96 Jack Ketchum

at Meg. She was coming toward me through the

dining room. She was shaking her head. Her
mouth was forming a silent "no."
That was okay. It was just shyness. Ruth would
see the painting and she'd get over it.
"Ruth," I said. "This is from Meg."
I held it out to her.
She smiled first at me and then at Meg and took
it from me. Woofer had Father Kirows Best turned
low now so you could hear the crinkling of the stiff
brown paper as she unwrapped it. The paper fell
away. She looked at the painting.
"Meg!" she said. "Where'd you get the money to
buy this?"
You could tell she admired it. I laughed.
"It costs just the framingy"I said. "She painted it
for you."
"She did? Meg did?"
I nodded.
Donny, Wmfer and Willie all crowded around
to see.
Susan slipped off her chair. "It's beautiful!" she
said.
I glanced at Meg again still standing anxious and
hopeful looking in the dining room.
Ruth stared at the painting. It seemed like she
stared a long time.
Then she said, "No, she didn't. Not for me.
Don't kid me. She painted it for you, Davy."
She smiled. The smile was a little funny some-
how. And now I was getting anxious too.
"Look here. A boy on a rock. Of course it's for
you."
 THE GlRL NEW D O O R 97
She handed it back to me.
"I don't want it," she said.
I felt confused. That Ruth might refuse it had
never even occurred to me. For a moment I didn't
know what to do. I stood there holdmg it, looking
down at it. It was a beautiful painting.
I med to explain.
"But it's really meant for you, Ruth. Honest. See,
we talked about it. And Meg wanted to do one for
you but she was so . . ."
"David."
It was Meg, stopping me. And now I was even
more confused, because her voice was stem with
warlling-
It made me almost angry. Here I was in the rnid-
dle of this damn thing and Meg wouldn't let me get
myself out of it.
Ruth just smiled again. Then looked at Willie
and Woofer and Donny.
"Take a lesson, boys. Remember this. It's impor-
tant. All you got to do any time is be nice to a
woman--and she'll do all kinds of good things for
you. Now Davy was nice to Meg and got himself a
painting. Nice painting. That is what you got, isn't
it, Davy? I mean that's all you got? I know you're a
little young but you never know."
I laughed, blushing. "Come on, Ruth."
"Well, I'm telling you you do never know. Girls
are plain easy. That's their problem. Promise 'em a
little something and you can have whatever you
want half the time. I know what I'm saying. Look
at your father. Look at Wdlie Sr. He was gonna
own his own company when we married. Fleet of
98 Jack Ketchurn
milk trucks. Start with m e and work his way on
up. I was gonna help him with the books just like I
did back on Howard Avenue during the war. Ran
that plant during the war. We were gonna be
richer than my folks were when I was a kid in Mor-
ristown, and that was pretty rich, I'll tell you. But
you know what J got? Nothing. Not a damned
thing. Just you three poppin' out one, two, three,
and that lovely Irish bastard's off to God knows
where. So I get three hungry mouths to feed, and
now I've got two more.
"I tell you, girls are dumb. Girls are easy. Suckers
saaight on down the line."
She walked past me to Meg. She put her arm
around her shoulders and then she turned to the
rest of us.
"You take this painting now," she said. "I know
you made it for David here and don't you try to tell
me any different. But what I want to know is, what
are you gonna get out of it? What do you think this
boy's going to give you? Now Davy's a nice boy.
Better than most I'd say. Definitely better. But
darlid-he's not gonna give you nothing! If you
think he will you got another thing coming.
"So I'm just saying I hope that painting's all you
been giving him and all you will give him, and this
is for your own good I'm telling you. Because you
already got what men want right down here and it
ain't your goddamn artwork."
I could see Meg's face begin to tremble, and I
knew she was trying not to cry. But unexpected as
all this was I was trying not to laugh. Donny too.
The whole thing was weird and maybe it was
 WE GIRL NEW DOOR
partly the tension, but what Ruth had said about
the artwork wasfunny.
,Her arm tightened around Meg's shoulders.
"And if you give them what they want, then
you're nothing but a slut, honey. You know what a
slut is? Do you, Susan? Of course you don't. You're
too young. Well, a slut's somebody who'll spread
her legs for a man, it's that simple. So they can
weasel their way inside. Woofer, you quit your
goddarnn grinning.
"Anybody who's a slut deserves a t h r a s h .
Anybody in this town would agree with me. So I
just warn you, honey, any slutthg around this
house will mean your ass is grass and Ruth's the
lawn mower."
She released Meg and walked into the kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator door.
"Now," she said. "Who wants a beer?"
She gestured toward the painting.
"Kind of pale-looking thing, anyway," she said,
"doncha think?"and reached for the six-pack.
 Chapter Fourteen
Two beers was all it took me in those days and I
went home lazy and high, with the usual promise
not to breathe a word to my parents, which wasn't
necessary. I'd sooner have chopped off a finger.
Once Ruth finished her lecture, the rest of the
evening had been pretty uneventful. Meg went into
the bathroom for a while and when she came out
again it was as though nothing had happened. Her
eyes were dry. Her face an unreadable blank. We
watched Danny Thomm and drank our beers and
then at one point during a commercial I made plans
to go bowling Saturday with Willie a d Donny. I
tried to catch Meg's eye but she wouldn't look at
me. When the beers were done I went home.
I hung the painting next to the mirror in my
room.
But there was a feeling of strangeness that
wouldn't leave me. I'd never heard anyone use the
word slut before but I knew what it meant. I'd
known since cribbing Peyton Place from my
mother. I wondered if Eddie's sister Denise was
still too young to qualify. I remembered her naked,
bound to a tree, her thick smooth tender nipples.
Crying, laughing-sometimes both together. I re-
membered the folded flesh between her legs.
I thought about Meg.
I lay in bed and thought how easy it was to hurt
a person. It didn't have to be physical. All you had
to do was take a good hard kick at something they
cared about.
I could too if I wanted.
People were vulnerable.
I thought about my parents and what they were
doing and how they kept kicking at each other. So
regularly now that, being in the middle as I was, I
had contrived not to care about either of them.
Little things, mostly, but they added up.
I couldn't sleep. My parents were in the next
room, my father snoring. I got up and went into
the kitchen for a Coke. Then I went into the liv-
ing room and sat on the couch. I didn't turn the
lights on.
It was well after midnight.
The night was warm. There was no breeze. As
usual my parents had left the windows open.
Through the screen I could see directly into the
Chandlers' living room. Their lights were still
burning. Their windows were open too and I
heard voices. I couldn't make out much of what
was being said but I knew who was speaking.
102 Jack Ketchum
Willie. Ruth. Then Meg. Then Donny. Even
Woofer was still up-you could hear his voice high
and shrill as a girl's, laughing.
The others were all yelling about somedung.
". . . for a boy!" I heard Ruth say. Then she faded
out again into a mixed jumble of sounds and voices
all together.
I saw Meg move back into the frame of the
living-room window. She was pointing, yelling, her
whole body rigid and shaking with anger.
"You will not!" I heard her say.
Then Ruth said something low and out of my
hearing range but it came out like a growl, you
could get that much, and you could see Meg sort
of collapse all of a sudden, you could watch her
fold. And then she was crying.
And a hand shot out and slapped her.
It slapped her so hard she fell back out of frame
and I couldn't see her anymore.
Willie moved forward.
He started to follow her. Slowly.
Like he was stalking her.
"That's it!" I heard Ruth say. Meaning, I thmk,
that wllie should let her alone.
There was a moment where I guess nobody
moved.
Then bodies came and went for a while, drifting
by the window, everybody looking sullen and an-
gry, Wdlie and Woofer and Donny and Ruth and
Meg picking up things from the floor or rearrang-
ing the chairs or whatever and slowly moving away.
I heard no more voices, no mlking. The only one I
didn't see was Susan.
 THE GIRL NEXT D O O R 103
I sat watching.
The lights went off. You could see a dim glow
from the bedrooms and that was all. Then even
that was gone and the house was black as ours was.
 Chapter Fifteen
That Saturday at the alleys Kenny Robertson
missed his seven pin for an easy spare in the tenth
frame, finishing with a 107. Kenny was skinny and
had a tendency to throw every pound he had into
the ball and throw it wild. He came back mopping
his brow with his father's lucky handkerchief,
which hadn't been too lucky for him at all that day.
He sat between me and Willie behind the score-
card. We watched Donny line up on his usual spot
to the left of the second arrow.
"You think any more about it?" he asked Willie.
"About getting Meg into The Game?"
Willie smiled. I guess he was feeling good. He
was probably going to break 150 and that didn't
happen often. He shook his head.
"We got our own Game now," he said.
 Chapter Sixteen
Those nights I'd sleep at the Chandlers', once we
got tired of fooling around and Woofer was
asleep, we'd talk.
It was mostly Donny and I. Willie never had
much to say and what he did say was never too
smart. But Donny was bright enough and, as I said,
the closest I had to a best friend, so we'd talk-
about school and girls, the kids on American Band-
stand, the endless mysteries of sex, what the rock
'n' roll tunes we heard on the radio really meant
and so on, until long into the night.
We talked about wishes, hopes, even nightmares
sometimes.
It was always Donny who initiated these talks
and always I who finished them. At some point
long past exhaustion I'd lean over the top of my
bunk and say something like, see what I mean? and
108 Jack Ketchum
he'd be asleep, leaving me alone at the mercy of
my thoughts, uncomfortable and unspent, some-
times till dawn. It took time for me to cut deep
enough into whatever it was I felt and then once I
did I couldn't bear to give up the taste of it.
I'm still that way.

The dialogue is solo now. I don't talk. No matter

who's in bed with me I never do. My thoughts slip
off into nightmares sometimes but I don't share
them. I have become now what I only began to be
then-completely self-protective.
It started, I suppose, with my mother coming
into my room when I was seven. I was asleep. "I'm
leaving your dad," she said, waking me. "But I
don't want you to worry. I'll take you with me. I
won't leave you. Not ever." And I know that from
seven to fourteen I waited, prepared myself, be-
came myself who was separate from each of them.
That, I guess, was how it started.
But between seven and thirteen Ruth happened,
and Meg and Susan happened. Without them that
conversation with my mother might even have
been good for me. It might only have saved me
from shock and confusion once the time came. Be-
cause kids are resilient. They bounce back to con-
fidence and sharing.
I wasn't able to. And that's due to what happened
after, to what I did and didn't do. .

