The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm (6 page)

“What did we just say about Zeus?” Atalo continued in that pedantic tone. “Arrogance can be a very dangerous quality.” Gordie ran his finger over the crack in the table as he brooded. “I don’t mean to belittle you, Gordo. I’ve seen a number of your unbelievable feats of strength, but it’s important that you stay grounded. That’s all I meant,” he said with a sympathetic smile, which softened Gordie, and he made a note to heed his grandfather’s warning.

“You said Grandpa proved your lineage to you,” Ellie interjected. “How did he prove it?” It was clear she was still skeptical about this whole tale. Gordie, on the other hand, had accepted it with open arms, as it meant that he literally possessed Herculean strength.

“Look at my bat, Mom,” Gordie said. “When I left this morning it was in my room, which later exploded. My bat doesn’t have a scratch on it!”

“So what?” she snapped. “You’ve got a strong bat! Or it’s just lucky. I want proof, Dad.”

“Follow me,” Atalo said with an exasperated sigh, his chair squealing as he rose from the table. “Bring the bat, Gordo.”

He led them through the kitchen and into the garage where a tennis ball hung from the ceiling to rest on the windshield of a large black SUV.

Gordie had spent a fair amount of time in that garage with his grandfather. Atalo was a carpenter (albeit a rather untalented one), and they used to make bird houses together. Sure enough, Atalo walked right over to his table saw and held his hand out for Gordie’s bat. A crooked birdhouse with bent nails sticking in all directions rested on a shelf above the saw. Gordie hesitated as he looked at it. Minutes ago, he had believed his bat to be a weapon of godly proportions, but now he feared for its well-being. He was too attached to it to watch it be sawn in half.

“I don’t think we should . . .” he said, hugging the club close to his chest.

“I promise it’ll be all right,” Atalo said, looking Gordie in the eyes. “In fact, I think you should do it.” He held his grandson’s gaze, which Gordie returned, searching for a hint of doubt in those powerful brown eyes. He decided to trust him and approached the table.

“Why don’t we stand back, honey,” Atalo suggested to his daughter. She looked at Gordie with concern.

“It’s gonna be fine, Mom,” he chirped. “I’ve used this before.” Ellie shot her dad a stern, disapproving look, but then turned back to Gordie to give him the okay with a nod. He turned on the saw and watched the blade spin, looking down at his bat reluctantly.

“Let’s get a move on,” Atalo said. Gordie raised the bat to the table and placed it in front of the saw, gripping it at both ends. He took a deep breath and pushed the bat forward.

Sparks started flying everywhere as the teeth of the saw started to grind down. Gordie could feel the heat pouring from it, smoke billowing around him. Then the blade was dislodged from its harness before it launched off the table. Gordie shot out his right hand and grabbed the jagged disc that was headed straight for his grandpa.

“Two birds with one stone,” Atalo chortled, as Ellie looked on in shock. He grabbed Gordie’s bat and handed it to Ellie. “Good as new,” he said. She inspected it, the utmost scrutiny recognizable in her eyes. She turned it over in her hands looking for imperfections, feeling for nicks or divots. After a few moments of silence, she handed it back to her father, apparently mollified.

“If it’s indestructible, how was it chiseled into a baseball bat? Wasn’t Hercules’s club supposed to be three times the size of this?” Ellie asked, still trying to poke holes in her father’s story.

“It was, but Hephaestus knew what he was doing,” Atalo responded airily. Gordie was taken aback by the nonchalant suggestion that the Greek god of metallurgy did indeed have a hand in crafting his bat. Judging by how high his mother’s eyebrows raised at this statement, he would say she was experiencing a comparable degree of surprise.

“Hephaestus?” Ellie asked, sounding exasperated. “The blacksmith of Olympus fashioned the stick I’m holding?”

“Yes,” Atalo said. “But he was hesitant to alter such a fine instrument, so my father had to coerce him.”

“How?” There was a hint of genuine curiosity in Ellie’s voice. Gordie thought she was starting to come to terms with all this, but still too slowly for his taste.

