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He saw the blood and the hungry foxes and the torn rabbits.
"And learn to give and take," she was saying, "and fight if he has to."
"Fight if he has to," he murmured.
"I knew you’d come around."
"Around," he said. "You’re right. No way out. He must be sacrificed."
"Oh, Charlie, you are odd."
He cleared his throat. "Well, that’s settled."
"Yes."
I wonder what it would be like, he thought.
"Everything else okay?" he asked the phone.
He thought of the diagrams in the dust, the boy seated there with the hidden bones in his face.
"Yes," she said.
"I’ve been thinking," he said.
"Speak up."
"I’ll be home at three," he said, slowly, piecing out the words likea man hit in the stomach, gasping for breath. "We’ll take a walk, you and Jim and I," he said, eyes shut.
"Wonderful!"
"To the Playground," he said and hung up.
It was really autumn now, the real chill, the real snap; overnight the trees burnt red and snapped free of their leaves, which spiraled about Mr. Underhill’s face as he walked up the front steps, and there were Carol and Jim, bundled up against the sharp wind, waiting for him.
"Hello!" they cried to one another, with much embracing and kissing. "There’s Jim down there!" "There’s Daddy up there!" They laughed and he felt paralyzed and in terror of the late day. It was almost four. He looked at the leaden sky, which might pour down molten silver any moment, a sky of lava and soot and a wet wind blowing out of it. He held his sister’s arm very tightly as they walked. "Aren’t you friendly, though?" She smiled.
"It’s ridiculous, of course," he said, thinking of something else.
"What?"
They were at the Playground gate.
"Hello, Charlie. Hi!" Far away, atop the monstrous slide stood the Marshall boy, waving, not smiling now.
"You wait here," said Mr. Underhill to his sister. "I’ll be only a moment. I’ll just take Jim in."
"All right."
He grasped the small boy’s hand. "Here we go, Jim. Stick close to Daddy."
They stepped down the hard concrete steps and stood in the flat dust. Before them, in a magical sequence, stood the diagrams, the gigantic tic-tac-toes, the monstrous hop-scotches, the amazing numerals and triangles and oblongs the children had scrabbled in the incredible dust.
The sky blew a huge wind upon him and he was shivering. He grasped the little boy’s hand still tighter and turned to his sister. "Good-bye," he said. For he was believing it. He was in the Playground and believing it, and it was for the best. Nothing too good for Jim. Nothing at all in this outrageous world! And now his sister was laughing back at him, "Charlie, you idiot!"
Then they were running, running across the dirt Playground floor, at the bottom of a stony sea that pressed and blew upon them. Now Jim was crying, "Daddy, Daddy!" and the children racing to meet them, the boy on the slide yelling, the tic-tac-toe and hop-scotches whirling, a sense of bodiless terror gripping him, but he knew what he must do and what must be done and what would happen. Far across the field footballs sailed, baseballs whizzed, bats flew, fists flashed up, and the door of the Manager’s office stood open, the desk empty, the seat empty, a lone light burning over it.
Underhill stumbled, shut his eyes and fell, crying out, his body clenched by a hot pain, mouthing strange words, everything in turmoil.
