Soon after her marriage, when they all moved to the nearby city of Lancaster, Dorothy discovered that Chalmer was unusually strict with the four children. No talking at the dinner table.
No laughing. The salt had to be passed clockwise. When company came, the children had to sit up straight, feet flat on the floor, hands on their knees.
Kathy was not allowed to sit on her mothers lap. “You’re too old for that,” Chalmer said to the seven-year-old.
Once when Jimbo asked Billy to pass the salt, and Billy, unable to reach that far, slid it over partway, Chalmer shouted at him, “Can’t you do anything right? Nine years old, acting like a baby.”
They became afraid of Daddy Chal. It was even worse when he was drinking beer.
Afraid to show his anger, Billy withdrew into himself. He didn’t understand the strictness, the hostility, the punishment. Once when Chalmer shouted at him and Billy looked directly into his face, Chalmers tone changed to an icy hiss: “Bend them eyes while I’m talkin’ to you.”
The voice made Billy cringe and look down . . .
Often when Shawn opened his eyes and looked around, someone was watching him with lips moving, face angry. Sometimes it was the pretty lady. Sometimes it was one of the girls or the boy, who was a little bigger than he was, who would push him or take his toy away. When they moved their lips, he moved his, too, and made the buzzing through his teeth. Then they would laugh when he did that. But not the big angry man. The man would glare at him. Then Shawn would cry, and that would make a funny feeling in his head, too, and Shawn would close his eyes and go away.
Kathy later remembered Billy’s favorite childhood game.
“Do the bee, Billy,” Kathy said. “Show Challa.”
Billy looked at them, puzzled. “What bee?”
“The bee thingie you do. You know. Zzzzzzzz!”
Puzzled, Billy imitated the buzzing of a bee.
“You’re funny,” Kathy said.
“Why do you make that buzzing sound at night?” Jimbo asked later in their room. They slept in the antique wooden double bed together, and Jimbo had been awakened several times by his brother making the vibrating buzzing sound.
Embarrassed that Jimbo should mention the buzzing, just as the girls had, which Billy knew nothing about, he thought quickly. “It’s a game I invented.”
“What kind of game?”
“It’s called ‘Little Bee.’ I’ll show you.” He put both hands under the covers and moved them in circles. “Zzzzzzzz . . . You see, that’s a family of bees under there.”
To Jimbo, it was almost as if the buzzing sound was coming from under the covers. Billy brought one hand out, cupped, and it seemed the buzzing was coming from inside his hand. Then with his fingers he walked the bee up and down the pillow and the covers. He did this several times with different bees until suddenly Jimbo felt a sharp pinch on his arm.
“Ow! What’d you do that for?”
“That was one of the bees stung you. Now you gotta catch it. Smack that bee or hold it down
with your hand.”
Several times Jimbo slapped or trapped a bee that stung him. Then once, as he trapped one, the buzzing filled the darkened room, became louder and angrier, and the other hand came out and pinched him harder and harder.
“Ow! Ow! Hey, you’re hurting me.”
“It’s not me,” Billy said. “You trapped Little Bee. His daddy and his big brother came buzzing around to punish you.” Jimbo let go of Little Bee, and Billy had the whole family of bees circling around Little Bee on the pillow.
“That’s a good game,” Jimbo said. “Let’s play it again tomorrow night.”
Billy lay there in the dark before falling asleep, thinking that was probably the real explanation for the buzzing. He had probably been inventing the game in his head—making the buzzing sounds without realizing the others in the house could hear him. That probably happened to a lot of people. Just like losing time. He figured everybody lost time. He’d often heard his mother or one of the neighbors say, “God, I don’t know where the time went” or “Is it that late?” or “Where on earth did the day go?”
(2)
The Teacher remembered one Sunday vividly. It was a week after April Fool’s Day. Billy, who had turned nine seven weeks earlier, had noticed Daddy Chal watching him constantly. Billy picked up a magazine and glanced through it, but when he looked up he saw Chalmer staring, sitting stone-faced with his hand to his chin, his empty blue-green eyes watching everything he did. Billy got up, put the magazine neatly back on the coffee table and sat on the couch the way he’d been told to, feet flat on the floor, hands on his knees. But Chalmer kept looking at him, so he got up and went out on the back porch. Restless, not knowing what to do, he thought of playing with Blackjack.
Everyone said Blackjack was a vicious dog, but Billy got along with him. When he looked up, he saw Chalmer staring at him through the bathroom window.
Frightened now, wanting to get away from Chalmers gaze, he went around the house to the front yard and sat there shivering although it was a warm evening. The paper boy tossed the Gazette to him, and he got up and turned to bring it into the house, but there was Chalmer watching him through the front window.
