The Grounding of Group 6

by Julian F. Thompson

  “Until we get a system of some sort,” he said, “like a lookout or a sentry—some darn thing—we’d better just be super-cautious. I stuck a piece of leaf in both the latches when we left—and of course we’ll see the car, if anybody’s parked. …” They started up the road in single file, not talking, trying to step as silently as possible.

  Ludi whispered, “Nat. There’s someone there.”

  And he said, “Where?”

  And she said, “There.” She pointed. “Up inside the house.” Everyone looked back and forth, from her to that big house shape up ahead.

  Nat said, “You can see somebody up there, Lu?”

  And she said, “No, it’s just a feeling. I can tell.”

  He nodded. Ludi just took tiny breaths. She knew that she was right in what she said; she also knew she’d had to say it. What she didn’t know was what they’d think and say—what he’d say, first of all. It seemed like a big moment in her life.

  “Do you know who it is?” Nat said. There wasn’t any doubting in his voice—no what’s-this-crazy-talk?, no little-lilt-of-laughter.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t even tell how many. There could be more than one.”

  Nat didn’t hesitate at all. He hunkered down and started to unlace his boots. “I’m going to check it out,” he said. The house appeared completely dark; it certainly was silent. He took his boots and socks off.

  “Do any of you drive?” he asked.

  Sara answered, “Yes, but not a stick.”

  Marigold: “Same here.”

  Ludi said, “I can.” Nat handed her the car keys, and then, once more, his money. He smiled. “Dramatic precautions department, N. Rittenhouse, Director.” He slipped off the khaki trousers. “It isn’t that I’m expecting Bo Derek,” he said to Marigold, “it’s the noise factor. You’ve probably noticed in the frontier flicks how the Indians never wore corduroy pants …?”

  He faced them all. “Just wait right here,” he said. “If anything that I promise you isn’t going to happen happens, coast the Pumpkin down the hill till you get to the road, and then…I don’t know, head for California or something. Maybe Dayton, Ohio; nobody looks for anyone in Dayton. You’ll have to decide. But of course that isn’t going to happen. It’s probably just a pair of local lovers. Or Mrs. Robinson. Anyway. I should be back inside a half an hour.”

  And then, to everyone’s surprise (and Sully’s—face it—horror) he shook their hands in turn and gave them each a kiss. “For luck,” he said, and winked, and started up the road, staying on the shoulder, bent way over. Sully wished he had another guy—like Coke—to look at, so he’d know what he should feel, for sure. Maybe what he should have done was go with Nat, but what good would he have been? Sully sank to one knee, like the on-deck hitter in a baseball game; that was better than standing, waiting, and he thought it looked kind of ready-for-anything. Right away, the three girls all got down on the roadside beside him, which made him feel a great deal better.

  As Nat got nearer to the house—feeling just a little bit absurd, but also more than mildly frightened—he veered away from it, staying in the shadows. The driveway widened out to make a larger space for parking all along the near side of the house. There were two ways of gaining access from that side. First, there were some rustic steps quite near the front, which went up to the biggest sundeck, on the second floor. The “front” door, if you will, was there; you entered in the living room. The second door was almost at the back, at ground level; it led into the kitchen. Actually, there were two doors there; an outside one that opened on a little hall where there was a place for boots and coats, and then the kitchen door itself.

  Nat circled all the way around the parking space, behind a woodshed, and so approached the house from its back side, walking toward the kitchen windows. It was a big country kitchen that ran the full width of the house.

  There was a kerosene lamp burning on the kitchen table, with its wick set low.

  Nat crept toward the house, setting down his feet heel-first and walking on their outside edges. He got close enough to see the room from end to end.

  There was no one in the kitchen.

  He turned and moved back from the house. Now he circled to the house’s other side, staying at a distance. There were no other lights. Not in the two big downstairs bunk rooms, or in the downstairs den, or bath; not in the two upstairs bedrooms, or the living room, or upstairs bath.

  Nat considered. Could the person(s) be asleep? Might they just be sitting in the dark? Lying in the dark? Well, sure, why not?

