The Man in the Net (19 page)

“No she wouldn’t, either.” Angel was clutching Louise to her breast, her head bent down as if she were listening to an invisible voice issuing from below the sunbonnet. Then she glared at Emily. “Louise says yes. Louise says Timmie can come to the cave and Leroy and Buck. Louise says, Yes, yes, yes.”

“Then”—John smiled humbly at Angel—“do you think Emily could go back to the village now and tell them about the bicycle and then bring the other kids here?”

Angel stumped back to the orange crate, carefully settled Louise on it and dropped her a solemn curtsy. Then she turned back to John.

“We’re both going now. I’m going to ride my bicycle and Emily is going to walk.”

Emily exchanged a swift glance with him, letting him know it would be all right.

“I’ll tell them about your coming up on the dirt road and borrowing my bike. Then we’ll come back with the others.”

“And find out whatever you can.”

“Of course I’ll find out everything.”

Angel had picked up a little twig from the floor. She beat at Emily’s legs with it.

“Go on. Go on first—slave.”

Emily hurried toward the hole in the wall. Angel started strutting after her and then turned back to John.

“Why are we going to bring Timmie and Buck and Leroy? Is it some kind of a game?”

“Yes,” said John. “It’s some kind of a game.”

“I’ll play it,” said Angel. “If it’s a game, I’ll play it. But I’m the head of the game. Louise says so. Whatever it is, I’m the head, the top, the queen of the game.” She simpered. “And if I’m not, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go to those men and I’m going to say, ‘You want dopey old John Hamilton, don’t you? I know where he is,’ I’ll say. ‘I know where dumb, dopey old John Hamilton is.’”

The simper became a giggle. Emily had slipped out through the hole. In a crazy skipping dance Angel ran to the hole, ducked down and wriggled away after her sister.

For a moment John stood still, his arms limp at his sides. In the flickering candlelight, Louise, perched on the orange crate, seemed to glower menacingly like a pagan idol. A brutal memory came of the butterflies struggling in the dusty webs of the window above the new, nightmare cement floor. It was as if he were still there in the damp, musty atmosphere of the barn. Then, in his mind, the men were running down the slope from the cars, belling like hounds. And, with Angel’s giggle still echoing in his ears, the cave became not an asylum any more but a trap.

He was still too close to those moments of horror to have full control of his nerves and he felt panic pushing up in him, urging him to run, to escape from the cave before Angel Jones betrayed him.

But gradually the thought of Emily steadied him. Emily could control Angel. Couldn’t she? Wouldn’t it all be all right—because of Emily?

Exhaustion hit him. He dropped down on one of the pine-needle beds; then, realizing it was Angel’s, automatically got up and moved over to Emily’s.

He would have to stay. Whatever might happen, that was the only possible road to salvation—to stay, to trust Emily, to make himself believe that with the help of the children …

Before he realized it, he was asleep.

HE WOKE UP with a start. The candle had burnt out. Above him daylight still filtered down from the remote fissure in the rock, thrusting a greyish quality into the darkness. How long had he slept? Would the children be arriving soon?

The thought of the children brought a nauseous sensation of anxiety. Hadn’t he been absurdly rash? Now there would be five complex, unaccountable entities who had it in their power to betray him. Not intentionally, perhaps…

To steady himself, he thought of Linda’s problematical cache. If it existed, if he could find it, if his hunch were fantastically proved to be right, everything might be resolved. As if the answer had come to him while he was asleep, he thought of the cow-barn. If Linda had something of great secret importance to hide, she would never have hidden it in the house itself, but the cow-barn, where she had kept her garden tools and to which he never had reason to go, was different. Could that be it? A magpie cache in the cow-barn? But where in the barn? The old ice-chest was the only piece of furniture there. In the ice-chest? Why not? No one ever used it; it was near the door. Why should she have bothered to look for a more elaborate hiding-place when the ice-chest was so ideally suited to her purposes?

Couldn’t he send one of the children to look? Almost certainly there would be troopers guarding the house. But —a child! After dark … !

Yes, he needed the children. Of course he did. It could work with the children.

Not long after that they came. He heard the scuffling sound of their bodies wriggling through the hole and then could dimly make them out as patches of movement in the darkness.