All the rest of that Sunday and that evening, Billy felt Chalmers eyes boring into him. He began to tremble, not knowing what Chalmer was going to do. Chalmer didn’t say anything, didn’t speak, but the eyes were there, following every move.
The family watched Walt Disney s Wonderful World of Color, and Billy stretched out on the floor. From time to time, he would look back and see Chalmers cold, empty stare. When he moved to sit close to his mother on the couch, Chalmer got up and stomped out of the room.
Billy couldn’t sleep much that night.
Next morning, before breakfast, Chalmer came into the kitchen, looking as if he hadn’t slept much either, and announced that he and Billy were going to the farm. There was a lot to be done.
Chalmer drove the back way, the long way, to the farm, never speaking a word the whole trip. He opened the garage and drove the tractor into the bam. Then Billy closed his eyes. He felt pain . . .
Dr. George Hardings statement to the court recounts the event: “The patient reports . . . that he suffered sadistic and sexual abuse including anal intercourse from Mr. Milligan. According to the patient this occurred when he was eight or nine over the course of a year, generally on a farm when he would be alone with his stepfather. He indicates that he was afraid that the stepfather would kill him insomuch as he threatened to ‘bury him in the bam and tell the mother that he had run away.’”
... at that moment his mind, his emotions and his soul shattered into twenty-four parts.
(3)
Kathy, Jimbo and Challa later confirmed the Teachers memory of their mothers first beating.
According to Dorothy, Chalmer had become enraged after he saw her talking to a black coworker on the job at a nearby bench. She had been operating a tape-controlled punch drill, and when she
noticed the man was starting to doze on the assembly line, she went over, shook him and told him it was dangerous. He smiled and thanked her.
As she went back to her work table, she saw Chalmer glaring at her. All the way home he was silent, sulking.
In the house she finally said to him, “Whats the matter? You want to talk about it?”
“You and that nigger,” Chalmer said. “What’s going on?”
“Going on? What in God’s name are you talking about?”
He hit her. The children watched from the living room as he beat her. Billy stood there, terrified, wanting to help her, wanting to stop Chalmer from hurting his mother. But he smelled the liquor and he was afraid Chalmer would kill him and bury him and tell her he ran away.
Billy ran to his room, slammed the door shut with his back against it and covered his ears with his hands. But he couldn’t shut out his mothers screaming. Crying, he slowly slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor. He closed his eyes tight, and in Shawn’s deafness everything went silent . . .
That was the first of the bad mix-up times, the Teacher recalled. Life became tangled as Billy wandered about, losing time, not knowing the day or week or month. His fourth-grade teachers noticed his odd behavior, and when one of the personalities, not knowing what was going on, would say something strange or get up and wander around the room, Billy would be sent to stand in the comer. Three-year-old Christene was the one who kept her face to the wall.
She could stay there for a long time and not say anything, keeping Billy out of trouble. Mark, who had a short attention span for anything but manual labor, would have wandered away. Tommy would have rebelled. David would have suffered. “Jason,” the pressure valve, would have screamed.
“Bobby” would have gotten lost in a fantasy. “Samuel,” who was Jewish, like Johnny Morrison, would have prayed. Any one of them or the others might have done something wrong and gotten Billy into a worse mess. Only Christene, who never got older than three, could stand there patiently and say nothing.
Christene was the comer child.
She was also the first to hear one of the others. She was on the way to school one morning and stopped to pick a bunch of wildflowers in the field. She found sumac and mulberries and tried to put them into a bunch. If she brought them to her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Roth, maybe she
wouldn’t be put in the comer so much. When she passed the apple tree, she decided to bring a fruit instead. She threw away the wildflowers and tried to reach the apples. She felt sad they were too high, and tears came to her eyes.
“Vat is wrong, little girl? Vat for you are crying?”
She looked around but didn’t see anyone. “The tree won’t let me have the apples,” she said.
“Don’t cry. Ragen gets apples.”
He shimmied up the tree, and summoning all his strength, “Ragen” broke a thick branch and brought it down. “Here,” he said. “I have for you many apples.” He loaded his arms with apples and led Christene toward the school.
When Ragen left, Christene dropped them in the middle of the street. A car was speeding toward the biggest, shiniest apple, the one she wanted to give Mrs. Roth, and when she tried to reach it, Ragen bumped her out of the way to save her from being hit. She saw the car had squashed the pretty apple, and she cried, but Ragen picked up another one, not nearly as nice, wiped it off and gave it to her to take to school.
When she put the apple on the desk, Mrs. Roth said, “Why, thank you, Billy.”
That upset Christene, because she had brought the apple. She went to the back of the room, wondering where to sit. She sat down on the left side of the room, but a few minutes later a big boy
said, “Get outta my seat.”
She felt bad, but when she sensed Ragen coming to hit the boy, she got up quickly and walked to another chair.
