'd better let her get up."

John, who had watched this a little embarrassed, seemed somewhat relieved. Barbara

wasn't mad at him, Cindy thought, or at least anger wasn't the thing she felt most.

"Go get the others," John said, and Cindy went, taking time only to toss her towel across

the doorknob.

Using the normal, drawn-out manner, Freedom Five shifted Barbara to her feet and led her,

rope around the throat, to the bathroom. She didn't fight now, but when they got her

inside, she began to make sounds again. She bent low and rubbed her taped mouth on the

wash basin. She wanted to be ungagged.

"Do you want to go to the toilet or not?" Dianne

said.

More hopeless sounds. Dianne just shrugged.

Barbara gave her a look of anguish that even Cindy could feel. Then Barbara sat down on

the toilet and all except Dianne went out into the hall. Afterward they could hear a great

deal of water splashing and bathing inside. Eventually Barbara came out again shuffling,

hobbled-and they led her back to her room and tied her to the chair by the vanity.

Dianne fixed her a sandwich, a good one for a change. It was chicken, white bread, and

mayonnaise, and it smelled good to Cindy, who was getting hungry again as she did hourly.

When Barbara was ungagged

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however, she didn't use her free hand to eat it. Instead she said, "Dianne, you've got to

untie me now. You've got to."

Dianne said nothing. She was standing to Barbara's right, near but not leaning on the

vanity.

"That boy raped me," Barbara said. "You know about that; you're a woman. I've got to wash

myself out or something."

"Don't you use the pill?" Dianne said with curiosity.

"No, of course I don't. Do you? Does anybody?"

Barbara wrenched at her ropes angrily. "Dianne, unless you're married or you're set on

going to bed with every boy you meet, there's no need to."

"I thought all girls who went to college did." Dianne seemed to consider this a most odd

piece of information. She regarded it with scholarly surprise.

"Dianne, it doesn't make any difference one way or the other. What makes a difference is

that I may be pregnant by that boy. Already pregnant. It only takes one sperm cell to

fertilize. You've got to let me go now. You've got to let me try."

Dianne remained silent, but Cindy thought that she looked aware, concerned about

Barbara in some way.

"Dianne?'~

"How could he do it?" Dianne remained quite puzzled about it.

"He did."

"Did he?" Then Dianne looked down at Cindy and said with a rather quaint prudery,

everything considered, "Well, never mind. We can't let you go. You know that."

"Why?" Barbara was on the edge of crying. "Dianne, he could make me have a baby. The

baby would live to be someone like you or me or any of us. You know, can I make it any

clearer? You've got to let me get out of here and douche or something."

"I can't." For the first time, Dianne didn't use the word "we" when speaking of Freedom

Five's joint action. She took the decision to herself, and Cindy

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thought-also for the first time-that Dianne was a very strange girl.

Barbara accepted the ruling in silence.

"Do you want your sandwich or not?" Dianne said.

"I'd throw it up," Barbara said. Her head dropped forward, and Cindy thought she might

really begin to cry, but she didn't-quite. "Just go away and leave me alone."

A few minutes later, with a display of temper on both sides, Freedom Five gagged their

prisoner again, forced her to bed, and tied her down. Very tightly. The sandwich sat

uneaten and drying in the air; eventually Bobby and Cindy split it between themselves and

washed the plate clean.

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5

As on the night before, it was hot, still, and humid. The marsh mosquitoes-obviously infuriated-

whined about his bead. And again, as on the night before, the end-of-day squall bad gathered,

threatened and then dissipated without giving rain. Remnant clouds sat high in the distant

darkness, a castle of corridors and halls through which dim lightning and dull thunder wan-

dered without giving any true action. Unlike Cindy, John Randall had never had any

superstitions about storms. Instead, he cast a sailorly eye aloft and concluded that the rain, if

any, would fall on the lower Eastern Shore or even drop wastefully into the ocean beyond. He

dismissed the intruding consideration and returned to his first-it could be said his utterly con-

suming-passion. Barbara and/ or the thoughts provoked by her.

Considering that he had helped capture a girl and hold her prisoner, that he had raped her,

that the punishment for this was going to be so severe that he had literally destroyed himself,

he was singularly elated. He. had broken out of the prison of childhood; he was no longer

someone just to be ordered around, he had solved what he too considered the "mystery." He

could do it from here on as well as any grown-up--he could fuck: what all the others talked

about-and he had done it. With a defiant, self-immolatory glee, he was absolutely delighted

with himself. He had executed a real, fundamental, human act: he had entered life in

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spite of them all. (Them be defined as adults-those tedious, living pains-in-the-ass who held

you down so long and took such pleasure in doing it.) And he had sampled something of

love as well, not simply the physical side, but the spiritual and revelatory side, too. He saw

now-at last-the possibility of falling in love himself someday. To that extent, his thoughts

were both characteristic of the male and quite uncharitable.

When he had lain beside /and then atop Barbara, he had loved and admired her-quite more

than that, he had been nearly rabid with passion-but the insertion accomplished, the deed

done, everything had faded rapidly. Old Barbara's body was pretty much OK; what you

could expect, he guessed; but in retrospect, he had to remember that under the tape and

blindfold was only the girl herself, the goody one with something to say about everything.

Her undeniable appeal and submissiveness were enforced, almost created by the kids -

Freedom Five-and, of course, only temporary. In her place, John Randall would far rather

have-at the same, harsh terms-any number of girls at school and around here, girls at

home with their parents right now, girls not knowing that his thought like a closely defined

spotlight was picking them out one by one. John swatted at a mosquito, shifted position on

the back steps, and sighed. Life was going to be endless and suddenly wonderful.

John Randall, his punishment for present sins served out, was going to plough through the

world screwing everything he could get his hands on. Never mind love or babies or God or

any of that crap. His mind focused on the moment-of-first-clutch. Just exactly there. That

much, Barbara had taught him. And, if in the end, he did marry, it was going to be a mild,

sweet, meek girl he could do anything with that he wanted. That much more, Barbara had

also taught him-no smart-asses. Meanwhile he had better things to think about (in truth,

the same thing but in more particular terms).

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"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," Macbeth had said-it was one of the few things

John's memory had salvaged from endless, boring English classes-and it entirely suited

John's present mood. Tomorrow, indeed. Tomorrow he was going to rape a girl captive.

Again. Few men alive could say as much: few people knew as little about technique

required as the impatient re-rapist.

Dianne had said-another bossy girl-that the woman's knees should be raised and parted to

open the vagina. At least, if you were electing that position. She had read it in a marriage

manual her progressive, not to say permissive, parents had thrust on her shortly after she

began to menstruate. This John now took in with great and attentive care. It could explain a

number of things.

When he had tried to get himself inside of the girl-dumb Barbara shaking her head No, No,

No-he had had the worst time finding out where. With humorless concentration, not to say

intensity, he had taken the failure hard: it defeated manly dignity. Nonetheless he knew

approximately where to look and so got his finger in: thereafter, he attempted to put his

penis into the same opening (were there two?). His reactions were discouraging. First, it

hurt; second, he was so excited that he came almost at once. If there was further remnant

memory, it was that Barbara made an angry-animal sound not at all like the sighs of love

and passion satisfied the world had led John to expect. Thereafter, considering the

unsatisfactory nature of the coupling, there was drowsing, desirable bliss. It was something

one could grow to like if done properly. There, exactly, was tomorrow's problem.

He was going to do it again, of course, but better if possible-for himself anyhow. No other

thought-no consideration of Barbara's actions and reactions, thoughts or feelings-so much

as shadowed his mind. Had he been asked about her, he would have said male fashion-that

he didn't give a shit.

125

Paul, obviously unaware of John's thoughts, had-equally and obviously-the same principal sub-

ject on his own mind as the somewhat thwarted night settled down. Unlike John, he was not

free to roam the creek in a rowboat or even ramble around the rather considerable piece of

McVeigh property. Instead he sat encapsulated in his room, a beating heart in the unresponsive

body of the house. But tomorrow-such was the relieved contract between parents and child-he

would not only be released again, but pitched out, free to run and play and torture a grown

girl. This whole adventure was for Paul like a string of erotic Christmas Days all in a row.

Like John-again-the thrust of Paul's thought was entirely sexual. Compared to other thirteen-

year olds, Paul was very nearly jaded. At five he had peeked at his naked older sister; at eight,

he had found his father's magazines; at ten, his imagination had already taken him far beyond

what the world could ever offer. At twelve, he understood that he was closed in and that his

best dreams would never come true because of "people."

Like John-still again-Paul loathed adults.

Yes, they held you down; yes, they dominated; yes, they kept you away from the fun; but Paul

had a deeper complaint. Yes, they were more stupid-by far. His contempt was the entire heap

of contempt of the "mind people" against the "no-neck people." He despised no-necks, and on

this point at least, he felt himself on sound footing.

Adults were unseeing, insensitive, slow, dull-witted and catastrophic in their makeup. They

smashed and blundered about. How could they be human at all? Paul was not related. He held

like the blade of his knife an absolute division between himself, and them, and the division

would never be mended. He could see where they could not; he was cheered when they wept;

he was clear where they were unclear. The only hitch to this was that they dominated. They ran

the world.

Paul's feeling was Jess one of hatred than pure

126

separation. They were not people. He did not grant their existence anymore than after

waking he granted the existence of his strange dreams. He did not grant the existence of

his parents (though he had to grant their power, surely enough). He did not grant the

existence of schoolmates; he did not grant the existence of so imperfect a world. Paul was-

given other times and circumstances---capable of an Auschwitz, an Inquisition, a Rape of

the Sabine Women. He would kill cheerfully, simply because the victims offended the pat-

terns of perfection he would then create. A world of Pauls would be-to his mind-a perfect

world.

To that extent, when he thought of Barbara, he thought only of her skin and of his knife

blade passing in and passing out, passing in and passing out, accompanied by the instant

appearance of blood. There! He would show them. In his night imagination he heard a

scream, but it was them screaming, not anyone in particular at all. It was great.

Only Dianne escaped his fervor: first, because she understood him and told him things;

second, because she was bigger and older; third, because she was fairly ugly and

uninteresting; and last, because she was his sister. Within this unsentimental roster of

priorities, her chief value to him remained that of storyteller, exciter.

