older-and so, really stupid-could not be forgiven in someone who looked like, who
pretended to be a girl not much older than John himself. It rankled. It aggravated. Who
would ever go for someone like that? Well, that was what he had thought, all right.
How different today!
He sighed, shifted position slightly, and-thus reminded that there was water in the boat-
began idly, mechanically to bail. From time to time he stopped and stared, preoccupied,
at the surface of the creek.
John had been scared and embarrassed this morning. Barbara was tied and gagged
pretty well, but it had seemed like they only had her. It was as if the weight of law and
order she represented must have allies everywhere, as if something terrific was going to
happen to them any second. Even now, he wasn't sure it wouldn't occur sooner or later.
Nonetheless, the afternoon had been great, the greatest experience John Randall had
ever had. He didn't know exactly what it was: it was just something about the way she
acted (as if, indeed, - she could have acted any other way-John didn't think about that).
When it was his tum to watch her and Dianne had left to keep an eye on the kids at the
beach, he went into the bedroom, and Barbara was looking at him as if something
different was going to happen. When he simply sat down a little to one side, pulled .his
towel around his neck and propped his feet on the bed, however, she had turned away,
and after a while her head had slowly dropped forward. It was then that something
about the smooth back of her neck, the curve of her shoulders, the way she sat there
barelegged
42
and sort of innocent and kid-looking, entirely charmed him.
John Randall was largely truthful with himself in regarding this as a surprise. The day had
been filled with emotions-nervousness, embarrassment, daring, excitement, foreboding,
and perhaps some covetousness-but yet he had entered the room feeling more a sense of
danger and disbelief than anything else. It was impossible not to think of the trouble of
keeping this whole game going, the chances of being caught, the things that would happen
when it was all over-quite truly, he had a number of sober thoughts in his mind-and it was
only after some time that he really studied the girl before him.
Silent, subdued of body if not of spirit, sweetly patient (or so he thought) enduring just
enough picturesque pain and discomfort to keep her alert, Barbara became minute by
minute a kind of girl he had never seen or suspected to exist. In fact, as he became atten-
tive, even hypnotized by the sight, it became clear to him that he had never seen a real
girl, a woman, before in his whole life.
Girls-in John Randall's estimation-were a pain in the ass. They came at you and were
friendly enough, but if you responded, they turned and ran again and stood giggling in
clutches of their own kind. They might touch you now and then, but if you touched back,
they pushed you away as if you had broken something-s-or something. They came around
in fantasies and kept you awake at nights, and yet-such was John's conclusion-girls really
didn't need boys now or ever in their lives. Despite the fairly steady sight of marriages and
enduring romances in the community and even in school, be was convinced of this. You
needed girls-i- sleepless nights attested to it-and they didn't need you. That was the pain in
the ass. But Barbara was different.
She was now.
Though it was imposed and enforced, of course, she had during the afternoon, exuded a
feminine qual-
43
ity of submission that literally drenched the room. Moreover, the tension between John
Randall and Barbara perceptibly changed as his guard hour wore along, changed between
the girl and him. Before, it had been Barbara tied up by the kids-for so he still thought of
himself-and now suddenly, as delicately as a bubble appearing, there came before him a
girl brought to her proper, humble place by (in part, at least) her master. She was given to
play her role, and he was-divinely given his. It was all a stunning conception. He had the
feeling of being in the presence of profound reality, the kind that smashed away laws,
manners, and all the crap they handed you. He exhaled and only then realized that he had
been holding his breath in order to hold the spell. The most mysterious and wonderful thing
in the world was simply what was going on right there beneath his nose. He was engulfed
in living as he had always wished.
What sort of spoiled it every now and then was that she would try and shift around. The
way her hands twisted and searched behind her back, the way she suddenly breathed
more heavily, the way she looked accusingly at him, brought back the truer shape of
things. She was only Barbara after all: released, she would become her busy, cheerful,
uninteresting self soon enough again. And he was only John who was going to get it good
when all of this was over and finished. The magic was broken.
Only to rise again.
With the sigh of someone who throws himself before a wonderful fate, John Randall flipped
the rowboat's painter off the dock piling and let himself float slowly toward the river. It was
dark now, and he felt more sheltered and private. With exacting mental care, he picked the
needle of memory up-it was all like replaying a good record-and set it back again to the
precise groove when everything seemed to change between him and her. Then he sat back
and let himself and the boat drift, and he lived it all over again.
44
45
Things were harder for Paul. Everything was harder for Paul.
He knew, for example, that he laughed too loud and too soon-brayed in fact-when nobody
else saw anything funny. He knew he let himself become sad or frightened and cry too
easily He knew that-being his size-he dare not fistfight, and yet he couldn't hold his temper
one bit. He always realized afterward that he missed stupid questions at school because
when they were asked, he stopped to think of all the possibilities and ramifications, and
then the questions weren't simple anymore. Things were all more complicated than anyone
seemed to understand. The world constantly reported itself to him as louder, harsher,
funnier, sadder, more menacing and intricate, than it did to others.
All of this had been observable from the beginning.
"See the dog, Paul"; Paul understood at once.
"Say dog," "Spell dog"; Paul did it first. So far, so good. Paul McVeigh was as superior as his
forebears would have expected (and they were very WASP forebears). How bright-eyed,
how interested, how quick. Yet Paul also saw terrible terrors in the most familiar shadows.
And he felt things that were not entirely warranted-more grief than a dead bird demanded,
more beauty and grandeur than a winter night's sky possessed. His sensitivity, in short,
went beyond the useful to the useless and to the harmful itself.
Growing up, Paul had assumed that everyone else felt exactly as he did, saw the exact
same things he did. The difference was that-c-somehow-c-everyone else seemed to control
themselves better. The question of why puzzled him very much. Why shouldn't they twitch