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-
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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
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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.