The Grounding of Group 6 Read online

  The atmosphere at Spring Lake Lodge that evening was far more mellow and laid-back than, say, the day before. It wasn’t being too dramatic (so it seemed to Nat) to say that everyone had lost a little childhood in the day just past. Whether they liked it or not, they’d all moved up one level in life, become a bit more like their parents, maybe. Certainly as copers. Knowing how to cope was great (thought Nat) at times, in certain ways; the trouble was that copers sometimes coped too much, when they should let-alone and cool it. Or just admit they didn’t have the answer.

  In any event, the members of Group 6 had drifted into moods that weren’t so extreme on either end—closer to a happy medium. The presents were a great success—each immediately tried on and named a perfect fit. The shirt they’d got for Marigold was absolutely see-through, which made for a certain amount of good-natured, and even flattering, comment, most of it by Coke, and Sara said her sandals were handmade, she knew it, and very much the best she’d ever owned. Sully said he liked the fact that they were see-through, too.

  There was also some discussion of the possible effects that “everything” had had upon the Plan. Nat wondered if they might not all go down, quite early in the morning, to see if they could guess what form the search for Cone was going to take. He was curious to see if they had found the car, and whether they would ask for any (skillful) local help, like Rescue Squads or Fire Wardens: people who had known those woods since childhood. Sully, Sara, and Marigold had seen Levi and Mrs. Ripple return and go to Doctor’s office, but after that the day seemed normal, insofar as they could tell. Mrs. Ripple spent it in the classroom building, Levi in the Shop; Doctor wasn’t seen at all. He had—although of course they didn’t know it—a Jackson Pollock jigsaw puzzle on a table in his office in Foote Hall.

  When they were washing up the dishes on which they’d eaten an outstanding, gourmet, fresh-food meal (Corporal Nat’s North Jersey Broiled Chicken), Sully asked Nat if they could talk, and the two of them wandered up to the top of the little knob above the spruces. Their departure was observed approvingly by all the others, and even a little proudly by Sara and Ludi.

  “I’m sure you can guess what I want to talk about,” Sully said. He looked steadily at Nat as he said this, and he spoke in a flat and neutral tone of voice.

  “Yeah, I imagine,” Nat said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Better,” Sully said, and nodded once. His eyes left Nat, but came right back to him. “Much better. But I can’t quite seem to get over that I actually killed a guy. You know? That if I look in the mirror, I’m not just seeing a person who could do that, or might do that, but who’s really done it. Gives me a weird feeling, I can tell you that much.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Nat. “Just having been there at all’d give you a weird feeling. I mean, suppose you hadn’t shot. You’d still feel a hell of a lot different than two days ago.”

  “My God,” said Sully, “I guess so. I never thought of that. If he’d killed Sara, and I’d just stood there and let him …”

  It was Nat’s turn to nod. “That’s the thing. No matter what you did, or didn’t do, just being there …” He made a wry smile. “I’m sure if it were me, I’d rather live with what you did than the other. And those were your only choices, Sul. Let’s face it. You couldn’t have shot the gun out of his hands, right? Even if you’d wanted to and had all the time in the world to aim and everything.” He thought of something else. “Look. It isn’t any of my business, but…you really like Sara, don’t you?”

  “A lot,” said Sully, still looking right at Nat and talking very matter-of-factly. “I don’t mind telling you that.”

  “O.K., then, answer me this. Suppose the roles were switched around, and you were the one about to get shot, and she was the one with the bow and arrow. What would you want her to do?”

  “For whose sake, hers or mine?” asked Sully.

  “Either one. Both. Any way you want it.”

  Sully looked down at the ground and took his time. “If I’m going to be honest, there’s no question about it. I’d want her to shoot him. I really would.” He took a deep breath and crossed his arms, rubbing his hands on his shirt sleeves. “I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to say that. She really isn’t going to blame me, is she?”

  “No,” said Nat. “Not hardly. I don’t think so.”

