Michael Chabon: Werewolves in Their Youth

At two o’clock every day, I knew, Mrs. Maloney sneaked around to the windowless side of the school building and stood behind the power transformer, smoking an Eve cigarette. I turned, with a sinking heart, and looked at the clock over the door to Mr. Buterbaugh’s office. I hadn’t missed the whole afternoon, after all, lying there in the ditch for what had seemed to me like many hours. There was still another ninety minutes to be gotten through.

“Well, now, Timothy.” Mrs. Gladfelter took me by the shoulders and maneuvered me around her. “Look who I found,” she said.

“Hey, Timothy,” I said.

Timothy didn’t look up. Mrs. Gladfelter gave me a gentle push toward him, in the small of my back.

“Why don’t you sit down, Paul?”

“No.” I stiffened, and pushed the other way.

“Please sit down, Paul,” said Mr. Buterbaugh, showing me his teeth. Although his last name forced him to adopt a somewhat remote and disciplinarian manner with the other kids at Copland, Mr. Buterbaugh always took pains with me. He made me swap high fives with him and kept up with my grades. At first I had attributed his kindness to the fact that he was a little heavy and had probably been a fat kid, too, but then I kept hearing from my mother about how she had run into Bob Buterbaugh at this singles’ bar or that party and he had said the nicest things about me. I stopped pushing against Mrs. Gladfelter and let myself be steered toward the row of orange chairs. “That’s the way. Sit down and wait with Timothy until his mother gets here.”

“Mr. B. and I will be sitting right inside his office, Paul.”

“No!” I didn’t want to be left alone with Timothy, not because I was afraid of him but because I was afraid that somebody would come into the office and see us sitting there, two matching rejects in matching orange chairs.

“That’s enough now, Paul,” said Mr. Buterbaugh, his friendly smile looking more false than usual. I could see that he was very angry. “Sit down.”

“It’s all right, ” said Mrs. Gladfelter. “You see what you can do about helping Timothy turn back into Timothy. We’re just going to give you a little privacy.” She followed Mr. Buterbaugh into his office and then poked her head back around the door. “I’m going to leave this door open, in case you need us. All right?”

“This much,” I said, holding my hands six inches apart.

There were three chairs next to Timothy’s. I took the farthest, and showed him my back, so that anyone passing by the windows of the office would not be able to conclude that he and I were engaged in any sort of conversation at all.

“Are you expelled?” I said. There was no reply. “Are you, Timothy?” Again he said nothing, and I couldn’t stop myself from turning around to look at him. “Timothy, are you expelled?”

“I’m not Timothy, Professor,” said Timothy, gravely but not without a certain air of satisfaction. He didn’t look at me. “I’m afraid your precious antidote didn’t work.”

“Come on, Timothy,” I said. “Cut it out. The moon’s not even full today.”

Now he turned the werewolf glint of his regard toward me. “Where were you?” he said. “I was looking for you.”

“I was in the ditch.”

“With the ants?”

I nodded.

“I heard you talking to them before.”

“So?”

“So, are you Ant-Man?”

“No, dummy.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I’m not anybody. You’re not anybody, either.”

We fell silent for a while and just sat there, not looking at each other, kicking at the legs of our chairs. I could hear Mrs. Gladfelter and Mr. Buterbaugh talking softly in his office; Mr. Buterbaugh called her Elizabeth. The telephone rang. A light flashed twice on Mrs. Maloney’s phone, then held steady.

“Thanks for calling back, Joel,” I heard Mr. Buterbaugh say. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“I went to see Dr. Schachter a couple times,” I said. “He had Micronauts and the Fembots.”

“He has Stretch Armstrong, too.”

“I know.”

“Why did you go see him? Did your mother make you?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How come?”

“I don’t know. She said I was having problems. With my anger, or I don’t know.” Actually, she had said — and at first Dr. Schachter had concurred — that I needed to learn to “manage” my anger. This was a diagnosis that I never understood, since it seemed to me that I had no problems at all managing my anger. It was my judgment that I managed it much better than my parents managed theirs, and even Dr. Schachter had to agree with that. In fact, the last time I saw him, he suggested that I try to stop managing my anger quite so well. “I don’t know,” I said to Timothy. “I guess I was mad about my dad and things.”

“He had to go to jail.”

“Just for one night.”

“How come?”

“He had too much to drink,” I said, with a disingenuous shrug. My father was not much of a drinker, and when he crashed the party my mother had thrown last weekend to celebrate the closing of her first really big sale, he broke a window, knocked over a chafing dish, which set fire to a batik picture of Jerusalem, and raised a bloody blue plum under my mother’s right eye. People had tended to blame the unaccustomed effects of the fifth of Gilbey’s that was later found in the glove compartment of his car. Only my mother and I knew that he was secretly a madman.

“Did you visit him in jail?”

“No, stupid. God! You’re such a retard! You belong in Special School, Timothy. I hope they make you eat special food and wear a special helmet or something.” I heard the distant slam of the school’s front door, and then a pair of hard shoes knocking along the hall. “Here comes your retard mother,” I said.

“What kind of special helmet?” said Timothy. It was never very easy to hurt his feelings. “Ant-Man wears a helmet.”

Mrs. Stokes entered the office. She was a tall, thin woman, much older than my mother, with long gray hair and red, veiny hands. She wore clogs with white knee-socks, and in the evenings after dinner she went onto her deck and smoked a pipe. Every morning she made Timothy pancakes for his breakfast, which sounded okay until you found out that she put things in them like carrots and leftover pieces of corn.

“Oh, hello, Paul,” she said, in her Eeyore voice.

“Mrs. Stokes,” said Mrs. Gladfelter, coming out of the principal’s office. She smiled. “It’s been kind of a long afternoon for Timothy, I’m afraid.”

“How is Virginia?” said Mrs. Stokes. She still hadn’t looked at Timothy.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” Mr. Buterbaugh said. “Just a little shaken up. We sent her home early. Of course,” he added, “her parents are going to want to speak to you.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Stokes. I saw that she was still wearing her white apron and her photo name tag from her job. She worked at the bone factory out in the Huxley Industrial Park, where they made plastic skulls and skeletons for medical schools. It was her job to string together all the delicate beadwork of the hands and feet. “I’m ready to do whatever you think would be best for Timothy.”

“I’m not Timothy,” said Timothy.

“Oh, please, Timmy, stop this nonsense for once.”

“I’m cursed.” He leaned over and brought his face very close to mine. “Tell them about the curse, Professor.”

I looked at Timothy, and for the first time saw that a thin, dark down of wolfish hair had grown upon his cheek. Then I looked at Mr. Buterbaugh, and found that he was watching me with an air of earnest expectancy, as though he honestly thought there might be an eternal black-magical curse on Timothy and was more than willing to listen to anything I might have to say on the subject. I shrugged.