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this, she was agonizingly neat, quiet, withdrawn, undemonstrative, and chilly.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
26
Cindy would have been primed to silence in spite of her voluble, willful nature.
Seen in that light, how unreal their innocent splashings, their carefully taken
instructions, their casual obedience seemed. What a bad job new Teacher had done in
her analyses, how easily Teacher was made the fool. Beneath the glib little caricatures
she had drawn of the children, they were people--learn that! They were organized; they
could plan; they could keep their own counsel; they could execute; and now it appeared
that they could keep their composure once commitment had been made.
How quickly the tables were reversed. The children were children no more, and Teacher
was Teacher no more. With a neat, short plot, they had erased her advantages and
made her just a girl again, one who was now no better than they.
Less better!
Having heard the meeting which they took no trouble to keep secret, Barbara, of
course, knew her captivity was not intended to be short. The moment of release,
triumph, retribution, that she had felt to lie only a short while ahead, was not here or
even near. Only another hour lay beyond this hour, perhaps only another day beyond
this day.
With that conclusion, of course, she began to hurt.
Her flesh and her muscles and tendons and body began to hurt very much. Something
like her first panic almost returned.
No, Barbara said (remembering Terry's advice).
I'll be calm. I won't hurt myself. I won't scare them again. I'll be careful.
Help me, Barbara said.
For-anyone inclined to see humor, Freedom Five's second visit to their captive offered
subtle possibilities. They entered the room together-very closely together-and moved to
the bed in silence. It could be guessed from their manner and the sound of rapid shal-
27
low breathing that the wardens were more nervous than the prisoner.
The law had been broken, of course, and they had broken it. Since Barbara's capture
had been accomplished before, however-last night, offstage, remote from them-all
except Bobby might conveniently regard the crime as not theirs. The resulting
situation Barbara's helplessness, their ascent to power-might then be merely an
abstract, a set of conditions discovered on their awakening this morning. But with their
meeting, their decision to go on, their confrontation of the girl right now, things must
obviously change. Now they began to break the law hour by hour, deliberately,
forewarned of all the possible and unpleasant consequences. They became entirely
responsible and answerable for their own actions. The door to innocence, real or
pretended, had closed behind: from now on, there was no way to think of themselves
except as bad and wrong and to be punished. So clearly did this appear to impress
them, that they looked down at their prisoner but took care to avoid her eyes.
Barbara, of course, felt their tenseness and had the momentary, crazy impulse to
laugh-if she could have laughed-at the whole improbable scene. She saw it as one both
sees one's self and is one's self in dreams, the not-quite-Lilliputian captors and their
possibly dangerous captive, each afraid of the other and yet each locked in with the
other. Because it was true, of course, there was an hysterical edge to her thought.
Finding after several moments that Barbara indeed remained helpless, however,
Freedom Five gradually relaxed. All right, here they were, out in the open, breaking the
law between children and adults, and nothing was happening. They ignored the taboo,
and
no lightning fell.
·
"Well, what're we going to do?" John's voice was a little tight and dry, as if he were
having difficulty in speaking.
''We don't have to do anything if-"