The Grounding of Group 6 Read online

  She cocked her head again, this time with a wrinkled brow. “‘When the time comes?’ You make it sound like that’s a ways away.”

  He nodded with a smile he hoped looked sweet and gentle, like he felt it, really. “Well, not too far, I hope,” he said. “But I’ve been thinking, Lu. We’ve known each other—what?—two weeks and some. And under what you might call unusual conditions. Like, never knowing what tomorrow has in store for us, if anything. I’d just hate it if you jumped into something that you’d regret later on. That’d make you sad, or pissed, or disappointed. I know sex isn’t that big a deal with a lot of people, but I want it to be, with us.”

  She shook her head. “But it is,” she said. “That’s the whole point. It’s a fantastically big deal, just the way it should be. Loving you is much the biggest deal in the history of my whole life. It always will be, Nat; I absolutely know that. Every so often somebody’s lucky enough to meet their own true love at sixteen, you know.” She gave a little laugh. “And I think at this point I’m meant to say ‘Look at Romeo and Juliet.’ ”

  Nat stuck with the nod and the smile. The ridiculous part of all this was that he actually believed everything she said. “I know,” he said. “But you’ve got to admit that the circumstances are so bizarre that they’re enough to mess up anyone’s…perspective. How can you tell whether you’d even like the everyday me, when I’m just hanging out and coming home from work, always going bowling, and there isn’t anybody hunting us and trying to shoot us up the nose and all that jazz. I mean, it stinks, but it’s exciting, right? And it isn’t even remotely real—and so we all act differently than normal.”

  “That depends on how you look at it,” she said. “I could argue that it’s super-real. That it makes everything clearer, instead of more distorted—or whatever it is you’re saying. I could say that if you really want to know someone, watch them under pressure, if you can. Maybe that’s when the real you shows up.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “maybe. But don’t you see I have to feel responsible a little? Turn it around. Suppose you were the teacher here, and I was the kid in your group, and you fell in love with me, and I seemed to be in love with you. …”

  Ludi was carefully packing away the trash from their meal, folding it all into the original Burger King bag. “It sounds as if you’re telling me you know The Answer, in this case, and that it’s ‘No—no making love.’ And that the reason that’s The Answer is that one of us knows what he’s doing and the other one doesn’t, so that the one that does has to decide for both of them.” She didn’t look up from this careful, deliberate work she was doing.

  “Christ,” he said, “I know it sounds that way. But it isn’t. Can’t you see that I love you so much it makes me scared to death I’ll mess it up some way?”

  She looked at him then. He was sitting tailor-fashion on the blanket, with his hands interlaced in his lap and his body leaning forward. By any standard he looked miserable.

  “I don’t know how upset I really am,” she said. “I think a lot. That may prove you’re right and that I am just a kid, and I don’t know what I’m doing. Or it may be because I didn’t expect this from you—which may also prove that I really am too young or too stupid or inexperienced or something to fall in love with anyone.” Her eyes were glistening again.

  “Oh, Lu,” he said, “don’t talk that way. It isn’t anything like that. Look. You know what you feel, right? And I know what I feel. For each other, I’m talking about. That’s what we have to hold on to and believe in. Really. Nothing else matters but that. When the time’s right for making love, we’ll know it.”

  “But you mean you’ll know it, don’t you?” she said. “Because I thought I knew it already.” It all seemed pretty clear to her. “But I don’t think I know it anymore,” she went on. “And I kind of have a rotten feeling that maybe I never will again.”

  “Whoa,” he said. “Hold on. Ludi, please.” She heard a wild and desperate stridence in his voice. “Don’t say that. We’ve got to be able to make mistakes and not get killed for them. Don’t you think I love you? Look. If I didn’t love you like this, it all would have been easy. That’s what’s so stupid. I’ve made love before, but I’ve never been in love before, don’t you see? Jeezum.” He battered the sides of his head with his fists. “I’m such a jerk I don’t know what to do.”

  Ludi shook her head. What had seemed so clear a moment before had gotten clouded over again. “O.K.,” she said. “I take it back. The last thing that I said. I didn’t mean that; I’m just hurt. I know I love you, Nat. And I guess that means I’m scared, too, and in a hurry, and I want to be your woman… absurd as that may seem.”