  “I guess that’s been bugging me as much as the other,” Sully said. He dropped his eyes again. “I think she’s so great. But what I do is, I keep wondering if she really likes me, or if maybe she’s just trying to make me feel good. If she thinks I saved her life, well, I guess she’s got to be grateful. But that isn’t what I want. I wouldn’t want her hanging out with me just because she thinks she ought to, or because she thinks she owes me something. You know what I mean? I’m afraid that maybe she’s doing that, whether she knows it or not.”

  “Listen, Sully, um …” Nat hitched his weight forward a little, and clasped his hands between his knees. “You’ll never figure that one out. You’ll never know. So you might as well forget it. Things just turn out, you know what I mean? Look. You say you like her a lot. O.K., just act like it then. And as long as she’s acting as if she likes you, too—well, believe it. Don’t waste your time with that other stuff; it’s hopeless. Does-she, doesn’t-she; will-she, won’t-she—waste of time. Enjoy what you have; believe what she says. She knows what she’s doing. Hell, if you like her—love her—you’ve got to believe that.” Suddenly he heard his own voice, his own words of wisdom. What an incredible fucking jerk he was.

  Sully looked at Nat again. He shook his head—in wonder, not denial. “Of course,” he said. “I see exactly what you’re saying. And that’s completely right. It’s hard, but it’s completely right. That’s the way I want to be, Nat. That’s the sort of person I want to be.” He dropped his head and said, much softer, “Like you, you know?”

  Nat reached out and rumpled Sully’s hair. “Yeah? Well, I’m going to try to be like you, Sul.”

  Sully shook his head some more. He didn’t understand, but smiled at Nat and touched him, feeling awkward, on the shoulder.

  When they got down to the Lodge, only Coke was still beside the fire.

  “They said they had to get their beauty sleep,” he told his fellow feminists; his thumb jerked toward The Ladies Room.

  10

  The tree that Group 6 used for looking down on the Coldbrook Country School was what Nat called a good old-fashioned Robin Hood tree. When he was a kid, he’d seen this Robin Hood movie with some huge old oaks in it, enormous things, each of them with space for…hell, a score of merrie persons dressed in Lincoln green. What they’d do was get up in these trees and wait a little while, and then drop down on top of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s goons, all of whom wore chain mail and couldn’t fight worth a lick. Other days, they’d wait until some fat-pursed merchants palfreyed by, and then they’d drop on them and take their little clinking bags of gold away for later distribution to the local widows and orphans. Another thing the merrie persons also did a lot was whack the merchants and men-at-arms across the fanny with the flats of their swords and then bend over, with their hands on their knees, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

  But that was a movie; this was real life. And so, instead of there being a lot of strapping varlets in the tree, each on his own fat, spreading limb, there was a band of five suburban-urban high school kids and their slightly older “teacher,” crowded together like monkeys and squabbling over the rights to a single pair of binoculars.

  For there was something worth watching on this morning bright: the Coldbrook Country School was getting ready for a Treasure Hunt.

  Doctor had announced it in the dining hall at breakfast. Saturday classes were all canceled; instead, there would be Fun, and also Games: a frolic in the woods, a Treasure Hunt, a contest. With Homer Cone, that priceless pedagogic gem, the prize!

  The place erupted with excitement: Cone was lost; he hadn’t been arrested (as the rumors went) at all
! Cries of “Yay!,” “I told you so” were mixed with “What’s the second prize?” and “Do we have to keep him if we find him?”

  In fact, beamed Doctor, Cone was not the prize at all (though certainly the Treasure!). Whatever dorm found Cone would win itself a brand new Betamax TV recorder! But even those that didn’t would also get Prizes, Doctor promised, and everyone would Feast that night, for sure!

