The Grounding of Group 6

by Julian F. Thompson

  Coke remembered having “growing pains”—his mother’d called them that—when he was younger. But exercise had never been his thing. He’d never thought that he’d become a closet fitness-freak, yet that was almost what the situation was right now. What had happened was, he’d had to push himself so hard the first few days—that trip to Boynton Falls and back, on top of all the rest—it almost seemed a shame to waste it. And then there was this—well, relationship with Marigold. Wouldn’t it be good for it if he were just a shade more of a specimen?

  Yet he was still a trifle loath to give up any aspect of his image. His lifestyle, you might say. Coke had always specialized in lassitude; he was a boredom connoisseur, a laid-back, decorated veteran of countless Bore Wars. Campaigns like that were rather fun. You could find an element of boredom in almost everything that you and other people did, and you could talk about it endlessly. Boringly. Destructively. Bored people specialized in put-downs: everything was so boring it deserved to be put down. Each other, themselves—mox-nix.

  What Coke really wanted was the best of all possible worlds: to keep his image as the prince of put-downs, the baron of boredom, and at the same time be a stud.

  Life was much, much simpler for Sully. Every day he had one plain and simple purpose: to do as many things as possible that Sara’d like. Any time he made her smile and say, “That’s good,” he was in heaven; every time she called his name, it was a thrill. Sully knew that Coke and Marigold were up to something, meeting one another in the middle of the night. Sully wanted to be up to something, too. He never really had been. Sara must be what he’d overheard a senior at his former school describe as “one boss girl.” He could imagine himself telling another guy—not Coke or Nat—that he had met this real “boss girl” at Cold-brook Country School, and that they’d been “seeing one another” for a while.

  Sully didn’t know whether Sara could get interested in him or not. It seemed to be a fact she was impressed that he could sprint up mountainsides every bit as fast as she could. And shoot a bow and arrow even better. He seemed to have a knack for it. That was amazing: there’d never been a thing before that he’d been good at, from the first. But what he figured was that Sara’d known a lot of guys who specialized in being great at stuff that was a lot more choice than bow and arrow shooting. Like football, tennis, or lacrosse—things that people watched and rooted at. Though Sara wouldn’t ever be a cheerleader, Sully figured. Hell, no—she’d be on a team of her own. One time, she’d mentioned being chosen swimming captain at her school, and Sully’d seen her take a few strokes in Spring Lake; you could tell she was for real.

  Of course he’d quickly looked away that time, because he’d seen that she was naked and it wasn’t cool to stare, but still he’d seen enough to make his throat go slightly dry and his heart start to pound, and for his shorts to…you know. Sully thought perhaps he was in love. He wished he dared ask Coke.

  Sara was aware of Sully’s interest in her. She’d begun to wish he’d do something, but she wasn’t sure just what. Exactly what, that is; in general was easy. Maybe he’d just start by asking her outside, like Coke and Marigold. They could sit by the fire and talk and stuff, and it’d even be nice to kiss him, she thought. To hug and kiss him. She thought it’d feel great to just be able to hold on to someone—a guy—Sully—and feel herself held on to and kind of cozy, like that. Sara didn’t want to do it with Sully or anybody else, though for the first time in her life, she started to get a little flash of “Why not?” in her mind, whenever she said to herself she didn’t want to do it. And where before there’d always seemed to be a bunch of reasons, now there was—well—mainly (only?) one: birth control. She sure didn’t want to get pregnant. But she’d seen Sully’s body, and it didn’t repel her at all; in fact, it gave her a neat kind of friendly little feeling. He’d be pretty good to touch, she knew that, and she liked it when he looked at her as if he had ideas and hankerings. Being hankered for was quite all right with Sara, at that juncture in her life.

  Nat kept telling himself not to get overconfident with the way things were going. Two weeks wasn’t any time at all; the whole gig was still in the “getting-to-know-you” period, the first flush—or was that blush?—of excitement. New people, new circumstances, a certain amount of urgency. Even a Coke could not be bored already, so it seemed to Nat.

