Jasper Jones (13 page)

And clearly, it’s not just me. I skim over editorials and letters which gather in intensity as the crimes continue. A fever of panic against an unseen evil, as though Perth were Gotham City itself. I imagine worried denizens clutching their coats and walking quickly as a cool wind herds leaves around their ankles. I read on. Reporters tell folks to lock their doors, recommending curfews and urging ladies to wear full-length clothing. There are double-page spreads, rife with wild speculation and concern, on how to secure your home. Nowhere was safe, nobody was exempt. It could be
you
next.

And then they caught him. Eric Edgar Cooke, who came looking for his gun and was ambushed by the law. He must have wondered what took them so long.

I stare at his photograph. The thin, bowed man who tormented a
city. The man who had them running for the exits, had them turning against each other. He looks a little like a beaten and battered Jack Dempsey. He looks harried by demons and ill at ease.

There are stories etched into that face, but what I’m really searching for is
why
. Why he stabbed a woman in her own bed. Why he shot a man between the eyes as he answered his door.
Why
? Why did he kill all these people? I need to know why he wanted a whole city to close in on itself.

I shake my head slowly and read on and on, no longer interested in the crimes themselves. I find it strange that even after he was caught and caged, even after he was revealed to be such a small and sallow sight, the panic in the articles doesn’t relax. The people still are rattled.

I finally begin to piece together a portrait of his life and his childhood. I read about him being ruthlessly bullied on account of his cleft palate. About his loneliness. His abandonment by everyone except his pitying mother. About his abusive drunkard father who beat him ferociously with his fists, sometimes with a thick belt. Who spent his wages on drink and let his family go hungry, which meant Cooke had to thieve for their livelihood.

It is horrifying and sad. But I still don’t understand. Was this really
why
? Are these the ingredients of a murderer? I hold my head in my hands and I think about Jasper Jones. An orphan, or as good as. Whose dad hits the drink as hard as he hits his only son. Who also has to steal to eat. I can’t even begin to imagine what has happened under that roof. I think about Jeffrey Lu, bullied every day of his life. I think about Sam Quinn, a boy at our school with a cleft palate. Or Prue Styles, a lonely girl who has a ruby-red birthmark like a bloodstain down her face. And I think of Mad Jack Lionel. I imagine his face as a composite of Albert Fish and assorted movie villains. I think of him alone on his veranda in the still of night. His crooked face, his evil eyes. Surveying his moonlit property. Watching a girl in a nightdress hastily making her way to the river.

I push my glasses to my eyes and peer at Cooke again. And it
occurs to me for the first time that people can do this to each other. People really can. And I wonder: How thin is the line? Is it something we all have in us? Is it just a matter of friction and pressure? Is it shit luck and a poor lot? Is it time and chance? I scratch at my scalp and sniff. Maybe Mark Twain knows.

To my surprise, the next volume holds Cooke’s own answer.

The paper is dry, and it crackles as I navigate through it. It smells musty. I turn to the right page. There is a small tear in the bottom corner, and my spine sparks cold at the thought of someone else being privy to this. There’s a different picture of Cooke. This time he looks more pathetic. Almost resigned. I read hungrily. Finally, at last, a reporter asks him
why
. Why did he do this?

Cooke replied:
I just wanted to hurt somebody
.

I sigh and rest my cheek on my fist. I glance out the window for a time. That can’t be it. That can’t be all. I reach for the newspaper dated the day after Cooke’s hanging, but I find no report. I frown and lean forward, scouring the sheets in front of me. It’s only when I’m deep into its innards that I realize my mistake: October 27, 1965. I’m a full year out.

But underneath the date, I’m drawn to a headline that stops me cold. I pause to clean my glasses with my shirt. I hold my breath and pore over the box of text beneath it.

I read about a girl from America called Sylvia Likens. The police found her dead on a dirty mattress. She was sixteen. The same age as Laura Wishart. And I feel myself lured down a path I’m not sure I should be treading. The outline of her story seems so black and obscene. I’m ill and cold and empty, but hungry for more. So much so that I’m driven back to the newspaper stand to take every edition since October back to my table. Mrs. Harvey eyes me over the rims of her spectacles. I sit down heavily. And I read on with my brick sinking, patching together the story of Sylvia Likens.