“Hey, that’s my seat,” a girl called from the blackboard. “Billy’s sitting in my seat.”
“Don’t you know where you sit?” Mrs. Roth asked. Christene shook her head.
Mrs. Roth pointed to an empty seat on the right side of the room. “You sit in that chair right there, Billy. Now go to it.” Christene didn’t know why Mrs. Roth was angry. She had tried so hard to make the teacher like her. Through her tears she felt Ragen coming out to do something bad to the teacher. So she squeezed her eyes shut, stamped her feet and made Ragen stop. Then she left too.
Billy opened his eyes, looked around, dazed, to find himself in class. God, how had he gotten here? Why were they staring at him? Why were they giggling?
On the way out of class, he heard Mrs. Roth call to him, “Thank you for the apple, Billy. It was very nice of you. I'm really sorry I had to scold you.”
He watched as she went down the corridor, and wondered what in the world she was talking about.
(4)
The first time Kathy and Jimbo heard the British accent, they thought Billy was clowning.
Jimbo was in the room with him while they were sorting their laundry. Kathy came to the door to see if Billy was ready to walk with her and Challa to school.
“What’s the matter, Billy?” she asked, seeing the dazed look on his face.
He looked at her, around the room and at the other boy, who was staring at him too. He had no idea who these two were or how or why he was here. He didn’t know anyone named Billy.
All he knew was that his name was Arthur and he was from London.
He looked down and saw the socks he was wearing, one black and the other purple. “Oh, I say, these are most certainly not mates.”
The girl giggled and so did the boy. “Oh, you’re silly, Billy. That’s good. You sound just like Dr. Watson on those Sherlock Holmes movies you’re always watching, doesn’t he, Jimbo?”
Then she skipped off, and the boy called Jimbo ran out, shouting, “Better hurry up or you’ll be late.”
Why, he wondered, were they calling him Billy when his name was Arthur?
Was he an impostor? Had he come into this house among these people as a spy? A detective?
It would take some logical thinking to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Why was he wearing two different-color socks? Who had put them on? What was going on here?
“You coming, Billy? You know what Daddy Chal will do if you’re late again.”
Arthur decided that if he was going to be an impostor, he might as well go all the way. He joined Challa and Kathy on their walk to the Nicholas Drive school, but he said nothing all the way there. When they passed a room, Kathy said, “Where you going, Billy? You’d better get in there.”
He hung back until he could figure out—by the last empty seat—where it would be safe to sit. He walked to it without looking right or left, holding his head high, not daring to speak; he had figured out that the others had laughed because he spoke differently.
The teacher handed out the mimeographed arithmetic test. “When you’re done,” she said,
“you may leave your papers in your books and go out to recess. After you come back, check your answers. Then I’ll collect the papers and grade them.” Arthur looked at the test and sneered at the multiplication and long-division problems. He picked up a pencil and quickly went down the paper, doing the problems in his head and writing in the answers. When he was done, he put the paper into the book, crossed his arms and stared into space.
This was all so very elementary.
Out in the schoolyard the rowdy children annoyed him, and he closed his eyes . . . After recess the teacher said, “Take your papers out of your books now.”
Billy looked up, startled.
What was he doing in class? How had he gotten here? He remembered getting up in the morning, but not getting dressed or coming to school. He had no idea what had happened between waking up at home and now.
“You may check your answers before turning in the math papers.”
What math papers?
He had no idea what was going on, but he decided if she asked him why he didn’t have his math, he’d tell her he forgot it or lost it outside. He’d have to tell her something. He opened his book and stared in disbelief. There was the test paper with all the answers written in—to all fifty
problems. He noticed that it wasn’t his handwriting—similar, but as if it had been written very quickly. He’d often found papers in his possession and just assumed they were his. But he knew there was no way in the world someone as bad as he was in math could have done those problems.
He peeked over at the desk next to his and saw a girl working on the same test. He shrugged, picked up a pencil and wrote “Bill Milligan” at the top. He had no intention of checking it. How could he doublecheck the answers if he didn’t know how to work the problems?
“Are you finished already?”
He looked up and saw the teacher standing over him.
“Yeah.”
“You mean you didn’t check your answers?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have that much confidence you’re going to pass this test?”
“I dunno,” Billy said. “Only way to find out is to grade it.”
She took the test paper up to her desk, and a few seconds later he saw the frown on her face.
She walked back to his seat. “Let me see your book, Billy.”
He handed it to her and she leafed through it.
“Let me see your hands.”
He showed her his hands. Then she asked to see his shirt cuffs and the contents of his pockets and the inside of his desk.
“Well,” she said finally, “I don’t understand. There’s no way you could have the answers, because I just ran the test off on the mimeograph this morning and the only answers are in my purse.”
“Did I pass?” Billy asked.
“Did I pass?” Billy asked.