The Indestructible Man (12 page)

       
Most of Jacob’s friends shake their heads and politely decline, unwilling to betray him. Some tell their parents, who call us angrily and accuse me of harassing their children. Dora feigns ignorance: there must be some misunderstanding, she tells them, nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

       
One afternoon, when school is out and Jacob is safely shut away in his room, I look out the window and glimpse a blonde girl about his age pedaling her pink
Schwinn
down the sidewalk—Marla, the
Klaupmanns
’ youngest daughter, Jacob’s friend. She does not speed away when I cross the lawn; she knows me, knows my offer. She skids to a stop and sighs, shakes her head sadly.

       
I give her my friendliest smile, kneel so we are eye to eye. “You’re friends with Jacob, right?”

       
“My mom said not to talk to you.”

       
“I know. I just want someone to tell me if he’s still trying to fly. And where he does it. I’m afraid he’s going to get himself or his brother hurt very badly.”

       
I begin to pull the five-dollar bill from my wallet, but she rolls her eyes under her curly bangs. “You never give up,” she says. “He can do it, you know. He’s come really close.”

       
“Is that right?”

       
“You wouldn’t be mad if you saw. I’ll tell you where if you promise not to punish him.”

       
I nod and put my wallet back. “Fair enough.”

       
She raises one eyebrow, gauging my honesty. “Behind the church, after school. Then you’ll see. And remember, you promised.” She slides back onto the seat and pumps the white plastic pedals, streamers trailing from the handlebars as she speeds away.

       
The next day I again hide the station wagon behind the farmer’s market and idle until the final bell rings. Dora sits beside me, resting her head in her palm and rubbing her right ear, sore from arguing with Deborah
Klaupmann
over the phone all evening. It has taken some convincing for her to come, but I promise her this is the last time. This time we will end Jacob’s delusions, we will make sure his feet remain firmly in contact with the ground.

       
Just after three we hear children shoving and hollering their way out the lunchroom doors. We run across the street and inch toward the playground along the outer wall, its weathered brick staining our palms and sleeves chalky-brown.

       
We peer around the ancient corner, careful to avoid being seen, until Dora spots Jacob in the field near the church, along with ten or fifteen other children gathering to watch.
Ferlin
jumps up and down trying to get a better view, his pudgy belly jiggling. Jacob scans his surroundings carefully, looks toward the lunchroom doors, the farmer’s market. We duck behind the corner before he spots us.

       
Jacob takes his place at the foot of the human runway. He takes a deep breath and breaks into a jog for about twenty feet, slowly building to a full sprint. At the limit of his speed, when his feet nearly hit his backside, he holds his arms out, tucks his head between his shoulders, and jumps, the sod seeming to recoil under his sneakers like a trampoline. He hangs in the air for a second or two before his feet touch the ground, the impact tossing up bits of grass. For a moment we smile, chuckle to ourselves: he is only pretending, we have nothing to fear.

       
Then he leaps again, hangs above the ground, arms outstretched, legs treading empty air like a cartoon character about to fall off a cliff. I feel my overworked deodorant wafting up from beneath my collar. I close my eyes against the afternoon sun; when I open them, I tell myself, his feet will be on the ground, he will not be in the air, he was never in the air at all. But when my eyelids part he is still suspended, as if hanging by wires. Dora and I exchange a quick glance; her expression suggests we ought to slink back to the car and go home and dismiss what we have seen as a mirage, a trick of the imagination. But my legs are numb and tingly and refuse to carry me back.

       
The other children cheer as Jacob touches ground and leaps again, rising even higher. With each new act of defiance a pressure wells up in my stomach and chest, and before Dora can stop me my numb legs erupt into a run across the playground, my shoes disappearing in gravel with each step.

       
Not far behind I hear Dora’s pumps clattering on the pavement, Dora huffing as she tries to keep pace. A few children notice me; some shout a warning to Jacob, but he does not seem to hear.
Ferlin
screams and runs toward me, trying to block my path, but he is too slow and can only follow far behind. The gravelly scrunch under my feet gives way to soft, even sod. Jacob runs faster, arms at his sides, the wind or the children’s hollering keeping him from noticing me. He closes his eyes and takes a final leap; his legs catapult him off the ground like a broad jumper, his knees bend underneath him, and he glides through open air, disappearing for a moment into the afternoon sun. Dora gasps behind me and stops in her tracks. “You saw!”
Ferlin
screams again and again, until he stumbles and hits the ground face-first with a soft thud. I keep running, ignore my cramping thighs, shield my eyes against the glare as Jacob rises higher, until all I can see are his red-and-white sneakers coasting at eye level, just out of reach.