  He also felt they’d got a lot accomplished. Everyone was pretty good at how to get from A to B to C to D to E—A being Spring Lake Lodge, B being the Robinsons’, C and D being two supply caches, and E being the Coldbrook Country School. And their woodcraft and overall fitness were definitely improving. There was still a lot of land they had to learn the lay of, and a great deal of practicing they ought to do, but if they didn’t lose their desire, and kept on acting like a group, it seemed that they would soon be…what you might call competent.

  For what? Nat sometimes asked himself. He didn’t know. It tickled his sense of the ridiculous to realize that the members of Group 6 were having almost exactly the sort of group experience predicted in the catalogue of Coldbrook Country School—though doubtless seldom realized in fact. But still, that didn’t get them anywhere.

  What they would need, before too long, was an answer to “For what?”: a set of goals that went beyond survival. That’s what Nat supposed, in any case. Maybe he didn’t need those kinds of goals, but he was pretty sure that they did.

  It was possible that he did, too. It didn’t pay to be too certain—jinx yourself. One trouble with fun—finding, seeing, having fun—was that you didn’t like to break the flow of it. There were times that he’d felt like Snoopy in those Peanuts cartoons, where all he’s doing is dancing and dancing and dancing, while Lucy’s raving all around him, shouting stuff like “Famine! Pestilence!” and so forth, and all that Snoopy does is dance a little harder. You got to stop sometime.

  And then, this one day, they were all together on the slope above the Coldbrook Country School and looking down at it. They were trying to decide whether there was any sense in putting up an observation platform there, up in a tree, when Sully just happened to say, as a making-conversation little joke, “You know what’d make a good base for us?”

  And Ludi said, “No, what?”

  And Sully, pointing, said, “Down there. The school. If we had Spring Lake Lodge and the Robinsons’ and that, I’ll bet we could hold out for years and years.” He laughed a little raucously.

  “I’m not so sure,” said Coke. “Schools are always full of germs. Diseases. Or maybe it’s this allergy I’ve got. All I know is, every time I hang around a school, I start to puke. …”

  “Or it does …, “ Marigold threw in.

  Sara interrupted. “Wait,” she said. She turned to Nat. “I wonder if we could. Seriously.”

  And he, not serious at all, said, “What?”

  “Take over the school,” she said. “Just capture the place and tell everyone what they were trying to do to us. Make them listen. I don’t know, threaten them with our bows, or get some guns, or something. I’m positive that everybody down there isn’t in on this—they couldn’t be. The other kids and all. And most of the teachers, probably.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Coke. “I can just see everyone believing us.” Coke’s tone of voice was gentle, though. He didn’t know if Sara was serious or not, but he did remember how freaked-out she’d been by learning all that stuff about their parents. He was a sensitive guy; he could understand her feelings.

  “They might believe us,” said Nat. “And if there was some evidence, they’d have to.”

  “Evidence? Like what?” said Coke.

  “Well, like letters, say,” said Nat. “Or some record of the money Doctor got from…well, you know, your parents.”

  “My God,” said Marigold. Everybody turned and looked at her; it was her tone of voice. Until she spoke, the thing was strictly in the jokes-and-what-ifs league; Sara’d sounded serious, but that was Sara. Marigold’s “My God” was more as if she’d had a vision,
looking way out there, above the school.

  “Could…you…imagine?” she said now, letting out the words one at a time. Her head came forward, and she switched her gaze to them. “Just think”—the words began to tumble—“oh, wow, ‘cause if there are some letters down there that our parents wrote and we could get our hands on them, why then our parents”—she raised her eyes and eyebrows and began to smile; her voice slowed down again—“would damn well have to do whatever things we told them to. You name it. Send us to the schools and colleges we wanted to be sent to—huh?” She looked at Sara. “Get us the things we needed when we wanted them. A little BMW, perhaps?” she said to Coke.

  “Blackmail,” Sully had to say, but more in awe than anything.

  “Justice.” Marigold spread her mouth in one big super-sweetness smile. “We didn’t start this shit. But we could finish it, O.K.”