Dianne was widely-� though not well-read. She devoured her mother's book-club novels as

fast as they fell through the mail. She poked and pried around the house and read

everything in it from Organic Gardening to High-Speed Emulsions (photography). She was

off to the library every time the family car went into Bryce. She was a fund of scattered,

not too well-considered, knowledge. Those things she shared with Paul, however, had a

certain direction.

For him she reserved her tales of the Nazi atrocities, the Salem witch trials, the fate of the

early Christian martyrs, or the human sacrifices of primitive peoples, and when she did so,

her cool gray eyes became abnormally large and intense. Paul ate it up. He saw, he saw it

all as she talked. He saw the small iron cage

127

hoisted by rattling chains, up, out, over, and then down into the waiting bonfire built in the

medieval town square. He heard the shrieks, saw the dimly lit figure in the cage flinging itself

around in captive agony, heard the flesh crackle like bacon in a skillet (his simile), saw the iron

grow red until its content was entirely consumed. Paul nearly fainted at the force of his-tu-

tored-imaginings. This wasn't a make-believe story, this wasn't the comics or TV-they were all

tame and boring-this was what had happened to real people, done by real people.

It was too much for a small boy, and yet from the time he could think, Dianne had treated him

to such fare. (In fairness to her, it must be said that he bad never put his fingers in his ears. He

listened.) Their natures coincided at this point, and the Freedom Five "game" insofar as they

were able to influence it, was their game. (In fairness again, it must be admitted that though

the others might change the plot here and there, they played. They liked it.)

Thus, when Paul considered tomorrow and the prisoner they called Barbara, he considered it

from a most special point of view. He lay in the darkness of his room turning over all the

possibilities. Actually you ought to have more than just a knife to do any good.

Bobby, awakened on the same night, hardly knew what to think. Cindy, sleepy and untalkative,

shook him to consciousness and then went stomping off to bed, fell in, and was almost

instantly asleep, knotted hair, dirty dress, dirty pants, dirty socks, and all. In the smoothly

purring automated house, Bobby was alone again. Though he did not think of the house in just

those terms, it seemed a ship. The flavor of the hour was easily assimilated. It was a ship on

which he was at once both master and passenger-the black night sailed by outside. He had his

duties and his burdens.

After he bad yawned and scratched himself to life, Bobby made a cursory inspection of the

prisoner, though it was hardly necessary on this fourth night.

128

He had observed-excepting when Cindy ungagged the captive-nothing more from Barbara than

the occasional movement of a hand, the turn of the head, an occasional opening and closing of

the eyes, or a twisting of this foot or that. She simply could not escape, and each tieing up

made it less likely. The children steadily improved as wardens, and Bobby was the best of all.

The difference tonight-her nakedness-did not much affect Bobby. Barbara appeared to be

sweet, defenseless, and all that, but to him, she was also a trifle repugnant. The raw thrust of

genitals and hair was a little too much for him at his age; everything was overscale compared

to his own slight build. Her nudeness was simply another grotesque item in Bobby's troubled

week.

Nonetheless, walking into her room and finding all of this so-still so--Bobby felt a true

sympathy for Barbara. They were hurting her. She had not put on makeup in days, so that her

eyes were as naked as her body; nothing was left to imagination, and in her eyes he saw the

change the Freedom Five had caused. There were dark smudges under those eyes. He knew

Barbara had slept, but she seemed not to have slept in a long time. Her eyes-possibly from

sleeplessness-were red with irritation, and wide open and dry, and the pupils were abnormally

dark (or so it seemed to Bobby). Her wrists and ankles were chafed and scraped from the rope;

her hands which he did not dare touch and her feet (he touched one foot knowing what he

would find) were dark colored and cold. Circulation. Her stomach was flat, not to say hollow.

The torture was beginning to show.

Bobby knew what he would do if it were up to him, what he could do even now-the sooner the

better. Son of a surgeon, he had sat around enough dinner tables

�listening to his father talk about patients. Bobby would untie her, get some circulation going,

feed her, cover her up, and let her sleep in absolute secure peace until she wanted to get up

and become some part of Barbara

129

again. He remembered asking his father some question about his work and hearing Dr. Adams

tell him, "We stop a person from getting sicker and make him comfortable, but patients get

well by themselves. All you can do is to try and help."

And Bobby did want to help her, but it wasn't one of tonight's possibilities. Boy fears were at

war.

Free Barbara, and in all probability she would beat him half to death. If she did not, Freedom

Five (only then it would be three) would do it for her later, Leave her prisoner and let the

others toy with her another two or three days, and his parents would accomplish the same

end. There was no way out and no way to take action just now.

Personally he felt bad about Barbara. He they-had proved the point. They bad taken and suc-

cessfully held her captive. Now the responsibility weighed on him. For a boy who should have

been living on parental guidance, kindness, and protection, he had turned out to be

extraordinarily self-disciplined. How else could be have made the initial capture, stood the

morning watches, avoided catastrophe last night, and so on? Like his surgeon father he had

the inborn willingness to subject himself to the test again and again. Someday-again like his

father-he might hold life and death in his bands, and they would be good bands. But for the

moment he was tired of it all and quite frightened over what would happen next. (Cindy bad

told him what John bad done.)

At one o'clock in the morning, however, be just couldn't seem to think about it clearly. Like any

adult faced with similar imponderables, he simply postponed thinking about the matter.

Barbara, momentarily released in imagination, was-with some misgivings-returned to captivity.

Bobby left her room and went into the kitchen to make himself a milkshake.

Ordinarily a treat, this ritual repeated alone three nights in a row (no one to give permission,

admire, or share) bad become like so many other things he found himself doing now that

Barbara was captive, his par-

130

ents were gone, and he was in charge. It was simply another duty; having fun was

practically a duty. Like Cindy he felt ennui. He wondered why in the world adults bothered

to grow up. You had to get physically bigger of course, but why grow up if it was like this? He

shook his head.

Well, anyhow.

He carefully plopped in the ice cream-c-chocolate-added chocolate syrup for true taste, just

enough milk to liquefy, and pushed the bowl of ingredients up under the blade of the

Adams' milkshake-maker (as separate from Mother's mixer and Dad's blender, each in its

own place, too). He set the automatic timer for forty seconds, pulled down the lever, and

pushed the button to On. Having at thirteen years old executed this maneuver without

even thinking about it, Bobby turned and idly surveyed the kitchen. It was in the instant of

turning that he saw-perhaps a trick of reflection what appeared to be a light down in the

marshy woods by Oak Creek where nothing else could be.

Bobby wasn't alarmed. Parallax and prism effects, particularly in a house with duothermal

panes, air conditioning, and random condensation, were not only known to him but actually

the objects of games he played alone. (Move the bead this way and make the light

disappear, etc.) Instead of being startled, he summoned up his interest and tried to figure

out what light source could cause so funny a bounce back. The color varied; it was white

and then quite yellow. It danced. Bobby moved his head. No luck; the light stayed pretty

much where it was no matter what he did. Behind him the mixer whirred on: fifteen

seconds to go.

The conclusion he reached in the next five seconds was that the light was not his old friend

reflection but truly a light in the marsh, not a flashlight, not coming closer, but simply an

unknown light in the marsh. This meant somebody was in the marsh.

Bobby's first thought was John Randall. John had talked big about coming over and helping

watch at night, but Bobby knew the problems of sneaking out of

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that house and returning too many times. Also the light was not near the path by which John

would come. Therefore it was not John. Behind Bobby, the mixer purred to a stop, leaving only

the little orange-colored On sign blinking at him ..

As if wishing the whole matter to go away, he turned, opened the kitchen cupboard, got out a

tall glass, and with a steady, exact hand, poured his milkshake into it. Then he detached the

mixer blade, rinsed it, and put it in the drainer to dry. When he had done this and turned back,

however, he saw the light again. Once in a while, it disappeared only to reappear again. In his

imagination, it was a small campfire, and someone was passing back and forth between it and

his eye. Gathering wood, perhaps.

Bobby got his milkshake, turned off the kitchen light, and stood holding the cold glass and

sipping from it, his heart beginning to step up tempo in the darkness of the room. As soon as

his eyes became accustomed to the night, he understood once and for all that there was a light

in the marsh, that it was man-made, and that there was a person there feeding the fire.

There followed two very quick trains of thought:

1. Adult. Power of adults. Kids holding a captive girl in the bedroom. Discovery. Alarm. Punishment.

2. Pickers.

Although the Adams did not own enough ground to farm seriously, they were surrounded by

commercial spreads farmed by traveling machinery and-when the fruit was ripe-Pickers. And in

the fall-it was almost time, now-the Pickers came to help. They were dark Latin people with oily

shiny skin, dark luminous eyes, "heavy faces" and volatile natures. Their futures were also

hopeless. If Bobby had had the ability to phrase his opinion, he would have called them slaves-

to his parents, to his group.

For two or three weeks Pickers filled the country-

132

side, spent their meager pay at Ti11man's or the local bars, and then disappeared again. They

spoke an incomprehensible language Bobby's parents called pachuco, and no one Bobby knew,

knew any of them.

During the period of their stay, Pickers might appear anywhere at any time doing anything. By

turns the local community depended upon, tolerated, persecuted and then drove them out.

And then they returned the next year unchanged. To Bobby, however, the idea of a Picker

camping in his marsh under the present circumstances, was menacing. The man might come

to the door; Barbara might make a noise; and then the whole plot might be exploded. In the

darkness he became much as his father was--careful.

He put down his milkshake half drunk, turned, and went down the hall, down the stairs into the

rec room where the guns were kept. There he put two shells into a .410 shotgun, several more

in his pocket, and went back upstairs, his heart now beating very irregularly. From Freedom

Five, Bobby had gained rather advanced notions of tactics. The way to defend a castle was not

to sit on the walls but to leave it there like a tantalizing target. What you really did was go out

into the woods, lie flat, let the enemy pass through you, and then shoot them from the rear.

This, in his thirteen-year-old manner, he did, opening the kitchen door (away from the fire),

sneaking out and down into the vegetable garden where he was concealed. Wild little thoughts

flitted. Wake Cindy? No, she was no use; she might get hurt. Let Barbara go? Again no use. Go

for help? It was too far away, too risky, too unavailable. Instead he crept �down between the

lines of tomatoes (to the right) and beans (to the left) and knelt in the dust. Except for distant

thunder he could hear nothing, and he kept his cool.

