The Knife Thrower by Steven Millhauser Read Free Book Online Page B

the group, Meyer experienced, in addition to his self-revulsion, an intense fear of what he was about to witness. The seven girls did not speak, although they greeted one another with nods. Following what appeared to be a prearranged plan, the girls formed a small, close circle and raised their arms in such a way that all their forearms crossed. After this silent sign the girls separated and took up isolated positions, sitting against separate trees or lying with arms clasped behind the head. Not a single word was uttered. Nothing happened. After thirty-five minutes by his watch, Meyer turned and crept away.
RESPONSE TO MEYER’S TESTIMONY
    Meyer’s testimony, far from resolving the problem of the sisterhood, plunged us into deeper controversy. Enemies of the sisterhood heaped scorn on Meyer’s report, although they disagreed about the nature of its untrustworthiness. Some insisted that Meyerhad invented the whole thing in a crude effort to protect his daughter; others argued that clever Hilda Meyer had plotted the entire episode, cunningly leading her father to the woods in order to have him witness a staged scene: The Innocent Maidens in Repose. Others pointed out that even if no deception had been practiced, by either Robert Meyer or his daughter, the testimony was in no sense decisive: Meyer by his own admission did not remain during the entire meeting, he observed the girls only a single time, and he observed only a single group of girls out of many groups. Was it not unlikely, people asked, was it not highly unlikely, that girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen would sneak out of their houses night after night, risking parental disapproval and even punishment, in order to meet with other girls in secluded and possibly dangerous places, solely for the purpose of doing nothing? This was not necessarily to say that the girls were engaging in forbidden deeds, although such deeds could never be ruled out, but merely to suggest that what they did do remained exasperatingly unknown. It was even possible that the girls, at the very time they were being observed by Meyer, had engaged in secret practices that he had failed to recognize; perhaps they had developed a system of signs and signals that Meyer had not been able to read.
THE TOWN
    Night after night the members of the secret sisterhood set forth from their snug and restful rooms, the rooms of their childhood, to seek out dark and hidden places. Sometimes we see, or think we see, a group of them vanishing into the shadows of back yards litby kitchen windows, or gliding out of sight along a dark front lawn. Disdainful of our wishes, indifferent to our unhappiness, they seem a race apart, wild creatures of the night with streaming hair and eyes of fire, until we recall with a start that they are our daughters. What shall we do with our daughters? Uneasily we keep watch over them, fearful of provoking them to open defiance. Some say that we should lock our daughters in their rooms at night, that we should place bars on their windows, that we should punish them harshly, over and over again, until they bow their heads in obedience. One father is said to tie his thirteen-year-old daughter to her bed at night with clothesline rope and to reward her cries with blows from a leather belt. Most deplore such measures but remain uncertain what to do. Meanwhile our daughters are restless, night after night bands of girls are seen disappearing into dark places beyond the reach of streetlights. The sisterhood is growing. There are reports of girls moving across the parking lot behind the lumberyard, meeting in the small wood behind the high school tennis courts, climbing from the cellars of half-built houses, emerging from the boat shed by South Pond. Always they move at night, as if searching for something, something they cannot find in sunlight; and we who remain at home, awake in the dark, seem to hear, like the distant hum of trucks on the thruway, a continual faint sound of