"What?"
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"Fun."
Bobby said nothing. "Is it? Is it now?"
"Well ... not so much, I guess."
But he wasn't going to untie her, not yet. He wasn't ready to let her live. Barbara said
nothing.
Thunder came again. A nervous puff of wind shook the tenant house. Bobby looked over
his shoulder and out the window and then composed himself a while longer. He seemed as
lonely as she " .•• not so much," he echoed himself. "It's funny."
"What's funny?"
"Like the way it didn't come out that way," be said. "Like when we were all figuring out if we
could do it, it seemed like something we had to do. You know? Like if you think you can do
something, you have to.
"You don't have to do anything. You don't have to hurt people."
"I know what you're going to say, but-" Bobby suddenly clamped-down in stubbornness.
"I'm sorry." Barbara was stretched out and comforted, and she was allowed to talk. I can't
let him stop now, Barbara said.
"It's OK," he said.
She nearly died with relief.
He didn't notice. "I dunno, it was like something that ought to be done. Like we couldn't
help it." He stopped and looked at her moodily. "And it was OK at the beginning. Then it
was a drag. Now ... " this was a long speech for Bobby, and he suddenly seemed to realize
it. "The reason I took off your gag is that I'm sorry."
"About what?" "That it's you."
"But it is me." Something in Barbara let go, and with all her strength she pulled at the
cords and knots that held her. "I'm me." She collapsed again. "I'mme. You like me. You
don't have anything against me. Just let-me-go. Please!"
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~·1 would," he said, but I can't." He seemed :finished with the talk; be had known what
she was going to say anyhow. He put his bands on the floor to get up.
"Bobby, don't go."
"I'm not going anywhere. I mean, not away from here. Just around"-he actually seemed
solicitous"Don't be scared."
Monstrous, again.
"I am scared," she said. And she was. In pulling against her ropes, she had hurt herself
again, and the hurt- would not stop. In pulling against Bobby's orderly but other-oriented
mind, she had seen the possible future, and that hurt would not stop, either. Desolation.
She raised her head and shouted his name, and that didn't help either. She let her head fall
and cried.
In all the time and through all the things the children had done to her, Barbara had never
really cried. Adult dignity had held out that far. But now she cried, and it was ugly. Her
diaphragm heaved; her nose ran; her face streamed water; she made unmaidenly sounds:
she cried.
Bobby watched her-she saw him watching her and not doing anything for her-and he
appeared distressed. When the crying did not stop--she could not stop it-be got up with his
small shotgun and went someplace else. It was beginning to rain now. The boards and
nails, the floors of the tenant house, everything moved beneath her. There was no solidity
anywhere in the world. They were going to kill her if they could; all of this world would
cease all too soon. Her mind could hardly encompass the thought.
Yet so tough is the human creature, that the crying eventually stopped. The body-
unbidden-ignored its pain and despair and repaired: it fought for itself. She subsided alone
and lay sniffling alone, and after a bit, Bobby came back and bent over her. He took a
damp, crumpled paper napkin-it smelled "sandwich"-out of his shorts pocket and let her
blow her nose on it, and afterward be wiped her eyes with the same piece of paper. She
looked up at him.
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"Bobby-" How much can be put into a word?
How can you convey the end of the end? "Bobby, just tell me. Why won't you let me go?
Now? What's stopping you? I don't want to die."
He looked-aside from his concern with the squall and everything else-Bobby looked
contrite. He said, "They wouldn't like it."
"They," Barbara said. The rain swept over the building and a livid streak of lightning
seemed to hit quite nearby. "They is nobody, Bobby. You're the one who's doing it. You're
doing this to me. You started it. You're responsible." Oh, god, tell it to a wall.
"We voted," he said, "and I lost." Duty, democratic principle, morality, desire, confusion.
He seemed genuinely tragic enough, a young boy caught up in a large web of philosophy
and religion and man and forever and all of that. "I tried all along. I was on your side," he
said, "but I can't help it now."
"YOU canl"
"Well ... I could, I guess." "You can! Do it."
"Not yet, anyhow," he said. Bobby was getting more and more nervous as the storm grew.
He kept darting his eyes around. He was ready to leave again.
She desperately tried to hold that attention on herself. "Bobby, what's more important, me
or those other kids?"
"Well, I said I'd do my part .••• " "Me or them?"
"Them."
Afterward before lie left her, lie put the gag back in her mouth. First he reached for the
chloroform, but she protested, and so they agreed. He stuffed the rag back in her mouth,
down the tongue where it nearly made her retch, and then he retaped her.
Help me/ What help?
The squall brought the night. There would be no swift passage and then the reprieve of
sunset that so often followed these summer storms. Rain gusted through
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the broken windows of the upper rooms of the tenant house and made thin mud of the
linoleum floors. It grew cold and quite black. Bobby patrolled and then repatrolled the
windows on the second floor, his shotgun in arm. Barbara watched him until there was
barely enough glow from the stairway lantern to see anymore, and then she listened to
him come and go.
Listening, she strained. Little terrors went up and down.
Thunder and lightning and gusts of wind were bad; they increased her desolation.
Footsteps were good; he was back again. The sealike sound of wind and rain curling
over the tin roof was the worst. She listened for more, anything more, and there was
more but only by intervals.
She heard Bobby make a sound in the other room.
She sensed his fright. She heard the silence after the squall that was so thinly stretched
that a cricket sound would have sounded like an explosion. She heard John's whistle
when he came; she heard the whispered conversation between boys downstairs. She
could hear them talking to the Picker and then, a long while later, she heard John
coming back into the tenant house, up the stairs to guard her. He brought the gasoline
lantern with him, its mantle still turned low. He put it on the floor by the wall that was
dry, and it underlit him, sending long shadows the wrong way up his body and face.