As on the night his dog had been put to sleep by his father's merciful hand, as on the day he

was too sick to graduate from grammar school and had to miss the party, as on the day ... as

on the day ... he found here was nothing to do but accept life. It ran you, and

133

you did not run it. The problem was to do the best you could with what you had-that was

another of his father's sayings.

So he lay down in the. vegetable garden alone, aware both of the unknown person or

persons down beside the marsh and� of Barbara and Cindy inside of the house. They were

all in his hands, and they didn't know it. He felt quite brave. And scared.

The fire in the marsh burned on, but no one came. The night wore out in wet dew, and

green became the color of the sky. Any adult walking past would have been hit by a

shotgun blast, but luckily (Bobby thought) it wasn't required. Eventually-nodding, fighting

it-he went to sleep, pink cheeks on crossed hands, the gun at his side.

The physically painful side of Barbara's captivity continued to worsen. Because of her

several struggles with Freedom Five, her wrists and ankles were� so raw that she bloodied

the ropes that held� her, and of course she could not hope to heal under the circumstances.

From containment and inactivity, her body steadily became more stiff and cranky; she was

slowly acquiring a form of bed sickness, so that when the children came and made her get

up, she felt dizzy for a moment. Her mouth was perpetually dry-the wad of cloth in her

mouth kept it so-and her throat from trying to swallow when there was nothing to swallow

was swollen and tender. Her lips, from being taped and untaped, were dry and sore, and

hunger pains came and went like menstrual cramps. The kids had never fed her much, and

refusing that chicken sandwich tonight had been stupid.

None of this was fatal, of course. She knew that.

None of it would leave so much as one scar, and yet considered as one-her small

complaints added up to torture.

To Barbara's thoughts tonight were added new problems. Paul had indeed scratched and

pricked her with his knife. John had indeed taken her virginity, 134

clumsily, but taken it: she had been opened for the first time, and she had bled a little (a very

little, she noted when she had been allowed to get up). All that was left now was a distant,

burning sensation between her legs.

Also, of course, there was the mental affront-humiliation, but more than that-a feeling of "going

down." With every day, her status as an adult, her hold on Freedom Five steadily declined.

Where she had begun as their keeper, she was now down to being their equal-less than equal

for being the it of the game. Where this morning they had barely dared strip her na ked, she

had become by afternoon the object of rape. Tomorrow she would be little better than the

Barbie Doll that Terry had foreseen her becoming.

Tomorrow, Barbara said. I've got to think. Oh, why am I always saying that, when I can't?

One thing she had learned. If her body was a prisoner of Freedom Five, her mind was a

prisoner of her body. The steady complaint of nerve ends to the brain-stop everything until you

take care of this, and this and this and this--created an interrupting static that made her jump

from subject to subject. However she tried to imagine tomorrow, the most that she could come

up with was that it would be worse than today.

Tomorrow Paul would invent new ways to tease and hurt her (and here, she felt true fear). This

afternoon, when he had begun to drag his knife over her just short of breaking the skin, he had

just been Paul. As time passed, however, his face had assumed a smooth cast of pleasure,

even righteousness, as if what he was doing was for him the most correct thing-for him-in the

world. Here was the revengeful soldier putting the torch to Joan of Arc's pyre; here was the

good gray friar listening to confessions of heresy from the rack. Barbara had thought, this little

boy is very nearly insane. The string that held him together-fear of parental punishment-might

have snapped this afternoon, might well snap tomorrow when he no longer felt novelty in the

situation. If it did, he would really stab her or worse, and if he did it

135

once, he would do it again and again in a frenzy. Barbara could see it; she could see that

tomorrow 's he might die sitting up, bound to a chair in the guest room at the Adams'.

Whatever other thoughts came across her mind, that picture remained-the little boy stab-

bing her again and again-and she was afraid.

Tomorrow-again her mind took a sideways jump-John would probably attempt to rape her

again, and he would probably succeed. Here her thoughts shattered and ran off in several

directions at once (again). There was fear of pregnancy ... sorrow ..� John ... Midge ....

In college, during Barbara's first year, there had been a girl called Midge, who, as the

nickname implied, was short, petite, brunette, vivacious, and pretty much everyone's

choice as the Most Fun To Be With. The night after the Indiana game, she and a boy were

goofing off, horsing around the freeways in their car when they hit an overpass bridge

abutment and were killed.

Such things, of course, produce shock on campus, even on so large a one as that. For

several days following, the conversation rather typically ran to "I knew

her ... ,"or "A friend of mine knew her ," or "She

was in my American Lit class last year ," etc. The

main point of it all was that one of us is dead, already dead, actually dead. There was awe.

Afterward there were sophomoric, if better considered, discussions of life, love, God,

philosophy, and so forth.

In the dorm where Barbara was living, the second clear point to be derived was, If you

knew you were going to die tomorrow, wouldn't you be sorry you hadn't jumped in bed with

every boy who ever asked you? It was hardly an original question, and it elicited what was

hardly an original answer. Yes, I would, I most certainly would. The girls had shaken their

heads. Since they were not going to die, of course (it was true: that was the only student

death incident that year), they had not altered their various standards. They had simply

thought about it.

136

Midge's death had had no further meaning for Barbara until tonight when it was reflected as

this: if you had known you were going to be taken prisoner by a bunch of kids and raped by a

sixteen-year-old, wouldn't you have given in to Ted when he wanted you to? Yes, I certainly

would have, Barbara said. Absolutely. It would have had something nice about it then.

Ted swam, too.

He wasn't Olympic caliber-on the team there was a standing joke that when you were twenty

you were over the hill in swimming-but he was good as most young men went. They had met

at the pool and gone stroking off like a pair of sleek young otters, and afterward, Barbara was

considered to have a boyfriend.

Ted had a number of other qualities, too. He could be serious; he hit the books with fair results

and even thought about them afterward; he was kind and considerate for a young man; he

smelled good, and though he was strong as a bull, he was remarkably gentle and restrained

with Barbara. One night after a different game (it was the next year-last year) they, too, had

been goofing off and coasting around in his car when he turned into a vast, empty parking lot,

parked and put the moves on her. He was the first one whose attack did not cause revulsion.

She was surprised.

His hand circled under her arm and covered her breast, his other hand moved under her skirt

and stroked her thigh (well, I guess there just isn't all that much different you can do, she had

thought), and she had consented. She had liked it. There wasn't that wild, randy look that

some of them had. If she had had to put it into words, she might have said that she was being

worshipped-it had seemed so, anyhow-and that was certainly permissible. I just might, Barbara

had thought, I just might, and if I do it and like it, I just might keep on doing it. But she hadn't.

There was her innate "niceness."

Barbara's mother and father hadn't reared her to do it in a parking lot. Or in a rented motel

room (at least, she didn't think so). Or in the woods (not most

137

woods, anyhow). Just exactly where she would consent to Ted's loving, Barbara hadn't

decided (at that time). She supposed she would know it when it happened. Anyway cars

kept coming and going with their headlights; it was cold and cramped and just out of the

question. At best, she wordlessly promised to go to bed with Ted at some unspecified time

and place and to submit-she used it in the grand sense of girlish surrender-to his whims

(which appeared .. safe and pleasant). Yet even that hadn't happened.

Mostly because of money, because of time, because of the lack of a place to be safely

alone, because of her own aversions, they simply hadn't connected. Instead summer had

come, and they had split until this coming fall. Therefore young John Randall, many and

many a mile away and unknown then, had ultimately taken for his own what was honestly

promised to Ted.

Again, it wasn't fatal, she supposed.

I'll live, Barbara said. After all, I'll live. Some girls lose it to a bicycle seat.

Nonetheless she felt sorrowful, deprived unfairly, and changed against her will for the rest

of life. John had altered her. He might also have made her pregnant. She thought about it-it

was too late to do anything else now.

On the one hand, marriage and children were what Barbara considered herself best suited

for. She just. wasn't an activist; she had no desire to compete; politics were like real-life

comic strips, and teaching her field-was only meant to fill in the time until some young

man came along to organize her and get her tracking in the right direction. Sometimes this

seemed grim (particularly at school where there was so much talk of careers, and so on),

but most of the time it seemed nicely possible. Moreover, at her age, this might happen at

any time: it could happen this fall, or it could be three or four years from now. The way she

regarded it, she had "four years left at best." At that time, if not before, her focus would

properly shift to love, impregnation, gestation, birth, and rearing of 138

young. If sometimes she seemed to swing along in cropped hair, suntan, cotton frocks, and

carelessness, it was all something of a put-on; the older she got, the more she thought distant

thoughts.

Being pregnant, that is, being trapped by a baby out of wedlock, however, was another thing

entirely. In no way was she a Libber. Getting knocked up, there was the commonly shared

nightmare that walked the balls of the girls' dorms, visiting the poor ones ( automobile back-

seat girls) in their small suites and the richer ones (motel doubles, ski-weekend girls) in their

sorority bedrooms, causing each young transgressor to frown into the darkness and wonder,

"Am I, am I?" That was the situation where, having broken the deep taboo, you suddenly felt

cosmic, impersonal consequences coming out of the night to expose you: life was over,

finished,

and how much too soon, too.

�

How could I have been so stupid? Well I got carried away, etc., away, away, far away.

Such was the rehearsed, the long-avoided fear that came with Barbara's troubled thoughts

tonight. She would have to have an abortion; surely in these circumstances, they would let her.

At the necessary idea, however, she shrank back a little.

Barbara knew a girl who had had an abortion, a legally arranged, expensive, fancy one, and

the girl had told her about it. She had described checking into the large university hospital (in

another city) accompanied by her parents (everyone shifting embarrassed in their plastic

chairs), had described signing in, being shown her two-bed room, getting undressed, having

the tests, getting pubic hair shaved off, having Daddy come up later with candy, magazines,

and flowers and that absolutely betrayed that noble look in his eyes. What remained highest in

Barbara's mind, however, were the forms. In the evening, a brisk, young lady doctor had

brought the girl several papers to read and sign for herself, and the lady doctor had sat there,

coolly efficient, ready to answer any and all questions while the girl read.

