The Struggles of Johnny Cannon (23 page)

Me and Willie moved on to try and help wherever else we could. Thankfully, nobody'd been close enough to the blast to get killed or nothing, so there wasn't any real messy cleanup to do. After a few minutes of helping folks walk to a gurney or get their car pushed out of another one's fender, I noticed that the Three Caballeros wasn't around.

“Where do you reckon they are?” Willie said. “You don't think they went after Eddie and that other fella or something, do you?”

“I don't rightly know,” I said. “There really ain't no telling what they do. Heck, I'm about done trying to figure out what's going on with anybody anymore.”

He nodded and we both kept right on helping out. After a bit, the sheriff's car pulled up and Sheriff Tatum, Pa, Carlos, and Mr. Thomassen all got out. But they wasn't in handcuffs, so I reckoned they hadn't gotten in trouble. Me and Willie went over to see what was going on.

Sheriff Tatum walked around, looking at the damage with his hands in his pockets, every once in a while patting his big belly or twisting the ends of his mustache. He'd occasionally mutter to himself about how terrible a thing it was and such. Finally he came back over to all of us.

“All right, I think I've seen enough for now. I'm going to do everything I can to find whoever did this and get them locked up.”

“Ain't going to be too hard,” Willie said. “We all saw Eddie and his buddy do it.”

“Hmm,” Sheriff Tatum said. “Blowing up his own daddy's shop. That's dirty.” Then he lowered his voice. “Though, I can't say I blame him.”

“Where is Bob, anyway?” Pa said. “I'd have thought he'd be burning rubber to get over and check this all out.”

I looked over at the pile of burning rubble that used to be Gorman's Auto Shop and I started feeling sick over it again. Bob had lost his airfield earlier that year in the tornado, and now this. Plus his son had done run off. It might have been the worst year anyone ever had. Except for those folks that lived in Europe in 1348, when the bubonic plague broke out. Then again, it got rid of half the folks that lived back then, so if you was sort of a loner, you might have appreciated it.

“It is weird,” Willie said. “My pa was trying to meet with him too. He came into town to look for him at his shop earlier.”

“What's your pa drive?” Sheriff Tatum said.

“Our station wagon,” Willie said. “A brown Ambassador.”

“Thought I saw one while I was driving over. Parked around the corner.”

I was still looking at the wreckage. Thought I saw something moving, but I wasn't too sure.

“Funny.” Sheriff Tatum kept talking. “It was parked behind Bob's tow truck. Bob must not have had room in his shop to park.”

“Wait, so they're around here somewhere?” Willie said.

Yeah, I definitely saw something moving. I took off running toward the rubble.

“Johnny, come back here. That ain't safe!” Pa said. I didn't listen.

I got over to the mess of metal and bricks, and it was as hot as the fires of hell over there. The flames was still burning, probably thanks to the oil and gasoline. But I was sure of what I saw.

Under a great big slab of concrete I'd seen something moving.

I got there and looked in the little opening there was, and I was met by a set of eyeballs. And a voice.

“Johnny, please get help.” It was Reverend Parkins.

“Get over here!” I hollered to them other fellas. They all came running and as soon as they saw what I saw, they started pulling on the slab to move it.

“Daddy,” Willie said as he got up next to me. “Try and push it off.”

“Can't,” Reverend Parkins said. “I can't move my hands.”

The Three Caballeros was heaving as hard as they could. Carlos grabbed a piece of rebar, but then dropped it 'cause it was flaming hot. He pulled off his shirt and grabbed it again and stuck it under the slab to start prying it off.

“Are you paralyzed?” Willie said.

“No,” Reverend Parkins said. “I just can't do it right now.”

“Where's Bob? Was he in there too?” I asked.

“Yes, we were together,” he said. “Please, get this off of me.”

I started pushing on the slab myself. After a few seconds of nearly popping all our back muscles, we got it moved. Reverend Parkins's foot had been under it and it was pretty bad mangled up, plus he had pretty bad burns all over his legs and back. But not a one of us focused on those things, 'cause all of a sudden, we knew why he hadn't been able to use his hands.

