by Neal, Toby
“It was a bad time for me.” Russell Pruitt stirred the noodles. A shock of his thick, greasy hair shielded his eyes, and his massive shoulders were hunched.
I came closer, made eye contact with him. Behind those thick lenses, his eyes had that glassy look again, his cheeks pale. Perhaps his heart was stressed—I wanted to hope so but couldn’t bring myself to. I felt sick with compassion for all he’d been through. “I’m so sorry. I remember hoping you had somewhere loving to go.”
“Turns out I didn’t. And I don’t want your pity. It’s your fault my dad got the sentence he did.” His voice was a low growl.
“Think about it. I did my job. I work for the state, and I get the cases they give me. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been another psychologist.”
“But it was you.” He tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot. “My gigantism began during the trial. The pediatrician said the stress might have thrown my pituitary gland out of whack.”
I walked back, knelt on the floor, brushing the bits of broken phone into the dustpan. It seemed the safest place at the moment. It was important not to argue with him; my desire to defend myself would only activate the intermittent rage I’d already experienced.
“It must have been terrible.”
“It was. As I grew, I kept thinking that if my dad hadn’t died, I might have had somewhere to go—but even I know he was scary, and I didn’t really want to live with him. So I wanted to understand him, and my mom, and why she stayed with him. And I wanted to find out if psychopathy is inherited.”
I breathed slowly, quietly, on my knees. “And what did you learn about that?”
“There seem to be two kinds of psychopathy—those that arise from environmental factors and those that have a genetic brain chemistry component.”
“That’s right. It seems like you’re really wondering about yourself. The developmental task of the adolescent and young adult is identity formation—discovery of who, what, and how you are in the world.”
“That’s what I came to find out.” Russell Pruitt’s eyes blinked rapidly behind the glasses as he turned to look at me. “What do you think, Dr. Wilson? Am I a psychopath?”
Chapter 17
Don’t tell him he’s a psychopath! Constance shrieked in my mind. This isn’t real therapy—remember, keep the giant happy!
“I don’t know,” I said. It was the truth.
“C’mon, Dr. Wilson. That’s a cop-out.”
“Asking me is a cop-out. I can’t give an honest answer; my life is at stake. So that should give you something to consider.”
A long silence stretched out between us.
“Fair enough.” He stirred the Top Ramen. “We’ll talk more about this. Dinner’s ready.”
I got up off my knees and walked into the kitchen, dumped the last bits from the dustpan into the trash. “I don’t know how much you’re aware of regarding the diagnostic process. What classes have you had so far?”
“Got the basics in my bachelor’s. Next semester I’ve got Theories of Personality, Abnormal Psychology, Social Psychology Methods, and Overview of the DSM.”
“Those are the theoretical basics. Applied assessment and interviewing is a lot of practice experience that you’ll get in your internship.” I washed my hands under the cold, cold water piped straight out of the aquifer in the heart of the volcano. “Any diagnostic impression of you would be complicated by the severe trauma you went through in witnessing the domestic violence between your parents. Your gigantism is another aspect that makes your mental health profile complicated—impaired pituitary function can lead to impulse control problems.”
“I’m actually more of a planner than impulsive.”
“I agree, given how you set up this situation, but personally, I think character isn’t ever preformed or inherited.”
“Character,” Russell Pruitt said. “That’s not a word you hear very often anymore.”
“What I mean by character is the sum total of acted-out, observable behavior. Character has fallen out of fashion, but it’s still a great way to think about who you want to be in life. You know that old saying—sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow character and reap a destiny. What we do here in this cabin, in the time we have left to us, is the fruit of our character and becomes our destiny.”
“Very poetic.” Russell Pruitt drained the noodles in the sink beside me, using the lid to keep them in the pot. Steam rose and wreathed his glasses. “I think it’s an experiment.”
“Hmm. Tell me more.” I spooned the prunes into two chipped china cups and carried them to the table. He followed me, carrying bowls of the noodles and a couple of metal forks.
“It’s an experiment as to whether or not I have the same capacity for violence as my father. Is the revenge I’ve planned something I have to act on, or something I can resolve some other way?” Russell slurped some hot noodles, his eyes still hidden by fogged lenses.
“Right. Good questions.” I blew on the hot noodles, my heart thudding and stomach churning. The topic was utterly unnerving, but as long as I treated it as a source of intellectual inquiry, I could engage him in a dance of words that might somehow set me free. “I’d like to make a case that you are not a psychopath.”
“I bet you would,” he said, and smiled that funhouse grin.
I persevered. “Certainly you have trauma. Unresolved parent issues. An obsessive quality even. Narcissism and a problem with anger and impulse control. But I’m not convinced that you’re a psychopath.”
“Why not?” His voice sounded deep, hopeful, young—a Stradivarius of a voice that could adopt shades of meaning. I reminded myself not to trust that naive tone—he’d fooled me with it before.
“Well, you’ve been kind to me, and even when you laid hands on me, it was not to inflict pain that you then enjoyed. It was because you were angry or to make a point. There was a function to it.”
You’re making excuses for him, Constance whispered. Please tell me you don’t really believe that crap.