139

The patient understood that she had requested and was to have an operation for the

removal of certain tissue matter from her body; the patient understood that the hospital

would be held blameless from the results, mental and physical. The patient understood

that the operation might be witnessed by qualified medical students; the tissue removed

from her body might be laboratory studied or disposed of by suitable means. The patient

understood, the patient understood .... The girl had nodded dumbly, signed, and gone back

to looking at a magazine she couldn't seem to read. Afterward, the parents-Mommy and

Daddy-also had to read and countersign. They understood that as parents of the above

minor, etc.

What the patient, what Mommy and Daddy understood quite clearly, was that they had

mutually agreed to kill a baby-to-be, one presumably in healthy condition and fully capable

of becoming one of them. (That was the part that really horrified Barbara.) So be it.

The operation was performed as announced, at seven o'clock in the morning-neatly,

quickly and with professional speed. Forty-eight hours later, the patient was home again,

sick with nausea (womb returning to normal size), nausea of the spirit and nausea of living.

Which would it have been? What would it have been like? Who would it have resembled?

What have I done?

Nothing save death is fatal, of course. Some few months later, Barbara observed the girl-

hardly penitent, hardly broken-hearted-swinging out with that little bottle of pills her

mother's GN had prescribed. The abortion, she referred to simply as Mommy and Daddy's

little d and c: "It really shook them up." Thus lightly the matter was concluded.

Barbara, however, could not view it so. To her, the entire experience lay ahead like an

insurmountable barrier to further life. She would rather die first (and knew, of course, that

she would not). The invasions of the body so far endured might soon enough come to be

140

trifling compared to the curette and the removal of a possible baby from her womb. The

time had come for her to look at the dim ceiling and wonder, "Am I, am I?" Then somehow

she was over it, and thinking about

John.

�

Barbara, too, had varying opinions of her coupling partner. There was John the young boy,

John the captor, John the damned rapist, John the just-possible father-of-her-baby, and John

the First One. Without surrendering an iota of her shock, sorrow, and bitterness, she was

still forced to remember the event with at least a degree of after-the-fact clarity.

By afterthought Barbara supposed that if it were her destiny to be raped at all (a large if,

but there was some measure of fatalism in her nature), then she was fortunate that it had

been a boy she knew and not some man animal up an alley or in the woods or wherever.

With John, lust was at least somewhat tempered by fondness. His touch-unwanted,

repugnant, unsure-had been gentle, even so. He bad tried to arouse her, tried to coax her,

and if at the last moment he had gone ahead and satisfied himself at her expense, give

him marks for effort.

Had she enjoyed it? Indeed not. She had been spread and torn (in a minor way, she

suspected; after all, she couldn't see); she bad been pumped, and there had been friction,

enough so that going to the bathroom afterward had made her burn.

So that's it, Barbara said, and considered.

Teacher Barbara was well enough sex-educated technically-but there is always the little

trick of actually doing a thing to really understand. Shouldn't I have felt anything at all that

was good? She couldn't remember; rape was more of a dorm subject than classroom topic

of discussion.

Here she was interrupted. Bobby ran down the hall outside her room. She raised her bead

and watched him run back by the other way, shotgun in his hand. The vision was a

momentary one but sufficient to impress on her the set, frightened look in his face, the

141

measure of desperation in his movement, the utter need for haste.

After the first two days, when she had given up hope of release, Barbara had begun paying as

little attention to Bobby and Cindy as they did to her. They interrupted her difficult sleep, came

to gaze with large, innocent, and yet impersonal eyes on her misery, and then went away. She

neither feared them nor held them out as a medium of hope. At night when she was dozing

and dreaming 'of Terry or Ted or other things, the children came and went more as pictures,

things of imagination equal only to other things of imagination. Now this changed.

Impossibly, Barbara knew at once what the trouble was. Bobby's manner, his quick strength,

the gun in his hands told her'. She heard the kitchen lights turned off, heard the opening and

closing of the river door, and understood. There was a prowler somewhere. This, more than

anything else that had happened, really frightened her.

Enduring the small tortures of children, even child-rapists, was one thing, but helplessness

before the unknown was another. Whatever noise had startled Bobby was made by a human

not an animal, a male not a female, someone powerful and not weak. It could be no other way.

Moreover Bobby, gun and all, would be no match for the man-in-the-dark of Barbara's sudden

imagination. He would be taken care of if necessary, and ~then the kitchen door would open

again. What would happen to her when the intruder finally learned what was going on here

was unimaginable, better not imagined. She held her breath to hear the sound of scuffling, the

sound of a gun-the sound of something-and heard nothing for an hour and then a second

hour. She looked at her wrists seeming miles away, neatly bound with Scout knots-clove

hitches if the correct terms were used-and felt that tomorrow, if there was one, she must

absolutely get away.

Gingerly, very gingerly, she exhumed the outlines

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of a plan she had invented earlier and been too "nice" to effect.

In the garden Bobby was late-awakened by the sudden heat of a risen, huge August sun;

he was cold, damp, dirty, and stiff with the barrel of the .410 glinting wetly where he had

laid it against the beanpoles (the gun was still dangerously cocked). He awoke with a start,

a physical jump, all of the past night's fears and suspense, all of the guilt at having had to

abandon guarding Barbara, immediately on his shoulders. A moment's consideration,

however, told him that everything was all right: he could feel it. The sky was pale green with

very tropical, moist clouds just warming their eastern faces to the light. The birds were

making their usual morning racket, and the river-when he cautiously stood and surveyed

the place-was flat-moving and peaceful. Most important, there was no concealment for

anyone now, no shadows, no darkness, no confusion. Was the Picker gone, too? (In Bobby's

1mind, it was definite now: there had been someone, and the person was a Picker.) Or was

147

"He hasn't, has he?"

"He hasn't been around long .... " "No, but what if he does?"

"Then let me talk to him, and the rest of you hang around. We'll say that Mother's in town,

Daddy's at work, and besides we have somebody to do the fieldwork. Keep one gun up here on

this floor, and somebody like John or Bobby to shoot it, and we'll just see." Dianne reached her

decision with decision. "Don't worry about it."

"And what if we have to shoot him?" Cindy said brightly.

"Then we'll shoot him," Dianne said.

Freedom Five considered. What she was talking about was killing an adult, not a very important

one perhaps (adults varied) but still doing it. The idea was not in any way unacceptable except

that other grownups would find out about it and punish them for it.

"Won't that blow everything?" Bobby said quietly. "Not if we do it my way."

They nodded. Nonetheless the day had begun on a somber note.

The next problem of the day-it became a crisis-arose with Barbara. Because of the Picker, the

children were late in shifting her from bed to walking and taking her to the bathroom:

nonetheless she went docilely enough and performed her usual ceremony (ever more brief as

she ate less) with such grace as was possible. Only she and Dianne knew exactly what hap-

pened next.

While Barbara was washing one-handed, she dropped her washcloth on the floor and being

tied, couldn't seem to bend over properly and pick it up again. Dianne went-, in, bent to get it,

and Barbara grabbed her. Strong, elastic swimmer's fingers dug into Dianne's neat hair and

seized a handful at the roots. Though only Barbara's right hand was free and then only from

the elbow down, all her strength was concentrated there, and it was clear to her and to Dianne

that

148

she was never going to let go. The hair strained at the roots with the force of the grip.

Moreover, Barbara threw her hip and cracked Dianne's head against the side of the sink for

emphasis. Then it was all confused.

Dianne yelled, of course. The sound was one of surprise, sudden pain, and anger but-it was still

cool Dianne-not quite panic. Her own hands shot above her head and engaged Barbara. Then

she was hipped against the sink again, and her eyes momentarily lost clear focus.

The rest of Freedom Five came banging into the bathroom, wide-eyed and thoughtless, and

there was instant battle. Barbara seemed determined to never, never let go, and even

hobbled, resisted their tries at getting her fingers loose. Dianne hurt, and she continually made

just exactly that noise as she tried to get up from her knees where Barbara had her forced. In

the tumble of bodies, naked and clothed, nothing was clear except the central issue of

Barbara-must-let-go-or-Dianne-will-be hurt, versus Barbara-must-hold-on-and-hurt-Dianne.

They swayed and twisted; Paul was pushed across the edge of the empty bathtub and fell in it;

Cindy fled; Bobby got his hands tangled up with Dianne's and Barbara's. Only John could solve

it and only his way.

He doubled his fist and, in contradiction to all his upbringing, hit Barbara on the face. His blow

aimed at the chin went high and 'struck her just in front of the ear, but it was delivered with

such sincerity that she, in tum, lost focus, and her hand in response released Dianne and tried

to reach up to the hurt, and then John hit her again. There was no one to catch her. Hobbled,

she could not step back and so fell against the wall and slid down sideward, spinning the roll of

toilet paper out in a stream as she did so. Then everything was changed again.

In the succeeding tableau-it was a half second later-Dianne was sitting, crying, on the tile floor,

her head in her hands, face out of sight. Barbara, bound as ever, lay twisted and half out of

sight behind the toilet, and John, now the frantic one, was grotesquely trying

149

to get at her and rip the tape from her mouth. She mustn't cry or she might suffocate

behind her gag. Finally everything subsided.

Dianne, crying, got slowly up and stumbled blindly from the bathroom, down the hall, into

the living room, and threw herself onto the couch, still cradling her face in her hands. For

some time she remained there, her tears gradually slowing, her control returning. In the

bathroom itself, Barbara lay in a fettered S on the floor, her face white, her cheek against

the cold tiles. Paul followed Dianne and stood over her in helpless spasm; Cindy stood

timidly behind him while John and Bobby watched over the prisoner. More minutes passed.

When Barbara's eyes showed clear and intelligent again, John and Bobby dragged her feet

first, breasts down against the floor, to a space where they could get at her. Rolling her

over, they took the free hand and tied it back to the other_ behind her. She said things like

"Don't-" and "Please- " and "It hurts-" and all they got out of it was that she was OK now.

Afterward, they regagged her and doubled the tape over her mouth. The rebellion was over

for the time.

Barbara's brief night view of Bobby with his outsized shotgun (or so it seemed to her), his

boy's face frightened and determined all at once, the silence that followed when he

abandoned his post in the house and slipped outside, all produced in her a new degree of

desperation. She would not be passed on by captors to a new captor, winners to new

winner. A possible escape plan she had formed much earlier came back to mind.

