The Grounding of Group 6

by Julian F. Thompson

  Coke sighed and made a face, but the sigh was more relief than anything.

  In the morning, everyone got up together, more or less. Marigold had found the little tin flute that Ludi had, and played “The Worms Crawl In” on it, to make sure people were awake. Nat and Ludi had had to wiggle into shirts and pants while still in bed, but nobody was watching anyway.

  When they all sat down to Marigold’s French toast, each couple seemed to make a point of its own bondedness, although before they’d even had a glass of juice, the girls had gone together to the Lodge “to dress—no men allowed.” Each of them had wanted to be sure that the other two were “feeling good,” and until they each knew that, none of them could feel—or act—real happy. Marigold had said, “You know, I’ve never liked that ‘sisters’ bullshit that you hear sometimes. Just ‘cause someone’s female doesn’t mean she isn’t an asshole, as far as I’m concerned. But you two…I really wish you were my sisters, and I just wanted to tell you that.”

  Well, that made all three of them nod and hug and feel their eyes bum, and everyone insisted she felt fine and dandy.

  By seven, under cloudy skies, they’d gone their separate ways. Sully, Sara, and Marigold headed for the school, where they would watch all through the afternoon, and not get back till after dark. Nat and Ludi aimed for the Robinsons’, and Coke went with them, almost all the way. The houses on the map that Nat had drawn for him were farther than the Robinsons’, and on the side away from school. He’d promised Nat that he would take no chances, and he knew he’d keep that promise. He was no hero. But whatever he was, he sure felt different than he used to feel. The strange fact of the matter was that Coke was starting to feel healthy.

  Mr. Cone was not at breakfast. Mrs. Ripple knew that ‘cause she looked, although she didn’t have to. Homer Cone ate breakfast at a table just behind her own; he always took hot cereal with cream, and toast, and coffee. Though lacking rural roots herself, Mrs. Ripple had some knowledge of the language of the farm: agricultural idioms had an earthiness that pleased her. So, even if she didn’t know what “sloppin’ hawgs” might mean, exactly, she thought that she would recognize the sound of such a happening, not unlike the breakfasting of Homer Cone on oatmeal. And that morning there was no such sound, a rare event. Mr. Cone was seldom one to miss a feeding.

  Mrs. Ripple thought she should investigate. She’d been a little miffed, the day before, when Mr. Cone had failed to seek her out and tell her what he’d found, or hadn’t found, when he’d gone hunting on his own. And now he hadn’t come to breakfast. Could he be avoiding her? Could he, by the blindest luck, have finished the whole job himself? That bulbous-browed B.M., thought Mrs. Ripple.

  She knocked on Homer Cone’s apartment door. No answer. She knocked again, a good deal more emphatically. He could be in the bathroom, she supposed. She went away and then returned ten minutes later, knocked some more. He surely would be finished in the bathroom, Mrs. Ripple thought. She tried the door. It was unlocked; she entered.

  “Mr. Co-o-one,” she called. She craned her neck. He wasn’t in his little kitchen, either. Should she go into the bedroom? Mrs. Ripple wondered. Would that be proper of her? Having been a married woman, Mrs. Ripple dared.

  There were no heavy drapes, no mirrors on the ceiling or the walls, no movie screen, no water bed. Rather a disappointing bachelor’s bedroom, Mrs. Ripple thought. Not even heaps of loathsome magazines, and scatterings of cutout underwear. The bed looked undisturbed, uninteresting—unslept in. Mrs. Ripple touched the counterpane; it wasn’t even warm, nor did it vibrate. She hurried off to Doctor’s office in Foote Hall. That gentleman had just arrived and now was drinking coffee, brewed (incredibly) by a Mrs. Olson.

  “Oh, Mrs. Ripple,” Doctor said. “Yes, do come in. Perhaps a cup of coffee? Mrs. Olson made it; it’s the best.”

  “No, thank you,” Mrs. Ripple answered, “I’ve had my tea.” Coffee was an after-dinner beverage, in her opinion. “I hate to bother you so early in the day,” she said, “but Mr. Cone, I fear, has not returned.”

  “Returned?” said Doctor, eyebrows arched and raised. “Returned from where? Since when?”