“Barter,” Atalo said. Seeing the hungry look on Gordie and Ellie’s faces, he expounded, “My father traded him the Nemean Lion Skin that had been passed down for generations—which, incidentally, is more existing proof of our heritage.” He shot his daughter a smug smile. Shocked again, Gordie and his mom traded glances. He doubted her look of disbelief was reflected in his excitement. She changed her expression to a stern one before she turned away to address her father.

“Well, it’s not very good proof if you don’t have it.”

“Don’t worry, we’re gonna have to retrieve it sooner than later.” Atalo’s smile widened at the look on their faces.

The prospect of traveling to Greece in search of Hercules’s iconic adornment, the Nemean Lion Skin, propelled Gordie into a state of pure fantasy in which he battled the Minotaur and wrestled Cyclopes. Then a whole new idea sprang to life, and he began to wonder if such creatures existed and if he would meet them on his quest for glory.

“We are not shipping off to Europe to go gallivanting with gods.” Ellie dragged Gordie out of his daydream with another disapproving look. “This is getting out of hand! Dad, you need to stop putting these ideas in his head!” Her temper was rising as she spoke.

“But, Mom—”

“No!” she snapped at him. “It is out of the question! I won’t allow it!” Gordie’s pipedreams of befriending mythological beings and slaying evil creatures were slipping away from him, dissolving into rainbow colored mist in his mind’s eye.

“Ellie—”

“NO!” Ellie threw her father’s consoling hands off of her. “This can’t be happening! I lost my husband today! I will not lose my son!” Her eyes were brimming with tears, bulging out of her head with a look of severity bordering on the depraved. Again her breathing was heavy, intense.

Meanwhile, Gordie was hurled into a state of renewed devastation and crushing guilt as he thought about his father again. He had been so busy imagining adventures that he had nearly forgotten the pain of losing his dad just hours earlier. His heart sank as he recalled the other painful experiences.
How could I have been so thoughtless?
At the very least he felt he should have masked his excitement for his mother’s sake. She at least had the decency to mourn for more than two hours.

Lost in his conscience, Gordie did not notice his mom sobbing in her dad’s embrace. He put his head down and continued the internal berating of himself for the lack of compassion he had shown. He forced himself to relive the horror of finding his dad’s body because he felt it was an insult to his memory to be thinking of anything else at the moment. He closed his eyes and let fresh tears roll down his face while he shuddered. For the second time that day, the strong arm of his grandfather pulled him in close as he wept next to his mother.

After a few minutes, Atalo suggested they go back inside, and Gordie nodded his assent. When they broke apart, he grabbed his mother’s hand and looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry, Mom. I should have been thinking about Dad, not pretending to be a hero.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I just can’t do this today.”

They traipsed back to the kitchen and reformed their seating arrangement from earlier. They sat in silence for some time before Atalo broke it with yet another apology. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I lost my head. I was acting like a child pretending to be in a fairy tale.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Ellie said. “I think a little break from this stuff would do us all some good.”

With this proclamation came a new session of quiet reflection. They sipped their drinks alternatingly, staring into their cups as if they contained the answers they sought. Gordie was only drinking his lukewarm cocoa because he didn’t know what else to do, and he knew that was what his mom and grandpa were doing. Only slurping broke the silence.

The day had been so confusing, and the gamut of emotions Gordie had experienced would qualify him for a place in a psychiatric ward. The wound of losing his dad was still gaping, despite his recent preoccupations with fantasy. But right then he felt the need to push everything from his head except for the memory of his father.

The silence lasted for a long time. Gordie took to watching the clock as a substitute to more introspection. It was shortly after noon, and he was shocked it had only been three hours since his classmates were blasted from their seats. He closed his eyes to focus on the act of shunning such memories before continuing his post as time supervisor.

A half hour ticked away as he observed the progress of the minute-hand. Atalo cleared his throat. Another hour passed. Ellie sniffled. Then two hours. Finally, Atalo spoke.

