Werewolves in Their Youth

Picador USA

Excerpt

I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an androidprogrammed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man andMatter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck,and even, for a week, as the Mackinac Bridge, but it was asa werewolf that Timothy Stokes finally went too far. Iwasn't there when it happened. I was down in the ravineat the edge of the schoolyard, founding a capital for anempire of ants. "Now, of course, this right here, this lovelystructure, is the Temple of El-bok," I explained to the ants,adopting the tone my mother employed to ease newlyweds throughthe emptied-out rooms of the depressedhousing market in which she spent her days. I pointed to apyramid of red clay at the center of a plaza paved with thecrazy cross-hatching of my handprints. "And this, naturally,is the Palace of the Ant Emperor. But, ha ha, youknew that, of course. Okay, and over here"--I pointed to asort of circular corral I'd formed by poking a row of sharpenedtwigs into the ground--"all of this is for keepingyour ant slaves. Isn't that nice? And over here's where youmilk your little aphids." On the heights above my citystood the mound of an ordinary antville. All around methe cold red earth was stitched with a black embroidery ofants. By dint of forced transport and at the cost of not afew severed abdomens and thoraxes I succeeded in gettingsome of the ants to follow the Imperial Formic Highway,a broad groove in the clay running out the main gates ofthe city, up the steep slope of the ravine, and thence outinto the tremendousness of the world. With my store ofsnapped-off ant body parts I pearled the black eyes of El-bokthe Pitiless, an ant-shaped idol molded into the apexof the pyramid. I had just begun to describe, to myself andto the ants, the complicated rites sacred to the god whoseworship I was imposing on them when I heard the firstscreams from the playground.

    "Oh, no," I said, rising to my feet. "Timothy Stokes."The girls screamed at Timothy the same way every timehe came after them--in unison and with a trill thatsounded almost like delight, as if they were watching thefamily cat trot past with something bloody in its jaws. Iscrambled up the side of the ravine and emerged as Timothy,shoulders hunched, arms outstretched, growled realisticallyand declared that he was hungry for the throatsof puny humans. Timothy said this or something like itevery rime he turned into a werewolf, and I would nothave been too concerned if, in the course of his lasttransformation, he hadn't actually gone and bitten VirginiaPease on the neck. It was common knowledge aroundschool that Virginia's parents had since written a letter tothe principal, and that the next time Timothy Stokes hurtsomebody he was going to be expelled. Timothy was, inour teacher Mrs. Gladfelter's words, one strike away froman out, and there was a widespread if unarticulated hopeamong his classmates, their parents, and all of the teachersat Copland Fork Elementary that one day soon he wouldprovide the authorities with the excuse they neededto pack him off to Special School. I stood there awhile,above my little city, rolling a particle of ant between myfingers, watching Timothy pursue a snarling, lupine coursealong the hopscotch crosses. I knew that someone oughtto do something to calm him down, but I was the onlyperson in our school who could have any reason to wantto save Timothy Stokes from expulsion, and I hated himwith ail my heart.

    "I have been cursed for three hundred years!" hedeclaimed. He was wearing his standard uniform of whitedungarees and a plain white undershirt, even though itwas a chilly afternoon in October and ail the rest of ushad long since been bundled up for autumn in corduroyand down. Among the odd traits of the alien race fromwhich Timothy Stokes was popularly supposed to havesprung was an apparent imperviousness to cold; in themidst of a February snowstorm he would show up onyour doorstep, replying to your mother's questions onlywhen she addressed him as Untivak, full of plans to buildigloos and drink seal blood and chew raw blubber, wearingonly the usual white jeans and T-shirt, plus a pair ofgiant black hip boots that must have belonged to hisfather--an undiscussed victim of the war in Vietnam.Timothy had just turned eleven, but he was already as tallas Mrs. Gladfelter and his bodily strength was famous;earlier that year, in the course of a two-week period duringwhich Timothy believed himself to be an electromagneticcrane, we had on several occasions seen him swing an ironmanhole cover straight up over his head.

    "I have been cursed to stalk the night through alleternity," he went on, his voice orotund, carrying all acrossthe playground. When it came to such favorite subjects aslycanthropy and rotary-wing aircraft, he used big words,and had facts and figures accurately memorized, andsounded like the Brainiac some took him for, but I knewhe was not as intelligent as his serious manner and heavyblack spectacles led people to believe. His grades werealways among the lowest in the class. "I have beensearching for prey as lovely as you!"

    He lunged toward the nearest wall of the cage of girlsaround him. The girls peeled away from him as thoughsprayed with a hose, bumped shoulders, clung shriekingto each other's sleeves. Some of them were singing thesong we sang about Timothy Stokes,

Timothy Stokes, Timothy Stokes, You're going to the home for crazy folks,

and the one singing the loudest was Virginia Pease herself,in her furry black coat and her bright red tights. She wasstanding screened by Sheila and Siobhan Fahey, her bestfriends, dangling one skinny red leg toward Timothy andthen jerking it away again when Timothy swiped at itwith one of his werewolf paws. Virginia had blond hair,and she was the only girl in the fifth grade with piercedears and painted fingernails, and Timothy Stokes was inlove with her. I knew this because the Stokeses lived nextdoor to us and I was privy to all kinds of secrets aboutTimothy that I had absolutely no desire to know. I forbademyself, with an almost religious severity, to showTimothy any kindness or regard. I would never let him sitbeside me, at lunch or in class, and if he tried to talk to meon the playground I ignored him, it was bad enough that Ihad to live next door to him.