  “Yesterday,” said Mrs. Ripple, lowering her voice, “he went up, just at lunch time, to that new house in the woods. The one that people from Long Island built, with all the porches? People named Novotny, I believe?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Doctor, matching left-hand fingertips to right. Once again, they came out even, to his great delight.

  “And insofar as I can tell, he never did get back,” said Mrs. Ripple.

  “I take it Mr. Cone was…on a mission,” Doctor said discreetly.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Ripple. “And that’s what makes me think he may be lost. He wouldn’t be familiar with the woods up there, you know, and besides …” She stopped. One shouldn’t speak ill of a colleague, ever.

  “And besides, as Levi always says, he couldn’t find his sock in his galoshes.” Doctor chuckled.

  Mrs. Ripple smiled her very thinnest smile. She’d overheard what Levi “always” said one time. Levi should have his mouth washed out with good strong laundry soap, that sharp-nosed donkey’s dork. “It’s true that Mr. Cone does not possess what my late husband called a ‘bump of direction,’ ” said Mrs. Ripple. “He has been known to lose his way.”

  “‘… down upon the Swanee River,’ ” Doctor sang, “‘far, far, away …’That’s true, for sure,” he said. “Well. Now. Let’s see. How’s your schedule look this morning, Mrs. Ripple?”

  “I have no formal classes till eleven,” she replied, “though students often seek me out for special help and counseling at any time. Yesterday, for instance, I couldn’t go with Mr. Cone because my schedule was much too tight. In fact, I didn’t get to bed till after midnight, as it was. I still insist on weekly themes from all my classes, unlike some others I could name.” Mrs. Ripple sighed. “It must be wonderful to teach math, and just go C and X, right down the page. Isn’t it ironic that the teachers who have lots of time to read just don’t, while those of us—”

  “Yes, fine,” said Doctor, slapping both his hands on chair arms, meaning that the interview was ending. Ripple always did run on about how overworked she was. “Suppose you just go ‘round to Maintenance and tell young Levi that I say he should run you up with him to Br’er Novotny’s. Tell him to take a bullhorn, too.” He chuckled. “Homer’ll be mighty glad to hear a friendly voice, I’ll wager. Bet he’s feeling grouchy as a silvertip without his breakfast.” Doctor liked to salt his speech with Rocky Mountain lingo. He’d never been west of Philadelphia, nor higher than the highest point on the Massachusetts Turnpike. He looked down at his fingernails and counted to twenty, to himself, lips moving; by the time that he’d looked up, she’d gone.

  Mrs. Ripple found Levi drinking coffee in the Shop beside the big garage. The men in Maintenance had chipped in for a Mr. Coffee, and they all had their own mugs with their names on them that hung on nails when not in use—or hardly ever, as it seemed to Mrs. Ripple. She’d like to work their hours, she could tell you that much. Actually, the cups didn’t have the men’s own names on them, but the names of people they particularly admired. Levi’s, for example, had Jesse Helms’s name on it, whose views he shared on crucial legislative issues, such as gun control and some other stuff, too, that he couldn’t usually think of right then. Other cups belonged to “Genjus” Kahn, Bo Derek, Joe DiMaggio, the U.S. Hockey Team, and Zonker Harris, whoever he was.

  Levi shook his head and acted real concerned to hear that Homer Cone had not come home all night, and that maybe he had spent it in the woods and lost. Actually, he thought: too bad it didn’t snow. He got the Rover and a bullhorn, though, and in less than twenty minutes time, the two of them were parked beside the Robinson-Novotny house, right next to Mr. Cone’s sedan.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Ripple, “at least we know he got here, anyway.”

  “Unless somebody stole his car,” corrected Levi Welch. “Or had another one just
like it.”

  Mrs. Ripple looked at Levi sharply, wondering if he was being fresh or merely stupid. Presumably, he might be both at once.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “we now should use the…hailer. Ask that Mr. Cone discharge his rifle, if he hears your voice.”

  Levi raised the bullhorn. “Hey, Cone, if you c’n hear me, shoot your gol-danged gun off!” He shouted that four times: up, down, and across the slope in both directions. Then, after a moment’s discussion, they began to walk almost due east, away from the school and away from Spring Lake Lodge. Levi Welch and Mrs. Ripple both knew Homer Cone, and the walking…it was much the easiest, in that direction.