Because the children were not getting more careless with her but only more expert, she

could expect only less and less possible freedom as time went by. Already an opportunity

to put her idea to work had slipped by her because things had not been serious enough,

because she was too squeamish. Because, because, because. But I have to now, Barbara

said.

150

It had begun as a simple if desperate proposition.

During a moment when she had even partial movement of one hand, she would grab one of

the children and hold on until the rest of them let her go. Since with the chloroform and by

weight of number they could easily thwart this, she shifted to a variation. With the momen-

tarily free hand she would hurt one of the children. This would eventually cause adult

investigation, and investigation would lead to her rescue hence release.

She could easily have conned Cindy the night before last, but she had not wanted to hurt that

child who would? Barbara's sense of nicety would not permit it. Moreover there was no sense

in trying to catch Bobby; he not only went by the book; he had written it. He stayed carefully

out of reach. That left the outsiders-John, Dianne, and Paul. She would send her message to

the outside via a black eye, a split scalp, or a swollen nose. She was, after all, a competitive

swimmer, someone who tried things.

Since John was too strong, and Paul was, too well, if she failed, he might just kill her on the

spot-she centered on Dianne. Mornings offered Barbara's greatest moments of freedom; she

was on her feet, at least the lower part of one arm was free; the space in the bathroom was

confined enough to make attack possible; and who else was there? Only proper and sometimes

helpful Dianne. Moreover the thin girl was the most responsible member of the group; if she

failed to go home, or went home badly banged up, inquiry was sure to follow. Yesterday, in the

morning, Barbara had even done a little private rehearsal; she was sure she could get Dianne.

That certain delicateness that pervaded and marked Barbara's character, however, had so far

prevented her from doing more than planning. Everyone was susceptible to love and charity,

and the kids could be counted on to come through, couldn't they? She could see it to the end

this way, couldn't she? Violence wasn't necessary, was it? So much for yesterday's generously

liberal thoughts. Having been knife-scratched by a thir-

151

teen-year-old, raped by one not four full years' older, and threatened by the presence of an

unknown prowler, however, she reversed herself. Now, lady.

In the morning next, then, she had dropped her washcloth and felt her whole system go on

double time. Argument and argument came together: I must do it versus I can't do it. Then

Dianne was bending beside her and then her own hand-it hardly seemed hers was swinging

out.

Once she had sunk her fingers into that neat hair of Dianne's-Barbara had to content herself

with the first grip whatever it was-she knew that she had at least enough determination never

to let go. When it came to hurting Dianne enough, however, she held back as she had been

afraid that she would. Mentally she gave the command and momentarily the advantage was

hers. A real swimmer's smash of the hips banging Dianne's head and face against the wash

basin would have been the end of the game: if not, the next smash would have been. Even as

she moved, however, she held back; being Barbara, she somehow hoped a little bit would do

it. She thumped Dianne a good one, of course, but it was delivered with a mercy not returned;

Dianne was not made of so tender a stuff as Barbara thought; and then the moment of

opportunity passed, and the struggle was in progress.

Barbara never truly saw John's first blow coming save as a blur in the corner of her eye, but

even with the bright green and white flashes that followed the explosion at her temple, she

somehow froze him in memory. He, too, was made of harder stuff and would not hesitate to kill

her, and then he hit her again, and she was falling. She had underrated them all.

When she went down, it was in a daze. Releasing Dianne too late and throwing her free lower

right arm out too late, she struck the tiled floor unprotected, and then coldness rushed up to

meet her face and hurt it.

For some time, it remained that way. She vaguely heard crying and voices, dimly felt things

being done to her, but she was somehow anesthetized. There was a

152

dizzy fog between the essential inside Barbara and outside Barbara. She was gratefully

numbed. She would have liked to remain so, but pain and consciousness relentlessly returned.

She opened her eyes and found herself still on the bathroom floor, both hands tied again and

her feet no longer just hobbled, but bound tightly together ankle and-ankle. Her mouth was

again stuffed with lumpy, , damp cloth, and her lips were heavily covered with tape. Little

dazzling shock waves of hurt-injured wrist, thudding head-went across her consciousness.

Above her, on ~the other side of this flickering return to waking, John and Bobby stared down

at her. Even though they came and went from focus, she knew they were white-faced and

breathing hard, too. She turned her face down against the cool ceramic floor and made a sound

of heartbreak.

She hadn't had it in her.

The pain at the point where Dianne's head had struck the sink, lessened and left in its place

only a headache and slight swelling. When this became apparent to her, she was reassured

and calm again, almost supernaturally calm. Drying her eyes, she got up from the sofa, went

into the kitchen, opened the freezer, took ice cubes from the automatic ice-maker, crushed

them in the ice-crusher in Dr. Adams' bar; wrapped them in a towel, wet it, and put it to her

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

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

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

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

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

appeared quite different.

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

than be-

153

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and found it neat enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

remembered it all quite clearly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

were two).

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

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

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

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

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

spoke,

155

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

chamber.

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

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

almost understood what she had intended-and she had frightened them, the most

unforgivable thing of all. They reacted like a person who has bumped into a piece of

furniture and then turns and kicks the offending chair or table to teach it.

Half lifting, half dragging her, they got Barbara into the hallway and pulled her to her feet.

Although she offered--could offer-no resistance, she held herself stiffly and, glancing over

her shoulder, made clear enough sounds of pain. They were not inclined to listen, however,

even Cindy. Ever since the other night when she had ungagged Barbara only to have her

start screaming, she had distrusted her. The scuffle this morning, the fact that Barbara had

hurt Dianne, only deepened this. When the others began to carry Barbara downstairs, she

wished that she was big enough to help; she'd bump her into something and show her.

"Watch it now-You still got her?" John and Dianne carried her by the upper arms, one to

each side.

"Yeah. Watch it, Paul! Yeah, we're OK." Breathing hard and moving awkwardly, Bobby and

Paul backed down the stairs, their hands locked beneath her knees.

"Not so fast-"

"I can't hold on-" "Just don't let go here."

"There's not enough room for me to turn." "Get out of the way, Cindy!"

Bumping and staggering, they slowly descended the stairs to the basement where they put

Barbara down on the last step while Bobby opened �the door of the recreation room and

turned on the bare bulb over the work bench. Barbara leaned over and tried to rest her

head against John's leg, but he pushed her away.

"OK, let's go." Moving more easily with level

156

footing, they carried her into the shop and put her down-hard--on the concrete floor. There

was timeout for a puff.

"What're we going to do now?" Although he was outwardly quiet, Paul appeared nearly

spastic with restrained excitement. His eyes darted back and forth with guilty, squirming

pleasure.

They considered.

It was stuffy in the basement: the air conditioning did not reach here. John pulled the tail of

his T-shirt up and wiped his eyes. Bobby looked uncomfortable. They all watched Dianne.

Tilting her head back and looking at the exposed pipes and joists and the heavy "ship's"

ringbolts in the finished beams, Dianne said, "Let's hang her up."

"Yeah, that's tough!" Paul did what is known as a

jump for joy (rarely seen). "By her thumbs!"

"Ah, you can't do that," John said. "Why?"

"That's only like you read-"

"You'd pull her thumbs out of the sockets," Bobby said learnedly.

Barbara struggled to sit up, making noises through her nose.

"Just by the arms," Dianne said. "That hurts enough."

"Boy!"

The complicated maneuver meant another fight, however. They had to move her again-

under the heavy, iron rings-and knowing what was coming, Barbara kicked out and sent

the two smaller boys falling. Eventually it took even Cindy to help move her the eight or

ten feet required.

"She's too tall," John said. "What do you mean?"

"By the time you get her reaching all the way over her head, she could touch the pipe.

Anyway it might not take her weight."

They hadn't thought about this, but it was clearly so.

157

"I know!"-Paul's moment had come (it was clear). "Leave her hands behind her like they are

and

pull them up!"

�

"It'll work," Dianne said slowly.

This was something that Freedom Five had not tried upon itself. It would be interesting.

Barbara's wrists and elbows (still tied together) were released from her body and rebound

behind her. John ran a rope from her wrists up over the pipe and down again. He pulled and

wrenched her arms up backward and her body down forward. Convinced that she must

stand or have her shoulders twisted around and out of their sockets, Barbara allowed

herself to be brought to her feet, and John pulled some more. It was no effort at all. To

avoid pain, her heels cleared the cement, and she went up on tiptoe: the tendons behind

her knees were sharply shadowed, and the muscles in her calves stood out. Her breasts

hung, and her head (now) hidden by tousled hair pitched forward. John tied the rope off to

a supporting column, and Freedom Five took a second breather.

In the some minutes of wrestling, Barbara's nakedness had lost all its novelty for Bobby

and Cindy and much of its excitement for the others. Up to this instant, the morning had

proved the prisoner to be a burden, a danger, an opponent, a spur to guilt and anxiety, but

never the object of erotic attention. Now, however, forced, twisted, bound, and motionless

except for a slight shifting of weight to somehow ease the agony, she became to them-still

again-altogether astonishing.

"We did it." Paul could not believe it. "We really did."

Cindy looked at him and understood what he meant. Indeed, she felt that everybody did. It

was the game for real. The game played so many times in imagination and so, innocence,

had come true. What Paul had said went for them all, and there was a sense of deep

complicity and commitment in the basement. They all knew that in "the game," there were

other

158

things that could be done. It was suddenly a little scary-at least, Cindy thought so-and she

didn't reply or say any other word.

"Well, what did you expect? That we couldn't, or something?" John bluffed a casualness

that Cindy' saw as false. He was nervous and not nervous, looking and not looking at

Barbara's white, smooth, rounded be-

hind.

171

He accepted it with surprising equanimity: it was almost a given of the problem.

They were enemies. Any two people coming together in such circumstances must fear and

hate one another. John considered it normal.

In books and comic strips silences are taken to be intolerable. People blurt out words. This

silence, however, turned out to be not only tolerable, but quickly preferable.

Wordlessly the Picker bent down and scooped up a double handful of water and dumped it

over his head. Wordlessly John moved his boat out toward midstream, pulling himself along

the uncertain branches of the tree and then pushing away. When he was clear, he broke

out the oars, and slipping them into the rowlocks, pulled away into the middle of the pool.