My first wife, Evelyn, calls me sometimes, wakes

me up at night.
 ?RE GIRL NEXT D O O R 109
"Are the children all right?" she asks me. Her
voice is terrified.
We had no kids together, Evelyn and I.
She'd been in and out of institutions a number
of times, suffering bouts of acute depression and
anxiety but still it's uncanny, this fixation of hers.
Because I never told her. Not any of this, never.
So how could she know?
Do I talk in my sleep? Did I confess to her one
night? Or is she simply sensing something hidden
in me-about the only real reason we never did
have children. About why I never allowed us to.
Her calls are like nightbirds flying screeching
around my head. I keep waiting for them to return.
When they do I'm taken by surprise.
It's frightening.
Are the c b i k ad right?
I've long since learned not to ruffle her. Yes,
Evelyn, I tell her. Sure. They're fine. Go back to
sleep now, I say.
But the children are not fine.
They will never be.
 Chapter Seventeen
I knocked on the back screen door.
Nobody answered.
I opened it and walked inside.
I heard them l a u g h right away. It was coming
from one of the bedrooms. Meg's was a kind of
high-pitched squealing sound, Woofer's a hysteri-
cal giggle. W&e Jr's. and Donny's were lower,
more masculine-sounding.
I wasn't supposed to be there-I was being pun-
ished. I'd been working on a model of a B-52, a
Christmas present from my father, and I couldn't
get one of the wheels on right. So I tried about
three or four times and then hauled off and kicked
it to pieces against the bedroom door. My mother
came in and it was a whole big scene and I was
grounded.
 7HE GIRL NEXT D O O R 111
My mother was out shopping now. For a mo-
ment at least, I was free.
I headed for the bedrooms.
They had Meg up against the bedroom wall in a
corner by the window.
Donny turned around.
"Hey, David! She's ticklish! Meg's ticklish!"
And then it was like there was this prearranged
signal because they all went at her at once, going
for her ribs while she twisted and tried to push
them away and then doubled over, elbows down to
cover her ribs, laughing, her long red ponytail
swinging.
"Get her!"
"I got her!"
"Get her, Willie!"
I looked over and there was Susan sitting on the
bed, and she was laughing too.
"h!"
I heard a slap. I looked up.
Meg's hand was covering her breast and Woofer
had his own hand up to his face where the redness
was spreading and you could see he was going to
cry. Willie and Donny stood away.
"What the hell!"
Donny was mad. It was fine if he belted Woofer
but he didn't like it if anybody else did.
"You bitch!" said Willie.
He took an awkward open-handed swing at the
top of her head. She moved easily out of its way.
He didn't try again.
"What'd you have to do that for?"
112 Jack Kekhum
"You saw what he did!"
"He didn't do nothin'."
"He pinched me."
"So what."
Woofer was crying now. "I'm telling!" he
howled.
"Go ahead," said Meg.
"You won't like it if I do," said Woofer.
"I don't care wbat you do. I don't care what any
of you do." She pushed Willie aside and walked
between them past me down the hall into the liv-
ing room. I heard the front door slam.
"Little bitch," said Willie. He turned to Susan.
"Your sister's a goddamn bitch."
Susan said nothing. He moved toward her
though and I saw her flinch.
"You see that?"
"I wasn't looking," I said.
Woofer was sniveling. There was snot running
all down his chin.
"She hit me!" he yelled. Then he ran past me too.
"I'm t e h g Ma," said Willie.
"Yeah. Me too," said Donny. "She can't get away
with that."
"We were just foolin' around, for chrissakes."
Donny nodded.
"She really whacked him."
"Well, Woofer touched her tit."
"So what. He didn't mean to."
"You could get a shiner like that."
"He could still get one."
"Bitch."
There was all this nervous energy in the room.
 WE GIRL NEXT D O O R 113
Willie and Donny were pacing like pent-up bulls.
Susan slid off the bed. Her braces made a sharp
metallic clatter.
"Where you going?" said Donny.
"I want to see Meg," she said quietly.
"Screw Meg. You stay here. You saw what she
did, didn't you?"
Susan nodded.
"AU right then. You know she's gonna get pun-
ished, right?"
He sounded very reasonable, like an older
brother explaining something very patiently to a
not-too-bright sister. She nodded again.
"So you want to side with her and get punished
too? You want your privileges taken away?"
"No."
"Then you stay right here, okay?"
"All right."
"Right in this room."
"All right."
"Let's find Ma," he said to Willie.
I followed them out of the bedroom through the
dining room and out the back door.
Ruth was around back of the garage, weeding
her patch of tomatoes. The dress she wore was old
and faded and much too big for her, cinched tight
at the middle. The scoop neck hung open wide.
She never wore a bra. I stood over her and I
could see her breasts almost to the nipple, They
were small and pale and they trembled as she
worked. I kept glancing away, afraid she'd notice,
but my eyes were like a compass needle and her
breasts were due north.
114 Jack Ketchurn
"Meg hit Woofer," said Willie.
"She did?" She didn't seem concerned. She just
kept weeding.
"Slapped him," said Domy.
"Why?"
"We were just f o o h g around."
"Everybody was tickling her," said Willie. "So
she hauls off and clobbers him in the face. Just like
that."
She tugged out a patch of weeds. The breasts
shook They had gooseflesh on them. I was fasci-
nated. She looked at me and my eyes got to hers
just in time.
"You too, Davy?"
"Huh?"
"You tickling Meg too?"
"No. I just came in."
She smiled. "I'm not accusing you."
She got to her knees and then stood up and
pulled off the dirty work gloves.
"Where's she now?"
"Don't know," said Domy. "She ran out the
door."
"How about Susan?"
"She's in the bedroom."
"She saw all this?"
"Yeah."
u0by.77

She marched across the lawn toward the house

and we followed. At the porch she wiped her thin
bony hands over her hips. She pulled off the scarf
that bound her short brown hair and shook it free.
 THE G/RlNEXTDOOR 115
I figured I had maybe twenty minutes before my
mother came home from shoppingso I went inside.
We followed her into the bedroom. Susan sat
right where we left her on the bed l o o h at a
magazine, open to a picture of Liz and Eddie
Fisher on one page facing across to Debbie
Reynolds on the other. Eddie and Liz looked
happy, smiling. Debbie looked sour.
"Susan? Where's Meg?"
"I don't know, ma'am. She left."
Ruth sat down next to her on the bed. She pat-
ted her hand.
"Now I'm told you saw what happened here.
That right?"
"Yes, ma'am. Woofer touched Meg and Meg
hit him."
"Touched her?"
Susan nodded and placed her hand over her
skinny little chest like she was pledging allegiance
to the flag. "Here," she said.
Ruth just stared for a moment.
Then she said, "And did you try to stop her?"
"Stop Meg you mean?"
"Yes. From hitting Ralphie."
Susan looked bewildered. "I couldn't. It was too
fast, Mrs. Chandler. Woofer touched her and then
right away Meg hit him."
"You should have tried, honey." She patted her
hand again. "Meg's your sister.'
"Yes, ma'am."
"You hit somebody in the face and it can do all
kinds of things. You could miss and break an
116 Jack Kskhum
eardrum, poke out an eye. That's dangerous behav-
ior."
"Yes, Mrs. Chandler."
"Rutk. I told you. Ruth."
"Yes, Ruth."
"And you know what it means to be in con-
h c e with somebody who does that kind of
%?"
She shook her head.
"It means you're gdty too,even though maybe
you didn't do anytfung in particular. You're sort of
a f&w traveler. You understand me?"
"I don't know."
Ruth sighed. "Let me eqlain to you. You love
your sister, right?"
Susan nodded.
"And becszlse you love her, you'd forgive her
somedung like this, wouldn't you? Like hitting
Ral@e?"
"She didn't mean to hurt him. She just got mad!"
"Of course she did. So you'd forgive her, am I
right?"
"Uh-huh."
Ruth smiled. "Well now you see that's just plain
wrong, honey! That's just what puts you in con-
nivance with her. What she did wasn't right, it's
bad behavior, and you forgiving her just because
you love her, that's not right either. You got to stop
this sympathizid, Suzie. It doesn't matter that
Meg's your sister. Right's right. You got to remem-
ber that if you want to get along in life. Now you
just slip aver the side of the bed here, pull up your
dress and slide down your drawers."
 Susan stared at her. Wide-eyed, frozen.
Ruth got off the bed. She unbuckled her belt.
"C'mon, hod," she said. "It's for your own
good. I got to teach you about connivance. You
see, Meg's not here for her share. So you got to get
it for both of you. Your share's for not saying,hey,
cut that out, Meg-sister or no sister. RightTs right.
Her share's for doing it in the first place. So you
come on over here now. Don't make me drag you."
Susan just stared. It was as though she d n ' t
move.
"Okay,"said Ruth. "Disobedience is another
thing."
She reached over and firmly-though not what
you'd cali roughly-took Susan by the arm and slid
her off the bed. Susan began to cry. The leg braces
clattered. Ruth turned her around so she faced the
bed and leaned her over. Then she pulled up the
back of her frilled red dress and tucked it into her
waistband.
Willie snorted, laughng. Ruth shot him a look.
She pulled down the little white cotton panties,
down over the braces around her ankles.
"We'll give you five for conniving, ten for Meg.
And five for disobeying. Twenty."
Susan was really crying now. I could hear her. I
watched the stream of tears roll down across her
cheek. I felt suddenly shamed and started to move
back through the doorway. Some impulse from
Donny told me that maybe he wanted to do the
same. But Ruth must have seen us.
"You stay put, boys. Girls just cry. There's noth-
ing you can do about it. But this is for her own
118 Jack Ketchurn
good and you being here's a - ~ a roft it and I want
you to stay.."
The belt was thin fabric, not leather. So maybe
it wouldn't hurt too bad, I thought.
She doubled it over and raised it above her head.
It whistled down.
Smack.
Susan gasped and began crying in earnest,
loudly.
Her behind was as pale as Ruth's breasts had
been, covered with a fine thin platinum down. And
now it trembled too. I could see a red spot rise
high on her left cheek near the dimple.
I looked at Ruth as she raised the belt again. Her
lips were pressed tight together. Otherwise she was
expressionless, concentrating.
The belt fell again and Susan howled.
A third time and then a fourth, in rapid succes-
sion.
Her ass was splotchy red now.
A fifth.
She seemed to be almost gagging on mucus and
tears, her breath coming in gulps.
Ruth was swinging wider. We had to back away.
I counted. Six. Seven. Eight, nine, ten.
Susan's legs were twitching. Her knuckles white
where she gripped the bedspread.
I'd never heard such crying.
Run,I thought. Jesus! I'd damn well run.
But then of course she couldn't run. She might
just as well have been chained there.
And that made me think of The Game.
Here was Ruth, I thought, playing The Game.
 THE GIRL N W DOOR 119
I'll be goddamned. And even though I winced
every time the belt came down I just couldn't get
over it. The idea was amazing to me. An adult. An
&t was playing The Game. It wasn't the same ex-
actly but it was close enough.
And all of a sudden it didn't feel so forbidden
anymore. The guilt seemed to fall away. But the
excitement of it remained. I could feel my finger-
nails dig deep into the palms of my hands.
I kept count. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
There were tiny beads of perspiration across
Ruth's upper lip and forehead. Her strokes were
mechanical. Fourteen. Fzpeen. Her arm went up.
Beneath the beltless, shapeless dress I could see her
belly heave.
Uw~~!79
Woofer slipped into the room between me and
Donny.
Sixteen.
He was staring at Susan's red, twisted face.
"Wow," he said again.
And I knew he was thinking what I was
thinking-what we all were thinking.
Punishments were private. At my house they
were at least. At everybody's house, as far as I knew.
This wasn't punishment. This was The Game.
Seventeen. Eighteen.
Susan fell to the floor.
Ruth bent over her.
She was sobbing, her whole frail body twitching
now, head buried between her arms, her knees
drawn up as tight to her chest as the casts permitted.
Ruth was breathing heavily She pulled up Su-
120 Jack Ketchum
san's panties. She lifted her up and slid her back on
the bed, lying her on her side and smoothing the
dress down over her legs.
"All right," she said softly. "That'll do. You just
rest now. You owe me two."
And then we all just stood a moment, listening
to the muffled sobbing.
I heard a car pull in next door.
"Shit!" I said. "My mother!"
I raced through the living room, out the door to
the side of their house and peered through the
hedges. My mother was pulled in all the way to the
garage. She had the back of the station wagon open
and was bent over lifting out bags marked A&P.
I dashed across the driveway to our front door
and ran up the stairs to my room. I opened a
magazine.
I heard the back door open.
"David! Come on down here and help me with
the groceries!"
It slammed shut.
I went out to the car. My mother was frowning.
She handed me one bag after another.
"The place was absolutely mobbed," she said.
"What have you been doing?"
"Nothing. Reading."
As I turned to go back inside I saw Meg across
the street from the Chandlers' standing by the
trees in front of Zorns' house.
She was staring at the Chandlers' and chewing
on a blade of grass, looking thoughtful, as though
she were trying to decide about something.
She didn't seem to see me.
 THE GIRL NEXT D O O R
I wondered what she knew.
I took the bags inside.