  Could they be outside, somewhere? Maybe even driving back, say, from the store, just the same as they had done. Which meant they’d see the Pumpkin in the road, and then the kids—and then what?

  Thinking all those thoughts made Nat decide he’d have to see if there were people in the house, and if there were, how many. Their sex and size would be of interest, too.

  He circled back behind the house again, and over to the woodshed. There he found about a two-foot piece of stove wood, round and hard as a rolling pin; it made him feel both better and ridiculous. His legs were getting kind of cold.

  The outside kitchen door—the leaf no longer in the latch—was what is called a storm door: a Plexiglas-aluminum affair with one of those good strong springs on the top that slam the door closed after you—or on you. So what Nat figured he could do was open up that door real wide, and then let go—and duck around the corner of the building as he did so. Whoever came to check the noise would have to pass the kitchen table and the lamp, and he, the perfect Peeping-Nat outside the window, would see him-her-them-someone, in terrifying, big-screen color.

  He did it. The door, amazingly, was squeakless as it opened. He let it go and scooted.

  Slam!

  He waited. And pretty soon there was a person, tall and lean and walking in an awkward kind of glide, with an L-shaped poker held in front of him, as if it were a sword. His eyes were wide and staring.

  “Jeezum. Coke!” said Nat-the-cotton-mouthed. The words came out a mumble. He got saliva going, licked his lips, and went up to the window. Coke was now beside the door, flattened to the wall, and listening. Nat decided not to tap on the window; give the guy a break. Instead, he walked back to the door he’d slammed and opened it, and said (in normal, loud, and very friendly tones), “Hey, Coke. I come in peace. It’s Nat.”

  Later on in life, Coke always felt a twinge of guilt/embarrassment about that moment, and the next few hundred, say. Because, before he’d thought it through at all, he’d dropped the poker, opened up the door, and grabbed ahold of Nat in tears. Later on in life, he’d tell himself that he was drunk, which was at least a little true, and very near exhaustion, which was fact.

  “Oh, boy,” said Nat, a little awkward in his underwear, but not unsympathetic. “Everything’s O.K. now, Coke,” he said. “It’s great to see you back.”

  He kept on patting Coke between the shoulder blades, until it crossed his mind that Coke might feel like he was being burped or something, so then he just hung onto him and said, “Yeah, it’s O.K.,” until he felt Coke’s breathing get smoothed out a little.

  When Coke felt slightly in control, he pulled away from Nat and took his handkerchief and blew his nose and started in, “Oh, Jesus, what a day …” And though he sounded near-hysterical, he got the story out. It was the only time he told it altogether truthfully.

  What he’d found, when he arrived in Boynton Falls (almost) was that he was afraid to let himself be seen by anyone. At Nat’s suggestion, he’d gotten off the road (and into woods or ditches) at the sound of any car approaching, and that had made him so completely paranoid that now he didn’t dare to enter Boynton Falls and get aboard a bus. He also didn’t dare to hitch a ride (every car that passed seemed to be driven by a homicidal maniac), and he surely didn’t dare to face his parents. So all that he could think to do was start on back to the Robinsons’. Pretty soon he felt so tired that he couldn’t walk another step; and so he had to
curl up in some underbrush—a thing he also didn’t dare to do at all—and pass a night of total terror, listening to passing steps of bears and wolves and cougars. When it got light, he started off again, now weak from hunger, too, and hoped at first to meet the Group approaching Boynton Falls. Then he realized Nat would know some shortcuts, wouldn’t have to stick to roads—so he had to hike it solo once again.

  The return trip took an even longer time. It seemed that there were lots more cars and trucks abroad (many of the latter group had rifles, right on racks), and also he was tired. Even when he finally made the house, he didn’t feel too great. And less so, as the hours passed, and darkness came again, and they were still not back. He told Nat he’d imagined—he blew his nose again—a lot of awful things, including whips and cages. He’d found where old man Robinson concealed his booze supply, and so he’d had himself a pair of vodka tonics, really strong ones. He’d found some crackers, too, but he hadn’t felt like eating much. (Might have had some trouble with the box, Nat thought.) But he was hungry now, he said.

