The Grounding of Group 6 Read online

  “I’m going to go home,” Coke said. He was looking at the ground now. “I’m not going to let my parents get away with this. I know a kid who’s got a gun. No shit. He’ll let me have it if I ask him. And then I’ll, like, discuss it with them face to face. My old man’s such a big bullshitter. I just want to see what he says.”

  Marigold said, “You’re crazy. Who’s acting now? That sounds dramatic as hell, but what are you going to do? Have your parents arrested? Sure. Fat chance. Shoot them? Great. You know what happens to kids who shoot their parents?”

  “Yeah, they put them in the hospital and give them psychiatric tests. I’ve had a lot of those,” said Coke. “There’s probably some shrink somewhere who’s already put down that I’m crazy. I’m the sort of guy you always read about—where the courts put them back on the streets and they end up raping some eighty-five-year-old woman in Queens or something.”

  “Oh, shut up, will you?” Sara’d kept on crying, sitting huddled up, her arms around her knees, her forehead on her knees. She’d picked her head up now. “Maybe it doesn’t matter to the rest of you, but I just can’t stand being hated that much.” And she started to cry harder, rocking her head back and forth. “‘I don’t have a daughter named Sara’—that’s what he said! Oh, God—what am I meant to do now?” Sara wailed the word, not even caring she was being such a baby (as her father’d say), feeling nothing but the pain. She dropped her head again.

  Ludi put an arm around her shoulders, leaned, and whispered in her ear.

  “Well, you’re not going to give up,” said Sully, talking loudly once again. “I won’t let you.” He wanted to say something important to Sara, something that would make her feel good right away, and he’d just opened his mouth and started talking, and that was the first thing that came out. “Don’t you see we need you?” Sully said. “Other than Nat, you’re the only one who knows how to do anything. I mean, a lot of things. So whatever we end up doing, you’ve got to help us,” Sully said. His face looked white in the firelight, and his fists were clenched on his bare knees, and his weight was forward on his feet, as if he was going to spring up any second and do something quick and vital.

  Marigold was looking at Nat. “All this other bullshit to one side,” she said, “that is the bottom line—what both of them just said. What are we going to do?”

  “Well, one thing that we ought to do real soon is get some sleep,” said Nat. “Whatever any of us ends up doing, we’ve got to have some rest. Right now, everything looks impossible and crazy. But what I’ve been thinking is we—each of us—has got to have a short-range and a long-range plan. The second one may take some time-—to plan it out, you know?—so what I’d like to do is put our heads together in the morning and talk about the next two weeks, or a month, or some period of time like that. My vote is to hole up in the hills, but of course I’m used to that. I’m comfortable up here—maybe other people wouldn’t be. And I hope we can stick together. What I’m feeling right now is that I’m afraid but not petrified. It’s really weird. The world seems about a million times more fucked up to me than it’s ever been, but for myself, I still feel O.K. Crazy as it may seem, I’m actually looking forward to a long and happy life, doing what I want and being who I want to be. Regardless of all this.” And he smiled, the fire flicker lighting up his scraggly-bearded face and lightening his long blond hair.

  Ludi smiled back at him, and everybody else looked—even Sara, who’d stopped crying as he talked. She couldn’t think of this as a beginning yet, but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be The End.

  Ludi felt completely sure that she was not about to die; when she was going to die, she’d know it. About her parents, she felt nothing special, nothing really new. She’d never liked her stepmother at all, and she’d long since realized her father and herself were like two different sorts of beings. So, while it was a shock to her—as Sara said—that anyone could hate her all that much, she felt (with no conceit involved) he had no reason to at all. When she’d come to Coldbrook—gone away from home—she’d felt that she was starting on a new phase of her life, and here it was. It didn’t seem that things had changed so much. She hadn’t changed. Her father had the power to kill her—so he’d thought—but not to change her, ever. She wished she had a way to get that feeling into Sara. And the rest of them, of course; but Sara first.

  Nat stood up. “Please go to bed,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound like your camp counselor or something, but please go to bed. Even if you’d rather stay up and talk, and even if you’re sure you’ll never get to sleep. We’ve really got all sorts of time to talk; there isn’t any rush to settle anything tonight.” He had to laugh, just once. “I promise I’ll never ask anyone to go to bed again, if you’ll do it this one time.”

