The Grounding of Group 6 Page 20

  “Not so far as you can see,” said Nat. “She may be locked away someplace, of course. Down in a musty cellar maybe. But somehow I think Doctor is a widower. Or possibly divorced. He’s too weird for anyone to live with for long, but he also doesn’t seem like a bachelor. I don’t know why I say that, exactly—”

  “Well,” said Sara, interrupting, “whatever he is, no one goes into his house from eight-thirty in the morning till ten-thirty. Or, no one did today, I can tell you that much.”

  “He went in after lunch,” said Marigold, looking at her papers, “and stayed for about five minutes, and then went back to Foote.”

  “Probably brushed his teeth,” said Coke, “like a good little Doctor.”

  “There’s a lot more traffic into Foote,” said Sara, “but it doesn’t really start till”—she ran a finger down a page of notes—“till eight-fifteen, when a fat woman—who drives up in a Vega, by the way—comes in.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Coke, “that one. She was first one in for lunch, too, and she didn’t come out for over an hour. Remember?” he said to Marigold. “That’s the one I said reminded me of the woman who taught ‘Habits: How to Break the Baddies,’ at the Institute.”

  Marigold looked up and nodded quickly, with a little smile. Coke had been pretty funny telling her about that woman, and how the flab below her upper arms swung back and forth when she was writing on the greenboard.

  “After eight-thirty,” Sara said, “there’re people coming and going all the time, in and out of Foote. And it’s all irregular, not just at certain set times, like when the classes change.”

  “No,” said Sully loudly, and he gave a little jump, as if he’d scared himself. “They just come and go. I was thinking. Maybe kids get mail there. Or money even. Maybe there’s like a school bank.”

  “Could be,” said Sara. She touched him gently on the knee; then she patted the place she’d touched. “You know, I’ll bet that’s right,” she said. “I seem to remember that some of them went in and out in just a couple of minutes’ time. I’ll bet that’s exactly it.” She smiled at Sully.

  “What do you think’ll happen”—Sully turned to Nat now—“when that guy doesn’t come back?” He cleared his throat. “You know.” He did some flutters with his hands. “D’you think they’ll look for him up there, or what?”

  Nat shook his head. “Gee, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll look for him eventually. But when they start and where they’ll start looking… I guess that’ll depend on whether he told anyone where he was going, and—well—what his habits are, you might say. I mean, is he the sort of guy who’d stay out overnight? Stuff like that. I was thinking, as a matter of fact, that it might be a good idea to put the Robinsons’ under surveillance for a while.” He put his fist up to his mouth and spoke in it, as if it were a microphone. “Car eight-oh-two, let’s run a check on five-three-nine Magnolia Drive. I want a stakeout round-the-clock.” He laughed and shook his head. “But seriously. See if anyone comes, and what they do, and stuff like that. It is only a couple of hours from here, after all.”

  “Boy, I agree,” said Ludi. “I was wondering about that actually. D’you think maybe we ought to consider setting up another—I don’t know—major base, you might say? Farther away from everything? I mean, if we’ve lost the Robinsons’, and if they’re going to start searching from there…Before, it seemed as if Spring Lake Lodge was just about the end of the world, but now, well, it doesn’t feel that way at all. I don’t even like to think about them finding it, but… I don’t know.” She shrugged and looked at Nat, wanting to be sure he understood what she was saying.

  “Hmm,” said Nat. “Maybe we ought to talk about that. I know some other places that are pretty neat. There’s one that’s by this little waterfall. …”

  “But how about tomorrow?” Sara said. “And watching the school some more? Don’t you think we have to know what happens in the afternoons, for instance? I mean, if it is during a game that we go down there, like whoever it was said …? And don’t you think that maybe one of us could sneak in there and copy down the schedule? Of games and stuff. I’ll bet there’s one on that big bulletin board, and if I went in right at the beginning of dinner, I’ll bet I could do it without getting caught. Without getting seen, I mean.”

