by Chris Lynch
He nodded, took the seat.
“Steven, as the founding father of the He-Man Women Haters Club—”
Hisses, low boooos came from the crowd at the mention of the sacred name.
“Can you tell us the principles your organization was built on?”
“We hate women,” he answered robotically.
More booos, more hisses. Somebody threw a chewed piece of gum that bounced off Steven’s forehead. The impartial judge leaned over and said, “If you were my son, I’d put you over my knee.”
“No offense, your honor, but if I was him, I’d put myself over a cliff.”
“Yes, yes,” I cut in. “And when He-Man Wolf joined, was he aware what you were all about?”
“He was.”
“And did it appear to you, in your original meetings with Wolfgang, that he did, in fact, hate women?”
“It seemed to me that Wolfgang hated all living things, which I assumed would include women things.”
“Fair enough. Now Steven, I realize you’ve been through a horrifying experience, but could you please try to recall the afternoon of the dance party—”
“Objection,” called the defendant. “Alleged dance party.”
“What?” Steven leaned forward in his seat and grabbed me by the shirt. “I thought we were going to avoid this.”
“If you want to get him out, we have to have the smoking gun.”
Steven sat back, took a deep breath.
“Um, he tricked us into thinking we were having a summit meeting to get Vanessa to stop harassing Jerome. Then when we got there, the lights went out, and Nessy got ahold of Jerome, and … girls everywhere … music … lights low … snacks … girls …”
“Steve-o, Steve-o,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Easy there, buddy. Now, please, could you tell the court what happened when Monica dragged you into the paint closet and kept you trapped for seven whole minutes?”
There was a very long pause as Steven composed himself. He looked out over the crowd, which was also silent. Silent, that is, except for one very excited Girl Scout who could not help giggling throughout this whole portion of the trial.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I looked at Steven, then back at the crowd, then back at Steven again. “Pardon me?”
“I said I don’t know what you mean. I never went into any closet with any girl.”
“Steven?”
“I didn’t and I never would, everybody knows that. In fact, I don’t even know anybody named Monica. Sorry, never met her.”
Now we had a near riot. Representatives of both sides wanted a piece of Steven. Monica jumped up and screamed—backed by her Girl Scout friends, The Monicats. “You filthy pig. You cowardly little hairless dog—”
Oh boy. Right for the jugular, eh, Monica?
“Hey,” Steven screamed back. “I got hairs. I got loads of hair, all over the place, I got hairs.” As he said it, he made a broad sweeping gesture with his arm, as if he had hairs all over the garage.
“Sit down, all of you,” the judge hollered.
I took advantage of the moment to lean close to Steven and offer him a little professional advice. “See, Steven, the key to effective lying is to say something that cannot be disproven by every person in the room, including the judge.”
He sat back, crossed his arms defiantly. “Ya, well, that’s my story. I never met her before. And even if I had, nothing would have happened in that paint room. Nothing.”
“Sheesh,” I said, hobbling away once more from the witness stand.
Wolfgang was practically salivating.
“Hi,” he said.
Steven refused to answer.
“Fine. Steven, will you please tell the court what desperate and pathetic nickname you have given to yourself?”
“I’m gonna kick your—”
“I’m sorry, could you speak up so everybody can hear you?”
“Johnny Chesthair,” Steven said proudly. “And I didn’t give the name to myself. It just sort of—”
“Isn’t that sad?” Wolf cut in. “Okay. Johnny, when the He-Men went on television one time, there was a moment toward the end of the program when the pressure was really on—”
“Nothing happened,” Steven snapped.
“May I remind you that we have the event on a very popular and widely circulated video?”
“I threw up, all right? So what’s your point, bat ears?”
“I would like to state, for the record, that Steven hurt my feelings with that reference to the pointiness of my ears.”
“Oh please,” Steven sighed. “What feelings?”
“You may step down and stop soiling my witness stand, rotten boy,” Mom said.
That would be a problem, the judge hating your star witness.
“You got any more witnesses?” Wolf asked me.
I barely had the strength to shake my head no.
“Good. I’ll be brief. The defense calls Monica.”
That’s right, Wolfie, as long as we’re down, just keep kicking away there, boy. All you had to do was watch her stroll to the stand, and you could feel the red menace of her. Bright shiny pigtails hanging perfect, motionless, the tips like epaulets on the shoulders of her Girl Scout uniform. Her patent-leather shoes more highly polished than my own. She smiled at everyone, waved at her friends when she took the stand, then shared a stick of Trident with the judge.
“Now Monica, would you like to add anything to what Steven said about that afternoon in the paint room?”
“He kisses like a fish.”
It was good that Wolf dismissed her at that point, since the laughter and squealing made it impossible to hear any more anyway. Steven tipped all the way over backward in his chair, crashing to the floor. Then he didn’t bother to get back up.
Wolf was on a roll.