  “Now easy does it, Natty.” Marigold laughed, too; it was her old voice, back again. “You just said you were planning on a long and happy life. …” She stood up. “Jesus, I’m stiff. Girls got dibbies on the outhouse.” And she went up to get the flashlight.

  Ludi stopped by Nat. “Are you O.K.?” she asked him. She came up to his chin and stood there, straight and serious.

  “What?” he said. “How d’you mean?”

  “About this whole enormous mess,” she said. “About seeing those people who wanted to kill you. This must have been an incredible day for you.”

  “I’m really so tired,” Nat said, “I don’t know how I am. O.K., I think. I realized, a little while ago, my father’d like to kill me, too, I bet—but, well, I think I know he shouldn’t.” And suddenly he found himself crying. “Listen, thanks for asking, Lu.” The tears were coming down his cheeks and disappearing in his beard, but he was facing her. “I know it’s hard to tell the way I’m acting”—he made a sort of barking sound—“but it really helps to have you ask.”

  He closed his fist and dropped it on her head, but gently; then he turned and walked up toward the Lodge.

  5

  By the time that Homer Cone and Mrs. Ripple made it back to Coldbrook Country School—chauffeured still by Levi Welch—the clocks said quarter after nine P.M. Levi’d passed the time in Boynton Falls at Osgood’s Perfect Pizza Place, where he’d enjoyed a baked-bean-pepperoni pizza, accompanied by Genesee Cream Ale, two bottles’ worth. He’d also won two games of bumper pool from Henry Dunham, Junior, age of seventy-two, who had a wooden hand. Years before, a big old Pioneer had hit a stone he hadn’t seen was there, and jumped back off it, heading for his face. He’d got his hand up just in the nick, he liked to say, and caught that chain saw right across the palm. “Lucky thing I did,” he often said. “Hardly ever seen a wooden head I liked.” “June” Dunham claimed his artificial hand made just the perfect bridge for shooting pool, but Levi beat him anyway, two games to none, and then he and June Dunham each had a Genesee on June. Them other two could cool their heels some more, for all he cared.

  During dinner, Homer Cone and Mrs. Ripple finally finished their in-depth evaluations of Dr. Scholl (pro) and Levi Welch (con) and came to focus on the matter of Group 6.

  “I suppose,” said Homer Cone, “he won’t be pleased at all. I don’t believe we’ve ever lost a group before.”

  “I imagine he’ll be furious,” said Mrs. Ripple, shuddering with pleasure. “Doctor has a wild, ungovernable temper, I feel sure—even if I’ve never seen him lose it. You can tell by the shape of his fingernails.” Mrs. Ripple checked for wisps above her collar in the back. “But let’s not be defensive, Mr. Cone; none of this is our fault. We didn’t misplace poor Group Six; we never had it to begin with. So Doctor can’t blame us, not for a minute”—she pursed her lips and wiped them with her napkin—“if anyone’s to blame, it’s he himself.”

  “That’s true,” said Homer Cone, speaking somewhat louder than he needed to. “If anyone’s to blame for this snafu, it’s Doctor Simms himself!” Homer Cone liked people to believe that he was a veteran of World War II, and so he sometimes spiked his conversation with words like “snafu” and “fubar
” and “Dunkirk” and “Anzio.”

  “Young Rittenhouse is his responsibility,” said Mrs. Ripple. It would not do for Levi Welch to know that she’d been drinking, so she’d gotten a Clorets out of the package in her jacket pocket, and now she squeezed the little candy in her palm. It would not do for Homer Cone to know she sucked Clorets. “He must be made to see that. We must make that very clear to him, and not be in the least defensive. There’s no reason for us to be the…autumn persons, as I think they’re called.” She gave a little cough, but when she’d covered up her mouth before she coughed, she’d popped the Clorets into it.

  “Exactly,” Homer Cone agreed. “Doctor bollixed this one up but good. You get what you pay for in this world, and that bird Rittenhouse looked about as tacky as they make ‘em.” Homer Cone had forgotten that he had never laid an eye on Nat. Three Manhattans always knocked his memory a little bit askew, but sharpened his aggressiveness, as well.