“I’ve been kind, yes. I didn’t have to bring you a cinnamon roll and let you eat it.”
“Right. You seem to be upset when I’m upset. That implies a level of empathy, and a lack of empathy, or inability to feel others’ emotions, is one of the primary hallmarks of the psychopath.”
Russell Pruitt seemed to be thinking this over. “So you don’t think I can kill you, then?”
“Oh no. I think you can kill me, all right.” I turned my blue eyes on him. “I just think you’ll regret it forever if you do.”
I’ve been told my eyes are very effective at seeing the depths of clients—and the depths I saw in Russell Pruitt were confused. Confusion I could handle.
“I think you’ll be sorry if you kill me and will never feel right about it.” I pitched my voice low, with the cadence of a hypnotic suggestion. “You don’t want to kill me.”
I drove that suggestion deep. His eyes showed the telltale circle of white beneath the iris that confirmed he was under hypnosis. “You want to live. You want me to live too.”
“I want to live,” Pruitt repeated. “I want you to live.” Then he shook his head like a bear with a mosquito in its ear. “Enough of this. The noodles are getting cold.”
After our meal, he said, “I want to keep going with our therapy, but we’re going outside. Let’s each get some logs.”
I walked into the storage closet, identical to the one at the other cabin, and loaded my arms with four of the Pres-to-Logs in their brightly marked paper packaging. Pruitt was waiting in the doorway with the rope in his hands, and I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, come on. Do you really think I’m going to run off? With no water? And night coming on?”
Russell Pruitt held up the rope, considering.
“Okay. You can take off your boots. I don’t think you’ll run off without your boots. Or, you can be tied.”
Holding the Pres-to-Logs, I considered. “I thi
nk that’s an unfair choice. You still don’t trust me.”
“Of course not. Choose.”
“Okay then. I don’t like the way the rope makes me feel. I’ll do without the boots.”
“Socks too,” he said. I went to the bed, set the logs down, untied the boots.
I’d left them on without taking them off for two days now. My feet reeked, and they were reddened and sore from hiking, the skin blanched from sweat and blistered on the tops of my toes. Taking the boots off and rubbing my feet with the dirty socks, I was surprised at the sense of freedom my bare feet gave me.
Maybe this was going to be my chance. I glanced up at the windows—another glorious sunset was flaming in the crater, and it would be full dark soon. But I still had the flashlight and striker bulb down in the leg of my elastic-bottomed sweatpants, and something Russell Pruitt didn’t know was that I loved being barefoot. I did all my yard work barefoot. Like many Hawaii residents, I had tough soles on my feet from wearing slippers or nothing on the weekends, and I thought I might be able to do the trail barefoot . . . The thought of the lacy-sharp edges of the pumice I’d picked up earlier intimidated me, but I’d cross that bridge when and if I came to it.
He’d offered me a choice, and I chose the option that seemed to give me the most likely chance for escape.
Now, if I could just get a few other things . . . “I’d like to get my jacket on if we’re going outside.”
“Definitely.” He went to his own backpack and dug through it. I turned to mine and considered the butcher knife.
I discarded the idea of carrying it. It was just too big to conceal, and the possibility of cutting myself too real. I needed some water, though, and my car keys if I ever did get my chance.
I pulled out my nylon jacket with its zippered pockets and, at the same time, felt the side pocket of my backpack. He’d taken the car keys. Another tiny blow, eating away at my resolve. Still, all I had to do was get out of the crater alive, and I could wave someone down.
I zipped up the nylon jacket and picked up a full water bottle. “Okay.”
Russell Pruitt picked up his own load of Pres-to-Logs. “Follow me.”
I felt dizzy with the liberty of following him untethered outside the cabin. Farther to the west than Kapala`oa Cabin, Holua’s sunset view was completely blocked by the huge cliff behind us, the western wall of the crater. All I could see of the sunset was a row of clouds marching along the jagged edge of the rim, stained crimson and gold.
Standing on the plushy green grass, though chilly, felt great on my feet, and I wriggled my toes, looking down the valley. “I wonder where the trail out is.”
Pruitt pointed with one of his sausage fingers to the east. “See that headland? Switchbacks go all the way up that.”
My heart sank.
The way out was going to be at least as strenuous as the way in. The headland looked to be a couple of miles away across rugged lava on the floor of the crater. Even from where I stood, I could see the trail was steep and all uphill, climbing the impressively steep wall of the crater by winding back and forth. I remembered it was a total of four miles on the map—technically not that long, but at an elevation of ten thousand feet, nothing to sneeze at.
“Come with me.” He walked around the back of the cabin.
I followed him, carrying the logs and my water bottle on top of them. A narrow trail led straight up the cliff directly behind the cabin, and we navigated that carefully. As soon as I was off the grass and on the trail, I discarded the idea of running away without my boots. The dirt was soft enough, but it was punctuated by knurls of raw lava, poky as stone burrs. I found myself slowing down, mincing, trying not to step on the painful stones as Russell Pruitt headed for a dark opening in the cliff face.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
This must have been where he was when I was making my call to Bruce.
God, please help Bruce find me, I prayed, as I stepped onto the rough, chill stones lining the floor of the cave. Please. Soon.
