Hero (23 page)

"Ruth."

"Yep."

"Why are you telling me all this? What did you see in my future?"

She leaned back on the picnic table and lit another cigarette. I could tell she was proud that I was asking the right questions now; I was learning.

"You have your path, Thom. It's full of twists and turns and choices, but ultimately it's all up to you."

Apparently that was all I was going to get out of her right now.

"What about you?" I asked.

"You have your path," she repeated and looked up at a flock of birds flying high above in a perfect V-formation. "I have mine."

Then she hopped up from the picnic table, ready to go.

"Those damn birds start dropping on us, I'm gonna have to get my .22 out of the trunk."

*   *   *

She nearly wiped out a stop sign when she turned in to my neighborhood.

"One more thing," she said. "If you really want to be a good healer, you gotta know who needs healing."

"Okay, sure." Easy enough.

She tapped the steering wheel with her fingernail.

"Which means you can't be so obsessed with your own little problems and your own little world all the time, or you'll never be as good as you want to be. If you opened your eyes, you might see some hurt you could actually fix,"

Ouch.

"Like what?"

She breezed past another stop sign. An oncoming car slammed on the brakes. She kept going.

"You're not very nice to Scarlett."

I'm not very nice to Scarlett!

"Ruth, you've got to be kidding me." I looked at her to see if she was joking.

She pulled into my driveway and stopped the car.

"Are you serious?" I asked. "Scarlett?"

"You're the healer. You figure it out."

I got out of the car and walked up to the porch.

She started to back down the driveway, rolled down the window, and shouted, "Even at my age, some things still manage to surprise you."

She backed over our mailbox on her way out of the driveway and sped off.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I HAD MY FIRST out-of-body experience when I walked in the door. I'd wiped my feet on the doormat and taken a second to muster up the courage to face my father. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and found Golden Boy sitting on our living room couch next to Dad. They had a bunch of old pictures spread out on the coffee table in front of them. I blinked a few times to make sure it was really Golden Boy sipping a cup of coffee with my father.

No one ever sat in the living room. Every once in a while my dad would meet with his insurance agent or financial planner, but it was rare. We barely even vacuumed the rug because no one ever walked on it.

And they were laughing, of all things. Together. Or at least trailing off. From the look of it, Dad had said something that had Golden Boy in stitches. I don't think I'd ever seen the guy laugh. In fact, if there had been a contest for most humorless League member, he certainly would have received my vote, and mine wouldn't have been the only one. Golden Boy stood up when he saw me.

"Hello, Thorn," he said. He shook my hand, formally, like he was being interviewed and wanted to make a good impression.

"Have a seat," Dad said.

I wanted to ask Golden Boy what the hell he was doing here, but I was speechless. I sat in the armchair that matched the couch.

"I was just showing your father my scrapbook from when I was a kid."

Golden Boy held up an old photo album with a collage on the cover of Major Might in various poses, cut from cereal boxes and magazine articles.

"It's been a real honor to show them to your dad. Man, the stories he has, I mean, I used to dream about this when I was a kid."

Dad chuckled, slightly embarrassed. "Yeah, after girls and baseball games, I bet," he said. "I know where I fell on the totem pole." He grinned. "Who wants more coffee?"

I hopped up and offered to help Dad brew a fresh pot in the kitchen. It was comforting to know they had common things like coffee here in the Twilight Zone.

"Dad?" I said, once we were alone in the kitchen. "You aren't mad at me?"

Dad went about preparing a nice tray of snacks for his guest.

"Why didn't you just tell me about the team, Thorn?

I thought you were answering to that Froot Loop Uberman. Your team leader's great. Not at all what I would have expected."

Did this mean he was okay with what I was doing?

"So you're not mad?"

He pulled some dirty mugs from yesterday's breakfast out of the dishwasher and rinsed them off in the sink.

"No, I'm extremely mad that you lied to me. I'm extremely mad that you put me in a position where I looked foolish for trying to do what's best for my son."

"You and Mom never told me the whole truth, either."

