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Billy loved flowers and poetry and helping his mother around the house, but he knew that Chalmer called him “a sissy” and “a little queer.” So he stopped helping his mother and writing poetry. “Adalana” came to do them for him in secret.

One evening Chalmer settled down to watch a World War II movie in which a Gestapo interrogator beat his victim with a hose. When the movie was over, Chalmer went out into the yard and cut a four-foot length of garden hose, doubled it and wrapped the cut ends together with black tape for a handle. When he came inside he saw Billy washing the dishes.

Before she knew what was happening, Adalana felt a blow in the small of her back that knocked her to the floor

Chalmer hung the hose by the looped end on his bedroom door and went to bed.

Adalana learned that men were violent and hateful and never to be trusted. She wished Dorothy or one of the girls— Kathy or Challa—would hug her and kiss her and make the fear and the bad feelings go away. But she knew that would cause trouble, so she went to bed and cried herself to sleep.

Chalmer used that hose often, mostly on Billy. Dorothy recalled hanging her robe or nightgown over it on the back of the bedroom door, hoping that if Chalmer didn’t see it, he wouldn’t use it. Then one day, after he hadn’t used it for a long time, she threw it away. He never did know what had happened to it.

In addition to secretly playing with motors and electrical equipment, Tommy began to study methods of escape. He read about the great escape artists Houdini and Sylvester, and was disappointed to discover that some of their great escapes were tricks.

In later years Jimbo remembered his brother telling him to tie his hands tightly with a rope and then to leave. When Tommy was alone he would study the knots and figure out the easiest way to turn his wrists to make them mobile so that the ropes would slide. He practiced tying one wrist with a rope and then untying it with his hand behind his back.

After reading of African monkey traps—used to capture the animals when they reached through narrow slots for food and were then unable to pull their fists free because they wouldn’t let go—Tommy began to think about the structure of the human hand. He studied the encyclopedia pictures of bone structure, and it occurred to him that if the hand could be compressed smaller than the wrist, it could always get free. He measured his own hands and wrists and began a series of exercises, squeezing and conditioning his bones and joints. When he finally reached the point of being able to compress his hands smaller than his wrists, he knew that nothing could ever again keep him in harness or chains.

Tommy decided he also needed to know how to get out of locked rooms. When Billy’s mother was out and he was alone in the house, he got a screwdriver and unscrewed the lock plate of the door, studying the mechanism to see how it worked. He drew a picture of the inside of the lock and memorized the shapes. Whenever he saw a different lock, he would take it apart, study it and put it back together.