       
When Jacob finally turns his head and sees me, his eyes go wide and his mouth falls open. Still rising, he slows, and his gaping mouth curls into a broad, triumphant smile—now I understand, he knew I would, I only needed to see for myself. With the last bit of strength in my legs I jump, snatch Jacob’s ankle with both hands and hold on tight. For a few seconds my feet find no traction and I begin to coast along with him, until I dig my heels into the thick grass and pull hard, tilting him earthward like a plummeting kite, wrestling him to the safety of solid ground.

       
For the past three
weekends
my son has been
communi-cating
with aliens on a build-it-yourself short-wave radio. When I bought the kit I assumed we would assemble it together some evening after Margot dropped him off. Instead, as soon as he opened the box he sent me to the store for some cheese doodles and root beer, and went to work on it himself. By dinner he was finished.

       
Adam is a smart boy—maybe too smart. When he was four he adjusted the record player to spin backwards, giggling and grabbing his toes while the Chipmunks sang in reverse; at eight he helped me build a TV from scratch, sneaking into the garage early in the morning to finish the job alone. So I was not surprised when he tired of listening to the police band and weather reports and began fiddling with the wiry guts to increase the radio’s range. He first connected it to the old UHF loop, then to the TV antenna outside, pulling in signals from farther and farther out: a folk-rock station in Maine, a French soccer game, a Japanese talk radio program. Then the signals disappeared, replaced by faint squeals and beeps which he insisted could only be transmissions from outer space, an alien ship passing near Earth. He claims he can even make out voices speaking an unearthly language, and has since wired his walkie-talkie to the radio to communicate with them directly. I smile, tell myself someone with a transmitter is having a bit of fun. But since he seems to be enjoying himself, I try not to stifle him.

       
I offer to take him to the movies, rent a video, buy him a turtle sundae at the frozen custard stand—anything to divert him for a while—but he rarely leaves his room. Margot says I should take him to the campground by the lake, but he has terrible luck with poison ivy and thinks fishing is cruel. He can have friends over if he wants, but he has not seen his old crowd since the move and seems to view the separation as permanent. He is ten, intelligent but awkward, and has yet to make friends at his new school.

Taking into account the signal lag and the time of night his “aliens” transmit, he has decided their ship must be fairly close—possibly on the dark side of the moon or somewhere between the earth and Venus. Since they have been transmitting for nearly three weeks, he speculates they must be on a mining expedition or a mission to map our solar system. His desk is covered with carefully-penciled charts of the planets, attempts to pinpoint the spaceship’s exact position, the reflector telescope I bought him for his birthday trained on the night sky to catch a glimpse of them. I do not move anything when I straighten up his room; he would be furious if I disturbed his delicate work.

Adam and I have agreed not to mention the radio to his mother. Margot has enrolled him in the gifted program at school, and asks his teachers for extra assignments to make sure he is properly challenged. She has planned his entire future—SATs by age twelve, the math-and-science academy downstate by fifteen, Ph.D. by twenty—and would see this as a dangerous distraction. I sometimes tell her she may be pushing him too hard; she quickly reminds me I can no longer tell her anything.

Late Friday night
I hear
trilly
gurgling sounds from Adam’s bedroom. I burst through the door, thinking he is having a seizure or choking on popcorn, but find him hunched over the radio, walkie-talkie in hand, listening for a response through the little plastic earpiece. He is a bit startled when I open his door, but waves me in anyway.

“What’s going on?” I ask him. “Sounds like you’re dying in here.”

“Oh, sorry,” he says. “Just practicing.”

“Practicing what?”

“They’re teaching me words. The sounds are a little hard to make.” His hand goes to the earpiece; he listens carefully for a moment, picks up the walkie-talkie and makes a “
ffff
” sound into the microphone, clicks his tongue. He tries it a few more times, then waits for a voice to squawk its approval through the earphone.

“And what word is that?” I ask him, snickering.

“
Hello
, I think.”

“Right,” I say. “Mind if I listen?”

“Go ahead,” he says. “They’re a little shy, though.”

I take the earpiece and listen carefully for a minute, but hear only static. “Yep,” I say. “They’re chatting up a storm.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” he says, and holds out his hand for the earphone.

I hand him the receiver. “Sorry.”

He smiles. “You’ll see.”

“I’m sure.” I smile back, muss his spiky blond hair, and leave him to his work.

The “aliens” only transmit
between nine and two—Adam says it has to do with the earth’s rotation relative to the ship’s position—so on Saturday he is free until well after dinner. He gets up at eleven and pulls a stool up to the breakfast bar, curls his toes around the metal footrest.

“Long night?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m trying to get them to tell me exactly where they are.”

“Sounds important.” While I fix him a bowl of Sugar Pops he reaches for my mug and samples my coffee. He is slowly developing a taste for it, but mine is twice as strong as Margot’s, and after one sip his face scrunches up and he sticks out his tongue.

“Puts hair on your chest,” I tell him, and pull down my shirt collar.

“Gross,” he says. He pours himself a cup, dumps in half the sugar bowl and enough milk to make the coffee cool and yellow, tests it again, and nods his satisfaction.

