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