Sylvia’s parents were carnival workers and often moved from city to city. A few months ago, in July, they were due to leave for another
stint. They couldn’t afford to bring all their children with them, so her father called on a recent acquaintance of his, a woman called Gertrude Baniszewski, and offered her twenty dollars a week as board for Sylvia and her younger sister, Jenny. Baniszewski, described as a sickly and severe woman, accepted the offer despite having seven children of her own and an estranged husband.

It seems that as soon as the door was closed on Sylvia Likens, the nightmare began. Gertrude Baniszeswki was at once bitter and suspicious, then jealous and sinister. She took an immediate dislike to the girls, particularly Sylvia, and often falsely accused her of thieving so that she might punish her.

After the first week, the stipend promised by the girls’ father did not come. Enraged, Baniszewski thrashed Sylvia with a wooden rod. This became the first of many beatings. The violence became routine and grew in intensity. Sylvia must have been terrified. After a few weeks, she started wetting her bed. But it wasn’t just Baniszewski. As the abuse escalated, Gertrude somehow enlisted her own children and others from the surrounding neighborhood, inviting them to enact awful cruelties upon Sylvia. They did unthinkable things. They stubbed cigarettes out on her skin. They cut her and beat her. They pulled her hair and they spat on her. They made her strip her clothes and dance in front of them. They made her put a Coke bottle inside her private parts.

Sylvia’s torment got worse. Every day she was kicked and punched and hit and burned. She was just a grisly game for them. They tortured her methodically, all at Baniszewski’s bidding. They began lowering Sylvia into baths filled with scalding water, holding her down as a means of cleansing her of sin. Then they rubbed salt into her open wounds.

Eventually, Sylvia tried to escape. She was caught on the landing. She didn’t even make it to the front yard. Baniszewski dragged her inside. She shoved her down the basement stairs. From then on she was made to live in the cellar with the dogs. Baniszewski treated her
like one of her animals. Worse. They starved her, feeding her nothing but crackers. They wouldn’t allow her to wear clothes. They wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom. They made her eat her own shit and piss and vomit.

Sylvia had told Jenny that she was going to die soon. She said she knew it. She must have been so afraid. It sounded as though she was giving up. She’d borne too much. She was letting go.

Sylvia’s single act of defiance was to spend a night banging a shovel against the walls of the cellar. But nobody came. Nobody saved her.

She died in the bath. Of hunger and shock. She just slipped away. When they made the discovery, Baniszewski and her daughters carried Sylvia’s body and dumped it on a filthy mattress across the hall. They folded her arms across her chest. Then they called the police.

What they found was a tiny body scratched and torn and bruised and branded, still wet from the bath. She had open sores from her scalding. She was stippled with puckered cigarette burns. She had teeth missing. Two black eyes. Her nails were broken. She’d bitten right through her bottom lip.

Before the police left, Jenny Likens quietly tugged at the shirt of an officer. And she said: “If you get me out of here, I’ll tell you everything.” Later that day, Baniszewski was arrested.

I stop reading.

One of the hardest things for me to understand is why Jenny waited until then to speak out. She’d watched for all those months; she’d been there for every savage act. She had the chance. Hadn’t she been at school while Sylvia was housebound? She could have told somebody there.

But it’s not just Jenny. It’s the whole choir of mute voices that puts the lump in my throat. Why didn’t anybody help her? The neighborhood knew. Oh, they knew. The folks next door, the Vermillions, had been there and seen the extent of Sylvia’s injuries. They’d heard the screams and the commotion. The thumping of the shovel. But not a sound came from their side. They let it happen. Did they not care?
Whole blocks of people. Whole towns. A whole city. Whole clusters of families. Not one of them uttered a word.

And how was it that Gertrude Baniszewski could seduce so many children into committing these acts? How could they turn up, day after day, to do the unspeakable? And how could they return home of an evening, no words of shame or remorse tumbling out of their mouths? What did Sylvia Likens do to deserve this? Or was it just shit luck and chance?

Everything bubbles up in me. I have to snatch it and squash before it boils over.