“Can I make you two some food? You must not have eaten since breakfast.”

“I’m fine,” Ellie said.

“Me too,” Gordie agreed. He was not lying. He truly had no appetite. Of course, his grandpa was not appeased, and he headed to the kitchen to whip something up. Atalo returned in a few minutes with a plate of turkey sandwiches.

“Eat,” he said. “You need some food in your system.” Ellie didn’t seem to have the strength to argue, so she grabbed a sandwich and nibbled like a rabbit. Gordie followed suit, except his stomach was enlivened by its first nutrients in nearly eight hours, so he inhaled his lunch in true teenage form.

Ellie was evidently not fairing as well as him because she had consumed no more since her first bite. Gordie stood up and excused himself from the room as he could no longer sit idly. “I’m gonna go watch some TV,” he said to no one in particular.

“Good idea,” said Atalo. “I’ll join you in a bit.”

Gordie headed into the adjacent living room, plopped down on the cozy leather couch, and turned on ESPN. He was grateful that this room was secluded because he felt like he needed to get lost in TV for a while. He noted another Milwaukee Brewer failure with little concern—sports didn’t seem to mean as much as they had that morning.

With a pang of guilt he remembered that he had refused his dad’s offer from that morning to take him to an upcoming game. The thought stung, so he shook it off and focused his attention on the rundown of NBA victories. He continued to watch with little interest, and didn’t turn at the top of the hour when another SportsCenter began despite the fact that he was now being bombarded with all the same highlights he had viewed for the last hour.

“How’d the Crew do?” Atalo entered the room and sat in his leather recliner.

“They lost again,” Gordie said in monotone.

“Well, at least they’ll probably get the sweep against the Cubbies this weekend.” Atalo smiled, not realizing that Gordie had been actively avoiding the thought of that particular series.

“Yeah,” Gordie said. They watched in silence for a while.

Hours ticked by as the programming changed. The image of his father remained in his mind’s eye for an extended period of time. He allowed it because he needed to cope with it, become accustomed to it, eventually overcome it.

The sun had long since set. The family room was lit only by the light of the television. Ellie had remained at the kitchen table in solitude. Atalo had left his grandson in peace hours earlier to pass the time in his study, doing what, Gordie did not know. Gordie had sat in front of the television long enough, so he turned it off and returned to the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“I was thinking about going to bed now. Do you think you could come with me? I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Sure, honey.” She smiled at him and rose from her seat for the first time in hours. “We’re going to bed, Dad,” she called to the other room.

“Okay, sweetie,” Atalo said, poking his head around the corner. “Sleep well. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

Upstairs Gordie headed straight to the guest bedroom, while his mom went to the bathroom, telling him she would be in in a minute. He made a nest on the floor and lay on his back listening to the sink run as the flow of water was interrupted with the distinctive sound of face washing. This went on longer than a normal cleansing, and Gordie imagined his mom splashing her face obsessively with hot water in an attempt to wash away the misery. He started to get anxious as he lay there. He was alone and settled down for bed, something he had wanted to avoid. As if she felt her son’s woe, Ellie sauntered into the room, knelt down, kissed him on the forehead, and climbed into the full-size bed with floral sheets that hadn’t been slept under in months. Her loving touch spread a warm relief through Gordie’s body, and he smiled, grateful for her company.

“I love you, Mom,” he whispered into the darkness to remind her that he was at her side.

“I love you more than anything in the world,” she replied, one-upping him. After that the silence resumed, even though Gordie got the feeling that his mom was as awake as he was. There was a clock on the wall in front of him that he could read, swathed in moonlight as it was. He once again took to watching the minute-hand make its painstaking revolutions.

He wasn’t tired so he didn’t know why he had suggested bed. His body coursed with unwanted energy. It was hard to remain still, like ignoring an itch under a cast. At a quarter to midnight, he was still reliving the events of the day in silent horror, wincing occasionally at the gruesome visions.