Then later I went out to the garage to get the gar-

den hose and I saw them in the yard, just Meg and
Susan, sitting in the tall splotchy grass beyond the
birch tree.
Meg was brushmg Susan's hair. Long smooth
strokes of the brush that were firm and even but
delicate too, as though the hair could bruise if you
didn't get it right. Her other hand caressed it from
below and under, strokmg with just the tips of the
fingers, lifting it and letting it gently fall.
Susan was smiling. Not a big smile but you
could see her pleasure, how Meg was soothing her.
And for a moment I realized how connected the
two of them were, how alone and special in that
connection. I almost envied them.
I didn't disturb them.
I found the garden hose. Coming out of the
garage the breeze had shifted and I could hear
Meg humming. It was very soft, like a lullaby.
"Goodnight Irene." A song my mother used to
sing on long nighttime car mps when I was little.
Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene, I'll see you in my
dreams.
I caught myself humming it all day. And every
time I did I'd see Meg and Susan sitting in the
grass together and feel the sun on my face and the
stroke of the brush and the soft smooth hands.
 Chapter Eighteen
"David, have you got any money?"
I felt around in my pockets and came up with a
crinkled dollar bill and thirty-five cents in change.
We were walking over to the playground, Meg and
I. There was going to be a game there in a little
while. I had my left-handed fielder's mitt and an
old black-taped ball.
I showed her the money.
"Would you loan it to me?"
"Allof it?"
"I'm hungry," she said.
"Yeah?"
"I want to go over to Cozy Snacks for a sand-
wich."
"For a sandwich?"
I laughed. "Why doncha just steal a couple of
candy bars? The counter's easy there."
 THE GIRL N r n DOOR
I'd done it myself on plenty of occasions. Most
of us did. The best was just to walk up to whatever
you wanted and take it and then walk right out
again. Nothing lrtive and no hesitations. The
place was always busy. There was nothing to it. And
nobody had any use for Mr. Holly, the old guy who
ran the place, so there wasn't any guilt involved.
But Meg just frowned. "I don't steal," she said.
Well jeez, I thought, meet Miss Priss.
I felt a little contempt for her. Everybody stole. It
was part of being a kid.
"Just loan me the money, will you?" she said.
"I'll pay you back. I promise."
I couldn't stay mad at her.
"Okay. Sure," I said. I dumped it into her hand.
"But what do you want a sandwich for? Make one
at Ruth's."
"I can't."
"How come?"
"I'm not supposed to."
"Why?
"I'm not supposed to eat yet."
We crossed the street. I looked left and right
and then I looked at her. She had that masked look.
Like there was something she wasn't telling. Plus
she was blushing.
"I don't get it."
Kenny and Eddie and Lou Marino were already
on the diamond tossing a ball around. Denise was
standing behind the backstop watching them. But
nobody saw us yet. I could tell Meg wanted to go
but I just stared at her.
"Ruth says I'm fat," she said finally.
124 Jack Ketchurn
I laughed.
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?*
"Am I?"
"What? Fat?" I knew she was serious but I still
had to laugh. " 'Course not. She's kidding you."
She turned abruptly. "Some joke," she said. "You
just try going without dinner and breakfast and
lunch for a day."
Then she stopped and turned back to me.
"Thanks," she said.
And then she walked away.
 Chapter Nineteen
The ball game dissolved about an hour after it
started. By that time most of the kids on the block
were there, not just Kenny and Eddie and Denise
and Lou Morino but Willie, Donny, Tony Morino
and even Glen Knott and Harry Gray, who
showed up because Lou was playing. With the
older kids there it was a good fast game-until Ed-
die hit his hard line drive down the third-base line
and started running.
Everybody but Eddie knew it was foul. But
there was no telling Eddie that. He rounded the
bases while Kenny went to chase the ball. And then
there was the usual argument. Fuck you and fuck
you and no, fuckyuu.
The only difference was that this time Eddie
picked up his bat and went after Lou Morino.
Lou was bigger and older than Eddie but Eddie
126 Jack Ketchum
had the bat, and the upshot was that rather than risk
a broken nose or a concussion, he stalked off the
field in one direction mking Harry and Glen along
with him while Eddie stalked off the other way.
The rest of us played catch.
That was what we were doing when Meg came
by again.
She dropped some change into my hand and I
put it in my pocket.
"I owe you eighty-five cents," she said.
"Okay."
I noticed that her hair was just a little oily, like
she hadn't washed it that morning. She still looked
nice though.
"Want to do something?" she said.
"What?"
I looked around. I guess I was afraid the others
would hear.
"I don't know. Go down by the brook?"
Donny threw me the ball. I pegged it at Willie.
As usual he slumped after it too slowly and missed.
"Never mind," said Meg. "You're too busy."
She was irritated or hurt or somedung. She
started to walk away.
"No. Hey. Wait."
I couldn't ask her to play. It was hardball and she
had no glove.
"Okay, sure. We'll go down to the brook. Hang
on a minute."
There was only one way to do this gracefully. I
had to ask the others.
"Hey guys! Want to go down to the brook?
Catch some crayfish or something? It's hot here."
 THE GIRL NEXT D O O R 127
Actually the brook didn't sound bad to me. It
was hot.
"Sure. I'll go," said Donny. Willie shrugged and
nodded.
"Me too," said Denise.
Great, I thought. Denise. Now all we need is
Woofer.
"I'm gonna go get some lunch," said Kenny.
"Maybe I'll meet you down there."
"Okay."
Tony vacillated and then decided he was hungry
too. So that left just us five.
"Let's stop at the house," said Donny. "Get some
jars for the crayfish and a Thermos of Kool-Aid."
We went in through the back door and you could
hear the waslung machine going in the basement.
"Donny? That you?"
"Yeah, Ma."
He turned to Meg. "Get the Kool-Aid, will ya?
I'll go down after the jars and see what she wants."
I sat with Willie and Denise at the kitchen table.
There were toast crumbs on it and I brushed them
onto the floor. There was also an ashtray crammed
with cigarette butts. I looked through the butts but
there was nothing big enough to crib for later.
Meg had the Thermos out and was carefully
pouring lime Kool-Aid into it from Ruth's big
pitcher when they came upstairs.
Willie had two peanut butter jars and a stack of
tin cans wirh him. Ruth was wiping her hands on
her faded apron. She smiled at us and then looked
over at Meg in the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" she said.
128 Jack Ketchum
"Just pouring out some Kool-Aid."
She dug into the pocket of her apron and took
out a pack of Tareytons and lit one.
"Thought I said stay out of the kitchen."
"Donny wanted some Kool-Aid. It was Donny's
idea."
"I don't care whose idea it was."
She blew out some smoke and started coughing.
It was a bad cough, right up from the lungs, and
she couldn't even talk for a moment.
"It's only Kool-Aid," said Meg. "I'm not eating."
Ruth nodded. "Question is," she said, taking an-
other drag of the cigarette, "question is, what did
you sneak before I got here?"
Meg finished pouring and put down the pitcher.
"Nothing," she sighed. "I didn't sneak anythmg."
Ruth nodded again. "Come here," she said.
Meg just stood there.
"I said come over here."
She walked over.
"Open your mouth and let me smell your
breath."
'What?"
Beside me Denise began to giggle.
"Don't sass me. Open your mouth."
"Ruth . . ."
"Open it."
"No!"
"What's that? What'd you say?"
"You don't have any right to . . ."
"I got all the right in the world. Open it."
"No! "
"I said open it, liar."
 THE GIRL NWT DOOR 129
"I'm not a liar."
"Well I h o w you're a slut so I guess you're a liar
too. Open it!"
"No."
"Open your mouth!"
"No!"
"I'm telling you to."
"I won't."
"Oh yes you will. If I have to get these boys to
pry it open you will."
Willie snorted, laughing. Donny was still stand-
ing in the doorway holding the cans and jars. He
looked embarrassed.
"Open your mouth, slut."
That made Denise giggle again.
Meg looked Ruth straight in the eye. She took a
breath.
And for a moment she suddenly managed an
adult, almost stunning dignity.
"I told you, Ruth," she said. "I said no."
Even Denise shut up then.
We were astonished.
We'd never seen anydung like it before.
Kids were powerless. Almost by definition. Kids
were supposed to endare humiliation, or run away
from it. If you protested, it had to be oblique. You
ran into your room and slammed the door. You
screamed and yelled. You brooded through dinner.
You acted out-or broke things accidentally on
purpose. You were sullen, silent. You screwed up in
school. And that was about it. All the guns in your
arsenal. But what you did not do was you did not
stand up to an adult and say go fuck yourself in so
130 Jack Ketchurn
many words. You did not simply stand there and
calmly say no. We were still too young for that. So
that now it was pretty amazing.
Ruth smiled and stubbed out her cigarette in the
cluttered ashtray.
"I guess I'll go get Susan," she said. "I expect
she's in her room."
And then it was her turn to stare Meg down.
It lasted a moment, the two of them facing off
like gunfighters.
Then Meg's composure shattered.
"You leave my sister OW of this! You leave her
alone!"
Her hands were balled up into fists, white at the
knuckles. And I knew &at she- knew, then, about
the beating the other day
I wondered if there had been other times, other
beatings.
But in a way we were relieved. This was more
like it. More like what we were used to.
Ruth just shrugged. "No need for you to get all
upset about it, Meggy. I just want to ask her what
she knows about you raiding the icebox in between
meals. If you won't do what I ask, then I guess
she'd be the one to know."
"She wasn't even with us!''
"I'm sure she's heard you, honey. I'm sure the
neighbors have heard you. Anyhow, sisters know,
don't they? Sorta instinctive, really."
She turned toward the bedroom. "Susan?"
Meg reached out and grabbed her arm. And it
was like she was a whole other girl now, scared,
helpless, desperate.
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
"God damn you!" she said.
You knew right away it was a mistake.
Ruth whirled and smacked her.
"You touch me? You t w h me, dammit? You bold
with me?"
She slapped her again as Meg backed away, and
again as she stumbled against the refrigerator, off
balance, and fell to her knees. Ruth leaned over
and gripped her jaw, pulling on it hard.
"Now you open your goddamn mouth, you hear
me? Or I'll kick the living shit out of you and your
precious little sister! You hear me? Willie?
Donny?"
Willie got up and went to her. Donny looked
confused.
"Hold her."
I felt frozen. Everydung was happening so fast.
I was aware of Denise sitting next to me, goggle-
eyed.
"I said hold her."
Willie got out of his seat and took her right arm
and I guess Ruth was hurting her where she held
tight to her jaw because she didn't resist. Donny
put his jars and cans on the table and took hold of
her left. Two of the cans rolled off the table and
clattered to the floor.
"Now open, tramp."
And then Meg did fight, trying to get to her
feet, bucking and rolling against them, but they
had her tight. Willie was enjoying himself, that
was obvious. But Donny looked grim. Ruth had
both hands on her now, trying to pry her jaws
apart.
132 Jack Ketchum
Meg bit her.
Ruth yelled and stumbled back. Meg squirmed
to her feet. Willie twisted her arm behind her back
and yanked it up. She yelled and doubled over and
med to pull away, shaking her left arm hard to get
it away from Donny in a kind of simultaneous