  “Well,” said Nat, “maybe we ought to split up again tomorrow. I think we ought to keep an eye on the Robinsons’, like I said, and see what they may be up to—the people from the school. But if you and Sully want to go down to the school—or at least to our tree down there…I don’t know. I’d feel a lot better if you didn’t go into the place just yet, though. Would you humor me on that?” Sara nodded, and he looked over at Coke. “What do you guys feel like doing, do you think?”

  “I don’t feel like counting again, I’ll tell you that much,” said Coke. “Maybe we could go with you, or just hang around up here. …”

  “I’ll go with Sara and Sully,” Marigold said. “It might be easier with three.” She made a big thing out of licking the inside of her bowl.

  “Well, then, maybe I could find another house to take the place of the Robinsons’,” said Coke. “If you could more or less suggest some possibilities,” he said to Nat, “maybe I could scout around and look at them.” He wanted to give himself something dramatic and important to do. He wouldn’t exactly hate finding some liquor or something, too.

  Nat shrugged. He didn’t much like the idea of Coke soloing around the summer houses in the area; most of them were pretty unremote and near a road. But he also found he loved the prospect of a Cokeless day, spent hanging out with Ludi. It had even crossed Nat’s mind that if he got the chance to go back into the Robinsons’, he’d remember to check out the… well, the birth control situation there. He wondered if he should be a little embarrassed by that thought. She was still sixteen; love didn’t change that. Could she really know exactly what she wanted? Of course she’d think she knew—but doesn’t everybody, all the time, except about college and careers?

  “Well,” he said, “there may be one or two. They’re pretty near the road, though. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look, if you’re super-careful.”

  Coke nodded, coolly, cagily. Marigold looked interested. Sara was talking to Sully in a sort of private tone.

  Nat got up. “I cooked,” he said, “so I don’t get to wash. I think I’ll hit the sentry tree awhile. just to be on the safe side. I’ll make you a map in the morning,” he said to Coke.

  “Want company?” said Ludi. “I’ll do a dish or two, first.” Coke looked at Marigold.

  “Why, shore …,” said Nat. He touched her head. “I’d love it.”

  He wandered off, hoping that he didn’t look too happy. Being sentry wasn’t all that big a turn-on, after all.

  9

  If Jen Maloney had had to choose one course, out of all the courses taken by her sometime roommate Nat, and label it “The Absolute Most Bullshit One of All,” she might have chosen one called “The Collective Consciousness: Sounds and Styles of the Sixties.” It was a little interdepartmental beauty, offered by some very junior members of the Music and Sociology faculties, and it included watching a lot of films, and listening to a lot of records, and reading (quite) a lot of jive about group marriages and other utopian experiments. The student nickname for the course was “Tunes and ‘munes,” and Nat would surely have got an A in it, if grades (or credit) had been offered.

  But no matter anything that Jen might think, or say, Nat had gotten a lot out of that course. He’d learned, for example, that whenever people tried to live together, trouble always started in the kitchen or the bathroom, where the Cleans first quarreled with the Dirties over dishes, crumbs, and toilet bowls; and who ate whose last-thing-of-coffee-yogurt-l-was-saving and used up half-a-fucking-bottle-of-shampoo. He’d also learned that groups that had a good strong vow of chastity were apt to be long-lived, compared to those that smiled on pairing, mating, dating, or relating.

  In the case of Gro
up 6, there weren’t any Clean and Dirty Wars. It happened Nat and Sara, both, were energetic Cleans, and so was Ludi, when she thought of it. The other three were either neutral or unconscious, so principles did not become an issue; things were cleaned as needed, and no one felt a constant sense of loss-of-their-identity, or martyred.

  Whether pairing (dating, mating, or relating) hurt Group 6 or not is quite another question. On the one hand, Nat thought not: he knew that he and Ludi didn’t (wouldn’t ever) talk against the others, or the Group, when they were what the French might call a deux. And he didn’t think that other people did that, either. But yet, beyond a doubt, the “groupiness” of 6 just had to be affected by the separations and the stresses of the lifestyle it adopted.

  The evening of the day that Homer Cone was killed was the first time that they didn’t start the night, at least, with boys and girls in separate rooms. Nat and Ludi, sitting in the sentry tree, had talked about the matter thusly:

  She: “You want to sleep outside tonight?”