 
“So how’s school?” I ask, and slide him his cereal bowl across the bar—his favorite trick when he was younger, though now he hardly notices.

“Okay, I guess,” he says. “Mrs.
Barczak
keeps piling homework on me. I only get to watch TV when I’m here. Mom says it’s poison.”

I am not surprised—anything outside her plans for him is ‘poison.’ “But they’re treating you all right?”

He scoops up a bite of cereal, careful to drain the milk from the spoon before eating it. “Mrs.
Barczak’s
pretty nice. She has a big birthmark on her cheek that’s shaped like Alaska.”

I take a long swig of coffee. “I bet it’s hard not to stare.”

“Sometimes,” he says. “You don’t want to get too close, though—her breath smells like rotten coffee grounds.”

I top off his cup. “I’ll have to remember that in case I meet her.”

He holds his mug and stares out the window a moment, lost in thought. “I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be out there,” he says. “I think they stayed longer because of me. I should probably tell somebody.”

“But not Mom,” I remind him.

“I mean somebody from the government. A scientist, maybe. Do you know of anyone?”
       
“No idea, pal.”

He sighs, slams his coffee. “I guess I’ll look it up later. I’ve learned about twenty words now. You might have to make the call, though—I don’t think they’d believe me.”

“We’ll see,” I tell him. I imagine the reaction of some government official as I tell him I am speaking to extraterrestrials on a U-
Bild
-It radio kit. Still, I do not try to change the subject. It may not be normal conversation for a ten-year-old, but for the first time since the divorce he actually seems happy.

For most of the afternoon
we munch on fried chicken from the supermarket and watch sitcom reruns, making fun of the actors in the commercials. Eventually Adam dozes off on the couch, a drumstick dangling loosely from his fingers. I cover him with an afghan and turn off the TV to let him rest. When the sun goes down Adam snaps awake like a zombie and bolts toward his room, hunches over the desk for his nightly surveillance.

Just before two I find him asleep in front of the radio, face-down on the plywood, the tiny earphone lying beside his face. When I come in to help him into bed I hear a strange sound from the earpiece. I pick it up and listen as a low, inhuman growl pierces the static. I have seen my share of foreign films, but this sounds like no language I have ever heard. The voice speaks quickly, then hesitates, waiting for a reply.

“Hello?” I say into the walkie-talkie. “Who is this?”

The voice immediately stops.

“Hello?”

Adam lifts his head from the table, rubs his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, pal. Let’s get you to bed.”

He squints at me, at the earpiece still in my hand. “What are you doing with that?”

“Nothing.” I lay it gently beside the walkie-talkie. “Just putting things away.”

His face breaks into a tired smile. “You heard them, didn’t you?” I stand there without answering, probably looking guilty, until he nods. “I knew you would.”

Over breakfast the next morning Adam asks what I heard; instead of answering I ask if his new school has a decent basketball team. He takes the hint and plunges a spoon into his cereal with a satisfied grin: sooner or later, I will believe him.

At four-thirty
Margot appears on the doorstep, gives three slow, menacing knocks, and waits on the porch for me to produce him. She is supposed to pick him up at five, but if I complain she comes even earlier the next time. She cannot stand to leave him with me any longer than necessary. She never comes in; we are on speaking terms again, but we have little to talk about. I tell Adam to take his time, make her wait a little longer just for fun. When he emerges from his bedroom with his duffel bag I raise a finger to my lips; he nods and repeats the gesture.

I watch Margot pull away from the curb; Adam waves out the window until the car disappears around the corner. Then I tiptoe into his room and stare at the diodes and wires and circuit boards splayed across his desk. Next to the mass of electronic guts is a stack of diagrams—the wiring between the components, a list of frequencies where he’s heard signals, tiny scribbled translations of the words he’s learned, charts of the planets with red X’s marking where the ship might be. I turn on the power, toggle through the dial, listen for them. But it is the wrong time of day, and after a few minutes I turn the radio off, arrange the components exactly as Adam left them, and cover them with an old pillowcase.

Wednesday afternoon
Margot calls my mobile phone while I am showing a lakeside cottage to a retired couple. She is crying. I have never heard her cry—not when I told her I was leaving, not even at her father’s funeral—so I panic, thinking Adam has been hit by a car or fallen off his bike and cracked his skull. I ask what’s happened and grab my jacket, nearly bowling over Mrs. Stevens on the way to the door.

       
“Adam’s teacher,” she sobs. “She thinks something’s wrong. His schoolwork’s been slipping and he’s getting picked on a lot. She wants to see both of us.”

       
I drop my jacket onto the porch and sit on the wooden landing. “Is that all? The way you sounded I thought he’d broken his neck.”

She stops crying. “Aren’t you worried? It isn’t like him to slack off in school. She says he might be depressed.”