panic and she almost made it, Donny's grip was
uncertain enough, she almost got it free.
Then Ruth stepped forward again.
For an instant she just stood there, studying her,
looking I guess for an opening. Then she balled up
a fist and hit her in the stomach exactly the way a
man would hit a man, and nearly as hard. What you
heard was Like somebody punching a basketball.
Meg fell, choking, and gasped for breath.
Donny let her go.
"Jesus!" whispered Denise beside me.
Ruth stepped back.
"You want to fighd" she said. "Okay. Fight."
Meg shook her head.
"You don't want to fight? No?"
She shook her head.
Willie looked at his mother.
"Too bad," he said quietly.
He still had her arm. And now he started twist-
ing. She doubled over.
"Willie's right," said Ruth. "It is too bad. Come
on, Meg honey, fight. Fight him."
Wfie twisted. She jumped with the pain and
gasped and shook her head a third time.
"Well I guess she just won't do it," said Ruth.
"This girl don't want to do anything I say today."
 THE GlRL NU(T DOOR 133
She shook the hand Meg had bitten and exarn-
ined it. From where I sat it was just a red spot. Meg
hadn't broken the skin or anydung.
"Let her go," said Ruth.
He dropped her arm. Meg slumped forward.
She was crying.
I didn't like to watch. I glanced away.
I saw Susan standing in the hall, holding on to
the wall, looking frightened, staring around the
corner. Eyes riveted on her sister.
"I gotta go," I said in a voice that sounded
strangely thick to me.
"What about the brook?" said Willie. Sounding
disappointed, the big ass. Like nothing had hap-
pened at all.
"Later," I said. "I gotta go now."
I was aware of Ruth watching me.
I got up. I didn't want to go by Meg for some
reason. Instead I walked past Susan to the front
door. She didn't seem to notice me.
"David," said Ruth. Her voice was very calm.
"Yes?"
"This is what you'd call a domestic dispute,"
she said.
"Just between us here. You saw what you saw.
But it's nobody's business but ours. You know? You
understand?"
I hesitated, then nodded.
"Good boy," she said. "I knew you were. I knew
you'd understand."
I walked outside. It was a hot, muggy day. Inside
it had been cooler.
134 Jack Ketchum
I walked back to the woods, cutting away from
the path to the brook and into the deeper woods
behind the Morino house.
It was cooler there. It smelled of pine and earth.
I kept seeing Meg slumped over, crying. And
then I'd see her standing in front of Ruth looking
her coolly in the eye saying I told you I said no. For
some reason these alternated with remembering an
argument with my mother earlier that week.
You're just like your father, she'd said. I'd re-
sponded furiously. Not nearly as well as Meg had.
I'd lost it. I'd raged. I'd hated her. I thought about
that now in a detached kind of way and then I
thought about all this other stuff today.
It had been an amazing morning.
But it was as though everydung canceled
everydung.
I walked through the woods.
I didn't feel a thing.
 Chapter Twenty
You could get from my house to Cozy Snacks
through the woods by crossing the brook at the
Big Rock and then walking along the far bank past
two old houses and a construction site, and I was
coming home that way the next day with a Three
Musketeers, some red licorice and some Fleer's
Double Bubble-which, thinking of Meg, I'd ac-
tually paid for-in a paper bag when I heard Meg
scream.
I knew it was her. It was just a scream. It could
have been anybody's. But I knew.
I got quiet. I moved along the bank.
She was standing on the Big Rock. Willie and
Woofer must have surprised her there with her
hand in the water because her sleeve was rolled up
and the brook water beaded her forearm and you
136 Jack Ketchum
could see the long livid scar like a worm pulsing up
through her skin.
They were pelting her with the cans from the
cellar, and Woofer's aim, at least, was good.
But then Willie was aiming for the head.
A harder target. He always went wide.
While Woofer hit her first on her bare knee and
then, when she turned, in the center of the back.
She turned again and saw them pick up the glass
peanut bumr jars. Woofer fired.
Glass shattered at her feet, sprayed her legs.
It would have hurt her bad to get hit with one of
those.
There was nowhere for her to go except into
the brook. She couldn't have scaled the high bank
beside me, at least not in time. So that was what
she did.
She went into the water.
The brook was running fast that day and the
bottom was covered with mossy stones. I saw her
trip and fd almost immediately while another jar
smashed on a rock nearby. She hauled herself up,
gasping and wet to the shoulders, and aied to run.
She got four steps and fell again.
Willie and Woofer were howling, laughmg so
hard they forgot to throw their jars any more.
She got up and this time kept her footing and
splashed downstream.
When she turned the corner there was good
heavy thicket to cover her.
It was over.
Amazingly nobody had seen me. They still
didn't. I felt like a ghost.
 THE GIRL NEXT D O O R 137
I watched them gather up their few remaining
cans and jars. Then they walked off laughing down
the path to their house. I could hear them all the
way, voices gradually fading.
Assboks, I thought. There's glass all over now.
We can't go wading. Not at least until it floods
again.
I crossed carefully across the Rock to the other
side.
 Chapter Twenty-One
Meg fought back on the Fourth of July.
It was dusk, a warm night gracefully fading to
dark, and there were hundreds of us out there on
blankets in Memorial Field in front of the high
school waiting for the fireworks to start.
Donny and I sat with my parents-I'd invited
him over for dinner that night-and they sat with
their friends the Hendersons, who lived two
blocks away.
The Hendersons were Catholic and childless,
which right away meant that something was
wrong, though nobody seemed to know what it
was exactly. Mr. Henderson was big and outdoorsy
and given to plaid and corduroy, what you'd call a
man's man, kind of fun. He raised beagles in his
backyard and let us shoot his BB guns sometimes
 WE GfRL NEM D O O R 139
when we went over. Mrs. Henderson was thin,
blond, pug-nosed, and pretty.
Donny once said he couldn't see the problem.
He'd have fucked her in a minute.
From where we sat we could see Willie, Woofer,
Meg, Susan and Ruth across the field sitting next
to the Morino family.
The entire town was there.
If you could walk or drive or crawl, on the
Fourth of July you came to the fireworks. Apart
from the Memorial Day Parade it was our one big
spectacle of the year.
And pro forma the cops were there. Nobody re-
ally expected any trouble. The town was still at
that stage where everybody knew everybody, or
knew somebody else who did. You went out and
left your door open all day in case somebody came
by and you weren't there.
T h e cops were family friends, most of them. My
dad knew them from the bar or from the VFW.
Mostly they were just rnakmg sure that nobody
threw cherry bombs too near the blankets. Stand-
ing around waiting for the show like the rest of us.
Domy and I listened to Mr. Henderson, who
was talking about the beagles' new litter and drank
iced tea from the Thermos and belched out pot
roast fumes at one another, laughing. My mother
always made pot roast with a lot of onions in it. It
drove my father crazy but it was just the way we
liked it. In half an hour we'd be farting.
The public address system blared John Philip
Sousa.
- A quarter-moon was up over the high,school
h & dim gray iq+t you d d see little lrids
chasing each otlter through the crowd. People
were lighting sparklers. Behind us a fuIl pa& of
two-- went off like machine-gun fire.
We decided to get some ice cream.
The Good Humor truck was doing a bang-up
business, kids wadmg in four deep. We gradually
pnshed our way through without getting stepped
on. I got a Brown Cow and Donny got a Fudge-
side and we hauled ourselves back out @.
Then we saw Meg by the side of the truck, talk-
ing to Mr. Jennings.
A d it supped us dead in our tracks.
Because Mr. Jennings was also w e r jennings.
He was a cop.
And there was s0meth.qin the way she was act-
ing, gesturing with her hands, leaning forward sort
of into him, so that we knew right away what she
was saying.
It was scary, shockmg.
We stood there rooted to the spot.
Meg was teiling. Betraying Ruth. Betraying
Donny and everybody.
She was facing away from us.
For a moment we just stared at her and then as if
on cue we looked at one another.
Then we went over. Eating our ice creams. Very
c a d . We stood right beside her off to one side.
Mr. Jemiqs glanced at us for a second but then
looked off in the general diretion of Ruth and
Willie and the others, and then, noddmg, listening
carefully,looked attentively back to Meg.
We worked studious1-y at the ice creams. We
looked around.
"Well;that's her right, I guess," he said.
"No," said Meg. "You don't understand."
But then we couldn't hear the rest of it.
Mr. Jennings smiled and shrugged. He put a big
freckled hand on her shoulder.
"Listen," he said. "For all I know maybe your
parents wouM've felt exactly the same. Who's to
say? You've got to think of Miz Chandler as your
mom now, don't you?"
She shook her head.
And then he became aware of us, I think, really
aware of Donny and me and who we were for the
first time and what we might mean in terms of the
conversation they were having there. You could see
his face change. But Meg was still tallung, arguing.
He watched us over her shoulder; looked at us
long and hard.
Then he took her arm.
"Let's walk," he said.
I saw her glance nervously in Ruth's direction
but it was getting hard to see by now, pretty much
full dark with only the moon and stars and the oc-
casional sparkler to see by, so there wasn't much
chance that Ruth had noticed them together. From
where I stood the crowd was already a shapeless
mass Like scrub and cactus stud* a prairie. I
knew where they were sitting but I couldn't make
them out or my parents and the Hendersons either.
142 Jack Ketchum
But you knew perfectly well why she was scared.
I felt scared myself. What she was doing felt excit-
ing and forbidden, exactly like trying to see her
through the windows from the birch nee.
Mr. Jennings turned his back to us and gently
moved her away.
"Shit" whispered Donny.
I heard a whoosh. The sky exploded. Bright
white puffballs popped and showered down.
0ooo0otw, went the crowd.
And in the ghostly white light of the aftershock
I looked at him. I saw confusion and worry.
He had always been the relucmnt one with Meg.
He still was now.
"What are you going to do?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"He won't believe her," he said. "He won't do
netbin'. Cops mlk but they never do anything to
you."
It was like somedung Ruth had said to us once.
Cops talk but they never do.
He repeated it now as we walked back to our
blankets like an article of faith. Like it had to be.
Almost like a prayer.
 Chapter Twenty-Two
The prowl car pulled in around eight the following
evening- I saw Mr. Jennings walk up the steps and
knock and Ruth let him in. Then I waited, watch-
ing out my living room window. Something turn-
ing over and over in my stomach.
My parents were at a birthday party at the
Knights of Columbus aad my sitter was Linda
Cotton, eighteen and freckled and, I thought,
cute, though n o w compared to Meg. At
seventy-five cents an hour she couldn't have cared
less what I was doing so long as it was quiet and
didn't interfere with her watchrng The Adventures
ofEUevy Queen on the TV.
We had an agreement, Linda and I. I wouldn't
tell about her boyfriend Steve coming over or the
two of them ne- on the sofa all night and I
could do pretty much whatever I wanted on condi-
144 J O C ~~etchum