Dad turned off the faucet and leaned against the sink with his back to me. I had a very good point, but it probably wasn't the best time to bring it up. A few moments passed, and he dried off the mugs, put the tray together, and began to walk back to the living room. His jaw was clenched, and I think he counted to ten in his head.

"I've been a little tired from working late every night. I'm sorry I overreacted. Let's try to stick to the truth with each other from now on. Deal?"

"Deal," I said. But I would never be able to tell him everything.

At Golden Boy's request, my father told us a few stories from his halcyon days as America's premier crime buster. I'd never heard any of them. I sat captivated at every detail—the way he'd frozen Sig-Sig-Sputnik's jet pack with his own dry ice so he couldn't escape with the loot he'd stolen from Fort Knox. The way he'd found those creeps the Brothers Grimm who kept kidnapping children from the tristate area with various fairytale ruses. He said he'd come this close to strangling one of the Brothers with their own bean stalk when he saw what they'd been doing to those kids.

I scanned all the old photos on the coffee table and thought how handsome dad looked in his old costume. Mom must have fallen for him hard.

"Sorry to crash your house like this," Golden Boy said to him.

"Don't be silly, Kevin," my dad said. "You're welcome here any time."

Kevin? They're on a first-name basis now? I didn't even call him Kevin.

"No, I should get going. But I will take you up on that offer for a return visit." Golden Boy stood up, fluffed our pillows, and stacked the coffee mugs neatly on the tray.

"You sure you have to go?" Dad asked. I'd never seen him so eager to tell his stories. Maybe he'd been afraid that no one cared, that no one wanted to listen. "You're sure there's nothing else you want to know?"

"Well, there is this one thing," Golden Boy said. "If it's not too much trouble, sir."

Sir? Oh, brother.

"Sure—what is it, Kevin?"

Golden Boy smiled. "I feel stupid asking, but I always wanted to see your costume."

Uh-oh.

I looked to Dad, unsure how he would respond.

"No problem, let me go get it."

My heart dropped and my toenails went white. I remembered what I'd done to his costume.

"Wait!" I yelled.

Dad turned around on the stairs, shocked at my outburst. I had to think up something quick to keep Dad from going upstairs.

"It's just, it's just that . . ." God, I really was the world's worst liar.

"I think I know what Thorn's trying to say," Golden Boy interjected.

Really?

"It's something I want to talk to you about, too, sir."

Dad raised an eyebrow.

"Hal," Golden Boy continued, "I don't want you to think that I didn't have another motive in coming over here today. One thing I learned from looking up to you all those years is honesty." Golden Boy gave me a sideways glance, and I thought it was really weird to hear him call my dad by his first name.

"We want you to let Thom come back to the team. With your approval, everything out in the open. We had no idea you weren't in the loop on all this. Sir, if you would please just think about it."

Dad looked over at me and studied my face. He could always see right through me, and I knew he could tell that I didn't have anything to do with this request. It was as much as a surprise to me as it was to him. Dad gave Golden Boy a firm look.

"Let me get the suit," he said. Then he disappeared upstairs.

I collapsed into the armchair and waited for the explosion when Dad saw what I'd done to his costume.

Golden Boy's pleasant demeanor dropped the minute my father left the room. He leveled a stare at me. "Don't you think you could at least pretend to be a little bit grateful here? I'm saving your ass."

I wanted to cover my ears. Waiting for Dad to find the suit was like watching one of those bad slasher movies when the killer has zeroed in on a victim, and you just know he's gonna get it, but you don't know exactly where it's going to come from. A machete to the neck from behind, a hatchet to the head from above, an ice pick to the ear from the side.

"You shouldn't have come here," I said to Golden Boy. I wondered how long it took him to cook up that fake scrapbook with all the old clippings. "You shouldn't have stirred him up."

He looked at me like I was insane.

"What are you talking about? He's going to let you come back."

I shook my head and buried my face in my hands and waited for the bomb to drop. The sound of Dad's footsteps creaked in the ceiling above our heads, then I heard him come to a stop. I knew at that very moment he'd opened the closet door and pulled our his costume. He'd probably think the dry cleaners started using a new red logo on their plastic covers at first, and then he'd get a good look at it in the light and think someone must have snuck into the house and defaced it. Then the reality of what really happened would sink in and he'd picture me sitting down in the living room. Guilty.

