Scotch?"
"Well .... "
"It's just that there have to be rules." "Yeah, but that takes the fun out of it."
"No, it won't," Paul said with a tic. "C'mon, Just wait."
Cindy sighed and flounced up and went to the kitchen. She went as if she felt she
carried some immense veto power over the older kids. She let them wait. Then from
the kitchen-slam of the refrigerator door-she grudgingly acquiesced. "OK."
John snorted, but not without mild amusement.
"Well, OK. What're the rules so far?''
Dianne handed him the pad. On it, she had written in a neat, tiny hand:
1. Watch her.
2. All be here-move her.
3. All-gag out.
4. Be neat, clean up.
5. Watch telephone calls.
6. Eat-shop.
7. Cindy's hair.
"Yeah, what about the telephone?" John passed the pad to Paul. Bobby leaned down
over his shoulder and read with him.
"Tell everyone she's taking a bath," Dianne said. "Or she's down at the beach with the
rest of us,"
Paul said.
"Or she took Cindy up to Bryce," Bobby said. "OK." John was convinced. "Anything
else?" "Read your own rules," Dianne said. "First, let's
23
clean up what needs it, and then we can find out if she needs anything."
"I'll do the kitchen," Cindy said from the doorway.
"You wash your face and hands and put on a clean dress and brush your hair," Dianne
said.
"It hurts."
"All right, I'll brush it for you." "Still hurts-"
"Not if I do it."
"Cindy!" Bobby looked at her. He was the stronger.
"Aw-w-w-"
"Anyhow I'll do the kitchen with somebody. I know where everything's kept," Bobby
said. "Afterward we can get Barbara up."
"Cool," Paul said. "That's neat."
Barbara had guessed in advance who the rest of Freedom Five would be. She had taken
the same five children swimming the afternoon before-Sunday helping the boys with
their flailing Australian crawls, herding Cindy back from the part of the river where the
current was strongest, and getting in some workout herself. (Dianne had only waded
around a little and then withdrawn to sit on the bank and watch.)
Freedom Five was simply a community of kids well, call them children, Barbara thought-
stuck down in the country with no one else to play with except one with the other. And,
just as Barbara had characterized Bobby as manly and reliable and Cindy. as spoiled
and funny, so had she formed rapid, friendly opinions of the others.
John was quite big and strong for his age, which she took to be about sixteen. He was a
good-looking boy; his voice had settled down toward what would be its steady, mature
tone: he was mannerly and thoughtful toward the others even though-except for Di-
anne-they were younger, possibly irritatingly younger. Still, there was an air about him
which had to be called 24
vague, lost. Even in the short hours they had all been together at the small river beach
north of the Adams house, be had seemed now and then to drift away, to be thinking about
something else or, more accurately perhaps, to be trying to think of something beyond his
experience or present ability. Not to make too much of too little-particularly in the young-
Barbara assumed that since he was no longer one of the children and yet not an adult (as
she firmly felt herself to be), he was merely in the fashionable process of making himself,
of finding himself. It made him rather nice, and made her rather more kindly toward him.
Toward John, she had the Christian sort of superiority that made her want to help, made
her want to see him succeed.
Paul-poor little thing-was absolutely a mess.
This instant assessment rested not so much on his small skinny frame, thin lips, brown
hair, gnome like steelrimmed glasses, as upon his manner. Paul was squirmy. In girlish
reaction, Barbara was a little revolted: in motherly reaction, she was full of pity.
Paul twitched; he moved from foot to foot as if the ground was burning; he twisted his head
and craned his neck when he talked. It was as if he were straining to put into words and
actions some pouring torrent of ideas that could be neither checked nor investigated. His
voice cracked and warbled; his eyes darted about. He was obviously a creature in torment
caused again-by trying to translate back and forth between the world he found himself to
live in externally and the one within that was visible only to him. He would eventually grow
up to be something quick, bright, complicated, and comically deformed-a full professional
inventor of the useless, a doctor to computers, a teacher of the theoretical and distant. In
short, he too would become civilized, "normal," and useful, but that would be long after the
itch in him was tamed. For now, he remained squirmy.
Dianne, of course, was a stick. It wasn't unlikely that she was so considered by classmates
at school. Oldest of the five by possibly half a year, she ap-
25
preached her eighteenth birthday unblossomed, unfavored and, at this late date,
unpromising. Even Dianne, hopeful as she might allow herself to be in moments of
absolute privacy, must now begin to sense the cold cast of the future. Where other girls
had by this time begun to spread their child-bearing hips and lift out their breasts, she
remained a tall, thin girl with long, white feet, bony legs in which the knees were
prominent, absent hips, flat chest, prominent collarbone and sharp edged elbows and
wrists. Dianne rose· to some height, and then dangled down again. Probably to combat
this, she was agonizingly neat, quiet, withdrawn, undemonstrative, and chilly. Her hair
was severely pulled back-strand by strand, each exactly parallel; she was spotlessly
clean and smelled (nicely) of soap. She always stood a fastidious step apart, and only
by her occasional use of authority over the other children-an authority they seemed to
grant her willingly for some reason--did she reveal that there might be a person
within the stick.
"'
Because she felt superior-again-Barbara had felt her heart envelop the girl. She was
extra kind to her and wanted to be more so. She wanted to tell her things, coax her:
after all, no one need be that unattractive. But how to approach the wall Dianne had
around her? Well, that would come in time.
So it had been, so they had seemed; so they had all behaved on the bright Sunday-
yesterday-after church and a picnic on the beach and a swim. And among them,
Barbara had moved and directed with assumed, cheerful responsibility, already the
pretty new teacher with her first class of pupils. How different now.
By bright yesterday afternoon, Barbara realized now, her capture had all been fixed as
a plan, her indignity assured except for chance and error. Bobby would have had his
father's chloroform hidden away in a plastic sandwich bag in a jar, perhaps: there would
have .... been rope in his own closet in the dark. Even