    It was toward Virginia that Timothy now advanced, arattling growl in his throat. She drew back behind hergirlfriends, and their screaming now grew less melodious, lesspurely formal. Timothy crouched down on all fours. Herolled his wild white eyes and took a last look around him.That was when he saw me, halfway across the yellow distance ofthe soccer field. He was looking at me, I thought, asthough he hoped I might have something I wanted to tellhim. Instantly I dropped fiat on my belly, my heart poundingthe way it did when I was spotted trying to spy on a baseballgame or a birthday party. I slid down into the ravine backward,doing considerable damage to the ramparts of my city,flattening one wing of the imperial palace. All through theten minutes of growling and alarums that followed I laythere, without moving. I lay with my cheek in the dirt. Atfirst I could hear the girls shouting for Mrs. Gladfelter, andthen I heard Mrs. Gladfelter herself,, sounding very angry,and then I thought I could hear the voice of Mr. Albert, theP.E. teacher, who always stepped in to break up fights whenit was too late, and some bully had already knocked theglasses from your face and sent your books spinning awayacross the floor of the gym. Then the bell sounded the endof recess, and everything got very quiet, but I just stayedthere in the ravine, at the gates of the city of the ants.

    As I tried to repair the damage I had done to its walls,I told myself that I didn't feel sorry at all for stupidold Timothy Stokes, but then I would remember the confusedlook in his eyes as I had abandoned him to his rate,to ail the unimaginable things that would be done to himin the fabulous corridors of the Special School. I keptrecalling something that I had heard Timothy's mothersay to mine, just a couple of days earlier. I should explainthat at this point in my childhood I had acquired theshameful habit of eavesdropping on the conversations ofadults, particularly my parents, and, worse, of snooping intheir drawers--a pastime or compulsion that in recentmonths had led me to discover nude photographs of mymother taken with my father's Polaroid; school documentsand physicians' reports detailing my own learningdisability, juvenile obesity, hyperactivity, and loneliness;and, most recently, a letter from my mother's attorneycheerily explaining that if my father persisted in hiscurrent pattern of violent behavior he could be restrainedfrom coming anywhere near my mother ever again--adevelopment for which I had on certain bad eveningsprayed to God with desperation, but which, now that ithad become an actual possibility, struck me as the mostmiraculous of ail the awful wonders set loose upon theworld in the course of the past year. There had beenno mention in the lawyer's letter of whether my fatherwould be allowed to come near me. At any rate, I hadbeen hanging over the banister of the hall stairs the othermorning, listening in, when Mrs. Stokes--her name wasAlthea--came over to retrieve a two-hundred-dollar pairof Zeiss binoculars Timothy had given me the day beforein exchange for three tattered Mister Miracle comic booksand a 1794 one-dollar coin that he believed to be genuinebut that I knew perfectly well to have been a premiummy father received several years before on subscribing toAmerican Heritage.

    "You know," Althea Stokes had told my mother, inthat big, sad donkey voice of hers, "your little Paul isTimothy's only friend."

I DECIDED to spend the afternoon in the ravine. The sunstarted down behind the embankment, and the moon,rising early, emerged from the rooftops of the housessomebody was putting up in front of the school--brand-newsplit-level houses my mother and her company werehaving a hard time selling. The moon, I noticed, was notquite full. As I worked to rebuild the ghost town I hadmade, I felt keenly that my failure to help Timothy wasreally only the latest chapter in a lifelong history ofinadequacy and powerlessness. The very last line of that letterI'd found among my mother's papers was "I think weshould be able to have this thing wrapped up by Novemberfifteenth." If this was true, then I had less than onemonth in which to effect a reconciliation between myparents--a goal that, apart from wishing for, I had donenothing at all to bring about. Now it appeared that myfather would not even be allowed to come home anymore.My fingers grew stiff and caked with clay, and my noseran, and I cried for a while and then stopped crying, andstill it seemed that my absence from the classroom wentunnoticed. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. After awhile I gave up on my city building and just lay there onmy back, gazing up at the moon. I didn't hear the scrapeof footsteps until they were just above my head.

    "Paul?" said Mrs. Gladfelter, leaning over the lip of theravine, hands against her thighs. "Paul Kovel, what onearth are you doing out here?"

    "Nothing," I said. "I didn't hear the bell."

    "Paul," she said. "Now, listen to me. Paul, I need yourhelp."

    "With what?" I didn't think she looked angry, but herface was upside down and it was hard to tell.

    "Well, with Timothy, Paul. I guess he's just verywound up right now. You know. Well, he's pretendinghe's a werewolf today, and even though that's fine, andwe all know how Timothy is sometimes, we have seriousthings to discuss with him, and we'd like him to stoppretending for just a little while."

    "But what if he isn't pretending, Mrs. Gladfelter?" Isaid. "What if he really is a werewolf?"

    "Well, maybe he is, Paul, but if you would just comeinside and talk to him for a little bit, I think we might beable to persuade him to change back into Timothy.You're his friend, Paul. I asked him if he'd like to talk toyou, and he said yes."

    "I'm not his friend, Mrs. Gladfelter. I swear to God. Ican't do anything."

    "Couldn't you try?"

    I shook my head. I hoped that I didn't start crying again.

    "Paul, Timothy is in trouble." All at once her voicegrew sharp. "He needs your help, and I need your help,too. Now if you come right this minute, and get up outof that dirt, then I'll forget that you didn't come in fromrecess. If you don't come back inside, I'll have to speak toyour mother." She held out her hand. "Now, come on,Paul. Please."