I’ve read too much. I’ve seen too much. I’m in a strange daze, angry and bewildered. I don’t know what to do with myself. I want to wash my shaking hands of all this. I want to clear my head. I wish I could unknow all I’ve learned. Exorcise the memory of Eric Cooke and Albert Fish and wring my heart dry of Sylvia Likens. And Laura Wishart? Right now, I’d tear it all out of me in a second. I’d choose to forget. I’d sleep safe in my settled snow dome, and I’d close my window to Jasper Jones.

I hastily stuff the books and newspapers into a shelf in a back corner and leave the library feeling exhausted. I squint in the sunlight and wonder where to go. After a whole morning’s reading, I’ve collected more questions than answers.

I decide to head back home by way of the bookstore. I look at my feet as I walk, my head circling and cycling dizzily through too many avenues of thought. I feel like swimming. I want to dive straight into the Corrigan River and ripple my body and have the heat fizz off my brown skin. I imagine scrubbing at myself with grit from the bottom. Then lying on the surface and floating downstream like a raft. Or a corpse.

As my mind wanders, I trip and stagger on a raised pavement slat. I don’t fall, but my recovery is just as spectacular. I stumble like a duckling on ice. When I right myself, I look up and see Eliza Wishart outside the bookstore. She looks both amused and concerned.

“Are you okay, Charlie?”

I forbear a shriek of pain and put my hands on my hips. I force a smile and hold up my hand, which must end up looking like some sort of strange, leery wince, like I’ve just swallowed a glass of somebody’s urine and I’m recommending it.

“Yeah, nah,” I say, flexing my back. “Yeah, look, I’m fine. Didn’t hurt. At all, really. Just. Yeah. Bloody … town council and that. These slabs are … dangerous.”

Christ. I’m afraid to look down. I must have stubbed the bastard clean off my foot. I hold my breath. I want to either die or cry or take to this footpath with a jackhammer.

But she smiles and everything ebbs. She is beautiful. She looks a little like Audrey Hepburn today.

“Well, you know, I’ll let my father know. I’ll make sure it’s the first thing on the agenda at their next meeting.”

“Oh, no!” I say, realizing. “I didn’t mean, you know …”

“It’s okay, Charlie. I’m joking.”

“Oh.”

“Where is Jeffrey? Playing cricket?”

“No, he got grounded. He’s stuck at home.”

Her eyes widen conspiratorially.

“Oh, really? What did he do? Is he in a lot of trouble?”

“Just general stupidity. Nothing, really, you know,
bad.
”

I am nervous. Where is the sharp ballroom wit that I always imagined would punctuate this moment? My wit has abandoned me. Just when I need wit, I am witless.

“So, what have you been doing in town?” Eliza asks.

“Oh, nothing,” I say, and look down. “I was just at the library.”

She nods.

“Yeah, just, you know,
reading.
”

“At a library?”

I am momentarily confused, and she smiles. Oh. She’s outwitting me. Deftly. I need to lift my game. I can feel myself blush. I scuff my heel.

“Yeah. Well, it’s less suspicious than pretending to browse outside a bookstore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She shifts her weight onto one leg and tilts her head.

“Well, you know, it
appears
as though you’re casually looking, but I know you’re just reading for free. The jig is up.”

She smiles and rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, you got me. Red-handed. You’d make a fine detective, Charlie.”

That snaps me back. My head whirls and my toe throbs. I smile weakly, trying to stem my nausea. A dragonfly jets past my waist and I recoil like I’ve been shot.

She raises her eyebrows.

“I have to get home, Charlie. I had to slip out as it is.”

“Oh. Okay.” I nod excessively, like a pigeon.

Eliza waves the short novel in her hands and smooths her dress. “I just have to get this,” she says quickly, and then she pauses as she opens the door. “You want to walk me home?”

My mouth is open. I shrug and keep nodding.

The small bell on the door chimes as it claps shut behind her. There is certainly not enough time for me to compose myself. I inwardly admonish my decision to wear dirty clothes. I hope I don’t smell.

I’m just sniffing my armpit as Eliza walks back out, her book in a brown bag. I snap my arm down so hard, I wind myself.

We set off. I am shitting myself. Should I hold her hand? Should I do that? I should. I should do that. But my palms are sweating. Profusely. Surely that would be bad. Off-putting. It would be like giving her a clammy invertebrate to hold. So I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t do that.