  And so, when Homer Cone and Mrs. Ripple rapped on Doctor’s study door at nine-fifteen, both were feeling quite offensive.

  Inside, Doctor had been practicing throwing a Nerf ball into a little orange plastic hoop that was held in place on his lavatory door by two big rubber suction cups. When he heard their knock, he caroled, “Just a minute, please,” and went and got the ball and hoop concealed up on a closet shelf. Then he opened wide the study door.

  “Ah,” said Doctor, happily, “Homer Cone and Mrs. Ripple! Mission accomplished, I presume?”

  “Ha!” said Homer Cone.

  “Sadly not,” said Mrs. Ripple sharply.

  Doctor made his eyebrows jump. “Come in, come in,” he said, his face darkening. “Would you care for a liqueur?” he asked them—quite correctly, Mrs. Ripple thought.

  She said a Cherry Heering might be very nice, and Homer Cone allowed as how he would enjoy a B&B, if Doctor would have one, too. Whenever anyone offered Homer Cone a drink, he’d always say, “If you’ll have one with me.” Usually they did, which made Homer Cone feel very much in charge of things.

  Doctor poured Mrs. Ripple’s and Homer Cone’s liqueurs into highball glasses from his Titans of the Turf set. The set took up one whole shelf on the wall above the dry sink, where Doctor kept his bottles. Each glass had the name of a famous race horse on it, plus the names of the famous races that that horse had won. Every year or two, the Titans of the Turf people would send Doctor another glass, it seemed, and he would send them only $4.99 and add the new Titan of the Turf to his collection. He decided to give Mrs. Ripple Ruffian, and Homer Cone Foolish Pleasure. He poured himself a cognac in a large, round, crystal brandy snifter.

  Mrs. Ripple knew that Doctor knew better than to put a Cherry Heering cordial in a highball glass, and she also knew that he knew she’d resent a glass named “Ruffian.” Sometimes, she thought, she’d like to kick Doctor right in the A-double-Q.

  The story of their uneventful day was quickly told. Doctor’s pink cherubic face was furrowed with a scowl before it ended. Even knowing that the Brook Trout Amandine in Boynton Falls had been first-rate didn’t do a lot to cheer him up. And Mrs. Ripple didn’t help at all. If Doctor thought she was a ruffian, why, then she’d act like one, and just let Homer Cone do all the story-telling, in that boring, nasal voice of his. At that point, she wanted nothing more than to get out of her Carharts and into a nice hot bath.

  “Quite clearly,” Doctor said, when Homer Cone was done, “I put my faith in a very leaky vessel. This Rittenhouse is nothing but a blackguard—Rottenhouse I’ll call him from now on. Obviously his word is not his bond; his handshake isn’t worth the…fingers it’s composed of. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. …” Doctor shook his head. “Am I just being old-fashioned when I expect a day’s work for a day’s pay? Maybe it’s this country…‘’tis of thee,’ ” sang Doctor. “’Sweet land of liber-tee …’ The other day,” he said, “I read a piece that said the Japanese auto worker is forty-two percent more productive than his American counterpart. I probably should have hired a Japanese,” he mused, “or maybe someone from Hong Kong.”

  “Or maybe just used local labor,” said Homer Cone, offensively. “No,” he nasaled on, “I’m afraid you got what you paid for, Doctor. A real Dunkirk. Rottenhouse—that’s good—is nothing but a tenement, I’d say.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ripple spitefully. “Our clients aren’t used to shoddy goods, poor people. This isn’t any fun for them, you know.”

  “Yeah,” said Homer Cone, the mathematics teacher. “What does it say in the Bible? Something about a toothache and a worthless child?” He realized he was rubbing it in on Doctor, using Bible quotes like that; but it was his fun that Doctor ruined.

  “I know, I know,” said Doctor, holding up a clean white hand. “I’ve learned a hard lesson, bird-and-stone-wise. All I can say, in my own defense, is that Ritten…Rottenhouse was sent to us originally by one of the leading authorities in that particular field, a man of absolutely impeccable credentials. And while there is no written guarantee, of course, there’s still a certain understanding. Believe me, I shall be in touch with him, and I’m quite sure he’ll help us…make adjustments. But meanwhile”—Doctor sat straight up—“where is our Group Six? Where’s that rotten Rittenhouse? Are they together or apart? Near or far away? ‘Long ago and far away,’ ” sang Doctor, “‘I dreamed a dream one day. …’ ”

  “Well,” said Homer Cone. “I doubt that they’ve gone home. I’ll say that much.”