  He dared to look at her. She was shaking her head and smiling a sad little smile. “You see, I think I know The Answer, too,” she told him, “so I suppose I ought to be willing to wait for you to find it for yourself. I mean, if it’s the right answer. …”

  They finished getting all their stuff together. Nat tied the red bandanna on, and as they left the green at Suddington, they hesitantly held hands.

  They drove back through some intermittent silences; “communications blackouts,” in the space age. Nat was thinking that perhaps he’d blown it: that now there’d never be another time for him. Certain things had a way of hanging over a relationship. He could just see it: when he wanted to say “yes,” she’d have to say “no.” Give him a taste of his own medicine. That’s the way it worked, wasn’t it? He looked at Ludi sitting next to him. She wouldn’t do that, not Ludi. She was that exceptional. If he’d blown it with her, he deserved the worst, the very worst. What a moron.

  Nat thought of leaving Cone’s car up by the place where they’d grounded all the earlier Group 6’s. He thought he could find the spot, from what Lemaster had told him, and that’d give Doctor something to wonder about, all right. But the trouble with that idea was that the place was too remote, too seldom visited. He’d rather that they find Cone’s car and have to try to figure out what it was doing there—wherever. They left it by a summer home, right on the road to Boynton Falls and far from the Robinsons’. Somebody would see it there, for sure, the next day at the latest.

  They had a long walk back.

  “You know,” said Ludi, near the start of it, “you always think that when you fall in love—why, everything’ll be O.K. Nothing more to worry about, and so on. But it isn’t like that at all, is it?”

  “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’ve never been in love before, remember? I’d guess there’s always stuff to worry about, though. It wouldn’t be like life if there wasn’t. But if I love you, and you tell me that you love me, there’s this kind of O.K.-ness in the background of everything that sort of changes the way I worry. I can see all the shit and stuff, but I’m not buried in it, you know? I’m not destroyed by what a jerk I am.”

  “Well, I can tell you that I love you, for whatever it’s worth,” she said. “I really, really do, Nat.”

  “Still?” he asked. They’d stopped.

  “Always,” she replied. “Just absolutely always.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, closed his eyes, and squeezed. “Always and all ways and everywhere, I promise you. Be patient with me, Lu. You’re the most amazing woman in the world.”

  The silence that they walked in after that was soft and comforting, and everything seemed possible again.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Coke tried to remember if he’d ever spent that many hours completely by himself before, without any cigarettes, liquor, or drugs (including TV), and without calling anybody up on the telephone. He didn’t think he had, ever. Not counting time he was asleep, of course.

  It would have been easy enough to get his hands on some…distractions. One of the houses he checked out had had a bunch of bottles in plain sight—including both Drambuie and Tia Maria, which were big favorites of his. All he’d have to do was break a pane of glass in one of the windows, unlatch it, and climb in. But he hadn’t done that. What he told himself w
as that having a drink just wasn’t all that important to him. True, there was also the matter of maybe cutting himself when he broke the window, and the possibility that there’d be an alarm of some sort, or a prowl car. But, besides that, it’d be pretty mean to mess up someone’s house that way. Birds and different things might get in—squirrels, for instance—and rain, when it rained, which could be any time, from the looks of it. Coke could see the house wouldn’t be of any use to the Group, either; as Nat had said, it was much too near the road.

  The second house Coke looked at was really pretty swanky: gardens and a pool out back, with a sort of little house on the back lawn, a little house with no real walls and some woven metal furniture. Coke sat there to eat the lunch he’d brought. Marigold had told him that her house had an indoor pool. He guessed that all the kids in the Group came from pretty rich families, but none of them seemed spoiled, Coke thought. That made him laugh inside, when he thought about it. Spoiled, sure. It’d be hard to call anyone spoiled whose parents wanted to kill them. Not “I could have killed him.” The real thing. How unspoiled can you get?

  Coke decided, as he had before, that he liked the kids in the Group about as much—face it, more—than any bunch of kids he’d ever met. It’d really be good to be able to stay with them, at the school, if that was ever possible. They would have some fun. And, it occurred to Coke, he might very well do some studying, too. He felt an odd little thrill go through him at that thought. He’d always kind of known he was smart; everyone had always told him that. But now—now—it made sense to use his smartness, to study and do well. It’d be just for himself, no doing what someone else wanted him to do, no pleasing his parents. Of course it wouldn’t hurt anything to have Marigold and the others be impressed. She’d be smart herself, Marigold, and Sara would be, too. Sara looked like a worker, the type that puts in a lot of hours; he used to hate that particular type of kid. Sully was harder to tell about, as far as how smart he’d be, but he was a good kid. Sully-the-Kid; he’d killed a man. Bet that felt weird, thought Coke.