    And so I took her hand, and let her pull me out of theravine and across the deserted playground, aware that indoing so I was merely proving the unspoken corollary thatmy mother had left hanging, the other morning, in the airbetween her and Mrs. Stokes. There was a song about me,too, I'm afraid--a popular little number that went

What's that smell-o? Paul Kovel-o He's a big fat hippo Jell-O He's a snoop He smells like poop He smells like tomato beef Alphabet soup

because at some point in my career I had acquired thereputation, inexplicable to me, for exuding an odor ofCampbell's tomato soup--a reputation that no amount ofbathing or studied avoidance of all the brands and varietiesof canned soup ever rid me of. As if this were not badenough, I had to go around with a thick wad of electrician'stape on the hinge of my eyeglasses and a hugeWestern-style tooled-leather belt stuffed one and a halftimes around the loops of my trousers. It had been myfather's belt, and bore his name, Melvin, stamped along itslength, in big yellow capital letters set amid bright greencacti, like a cheery frontier invitation for all to come andyank my underpants up into my crack. I sat alone at lunchunder an invisible and mysterious hood of tomato smell--a scent dangerously similar to the acrid tang of vomit--walked myself home from school, and figured in all thedramas, ceremonials, and epic struggles of my classmatesonly in the unlikely but mythologically requisite role ofKing of the Retards. Timothy Stokes, I knew, as I followedMrs. Gladfelter down the long, silent hallway tothe office, hating him more and more with each step, wasmy only friend.

    He was sitting in a corner of the office, trapped in anorange vinyl armchair. There was a roman numeral threescratched into his left cheek and his brilliant white shirtand trousers were patterned with a camouflage of grassand dirt and asphalt. His chest swelled and then subsideddeeply, swelled and subsided. Mr. Buterbaugh, the principal,was standing over him, arms folded across his chest.He was watching Timothy, looking amazed and skepticaland somehow offended. Mrs. Maloney, the school secretary,who a dozen times a month typed the cruel words"tomato soup" onto the cafeteria menus that my mothercruelly affixed with a magnet to our refrigerator, rosefrom behind her desk when we came in, and gathered upher purse and sweater.

    "I finally reached Timothy's mother, Mrs. Gladfelter,"she said. "She was at work, but she said she would be here assoon as she could." She lowered her voice. "And we calledDr. Schachter, too. His office said he'd call back." Shecleared her throat. "So I'm going to take my break now."

    At two o'clock every day, I knew, Mrs. Maloney sneakedaround to the windowless side of the school building andstood behind the power transformer, smoking an Eve cigarette.I turned, with a sinking heart, and looked at the clockover the door to Mr. Buterbaugh's office. I hadn't missedthe whole afternoon, after all, lying there in the ditch forwhat had seemed to me like many hours. There was stillanother ninety minutes to be gotten through.

    "Well, now, Timothy." Mrs. Gladfelter took me by theshoulders and maneuvered me around her. "Look who Ifound," she said.

    "Hey, Timothy," I said.

    Timothy didn't look up. Mrs. Gladfelter gave me agentle 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, showingme his teeth. Although his last name forced him to adopta somewhat remote and disciplinarian manner with theother kids at Copland, Mr. Buterbaugh always took painswith me. He made me swap high rives with him and keptup with my grades. At first I had attributed his kindness tothe fact that he was a little heavy and had probably been afat kid, too, but then I kept hearing from my motherabout how she had run into Bob Buterbaugh at this singles'bar or that party and he had said the nicest thingsabout me. I stopped pushing against Mrs. Gladfelter andlet myself be steered toward the row of orange chairs."That's the way. Sit down and wait with Timothy untilhis 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, notbecause I was afraid of him but because I was afraid thatsomebody would come into the office and see us sittingthere, two matching rejects in matching orange chairs.

    "That's enough now, Paul," said Mr. Buterbaugh, hisfriendly smile looking more false than usual. I could seethat he was very angry. "Sit down."

    "It's all right," said Mrs. Gladfelter. "You see what youcan do about helping Timothy turn back into Timothy.We're just going to give you a little privacy." She followedMr. Buterbaugh into his office and then poked herhead back around the door. 'I'm going to leave this dooropen, 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 thefarthest, and showed him my back, so that anyone passingby the windows of the office would not be able to concludethat he and I were engaged in any sort of conversation at all.

    "Are you expelled?" I said. There was no reply. "Areyou, Timothy?" Again he said nothing, and I couldn'tstop myself from turning around to look at him. "Timothy,are you expelled?"

    "I'm not Timothy, Professor," said Timothy, gravelybut not without a certain air of satisfaction. He didn't lookat me. "I'm afraid your precious antidote didn't work."

    "Come on, Timothy," I said. "Cut it out. The moon'snot even full today."

    Now he turned the werewolf glint of his regard towardme. "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 lookingat each other, kicking at the legs of our chairs. I couldhear Mrs. Gladfelter and Mr. Buterbaugh talking softly inhis office; Mr. Buterbaugh called her Elizabeth. Thetelephone rang. A light flashed twice on Mrs. Maloney'sphone, then held steady.