He was laying on top of Bob Gorman, like he'd jumped on him to protect him from the falling slab. And he had his hand in a deep gash on Bob's throat, pushing real hard like he was trying to keep him from bleeding to death. There was a bloody piece of glass on Bob's smoldering chest, which must have been inside his neck before Reverend Parkins moved to save him.

Meanwhile, Bob, who probably would have been better off to be knocked out, was wide awake, his eyes bulging, staring at Reverend Parkins's face, his mouth gurgling but not saying nothing.

“It's going to be okay,” Reverend Parkins kept whispering to him. “The Lord is our shepherd. It's going to be okay.”

Mr. Thomassen jumped up.

“Get a doctor over here! Now!”

It only took a couple of seconds for Dr. Percival to get a gurney and two nurses over with him. When they saw the scene, they all froze. Reverend Parkins kept whispering a prayer to Bob.

“Move!” Mr. Thomassen said.

Dr. Percival sent a nurse to get more help and another gurney. All the while, Reverend Parkins kept on whispering the same thing over and over to Bob.

I glanced over at Willie. I could tell he was freaking out something fierce. Even though it was probably weird and wasn't what you was supposed to do with another fella, I reached over and grabbed his hand. He didn't pull it away.

When they got another gurney over, we all scrambled and started working on moving Bob onto the first of them. After we got him on, Dr. Percival moved around and worked to replace Reverend Parkins's hand with his own. Right after Reverend Parkins's blood-covered hand came out, they went to move him onto his own gurney, but Bob's hand snapped up and grabbed Reverend Parkins's wrist. He wouldn't let them move Reverend Parkins away from him.

“Somebody break his grip so we can move them,” Dr. Percival said. The nurses tried, but Bob was holding on for dear life.

“We can't,” one nurse said. Dr. Percival growled.

“Fine, then bring the other gurney closer so we can move them together.”

They did that and got Reverend Parkins onto the other one, and Bob didn't let go of his wrist, not once. Reverend Parkins called to Willie to come closer.

“I'll stay right by you,” Willie said to him.

“No, go on home and tell your ma that I'm okay,” Reverend Parkins said. “She's probably worried enough as it is, and I don't—” He coughed a whole mess of stuff up. “I don't want you seeing me like this. So go on. For me.”

Willie didn't seem happy about that, but he nodded. They started to move them along and Willie was left standing there. He hollered after them to stop and he went real quick to Bob.

“You need to stay alive,” he said. “It wouldn't be right for you to die after my dad acted like a SuperNegro for you.”

Bob nodded a little and they hurried to get into the ER so they could save his life.

Willie went and asked Pa if he could take him home so he could do what his pa had said, and so we went and got into our truck and left all that trouble behind so Willie could be a good son. I probably needed to be taking notes, but I didn't have no notebooks with me, so I hoped I'd just remember it later.

On our way up the hill, Willie stared out the window and I figured he was real worried about his pa, so I patted him on the back, which was somehow more awkward than when we'd been holding hands. He looked at me.

“Hey, Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking,” he said. “Mercury needs a hideout.”

It took me a second to respond.

“Mercury? You mean your made-up superhero?”

“SuperNegro, and yeah,” he said. “If Mercury had a hideout, like the Batcave or something, he could have a whole mess of computers and such and probably be able to do things like figure out the cipher in that letter and all that lickety-split.”

“Boy, I can't believe you're thinking of that letter at a time like this,” I said.

He shrugged.

“It's easier than the alternative.”

I nodded.

“On top of that, I can't believe you'd default to the Batcave for the hideout. What about the Fortress of Solitude? Superman's got Kryptonian computers in there that can do what them Batcomputers couldn't never do.”

“But Mercury ain't Kryptonian,” he said. “And, anyway, the Batcomputers are more realistic.”

Now, normally that would have set off an hour-long argument over which was better, Superman or Batman, and we'd both get real mad at each other and dig out comics to prove our points and all that. And normally, I'd have won, but he'd claim he did, which would have started another argument. And it'd be a grand old time of fun arguing.