  Ludi seemed real smart, too. A lot of quiet kids were smart. She’d surprised him with how strong and…well, mature she was; she was probably real good in school. It was…interesting, her and Nat getting together. Coke wasn’t sure he exactly went for that. It seemed as if Nat was maybe taking advantage. It didn’t seem possible that he’d be…well, sincerely interested in a sixteen-year-old girl. Screwing a sixteen-year-old, maybe, but not anything more than that. Actually, it was surprising he hadn’t made a play for Marigold, who seemed lots older. Coke realized how lucky he’d been to get it going with Marigold real early like that. She was such a bombshell—but also his friend, his family, now. Wouldn’t it be a riot if they got married some day? Coke wouldn’t rule it out; they had a lot in common. No, Nat was all right, but Coke decided he’d feel a lot better when Ludi got to hanging out with guys her own age. If, by any miracle, that school idea worked out…well, Nat would probably just go on about his business somewhere else. He wasn’t a teacher, really—never had been, never planned to be. No, he’d go off and do something else, which’d be too bad, in a way, just on account of the Group. But it was basically all right with Coke. Ludi’d get over him before very long. Coke knew; he could probably help her. And she’d be better off in the long run.

  Coke had heard Levi Welch calling to Cone through the bullhorn. For a while, the calls were definitely following him, but way before noon they’d gotten more distant and then stopped altogether. Coke concluded, correctly, that the searchers had retraced their steps and maybe gone back to school. And at a little after three, having visited all four houses on his list, Coke did some of the same—the retracing part. He’d have lots to tell about the places he’d checked out, and why he felt that none of them would do for the Group. Much as he regretted it, of course.

  “You can imagine our surprise”—Mrs. Ripple spoke to Luke Lemaster—“when we discovered it was gone.”

  The time was nine P.M.; the place was Doctor’s study, in his house. Present and accounted for were Doctor, Mrs. Ripple, Levi Welch, and Luke Lemaster. Doctor had been asked to imagine their surprise over ten hours before, when Levi Welch and Mrs. R. had just got back from the Novotnys’ with the news: Homer Cone had disappeared, and now his car had, too. Mysterious occurrences, indeed. Levi Welch had been there, been surprised himself, so there wasn’t any point in saying that to him. But Luke Lemaster was a nice fresh set of ears, and Mrs. Ripple was enjoying herself, filling them right up with news and commentary.

  “I almost pinched myself,” Mrs. Ripple said, imagining herself being pinched, not by herself, but by the seven finalists in the Belleville (N.J.) Iron-Pumpers Body Building contest, all glistening with olive oil and wearing satin jock straps. “’How can this be possible?’ I asked myself.” Their pinches were more presumptuous than painful; such a group of healthy, handsome boys, joking with their traineress.

  Levi Welch pinched the neck of his beer bottle, which he’d set between his thighs. “How about a beer?” Doctor had said to him when he’d come in. He’d been the first to get there, right on the stroke of nine, with his face washed and his hair slicked down. And he’d thought that was pretty good of Doctor, and he’d said he didn’t mind if he did, and Doctor had opened up this bottle of Miller and handed it right over. But then, when the other ones came in, Doctor asked them what they wanted, and one of them had one thing and the other had something else, and Doctor made himself what looked like a big rye highball, while Levi was left sucking on that Miller without even a glass to pour it into. There were times when Levi Welch just about wished he’d stuck with the army, after all.

  “What I says to her, at first,” he said to Luke Lemaster now, “was that he must’ve finally got himself straightened out and come back to his car and headed right on home. But turns out he sure as hell didn’t do that. Not yet, anyways.” Levi put a finger down the neck of that danged Miller.