    "Thanks for calling back, Joel," I heard Mr. Buterbaughsay. "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. Withmy anger, or I don't know." Actually, she had said--andat first Dr. Schachter had concurred--that I needed tolearn to "manage" my anger. This was a diagnosis that Inever understood, since it seemed to me that I had noproblems at all managing my anger. It was my judgmentthat I managed it much better than my parents managedtheirs, and even Dr. Schachter had to agree with that. Infact, the last time I saw him, he suggested that I try to stopmanaging my anger quite so well. "I don't know," I saidto 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 disingenuousshrug. My father was not much of a drinker, andwhen he crashed the party my mother had thrown lastweekend to celebrate the closing of her first really big sale,he broke a window, knocked over a chafing dish, whichset fire to a batik picture of Jerusalem, and raised a bloodyblue plum under my mother's right eye. People hadtended to blame the unaccustomed effects of the fifth ofGilbey's that was later found in the glove compartment ofhis car. Only my mother and I knew that he was secretly amadman.

    "Did you visit him in jail?"

    "No, stupid. God! You're such a retard! You belong inSpecial School, Timothy. I hope they make you eat specialfood and wear a special helmet or something." I heardthe distant slam of the school's front door, and then a pairof hard shoes knocking along the hall. "Here comes yourretard mother," I said.

    "What kind of special helmet?" said Timothy. It wasnever very easy to hurt his feelings. "Ant-Man wears ahelmet."

    Mrs. Stokes entered the office. She was a tall, thinwoman, much older than my mother, with long gray hairand red, veiny hands. She wore clogs with white kneesocks,and in the evenings after dinner she went ontoher deck and smoked a pipe. Every morning she madeTimothy pancakes for his breakfast, which sounded okayuntil you round out that she put things in them likecarrots and leftover pieces of corn.

    "Oh, hello, Paul," she said, in her Eeyore voice.

    "Mrs. Stokes," said Mrs. Gladfelter, coming out of theprincipal's office. She smiled. "It's been kind of a longafternoon for Timothy, I'm afraid."

    "How is Virginia?" said Mrs. Stokes. She still hadn'tlooked at Timothy.

    "Oh, she'll be fine," Mr. Buterbaugh said. "Just a littleshaken up. We sent her home early. Of course," headded, "her parents are going to want to speak to you."

    "Of course," said Mrs. Stokes. I saw that she was stillwearing her white apron and her photo name tag fromher job. She worked at the bone factory out in theHuxley Industrial Park, where they made plastic skulls andskeletons for medical schools. It was her job to stringtogether all the delicate beadwork of the hands and feet."I'm ready to do whatever you think would be best forTimothy."

    "I'm not Timothy," said Timothy.

    "Oh, please, Timmy, stop this nonsense for once."

    "I'm cursed." He leaned over and brought his face veryclose to mine. "Tell them about the curse, Professor."

    I looked at Timothy, and for the first time saw that athin, dark down of wolfish hair had grown upon hischeek. Then I looked at Mr. Buterbaugh, and found thathe was watching me with an air of earnest expectancy,as though he honestly thought there might be an eternalblack-magical curse on Timothy and was more thanwilling to listen to anything I might have to say on thesubject. I shrugged.

    "Are you going to make him go to Special School?" Isaid.

    "All right, Paul, thank you," said Mrs. Gladfelter. "Youmay go back to class now. We're watching a movie withMrs. Hampt's class this afternoon."

    Mrs. Maloney had reappeared in the doorway, hercheeks flushed, her lipstick fresh, smelling of cigarette.

    "I'll see that he gets there," she said--uncharitably, Ithought.

    "See you later, Timothy," I said. He didn't answer me;he had started to growl again. As I followed Mrs. Maloneyout of the office I looked back and saw Mr. Buterbaughand Mrs. Gladfelter and poor old Mrs. Stokes standing ina hopeless circle around Timothy. I thought for a second,and then I turned back toward them and raised an imaginaryrifle to my shoulder.

    "This is a dart gun," I announced. Everyone looked atme, but I was talking to Timothy now. I was almost butnot quite embarrassed. "It's filled with darts of my specialantidote, and I made it stronger than it used to be, and it'sgoing to work this time. And also, um, there's a tranquilizermixed in."

    Timothy looked up, and bared his teeth at me, and Itook aim right between his eyes. I jerked my hands twice,and went fwup! fwup! Timothy's head snapped back, andhis eyelids fluttered. He shook himself all over. He swallowed,once. Then he held his hands out before him, as ifwondering at their hairless pallor.

    "It seems to have worked," he said, his voice cool andreasonable and fine. Anyone could see he was still playinghis endless game, but all the grown-ups, Mr. Buterbaughin particular, looked very pleased with both of us.

    "Thank you very much, Paul." Mr. Buterbaugh gaveme a pat on the head. "Remember to say hello to yourmother for me."

    "I'm not Paul," I said, and everybody laughed butTimothy Stokes.

WHEN I got home from school my mother was down in thebasement, at my father's workbench, dressed in the paint-spattered blue jeans and hooded sweatshirt she put onwhenever it was rime to do dirty work. She had pulledher hair back into a tight ponytail. Normally I wouldhave been glad to see her home from work already anddressed this way. One of the sources of friction betweenus, and among the various angers that I had supposedlybeen attempting to manage, was my dislike of the way shelooked as she went off to work in the morning, in herplaid suit jackets, her tan stockings, her blouses with theirlittle silk bow ties, her cabasset of hairsprayed hair. In thedays before she went back to work my mother had been agenuine hippie--bushy-headed, legs unshaven, dressed invast dresses with Indian patterns; she was there to fixbowls of hot whole-grain cereal in the morning and togive me a snack of dried pineapple and milk in thekitchen when I came home. Now, every morning, I fixedmyself a breakfast of cornflakes and coffee, and when I gothome I generally turned on the television and ate the boxof Yodels that I purchased at High's every day on my wayback from school. But my pleasure at the sight of her inher old, ruined jeans, patched with a scrap of a genuineMao jacket she had bought as a student at McGill, wasdiminished when I saw that she was dressed this way sothat she could stand at my father's workbench and toss allthe delicate furniture of his home laboratory into anassortment of battered liquor cartons.