  He: “Yeah, sure, let’s do that. Excellent.”

  And so, when it was getting dark, they walked back to the fire, hand in hand. The conversation there shut down as they approached, but Nat continued holding Ludi’s hand. He checked expressions when they got in range; Marigold’s was pure “I told you so” when, after greeting them, she smiled around the circle. Nat thought that she and Coke had semi-made it up; she’d been lying semipropped on his lean stomach. Sully and Sara were sitting very close together, touching hip bones, actually. Sully still looked pretty strange and miserable, but Nat figured that might be partly because he couldn’t get up the nerve to fling a casual arm around sweet Sara’s shoulders. Coke and Marigold’s being so-o-o cool and so-o-o relaxed wasn’t helping the poor guy one bit, either, so it seemed to Nat.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve decided it’d be fun to sleep outside tonight.” He hadn’t meant to say that “fun” part; what he’d meant to say was “we’ve decided to sleep outside tonight,” but the rest of it just squeezed in there. Probably because, in some retarded corner of his mind, “fun” was always “wholesome,” too.

  Marigold, however, wasn’t having any “wholesome,” thank you very much; she rolled her eyes around and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I’d like to do that, too,” said Sully bravely. And, looking at the person to his right, more softly, “You want to, Sara?”

  She smoothed her hair back. “Sure,” she said, and touched him on the shoulder, keeping her hand there for a moment.

  “We got dibbies on the far side of the Lake,” said Ludi. “You can see the stars out there.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Marigold.

  Nat and Ludi went and got their sleeping bags, and pads, and a poncho to put under the whole affair. While Ludi was brushing her teeth and going to the bathroom, Nat managed to zip their sleeping bags together, and when he got back from similar errands, she was curled inside their bed already. He got his boots and jeans off, then turned and asked her what her nightdress was.

  “The minimum.” She smiled.

  “The bare minimum?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Ah,” he said, and grinned and got his clothes off. “What a day,” he said, when he was in beside her and had her smooth, light body in his arms.

  “If I didn’t feel so sorry for Sully, I think I’d just light up with happiness,” said Ludi. “Even as it is, it feels like I’m smiling all over me.”

  Nat stroked her gently, said “I’ll check,” and kissed her here and there for at least an hour’s time.

  Sully and Sara were the next to go to bed. It took a lot of “might as well’s” and drying of their palms on thighs to get them started, but finally they were settled in a spot back in the spruces that wasn’t on the way to anywhere that anyone would have to go to—as well as out of sight, and earshot, of the fireplace.

  “Can we put our sleeping bags together?” Sully wondered, meaning, mostly, “would you like to?” He’d never slept under the same set of covers with a girl.

  Sara answered, “Sure, I’ll bet we could.” And they did. She knew that Sully wanted her (whatever “wanted” meant), and maybe even needed her, that night; she was quite a bit less clear about her own feelings, which was unusual for her, she thought. She knew she wanted to help Sully, and that wasn’t just gratitude, either; even if it had been somebody else’s life he’d saved, instead of hers, she’d have wanted to help him. But whether she just plain wanted him (in all those senses)…well, she wasn’t sure, still. The different ways of wanting complicated matters.

  They both slid into bed with underpants and T-shirts on, and seeing that they’d kissed that afternoon, they kissed again, and that felt good. Sara found she was enjoying the warmth of Sully’s body, and the way he felt and smelled. Their kiss came to an end, but they kept on hugging one another. And then Sara felt Sully’s body start to shake, and she knew that he was crying.

  He’d buried his face in her shoulder—in her hair between her shoulder and her head, and he was holding on to her very hard, and pressing his face into her hair to muffle the sounds that he was making.

  She held him very hard, herself, and stroked his head and murmured to him. “Yes,” she said, “I know,” and that surprised her, saying that, so she said “It’s all right,” which sounded more traditional.

  Sully was just saying “Oh, God,” over and over, and moving his head in little shakes, almost as if he were trying to burrow into her and disappear.

