MY CRAZY FEVER BRAIN LIKES the look on Jerry T. Balls’s face when I say his first name. His eyes are hidden by the towel, but behind his big beard his mouth turns into a tight line. The knife is already in, and I decide to push on it, dig it deeper. I recite his full name and address. It might be a mistake, but I decide to say, “I wrote all that in giant letters on the Logan garage. Did you see the cop car head up to their place? I bet they’ve found it by now.”
He doesn’t say anything. The towel and beard hide a lot, but there’s something different about him, about the way he’s holding his jaw, his arms. It frightens me, this change. I don’t want to be frightened; I want to be satisfied.
“So, what did they call you? It wasn’t Jerry. I don’t remember hearing Jerry.”
“Ted.” It’s a tight, single syllable. It comes out coiled, ready to strike.
“That explains the T in Jerry T. Balls.” He doesn’t nod or act as though he heard me. “You want to know how I knew there were six?”
Long pause, then: “Yes.”
In truth I probably subconsciously counted six pairs of underwear on that horrific end table of his, but I want to tell him my ghost story, get deeper under his skin. “After you shot me in the field, by the bear-bait bucket, I hid up against some rocks. I prayed to your victims and asked for their help. You were right next to me, but you didn’t know it. You kicked a rock down the hillside, and a buck spooked in the forest. You chased the buck. Then the six ghosts of your victims came to me. I saw them. All so young. I bet some weren’t even teenagers.”
I don’t expect him to say anything and he doesn’t. I’m disappointed. I want under his skin, I want to burrow under it and scratch around. I want to make him bleed.
“You buried them under the cabin, didn’t you?”
Wolfman sits immobile.
He needs to be provoked, so I yell, “Didn’t you?”
In the end I don’t think it’s my volume but his curiosity that makes him say, “How do you know these things?”
It gives me satisfaction to say, “I told you. The ghosts.” I mention nothing of the lines I saw cut into the floor. Now that he’s talking, I get to the meat of what I want to know. “Why did you kill those girls?”
“They were evil.”
“Bullshit!” This time I don’t have to fake the anger. The rage is right there, ready for me. I ask again, in a controlled voice, “Why did you kill them?”
“They were impure.”
“Bullshit!” I scream. “They were little girls! They were just little girls! Little girls can’t be impure.”
Maybe it’s because my rage has made my voice shake, but his old confidence returns, and when he speaks, it’s with that principal--explaining-something-complicated tone. “Have you ever spent time with children?” he asks. “Have you ever seen how children treat other children? Have you ever seen a bully on a school bus?”
He pauses, and I can tell he’s really asking. I don’t say anything.
“Have you ever seen a bully on a school bus?”
I decide to be honest. “Yes.” But yes doesn’t really cover it. I’ve seen terrible things happen on a school bus, terrible, terrible things. Nothing ever happened to me, and I never did anything to anybody else. But I saw. And stayed quiet.
Wolfman continues, in that hateful, overly patient way of his. “It’s when they’re young that you can see them for what they really are. You can see their impurities.”
I bring the conversation back to the truth. “They didn’t deserve to die.” He says nothing, just vacuums up more water. “I don’t deserve to die.” Nothing again. “I think you do though.”
He swallows his giant gulp of water and says, “Hypocrite.”
I lean forward again, almost whisper, “I don’t give a shit what you think I am.”
Minutes pass. Wolfman finishes his water. I fill his glass again, and once more he drinks like he’s dying of thirst. I watch him drink and keep sifting through my thoughts, my crazy fever brain chugging along slowly but surely. Finally a little light comes on and a ding sounds, and I know I’ve found something important to say.
“Here’s the thing, Wolfman. Wolfman’s what I call you, by the way, because of your creepy, creepy eyes. So, here’s the thing. You’re right that there’s bad in everybody. School-bus bullies have evil in them. God knows, there’s bad in me. But I try to be good.” To my surprise, something catches in my throat. I fight through it, determined not to show emotion. “I try to be good. I want to be good. Maybe I fail—maybe I fail a lot—but I want to be a good person. You, you’re looking for an excuse to be evil.”