    "But, Mom," I said, watching as she backhanded into abox an entire S-shaped rack of stoppered test tubes. Theglass, in shattering, made a festive tinkle, as of little bells,and the dank basement air was quickly suffused with aharsh chemical stink of bananas and mold and burntmatches. "Those are his experiments."

    "I know it," said my mother, looking grave, her voicefilled with vandalistic glee. My father was a researchchemist for the Food and Drug Administration. He was a smallman with a scraggly gray beard and thick spectacles. Hewore plaid sports jackets with patches on the elbows,carried his pens in a plastic pocket liner, and went to servicesevery Saturday morning. He held a national ranking inchess (173) and a Canadian patent for a culture mediumstill widely used in that country, where he had been bornand raised. "And he worked very hard on them all." Shehefted the heavy black binder in which my father kepthis lab notes and dropped it into a box that had oncecontained bottles of Captain Morgan mm; there was a leeringpicture of a pirate on the side. "For years." The laboratorynotebook landed with a crunch of glass, breaking thethroats of a dozen Erlenmeyer flasks beneath it. "I've askedhim many, many times to come over here and pick up histhings, Paulie. You know that. He's had his chance."

    "I know." On his departure from our house, my fatherhad taken only a plaid valise full of summer clothing andmy grandfather's Russian chess set, whose black pieceshad once been fingered by Alexander Alekhine.

    "It's been months now, Paulie," my mother said. 'I'vegot to conclude that he just doesn't want any of his stuff.""I know," I said.

    She surveyed the wreckage of my father's homelaboratory--a little ruefully now, I thought--and thenlooked at me. "I guess it must seem to you like I'm beingkind of mean," she said. "Eh?"

    I didn't say anything. She held out her hand to me. Igrabbed it and tugged her to her feet. She lifted theCaptain Morgan carton and stacked it atop a Smirnoff cartonfilled with commercially prepared reagents in their bottlesand jars; there was a further crunch of glass as the upperbox settled into the lower. She hoisted the stacked boxesto her hip and jogged them once to get a better grip. Onecarton remained on the floor beside the workbench. Weboth looked at it.

    "I'll come back for that one," my mother said, after apause. She turned, and started slowly up the stairs.

    For a minute I stood there with my hands jammed intomy pockets, staring down into the box at my father's crucibletongs, at his coils of clear plastic tubing, at his stirrers,pipettes, and stopcocks wrapped like taffy in stiffwhite paper. I knelt down and wrapped my arms aroundthe carton and lowered my face into it and inhaled aclean, rubbery smell like that of a new Band-Aid. ThenI lifted the carton and carried it upstairs, through thelaundry room, and out into the garage, trying to fight offan unsettling feeling that I was throwing my father away.The rear hatch of our Datsun was raised, and the backseatshad been folded forward.

    "Thank you, sweetie," said my mother, gently, as Ihanded her the last carton. "Now I just have to load up afew more things, and then I'm going to mn ail this stuffover to Mr. Kappelman's office." Mr. Kappelman was myfather's lawyer; my mother's lawyer was a woman shecalled Deirdre. "You can just stay here, okay? You don'thave to help me anymore."

    "There's no room for me anyway," I said.

    Most of the space in the car was already taken up bypacked liquor boxes. I could see the fuzzy sleeve of myfather's green angora sweater poking out of one carton,and, through the finger holes in the side of another, Icould make out the cracked black spines of his collegechemistry texts. Stuffed into the spaces among the boxesand into odd nooks of the car's interior were my father'sbicycle helmet, his clarinet case, his bust of Paul Morphy,his brass wall barometer, his shoeshine kit, his vaporizer,the panama hat he liked to wear at the beach, the beigeplastic bedpan that had come home from the hospital withhim after his deviated-septum operation and now held ailhis razors and combs and the panoply of gleaming instrumentshe employed to trim the hair that grew from thevarious features of his face, a grocery bag full of his shoetrees, the Montreal Junior Chess Championship trophy hehad won in 1953, his tie rack, his earmuffs, and one Earthshoe. There was barely enough room left in the car forthe three boxes my mother and I had dragged up from thebasement. I helped her squeeze them into place, audiblydoing more damage to their rank-smelling contents, andthen my mother put her hands on the edge of the hatchand got ready to slam it.

    She said, "Stand clear." I flinched. I guess I must haveshut my eyes; after a second or two I realized that shehadn't closed the door yet, and when I looked at her againher eyes were scanning my face, darting very quickly backand forth, the way they did when she thought I mighthave a fever.

    "Paul," she said, "how was school today?"

    "Fine."

    "How's your asthma?"

    "Good."

    She took her hands off the lip of the hatch and croucheddown in front of me. Her face, I saw, was still buriedunder the thick layer of beige frosting that she applied to itevery morning.

    "Paul," she said. "What's the matter, honey?"