“I call … He-Man Ling-Ling to the stand.”
“What? No I’m very busy … being a prosecutor … being on the jury … sorry.”
“Get up here,” he said.
Slowly, I did. Very slowly.
I sat there in the witness stand, waiting, waiting, trying to hold it together. Wolf wheeled right up to me and just smiled. He looked friendly enough, but … god was I afraid of him. What was he going to do to me? What was to be my humiliation? I was the one, the mastermind, the person responsible for this whole situation. What was he going to do? Why didn’t he get it over with, for god’s sake? Have some mercy. …
I could feel the tears rolling like golf balls down my face.
He spoke solemnly. “Let the record show that the prosecutor is crying tears of shame for what he has done to me.”
He didn’t break stride, calling himself to the witness stand before I’d even vacated it. He rolled up, parked his chair right in front of me, and addressed the crowd.
“So you see, everybody, all I’ve ever wanted to do is improve their chances of survival. I just want to help my brother He-Men to achieve their real goal—they want to become men. And as we can plainly see, you couldn’t take the whole gang of them together, put them in a blender, and come out with one decent man. They are so desperately in need of help, extraordinary measures were in order.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the judge murmured, knowing full well her son could hear her clearly from the witness stand.
“I mean,” Wolf went on, “the president, Ling, has been running around lately looking like a kids’ breakfast cereal commercial. I tried to tell them, the girls like me because I’m dangerous and exciting. Superheroes are for goofs; villains is where it’s at. Everybody knows that. But do they listen? No.
“So I just want to say, if I am guilty, then I guess I’m just guilty of trying too hard. I tried the only way I know to make men out of these boys—I tried to make them more like me.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you can sympathize. You’ve all seen what I had to work with.”
Well, at the very least,
Wolfgang accomplished one thing—he made hamburger out of the club that was about to bounce him. But that didn’t matter. No matter how stupid we looked, we were back in charge. The vote belonged to the He-Men.
12 Justice, the Long Way Around
WE HUDDLED INSIDE THE jury deliberation-mobile.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” I said. “I vote he’s out.”
Steven jumped in. “He’s out. Let’s hurry and get him and his gang out the door before the odor of girl wipes out all the motor oil and paint and other good smells.”
Then came the shocker.
“I vote he stays,” said Jerome.
“What?” Steven said. “You little mental case! What do you want to do that for, after all he did to you?”
“Because he’s right,” Jerome said. “Like it or not, villains is where it’s at. It would be boring without him.”
“And Nessy’d eat you for breakfast?” I suggested.
“That too,” he added unapologetically.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll call yours a protest vote. It’s just symbolic anyway, because it’ll be three to one—”
Cecil started shaking his head.
“Now don’t you start,” Steven said.
“I just don’t see why we should kick him out if all he was tryin’ to do was help us. I was confused there until he pointed it out, but now I know what he was doin’ … and we oughta be ashamed we didn’t even appreciate it. He had me almost in tears myself when—”
“I’ll have you in tears,” Steven said, lunging over the seat at Cecil.
I stuck myself between them. “All right, that’s enough now. This is just great—now what are we going to do?”
On cue, the back door of the Lincoln opened, and Wolf threw himself in, right out of his wheelchair. “Come on, push over now, push over.”
With the five of us assembled in such tight quarters, it was a little tense.
“You have to get out,” I said calmly. “This is where the jury is supposed to deliberate in secret.”
“I know, that’s why I’m here. I’m voting.”
“What?” we all asked him at once.
“Sure, the jury is made up of all the He-Men, just as we agreed. No matter what the outcome of the trial, I am still, as of this moment, a He-Man, am I not?”
“Crap,” Steven said, already conceding defeat.
“I’m getting a ruling from the judge,” I said, popping the door open.
Wolf put a hand on my back. “Are you starting to enjoy public humiliation?”
I sat back down.
“Don’t gloat,” I said. “All right, everybody, let’s make it quick. Out!” I said.
“Out,” said Steven.
“In,” said Jerome.
“Good boy,” said Wolf, winking at him.
“In,” said Cecil.
Taking his time, cracking his knuckles, breathing deep the air of victory, Wolf finally voiced his vote.
“Out!” he said with a big rotten smile.
I could not believe my ears. But I guess I should not be surprised by anything my ears tell me at this point.
“You’re bluffing,” Steven said.
“No way. If I’m caught with this weenie club one more second, I’m afraid my reputation might never recover from it. It’s been fun, boys.”
On that word, he slipped back out of the car and into his chair. The four remaining He-Men crawled up tight to the rear window and stared, slack jawed, as he made his way out the far door of the garage. He was surrounded by his gang of girls—Vanessa riding in the chair with him, Rock rubbing his back, Monica unwrapping a stick of gum for him. Like he was the victim.
Steven broke the silence, speaking with what sounded a little like admiration as the door closed on The Trial of Wolfgang.