  Nat and Ludi had to smile as they watched Levi Welch and Mrs. Ripple disappearing with their bullhorn. Pretty soon, they heard “Hey, Cone …” again, four times, and shortly after that another set. They wondered just how long they planned to keep that up.

  “Do you think we ought to follow them?” said Ludi.

  Nat shrugged, with both hands deep in jacket pockets. It wasn’t all that great a day for walking in the woods. One pocket clinked: something hitting up against the little bottle he had got from Doctor; that seemed an age ago. He fished around to find the clinker, and his hand came out with car keys: Homer Cone’s.

  “Hey, Lu,” he said. “You want to take a ride?” He held them up before her face. She saw, then, for the first time, the way he must have looked before he flipped that quarter with the state and Arn-the-Barn: the part of him that got him into this. She decided that she loved it, too.

  “Come on,” he said. “How about it? We can leave it somewhere else where they can find it when we’re done, and maybe get them searching farther from the Lodge.”

  She grinned and nodded, started skipping down the slope. “Can you imagine the looks on their faces when they get back? And think they missed him, maybe?”

  He opened up the door for her and bowed. “Your carriage, princess,” he announced.

  They coasted backward to the road, and then drove carefully to Boynton Falls. Every time a car approached, Nat would cover up his mouth and duck his head, as if he had a cough; Ludi would sink down below the dashboard. But once they reached the major highway there, they felt anonymous, and headed on to Suddington quite merrily.

  “What fun,” said Ludi. “I feel as if we’re playing hooky.”

  “Our first date,” said Nat. “Ya gonna take me to a show?”

  “Well, actually,” he canceled that suggestion, “we shouldn’t stay away that long. We wouldn’t want the others getting jealous, would we…hmmm? But seriously. How about some shopping and a picnic…?”

  “Yay,” she said, and pounded fists down on her knees. “And presents. For the other kids, O.K.? And treats?”

  “Definitely treats,” he said.

  They got some necessaries first: more flashlight batteries, shampoo and conditioner, two different kinds of pinch bars of the type that might be great for breaking open desks and filing cabinets. Then they found a thrift shop and got presents for the stay-at-homes: a houndstooth vest for Coke, a purple chiffon shirt for Marigold, a checkered-wool visor-cap for Sully, some almost-surely handmade leather sandals for Sara. “Though it’s almost the end of sandal season,” Ludi said.

  When they were back on the street, she said, “I want to get something for you, too, but I don’t have any money.”

  He said, “Listen, I’m the original man-who-has-everything. Forget it.”

  She said, “No. Come on. Please. Just five dollars or five minutes, whichever comes first. Ple-e-eez.”

  Of course he gave in. They agreed to meet at the Burger King in ten minutes. He went to a freaky little gift shop and bought an Indian necklace made out of little tubes of colored clay and other bits of polished stone. She found the biggest drugstore in the town and chose a pack of condoms and a red bandanna. “The-man-who-has-everything,” indeed, she said to herself. She had no idea that there were that many kinds and styles and colors (yet!) of condoms, so she had to spend a little while at the display rack trying to figure out what kind he’d like the best. And, at the cash register, she had a bad moment when it looked as if the clerk—dapper, with a huge mustache—was going to ask her for I.D., or perhaps some sort of permit, like a marriage license. But she ran all the way to Burger King and was only a couple of minutes late.

  They decided to stick with the picnic idea, in spite of the chill in the air and the lack of sunshine. “At least the ice cream won’t melt too fast,” they told each other happily. Even not-so-good things are just what the doctor ordered some days.

  Suddington may be a town, the county seat, but still it has the same old village green, complete with bandstand. On one side is the county courthouse and the jail; on the other side is the school, which has been added on to, twice, but all of it is brick, the same as the original. Nat and Ludi sat near the center of the green, on a plaid wool blanket that had been in the backseat of Mr. Cone’s sedan, where it was called a lap robe.

  “Have you ever noticed that a lot of jails look like a lot of schools?” said Nat. “Or maybe the other way around?”

  “I guess that’s right,” said Ludi. “And wasn’t that place where the Winter Olympics were held—Lake Placid—isn’t that a jail now, where everybody lived up there?”