  Ludi looked at Nat. “You think she’s right?” she asked.

  “Jeezum, I don’t know,” Nat said. Everyone was looking at him now. “I suppose so. Provided you could get the right sort of evidence, provided it exists in the first place. And provided that your parents would rather pay you off than have it all made public.”

  “Sure they would,” said Marigold. “You kidding? I’m not talking about anything they can’t afford. And anyway, before they decided to send us to Coldbrook, they were probably planning to do all that anyway. For them, it’d be just going back to plan A.”

  “Except for the gun in their ribs, this time,” said Coke.

  “Exactly so,” said Marigold. “And you know what else? I’d make damn sure that they knew I’d given a lawyer or someone one of those ‘to be opened in the event of my death or disappearance’ letters.” She gave one strong, emphatic nod.

  “Supposing we did that,” Sara said. “Supposing we somehow—never mind how, for now—got into the school and found those letters, or whatever they are. Is there any reason, then, why we couldn’t get rid of Doctor Simms and any other people who were—you know—in on it with him, and then just… keep on with the school? Like, let it keep on going, even go to it? The whole bunch of us?”

  “If we wanted to, we could,” said Marigold. “Why not? Can you imagine that? Having our own little school?” She grinned.

  “Boy, would I like that, or what?” said Sully. “I think that’s a fantastic idea, I really do. ‘Principal Nat’—how does that sound?” He laughed.

  Nat did, too. “Ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t even know anything about teaching at a school, never mind running one….” He’d been keeping one eye down the slope, while all this talk was going on, and now he said, “Oh-oh …”

  “What?” said Sara, turning toward the school. There were two people walking on the road below them, coming from the school. One of them had a long bundle balanced on his shoulder.

  Nat took out his field glasses. “Everybody take a look,” he said. “Those are two of the people who were waiting to…um, shoot me, week before last.” He handed the glasses to Ludi. “The woman’s name is Mrs. Ripple; I actually met her, once. I don’t know the man’s name.”

  Everybody got to focus on the pair before, quite unexpectedly, they left the road and stepped into the woods.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Nat. He pulled an ear. “Let’s see. Sully. How about a little test? Think that you can get us to the cave from here, in…twenty minutes, say?” One of their caches was in a shallow, ledge-rock cave.

  Sully made a mouth. “No,” he said, “but maybe thirty-five, if everybody’s game to try. But just before we go—how about what Marigold and Sara said? You think that we can do it?”

  Nat shrugged. He was very conscious of Ludi looking at him, waiting for an answer. And of the fact she hadn’t said a thing about this big new plan.

  “Let’s talk some more,” he said. “Anything is possible, I guess.”

  “Well,” said Homer Cone to Mrs. Ripple, “this should be the last of it, I guess. Just one last X and then we’ll know they’re nowhere near the school.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ripple, stepping over, never on, a fallen tree. “Not a sign of them, so far.” Homer Cone had seen an owl, day eight, and shot its head off while it slept. And she, while answering a sudden “call of nature” (as she said to Mr. Cone), had seen two students from the school, Shelly Wynn and Robert Fritchman. They were in a glade, below the place she took the call, and quite oblivious to anything. She hadn’t mentioned them to Mr. Cone, because she didn’t care to talk about the thing that they were doing in the woods. She’d never seen it done before (never by herself and Mr. Ripple), although she’d read that people did such things—and therefore knew a lot of names (she wouldn’t think of saying) for it. Lucky thing for Shelly, she thought, that it was she, not Mr. Cone, who saw them doing that. It would certainly not be proper at all for a mathematics teacher, and a bachelor, to see a young woman in such a state of deshabille. Let alone position.

  “Well, just as well,” said Homer Cone. “It simply means we’re getting closer.” He made an adjustment to his cap. “Here’s my thinking on the thing. They aren’t near the school, or we’d have found them. And if they’d been holed up a little ways away— well, that Eyetalian would have seen them. Or maybe vice-versy, and they’d am-scray out of there. So, what my theory is, we should go a distance, next. Drive to different places, park, and—”

  “That’s the way Levi Welch hunts deer,” said Mrs. Ripple, interrupting. “He learned it from his father, as I understand.”