There, insulated, safe for the moment, he rested and panted with simple emotion.

"Fish?" The Picker spoke softly, no louder than would be required to carry his voice across a

room, and yet in the sound of "fish," the sh sound seemed to extend itself indefinitely. He

had the Pickers' accent.

"Yeah."

The Picker turned and, wading slowly, moved up the bank, and gathered his dark,

shapeless clothes around him. Instead of dressing and slinking off into the woods, however,

he turned back and squatted comfortably on his heels, hands locked in front of his knees.

After a bit there was the flare of a match and afterward the glow of a cigarette. John dipped

his oars in the water and held position against the weak current.

John felt disgusted with himself, relieved and frightened all at once. For all his horsing

around coming up here, he was now the one at disadvantage. A dozen better alternative

plans-fruit of hindsight came to mind, but then who would have expected the bastard to be

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

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

172

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

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

Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing answered. It was scary.

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

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

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

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

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

as he went.

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

com-

173

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

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

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

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

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

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

wouldn't have to face that man alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

feed store."

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

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

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

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

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

novelty and privilege 174

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

judgment even when looking at headlights at night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

passed to her, however, was the heavier thing-responsibility. She had seen that in their

eyes, all right. No matter what they decided to do, she would have to be the one who said

what the orders would be and what they would accomplish. No one else would. No one else

could, that is, if there was to be any outcome of the Barbara thing other than letting her go

and getting punished.

Dianne welcomed and resented this, welcomed it for the sense of freedom she felt and

resented it for what it allowed her to understand of the children. The little ones had always

known that they were going to give up and cry or something when it got hard; their

appearance of reliability and courage had only been a loan to be called in as soon as the

grown-ups' return was near. They hadn't said it, but Dianne saw that this was the way it

was going to be and soon, if she didn't think of some other way out. Barbara might be free

this time tomorrow night; they might be setting her free right this minute. And John, even

John. Now that he was messing around with the girl (Dianne was too repelled to watch, but

she wondered what it was like be-

175

tween a man and a woman), he too was undependable. He might even be the one to turn

chicken first. Sitting ivory-cool and neat in the car with her family, Dianne thought about it.

It was getting trickier. The chances of interference, discovery, Barbara's escape, and their

own loss of nerve, went straight up. They had had a fair run of luck for a fair time now.

Dianne didn't look at it so analytically, of course, but her sense of wonder at their success

and her clear foreboding that they were due for a change, was the constant weather of her

mind. The dread end of the game-the dread of each one of them-was hers to carry. And she

had the added problem of Paul.

Even regularly, he was erratic, predictable only in his strangeness, explosive,

temperamental, and unstable. A clever little built-in baby-sitter for her brother for years,

Dianne had learned a few ways to control him. Mother took tranquilizers and sleeping pills

as a part of her normal life. By switching capsules for capsules and pills for pills, Dianne

had been dosing little brother Paul for a long time now. The older she got, the bolder she

got, and Paul withstood it all without effect. Fragile-looking and spastic, he could

apparently burn off drugs in half normal time, and with the Barbara episode, he had

become worse. He moaned in his sleep, shouted out, and waked up crying until she was

sure he would blurt the whole story out. Caught be .� tween her responsibility to Freedom

Five, her mother's finite supply of sedatives, and Paul's super energy, she strung him along

with hints of what would happen and promises and-when everything else failed-stole an-

other pill and slugged him with it. (Even Bobby ransacked Dr. Adams' things for pills that

might work, but there was little to find of any use.) Paul was holding on now only to a faint

expectation Dianne had given him,

a way out of the game that would be a lot of fun, his kind of fun.

It was all enough to make a seventeen-year-old girl just give up, free the prisoner and go

forward to ' 176

judgment, and of course, the alternative had occurred to her. Her punishment would

probably be the lightest. She had entered only after they had captured Barbara; she had

run the house, kept everyone fed and safe, and so on, and so on. She could make a good

case of it. But �.. and but. It wasn't what she wanted to do.

The game was right. They bad done nothing wrong, not really. To this she clung. Grown-ups

and children were on opposite sides; anyone who knew anything knew at least that. One

was fair game for the other, and always had been. If there was fairness or loyalty between

them, it was the grudging, exasperated affection between opposites ever opposite. Dianne

could not-in pride-imagine crying at injustice, nor given the rare circumstance, imagine

adults doing less. So out of proper beginnings, fortuitous circumstances, and good

managing had come a logical (to her entirely so) situation that must have-sometime, some

place-an ending in harmony with the opening. This was an article of faith with her, so much

so that she began-she tossed away the dry, uneaten part of her ice-cream cone with the

thought-to imagine in detail bow they might conclude their little game.

At the state road her father got out and walked around to the passenger's side while

Dianne slid over to the wheel. A fair amount was on her mind. The driving of the car was

automatic, but at the touch of the wheel again, the movement of the gearshift into "drive,"

an

- outside, unbidden thought occurred to her as if some one had spoken it in her ear: "The

Adams have a car." There was nothing more, not a clue, not a hint, not a suggestion of

utility, just the miracle of the voice. The Adams had a car. She felt struck blind with

some kind of wisdom. Barbara could be moved.

Suddenly Dianne wished that the going home, the watching television, and the going to

bed were over and done with. She wanted very much to be alone where she could imagine

things, make things. All at once, she had a "story" in mind.

177

Perhaps he had heard his name being called even as he slept. It came closer quickly in

short, distress whoops. Then there was a white splash of light in his eyes and he was being

shaken, pushed, and pummeled by Cindy, her face nearly against his own.

"Bobby, Bobby-there's someone looking in the window! Get up! It's a man out there looking

in our windows. Bobby, wake up, I mean it!" The noise went on and on like a radio at top

volume.

Somehow, between sleep and waking and still numb, Bobby knew that what he heard was

true. It had been coming since he had seen the light in the marsh last night; it had moved

from being one of the possibilities to that of being an absolute future event in his mind.

Now Cindy's panic was the proof. They were discovered. And still she shook and pushed

him and pulled at the sheet, whether to get him out or make hiding room for herself being

unclear. "Bobby, hurry/ He's here! He's coming," she was crying with fright.

The Picker.

He sat up so suddenly that his forehead hit hers, but neither noticed. "What?" he said

though he knew what. "Where? Which window?" He looked-frightened-at his own, which

was empty.

"The basement, Barbara, the rec room." All of Cindy's words poured out as one. "You

know"-she was in agony-" ... There!"

"What kind of man?" Bobby made no move to get out of bed. In spite of the room's heat,

he suddenly felt cold and sick.

"A man, that's all."

"Did he see her?"

_

"How do I know what he saw?"

"Are the doors locked?"

"You find out," Cindy hissed.

"Did you open any of them tonight?"

"I dunno--no-yes, I did. One. The kitchen." "Did you lock it again?"

"No!" Cindy began to really cry now. "No, no.

Just get up!"

-

�

178

He knew he had to do it,. and yet everything inside told him that this was the end.

Someone had seen their secret, had looked in the window of the basement, and seen it all-

Barbara, the way they bad left her, Cindy, the emptiness of the house, the whole works.

Now there would be a pounding on the kitchen door, heavy shouts, big footfalls in the

living room, pushes and shoves and hits, Barbara free and telling the whole story. "Be

quiet," he said, and waited for the end.

"What're you going to do?"

"Just be quiet." He finally threw down the sheet, swung his feet out over the edge of the

bed, and sat up. Cindy looked at him, her eyes wet enough but momentarily not crying, her

springy hair curled up into spirals around her face, her lips pursed. They waited.

In fact, nothing happened, and it was very puzzling to Bobby. What was to happen was not

occurring. There was only the sound of the cicadas outside, moths at the window of his

room, and the very distant, almost soothing sound of summer thunder. He reached up and

turned out the light. He did it slowly, fearfully, almost religiously.

"Don't do that." "We have to." �

"I'm scared-I want to see."

"Go hide then. I don't want him to see us." "Hide where?"

"Anywhere."

"I want to stay with you-u-u-u .... "

"OK, then, but shut up, will you?" Bobby slowly stood up, testing the quietness of the house

with his ears-they felt as if they were sticking out a mile beyond his head. "Get away from

me, now. Stop getting in my way." He went to his window and squinted out. Nothing. Then

he went out into the hall and looked out the windows there. Nothing.

"What do you see?" "Shut up."

He went into the living room and stood in front of the .410 be had left there. It was far from

a warlike

179

move. He felt now that if he took a gun in his hand

. and an adult really did come in-a good adult-it would somehow make their whole crime

worse. It had all been well and good to go parading around with shotguns up to this point,

but he knew, he just simply knew, that he didn't have it in himself to shoot anyone tonight

Particularly somebody who oughtn't be shot. If a grown-up came in and just found Barbara

tied up and the two children being good (otherwise, of course), it would be better. There

was no reasoning to this; it was just the truth. "Stay here," he told Cindy.

"What're you going to do?" "Just stay here."

Barefooted, he went out into the kitchen to the river door and looked out the unlatched

screen (Cindy). In two lightning flares, everything continued quiet, and he opened the door

and looked out, up and down the length of the house. Although he again saw nothing, ev-

ery bush and tree beyond the immediate yard seemed a threat. He shut the screen,

latched it firmly, and shut the inner door behind it. "Tum on all the lights."

"All of them?" Cindy said from the doorway. "Everything. The television, too."

He turned on the kitchen overhead light, the counter light, and the stove lights. Cindy went

from lamp to lamp in the living room, turned on the blank TV, and the little-used front-

porch light. Together, they went down the hall from bedroom to bedroom until at last, they

met in a bath of illumination.

"Are we safe now?"

"I guess so." In fact, Bobby felt the same as he had last night: the Picker could see in and

Bobby could not see out. The difference was that in twenty-four hours he bad lost his

nerve. No going out there in the vegetable garden. tonight-no way. ~He was on the scared

defensive now.

"Well-" Cindy said.

"Don't worry." It was the first time in Bobby's life that he had ever done that thing that

adults do so often, hidden his fear from others, but he did it out of

180

compassion. And maybe the lights might work. They sure made daylight out of everything.