But a lightbulb had just went off in my head that made me not feel up to arguing. Instead, it made me feel up to mystery solving.

“ ‘A solitary fort,' ” I said. “Ain't that what the hidden message said?”

He blinked a couple of times. “Yeah,” he said. “ ‘If a solitary fort is a Scottish lake.' ”

“The Fortress of Solitude,” I said. “That's the solitary fort.”

His eyes got wide. “Whoa, that makes sense. But what's a Scottish lake?”

Pa must have been listening. “It's a loch,” he said. “Like Loch Ness.”

Me and Willie both had more lightbulbs busting. “The Fortress of Solitude is the lock!” we said at almost the same time.

“What's the next part?” I asked.

“ ‘Then what is its resident?' ”

“Superman,” I said. “Obviously.”

“But it didn't say ‘who,' ” Willie said. “It said ‘what.' ”

“Well,” Pa said, “I don't rightly know what y'all are talking about, but it would seem that if the first line is about the lock, then the second line is about the key. That's how riddles usually work out.”

“Superman is the key,” I said. Then I realized what that meant. “It's ‘Superman'!”

“Dadgummit,” Willie said. “Of course it's Superman. How come we didn't think of that before?”

“You didn't have me around,” Pa said with a chuckle. “I'm real keen at riddles.”

Willie leaned into my ear and whispered to me.

“Go get the letter and bring it to my house. We'll figure it out now, that's for darn sure.” He looked out the window and got that glimmer in his eye. “Meanwhile, I need to get a hold of Short-Guy.”

We dropped Willie off at his house and his ma was standing on the porch, watching the road real worried-like. I reckoned that wasn't going to be the best of conversations he was about to have, telling her what happened with Reverend Parkins and all. Which meant he'd be primed and ready to scat as soon as I got back. Which was fine by me.

We went up to our house and I hurried inside to grab the letter. Sora was sitting on the couch with a wet rag covering her eyes, and she was holding on to a pillow like it was a parachute.

“You all right?” I asked.

“I don't feel well at all,” she said. “I think this baby's trying to kill me.”

“Well, don't let it. There's already been enough folks getting rushed to the hospital today for my taste.” I ran up to my room and grabbed the letter. I peeked at it for a minute to see if I could figure it out on my own, which of course I couldn't, but I still owed it to myself to try. I could hear Pa checking on Sora the same as I had, and him saying just about the same thing I did. Then he went out to his radio shack and I reckoned I was clear to run back over to Willie's.

I started out the door, but Sora stopped me.

“Did something happen with Rudy today?” she asked.

“More like Rudy happened to something,” I said.

“He called me,” she said. “He seemed in a panic. Insisting that I come and meet him. Like it was life or death.”

“I don't reckon you ought to,” I said. Then I told her the whole story about Rudy blowing up Bob's shop, and about him being a Trafficante, and the whole shooting match. She clutched the pillow harder to her chest while I told it all. She shook her head and I almost thought she had tears in her eyes.

“I knew he hadn't changed,” she said. “Once a Trafficante, always a Trafficante.”

“Wait, you knew he was a Trafficante?”

She nodded. “But he swore he'd left that lifestyle behind. Trying to be a better man. Making his own name in the world. A name worth taking.” She breathed out a long sigh.

I didn't really much care for that sigh. “I thought you was Tommy's girl,” I said. She looked startled at that.

“I am,” she said. “Rudy is just—he's like a brother to me. He's always taken care of me. And I know he's so in love with me, because he always tells me.” She looked me in the eyes. “Tommy never said that to me.”

He should have. But that was Tommy.

“Well, I don't reckon Rudy's as different as he claimed.”

“I know,” she said. “And I don't feel the same for him as he feels for me. I've just never really told him. But I need to, for both our sakes. I'll go meet him and tell him to leave without me.”

She started to get up, but then she groaned a little and sat back down.

“Just leave him be,” I said. “He'll get the hint. And maybe get picked up by the sheriff. That'd be a happy ending, for sure.”

“I can't do that to him. Regardless of what he's done, he's always been good to me.”