  Once again, the dining hall went wild, but quieted again to hear the rules. After breakfast, from the steps of Daughtridge Hall, Luke Lemaster, Dean, would run some Raffles. What he’d raffle off would be the Searching Rights to different Sections of the land around the school. The night before, he’d made a Map, on one big piece of Sheetrock, and that was right beside him on the steps. There were six Sections (just as there were six dorms), each of them boundaried by this road, that brook, et cetera. Whichever dorm won the first Raffle would win exclusive Searching Rights within the Section that it chose. And so on. Everybody clear on that? Oh, yay! Each dorm would have to try to figure out what sort of place a guy like Homer Cone would be most apt to find himself completely lost in. And make its choice accordingly.

  So what Group 6 observed, between the leaves of its great oak tree, was something that looked like part medieval country fair and part sheer bedlam—or, in other words, pretty much the way that local folk defined the Coldbrook Country School. They saw the Raffle getting ready to begin.

  It had finally rained the night before, starting after midnight. But in the early-morning light, the wind had turned around and broken up the clouds and carried in a day so cool and clear and bright that even Mrs. Ripple must have felt like dancing on the diamond-studded lawn. She didn’t, but a lot of others did. It wasn’t formal dancing—no, indeed—but rather more a floating, weaving, chasing, arcing, soaring, banking, bumping kind of play. The gusts of wind were strong enough to push a person slightly off balance, and with that kind of start… why, well, why not put out your arms and fly with it? Play some leapfrog, maybe, with those people over there, or, following the leader, roll your body to the side and make some perfect cartwheels clear across the lawn. The campus dogs jumped all around them, barking, bouncing up and down as if their feet were strapped to springs.

  The kids who went to Coldbrook Country School were colorful to start with, and on occasions such as this they let their outfits match their natures, yes, indeed. Ludi, Marigold, and Sara looked on with something very close to envy in their hearts; three weeks of shorts and jeans were apt to cause a little dress-up hunger. The Coldbrook girls had gotten into colors for the hunt: purple shirts and orange ones; long, full, flowing skirts in pastel pinks and mauves and greens, with hiking boots beneath them; sashes, shawls, and capes of all descriptions, fluttering. A lot of boys wore masks with cowboy hats: the Cone Rangers would be riding, kemo sappy, side by side with certain Cone Heads, just a few of those, in fact. “It’s perfectly possible to be a Dead Head and a Cone Head at the same time,” a boy named Rushton told his roommate, Gabriel, a little stridently, defensively; maybe he was ruining his reputation for a cheap laugh. Gabriel, a Star Trek freak and heavy-metal man, could not care less.

  Doctor, in the spirit of the thing, had got himself up as the Master of the Hunt: hard hat, red coat, riding pants, and all. Slim, black, shiny boots. From time to time, he’d bellow “Yoicks!” or “View Halloo!” The students, much more tolerant of weirdness, paid him no more mind than usual, but younger faculty were forced to wonder. In many of their secret hearts, of course, there lived the hope that Cone would never be recovered. Then, too, they doubted that he was in the woods at all—unless, perhaps, some angry students, fed up with his insults, had beaten him to death with geometric solids and then buried the remains. Such things did happen; Cone was insensitive, for sure, but not invulnerable. No, what they really thought was: Cone had just flipped out and taken off. That happened, too: older teacher sees the writing on the wall—he’s not communicating anymore and starts to hate the job, the kids, the school, and vice-versa. Exit him—good riddance. And the Director is saved an unpleasant duty. Of course (as Matt Wampler, History, put it to Missy Coleman, Dance) it might well be that Doctor’d fired Cone and then, wanting to avoid reaction/gossip, just decided he’d be “lost.” Was it not significant (asked Matt) that no “authorities” had been involved so far? Perhaps (said Missy), but it really didn’t hardly matter, did it? A Treasure Hunt was just a “fab idea.”

  Finally, Luke Lemaster called them all to order and got six dormitory delegates to mount the steps beside him and his map. He made them pump their fists in time with his: “One, two, three—shoot!”