    "Nothing," I said, turning from her unrecognizableface. 'I'll be right back." I started away from her.

    "Paul--" She took hold of my arm.

    "I have to go to the bathroom!" I said, twisting free ofher. "You look ugly," I added as I ran back into the house.

    I went to the telephone and dialed my father's numberat work. The departmental secretary said that he wasdown the hall. I said that I would wait. I carried thephone over to the couch, where I had thrown my parka,and took my daily box of Yodels from its hiding placeinside the torn orange lining. By the time my father tookme off hold I had eaten three of them. This didn't requireall that much time, to be honest.

    "Dr. Kovel," said my father as he came clattering ontothe line.

    "Dad?"

    "Paul. Where are you?"

    "Dad, I'm at home. Guess what, Dad? I got expelledfrom school today."

    "What? What's this?"

    "Yeah, um, I got really mad, and I thought I was awerewolf, and I, um, I bit this girl, you know--VirginiaPease? On the neck. I didn't break the skin, though," Iadded. "And so they expelled me. Can you come over?"

    "Paul, I'm at work."

    "I know."

    "What is all this?" His breath blew heavy through theline and made an irritated rattle in the receiver at my ear."All right, listen, I'll be there as soon as I can get away,eh?" Now his voice grew thick, as though on the otherend of the line, while he held the receiver in the middleof his blank little office in Rockville, Maryland, his facehad gone red with embarrassment. "Is your motherthere?"

    I told him to hold on, and went back out to the garage.

    "Mom," I said, "Dad's on the phone." I said thesewords in a voice so normal and cheerful that it hurt myheart to hear them. "He wants to talk to you." I smiledthe conspiratorial little smile I had so often seen her useon her clients as she hinted that the seller just might bewilling to come down. "I think he wants to apologize."

    "Did you call him?"

    "Oh, uh, yeah. Yes. I had to," I said, remembering mystory. "Because I got expelled from school. I have to go toSpecial School now. Starting tomorrow, probably."

    My mother put down the hoe she had been trying tosqueeze into the back of her car and went, ratherunwillingly, I thought, to the phone. Before she stepped intothe house she looked back at me with a doubtful smile. Ilooked away. I stood there, behind her car, gazing in atail my father's belongings. My mother had said that sheplanned to take them over to his lawyer's office, but Ididn't believe her. I believed that she meant to take themto the dump. I hesitated for an instant, then reached in formy father's laboratory notebook. He had always beenmore than willing to show me parts of it, whenever Iasked him to; and naturally I had taken many furtive looksat its innermost pages when he wasn't around. But I hadnever really comprehended its contents, nor the tenor ofthe experiments he'd been performing down there in ourbasement over the years, although I had a general sense ofdisappointment about them, as I did about his wholeinterest, professional and avocational, in the chemistry ofmildews and molds. Yet even if there was nothing ofinterest in his notes--a likelihood that I still could notfully accept--I nonetheless felt a sudden urge to possessthe notebook itself. Perhaps someday I would be ableto decipher its cryptic formulae and crabbed script, andthence derive ail manner of marvelous pastes of invisibilityand mind-control dusts, unheard-of vitamins and deadlyfungal poisons and powders that repelled gravity. I reachedfor the notebook and then decided also to take two of theboxes of laboratory equipment. I knew who would keepthem safe for me; I hoped, as I never had before, that hewould still want to be my friend.

    I peered around the side of the garage, to make surethat my mother wasn't watching from the front windows,then ran as quickly as I could toward the stand of youngmaples and pricker bushes that separated us from theStokeses. The boxes were very heavy, and the shards ofglass within them jingled like change. It was dinnertime,and nearly dark, but none of the lights were on in Timothy'shouse. I supposed that he had been taken to seeDr. Schachter, and ail at once I worried that he wouldnever come home again, that they would just send Timothystraight off to Special School that day. Some peopleclaimed that the little yellow van that sometimes passed uswhen we were on out way to school in the morning, itswindows filled with the blank, cheerful faces of strangeboys none of us knew, was the daily bus to SpecialSchool; but other people said that you had to go live thereforever, like reform school or prison, and get visits fromyour parents on the weekends.

    My mother was calling me. "Pau-aul!" she cried. Shewas one of those women who have a hard time raisingtheir voices; it always came out sounding hoarse andfriendless whenever she called me home. "Pau-lie!"

    I hid in the brambles and studied the dark face ofTimothy's house, trying to decide what to do with myfather's things. My arms were growing tired, and I neededto go to the bathroom, and for now, I decided, I wouldleave the boxes at the basement door. I would come backlater to ask Timothy, who on occasion appeared in theavatar of the faithful robot from Lost in Space, to guardthem for me. Timothy slept in the basement of theStokeses' house, under a wall hung from floor to ceilingwith his vast arsenal of toy swords and firearms, in aroom strewn with dismembered telephones and the bonesof imitation skeletons. I tiptoed around the side of theStokeses' house and into their weedy backyard. The moonwas high and brilliant in the sky by now, and I thoughtthat, after all, it was pretty nearly full. I approached thebasement door, keeping an uneasy eye on the shadows inthe trees, and the shadows under the Stokeses' deck, andthe shadows gathered on the swings of the creaking junglegym. Since my last visit, I saw, Timothy had marked theentrance to his labyrinth with two neat pyramids of plasticskulls. My mother's raspy voice fell silent, and there wasonly the sound of cars out on the country road, and theghostly squeak of the swing set and the forlorn crooningof a blind Dalmatian that lived at the bottom of our street.Carelessly I dropped the boxes on the step, between thegrinning pyramids, and ran back through the trees towardmy house, heart pounding, tearing my clothes on theteeth of the underbrush, certain that something quick andterrible was following me every step of the way.

