It was fun to torture Eugene Huffines. He was resilient, like a dog that needs your approval so much it’ll ignore the fact that you’d like to break its legs and throw it into heavy traffic. No matter what we did to Eugene, he came back with an expectant grin, as if we’d gotten the meanness out of our systems and would welcome him into the fold. We were never going to get the meanness out of our systems for the simple reason that his very survival was like a prick on the sore spot on our brains and the only way to relieve it was to execute something even nastier against him next time. We exercised no caution to protect his mind or body; our only precaution was in not getting in trouble, which was pretty easy to prevent since it was understood from the lowliest freshman all the way up to the principal that torturing Eugene Huffines was basically a very good thing. It had a unifying effect on the student body. And that unification led to stability. And if there was stability, we would be easier to control. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I didn’t mind being controlled, as long as I was allowed to torture Eugene Huffines.

Physical Education was the best class for messing with Eugene. There were always excuses for contact in the sports we played. One of the best sports we played was Burn Ball. It was actually pretty retarded, now that I think about it, but we could sure go after Eugene when we were playing it. In case you don’t know how it works, it’s just like Dodge Ball, but with an attitude. The boys are divided up on one half of the gym or the other. Each half has maybe four balls of different sizes and you throw them at people on the other side. If you hit somebody with the ball, they’re out of the game. But if they catch the ball you threw, you’re out. Whichever team runs out of boys first, loses. It was the kind of stupid game they’d make you play if it was raining outside or if Stan Stans, the Phys Ed teacher, was too hung over to referee our basketball games. We played Burn Ball a lot. None of us seemed to care which team won or lost, as long as we could hit Eugene with as many balls as possible. One day I remember he was the only guy left on his team and all eight balls were on our side. Most of the balls were big and awkward, but a couple were hard and small and fit right in your fist. So eight of us fired off at the same time and two of the fast balls whacked Huffines right upside the head like Kennedy getting shot in the motorcade. It was hilarious. He was incredibly clumsy so it was easy to hit him. Wham! Wham! Right in the head! He went down hard, too. He landed right on his chin. Everybody roared. He got up and said something about this all being bullshit. Stan Stans shot out of his office like a pit bull chasing a poodle. He picked Eugene up under the arms and slammed him against the folded bleachers.

“Don’t you ever curse in my gym class again!”

Quick as a switch, Eugene’s face took on that expectant look, as if anything he could possibly say would make things right. “But Mr. Stans, they cuss all the time!”

Slam! right up against those bleachers again. “They don’t curse!” Stans clarified. And that was that. How perfect can it get?

Now, if you’re expecting this to be a story like Carrie or something, you can forget it because from what I’ve seen that kind of thing doesn’t happen much where the individual rises up against the hostile multitudes or whatever. He never got back at us. We never got in trouble. We chloroformed him and shoved him inside a jukebox. We stripped him naked, sprayed him all over with dry ice and locked him in the girls’ locker room. We set off a firecracker in his sister’s hair (twenty years later, ha ha, she still has a ringing in her ears) and he got the blame for it. We routinely tripped him going down the stairs, put scratches on his car, dumped piss in his locker, threw food in his lap, and ridiculed him at every opportunity. He was our very own pariah.

Well, as I said, it’s been twenty years and since graduation I haven’t thought much about Eugene Huffines, except once in a while when I run into somebody from the old days and we remember how much fun we had torturing the school pariah. I’m married, we’ve got two kids, and I own a collection agency that does well for the family and me.

Now here’s the funny thing and the reason I bring up the subject. One of my collectors brought me an account the other day. Anytime one of the debtors threatens to sue us, I need to know about it and that was the situation here. The name of the debtor was Lucinda Huffines. My first thought was, hey, that’s Eugene’s sister! Whoopee! Then reality settled in and I pushed that idea away. But the age of the debtor was about right and this person lived in the same small town I grew up in and in a few seconds I became convinced it was the same person. The amount she owed was a little better than ten thousand dollars--mostly a bunch of home shopping crap--of which my agency would get to keep thirty percent and my collectors know that for that kind of geedus, they can push the limits of harassment. I shouldn’t tell you this, but one time we told this guy that if he didn’t pay his bill we were going to call the cops and have him arrested. He laughed and hung up. So the collector called the police department nearest where this guy lived and claimed she’d been a witness to an illegal gun running operation taking place in the guy’s house. The way I heard it, a few hours later, an Emergency Response Team showed up at the guy’s house and practically tore the door off the hinges getting in. Three days later we had a cashiers check for the total balance. Sometimes you’re lucky and that kind of thing works. You do have to be careful, because debtors do have laws working for them, even though most of them are too stupid to know about it.

I talked with Lucinda for the better part of two hours. I kept imagining her having to use her other ear, the one that wasn’t ringing. I didn’t want her to recognize my name, so I used my alias, Ted Battle. We talked about the ten grand she owed and how it had to be paid. We talked about her allegations that we had harassed her and I very politely explained that we sure hadn’t intended to do that. It was possible, I argued, that the collector’s enthusiasm to do a good job for our client had been misunderstood as harassment. Lucinda admitted that might be the case. After a while she and I got to talking very nicely to one another and I even encouraged her to unburden herself to me. She talked to me about how she had all these creditors bothering her night and day, how her boyfriend had run up all these charges and then left her with a screaming baby girl to take care of. She told me about the hip surgery she’d had to have because of a fall she’d taken, and she mentioned the ringing in her ear caused by an accident many years ago. She told me about being disowned by her parents after her daughter was born and how lonely she was. She told me I was the only person she’d talked to in months to take the time to listen to her problems. She said she felt grateful. She asked if I could take a check payment over the phone for one thousand dollars. I said we could do that. She gave me the information, I verified the funds, and I arranged to have her call me back at the end of the week. I was almost ready to hang up when I heard myself ask, “How’s Eugene?”

Silence.

I knew she was still there, thinking, listening, dying just a little bit more inside. One minute she was living her life as if just because it was twenty years later all those nightmares were gone and the next minute, the biggest laughing nightmare of them all came crashing through her bedroom door, lifting her sheets and bounding, fat-kneed and wild-eyed.

Silence.

She had trusted me, confided in me, even liked me, not because she’d wanted to, but because she’d needed to. Once I had her money, I didn’t care. Now she was wondering if just maybe I had been one among the hundreds who had righteously, gloriously, mercilessly tortured her stupid shit pile of a brother. Was I? Was I? Damned right, bitch.

I didn’t say a word. When you’re destroying someone psychologically, the silence between you is a weapon.

“Are you referring to my brother?”

Ooh, good move! Answer the question with a question. Shift control. “How’s he doing these days?”

“My brother was murdered shortly after his high school graduation. I didn’t mention him. You must have known him. You must have been one of those boys…”

She trailed off and hung up.

She called back at the end of the week, just as she’d said she would, and son of a gun if she didn’t pay the other nine thousand dollars right then and there--verified funds, good as gold. Her demeanor was very curt. There was no small talk. The only thing weird was that she called me by my first name--my real first name. I didn’t even realize it until after she’d hung up. I’m almost certain she used my real first name.

I do not know how that money ended up in my personal checking account rather than the business account. All I can think of is she figured out who I was and decided to mess with me. How she got my banking information, I don’t know. But the suggestion that I performed an illegal transaction against Lucinda Huffines is completely ridiculous. And after you people get that settled, I’ll explain to you how I had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Eugene Huffines. But first I want my attorney.

Phil Mershon

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