Russell Pruitt had turned on his flashlight. The inside of the cave, a tall, narrow space with bench-like stones lining the walls, had been the scene of various kinds of revelry in the past—Tibetan prayer flags decorated one wall, empty liquor bottles another, and stubs of colored candles had been stuck into the stone, one melted onto the next.
“Seems like people party in here,” I said, wrinkling my nose against a smell of stale urine.
“Yeah. Thought we could talk in here this evening. Let’s make a fire.”
“I’m sure the Park Service wouldn’t like that.”
“The Park Service wouldn’t like a lot of things about what we’re doing.” Russell Pruitt took three of the logs, made a little tepee of them, and lit them. Flames licked up the paper wrappers and into the air in a spiral of smoke that made me squint.
I sat on one of the stone “benches” near the opening. I imagined making a run for it, powering down the trail on my once-muscular legs and tender feet, past the cabin, through the razor-like lava field and then into the dark up the Switchbacks Trail.
Even if I could outrun Russell Pruitt without my boots, which was highly unlikely, getting far enough ahead of him to actually escape seemed impossible. I needed my boots and a good long head start. I’d seen what Russell Pruitt could do, and he was at least as good a hiker as me even with his heart condition.
“So. We’re going to share our stories. Get some accountability.” The flare of the Pres-to-Logs danced across Russell Pruitt’s face. I realized his features reminded me of the way a face drawn on a balloon is distorted when you blow it up. Not pretty, and not his fault. I felt that compassion again—poor, sick, suffering boy.
He could have just gone to counseling, Constance said. He didn’t have to stalk you and take you captive.
“You go first,” I said. “I want to hear what you have in mind.”
“Okay. So. I told you already that when I started out to find you, I wanted to hurt you, and make you witness my pain and feel it too.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I suppressed the lurch of my heart and just listened, keeping my neutral psychologist face on.
“Well, that’s changed as I’ve gotten to know you. I now want us both to get something out of this experience, some sort of healing. I still want to do therapy with you, but now I want to help you with yours. I’ve begun some internship hours, you know. I’m working at a crisis shelter for teens. I talk to all kinds of runaways, abuse victims.”
“Sounds like a perfect fit for you.” I wondered how genuine all this was, this change of inclusion from “me” to “us.” He could be becoming attached to me, and that meant he might not kill me. The firelight flickered on those thick glasses, making his eyes impossible to see.
“Yeah. Well, to start with, my dad wasn’t always terrible at home.”
“They seldom are.”
“I remember my parents being happy. When I was younger. But as I got older, he’d come home late from work. When he came home late, it was a bad night. Mom would have me lock my door. She bought me a CD player that spun stars across the ceiling of my room and played songs through headphones. I turned it on as loud as it would go, but it was never loud enough to drown out the sound of them fighting, of him beating her.”
“That’s very hard on a child.”
“Yes. I wanted to help her, but I was scared of him too. I think on some level I knew he just wasn’t like other people. It took me until I was thirteen to realize he didn’t love me, never had, and all the hugs and Christmas gifts and baseball games—they were only so people thought we were normal. I was a prop in the ‘home and family’ set piece.” Russell Pruitt had begun panting shallowly, the flickering light dancing patterns on his sweating face. “In the morning after a bad night, Mom would be in bed with a ‘migraine.’ Dad would fix my breakfast on those days, always extra cheerful. I remember how he’d make me pancakes with blueberries in them. Only on th
e days she had migraines.”
“You realized your parents were both participating in the masquerade.” I summarized the content of his story. Doing so helped keep me disengaged from the heartbreaking threads of it. “Your mom came up with a health complaint she could use to disguise the beatings. You were scared and felt trapped and conflicted.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.” He ran his hands through his thick black hair, looked into the flames. “I didn’t know anything about the other people he might have killed until the trial, when I read the papers. The allegations about the other women who disappeared and how many times he was questioned—it made me feel sick inside. His sickness was in me, like his DNA was warped—and had warped me.”
“You found a reason for your gigantism.”
He looked at me, a long pause. The flames reflected in those thick Coke-bottle lenses, a spooky effect.
“You’re very good, Dr. Wilson. I can see I have a long way to go as a therapist before I’m as good at getting to the heart of things as you are.”
I didn’t reply.
Silence is also a powerful tool in therapy. He was naming a future for himself, a future that wasn’t yet hopeless but would never happen if he killed me. I had to let that work its own powerful magic on him—its infection of hope.
Russell Pruitt having hope was going to keep me alive. I still wasn’t sure myself if he was too far gone to be salvaged, to be healed, and even to have a future in psychology someday. I’d always believed in change and second chances—I wouldn’t have a career in this field if I didn’t—but at this point, all that swirled around us were possibilities and dust.
“The day he killed my mother was kind of like all the rest. That’s what stands out to me—that I didn’t realize it was going to be different.” Pruitt leaned forward toward the warmth of the flames, which were taking a while to warm the small cavern. The smoke was escaping somehow—there must be a vent in the ceiling. I wished I’d worn my boots after all, and tucked my feet up to keep them warm, wrapping my arms around my knees.