  And suddenly his eyes changed focus, really looked out there at Nat, away from all his inner hurts.

  “Christ,” said Coke, his voice quite near to normal. “Why’re you dressed like that? And where’s everyone else?”

  When Nat explained, Coke dropped his head; his eyes went side to side. “Look,” he said, “you won’t… you know”—he waved his hand—“go into everything with them? I mean, a lot of what I said…I’m really bushed, you know.”

  “Sure,” said Nat. He opened up the door. “All they’re going to be is glad to see you,” he predicted.

  That night they had to eat a lot of chocolate chip ice cream, to toast the prodigal’s return and all. Coke’s story got to be that he’d decided they were right. There wasn’t any point in challenging his parents—nothing would be proved, or solved, by that. And besides, he said, he’d missed the Group. He looked at Marigold when he said that, wanting to be sure she got his meaning. She met his eyes and smiled.

  When everyone decided it was time for bed, Coke found a way to say to her—he’d had to snatch the dish towel out of Ludi’s hands—that maybe they could meet upstairs, after everyone had been in bed awhile. And she had nodded, quickly, not the least bit hesitant, it seemed. The sleeping plan that people had decided on, the day before, was that they’d just use both the bunk rooms on the kitchen level, one for males and one for females, just like Spring Lake Lodge. That way, they wouldn’t get their stuff spread out, nor would they use the bedrooms that were clearly “family.” The bunk rooms were the guest rooms of the house; it seemed as if the Robinsons had lots of friends who skied.

  So, at something in the neighborhood of two A.M., Coke and Marigold slipped out of bunk—first him, and then, some minutes later, her—and tiptoed up the stairs. And when they met, beside the sofa in the living room, they didn’t say “Hello” or “How are you?” They simply took ahold of one another, made a little sound like “Oh,” and brought their heads together till they found each other’s mouths. When Coke came up for air, his next move slowly forming in his mind, he was surprised—astounded, terrified, delighted—to find that Marigold just crossed her hands and seized her cotton nightie underneath the armpits, and pulled it up and over, off her head. And underneath, she didn’t even have on rainbow underpants.

  Marigold had never been too awed by sex; it was not an unfamiliar topic in her home. Her parents, “Roz” and “Toby” R______________ (also known, in other homes, as “Mom” and “Dad”), believed in what they called “demystification.” They also “demythologized” the parent-child relationship.

  “Parents aren’t perfect,” little Mark and Marigold were told—and shown in countless ways. Parents quarreled, suffered, cried, they learned; parents “let their anger out”; parents were unfair, got frequent headaches, picked on one another.

  But parents also offered lots of information, much of it unknown to other children. Marigold (and also brother Mark) found out that there were lots of names for all the parts of them that certain silly other people thought should not be ever touched, or talked about. They learned that, far from being dirty, those parts were beautiful and fun. Neither Roz nor Toby ever hid those parts from either of their children, and even touched each other on them, sometimes. The showers in their house had clear glass doors on them, and any time there weren’t guests, bathing suits were never worn inside their indoor pool. Like many little girls, Marigold enjoyed her father’s daily shaving ritual—more, perhaps because he did it naked, using a soft brush, and lots and lots of lather. He often put a dab of lather on her nose, or chin, and once (in quite a frisky mood) he lathered up his pubic hair, pretending he would shave it. But then her mother entered, also naked, and told him he should cut the exhibitionism. “Later on,” she said to Marigold, picking Toby’s penis up, as if it were an unimportant medal, “you’ll see he hasn’t got that much to brag about.”

  Her parents always had a lot of books around the house that told, and showed, what sex was all about, so long before she thought of doing anything, she knew the things there were to do. Both her parents told her many times they knew she would experiment, and that was fine with them. They also drilled her on precautions though, including those that went beyond mere birth control.

  “Fucking’s just like any other skill, you have to practice it,” they told her. “But unlike racquetball, or golf, you can’t just go right out and play with everyone you want to. You have to be discreet.”