tion that I was home in bed before my parents re-

turned. She knew I was getting too old for sitters
anyhow.
So I waited until the prowl car pulled away
again and then I went next door. It was about quar-
ter to nine.
They were sitting in the living room and dining
room. All of them. It was quiet and nobody moved
and I got the feeling it had been that way for a
long time.
Everybody was staring at Meg. Even Susan was.
I had the strangest feeling.
Later, during the Sixties, I would realize what it
was. I would open a letter from the Selective Ser-
vice System and read the card inside that told me
my status had now been changed to lk
It was a sense of escalah'm.
That the stakes were higher now.

I stood in the doorway. It was Ruth who acknowl-

edged me.
"Hello, David," she said quietly. "Sit down. Join
us." Then she sighed. "Somebody get me a beer,
will you?*
wdlie got up in the dining room and went into
the kitchen, got a beer for her and one for himself,
opened them and handed one to her. Then he sat
dbwn again.
Ruth lit a cigarette. .
I looked at Meg sitting in a folding chair in front
of the blank gray eye of the television. She looked
scared but determined. I thought of Gary Cooper
walking out onto the silent street at the end of
Higb N m .
"Well now," said Ruth. "Well now."
She sipped the beer, smoked the cigarette.
Woofer squirmed on the couch.
I almost wried and went out again.
Then Donny got up in the dinrng room. He
walked over to Meg. He stood there in front of her.
"You brought a cop here after my mom," he said.
"After my motber."
Meg looked up at him. Her face relaxed a little.
It was Donny,after all. Reluctant Donny.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just had to be sure it
wouldn't . . ."
His hand shot up and slashed across her face.
"Shut up! Shut up, ywF
His hand was poised in front of her, ready,
tremblmg.
It looked like it was all he could do not to hit her
again and a whole lot harder this time.
She stared at him, aghast.
"Sit down," Ruth said quietly.
It was like he hadn't heard her.
"Sit down!"
He pulled himself away. His about-face was
practically military. He stalked back into the din-
ing room.
Then there was a silence again.
Finally Ruth leaned forward. "What I want to
know is this. What did you think, Meggy? What
went through your mind?"
Meg didn't answer.
146 Jack Ketchum
Ruth started coughing. That deep, hacking
cough she had. Then she got control.
"What I mean to say is, did you think he was
gonna take you away or something? You and Su-
san? Get you out of here?
Well I'll tell you it's not gonna happen. He's
not gonna take you anywhere, girly. Because he
doesn't care to. If he'd cared to he'd have done it on
the spot back at the fireworks and he didn't, did he?
"So what's left? What'd you have in mind?
"You think maybe I'd be scared of him?"
Meg just sat there, arms folded, with that deter-
mined look in her eyes.
Ruth smiled, sipped her beer.
And she looked determined too in her way.
"Problem is," she said, "what do we do now?
There's nothing about that man or any other man
that scares me, Meggy. If you didn't know that be-
fore, then I sure hope you know it now. But I can't
have you running to the cops every ten, twenty
minutes either. So the question is, what now?
"I'd send you someplace if there was someplace
to send you. Believe me I would. Damned if I need
some stupid little whore out ruinin' my reputation.
And God knows they don't pay me enough to
bother trying to correct you. Hell, with what they
pay it's a wonder I can even feed you!"
She sighed. "I guess I got to think about this,"
she said. Then she got to her feet and walked into
the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator.
"You get to your room. Susie too. And stay
there."
She reached for a beer and then laughed.
 THE GIRL NEXT D O O R
"Before Donny gets to thinking he might come
over and s d you again."
She opened the can of Budweiser.
Meg took her sister's arm and led her into the
bedroom.
"You too, David," said Ruth. "You better get on
home. Sorry. But I got some difficult thinking to
do."
"That's okay."
"You want a Coke or something for the road?"
I smiled. For the road. I was right next door.
"No, that's okay."
"Want me to sneak you a beer?"
She had that old mischievous twinkle in her eye.
The tension dissolved. I laughed.
"That'd be cool."
She tossed me one. I caught it.
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't mention it," she said and this time all of
us laughed, because don't mention it was a code be-
tween us.
It was always what she said to us kids when she
was letting us do something our parents wouldn't
want us to do or let us do in our own houses. Don't
mention it.
"I won't," I said.
I stuffed the can into my shirt and went outside.
When I got back to my house Linda was curled
up in front of the T V set watching Ed Byrnes
comb his hair during the opening credits of 77
Sunset Sm@.She looked sort of glum. I guessed
that Steve wasn't showing up tonight.
" 'Night," I said and went up to my room.
148 Jack Ketchum
I drank the beer and thought of Meg. I won-
dered if I should try to help her somehow. There
was a conflict here. I was still attracted to Meg and
liked her but Donny and Ruth were much older
friends. I wondered if she really even needed help-
ing. Kids got slapped, after all. Kids got punched
around. I wondered where this was going.
What do we do now? said Ruth.
I stared at Meg's watercolor on my wall and be-
gan to wonder about that too.
 Chapter Twenty-Three
What Ruth decided was that, from then on, Meg
was never allowed to leave the house alone. Either
she was with her, or Donny or Willie. Mostly she
didn't leave at all. So that I never had a chance to
ask Meg what she wanted done, if she wanted
something done, never mind deciding whether I'd
actually do it or not.
It was out of my hands. Or so I thought.
That was a relief to me.
If I felt that anydung was lost-Meg's confi-
dence, or even just her company-I was never all
that aware of it. I knew that thmgs had taken a
pretty unusual turn next door and I guess I was
looking for some distance from it for a while, to
sort things out for myself.
So I saw less than usual of the Chandlers for the
next few days and that was a relief too. I hung
1SO Jack ~ e k h u m
around with Tony and Kenny and Denise and
Cheryl, and even with Eddie now and then when it
felt safe.
The street was buzzing with news of what was
happening over there. Sooner or later every con-
versation came back to the Chandlers. What made
it so incredible was that Meg had gotten the police
involved. That was the revolutionary act, the one
we couldn't get over. Could you imagine tuming in
an adult-especially an adult who might just as
well have been your mother-to the cops? It was
practically unthinkable.
Yet it was also fraught with potential. You could
see Eddie in particular stewing over the idea. Day-
dreaming about his father I guessed. A thoughtful
Eddie was not something we were used to either. It
added to the strangeness.
But apart from the business with the cops, all
anybody really knew-including me-was that
people were getting punished a lot over there for
seemingly little reason, but that was nothing new
except that it was happening at the Chandlers',
which we'd all considered safe haven. That and the
fact that Willie and Donny were participating. But
even that didn't strike us as too odd.
We had The Game as precedent.
No, mostly it was the cops. And it was Eddie who,
after a while, had the final word on that subject.
"Well, it didn't get her sbit though, did it," he
said. Thoughtful Eddie.
But it was true. And strangely enough, in the
course of the week that followed our feelings
slowly changed toward Meg as a result of that.
 THE GIRL NU(T DOOR 151
From admiration at the sheer all-or-nothing bold-
ness of h e act, at the very concept of challenging
Ruth's authority so completely and publicly, we
drifted toward a kind of vague contempt for her.
How could she be so dumb as to think a cop was
going to side with a kid against an adult, anyway?
How could she fail to realize it was only going to
make things worse? How could she have been so
naive, so trusting, so God-and-apple-pie stupid?
2% policeman i t yourfiend. Horseshit. None of
us would have done it. We knew better.
You could actually almost resent her for it. It was
as though in failing with Mr. Jennings she had
thrown in all our faces the very fact of just how
powerless we were as kids. Being "just a kid" took
on a whole new depth of meaning, of ominous
threat, that maybe we knew was there all along but
we'd never had to think about before. Shit, they
could dump us in a river if they wanted to. We
were just k d r . We were property. We belonged to
our parents, body and soul. It meant we were
doomed in the face of any real danger from the
adult world and that meant hopelessness, and hu-
miliation and anger.
It was as though in failing herself Meg had
failed us as well.
So we turned that anger outward. Toward Meg.
I did too. Over just that couple of days I flicked
a slow mental switch. I stopped worrying. I turned
off on her entirely.
Fuck it, I thought. Let it go where it goes.'
 Chapter Twenty-Four
Where it went was to the basement.
 Chapter Twenty-Five
The day I finally did go over and knock on the
door nobody answered, but standing on the porch
I was aware of two things. One was Susan crying
in her room loud enough to hear her through the
screen. The other was downstairs. A scuffling.
Furniture scraping roughly across the floor. Muf-
fled voices. Grunts, groans. A whole rancid danger
in the air.
The shit, as they say, was hitting the fan.
It's amazing to me now how eager I was to get
down there.
I took the stairs two at a time and turned the
comer. I knew where they were.

At the doorway to the shelter Ruth stood watch-

ing. She smiled and moved aside to let me by.
156 Jack Ketchum
"She tried to run away," she said. "But Willie
stopped her."
They were stopping her now all right, all of
them, Willie and Woofer and Donny all together,
going at her like a tackle dummy against the con-
crete wall, taking turns, smashing into her stom-
ach. She was already long past arguing about it. All
you heard was the whoosh of breath as Donny hit
her and drove her tightly folded arms into her
belly. Her mouth was set, grim. A hard concentra-
tion in her eyes.
And for a moment she was the heroine again.
Battling the odds.
But just for a moment. Because suddenly it was
clear to me again that all she could do was take it,
powerless. And lose.
And I remember thinking at least it's not me.
If I wanted to I could even join them.
For that moment, thinking that, I had power.

I've asked myself since, when did it happen? when

was I, yes, cmrmpted? and I keep coming back to ex-
actly this moment, these thoughts.
That sense of power.
It didn't occur to me to consider that thls was
only a power granted to me by Ruth, and perhaps
only temporary. At the time it was quite real
enough. As I watched, the distance between Meg
and me seemed suddenly huge, insurmountable. It
was not that my sympathies toward her stopped.
But for the first time I saw her as essentially other
than me. She was vulnerable. I wasn't. My position
was favored here. Hers was as low as it could be.
Was this inevitable, maybe? I remembered her ask-
ing me, why do they hate me? and I didn't believe it
then, I didn't have any answer for her. Had I
missed something?Was there maybe some flaw in
her I hadn't seen that predetermined all of this?
For the first time I felt that maybe Meg's separa-
tion from us might be justified.
I wanted to feel it was justified.
I say that now in deepest shame.
Because it seems to me now that so much of this
was strictly personal, part of the nature of the
world as I saw it. I've tried to think that it was all
the fault of my parents' warfare, of the cold blank
calm I developed in the center of their constant
hurricane. But I don't quite believe that anymore. I
doubt I ever did entirely. My parents loved me, in
many ways better than I deserved-however they
felt about one another. And I knew that. For al-
most anyone that would have been enough to
eliminate any appetite for this whatsoever.
No. The truth is that it was me. That I'd been
waiting for this, or something like this, to happen
all along. It was as though somedung starkly ele-
mental were at my back, sweeping through me, re-
leasing and becoming me, some wild black wind of
my own making on that beautiful bright sunny day.
And I ask myself: Whom did I hate? Whom and
what did I fear?
In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn
that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one but-
ton awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set
them blazing toward destruction.
And I learned that they can taste like winning.
158 Jack Ketchum

