Free People Who Knock on the Door by Patricia Highsmith

yet. I was experimenting to see how long they’ll keep wiggling if they’re under water for so long.”
    Arthur groaned. Submersion, drowning, and then their limp forms would be stirred on the hook by the water. That was the way it would go in fishing. “How many times has he been out fishing?” Arthur asked his mother, mildly interested, because Robbie was accident-prone. Robbie would lean over a boat’s side, reaching for something, and just fall in.
    “ I don’t know.” Then Lois said to her mother, “We’re treating Robbie like a big boy this year, leaving him on his own in the afternoons, and he promised not to go off anywhere without telling me. Didn’t you, Robbie?”
    “I did say I was going fishing last Friday, and you said okay,” replied Robbie, and his face grew a little pink.
    “Just always say where you’re going, Robbie,” said Richard, “and tell your mother who you’re with. These older fellows, who are they?”
    “Reggie Dewey—He’s eighteen. St—”
    “School drop-out,” Arthur put in. “I know him.”
    “Steve and Bill,” Robbie went on. “Bill and a man named Jeff are much older.”
    “How do you get to Delmar Lake, on your bike?” Arthur asked. The lake was nearly three miles away.
    “Reggie or Jeff picks me up. Once I went on my bike.”
    “I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Richard murmured in Lois’s direction. “You’re not the best swimmer in the world, Robbie, and you can’t depend on another fellow in the boat—risking his life just to jump in after you.”
    “Maybe I can count on God ,” Robbie said.
    Arthur laughed and almost swallowed something the wrong way. He looked at his grandmother, who was smiling and listening to all this with interest.
    “Now, Robbie, God helped you through one really— bad—spot,” said Richard, trying to make every word sink in. “Don’t you tempt Him by your own foolish behavior. God might not be ready with a second miracle just to save you .”
    Robbie’s blondish brows drew closer together. “I dig worms for the fellows. I bait the hooks. The fellows like me.”
    “Sure,” Arthur said. “I bet you’re their slave.”
    “They say I can keep quiet when everybody’s got to be quiet,” Robbie continued to his father. “That’s why they like me.”
    Around midnight, his grandmother rapped on Arthur’s door. He had been hoping she would do exactly that and had left his door the least bit ajar. He was in bed, reading.
    “Come in,” Arthur said with a big smile. “Close the door. Can you find a place to sit?” He jumped out of bed, but he had already cleared his armchair and turned it facing his bed.
    “Well, well, nice to be here, Arthur,” said his grandmother, sitting down. She was in slippers and nightgown and a pretty robe of blue and yellow.
    Arthur put on his new dressing gown and sat on the edge of his bed. “So—you didn’t hear as much about religion tonight as I’d feared, but—what do you think?”
    “About Richard? About life?” She leaned forward and laughed heartily but softly. “Does it bother you so much?—You’re looking well, Arthur. Happier than the last time I saw you.”
    Had he been moping over a girl at Christmas? He couldn’t remember. “I told you I met a nice girl. I have a nice girl. She’s different—from most girls.”
    “How different?”
    Arthur looked at the ceiling. “First, she’s quite pretty and she doesn’t use it. And she’s reliable.”
    “ I see,” said his grandmother. “And what’s she interested in? She’s going to go to college, too?”
    “Radcliffe. Interested in puppets. Stage designing. Something to do with people, she says, but she doesn’t know exactly what yet. So she wants to start with liberal arts at Radcliffe until she—decides. Oh, you’ll meet her, maybe this week.—But what did you think of the prayer tonight, the blessing? Doesn’t it make you feel sort of stiff?”
    “Well—” His grandmother let several