“John!” It was Emily’s voice, low, conspiratorial.

“The candle burnt out,” he said.

She brushed past him, going toward the back of the cave, and soon light flickered behind him. She passed him again, holding a candle, moving back toward the other kids, and, as the light spread out in front, he saw them. Angel was sitting on the floor by Louise’s orange crate. The boys stood in a line, Buck fat and red-faced, Timmie slim as an alder switch, Leroy small, golden-brown, beautiful—all of them completely different and yet all of them wearing the identical awed, round-eyed expression.

“We told them,” said Emily. “And we made them swear the oath. Swear it again, swear it in front of John.”

Leroy opened his mouth, showing blazing white teeth.

“We swear …” he began, then the other boys joined in, all of them half whispering, half chanting:

“We swear, cut our throats and hope to die, that we’re on John’s side through thick and thin. Whatever he wants us to do we will do and we won’t tell anyone even if we are tortured with every torture known to man. And Angel is the head of the gang.”

Angel, who had pulled Louise down into her lap, looked up smugly. “I made them put that in. I made them say that.”

The boys shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other.

Leroy said, “It’s a beautiful cave. The secret is beautiful.”

Buck said, “Gee, they were hunting all through the woods and they didn’t find you.”

“No,” said John.

“Daddy was with them.” Timmie Moreland blurted it out and flushed. “Daddy was with them, running through the woods and everything, and he called Mummie and he said you’d got away. You must have got to the road and thumbed a ride and got away, he said.”

The image came of Gordon Moreland, precise, keen-eyed, enormously civilized, running with the blue-jeaned farmers through the woods.

Emily said, “It’s all right, John. I told them about the bike. Didn’t I, Buck? I told Buck’s father. I just brought it out like it was something I ought to say and there were other men with him at the gas station and they all jumped in a car to go after my bike. So they’ll find it and everything will be all right.”

Angel got up, clutching Louise to her bosom.

“They found Mrs. Hamilton,” she announced. “They found Mrs. Hamilton. She was in the cement. They dug her up out of the cement.”

She started rocking Louise wildly back and forth. All the other children, even Emily, were watching her, appalled and impressed by her daring in putting into words what they all obviously knew and had been keeping back. Slowly Angel started to dance around with Louise while the children’s eyes were fixed on her, beady with the thrill of fascinated horror.

“They dug her up. They dug her up. And I guess she looked awful—awful starey, starey eyes, awful starey, starey mouth, awful …”

“And blood,” broke in Buck Ritter, clumsily trying to share the spotlight. “Blood everywhere. Blood all over her clothes. Blood …”

“Blood,” piped Timmie, though his face was a greyish white.

“No,” cried Angel, in a sudden ecstasy of self-induced terror. “No, no. Don’t say those bad, wicked things. Don’t …”

She dropped down on the floor clutching Louise and, with her collapse, the children’s game of making their flesh creep collapsed too. They looked scared and uneasy. John, for whom, unlike the children, the horror was a real horror, said quietly to Emily:

“They’ve really found her?”

“Yes. The troopers did. The troopers came right after the others and they looked in the cellar, then they looked in the bam and they found the new floor, they …”

She broke off. It had been hours since John had known that Linda must be dead, known it with a certainty which should have mitigated the shock, but it didn’t. She was dead. She was really dead. He tried to bring a memory of her alive in his mind, but nothing came except the children’s horror-movie image of her—awful starey,

starey eyes, blood, blood all over her dress …

The boys had crowded around him. Emily was watching him with an anxious, maternal gaze. He became conscious of them again and, through them, of the urgent needs of the present.

“Have they taken her away, Emily?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes,” said Timmie. “Daddy said yes. They took her away in an ambulance and she’s gone.”

“But the troopers are still at the house?”

“Gee, I don’t know. I …”

John felt a gentle tug at his sleeve. He looked down. Leroy had the material of his shirt delicately squeezed between finger and thumb.

“Mr. Hamilton, can I go up there? Can I go up to the house and see if the troopers are there?” He dropped his eyelids shyly. “Then I can come back and I can tell you and you can know.”

“No,” cut in Timmie excitedly. “Me. Let me go. John, let me go.”