  “I don’t mean staying in the car,” said Homer Cone. “And I don’t mean in the middle of the night. What I’m going to do tomorrow is drive way up to where those people from Long Island built that house, a year or two ago. The real nice place with all the sun decks. Looks like a Swiss chalet.”

  “But I have a class tomorrow afternoon,” whined Mrs. Ripple.

  “I’ll just scout around,” said Homer Cone. “And anyway, I wouldn’t be a hog.” He licked his lips.

  7

  Given the way that human nature operates, it pretty much figured that almost everyone in Group 6 was just crazy to talk about the Plan. That’s “crazy” in the sense of “very-much-extremely-anxious,” not “kah-ray-zy” in the sense of “off their gourds.”

  A few months later on, Nathaniel claimed he’d seen the writing on the wall: that that was when the Group began to come apart. But, naturally, he hadn’t read it—not out loud, in any case.

  “The major storms in life bring out the ‘we’ in people,” he maintained, in rather plonking tones, to his companion of those months (and years to come). “But then, as soon as skies begin to clear, the ‘I’ pops out all over them, like spots, and off they go, each one to follow his or her own star. Which may, of course, be just a neon light, or a little shiny piece of you-know-what.”

  She took him by the nose, but didn’t squeeze. “You better not believe that altogether,” she replied, “unless you want to see a rain dance every morning during breakfast.”

  “Oh, we’re a different kind of ‘we’ than that,” he said. “We’re just you and I, for always in the hallways. As the little Messrs. H said to tiny Madame O: without you, we couldn’t even make water.” And he slid an arm around her shoulders, as if she didn’t know that anyway.

  “Do you think we ought to do it at night, maybe?” asked Sully, spaghetti dripping off his fork. He was sitting on the main porch at the Robinsons’, with his legs crossed tailor-fashion and his plate on the deck in front of him. Much as he loved Ludi’s spaghetti, he couldn’t concentrate on getting it wound around his fork right, so eating had been a slow business for him.

  “Ah, a commando raid,” said Coke. “I can see us now: our faces painted so we look like cows and bushes. With a knife up every pant leg, and piano wire coiled around our torsos. Heh. Of course, I am a specialist in hand-to-hand combat, Sul.” He turned to Marigold. “Wanna Indian wrestle?” He jumped his eyebrows up and down.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said. “This is
serious. You’re only making fun because you’re scared; you can’t fool Mumsy. Not that I blame you for that.” She put a pointer-finger on her chest. “I just wonder if we might not be better off in the daylight, when we could try to look natural. Just sort of blend in with the other kids.” She moved the hand behind her head. “Not that that would be so easy for some of us, need I add again?” Coke hissed.

  “You know what’d be good?” said Sara. “If we could go in on a day they’re playing some other school in soccer or something. I know that they have teams. Then there’d be bound to be a lot of strange kids around, from the other school, who came to watch the game.”

  “Strange kid,” said Coke, and tossed his thumb toward Marigold.

  “Yeah, that’d be the best,” said Sully. “We could just look natural. You know something? I think the only person who’d recognize me in the whole school is the kid I sat next to on the bus coming up. Robbie Something. I wonder if he ever wonders what’s become of me.”

  “He probably thinks you got smart and ran away,” said Coke. “But—you know something else? You’re right. Seeing how they kept us with our group the way they did, no one got to really talk to any other kid, except on the bus, like you said. That’s pretty smart, the way they did that. The guy I sat next to was a real zombie. Wayne. He wondered if they’d let him fly his kites up here. That’s what he was into: flying kites.”

  “What do you suppose they all think happened to the teacher from the bus, though?” Sully asked. “The weird-looking blond guy.”

  “They probably figure he belonged to the bus company,” said Coke. “Or that he had to take the TSAT and flunked it.” Coke and Sully laughed.