  “Sully, it’s O.K., dear; it’s O.K. now,” Sara said. She shifted slightly, got her hand on one of his, and slid the two hands, hers and his, right underneath her T-shirt. She put his hand down on her breast, and her hand over it, and told him, “There. Now everything’s all right. None of it was your fault, baby.” She’d never called anyone “dear” or “baby” before, and the words felt strange and awkward in her mouth. Everybody said words like that: her parents and Robert Redford and Meryl Streep and everyone. She knew they were the right words, but they still sounded funny, coming from her. But having him touch her felt good and right—again—and she was pleased to feel his gasps and sobs subside, in time, and very pleased to feel so good, in such a sexy way, herself.

  “I’m acting like such a baby,” Sully said. He had to blow his nose.

  “Don’t be silly,” Sara said. “You’re acting like a person.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do, if it wasn’t for you,” said Sully softly. He was now really touching her breast and sort of blown away by that reality, and pretty much confused by feeling so great and so terrible at almost the same time.

  Sara had her own confusions. She knew that Sully’s crying didn’t bother her—if anything, the opposite. And neither did his touching her, and the effect it clearly had on him; it seemed to her she loved them both. What she wasn’t sure of was the way he seemed to depend on her so much—although (she reminded herself) at the crucial moment it was he who’d acted, she who ran.

  Rather than try to figure anything out just then, it was easier to pull her T-shirt up a little, and run her hand around his side, onto his belly. He was surely breathing different—better—now.

  “Well,” said Coke, “I guess we’ve got the kiddies all tucked in.”

  “Now don’t be cynical,” said Marigold. “I think it’s kind of cute.”

  Coke shook his head resignedly. “These wartime romances,” he said, and smiled his foxy smile. He smoothed Marigold’s bangs; her head still rested on his stomach.

  “Well, what do you think ours is?” Marigold asked.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” said Coke. “But seeing as you have, let me ask you one now. Suppose—just for the fun of it—that we could stay at the school here. Like Sara was saying that time. Would you want to?”

  “Would you?” she asked, tilting her head around so she could see his face.

  “I asked you first,” he said.

  “Well, suppose I said ‘Yes,’ th
en,” she said. “What would you say?”

  “No ‘supposes,’ ” Coke said. “That’s not fair. You have to say, one way or the other.”

  “O.K., yes,” said Marigold. “I think I would. It might not be too bad. In some ways, I feel better now than I’ve ever felt in my life. So, now, how about you?”

  “If you stayed, I’d want to,” he said. “Even if you weren’t my girlfriend, maybe you’d be my friend. It’s sort of weird when you think about not having a home to go to anymore. Not having a family.”

  Marigold reached up and touched Coke’s cheek. “You know it,” she said. Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. “I’ve thought about that, being alone. You always knew it was going to happen sometime: that your parents’d die before you did, and maybe your brother’d be living in Seattle and never see you or write. But you don’t expect anything sudden, like this. It’s the same as an airplane crash or something, but it isn’t your parents who’re killed, it’s you. Most of the time, I can handle it, but then, all of a sudden, I feel so incredibly lonely, you know?” She shook her head and pinched the corners of her eyes.

  “No shit,” said Coke. “So I’d like to ask you something. Would you be my family?” he said, and looked away from her, as if it weren’t dark out there and he had had to look at something.

  “O.K.,” said Marigold. “I will. Sure; I really will. And you can be mine.” She sat up and offered him her hand to shake. Then she took a breath and grinned, fighting off the mood. “And that’d give us a chance to play Instant Incest—first ones on the block.” She looked around and did a double take. “Hey. Here’s a switch. Everyone in this group’s in bed with each other except us.”

  “Copycats,” said Coke. And then he said, “If you’d rather just sleep in your bunk tonight …”

  “Are you kidding?” said Marigold. “Someone might think I was losing my”—she put one hand on the back of her neck and did a little sitting bump—“stuff. Or that you had lost your mind.” She laughed and stood up. “This has to be one of the most difficult weeks in the history of innocent young girlhood.” She held out a hand. “Come on, bubba,” she said, “I’ve got to be in shape to count tomorrow.”