I watched Willie step back. For once he didn't look

clumsy. His shoulder caught her squarely in the
stomach, lifted her off her feet.
I suppose her only hope was that one of them
would miss and smash his head against the wall.
But nobody was going to. She was tiring. There
was nowhere to maneuver, nowhere to go. Noth-
ing to do but take it till she fell. And that would be
soon now.
Woofer got a running start. She had to bend her
knees in order not to take it in the groin.
"Cry, goddarnmit!" Willie yelled. Like the oth-
ers he was breathing hard. He turned to me.
"She won't cry," he said.
"She don't care," said Woofer.
"She'll cry," said Willie. "I'll make her."
"Too much pride," said Ruth behind me. "Pride
goeth before a fall. You ought to all remember
that. Pride falls."
Donny rammed at her.
Football was his game. Her head snapped back
against the cinder block. Her arms fell open. The
look in her eyes was glazed now.
She slid a few inches down the wall.
Then she stopped and held there.
Ruth sighed.
"That'll be enough for now, boys," she said.
"You're not going to get her to cry. Not this time."
She held out her arm, beckoning.
"Come on."
You could see they weren't done yet. But Ruth
sounded bored and final.
 WE GlRL NEXl DOOR 159
Then Willie muttered something about stupid
whores, and one by one they filed past us.
I was last to leave. It was hard to take my eyes
away.
That this could happen.
I watched her slide down the wall to squat on the
cold concrete floor.
I'm not sure she was ever aware of me.
"Let's go," said Ruth.
She closed the metal door and bolted it shut be-
hind me.
Meg was left in there in the dark. Behind the
door to a meat locker. We went upstairs and
poured some Cokes. Ruth got out cheddar cheese
and crackers. We sat around the dining room table.
I could still hear Susan crying in the bedroom,
softer now. Then Willie got up and turned on the
television and Tmth or C m e q m c e s came on and
you couldn't hear her anymore.
We watched for a while.
Ruth had a women's magazine open in front of
her on the table. She was smoking a Tareyton, flip-
ping through the magazine, drinking from her
Coke bottle.
She came to a photo-a lipstick ad-and
stopped.
"I don't see it," she said. "The woman's ordi-
nary. You see it?"
She held up the magazine.
Willie looked and shrugged and bit into a
cracker. But I thought the woman was pretty.
About Ruth's age, maybe a little younger, but
p='=ml-
 Ruth shook her head.
"I see her everywhere I look," she said, "I swear
it. E v e t y u h . Name's Suzy Parker. Big model.
And I just don't see it. A redhead. Maybe that's it.
Men like the redheads. But hell, Meg's got red hair.
And M&s hair's prettier than that, doncha think?"
I looked at the picture again. I agreed with her.
"I just don't see it," she said, frowning. "Meg's
definitely prettier than that. A whole lot prettier."
"Sure she is," said Doany.
"World's mazy," said Ruth. "It just don't make
any sense to me at all."
She cut a slice of cheese and placed it on a
cracker.
 Chapter Twenty-Six
"Get your mom to let you sleep over at my house
tonight," said Donny. "There's somethmg I want
to talk to you abeut."
We were standing at the bridge on Maple skim-
ming stones down into the water. The brook was
clear and sluggish.
"What's wrong with talking now?"
"Nothing."
But he didn't say what was on his mind.
I don't know why I resisted the idea of sleeping
over. Maybe it was knowing I'd get more involved
with them somehow. Or maybe it was just-that I
knew what my mom would say-there were girls at
the Chandlers' these days, and staying over there
would not seem so clear-cut to her anymore.
She should only know, I thought.
"Willie wants to talk to you too," said Donny.
162 Jack Ketchum
"WiUie does?"
"Yeah."
I laughed. The notion of Willie having some-
thing on his mind worth actually speaking about.
Actually it was intriguing.
"Well in that case I guess I'll just have to, then,
won't I,"I said.
Donny laughed too, and skimmed a long one
three skips down across the dappling bands of
sunlight.
 Chapter Twenty-Seven
My mother wasn't happy.
"I don't think so," she said.
"Mom, I sleep there all the time."
"Not lately you don't"
"You mean since Meg and Susan?"
"That's right."
"Look. It's no big deal. It's the same as before.
The guys get the bunk beds and Meg and Susan
are in Ruth's room."
"Mrs. Chandler's room."
"Right. Mrs. Chandler's room."
"So where is Mrs. Chandler?"
"On the couch. On the pullout in the living
room. What's the big deal?"
"You know what's the big deal."
"No, I don't."
"Yes you do."
 "No I dorz't."
"What?" said my father, wallung into the
kitchen from the living room. 'What big deal is
that?"
"He wants to stay over there again," said my
mother. She was snapping green beans into a
colander,
"What? Over there?"
"Yes."
"So let him." He sat down at the kitchen table
and opened up his newspaper.
"Robert, there are two young girls there now."
"So?"
She sqghed. "Please," she said. "Please don't be
dense, Robert."
"Dense, hell," said my father. "Let him. Is there
any coffee?"
"Yes," she said. She sighed again and brushed
her hands off on her apron.
I got up and got to the coffeepot ahead of her
and turned on the flame beneath it. She looked at
me and then went back to the beans.
"Thanks, Dad," I said.
"I didn't say you could go," said my mother.
I smiled. "You didn't say I couldn't, either."
She looked at my father and shook her head.
"Dammit, Robert," she said.
"Right," said my father. And then he read his
paper.
 Chapter Twenty-Eight
"We told her about The Game," said Donny.
"Who?"
"Ruth. My mom. Who else, shit-for-brains?"
Donny was alone in the kitchen when I came in,
making a peanut butter sandwich that I guess was
dinner that night,
There were smears of peanut butter and grape
jelly and bread crumbs on the counter.Just for fun
I counted the sets of silverware in the drawer.
There were still only five.
"You toM her?"
He nodded. "Woofer did."
He took a bite of the sandwich and sat down at
the dmng room table. I sat across from him.
There was a half-inch cigarette burn in the wood I
hadn't seen before.
"Jesus. What'd she say?"
 "Nothin'. It was weird. It was like she hew, you
know?"
"Knew? Knew what?"
"Everything. Like it was no sweat. Like she fig-
ured we were doing it all along. Like every kid did."
"You're kidding."
"NO. I swear."
"Bullshit."
"I'm telling you. All she wanted to know was
who was with us so I told her."
"You told her? Me? Eddie? Evqbody?"
"Like I said she didn't care. Hey. Would you
please not blow your cool on this, Davy? It didn't
bother her."
"Denise? You told her about Denise too?"
"Yeah. Everydung."
"You said she was naked?"
I couldn't believe it. I'd always thought that
Willie was the stupid one. I watched him eat the
sandwich. He smiled at me and shook his head.
"I'm telling you. You don't have to worry about
it," he said.
“Danny."
"Really."
"Donny."
"Yes, Davy."
"Are you nw?"
"No, Davy."
"Do you realize for a goddarnn second what
would happen to me if. . ."
"Nodung's going to happen to you, for God's
sake. Will you stop being such a friggin' queer
about it? It's my mom, for God's sake. Remember?"
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 167
"Oh that makes me feel just fine. Your mom
knows we tie naked little girls to trees. Great."
He sighed. "David, if I'd known you were gonna
be such an amazing retard about it I wouldn't of
told you."
"I'm the retard, right?"
"Yeah." He was pissed now. He popped the last
gooey corner of the sandwich into his mouth. He
stood up.
"Look, jerk. What do you think is going on in
the shelter right now? Right this minute?"
I just looked at him. How did I know? Who
cared?
Then it dawned on me. Meg was there.
"No," I said.
"Yes," he said. He went to the refrigerator for a
Coke.
"Bullshit."
He laughed. "Will you stop saying bulkhit?
Look, don't believe me. Go take a look. Hell, I
just came up for a sandwich."
I ran downstairs. I could hear him laughing be-
hind me.
It was getting dark outside so the basement
lights were on, naked bulbs over the washeddryer
and under the stairs and over the sump pump in
the comer.
Willie was standing behind Ruth at the door to
the shel~er.
They both had flashlights in their hands.
Ruth lit hers and waved it at me once like a cop
at a roadblock.
"Here's Davy," she said.
168 Jack Ketchum
Willie gave me a glance. Who gives a sbit.
My mouth was open. It felt dry. I licked my lips.
I nodded to Ruth and looked around the corner
through the doorway.
And it was hard to comprehend at first-I
guess because maybe it was out of context, and
probably because it was Meg, and definitely be-
cause Ruth was there. It felt dreamlike-or like
some game you play on Halloween when every-
one is in costume and nobody's quite recogniza-
ble themselves even though you know who they
are. Then Donny came downstairs and slapped
his hand down on my shodder. He offered me
the Coke.
"See?" he said. "I told you."
I did see.
They'd taken ten-penny nails and driven them
into the beams Willie Sr. had lain along the
ceiling-two nails, about three feet apart.
They'd cut two lengths of clothesline and tied
Meg's wrists and looped a line over each of the
nails and then run the lines down to the legs of
the heavy worktable, tying them off down there
rather than up at the nail so that they could be ad-
justed, tightened, just by untying each one and
pulling it around the loop and then tying it tighter
again.
Meg was standing on a small pile of books-
three thick red volumes of the World Book Ency-
clopedia.
She was gagged and blindfolded.
Her feet were bare. Her shorts and short-
sleeve blouse were dirty. In the space between the
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
two, stretched out as she was, you could see her
navel.
Meg was an inny.
Woofer paced around in front of her running
the beam of his flashlight up and down her body.
There was a bruise just under the blindfold on
her left cheek.
Susan sat on a carton of canned vegetables,
watchmg. A blue strand of ribbon made a bow in
her hair.
Off in the comer I could see a pile of blankets
and an air mattress. I realized Meg had been sleep-
ing there. I wondered for how long.
"We're all here," said Ruth.
A dim amber light bled in from the rest of the
basement but mostly it was just Woofer's beam in
there and the shadows moved erratically along
with him when he moved, making things look
strange and fluid and ghostly. The wire mesh
over the single high window seemed to shift back
and forth by subtle inches. The two four-by-four
wooden posts supporting the c e h g slid across
the room at odd angles. The ax, pick, crowbar
and shovel stacked in the corner opposite Meg's
bed appeared to switch positions with one an-
other, looming and shrinking as you watched,
shapeshifting.
The fallen fire extinguisher crawled across the
floor.
But it was Meg's own shadow that dominated
the room-head back, arms wide apart, swaying. It
was an image straight out of all our horror comics,
out of The Black Cat with Lugosi and Karloff, out
170 Jack Ketchum
of Famous Monsters of Filmland, out of every cheap
twenty-five cent paperback historical thriller about
the Inquisition ever written. Most of which I fig-
ured we'd collected.
It was easy to imagine torchlight, strange in-
struments and processions, braziers full of hot
coals.
I shivered. Not at the chill but at rhe potential.
"The Game is she's got to tell," said Woofer.
"Okay. Tell what?" Ruth asked.
"Tell anythmg. Something secret."
Ruth nodded, smiling. "Sounds right. Only
how's she going to do that with the gag on?"
"You don't want her to tell right away, Mom,"
said Willie. "Anyway, you always know when
they're ready."
"You sure? You want to tell, Meggy?" said Ruth.
"You ready?*
"She's not ready," insisted Woofer. But he need-
n't have bothered. Meg didn't make a sound.
"So now what?" Ruth asked.
Willie pushed off from the doorjamb where he
was leaning and ambled into the room.
"Now we take a book away," he said.
He bent over, pulled out the middle one and
stepped back.
The ropes were tighter now.
Willie and Woofer both had their flashlights on.
Ruth's was still at her side, unlit.
I could see some red around Meg's wrists from
the pull of the ropes. Her back arched slightly.
The short-sleeve shirt rode up. She was only just
 THE GIRL NUCT DOOR 171
able to stand with her feet down flat on the two re-
maining books and I could already see the strain in
her calves and thighs. She went up on her toes for
a moment to take the pressure off her wrists and
then sank down again.
Willie switched off his flashlight. It was spookier
that way.
Meg just hung there, swaying slightly.
"Confess," said Woofer. Then he laughed. "No.
Don't," he said.
"Do another book," said Donny.
I glanced at Susan to see how she was taking this.
She was sitting with her hands folded in the lap of
her dress andher face looked very serious and she
was staring intently at Meg but there was no way to
read what she was tlmduq or feeling at all.
Willie bent down and pulled out the book.
She was up on the balls of her feet now.
Still she made no sound.
The muscles of her legs defined themselves
sharply against her skin.
"Let's see how long she can go like that," said
Donny. "It's gonna hurt after a while."
"Nah," said Woofer. "It's still too easy. Let's do
the last one. Get 'er up on her tiptoes."
"I want to watch her a while. See what happens."
But the fact was that n o w was happening.
Meg seemed determined to tough this out. And
she was strong.
"Don't you want to give her a chance to confess?
Isn't that the idea?" asked Ruth.
"Nah," said Woofer. "Still too soon. C'mon.
172 Jack Ketchum
This is no good. Take the other book, Will."
Willie did.
And then Meg did make some kind of sound be-
hind the gag, just once, a sort of tiny exhaled
groan as all at once just breathing became harder.
Her blouse pulled up to right beneath her breasts
and I could see her belly rise and fall in an irregu-
lar labored rhythm against her rib cage. Her head
fell back for a moment and then came forward
again.
Her balance was precarious. She began to sway.
Her face flushed. Her muscles strained with
tension.
We watched, silent.
She was beautiful.
The vocal sounds that accompanied her breath-
ing were coming more frequently now as the strain
increased. She couldn't help it. Her legs began to
tremble. First the calves and then the thighs.
A thin sheen of sweat formed over her ribs, glis-
tened on her rhighs.
"We should strip her," Donny said.
The words just hung there for a moment, sus-
pended as Meg was suspended, tipping a balance