I heard the floorboards move above us, then the muffled sound of the closet door as he shut it.  His footsteps grew

louder as he descended the staircase. He appeared in the doorway and stood there.

I had expected to see him shaking with anger. We'd basically spent the last few hours dredging up his past, all about who he was and what made him great, only for me to remind him that he was now nothing, a single parent who could barely afford the payments on his shitty house by working his shitty factory job, with a shitty son who took a giant block of salt and ground it in the gaping wound that had become his life. Way to go, Thom.

Dad hadn't spanked me since I was a kid, but I wished he'd hauled off and hit me right then and there. It would have felt better than watching him hold all that hurt inside. Betrayed and reviled by the public, sure, that was the pain of his life. He'd learned to endure it, and the power of family had helped. When Mom left, I didn't think he'd recover, but he did. He got better because he still had someone left, a son to live for. And that son had just dropped his pants and taken a big shit on the last, treasured remnant of his father's greatness.

I looked up at him, trying to explain with my eyes how sorry I was and how inadequate any sort of apology would be. If I'd been a telekinetic I would have raised his hand with my mind and made him give me a hard whack to the face.

Dad stepped into the room, stood behind the chair, and placed his hand on my shoulder.

"My son can go back to your team if that's what he wants." He looked down at me, and our eyes connected. "I trust him."

Then Dad put on his long peacoat to go to work, and he reminded me on his way out the door that tomorrow was trash day. I sat perfectly still, afraid if I moved or spoke Dad would burst back in and kill me. Golden Boy thought it was a strange reaction to good news.

"Well," he said, "what are you going to do?"

I listened to Dad's car back out of the driveway. He needed

a new muffler but got me a laptop instead. I stood up. "I'm going to take out the trash."

Golden Boy flew up and down the driveway at superspeed, and one by one, overstuffed bags of cut grass and leaves appeared curbside.

"Kevin."

More bags stacked up on the curb.

"Kevin." I called out louder.

The stack of bags grew taller.

"Kevin!" I stuck my foot out, and a blur of golden costume tripped over me, and the recycling bin exploded open, which sent coffee cans and empty soda bottles and newspapers all across the yard.

"What?" Golden Boy was already picking up the mess.

I scanned the yard. "I don't think I can go back to the team."

Golden Boy looked at me for a minute and wondered if I was pulling his leg.

"You're not serious."

I was serious, and he saw it.

"Why not?"

I bent down and gathered six crushed cans of Milwaukee's Best Light.

"Who rigged up that ridiculous scrapbook?" I asked with a little more edge than I'd intended, because I was really mad at myself for doing such a stupid, childish thing to Dad's costume. "Tell me who did it. Miss Mural? The Color Chameleon? SculpTOR?"

I chucked a mayonnaise jar in the bin.

Golden Boy looked up at me with a peculiar expression.

"It's mine," he said. He stepped toward me and clenched his fist. "Are you making fun of me?"

"It's really yours?" Honestly, I thought he'd made the whole thing up.

Golden Boy didn't answer. He took the question as an insult. He crouched down and gathered pages of newspaper that were flying around the yard. He didn't use superspeed.

"You kept a scrapbook?"

He continued to clean up in silence.

"About my dad?"

He winged some bottles into the recycling bin. The glass shattered.

"You may find this hard to believe," he said, "but not everyone in the world gets to grow up with all this." He waved his hands around and motioned to our modest house, the paint peeling on the shutters.

"I used to dream about growing up in a place like this, having a parent who looked after me. Hell, you even have your own yard."

I didn't know much about Golden Boy, other than what most people knew. He'd suddenly appeared as Silver Bullet's ward a few years ago. Like most sidekicks, he'd just popped up on a caper and now he was there for the duration, until he was killed or moved on to some new identity of his own, or until some younger, usually brattier, upstart took his place. I had no idea where he actually came from.