  “Guys talk,” said Toby, grandly. “You can take my word for that. And a lot of times they’ll tell a girl they love her, when all they want’s a little piece of tail.”

  Marigold first “did it” on the Saturday after her thirteenth birthday, half to get it over with and half out of curiosity. It went all right and she decided to keep on with it, but a lot of boys she knew reminded her of Toby some, and so she followed his advice and never slept around. She also never lost her head and “took a chance” with birth control, though in her fifteenth summer she’d hitchhiked to the Cape and gotten trapped inside a Winnebago by a guy. His plan was that he’d feed her beer and something else back there, but she had faked some tears and told him she was twelve. When he let her go, she hopped the bus back home. “Forevermore,” she told O.D., and meant it.

  Marigold had lots of practice in decision-making; Roz and Toby saw to that. From very early in her life, she often got to choose, instead of having to; to certain sorts of people, she seemed “spoiled.” Her parents didn’t make her do her homework every night, and understood when she said certain teachers (or their subjects) were “a monstro-fucking bore.” She did high-honors-level work in classes that she liked, and just scraped by in others. If there was something in New York to see or do, she didn’t have to wait for weekends or her birthday. She always starred in the plays at school, and she was interesting enough in one of them to catch the eye of Jack duVivier, founder (and producer and director) of something called the Harlequins, a local theater group.

  Jack duVivier was Roz and Toby’s age, which made him close to forty, but not entirely like them; in lots of ways, it seemed that he was Then, instead of Now. He didn’t talk about himself, or see a shrink; his clothes were loose, and muted—made of things like cashmere wool and silk and cotton: single-knit, if that’s a word. He drove a vintage Jag, and never joined a health club. He didn’t ski, and neither did he marry. He had the most exquisite manners in the world, Roz thought; he always let her use the bathroom first.

  Roz was in love with Jack duVivier. In love. Affairs were one thing; Toby was another. Love—which she had clearly never known before—was something else.

  Roz and Toby had affairs; Marigold learned that when she was nine or ten, and one of them came up at dinner time. At first it didn’t bother her that Roz had “played around” with Mr. Gilman, or that Toby “had a little on the side” with Mrs. Fish. Roz told her that her parents were each other’s “best-best-friends,” like she and Wendy (pre-
“Odetta”) were; each of them had other friends, from time to time, but both of them knew who was always best. Toby told her people, like machines, were getting more and more complex, and this complexity produced a lot of different kinds of needs. He explained to her he’d always like roast chicken best of all, but that, from time to time, he had to have a piece of steak, “or Fish,” he said, and laughed, and winked a big one, leaned and pinched her on the thigh.

  Her parents seemed to talk about affairs a lot, their own and other people’s, both, and in a little while it came to seem to Marigold that possibly affairs were not so harmless after all. She learned of women getting “knocked around a bit” by irate husbands, and men who’d “gotten took for every dime” by angry wives. Wendy’s parents’ marriage “came unglued,” and Wendy’s mother had to go and “get detoxed” at some place called The Birches.

  By the time a few more years had passed, Marigold began to give opinions on affairs at dinner time. She told her parents she and Wendy (just about to be Odetta, now) had done a survey of their class at school. Fifteen sets of parents, out of forty, were divorced; another six were separated. “That sucks,” she told her parents. “Over half the people who conceived the kids in this one class don’t even want to live together now. What I want to know is: where do they get off, to have a kid at all, if they’re so fucking immature they don’t know what they want? And who’s to blame the kid for feeling she might be the next to hear that Mommy and Daddy don’t love her anymore, either?”

  Roz and Toby listened carefully to Marigold, and also talked it over with each other. They realized they had been immature, and “were playing with dynamite,” as Toby put it. So, at one roast chicken dinner, on one Tuesday night in March (Toby always cooked on Tuesday, when Roz stayed late at work), they told their children they were through with “all that fucking nonsense.” Holding hands across the table they vowed their faith in what they called “home cooking.” Mark and Marigold rejoiced.