  “Yeah, I think I remember that,” said Nat. He helped himself to French fries. “We used to call our high school a jail.”

  “God, so did we,” said Ludi. “And in a way it was. In lots of ways, actually. They always said they were teaching us how to take our place in society and be good citizens. That’s what jails are meant to do, too, right? But they’d never let us decide anything for ourselves—nothing important, anyway. We were ‘too young’ to do that, or we didn’t ‘know enough.’ They always had The Answer, and it was really the only one we were allowed to give.” She ate another bite out of her Whopper. “At our school, The Answer to ‘What goes with hamburgers?’ was ‘ketchup.’ ‘Mustard’ was wrong, so you couldn’t have it. I’m not kidding.”

  “Right,” said Nat, “and The Answer to ‘What kind of a world is it out there?”’

  “‘Dog eat dog,’ ” said Ludi promptly.

  “And, ‘When should a person go to college?’ ”

  “‘Directly after high school, or you’ll never go’—everyone knows that,” said Ludi. “That’s as stupid as asking, ‘If you know how to do the homework, and it isn’t graded, must you hand it in anyway?’ ”

  “Of course you must,” said Nat. “Otherwise you’ll flunk. ‘The homework is required.’ So. What’s a person called who doesn’t date?”

  “‘A queer,’ ” said Ludi.

  “Right,” said Nat. “‘Is more better?’ ”

  “Always,” she said. “Except in the case of zits, cavities, and pants-tightness.”

  “Excellent,” said Nat. “Now, ‘How many kids in a happy family?’ ”

  “At least two,” she replied. “The ‘only’ child is always spoiled, or lonely, or both. And even though you didn’t ask, men who make beds, or clean a house, or cook—except for outside, in the park or in their own backyards—are either fags or henpecked. Unless they’re Black or Hispanic, in which case they can do those for a living. That proves that ‘some of them are all right,’ by the way. The others all are welfare cheats.”

  “Very good,” said Nat. “But why aren’t there more women high school principals—or business executives, administrators, or government officials?”

  “Because it’s traditional,” she said, “and, anyway, women can’t command respect. They’re just not tough enough to compete in the marketplace or to talk turkey to the Russkies. And besides, they menstruate and have babies all the time.”

  “So any ones that do get good jobs…?” he prompted.

  “Suck up to men, to put it tastefully,” she replied. “That’s if they’re good-looking. Otherwise they’re dykes.”

  “Yes, gee whiz,” said Nat. “You really know The Answers. You must h
ave been great in school.”

  “Well,” she said, “I was a model prisoner in lots of ways. I didn’t talk back or smoke in the girls’ room. But I just didn’t do a lot of things I was told to. And that made people furious, because They Knew I Knew Better.”

  “That’s like giving The Wrong Answer on purpose, isn’t it?” said Nat.

  “I guess so,” she said. “It’s funny, you know? When I got into Coldbrook, I decided that I would conform up here. I’d do whatever ‘They’ wanted me to, mend my low-down ways. Be a Good Girl. And then I discover ‘They’ had got tired of waiting. It was too late for that.” She ran her fingers through her mophead curls and stretched. “Now I wonder if I’ll ever want to be good again. That kind of good. Which reminds me—how would you like your present now? Your presents, as a matter of fact.”

  “Great,” he said. “If you’d like yours.”

  She nodded, trying to look greedy, but not making a very good job of it; her face was just too sweet, her eyes too huge.

  Nat handed her the little paper bag that had her necklace in it. She squealed for joy and looked at him, her head cocked to one side. And then she leaned forward and kissed him, with tears in those huge brown eyes.

  “It is so beautiful,” she said, and put the necklace on. “Now open yours. It’s beautiful in a different way.” She handed him the drugstore’s paper bag.

  Nat smiled and took the condoms out. Ludi smiled and dropped her eyes. He rocked onto his knees and hugged her, and when she raised her head, he kissed her, too.

  “What a wonderful, wonderful present,” he said. “Much the best I’ve ever gotten—not to mention the sweetest and most generous.” He grinned. “My absolute best color, too.” He licked his lips. “You know something? I can hardly believe that I could love you any more than I do this minute, but I bet I can. And when the time comes”—he held up the package—“I promise you.” He sank back on the blanket.