  Mrs. Ripple frowned at Levi Welch’s interruption of her storytelling. Obviously, Mr. Cone had not come back to school. If he had come back to school, he would have been in this room with them, telling what he’d seen and done. If she was going to have to compete with Levi Welch for Mr. Lemaster’s attention, she just wasn’t going to bother. Let them do without her theories on the disappearance, based on quite a bit of firsthand knowledge of the individual involved. She rejoined her regularly scheduled daydream, measuring some rock-hard oily muscles. Let Luke Lemaster try to make sense out of that toothless manure spreader’s stories.

  Luke Lemaster pulled his ear and looked into the distance. “So, where does this leave us?” he said to Doctor in his slow, deep voice. “What’s become of Homer, in your view?” His years of teaching had given Lemaster the ability to ask every question in a tone that made the person questioned think Lemaster knew the answer to it. He also often said, “I’d like to have your thinking on that,” in a way that was meant to make people feel enormously flattered that so wise a man should care what they thought, then or ever.

  Doctor was much too slick to fall into Lemaster’s little traps, though. “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” Doctor said, and held up both his palms. Then, much more seriously, “I’ll tell you this much, though: wherever he is, there’s a reason for it.”

  “Maybe we could get the Guardsmen to come and help us look for him,” said Levi Welch. “I know this one fellow, over to Boynton Falls; he’s in the Guard. He’s got to go most every weekend, seems like. I could speak to him, right after this, and maybe he could talk to his captain about them coming over here and helping us. Tomorrow’s Saturday, you know.”

  “So it is,” said Luke Lemaster thoughtfully. “So it is, indeed.”

  Doctor smiled a little rosebud of a smile. “Well,” he said, “assuming Mr. Cone is lost—rather than mislaid, as I still think of him”—Mrs. Ripple looked up sharply—“it seems to me that we should search for him ourselves. What does the Good Book tell us about the shepherd and the poor little lambs who h
ave gone astray? Mr. Cone is one of ours, and we should find him. What better all-school activity could anyone imagine than the entire student body out searching for one of its devoted and beloved teachers? I’ll bet the kids would jump at the chance to go on a treasure hunt like that. With maybe a nice barbecue thrown into the deal. Breast of chicken, say, your strip sirloins, homemade pie with ice cream …”

  “Choice of beverage?” asked Levi Welch.

  “Why not?” said Doctor grandly. “And a prize for the lucky one who’s found him…‘never let him go,’ ” sang Doctor.

  “And where, may I ask,” asked Mrs. Ripple, forced to break her latest vow of silence, “would you possibly think to look?”

  “Everywhere,” said Doctor simply. “We’ll comb the woods for him. Just as he did ‘Cone’ them for Group Six.” That drink was Doctor’s third since dinner.

  “And what, may I ask, about Group Six?” said Mrs. Ripple. She knew she spoke tartly, difficult as that was for a lady like herself.

  “Ah, yes. Group Six,” said Doctor, laying a finger on the side of his nose and speaking slowly, softly—wisely. “They’re never out of my mind, of course. Just like those hostages in Eye-ran were for President What’s-his-face. Here’s my thinking, now, folks. It’s been three weeks. We haven’t had a peep from them, not even a postcard. Nor have their families, poor people.”

  The other three shook their heads sympathetically, and Mrs. Ripple echoed him: “Poor people.”

  “Emfatico and Darling haven’t seen a sign of ‘em,” Doctor went on, “and neither have good Cone and Mrs. Ripple. Add all those facts together and you get—what? That Cone was right: that they’re still here, somewhere. If they were safely in Saskatchewan, or Baja California, we’d have heard by now—at least a ‘nyah-nyah-nyah’ from one of them. I know kids and I know that; it’s human nature, people. And if one of them had headed home, we’d sure have had a jingle from the Better Business B. And if they weren’t in the woods, we’d’ve been bound to find some sign of ‘em by now: a Twinkie wrapper, a banana peel, an empty thing of Clearasil. You see? They’re being careful as coyotes at a turkey shoot. And finally, folks, I ask you this—going by the law of averages, isn’t it about time that Homer Cone was right? No, good friends and neighbors”—Doctor beamed around the room—“as far as Group Six is concerned, it’s only a matter of time…‘on my hands,’ ” sang Doctor, and he took a merry swig of his highball. All around the room, people were nodding; Mrs. Ripple might have actually dropped off. But for all his joviality, Doctor knew it just wouldn’t seem like a new school year until they got that grounding in. “Now here’s what I propose …, “ he started up again.