"Where're you going?" "Downstairs, stupid."

"I don't want to go down there anymore." Cindy crossed her hands over her chest. "It's

scary."

"Then don't," Bobby turned and began his way down. He had no more enthusiasm for it

than Cindy, but he had Barbara-even at the verge of surrender, he was responsible-as his

next duty.

"Bobbye-e-e-e." Cindy began to cry again, but

quietly.

187

8

It was late when Freedom Five assembled the next morning; it was also hot, the hottest day

of the drought of late summer. When John and Dianne and Paul came out of the tree line

along Oak Creek, their faces were shiny with sweat. The dust-it lay on every leaf and pine

needle-stuck to their skin. Breaking clear beneath the broiling forenoon sky, they crossed

the field, came past the vegetable garden and up to the Adams' kitchen steps in silence.

Bobby and Cindy, nearly sleepless and certainly sandy-eyed, were waiting for them.

"Sorry we're late," John said.

"John had to leave his boat up the creek last

night."

"He saw the Picker." "He talked to him .... "

"We had to go up the creek this morning and get the boat," Dianne said.

Bobby and Cindy looked at each other. "He was

here last night, too," Cindy said defensively.

"Who, the Picker?;' "I saw him."

"Cindy says she saw someone looking in the basement window last night," Bobby said.

"She woke me up, and I looked around, but I couldn't see anything."

"You were scared enough!" "I was not."

188

"Were too." Cindy stood firm. "You were as scared as I was."

"What window was he looking in?" Dianne said. "I dunno," Bobby said. "Maybe he looked in

all of them, if he was here. Cindy thought she saw something when she was guarding."

"Did he see her?" "Barbara? Who knows?" "Where is she now?"

"Still tied to the pole. She fainted. I had to let her sit down."

"What else?"

"Nothing. We turned the lights on upstairs and off downstairs, but nothing happened.

Nobody did anything. At least not yet."

Freedom Five stood silent a moment. They were solemn beyond their ages. John rolled his

handthumb, forefinger, and palm--over his forehead to remove the sweat. "I guess- we

better have a meeting."

There was a certain ceremoniousness about the Freedom Five meeting. Perhaps it was

caused by little things like the hot weather, their own selfish, sweettooth wishes, habit, or

the example of adults unconsciously observed, but there was ritual there. Dianne opened

the refrigerator and got out the ice-it popped from the automatic ice-maker that was

forever full John and the other kids got out the soft drinks and glasses and put them on the

kitchen counter. Then, like the grown-ups they disdained, they poured their own drinks--

one, a Cola; one, an orange; and another, a ginger ale. Afterward they went into the living

room and sat down formally for a change.

Only Cindy remained herself. She sat down at the piano and began her torturous attack on

"The Happy Farmer"-dum, dum, boom, boom, dum, dum, (mistake), boom, boom (begin

again)-with complete if temporary concentration.

"OK. Shut up,'' John said.

189

"You haven't begun yet." Cindy was offended in her house.

"Yes, we have. Now, stop it."

Cindy banged her hands on the keys with a discord effect, but she stopped.

Each member of the five looked at some other member in silence.

"Uh," John said, "I guess we gotta decide some things."

"What?" Bobby said.

"Well, everything." He looked around and received no help. "Well," he began again, "your folks

are coming home three days from now. That's one thing. And the Picker-us getting caught-

that's two. I saw him last night, I talked to him sort of, and he's big. If he gets the idea to come

in here, we can't stop him unless we kill him. And, of course, we've got her.".

"You mean, let her go," Bobby said. If nothing else he was logical; the mounting up of obstacles

meant just one conclusion (which, naturally, would be his release from the responsibilities of

jailer).

"Not yet."

"What then?" Cindy was impatient. She continued to sit on the piano bench, hands around one

knee, swinging her foot. "I mean, if you're just going to sit around and talk, say something."

There was a pause. Outside, the cicadas began another cycle of their endless chant to

summer.

"Kill her." Paul squirmed.

The words were blurted out in his usual way, and though he sat normally enough in his chair,

he seemed to be crawling around in his own skin like something in a bottle. And~ they all

looked at him. There was enough force in his voice to compel attention.

Beyond the walls of the house, beyond the automatic air conditioners, beyond the fields and

the county road and the highway, lay the routine world. There-in the town of Bryce-adults did

their own, incomprehensibly dumb things about stores and money and cars and all, and their

kids just bumped along behind them,

190

trying or complaining or carrying packages or just suffering it all in silence. The weight of

this oppressive world was not in any way forgotten. Kidlike, however, Freedom Five held it a

trifle away from them. After all, it wasn't bugging them at this very minute, was it? They

were privileged in their own world, weren't they? They could at least think about things,

couldn't they?

"Kill her," Paul said again, and this time more pleadingly, "We could kill her."

"And blame it on the Picker," John said.

"You're kidding," Bobby said. If he had been in school where everyone tried to keep up with

swinging language, he would have said, "Man, you're putting me in," but in the actuality of

emotion, he reverted to more antique slang. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm not. Dianne thought it up last night." John looked at her.

"Would you like to?" It was issued as a rather formal invitation.

"Kill her?" Cindy stopped swinging her foot in

midair.

"Why not?"

"You know what'll happen to us if she tells .... " "You know what'll happen to us if we kill

her,"

3obby said.

"I told you. We can blame it on the Picker. We .an do it and go free."

This gave Freedom Five genuine pause.

Things were arranged in an extremely simple fashion for their benefit. The Voice said, Do

this, or I will beat you. That, in essence, was the sound of their up) ringing as they had

heard it. Even John and Dianne at their present age still heard the melody: threat reprisal

for disobedience. The actuality of judgment and punishment-and for the oddest reasons-

was clear in their minds. What would happen after this experience was beyond

comprehension. They would not be killed, but then, that was probably the only thing they

would be spared.

(In fairness, they had also been tampered with

191

along this line: "Do this because it's so much more fun." They regarded it cynically and had

never been conned. Threats worked best; they were simply understood.)

The children also considered the proposition from the disadvantage of guilt. From the

beginning, "the game" had been directed toward WHAT WAS NOT ALLOWED. Born in a welter of-

nearly smothered by TV, magazines, comics, and newspapers, they were aware enough

that adults continuously killed other adults. It was only around here, in this neighborhood,

that it was strangely out of fashion, but they were not misled. They played with the idea

and liked it.

Everybody liked it-everywhere.

But that kind of play developed in them a stealth and guilt and-now, at the moment of

discovery versus execution-excruciating indecision. They fell grave. Because of the

sweetness and youthfulness of their faces, a difference and advantage they clubbed their

elders with, the gravity had an almost comic effect. Cindy, in fact, giggled.

"We can't kill her," Bobby said. Here his tone separated himself and Cindy from the other

three.

"Why?" Tears started in Paul's eyes. He was keen on it.

1

"Well-" Bobby paused. "She's-well, she's a-� she's just a kid like us."

"Yeah," Cindy agreed.

And still again, Freedom Five stopped to think.

They understood the argument Bobby had made with-� out being able to put it into an

articulate statement Barbara might still be on their side of the war. Grown-� ups killed each

other and got beat up in accidents, so OK it was hard to care about a grown-up outside of

your own family (and sometimes difficult then). But an� other one of them . ... It had a

strange force; they could identify with themselves or their equals, and not one of them had

ever died or been killed that they knew of. It was something new, indeed.

192

"Aw-w-w, she's old enough to be Cindy's mother."

"Is not!" Cindy was insulted. "She's only twenty." "A mother, then." (Mothers-for purposes of

this discussion-had a fairly low cartel.)

"So's Dianne," Bobby said, "and John's old enough to be a father. They'll both be in college like

her in a couple of years." He looked around and saw that his point was won. He had made it

"serious."

Freedom Five appreciated quietly.

After a minute Dianne said (and she had thought about Bobby's point as if it were something

new), "What difference does it make?"

"I dunno. It just does."

"We'd be in the same fix, and we'd have the same trouble if she was Cindy's age. Twice as

much trouble. You're not supposed to kill little children."

"I'm not that little!" "Oh, shut up, Cindy."

She did. Her expression showed that it was getting a little scary around here.

The other four were equally wordless, and yet somehow the tension had lifted one degree.

Ethically speaking, they would never victimize a small child nor-if their play was rehearsal for

life-would they think twice about an older person. Barbara was indeterminate. The matter

could not be solved on the basis of age. The jury was still out.

"Anyhow," Bobby, ever practical, said, "how

would you do it?"

"Any way." "Ask Paul."

Paul said very little, but he went ashen with the effort of getting it out. More was passing

through his mind than could be encapsulated in a single phrase, and he was in a near faint. He

said, "Like we always do."

"Oh."

Bobby, who knew Paul, sat back in his chair and let this sink in as far as it would go.

193

"Oh." Cindy was awed. John set his jaw.

Dianne never let much emotion show; if you knew her, you would say she had no

surface feelings at all (and the deep ones you would grant only out of politeness). She

listened to Paul and sat quite still as always, but she was rigid, and underneath the

rigidity was a trembling.

"Well, that's what we always played we wanted to do, isn't it?" Paul laid it on them.

Freedom Five heard and sighed. In imagining such a thing, they were not going as far

as. childhood would allow them to go and remain children any longer, but they were

going as far as being adult would ever allow them. Simply by considering the thing, they

were going as far as dreams and dreams again would take them-certain dreams.

Dreams of ....

The philosophical ins-and-outs of one person's taking another person's life---a nicety

that seems rarely considered in actual events-was beyond them. The point needs

clarification: they could not have discussed it. The literature on the subject, the

annotated codes of law prescribing the provocations and instances of retribution, the

history of the matter-all of history with all its precedents pro and con-were unavailable,

unreadable, and incomprehensible to them. They faced the subject anew.

Each person, after all, in his or her ability to create or destroy life is a god of some sort.

If a person is born, two other persons (presumably; who knows anymore?) created him;

if that person is deliberately killed, at least one other, equally human person did away

with him. Being god on a local scale is possible; any child who has ever squashed a

mushy caterpillar knows that.

"And we can get away with it," John said. In spite of the air conditioning, he appeared

sweaty.

"No way," Bobby said. "Dianne has it all figured out."