    "I'm home!" I said, coming into the brightness andwarmth of our hall. "Here I am."

    "There you are," said my mother, though she didn'tlook all that happy to see me. She laid a heavy hand onmy shoulder. It smelled of butyric acid and dextrorotatorysucrose and also very faintly of Canoe. "I just got off thephone with Bob Buterbaugh, Paul. He told me whatreally happened at school today." She had yanked her hairfree of its ponytail and now it shot out in ragged arcsaround her head, tangled like the vanes of a wreckedumbrella. "Do you want to explain yourself to me? Whydid you lie?"

    "Is Dad coming over?"

    "Well, yes, he is, Paul--"

    "Great."

    "--because he feels that he really needs to see you,tonight. But the two of you will have to sit outside in thecar and talk, or go somewhere else. I'm not going to lethim in the house."

    I was astonished. "Why not?"

    "Because, Paul, your dad--you know as well as I do--he's become, well, you know how he's been lately. Idon't have to tell you." As if she were angry, she foldedher arms, and clenched her jaw. But I could see that shewas trying to keep herself from crying. "I have to setsome limits."

    "You mean he can't come over to our house anymore?Ever again?"

    There were tears in her eyes. "Ever again," she said.Once more she crouched before me, and I let her take mein her arms, but I did not return her embrace. In the picturewindow at the end of the hall I watched her reflectionhugging mine. I didn't want to be comforted on theimpending loss of my father. I wanted him not to be lost,and it seemed to me that it would be her fault if he was.

    "He said he's going to collect his things. So I guess it's agood thing I didn't get rid of them, eh?" She gave me apoke in the ribs. "He must want them after all. Hey," shesaid. "What is it? What's the matter?" She followed mygaze toward the picture window, where our embracingreflections looked back at us with startled expressions.

    "Nothing," I said. A light had just come on in theStokeses' house. "I--I have to go over to Timothy's. I leftsomething there." "What?"

    "My Luger," I said, remembering a toy I had lent toTimothy sometime last summer. "The pink one that squirts."

    "Well, it's time to eat," said my mother. "You can goafter."

    "But what if Dad comes?"

    "Well, what if he does? You can go over to Timothy'stomorrow. He's probably not allowed to see anyoneanyway."

IN FIVE minutes I bolted my dinner--one of those bizarreconglomerations of bottled tomato sauces, casseroles-in-boxes, and leftover Chinese lunches that were thenthe national dishes of our disordered and temporizinghomeland--and ran out the front door into the night. Iwas sure that Timothy had found the cartons by now.What if he thought I had meant them for a present andrefused to give them back? My father was going to beangry enough about my mother's treatment of his chemistrythings, but it would be worse when he found out thatmost of them, including his notebook, were missing. Isprinted across our yard as quickly as I could, consideringmy asthma, and went crashing through the maple treestoward the Stokeses' house. There was a burst of red lightas a thin branch slapped against my left eye, and I criedout, and covered my face, and ran headlong into TimothyStokes. My chin struck his chest and I sat down hard.

    He smiled, and knelt beside me. "Are you all right,Professor?" he said. He was wearing the same pair ofwhite jeans and stained T-shirt, under an unbuttonedjacket that was too large for him and that bore over thebreast pocket his own last name, printed in block letterson a strip of cloth. He pulled a flashlight from his pocketand switched it on. The beam threw eerie shadows acrosshis cheeks and forehead, and his little brown eyeswere alight behind his glasses. I saw at once that theantidote I'd administered to him that afternoon had wornoff, and he showed no sign of having been subjected toany weird therapies or electroshock helmets. His facelooked as solemn and stupid as ever. He wore a riflestrapped across his back and a plastic commando knife inhis boot, and three Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoshand grenades poked through the web belt of hiscanteen, and in his right hand he was carrying, as thoughit were another weapon, the thick, black, case-boundnotebook.

    "That's my father's," I said. "You can't have it."

    "I already photographed all of its contents with my spycamera," he explained. "I have every page on microfilm.Plus I ran an extensive computer analysis on them." Helowered his voice. "Your father is a very dangerous man.Look here." He opened the notebook and shone theflashlight on a page where my father had written, "Myco.K. P889, L. 443, Tr. 23," and then a date from three yearsearlier. The rest of the page was an illegible mishmash ofnumbers and abbreviations, some of them connected bysharp forceful arrows. The entry went on for several pagesin the same fashion, cramped by haste and marginalia. Ihad seen plenty like it before, and I had no doubt that itdescribed a process that could be used to get rid ofsomething that grew between the tiles of your bathroom, or onthe skin of your pears.

    "Did you see?" said Timothy.

    "See what?" I said.

    "Your father is Ant-Man," he said gravely. 'I've suspectedit for a long time." He unhooked the canteen fromhis belt. It was covered in green canvas and it sloshed ashe waved it around. "This is the antidote."

    He clamped the notebook under one arm and with hisfreed hand unscrewed the cap. I inclined my face slightlytoward the mouth of the canteen, extended my fingers,and wafted the air above it toward my nostrils, delicately,as my father had shown me. I detected no odor thisway, however. So he stuck it right under my nose.

