Chapter 11 – Planning to Deceive
At the end of the first week in August, we watched Win and Jimmy’s team win the Little League championship, then we had a big celebration afterward in the cabin. We cooked a couple cans of pork and beans on our camp stove, along with hot dogs and potato chips. The other kids had given us a collection of miscellaneous equipment from their Boy Scout or 4-H stuff, like canteens and cooking gear. We wanted our own camping stuff to be at home where our parents could find it.
It was still three weeks until the Fair; plenty of time to finish all our planning and figure out what else we needed. Win and I had another trip to the Parish Hall planned for the next Saturday, with two purposes; I needed to talk to Kelly and convince her to help us, and we needed to try to get four folding chairs.
Now that the cabin was built, we could concentrate on planning. Tom, our Security Chief, was in his glory now. The other three kids were going to be our lifeline once we disappeared, and Tom drilled them over and over in the basics. They would be bringing us supplies on the weekends, bread and sandwich meat and whatever else they could come up with, and they had to be constantly on guard to be sure they weren’t caught stealing food, or followed when they were hiking to the cabin.
We would also be relying on them to bring us information. We had the radio, so we could follow the news, but that would only tell us so much. Jimmy and Larry were going into sixth grade, so all three of them would be in the same school, and they would be able to fill us in on what the teachers were doing and saying, and what rumors were going around. Roy was in our class, starting seventh, so he would be rubbing elbows with our classmates and listening to our teachers. He could end up being a vital source of information.
All three of them, of course, would have to play innocent and not give us away. We were pretty sure we could rely on them. They would also be crucial to our primary deception plan, although we had an idea to reinforce the plan, but it would have to wait for the Fair.
That next Saturday night, the fifteenth, Win and I headed for the Parish Hall for our final raid. As I had hoped, Kelly was there, and, while Win worked his way around to getting into the storeroom, I talked to Kelly.
She had been very pleased with the Dylan album, and had already thanked me for it, so we were on pretty friendly terms. I told her straight away that we had something planned, something that was going to strike a blow against the teachers, the cops, and the whole authority structure in our sordid little village. She loved it when I talked that way, and she was intrigued immediately. I made it clear that I was taking her into our confidence, and that she would have the power to turn us in and ruin everything, but that, if she wanted, she could really help us out.
This was probably the biggest risk any of us had taken yet, but I felt it was worth it. Fortunately, she liked it. She liked what we were doing and wished she could do something like it. I told her that she could do her part to help us out. We had a primary deception plan that might only be good for a few days, a week at most, and then we were going to need something else. As Win returned to the table, I assured both of them that they could trust one another, and I laid out the plan for her.
She loved it. Kelly was a clever girl, and she immediately proposed a refinement to the plan that really helped. Win and I left the Parish Hall feeling very much better about things, and we returned after dark to grab four folding chairs from the storeroom.