194

"You're going to get . . . well," Dianne said quickly, "Someone's going to break into the

house tomorrow night."

"The Picker," John said.

"How's he going to do that?" Cindy said. "Shut up."

"And he's going to force Barbara to lock you"Dianne looked at Bobby and Cindy-"in the

closet, so you can't get out. Then he's going to take Barbara out to the tenant house and

kill her. Then he's going to run away, and we're going to come over here in the morning

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

"The Picker?" Bobby said.

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

ing.

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

dismayed.

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

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

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

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

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

a story about it."

"Right."

"It won't work."

"Listen to it," John said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

just said."

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

deliberately ungrammatical here.)

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

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

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

idea.

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

the closet." Dianne was reassuring.

"What about you?"

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

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

them out with weeds."

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

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

"Yeah," John said.

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

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

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

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

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

us."

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

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

Bobby was overwhelmed. Dianne was really mean.

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

didn't do it."

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

196

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

they won't believe him."

"Why?"

"Who cares what a Picker says?"

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

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

"I dunno .... "

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

hands on him."

"Chicken?" Paul said.

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

have to choose between us and him."

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

cry a lot, they'll believe us."

"Paul'll tell."

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

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

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

though he seemed to be. But he was batty.

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

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

refute, "I

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

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

he looked

197

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

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

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

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

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

slightly "still there."

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

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

astonished.

Frustrated, hurt, still incapable of telling them what he wished to say, he lay sobbing on the

floor. It was a heart-breaking sound, not simply that of a hurt child, but a sound of

abandonment, of having been abandoned by whatever supported him.

Dianne jumped up and ran over to him. Dianne usually moved with glacial calm, but this

time she flew with a child's movements, abrupt, clumsy, frightened. She rolled Paul over

and cradled his bead in her lap; she hurt for him, it was easy to see. And Paul, when be was

not spastic or twitchy, was a normal enough boy. He had pale brown hair that was thin and

curly: his eyes were brown and warm. Against the cotton of Dianne's short dress, he looked

adorable. And pleading, somehow.

Dianne stroked his head for the bump. "Are you hurt?"

"I

I

" h b

.

d

.

. . . . .. , e egan agam an agam.

"Paul! Paul, listen to me. Hush now." "I ... what?"

"Paul, you can do it." "What?"

"Kill her."

"Me?" , ''Kill her," Dianne said. "Just like we said." Paul was somewhat pacified. He slowed

his crying.

198

"You can tell us what to do, and do it- first. You understand me?"

"I can?" A clarifying light thinned the color of his eyes to amber-amber like that of a

cat's.

Dianne looked up at the other three. She had asked for very little in her life and didn't

know how. "He can be first, can't he?" she said. "It isn't fair, but he'd like it-',

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

"Be first at what?" Cindy said.

"Be first-kill her." Paul was still somewhat incoherent. He rolled over on his side and

pressed his face against his thin sister's stomach as if he wanted to crawl into her

womb. His legs curled up in the foetal position, be looked like something waiting to be

born.

"He can, can't he?"

"Wait a minute," Bobby said. "We were having a meeting about it. We never voted. We

never decided anything-"

John had to acknowledge this true, though it seemed to annoy him. "OK then, we'll

vote. For killing her, who?"

"Me." Paul (well who else?). "Me." Dianne.

"Me," John got in.

"Oh-I guess so." Cindy.

"No." Bobby. He had stopped crying, but he was

still dismayed.

"Well, you wanted the vote." "It isn't fair!"

"What isn't?"

"I'm the only one who doesn't want to--" "That's what voting is for."

"-and I have to do something stupid just because 'you don't have the sense to see it.

We're going to get caught. I'm telling you, they'll find out."

"The vote!"

"Wait a minute," Dianne said coolly. "We can go through the first part-get ready-and

then if it doesn't 199

look OK, we can stop. We can always let her go, even at the last minute."

"No hurting her until then?" "Of course not."

"We're not crazy, you know."

Bobby was not satisfied with the meeting at all, but they had voted fair and square, and

they meant to do what they said, if they could. That sort of brought it down to 'the inside

thing, the last question.

"Well," be said. "OK." He needed time to think.

The rest of the morning was somber even by Freedom Five standards. Paul was persuaded

to lie dOWJ!. and rest for a while, to give up his first swim of the day. No more than any other

kid did be willingly take naps while the sun was still shining, but this time he relented.

"If you go home hurt or cranky, Mother's going to wonder why," Dianne said.

"You could mess up everything," John said.

"F

lf t

"

or yourse , oo. . . .

Even Cindy, the slightest unselfish trace coming out in her, put a soft little hand on his

head. "We can play and swim after lunch," she said. "I'll go with you. If you want to. We can

build bridges and stuff."

Bobby nodded, and Paul reluctantly shut his eyes.

He was obviously in some lingering state of upsetpale, trembly, perspiry-but he tried to

obey, and they left him.

Even at the beach, however, the mood did not lighten. It was terrifically bot: the water felt

like lukewarm mud, and the sand flies with avenging appetite drove them down from place

to place.

"It's really going to do it this afternoon," John

said.

"Rain?" Bobby said. "Squall."

"Yeah," Cindy said.

"What do you know about it?" "I know ... !"

200

"Yeah, it is."

"Are we really going to do it?" Bobby said after a

bit

"What?"

"You know. Kill her.',

John sighed. They were sitting on the half-mud, half-sand bottom, about shoulder-deep in

the water to keep away the files. He picked up a cupped handful of water and let it dribble

through his fingers. "I guess so," he said. "Dianne's got it figured out pretty well."

"Why?"

"I dunno:" The fact that John said he did not know the reason in no way seemed to

undermine his determination to go ahead and do it.

"Do we have to? I mean, what if we went up there now and told her she had to promise not

to tell or she was going to get killed?"

"She'd promise."

"She'd fib!" Cindy said. "Shut up."

"I don't have to. It's my house as much as yours." "You ought to stop picking on her," John

said

gently. "She's got smarts, too. She's right. Barbara'd tell, anyhow."

"Yeah," Bobby conceded. "So we get a whipping, and it's all over. It's not going to kill us.

We had our fun."

"That's not the point," John said.

"What is then? I mean, we proved we could tie her up and do anything we wanted to her.

We've already proved we can kill her. All you have to do is go up there and get my .22 and-

blowie!-she's dead. What's the sense of going to jail the rest of your life for it? What good is

she, dead?"

John was in no way a Catholic, but he said, "If you don't feel it yourself, I can't tell you."

The antique argument was fairly effective with Bobby; it was also unassailable, but he

tried. "So, tell

me."

201

"You remember how we used to play when we were younger?"

It had been kind of neat then, Bobby remembered, but now that they were talking

about real life, it was too gruesome to repeat. "Yeah, I remember," he said quickly.

"Like when we cut off the guy's fingers so he

couldn't climb out of the well?"

"I said I remembered."

"Well?"

-

"Well, nothing. That was only playing."

"So's going out for football after school; only Namath made 400-grand for signing with

the Jets. So's grinding out the grades; only some guys get sent around the world with

scholarships for it. Free."

"I ... ," Bobby struggled. "I guess that was fun, and this isn't. I didn't really mean it

about killing people."

"I didn't either," John said. "It's funny." "What?"

"Well I mean, I mean it now.''

"Will you just say why?" "Killing-is-what-one-person--does-to-

another-person-who-can't-help-himself." For John, this commonplace verged on

profundity. His face grew stern with the effort of it.

"It isn't," Bobby said.

"Well"-John gave an annoyed shrug-"Maybe only when you're not going to be caught at

it."

"Even still, it isn't that way."

"Then why does it happen all the time? Every time somebody gets the chance?"

"It doesn't. Not all the time.'' Nonetheless Bobby was swayed, bent by obvious fact, left

without an answer that he could easily express. What was in the corner of his mind

was the general argument, "We all ought to try and not do it," or something of the sort,

but it was a dumb chicken thing to say because nobody but him wanted to try anyhow.

In the-to him-ava- 202

lanche of Freedom Five opinion, he could only say, "Anyway, I don't want to kill her."

"You don't have to. Paul will. Or Dianne. Or me, if I have to."

"Or me!" Cindy said brightly. She was becoming

more savage as time went on.

"You better not!"

"I'll do what I like." "Leave her alone .... "

"And I don't even want to watch."

"You don't have to. Go up and put your head under the pillows all day if you want to."

"Then what do I have to do."

"Stand your guard. Shut up. Or it'll be you instead of her. You can't get away from us."

Well, that was true enough. Bobby could not get away from John. They were sitting not two

feet apart in the water. In such a tone does society speak.

Bobby sighed. A tear came down one cheek, and he clumsily washed it away with river

water.

"Oh, cut it out for godsakes," John said. "It's going to come out all right."

"Yeah. Don't be a cry baby," Cindy said.

At that point Dianne appeared above them at the top of the bank. "Let's eat." She was as

neat as ever but rather prettier and more animated than usual. "We have to clean up the

house and get ready, and then we have to take her to the bathroom."

"What for?" Cindy said. "She hasn't eaten since Wednesday."

"To make sure she's purged," Dianne said.

When the kids were late, and when, after they arrived, they did not come down, and when

she heard the muffled sounds of voices coming through the floor at the other end of the

house, Barbara assumed that it was a meeting. The occasional formality of the kids when

dealing as Freedom Five had not escaped her. But about what? A very strange tingling-was

it so prosaic a thing as hope?-began inside.

203

Was it about the person, the man who, they thought, had looked in the window last night, the

one who had been prowling around the woods the last couple of days? (His existence in her

mind was absolute enough.) Was it about the Adams coming home? Something new? Was it

about letting her go?

Freedom? (Oh-my-god!)

The freedom. Freedom, so abruptly taken away from her, so persistently denied, returned like a

chord of grand music (Ravel? Tchaikovsky? Wagner?) sounding through her head, a chord

struck by a thousand piece orchestra accompanied by choirs, cannon, and rockets. She was

engulfed in the great A-major majesty of it. It was just plain silly in her situation to feel so

momentarily free, and yet the sound echoed on. For a moment the strength in her returned

until she felt she could simply fling her hands upward, snapping rope like thread. Freedom!

Characteristically Barbara's thought of freedom-its nearness momentarily believed in--<lid not

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.