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
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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