It was almost night when she climbed out of the pit. She glanced up at the hilltop house and then started down toward the deserted lower road. When she reached the outskirts of town she chose the darkest streets so that the coat would be less noticeable. She hated the thick pats of clay that were embedded in its wool; moreover she was suffering from a sense of inner untidiness as a result of the unexpected change in her daily routine. She walked along slowly, scuffing her heels, her face wearing the expression of a person surfeited with food. Far underneath her increasingly lethargic mood lurked a feeling of apprehension; she knew she would be reprimanded for returning home after dark, but she never would admit either the possibility of punishment or the fear of it. At this period she was rapidly perfecting a psychological mechanism which enabled her to forget, for long stretches of time, that her parents existed.
She found her father in the vestibule hanging his coat up on a peg. Her heart sank as he turned around to greet her. Without seeming to, he took in the pats of clay at a glance, but his shifting eyes never alighted candidly on any object.
“You’ve been playing in that pit below the Speed house again,” he said to her. “From now on, I want you to play at the Kinsey Memorial Grounds.” Since he appeared to have nothing to say, she started away, but immediately he continued. “Some day you may have to live in a town where the administration doesn’t make any provision for children at all. Or it may provide you with a small plot of land and a couple of dinky swings. There’s a very decent sum goes each year to the grounds here. They provide you with swings, seesaws and chin bars.” He glanced furtively at her coat. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I drive past that pit on my way out to Sam’s. I’ll draw up to the edge of the road and look down. See that you’re over at the Memorial Grounds with the other children.”
Mary never passed the playgrounds without quickening her step. This site, where the screams of several dozen children mingled with the high, grinding sound of the moving swings, she had always automatically hated. It was the antithesis of her clay pit and the well-ordered barracks inside it.
When she went to bed, she was in such a state of wild excitement that she was unable to sleep. It was the first time that her father’s observations had not made her feel either humiliated or ill. The following day after school she set out for the pit. As she was climbing the long hill (she always approached her barracks from the lower road), she slackened her pace and stood still. All at once she had had the fear that by looking into her eyes the soldiers might divine her father’s existence. To each one of them she was like himself — a man without a family. After a minute she resumed her climb. When she reached the edge of the pit, she put both feet together and jumped inside.
“Men,” she said, once she had blown the bugle and made a few routine announcements, “I know you have hard muscles in your legs. But how would you like to have even harder ones?” It was a rhetorical question to which she did not expect an answer. “We’re going to have hurdle races and plain running every day now for two hours.”
Though in her mind she knew dimly that this intensified track training was preparatory to an imminent battle on the Memorial playgrounds, she did not dare discuss it with her men, or even think about it too precisely herself. She had to avoid coming face to face with an impossibility.
“As we all know,” she continued, “we don’t like to have teams because we’ve been through too much on the battlefield all together. Every day I’ll divide you up fresh before the racing, so that the ones who are against each other today, for instance, will be running on the same side tomorrow. The men in our outfit are funny about taking sides against each other, even just in play and athletics. The other outfits in this country don’t feel the same as we do.”
She dug her hands into her pockets and hung her head sheepishly. She was fine now, and certain of victory. She could feel the men’s hearts bursting with love for her and with pride in their regiment. She looked up — a car was rounding the bend, and as it came nearer she recognized it as her father’s.
“Men,” she said in a clear voice, “you can do what you want for thirty minutes while I make out the racing schedule and the team lists.” She stared unflinchingly at the dark blue sedan and waited with perfect outward calm for her father to slow down; she was still waiting after the car had curved out of sight. When she realized that he was gone, she held her breath. She expected her heart to leap for joy, but it did not.
* * *
“Now I’ll go to my headquarters,” she announced in a flat voice. “I’ll be back with the team lists in twenty-five minutes.” She glanced up at the highway; she felt oddly disappointed and uneasy. A small figure was descending the stone steps on the other side of the highway. It was a boy. She watched in amazement; she had never seen anyone come down these steps before. Since the highway had replaced the old country road, the family living in the hilltop house came and went through the back door.
Watching the boy, she felt increasingly certain that he was on his way down to the pit. He stepped off the curb after looking prudently for cars in each direction; then he crossed the highway and clambered down the hill. Just as she had expected him to, when he reached the edge of the pit he seated himself on the ground and slid into it, smearing his coat — dark like her own — with clay.
“It’s a big clay pit,” he said, looking up at her. He was younger than she, but he looked straight into her eyes without a trace of shyness. She knew he was a stranger in town; she had never seen him before. This made him less detestable, nonetheless she had to be rid of him shortly because the men were expecting her back with the team lists.
“Where do you come from?” she asked him.
“From inside that house.” He pointed at the hilltop.
“Where do you live when you’re not visiting?”
“I live inside that house,” he repeated, and he sat down on the floor of the pit.
“Sit on the orange crate,” she ordered him severely. “You don’t pay any attention to your coat.”
He shook his head. She was exasperated with him because he was untidy, and he had lied to her. She knew perfectly well that he was merely a visitor in the hilltop house.
“Why did you come out this door?” she asked, looking at him sharply. “The people in that house go out the back. It’s level there and they’ve got a drive.”
“I don’t know why,” he answered simply.
“Where do you come from?” she asked again.
“That’s my house.” He pointed to it as if she were asking him for the first time. “The driveway in back’s got gravel in it. I’ve got a whole box of it in my room. I can bring it down.”
“No gravel’s coming in here that belongs to a liar,” she interrupted him. “Tell me where you come from and then you can go get it.”
He stood up. “I live in that big house up there,” he said calmly. “From my room I can see the river, the road down there and the road up here, and this pit and you.”
“It’s not your room!” she shouted angrily. “You’re a visitor there. I was a visitor last year at my aunt’s.”
“Good-bye.”
He was climbing out of the pit. Once outside he turned around and looked down at her. There was an expression of fulfillment on his face.
“I’ll bring the gravel some time soon,” he said.
She watched him crossing the highway. Then automatically she climbed out of the pit.