“Now that was a butt whipping.”
A Biography of Chris Lynch
Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.
Lynch grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and recalls his childhood ambitions to become a hockey player (magically, without learning to ice skate properly), president of the United States, and/or a “rock and roll god.” He attended Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, before heading off to Boston University, neglecting to first earn his high school diploma. He later transferred to Suffolk University, where he majored in journalism, and eventually received an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. Before becoming a writer, Lynch worked as a furniture mover, truck driver, house painter, and proofreader. He began writing fiction around 1989, and his first book, Shadow Boxer, was published in 1993. “I could not have a more perfect job for me than writer,” he says. “Other than not managing to voluntarily read a work of fiction until I was at university, this gig and I were made for each other. One might say I was a reluctant reader, which surely informs my work still.”
In 1989, Lynch married, and later had two children, Sophia and Walker. The family moved to Roslindale, Massachusetts, where they lived for seven years. In 1996, Lynch moved his family to Ireland, his father’s birthplace, where Lynch has dual citizenship. After a few years in Ireland, he separated from his wife and met his current partner, Jules. In 1998, Jules and her son, Dylan, joined in the adventure when Lynch, Sophia, and Walker sailed to southwest Scotland, which remains the family’s base to this day. In 2010, Sophia had a son, Jackson, Lynch’s first grandchild.
When his children were very young, Lynch would work at home, catching odd bits of available time to write. Now that his children are grown, he leaves the house to work, often writing in local libraries and “acting more like I have a regular nine-to-five(ish) job.”
Lynch has written more than twenty-five books for young readers, including Inexcusable (2005), a National Book Award finalist; Freewill (2001), which won a Michael L. Printz Honor; and several novels cited as ALA Best Books for Young Adults, including Gold Dust (2000) and Slot Machine (1995).
Lynch’s books are known for capturing the reality of teen life and experiences, and often center on adolescent male protagonists. “In voice and outlook,” Lynch says, “Elvin Bishop [in the novels Slot Machine; Extreme Elvin; and Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz] is the closest I have come to representing myself in a character.” Many of Lynch’s stories deal with intense, coming-of-age subject matters. The Blue-Eyed Son trilogy was particularly hard for him to write, because it explores an urban world riddled with race, fear, hate, violence, and small-mindedness. He describes the series as “critical of humanity in a lot of ways that I’m still not terribly comfortable thinking about. But that’s what novelists are supposed to do: get uncomfortable and still be able to find hope. I think the books do that. I hope they do.”
Lynch’s He-Man Women Haters Club series takes a more lighthearted tone. These books were inspired by the club of the same name in the Little Rascals film and TV show. Just as in the Little Rascals’ club, says Lynch, “membership is really about classic male lunkheadedness, inadequacy in dealing with girls, and with many subjects almost always hiding behind the more macho word hate when we cannot admit that it’s fear.”
Today, Lynch splits his time between Scotland and the US, where he teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His life motto continues to be “shut up and write.”
Lynch, age twenty, wearing a soccer shirt from a team he played with while living in Jamaica Plain, Boston.
Lynch with his daughter, Sophia, and son, Walker, in Scotland’s Cairngorm Mountains in 2002.
Lynch at the National Book Awards in 2005. From left to right: Lynch’s
brother Brian; his mother, Dot; Lynch; and his brother E.J.
Lynch with his family at Edinburgh’s Salisbury Crags at Hollyrood Park in 2005. From left to right: Lynch’s daughter, Sophia; niece Kim; Lynch; his son, Walker; his partner, Jules, and her son, Dylan; and Lynch’s brother E.J.
In 2009, Lynch spoke at a Massachusetts grade school and told the story of Sister Elizabeth of Blessed Sacrament School in Jamaica Plain, the only teacher he had who would “encourage a proper, liberating, creative approach to writing.” A serious boy came up to Lynch after his talk, handed him this paper origami nun, and said, “I thought you should have a nun. Her name is Sister Elizabeth.” Sister Elizabeth hangs in Lynch’s car to this day.
Lynch and his “champion mystery multibreed knuckleheaded hound,” Dexter, at home in Scotland in 2011. Says Lynch, “Dexter and I often put our heads together to try and fathom an unfathomable world.” Though Dexter lives with him, Lynch is allergic to dogs, and survives by petting Dexter with his feet and washing his hands multiple times a day!
Lynch never makes a move without first consulting with his trusted advisor and grandson, Jackson. This photo was taken in 2012, when Jackson was two years old, in Lynch’s home in Coylton, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Lynch later discovered his house was locally known as “the Hangman’s Cottage” because of the occupation of one of its earliest residents. One of his novels, The Gravedigger’s Cottage, is loosely based on this house.
Lynch dressed up as Wolverine for Halloween in 2012.
Turn the page to continue reading from the He-Man Women Hater’s Club series
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