  A lot of fingers stabbed the unpolluted morning air. Luke quickly totaled up and counted off. A girl named Marci Bronson was the winner. In a loud voice, she made her choice: “On behalf of Drumby House, the intellectual and athletic center of the school, home of the perceptive, the privileged, and the pulchritudinous, core of creativity and charisma”—(general booing and hissing in the background)—“I choose Section Four!” She pointed west, toward an enormous stand of soft wood in the distance. “Drumby House is certain,” she screamed, “that Cone will be found in the pines!” And floating on a great soft pillow of sound (groans, boos, laughter, and applause), she left the steps to rejoin her gifted cohabitants. Section Four was a long, long way away, and a rotten place to even maintain your tan, but Drumby’d felt the joke was worth it, what the hell.

  The rest of the Raffle was completed without incident and pretty soon the exodus began. All the dorms were taking sandwich lunches from the dining hall, but Doctor, capering about, was promising a dinner to remember. “Roast ox!” he cried. “Slumgullion! Haggis!” “How about some poon-tang for dessert?” Richard Wanamaker shouted. And Doctor, hearing “marzipan,” or possibly Chinese, replied, “Why, shore, m’lad; why, shore.”

  They left in all directions, blowing horns and whistles, flashing mirrors in each other’s eyes, and waving so-called signal flags. Darwin House had even whipped up some lyrics and sang, to the tune of “Home on the Range”:

  “We’re looking for Homer, that fat little roamer,

  where the deer and the beaver do play.

  He’s always absurd,

  he’s a schnook and a nerd,

  and his eyes, they are cloudy all day.

  Homer, Homer you’re so strange …”

  There was no question what was going on down there; the people in Group 6 were all pretty bright, but you didn’t need to be bright to figure that one out. An all-school search for Cone was taking place; even Mrs. Olson and her cohorts were unplugging their coffee pots and getting out of there; and because of the barbecue that night, the kitchen staff was off for the day and free to head for Suddington and have a wine or two.

  Group 6 looked at one another. Would there ever be a better time, a better moment, for their mission? Surely not. They waited for ten minutes after the last straggler from the last dorm seemed to have disappeared, and then—look out below! They headed straight for Doctor’s house and study.

  The doors to both were open, country-style. They closed them both behind them. In character, they rubbed their hands together, sensitizing fingertips, perhaps. Ah-ha: so this was Doctor’s study.

  It was a good-sized room—once upon a time a formal living room, the biggest in the house. Stretching over halfway down it, from just inside the door, was one enormous cherry table, big enough for almost any kind of meeting you could think of, or (from time to time) for Doctor’s Hot Wheels track. Grouped around it were twelve heavy captain’s chairs with ugly steerhide seats; large windows on the left looked out upon an apple tree that bloomed in May, a path, and also a lawn that led to Foote, where Doctor’s other office was, and sometimes Mrs. Olson.

  At the far end of the room was Doctor’s royal desk, a large mahogany affair with a high-backed leather swivel chair, in black. It faced a canvas-covered sofa, tan, flanked by matching canvas-covered easy chairs. The sofa had a glass-topped coffee table between it a
nd the desk, and both the upholstered chairs had little tables that looked like nail kegs beside them. Wherever you looked, there were plenty of cork coasters and big ce-ramie ashtrays with pictures of game birds on them. Directly to the right of Doctor’s desk chair and along the wall behind it was the dry sink that served as his bar, with the Titans of the Turf glasses on the first shelf over it. In the matching space to the left of Doctor, there were two three-tiered wooden filing cabinets, and beyond them, going down the lefthand wall from Doctor’s desk chair, was the lavatory door that Doctor liked to put his Nerf basketball hoop up on. Past the lavatory was the large walk-in closet where he’d hide the ball and hoop when people came, and where he kept his cars and track and lots of other things including outdoor clothes. There was a pole across one side of the closet, with jackets and rain gear hanging on it, and backed deep against the wall there was a small pine chest of drawers, with scarves and gloves and woolen hats and sweaters in it.

  The members of Group 6 headed straight for the desk, their pinch bars in their hands, their faces grim. But, to their disappointment, the drawers were unlocked. They contained the following items, period.