“No lying.”
A weird whining fills my ears, and my body goes from slow motion to hyperkinetic freak-out. My heart, my sweat, my nerves, my muscles all burst to life and frantically move in place. There’s nowhere to go, but everything squirms and writhes inside me, as though individual bits of me are trying to escape.
“What I’d like to know is, how come a little girl like yourself is in charge of business decisions at a multimillion-dollar facility?”
I almost protest, but Wolfman said no lying. “I’m not in charge, but I have input because I bring a lot of money into the farm. I’m our best advertisement.”
“Some things you’re in charge of. You’re the sole voice of authority.”
There’s a vague feeling I’m missing something important, that I’m not thinking clearly through all the stress. “I manage the girls who feed at the barn, teach them how and make sure they do it right. I guess I’m in charge of that.”
“You’re also in charge of who gets fired at a moment’s notice. Or did your daddy lie when he said you made the call to fire me?”
A strange melting sensation happens inside me. How could my father be so stupid?
“He said you thought I wasn’t right, that I scared you. Was he lying?” Wolfman raises his right hand, ready to strike. “Was he lying?”
“No.”
“So you agree you are in charge. Do you think it’s right, for a little girl to be in charge like that?”
It’s a strange question for me to hear and harder for me to process.
“Answer. Do you think you should be in charge?”
“I’m trying.”
Another crack across the head. This one is worse. “You’re not trying! You’re not saying anything. Do you think you should be in charge?”
“Yes!” He’s reopened the wound on my scalp. Blood trickles into my eyes, so I squeeze the lids shut tight. “Because there’s nobody else.”
There’s a long pause. That second hit has me spinning around even as I sit still. My closed eyes are only making it worse, but there’s a steady drip of blood. I open them, not wanting to vomit.
Through the red haze of my blood I see a strange expression on his face. His eyes have come alive, and I don’t like it at all. He’s getting off on this now in a way he wasn’t before. My first thought is that my honesty is feeding him in a bad, bad way, and my second thought is not to question my gut.
“These are going to be very good days,” he says to me.
An hour has passed without conversation. I watched Wolfman eat his steak and drink can after can of cheap beer. He doesn’t seem drunk, but there’s a blurriness about his eyes that disturbs me. It feels like he’s getting ready to enjoy something.
Anxiety wants to take me over, but I fight it back. I think I learned something in our first conversation. He wants to break me down, get to the core of me. My truth is his crack. No more of that. No more playing this game by his rules. From now on he’ll know only what I want him to know. From now on I stay in control. That’s what’s going to get me out of here.
Wolfman clears everything off the table except his gun. That he keeps close at hand. There is a sense of ceremony about his actions. My stomach tightens up. We are about to begin.
From the back of his jeans he retrieves two objects. One is a mini spiral-bound notebook. The other is my cell phone. He then pulls a pair of foldable reading glasses from his shirt pocket. He puts them on, letting them rest low on his nose, and uses both hands to flip through the notebook. The notebook is nearly filled with neat, tiny print, and it takes some time for him to find what he’s looking for.
Once he’s found his spot, he pauses to look at me over his glasses. This is clearly a planned performance, but he’s trying to pull off an air of spontaneity. “I think you’re going to be my hardest case yet. But you will learn in the end. They all do.”
Hardest case yet. I’m not the first. I already knew this, and yet hearing it said so starkly sends a surge of bile up my throat. I swallow hard to keep from gagging.
“I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you’re a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents.”
A spike of rage joins my fear. Say what you want about me, but nobody speaks ill of my family.
“Your coddling parents and grandparents,” he says again, “who shelter you from the truth. Now, I’m a reasonable man, and do not expect you to simply take my word for it.”