that was every bit as precarious.
Suddenly it was me who felt dizzy.
"Yeah," said Woofer.
Meg had heard. She shook her head. There was
indignation, anger and fear there. Sounds came
from behind the gag. No. No. No.
"Shut up," said Willie.
She started trying to jump, pulling on the ropes,
trying to throw them off the nails, squirming. But
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 173
all she was doing was hurting herself, chafing her
wrists.
She didn't seem to care. She wasn't going to let it
happen.
She kept trying.
No. No.
Willie walked over and thumped her on the
head with the book.
She slumped back, stunned.
I looked at Susan. Her hands were still clasped
together in her lap but the knuckles were white
now. She looked directly at her sister, not at us.
Her teeth were biting hard and steadily at her
lower lip.
I couldn't watch her.
I cleared my throat and found something like a
voice.
"Hey, uh . . . guys. . .listen, I don't really
think . . ."
Woofer whirled on me.
" screamed. "We do! I
"We've got p e r m ~ 0 n . f he
say we take off her clothes! I say strip her!"
We looked at Ruth.
She stood leaning in the doorway, her arms
folded close into her belly.
There was something keyed tight about her, like
she was angry or doing some hard thmkmg. Her
lips pressed together in a characteristic straight
thin line.
Her eyes never left Meg's body.
Then finally she shrugged.
"That's The Game, isn't it?" she said.
Compared with the rest of the house and even
174 Jack Ketchum
the basement it was cool down there but now,
suddenly, it didn't feel cool. Instead there was a
growing filmy closeness in the room, a sense of
filling up, a thickening, a slow electric heat that
seemed to rise from each of us filling and charg-
ing the air, surrounding us, isolating us, yet some-
how mingling us all together too. You could see it
in the way Willie stood leaning forward, the
World Book clutched in his hand. In the way
Woofer edged closer, the beam of his flashlight
less erratic now, lingering, caressing Meg's face,
her legs, her stomach. I could feel it from Donny
and Ruth beside me, seeping in and over and
through me like some sweet poison, a quiet
knowledge shared.
We were going to do this. We were going to do
this thing.
Ruth lit a cigarette and threw the match on the
floor.
"Go ahead," she said.
Her smoke curled into the shelter.
"Who gets to do it?" said Woofer.
"I do," said Donny.
He stepped past me. Both Woofer and Willie
had their flashlights on her now. I could see Donny
dig into his pocket and bring out the pocketknife
he always carried there. He turned to Ruth.
"You care about the clothes, Ma?" he asked.
She looked at him.
"I won't have to do the shorts or anydung," he
said. "But. . ."
He was right. The only way he was going to get
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 175
the blouse off her was to rip or cut it off.
"No," said Ruth. "I don't care."
"Let's see what she's got," said Willie.
Woofer laughed.
Donny approached her, folding out the blade.
"Don't start anydung," he said. "I won't hurt
you. But if you start something we'll just have to
hit you again. You know? It's stupid."
He unbuttoned the blouse carefully, p u h g it
away from her body as though shy of touching her.
His face was red. His fingers were awkward. He
was trembling.
She started to struggle but then I guess thought
better of it.
Unbuttoned, the blouse hung shapeless over
her. I could see she wore a white cotton bra under-
neath. For some reason that surprised me. Ruth
never wore a bra. I guess I'd assumed Meg
wouldn't either.
Donny reached over with the penknife and cut
through the left sleeve up to the neckline. He had
to saw through the seam. But he'd kept the blade
sharp. The blouse fell away behind her.
Meg began to cry.
He walked over to the other side and cut
through the right sleeve the same way. Then he
jerked the seam apart, a quick tearing sound. Then
he stepped back
"Shorts," said Willlie.
You could hear her crying softly and trying to
say somethmg behind the gag. No. Pkbe.
"Don't kick," said Donny.
176 Jack Ketchum
The shorts zipped halfway down the side. He
unzipped them and tugged them down over her
hips, adjusting the thin white panties upward as he
did so, then slid the shorn down over her legs to
the floor. The leg muscles jerked and trembled.
He stepped away from her again and looked at
her.
We all did.
We'd seen Meg wearing just as little I suppose.
She had a two-piece bathing suit. Everybody did
that year. Even little kids. And we'd seen her wear-
ing that.
But this was different. A bra and panties were
private and only other girls were supposed to see
them and the only other girls in the room were
Ruth and Susan. And Ruth was allowing this. En-
couraging it. The thought was too large to consider
for long.
Besides, here was Meg right in front of us. In
front of our very eyes. The senses overwhelmed all
thought, all consideration.
"You confess yet, Meggy?" Ruth's voice was soft.
She shook her head yes. An enthusiasticyes.
"No she don't," said Willie. "No way." A sheen
of greasy sweat rolled off his flattop down across
his forehead. He wiped it off.
We all were sweating now. Meg most of all.
Droplets glistened in her armpits, in her navel,
across her belly.
"00the rest," said Willie. "Then maybe we'll
let her confess."
Woofer giggled. "Right after we let her do the
hoochykoo," he said.
 THE GlRL NEXT D O O R 177
Donny stepped forward. He cut the right strap
of her bra and then the left. Meg's breasts slid up-
ward slightly, straining free of the cups.
He could have unsnapped it from the back then
but instead he walked around in front of her. He
slid the blade beneath the thin white band between
the cups and started sawing.
Meg was sobbing.
It must have hurt to cry like that because every
time her body moved the ropes were there, pulling
at her.
The knife was sharp but it took a little while.
Then there was a tiny pop and the bra fell away.
Her breasts were bare.
They were whiter than the rest of her, pale and
perfect and lovely. They shuddered with her cry-
ing. The nipples were pinkish brown and-to
me-starrlingly long, almost flat at the tips. Tiny
plateaus of flesh. A form I'd never seen before and
wanted instantly to touch.
I'd stepped farther into the room. Ruth was
completely behind me now.
I could hear myself breathing.
Donny knelt in front of her and reached up. For
a moment it looked like adoration, like worship.
Then his fingers hooked into the panties and
drew them down over her hips, down her legs. He
took his time.
Then that was another shock.
Meg's hair.
A small tuft of pale blond-orange down in
which droplets of sweat gleamed.
I saw tiny freckles on her upper thighs.
178 ~ a c kKetchum
I saw the small fold of flesh half hidden between
her legs.
I studied her. Her breasts. How would they feel
to touch?
Her flesh was unimaginable to me. The hair be-
tween her legs. I knew it would be soft. Softer
than mine. I wanted to touch her. Her body would
be hot. It trembled uncontrollably.
Her belly, her thighs, her strong pale white ass.
The stew of sex ripened, thickened in me.
The room reeked of sex.
I felt a hard weight between my legs. I moved
forward, fascinated. I stepped past Susan. I saw
Woofer's face, pale and bloodless as he watched. I
saw Willie's eyes riveted to that tuft of down.
Meg had stopped crying now.
I turned to glance at Ruth. And she'd moved
forward too, was standmg inside the doorway now.
I saw her left hand move against her right breast,
the fingers gendy closing, and then fall away.
Donny knelt beneath her, lookmg up.
"Confess," he said.
Her body began to spasm.
I could smell her sweat
She nodded. She had to nod.
It was surrender.
"Get the ropes," he said to Willie.
Willie went to the table and untied the ropes, let
out some slack until her feet came down flat on the
bare cement floor, then tied them off again.
Her head fell forward with relief.
Donny stood up and removed the gag. I realized
it was Ruth's yellow kerchief. Then she opened her
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
mouth and he pulled out the rag they'd wadded up
and stuffed in there. He threw the rag on the floor
and put the kerchief in the back pocket of his
jeans. A comer hung out slightly. For a moment he
looked like a farmer.
"Could you . . . ? My arms . . ." she said. "My
shoulders . . . they hurt."
"No," said Donny. "That's it. That's all you get."
"Confess," said Woofer.
"Tell us how you play with yourself," said
Willie. "I bet you put your finger in, doncha?"
"No. Tell us about the syph." Woofer laughed.
"Yeah, the clap," said Willie, grinning.
"Cry," said Woofer.
"I already did cry," said Meg. And you could see
she'd got a little bit of the old tough defiance back
now that she wasn't hurting quite so much any-
more.
Woofer just shrugged. "So cry again," he said.
Meg said nothing.
I noticed that her nipples had gone softer now, a
smooth silky-looking shiny pink.
God! She was beautiful.
It was as though she read my mind.
"Is David here?" she said.
Willie and Donny looked at me. I couldn't an-
swer.
"He's here," said Willie.
"David.. ." she said. But then I guess she
couldn't finish. She didn't need to, though. I knew
by the way she said it.
She didn't want me there.
I knew why too. And knowing why shamed me
180 Jack Ketchurn
just as she'd shamed me before. But I couldn't
leave. The others were there. Besides, I didn't
want to. I wanted to see. I needed to see. Shame
looked square in the face of desire and looked
away again.
"And Susan?"
"Yeah. Her too," said Donny,
"Oh God."
"Screw that," said Woofer. "Who cares about
Susan?Where's the confession?"
And now Meg sounded weary and adult. "Con-
fession's stupid," she said. "There's no confession."
It stopped us.
"We could haul you right on up again," said
Willie.
"I know that."
"We could whip you," said Woofer.
Meg shook her head. "Please. Just leave me
alone. Leave me be. There's no confession."
And the thing was that nobody really expected
that.
For a moment we all just stood around waiting
for somebody to say something, something that
would convince her to play The Game the way it
was supposed to be played. Or force her. Or maybe
for Willie to haul her back again like he'd said.
Anything that would keep it going further.
But in just those few moments something was
gone. To get it back we'd have to start all over
again. I think we all knew it. The sweet heady feel-
ing of danger had suddenly slipped away. It had
gone as soon as she started talking.
 THE GfRL NEXT DoOl? 181
That was the key.
Talking, it was Meg again. Not some beautiful
naked victim, but Meg. A person with a mind, a
voice to express her mind, and maybe even rights
of her own.
Taking the gag off was a mistake.
It left us feeling sullen and angry and frustrated.
So we stood there.
It was Ruth who broke the silence.
"We could do that," she said.
"Do what?" asked Wdlie.
"Do what she says. Leave her alone. Let her
think about it awhile. That seems fine to me."
We thought about it.
"Yeah," said Woofer. "Leave her alone. In the
dark. Just hanging there."
It was one way, I thought, to start over.
Willie shrugged.
Donny looked at Meg. I could see he didn't want
to leave. He looked at her hard.
He raised his hand. Slowly, hesitantly, he moved
it toward her breasts.
And suddenly it was like I was part of him. I
could feel my own hand there, the fingers nearly
touching her. I could almost feel the slick moist
heat of her skin.
"Unh-unh," said Ruth. "No."
Donny looked at her. Then he stopped. Just
inches from her breast.
I took a breath.
"Don't you touch that girl," said Ruth. "I don't
want any of you touching her."
182 Jack Ketchum
He dropped his hand.
"Girl like her," said Ruth, "isn't even clean. You
keep your hands off her. You hear?"
We heard.
"Yeah, Ma," Donny said.
She turned to go. She stomped out her cigarette
butt on the floor and waved to us. "C'mon," she
said. "But first you better gag her again."
I looked at Donny, who was looking at the rag
on the floor.
"It's duty,"he said.
"Not that d r y , " said Ruth. "I don't want her
screaming at us all night. Put it in."
Then she turned to Meg.
"You want to think about one thing, girl," she
said. "Well, two dungs exactly. First that it could
be your little sister and not you hanging there. And
second that I know some of the things you've done
wrong. And I'm interested to hear them. So maybe
this confessing isn't such a kid's game after all. I
can hear it from the one of you or I can hear it
from the other. You think about that," she said,
and turned and walked away.
We listened to her climb the stairs.
Donny gagged her.
He could have touched her then but he didn't.
It was like Ruth was still in the room, watching.
A presence that was a whole lot more than the lin-
gering smell of her smoke in the air yet just as in-
substantial. Like Ruth was a ghost who haunted us,
her sons and me. Who'd haunt us forever if we
pushed or disobeyed her.
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 183
And I think I realized then the sharp razor edge
she'd honed to her permission.
The show was Ruth's and Ruth's only.
The Game was nonexistent.
And by that reckoning it was not just Meg but all
of us stripped and naked, hanging there.
 Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lying in bed, we were haunted by Meg. We
couldn't sleep.
Time would pass in total silence in the warm
dark and then somebody'd say something, how she
looked when Willie took the last book away, what
it must feel like to stand there so long with your
hands tied over your head, whether it hurt, what it
was like to &ally see a girl's naked body, and we'd
talk about that a while until moments later we got
quiet again as each of us wrapped himself up in his
own little cocoon of thought and dreams.
But there was only one object to these dreams.
Meg. Meg as we'd left her.
And finally we had to see her again.
Donny'd no sooner suggested it than we saw the
risks involved. Ruth had told us to leave her alone.
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 185
The house was small and sounds carried, and Ruth
slept one thin door away, in Susan's room-as Szl-
san lying awake like us? thinking of her sister?-
directly above the shelter. If Ruth awoke and
caught us the unthinkable might happen--she
might exclude us all in the future.
We already knew there'd be a future.
But the images we remembered were too strong.
It was almost as though we needed confirmation to
believe we'd really been there. Meg's nudity and
accessibility were like a siren's song. They ab-
solutely beckoned.
We had to risk it.

