she felt all that happened in the process. But, it occurred as a sudden, nearly fatal
blackness of the mind after which nothing could ever be the same again.
This is the end; this is what the end looks like and feels like and oh, god, he's still got it
in me. And after Paul regretfully removed the iron, she still felt it in her. She would
forever as long as forever could last.
The wound was born inside of her like another personality whose power overcame all of
her own, virtually wiped out all of her own. She shuddered as if in electric shock.
Nothing 'could allow life to go on being as it was at that instant. She raised her head
looking for something-anything-to stop it, and saw John bending over her.
He put the horrible metal to her breast; then Dianne laid a vivid stripe across her belly.
Even Bobby and Cindy took their tum dabbing at her and were thereby edified.
Afterward, the last inhibitions gone, they did all the things to her-under the
circumstances-that they had ever imagined doing to all the invisible, meaningless 272
people of their imagination, and while it was far different from what they had imagined,
they persisted. It all took a while.
Approximately halfway through the program, Barbara cheated them. She ceased to leap
and make appropriate sounds, and lay still and did not react to their torture. After a while,
Freedom Five's game became boring-as usual-and so they killed her and got done with it.
They twisted a rope around her neck and put a piece of wood in it and twisted until the
rope cut into her throat and no breath was possible. This had been thought out before, and
the hands that did it were gloved, and there was only the traceless rope constricting what
was left of life.
At the end, at the very end, when it would least have been expected, Barbara surprised
them one more time. Her long-closed eyes popped open, wide and staring but suddenly
extremely intelligent and clear, and she stared at them. She didn't stare at any one of
them in particular-her eyes seemed to include them all without moving-but she stared at
them as a human to humans, and her eyes formed the shape of the letter 0. And their
mouths and eyes opened in silent answer and formed the same, silent letter 0.
Then that part of it was complete. Freedom Five wept.
Oddly, with love.
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One event inevitably fathers another and other events. Some of them are worth note in
this case.
The people who get most of their adventurous life from the news led very interesting lives
for several days after Barbara's death. It is barely possible to turn away from such
headlines. (It is conjectural to wonder about those who read: elderly ladies in homes, train-
commuting husbands going to town, secretaries on coffee break, housewives yawning
before the real day begins, the kids who throw out the evening papers? The thread
continues forever.) Some of them read:
BOYS AVENGE BABY-SI'ITER'S TORTURE SLAYING IN MD.
LOCAL GIRL DIES IN BIZARRE CASE SUSPECTED KILLER SHOT BY BOYS
As a follow-up:
SLAIN CO-ED TOOK HOURS TO DIE
And so on, and so forth.
Cruz, of course, was killed. It was as planned.
John visited the Adams' house Sunday after church and let the kids out of the closet (Cindy
was a wreck). He and Bobby waited for Cruz and told him to go down
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and bring back the barbecue, and they followed him
with guns.
The tragic look on Cruz's face was less for his own death-be never anticipated that-it was
for what be bad seen just before be turned around to look at the boys, his mouth in the
shape of a soundless 0. He had never known, and when he finally knew, could not believe.
They very nearly cut him in half at close range.
He got a very small notice in the papers.
After they had strangled Barbara, Freedom Five still had to clean up. The sleeping bag had
to go back; the gloves be returned; and the house and path swept down, so that only
Cruz's footprints would be clear the next day. They went about it robot like, pale, silent,
talking in whispers. Dianne was the last one out of the tenant house, and she swept her
way downstairs with a handful of weeds and with tears running out of her eyes. (They had
to give Paul a shot of Scotch to get him moving home, but he came around when he had
to.)
Freedom Five-all of them, of course-were questioned.
Dianne, her eyes carefully cooled back down to pale gray, could tell them very little. She
and her brother, Paul, and John Randall went over to the Adams' every day and used their
beach to go swimming. The middle of last week, Bobby Adams had mentioned that there
was someone camping down just beyond the pines, but she had never seen whoever it
was, and besides, none of them thought much about it. Not even Barbara. After all, where
was the harm? (And she did mention Cindy coming over and their baking a cake for Dr. and
Mrs. Adams' return and all the rest of it.) Throughout, she remained very thoughtful and
tried to remember everything she could, but she was still just a teen-ager, and there was
only so much to remember.
The questioning of Paul was given up as not only
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useless but possibly harmful to the boy. The detective was the only one of the Bryce Police
Department so designated and was, of course, a part of the community. He knew the
McVeigh family and the doctor who attended them, and in the end he knew Paul quite well.
The boy was very delicately balanced--on the verge of insanity to the detective's mind-and
so the questioning took the form of a friendly casual chat, which was terminated when Paul
literally went into spasm. Barbara's death was hard enough for adults to stomach, much
less a nervous young· boy. The detective thought in pity that the thing might have marked
Paul for life.
The questioning of John took place as that of one athlete talking to another. The detective
had-not all that long ago-played football for the same high school that John now attended.
He followed the teams of his alma mater with year-around fervor. In the summer he
followed the fortunes of the Baltimore Orioles, who at the time were richly rewarding his
interest with another pennant. The detective didn't think John was great, but then John was
young. He could stand watching for good things.
John told him as little as the rest of the kids.
There was this guy camping down in the woods, and no one thought much about it. Then
the Adams kids didn't show up for Sunday school, so afterward he went home and changed
clothes and rowed over to see what was with them.
They were locked in a closet, and so forth. He and Bobby had each taken a gun from Dr.
Adams' rec room because they were afraid, and they'd gone out to see what there was to
be seen. Eventually they found Barbara, and there was a man with her. That is, there was a
crazy-looking man in the tenant house near her.
The point was gone over closely. Had John seen the body? Yes. What did he think? He
wanted to throw up. Was he emotionally disturbed at the time? Certainly. He had raised
and fired his gun at the man that Bobby said was the man.