It was like a game again. They didn’t think about whether he’d killed Linda or not. None of them had even asked. Those terms didn’t exist for them. To them, this was just a game—like the game he’d invented in the woods. “If you were an animal, every time you saw a human being you’d shiver and say—the Enemy!” Play it that way, then, handle it the way he used to handle the games, with game rules and game ethics.

He looked down into Timmie’s passionately eager face. “No. Timmie. Leroy thought of it first. It’s his idea. He’s the one who must go.”

“But I wanna. I wanna do something. I wanna …”

“You shall, Timmie. But this is Leroy’s idea.”

“Then I’ll go?” Leroy’s smile was dazzling. “I’ll creep up there? Right now?”

“Yes, Leroy. But be careful. Don’t let anyone see you.”

“No, no. I won’t. And I’ll come back and I’ll tell you.” Leroy started to run toward the hole in the wall. Just before he reached it, Angel called out:

“What are you doing? You can’t do anything without asking me first. I’m the leader.”

Leroy hesitated, glancing back at John. Play it their way. Respectfully John turned to Angel.

“Angel, would it be all right for you to send Leroy up to the house?”

Angel looked back at him, her eyes revealing flat, child’s malice. Then, with a toss of the head, she said:

“It’s okay. I say Leroy must go up to the house.”

Leroy dropped down on to the floor and wriggled away out of the hole. Both Timmie and Buck were clamoring: “What can I do? What can I do?”

Beyond anything, he had to impress upon them the fact that the game was secret.

“What time is it?” he said.

“It’s four-thirty,” said Emily.

“When do you have to be home for supper?”

“Six,” said Buck.

“Five-thirty,” said Timmie. “Mummie says I’ve got to be back at five-thirty to wash my hands and everything and to lie down before supper because I’m nervous, she says, and it makes my nerves better to lie down before I eat.”

Emily said, “Angel and I have to be back at six. Mother gets home from the post-office and I’m supposed to have supper fixed.”

He said, “All of you see, don’t you, how important it is to keep this a secret?”

“Yes,” said Emily. “We know. Of course, all of us know, don’t we?”

And Buck and Timmie said, “Yes, yes, we know.”

“Then that’s the most important thing; and if doing nothing is the best thing to keep it secret, then you’ve got to do nothing.”

“But I wanna …” Timmie broke off, looking ashamed.

John’s gaze moved from one to the other of the solemn faces gleaming in the soft yellow candlelight. After Leroy had reported on the lay of the land, one of them would have to go to the barn. He thought of the atmosphere of horror that must cling around the barn for them. Could he ask it of a child to go there of all places—and after dark? Or was that just an adult’s conception of a child? Hadn’t they shown just now that all that had happened was only partially real to them, only a sort of grisly make-believe? He didn’t know, but it didn’t matter because he would have to do it anyway. If he didn’t fight back with the only weapons at his command, this breathing space in the cave was merely a meaningless postponement of inevitable disaster.

“Which of you can get out after supper without arousing suspicion. If there’s any chance of making people wonder what you’re doing, then you’ve got to stay home.”

“I can,” said Buck. “No one never bothers what I do much with Mom on the fountain and Pop—like tonight, Pop being on a job and everything …”

“We can come,” said Emily. “Mother goes back to the post-office for between seven and eight and I’m supposed to put Angel to bed at eight and then I sit up and when Mother comes back we just sit there and I go to bed when she does but that’s always at ten because she gets up so early in the morning. So after ten’s all right. Like I told you, most every night Angel and I sneak out after ten anyways and come here to sleep and she never knows.”

“I can come too,” said Timmie. “I can come. I can fix it. I can.” His eyes were shining with excitement but there was uneasiness in them too. Suddenly his face fell. “I guess maybe I can’t either because of what you said about arousing suspicions. When we’re at home and don’t go any place, Daddy always plays records to me after supper, records that he says I like, and then, when I go to bed, Mummie always reads to me in bed out of books. So I guess it’s got to be like you say, that the important thing is not to arouse suspicions. So I’ll have to let them play the records and read out of books and all the time know I’m keeping the secret and that they don’t know anything and that I’m in the game all the time and I’m doing something terribly important and …”