  “Brazil?” Mrs. Ripple thought she might provide a little humor. Homer Cone and Doctor were such serious old stick-in-the-septic-tanks. “Bet they headed straight for Brazil,” she giggled, “fast as their little cariocas could carry them.”

  “No,” said Homer Cone. He tried to spit the word at Mrs. Ripple. He leaned way forward in his chair and made his eyes two narrow slits. “I know they’re out there somewhere.” He gestured toward the window. He’d made his voice a nasal whisper, strewn with gravel. “Hiding. Holed up. Desperate. Dangerous.” There were, after all, six of them, and three of them were teenaged girls.

  “You may be right,” said Doctor, “and I hope you are. I still have every intention of fulfilling our contracts with their parents. I am—we all are—honorable people…‘who need people,’ ” Doctor sang. “Quite unlike young Rottenhouse.”

  “I intend to comb the woods,” said Homer Cone, “until I find them,” forgetting that he had once got “hopelessly lost” while driving south, through Baltimore. “They’ve got a date with Homer Cone, my friends.”

  “An’I sha’he’p,” said Mrs. Ripple cheerfully and helpfully, her Cherry Heering having washed away her I’s.

  Doctor rose and bowed them to the door. He couldn’t blame Cone or Mrs. Ripple for the day’s events, or nonevents, but that didn’t mean he had to like them, either.

  “Good night, now, Mr. Cone,” he said. “Good night, dear Mrs. Ripple.”

  With just one window in each room, Spring Lake Lodge stayed dark in the morning, but people might have slept late anyway. When Nat woke up, his watch said noon, and he didn’t hear a sound from anybody else.

  Tired as he was the night before, he couldn’t get to sleep right off; he’d felt like he was speeding. His mind would run on rewind for a while, playing if-I’d-only with the past. Then, without a pause, or click, he’d find it on fast-forward, saying, “Maybe if we…such-and-such” or “Don’t forget to…so-and-so tomorrow.” It was a pain. He’d shifted in his sleeping bag, noticed Coke and Sully’s breathing change, and envied them. His mind went raving on; the battery ran down at last; he fell asleep.

  But when he woke at noon, he felt much better than he thought he would. He wasn’t tempted to go back to sleep again, nor did he wish that he had just… well, kept on going, after seeing what the situation was at North Egg Mountain. He’d been a bit afraid he might wish that. But, no. In fact—was this perverted?—he was having fun. Well, maybe not exactly fun, he told himself, but something in that neighborhood of feeling.


  He smiled then, lying on his back inside his sleeping bag. He heard murmurs from The Ladies Room and smiled some more.

  Nat’s father, Robert Rittenhouse, did not believe a person should expect much fun from Sunday afternoon to Friday evening. Sunday night supper was always a terrible meal at his parents’ house; his father seemed to like a really lousy meal, to sort of set the stage for Monday. Mr. Rittenhouse would always have a bowl of some cold cereal, like shredded wheat, with blue skimmed milk. Once, Nat convinced his Mom to split a pizza—“abbondanza” from Celeste. You’d think they both had stepped in dog shit, the way his father’d twitched his nose at them. They’d broken training for the game of Life: that heavy, cutthroat, no-fun race that started off again each Monday morning.

  Nat could never understand why Life should not be fun. He’d really given quite a bit of thought to fun, for quite a space of time. Fun was not a beer blast at the Delta house—or getting rays or getting laid or getting off or getting even. Not that all of them were not enjoyable at times. Fun, the real big F, was something different: doing with your life what you were meant to do. Not “meant to” in the way your parents said it—“You were meant to clean your room today, as I recall”—but “meant to” in an almost cosmic sense. Fun is doing, working at, the stuff that makes you feel the most like you. So, in the case of N. P. Rittenhouse, figuring was fun, and building things was fun, and cooking-eating food was fun, and hiding out was fun, and helping someone else was fun, and playing the guitar was fun. And saving your own life, and other lives, was lots and lots of fun.