Ted?
She frowns to herself.
So, everyone mills around until Sunday School lets out-late today-and the children come
out to claim parents. Because there are a lot of fond old-timers here today, there is also a
lot of ohing and ahing by the grandparents' groups, and this the children endure with as
much good grace as possible. After all, the Lord said to be kind. Then Bobby and Cindy and
Barbara get into the station wagon to go home and go swimming in the river on whose
banks the Adams house is built.
There is a last item. As they get into the rather flossy wagon-it is air-conditioned and has
tinted glass and pretty much the whole option sheet-they find their way out momentarily
blocked by pickers. This is a group of migrant workers walking along the country road on
foot.
Nearby-it is woodsy hereabouts-there are commercial orchards, and at this late time of
summer, the pickers arrive and harvest the fruit. It is hard work, back-bending work, and
very poorly paid. Nonetheless their arrival signals the end of the summer, and when they
have gone again like a flock of dark Latin birds, fall will begin.
"Who are they?" Barbara, with 425 cubic inches of piston displacement under her small
foot in the family wagon, is impatient.
"I dunno."
"Pickers," Bobby says. "Nobody."
Then the road is cleared, and the car spins gravel.
They pass the pickers without looking back.
"How long to get into the river?" Barbara says. "Fifteen minutes."
"Twelve." Cindy goes her brother three better. "Then let's go-o-o!" In white-dress and white-
glove exuberance-though she drives well, she rarely gets the chance to drive a powerful
car like this-Barbara floors the gas pedal for home. Clearly she feels a little naughty about
the surge of speed-there is that touch in her-and clearly she enjoys the squeal of tires
when they take pavement and accelerate.
It is afterward that it begins.
5
1
In the first moments, her mind floated up still webbed in memory of the most recent hours.
After seeing the children through baths into bed, she had made herself a small highball
with Dr. Adams' Scotch and sat out on the steps nearest the river-it was reward at the end
of the fourth day. Later she had showered and gone to bed.
Then, somewhere in the middle, there had been a commotion, something brief and
frightening-perhaps a bad dream-that seemed in the now clearing mind to have nearly
made her sick. Her thought in that fright had been the children, but instead of going to
them, she had fallen dreamlessly back into this sleep that released her so slowly.
Yes, the children. Get up.
She made all the drowsy efforts of rising but did not actually move at all. The mind
reaching consciousness understood few things at once, but these came first.
Daylight.
She was uncomfortable, stretched out in an odd position for sleep-flat on her back with her
arms and legs flung out. She was stiff and in some pain at her wrists and ankles. She could
not move. Her mouth was filled with wet. cloth-like terry cloth-and the lower part of her
face was covered with something stiff that hurt and pulled at her skin.
More struggle-quicker, more anxious now, more
6
coming awake-but nothing gave or changed. She was helpless, a condition caused by-a
nervous craning and twisting of her eyes showed her the reasons-rope, a gag, adhesive
tape. She was tied up. Beneath the sheet someone had thrown over her, she could see that
she was bound to the four posts of the bed and thus made entirely, tightly, a prisoner.
This, of course, was not acceptable fact: it simply couldn't be, particularly under the
circumstances. She was still in her bedroom at the Adams'; she hadn't been kidnapped or
moved. Beyond the tightness of rope, some stiffness, and a mild headache, she seemed
welclass="underline" she hadn't been harmed or raped (or so she felt). Moreover young Bobby Adams was
asleep in a chair beside the bed.
In the early light, his young face was all innocent composure-blond hair, high pink on the
cheeks, full lips-a fine-looking boy at his dreams. Under the conditions-her helplessness:
his freedom-sober, reliable Bobby seemed perhaps a too young sentry sleeping off-duty at
the front.
All totally impossible.
Here was a familiar, late-summer morning, and the only thing out of its appropriate role
and place was Barbara, the incredible, incredulous prisoner. At once, her shock and
surprise turned to fully awakened indignation. It was as if she were victim of some cosmic
practical joke aimed at her alone, and she resented, rapidly hated it.
Getting Bobby to untie her was obvious, but with that inherent, adult feeling of superiority
over children, she struggled for herself first. Although the ropes were tight and her position
unfavorable, she arched and wrenched, jumped and pulled at her bonds. Athletic and
young, even she was impressed by her strength and the violence and coordination of her
movements. The bed itself complained at assault.
Some lessons teach quickly, however.
Though it worked and cracked, the bed did not yield. Though the rope slacked in her favor,
the slack
7
came out of the turns on her ankles and wrists, and these turns tightened like wire. Though
she tugged and twisted, she could breathe only through her nose and soon became winded
and weak. A minute, a minute and a half, and she fell back. The hunter, the captor,
whoever he was, had won for the moment. Still indignant, more indignant for being more
convinced, she nonetheless stopped spending her strength and lay still. Now she would
take help.
The noise, of course, had waked Bobby. Careful, constant Bobby-he stood up by her side in
detailed, somewhat sleepy confusion and alarm.
"Um I ee," she said through her gag, or tried to.
"Ere. Um I ee." Demandingly.
Bobby reacted quickly. His hands flew to hers but only to tighten the knots that held her.
He flung back the sheet-she was still in her shortie, she saw-and he checked the ropes on
her ankles.
This done, his face relaxed, changed. She saw it. - He suddenly realized what day this was!
"Cindy!" No longer his sober self but shouting as if it was Christmas, he ran from the room
toward his sister's.
Helpless, still breathing hard but now exquisitely attentive to what the children would say,
Barbara heard Cindy's usual morning complaints. "What is it? Hunhh ... ? Stop it, now!"
Then after an interval, there was , faster, lower conversation. "Don't you remember? Listen ...
l"
Then they came bounding back into the bedroom.
Bright and now energetically awake Cindy-she was tousled joy-jumped right up on the bed
and peered down at Barbara's helplessness. Convinced it was so, Cindy kissed her on the
nose and hugged her as if Barbara were the greatest present in the world.
"We got her," she yelled. Jumping down from the bed, she did a round circle dance with her
brother.
"We got her, we got her ... we got the baby-sitter!" She and Bobby hugged each other in
rare, delirious agreement. "And they won't be back for a week"
8
The girl on the bed was not stupid: the visible and physical fact was fact. In some way,
for some reason, she was the prisoner of children.
Beyond the reach of such logic, however, beyond reason's control, her habits of inner
being continued. Spirit, will, vitality, told the mind that it was wrong, and at their