    "It smells like Coke," I said. "You put salt in it."Timothy didn't say anything, but I thought I saw disappointmentflicker across his flashlit face. "What would happenif I drank it?" I added quickly, not wanting to let himdown. There was something about the way Timothyplayed his game, the thoroughness with which he imagined,that never failed to entrance me.

    "That's what I'd like to know," said Timothy. "What ifit said in this book, here, that your father has been givingyou the secret formula to drink, like one drop at a time inyour cereal, ever since you were a little baby? And what ifthat's why you can talk to ants, too?"

    "What if," I said. I had always felt sorry for Ant-Man, asuperhero whose powers condemned him to the disappointingcomradeship of bugs. "Timothy, what happenedto you today? What did they say? Are you expelled?"

    "Shh," said Timothy. The notebook went flapping tothe ground as he reached for me, and drew me to him,and covered my mouth with his hand. His voice fell to aharsh whisper. "Someone's coming."

    I heard the sound of a car climbing the hill. A pair ofheadlights splashed light across the front of my house. Iyanked my head free of his grasp.

    "It's my dad!" I said. "Timothy, I need to get his stuffback--now!"

    "Quiet." Timothy loosened his hold on me and broughtthe canteen up to my lips. I took a step away from him."Quick," he said. "Swallow this antidote. We don't havetime to test it. You'll just have to take the risk." He pattedthe dull black barrel of his rifle. "I've already loaded thisbaby with antidote darts."

    From the distant front porch of our house I could hearour front door squeal on its hinges, and then the separatevoices of my parents, saying hello. I tried to makesense of their murmurings, but we were too far away.After a while there was another long squeal of hinges, andthe door slammed shut, and then our house creaked andresounded with the passage of feet along its hallway.

    "Oh, my God," I said. "I think she let him go inside."

    "Come on," said Timothy. "Drink this."

    "I'm not drinking that stuff," I said.

    "All right, then," he said. "I'll drink it." He threw backhis head and took a long swallow. Then he handed thecanteen to me, and I drank down the rest of the antidote.It was sweet and sharp tasting, and bitter through andthrough. I felt pretty sure that it was just Coca-Colamixed with good old sodium chloride, but then, after Igot it down, I realized there must have been somethingelse mixed into it--something that burned.

    "Take this," he said, handing me the plastic commandoknife. He said that it was in case something went wrong;the rifle was only for delivering the antidote. He said,"Stay down."

    He led me out of the trees, across our moonlit backyard,and up the short, grassy slope that rose to the back ofour house--a silvery gray shape loping along in a sort ofcrouched-over commando half-trot. The sleeves of myparka whispered against my sides as I ran. I belched up afiery blast of his formula, and then laughed a tipsy littlelaugh. Timothy stepped up onto our patio and unslungthe rifle from his shoulder. A radiant cloud of light fromour living room came pouring out through the sliding-glass door, illuminating the trees and the lawn chairs andthe grill, and the crown of Timothy's close-cropped headas he knelt down, raised the rifle, and waited for me tocatch up to him. When I got there he was peering in, hisface looking blank and amazed behind the luminous disksof his spectacles, his breath coming regular and heavy.

    "Can you feel it?" I said, kneeling beside him. "Is itworking?"

    He didn't say anything. I looked. My father and mymother were sitting on the sofa. He was holding her in hisarms. Her face was red and streaked with tears, and hermouth was fastened against his. Her sweatshirt was hikedup around her throat, and one of her breasts hung looseand shaking and astonishingly white. The other breast myfather held, roughly, in his hairy hand, as if he were tryingto crush it.

    "What are they doing?" Timothy whispered. He setthe rifle down on the patio. "Are those your parents?"

    I tried to think of something to say. I was dizzy withsurprise, and the formula we had swallowed was makingme feel like I was going to be sick. I sat there for a minuteor so beside Timothy, watching the struggle of those twopeople, who had been transformed forever by a real andpowerful curse, the very least of whose magical effects wasme. I felt as though I had been spying on them for myentire life, to no profit at all. After a moment I had tolook away. Timothy's gun was lying on the ground besideme. I reached for it, and held it in my grip, and found thatit weighed far more than I had expected. Its breechblockwas steely and cool.

    "Timothy, is this real?" I said, but I knew he wouldnever be able to answer me.

    I stood up, my head spinning, and stumbled off thepatio, onto the frost-bright grass. Timothy lingered fora moment longer, then came hurtling away from the window,passing me on our way into the woods. Under themaple trees we threw up whatever it was that he hadgiven us to drink. He seemed to lose some of his enthusiasmfor our game after that, and when I told him to gohome and leave me alone he did.

LATER ON that night, my father and I fetched his notebookfrom the pile of dead leaves in the woods where Timothyhad dropped it, and went over together to the Stokeses'house to retrieve all the pieces of his shattered laboratory.My father's arm lay heavy around my neck. I told AltheaStokes about the rifle, and Timothy was forced to produce itand surrender it to her. It had been, she said, hisfather's. I helped my father carry the cartons out to his car,and then in silence we and my mother removed all of hisother belongings, one by one, from her hatchback, andloaded them into the trunk of our big old ChevroletImpala. Then my father drove away.

    The next morning at eight, a little yellow bus full ofunknown boys pulled up in front of the Stokeses' house,and sounded its angry horn, and Timothy went out tomeet it.

Continues...
Excerpted from Werewolves in Their Youthby Michael Chabon Copyright ©2000 by Michael Chabon. Excerpted by permission.
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