founded on mutual decent respect for the other's individualism and personal dignity.
But I did look at her. Knobby knees, stringy, shooting up fast, not yet filled out, she was not as pretty as she had been as a baby girl. The shorts and T-shirt she was wearing, combined with peeling sunburn, scratches, bruises, and an understandable amount of dirt, did not add up to feminine glamour. She was a matchstick sketch of the woman she would become, her coltish gawkiness relieved only by her enormous solemn eyes and the pixie beauty of her thin smudged features.
She looked adorable.
I said, 'And I'm awful glad to be here, Ricky.'
Trying awkwardly to manage Pete with one arm, she reached with her other hand for a bulging pocket in her shorts. 'I'm surprised too. I just this minute got a letter from you-they dragged me away from mail call; I haven't even had a chance to open it. Does it say that you're coming today?' She got it out, creased and mussed from being crammed into a pocket too small.
'No, it doesn't, Ricky. It says I'm going away. But after I mailed it, I decided I just had to come say good-by in person.'
She looked bleak and dropped her eyes. 'You're going away?'
'Yes. I'll explain, Ricky, but it's rather long. Let's sit down and I'll tell you about it.' So we sat on opposite sides of the picnic table under the ponderosas and I talked. Pete lay on the table between us, making a library lion of himself with his forepaws on the creased letter, and sang a low song like bees buzzing in deep clover, while he narrowed his eyes in contentment.
I was much relieved to find that she already knew that Miles had married Belle-I hadn't relished having to break that to her. She glanced up, dropped her eyes at once, and said with no expression at all, 'Yes, I know. Daddy wrote me about it.'
'Oh. I see.'
She suddenly looked grim and not at all a child. 'I'm not going back there, Danny. I won't go back there.'
'But-Look here, Rikki-tikki-tavi, I know how you feel. I certainly don't want you to go back there-I'd take you away myself if I could. But how can you help going back? He's your daddy and you are only eleven.'
'I don't have to go back. He's not my real daddy. My grandmother is coming to get me.'
'What? When's she coming?'
'Tomorrow. She has to drive up from Brawley. I wrote her about it and asked her if I could come live with her because I wouldn't live with Daddy any more with her there.' She managed to put more contempt into one pronoun than an adult could have squeezed out of profanity. 'Grandma wrote back and said that I didn't have to live there if I didn't want to because he had never adopted me and she was my `guardian of record.'' She looked up anxiously. 'That's right, isn't it? They can't make me?'
I felt an overpowering flood of relief. The one thing I had not been able to figure out, a problem that had worried me for months, was how to keep Ricky from being subjected to the poisonous influence of Belle for-well, two years; it had seemed certain that it would be about two years. 'If he never adopted you, Ricky, I'm certain that your grandmother can make it stick if you are both firm about it.' Then I frowned and chewed my lip. 'But you may have some trouble tomorrow. They may object to letting you go with her.'
'How can they stop me? I'll just get in the car and go.'
'It's not that simple, Ricky. These people who run the camp, they have to follow rules. Your daddy-Miles, I mean-Miles turned you over to them; they won't be willing to turn you back over to anyone but him.'
She stuck out her lower lip. 'I won't go. I'm going with Grandma.'
'Yes. But maybe I can tell you how to make it easy. If I were you, I wouldn't tell them that I'm leaving camp; I'd just tell them that your grandmother wants to take you for a ride-then don't come back.'
Some of her tension relaxed. 'All right.'
'Uh... don't pack a bag or anything or they may guess what you're doing. Don't try to take any clothes but those you are wearing at the time. Put any money or anything you really want to save into your pockets. You don't have much here that you would really mind losing, I suppose?'
'I guess not.' But she looked wistful. 'rye got a brand-new swim suit.'
How do you explain to a child that there are times when you just must abandon your baggage? You can't- they'll go back into a burning building to save a doll or a toy elephant. 'Mmm...Ricky, have your grandmother tell them that she is taking you over to Arrowhead to have a swim with her... and that she may take you to dinner at the hotel there, but that she will have you back before taps. Then you can carry your swimming suit and a towel. But nothing else. Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?'
'I guess so. Yes, I'm sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people couldn't stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not abused.'
'She sounds like a sensible person. You'll do it that way?'
'I'll do it just that way, Danny.'
`Good.' I picked up the battered envelope. 'Picky, I told you I had to go away. I have to go away for a very long time.'
'How long?'
'Thirty years.'
Her eyes grew wider if possible. At eleven, thirty years is not a long time; it's forever. I added, 'I'm sorry, Ricky. But I have to.'
'Why?'
I could not answer that one. The true answer was unbelievable and a lie would not do. 'Picky, it's much too hard to explain. But I have to. I can't help it.' I hesitated, then added, 'I'm going to take the Long Sleep. The cold sleep-you know what I mean.'
She knew. Children get used to new ideas faster than adults do; cold sleep was a favorite comic-book theme. She looked horrified and protested, 'But, Danny, I'll never see you again~'
'Yes, you will. It's a long time but I'll see you again. And so will Pete. Because Pete is going with me; he's going to cold-sleep too.'
She glanced at Pete and looked more woebegone than ever.
'But-Danny, why don't you and Pete just come down to Brawley and live with us? That would be ever so much better. Grandma will like Pete. She'll like you too-she says there's nothing like having a man around the house.'
'Ricky... dear Ricky... I have to. Please don't tease me.' I started to tear open the envelope.
She looked angry and her chin started to quiver. 'I think she has something to do with this!'
'What? If you mean Belle, she doesn't. Not exactly, anyway.'
'She's not going to cold-sleep with you?'
I think I shuddered. 'Good heavens, not I'd run miles to avoid her.'
Picky seemed slightly mollified. 'You know, I was so mad at you about her. I had an awful outrage.'
'I'm sorry, Ricky. I'm truly sorry. You were right and I was wrong. But she hasn't anything to do with this. I'm through with her, forever and forever and cross my heart. Now about this.' I held up the certificate for all that I owned in Hired Girl, Inc. 'Do you know what it is?'
I explained it to her. 'I'm giving this to you, Picky. Because I'm going to be gone so long I want you to have it.' I took the paper on which I had written an assignment to her, tore it up, and put the pieces in my pocket; I could not risk doing it that way-it would be too easy for Belle to tear up a separate sheet and we were not yet out of the woods. I turned the certificate over and studied the standard assignment form on the back, trying to plan how to work it in the Bank of America in trust for- 'Ricky, what is your full name?'
'Frederica Virginia. Frederica Virginia Gentry. You know.'
'Is it `Gentry'? I thought you said Miles had never adopted you?'
'Oh! I've been Picky Gentry as long as I can remember. But you mean my real name. It's the same as Grandma's ... the same as my real daddy's. Heinicke. But nobody ever calls me that.'
'They will now.' I wrote 'Frederica Virginia Heinicke' and added 'and to be reassigned to her on her twenty- first birthday' while prickles ran down my spine-my original assignment might have been defective in any case.
I started to sign and then noticed our watchdog sticking her head out of the office. I glanced at my wrist, saw
