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By Root 475 0

calmly walked over to our tent and took hold of an empty kerosene can by the handle. Then he picked up a second can and, walking upright, returned to the place where he had been sitting. Armed with his two cans Mike continued to stare toward the other males. After a few minutes he began to rock from side to side Gradually he rocked more vigorously, his hair began to slowly stand erect, and then, softly at first, he began a series of pant-hoots. As he called, Mike got to his feet and suddenly he was off, charging toward the group of males, hitting the two cans ahead of him. The cans, together with Mike's crescendo of hooting made the most appalling racket; no wonder the erstwhile peaceful males rushed out of the way… .

Eventually Mike's use of kerosene cans became dangerous—he learned to hurl them ahead of him at the close of a charge…We decided to remove all the cans, and went through a nightmare period while Mike tried to drag about all manner of other objects. Once he got hold of Hugo's tripod … and once he managed to grab and pull down a large cupboard… . The noise and trail of destruction was unbelievable. Finally, however, we managed to dig things into the ground or hide them away, and like his companions, Mike had to resort to branches and rocks.

By that time, however, his top-ranking status was assured… .

School photo

Spring, 1994

To walk into our house this morning is to enter a war zone. The awful aluminum doors have been kicked in. They hang from their hinges, the scalloped frames busted out, gouging the torn screens. The doors below the sink are likewise kicked in, and the door leading to the basement. Here and there is evidence of Stephen's attempts to assuage the damage, attempts at what Ed calls “reparation.” Broken glass and Grape-Nuts have been swept into a milky pile. A brick props a cabinet partially torn from the wall.

It's spring in Massachusetts. Stephen is God knows where. Sometime in the night the car screeched out of the driveway and I understood that Stephen, his license suspended, must have secretly had a key made. Or maybe he hot-wired the car.

Our initial work with Ed seemed to create an iota of harmony between us, but the months since have proven that the problems we face, separately and in relationship to each other, are no easy fix. With Stan gone—no weekend visits, no calls to either of us—I suspect that Stephen feels a great deal like I do, hurt, confused, and abandoned.

And I imagine that from Stephen's point of view, he feels suddenly stuck, locked in this life with his mother. Apparently not the old scared mother, either, whom he could easily manipulate, but some emerging animal of a mother who attends parent-training sessions where she learns “techniques” like refusing to listen to him until he lowers his voice, playing dumb a lot to trick him into solving his own problems, and walking away when he kicks out a door. He is locked in with this infuriating mother and the only thing to do is up the ante.

But what is the ante, and why must it go up? Ed warns against it, but I still cull the past looking for reasons, in the end unable to come to terms with Ed's idea that for some children, indeed for Stephen, adolescence is simply a nightmare, a terrible, seemingly unending nightmare in which he is at risk, at one moment being chased down, in the next doing the chasing. He is paranoid, besieged, his hormones are raging. He is truant, destructive. I'm afraid he will kill himself or someone else with that car.

And there has been another incident at school involving a gun. Granted, it was not Stephen but a friend of his who brought it onto school grounds. The gun was brandished at a group of kids “in fun,” Stephen explained to the principal as we sat with police in the office. Who had pointed the gun? Stephen refused to give names. Had Stephen taken possession of the gun? He insisted no. He only held it for a moment.

During the interview Stephen remained calm; the mess in the kitchen is the aftermath of his rage at police and school officials, and at me for attempting to question