The night was moonless, black.

Donny and I climbed off the top bunks. Willie
and Woofer slid out beneath.
Ruth's door was closed.
We tiptoed past. For once Woofer resisted the
urge to giggle.
Willie lifted one of the flashlights off the kitchen
table and Donny eased open the cellar door.
The stairs squeaked. There was nothing to do
about it except pray and hope for luck.
The shelter door squeaked too but not so badly.
We opened it and went inside, standing barefoot
on the cold concrete floor the same as she was-
and there was Meg, exactly as we remembered as
though no time at all had passed, exactly as we'd
pictured her.
Well, not quite.
Her hands were white, splotched with red and
186 hck Kekhum
blue. And even in the flashlight's thin uneven
light you could see how pale her body was. She
was all gooseflesh, nipples puckered up brown
and tight.
She heard us come in and made a soft whiny
sound.
"Quiet," wlnspered Donny.
She obeyed.
We watched her. It was like standing in front of
some sort of s h e - o r like watching some
strange exotic animal in a zoo.
Like both at once.

And I wonder now if anythmg would have been

different had she not been so pretty, had her body
not been young and healthy and strong but ugly,
fat, flabby. Possibly not. Possibly it would have
happened anyway. The inevitable punishment of
the outsider.
But it seems to me more likely that it was pre-
cisely because she was beautiful and strong, and we
were not, that Ruth and the rest of us had done this
to her. To make a sort of judgment on that beauty,
on what it meant and didn't mean to us.

"I bet she'd like some water," said Woofer.

She shook her head. Yo.Oh yes please.
"If we give her water we got to take off the gag,"
said Willie. 8 .

"So what? She won't make noise."

He stepped forward.
"You won't make any noise, will ya, Meg? We
can't wake Mom."
 THE GIRL NUCT DOOR
No. She shook her head firmly side to side. You
could tell she wanted that water a lot.
"You trust her?" Willie said.
Donny shrugged. "If she makes any noise then
she gets in trouble too. She's not stupid. So give it
to her. Why not?"
"I'll get it," said Woofer.
There was a sink beside the washerldryer.
Woofer turned it on and we could hear it lightly
running behind us. He was being unusually quiet
about it.
Unusually nice, too, for Woofer.
Willie untied the gag just as he'd done earlier
and pulled the dirty wad of rag out of her mouth.
She moaned and began to work her jaw side to
side.
Woofer came back with an old glass fruit jar full
of water.
"I found it by the paint cans," he said. "It don't
smell too bad."
Donny took it from him and tilted it to Meg's
lips. She drank hungrily, making small glad noises
in her throat every time she swallowed. She
drained the jar in no time.
"Oh God," she said. "Oh God. Thank you."
And it was a weird feeling. Like everythlng was
forgiven. Like she was really grazef;cIto us.
It was amazing in a way. That just one jar of wa-
ter could do that.
I thought again how helpless she was.
And I wondered if the others were f e e 4 what I
was feeling-this overwhelming, almost dizzying
need to touch her. To put my hands on her. To see
188 Jack Ketchurn
exactly what shefeEt like. Breasts, buttocks, thighs.
That Mond-red curly tuft between her legs.
Exactly what we weren't supposed to do.
It nmde me feel like fainting. The push and pull.
It was that strong.
"Want some more?" said Woofer.
"Could I? Please?"
He ran out to the sink and then back again with
another jarful. He gave it to Donny and she drank
that too.
"Thanks. Thank you."
She licked her bps. They were chapped, dry,
split in places.
"Do you. . .do you think you could. . . ? The
ropes . . .they hurt me a lot."
And you could see they did. Even though her
feet were flat on the floor she was still stretched
tight.
Willie looked at Donny.
Then they both looked back at me.
I felt confused for a moment. Why should they
care what I thought? It was like there was some-
thing they were looking for from me and they
weren't sure that they'd find it.
Anyway, I nodded.
"I guess we could," said Donny. "A little. On
one condition though."
"Anydung.What?"
"You have to promise not tb fight."
"Fight?"
"You have to not to make any noise or
an* and you have to promise not to fight and
not to tell anybody later on. TeU anybody aWw."
 THE GIRL NEXT DOOR 189
"Tell what?"
"That we touched you."
And there it was.
It was what we'd all been dreaming about in that
bedroom upstairs. I shouldn't have been surprised.
But I was. I could hardly breathe. I felt like every-
body in the room could hear my heartbeat.
"Touched me?" said Meg.
Donny blushed deeply. "You know."
"Oh my God," she said. She shook her head.
"Oh Jesus. Come on."
She sighed. Then thought for a moment.
"No," she said.
"We wouldn't hurt you or anything," said
rust
D O ~ Y . touch."
"No."
Like she'd weighed and considered it and simply
couldn't see her way clear to do that no matter what
happened and that was her find say on the matter.
"Honest. We wouldn't."
"No. You're not doing that to me. Any of you."
She was mad now. But so was Donny.
"We could do it to you anyway, jerk-of. Who's
gonna stop us?"
"I am."
"How?"
"Well you'll only do it to me once goddamn you,
and only one of you. Because I won't just tell. I'll
scream."
And there wasn't any question but that she
meant it. She'd scream. She didn't care.
She had us.
"Okay," said Donny. "Fine. Then we leave the
 1% Jack Ketchum
- ropes the way they are. We put the gag back on
and that's that."
You could see she was close to tears. But she
wasn't giving in to him. Not on this. Her voice was
bitter.
"All right," she said. "Gag me. Do it. Leave. Get
out of here!"
"We will."
He nodded to Willie and Willie stepped for-
ward with the rag and scarf.
"Open up," he said.
For a moment she hesitated. Then she opened
her mouth. He put the rag in and tied the scarf
around it. He tied it tighter than he had to, tighter
than before.
"We still got a deal," said Donny. "You got
some water. But we were never here. You under-
stand me?"
She nodded. It was hard to be naked and hang-
ing there and proud at the same time but she man-
aged it.
You couldn't help admiring her.
"Good," he said. He turned to leave.
I had an idea.
I reached out and touched his arm as he passed
and stopped him.
"Donny?"
"Yeah?"
"Look.Let's give her some slack.Just a little. All
we have to do is push the workxable up an inch or
two. Ruth won't notice. I mean, look at her. You
want to dislocate a shoulder or something? Morn-
ing's a long way off, you h o w what I mean?"
 I said this in a voice loud enough so that she
could hear.
He shrugged. W e gave her a choice. She wasn't
interested."
"I know that," I said. And here I leaned forward
and smiled at him and whispered. "But she might
be gratef;unI said. "You know? She might remem-
ber. Next time."

We pushed the table.

Actually we sort of lifted and pushed it so as not
to make much noise and with the three of us and
Woofer it wasn't too hard. And when we were
done she had maybe an inch of slack, just enough
to give her a bend at the elbow. It was more than
she'd had in a very long while.
"See you," I whispered as I closed the door.
And in the dark I think she nodded.
I was a conspirator now, I thought. In two ways.
On both sides.
I was worlung both sides from the middle.
What a great idea.
I was proud of myself.
I felt smart and virtuous and excited. I'd helped
her. One day would come the payoff. One day, I
knew, she'd let me touch her. It would come to
that. Maybe not the others-but me.
She'd let me.
So "See you, Meg," I whispered.
Like she'd thank me.
I was out of my mind. I was crazy.
 Chapter Thirty
In the morning we came down and Ruth had un-
tied her and brought her a change of clothes along
with a cup of hot tea and some unbuttered white
toast and she was clnnkmg and eating that sitting
cross-legged on the air mattress when we arrived.
Clothed, freed, with the gag and blindfold gone,
there wasn't much mystery left in her. She looked
pale, haggard. Tired and distinctly grumpy. It was
hard to remember the proud Meg or the suffering
Meg of the day before.
You could see she was having trouble swallowing.
Ruth stood over her acting like a mother.
"Eat your toast," she said.
Meg looked up at her and then down at the pa-
per plate in her lap.
We could hear the television upstairs-some
game show. Willie shuffled his feet.
 It was rainingoutside and we dhear that too.
She took a bite of the crust and then chewed
forever until it must have been as thin as spit be-
fore swallowing.
Ruth sighed. It was as though wa- Meg
chew was this great big mal for her. She put her
hands on her hips and with her legs apart she
looked like George Reeves in the opening credits
of Superman.
"Go on. Have some more," she said.
Meg shook her head. "It's too.. .I can't. My
mouth is so dry. Could I just wait? Have it later?
I'll drink the tea."
"I'm not wasting food, Meg. Rood's expensive. I
ma& that toast for you."
"I . . .I know. Only . . ."
"What do you want me to do? Throw it ou*?"
"No. Couldn't you just leave it here? 1'11 have it
in a while."
"It'll be hard by then. You should eat it now.
While it's fresh. It'll bring bugs. Roaches. Ants.
I'm not having bugs in my house."
Which was kind of funny because there already
were a couple of flies buzzing around in there.
"I'll eat it red soon, Ruth. I promise."
Ruth seemed to think about i t She adjusted her
stance, brought her feet together, folded her arms
across her breasts.
"Meg honey," she said, "I want you to try to eat
it now. It's good for you."
"I know it is. Only it's hard for me now. I'll drink
the tea, okay?"
She raised the mug to h& lips.
194 lack Ketchum
"It's not supposed to be easy," said Ruth. "No-
body said it was easy." She laughed. "You're a
woman, Meg. That's hard-not easy."
Meg looked up at her and nodded and drank
steadily at the tea.
Donny and Woofer and Willie and I stood in
our pajamas and watched from the doorway.
I was gettine; a little hungry myself. But neither
Ruth nor Meg had acknowledged us.
Ruth watched her and Meg kept her eyes on
Ruth and drank, small careful sips because the tea
was still steamy hot, and we could hear the wind
and rain outside and then the sump pump kicking
in for a while and stopping, and still Meg drank
and Ruth just stared.
And then Meg looked down for a moment,
breathing in the warm fragrant steam from the tea,
enjoying it.
And Ruth exploded.
She whacked the mug from her hands. It shat-
tered against the whitewashed cinder-block wall.
Tea running down, the color of urine.
"Eat it!"
She stabbed her finger at the toast. It had slipped
halfway off the paper plate.
Meg held up her hands.
"Okay! All right! I will! I'll eat it right away! All
right?"
Ruth leaned down to her so that they were al-
most nose to nose and Meg couldn't have taken a
bite then if she'd wanted to-not without pushing
the toast up into Ruth's face. Which wouldn't have
been a good idea. Because Ruth was burning mad.