Wayne of Gotham
Authors: Tracy Hickman
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Batman created by Bob Kane
This book is dedicated to Ryan Hickman. Because he asked.
9 WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF?
GOTHAM HERALD OBITUARIES: BRUCE PATRICK WAYNE
MAKING A MAN
Wayne Manor / Bristol / 4:24 p.m. / September 21, 1953
“Damn it, boy! Stand up!”
Thomas Wayne shrank once more from the voice. It was a reflex ingrained in him. In all his fifteen years of life, that flinch had been as natural as breath, as unthinking as a blink.
“That's no way to hold a gun!” Patrick Wayne was a big man in a big town, with strong, wide hands that had, Thomas had no doubt, bent and shaped the very steel that formed the foundations of Gotham City. His voice outdid his size, roaring into the darkness, bounding off the unseen walls in a cascade of echoes that reached into the bowels of the earth. The column of yellow light from the old man's handheld flashlight hurt the boy's eyes. “Grip the stock by the trigger with your right hand so you can lift the barrel up by the forestock! And for hell's sake, hold it across your body with the barrel down.”
Thomas dutifully repositioned his hold on the shotgun. His hands were shaking so violently he was afraid he would drop it. Sweat was pooling between his shoulder blades beneath his collared shirt and sweater vest despite the damp chill of the cave. Some part of his mind registered the fact that his new jeans would be ruined. It was a diversion of his mind. He sensed what was coming next.
The big hand slammed into Thomas's back, propelling him forward into the cavern. The young man hated the dark. The unseen cavern walls and roof pressed down on him. He hunched up his shoulders, drawing tighter within himself as he stumbled over the loose shale crumbling beneath his feet.
“Hell or high water, boy, I'm going to make a man out of you,” Patrick roared behind him. Thomas knew the mix better than the cocktails his mother had him make for her every eveningâand, of late, in the afternoons as well. His father had achieved balanced parts of rage and liquor soured with a twist of disappointment. It never mattered where it came fromâwho or what had set the old man off was irrelevant, Thomas knew. All that mattered now was that Thomas had become the focus of his father's displeasure ⦠again. His own manhood had been somehow threatened and now manhood would be impressed on his son at any cost. “Do you think those comic books are going to keep you alive in Gotham? It's kill or be killed out thereânot like that comic book world you live in! And you're gonna learn how to kill today, son. You're gonna kill
something
!”
He could hear them.
Even over his father's thunderous voice, he could hear the waking bats.
It was afternoon, and he had disturbed their rest. The dim light from the failing Evereadys in his father's flashlight reflected in a thousand pairs of eyes blanketing the ceiling above them.
The bats were at home beneath Wayne Manor, and in their coming Patrick and his son had upset the quiet balance in the cavern between the world above and the world below.
“Get on with it, boy!”
The cringe was deepening. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking. He tried to raise the barrel of the shotgun but the foreign thing felt impossibly heavy, and he could not will his arms to move. Tears stung his eyes, welling out and spilling down his cheeks in the darkness.
Thomas tried to speak through shivering lips.
“What did you say, boy?”
Thomas could feel the massive presence of his father looming up behind him as the dimming flashlight shifted in his hands.
“Speak up, boy!” Patrick's voice shook the cavern.
He froze, but Thomas knew disobedience would only make it worse. He blurted his response loud enough to clear his clenched teeth.
“IâI
can't
!”
“You CAN'T?” Patrick raged. “You're the descendant of knights who fought in the crusades! Waynes have participated in every battle fought in or about Americaâgiven their blood for this country. We build the weapons that make this country strong and great ⦠and you tell me you
CAN'T
!”
The big hand. The strong hand. The hand that had bent the steel of Gotham smashed down across the boy's face, driving him to the ground.
Thomas lay on his back sobbing. He could taste his own blood from the corner of his mouth where Patrick's ring had dragged as it drove him to the ground. The side of his face would sting for a while but the pain in his soul would never diminish, only be compounded.
The shotgun lay across his body as he wept; his eyes closed against the darkness of the cavern around him ⦠the deeper darkness of his father standing over him. The watchful darkness of the keening bats beyond.
The big hand. The strong hand.
Thomas felt the gathering of his collar at the back of his neck. It stretched the sweater, dragging him to his feet as the gun clattered on the shale ground.
The hand of Patrick Wayne held his son in an iron grip, dragging their faces within inches of each other. The flashlight flickered as it shone upward, casting both their faces in heavy contrasting shadows. Thomas stared into the eyes of his father.
“You're a
Wayne
, boy!” Patrick growled into the face of his son. The words smelled like rotted fruit falling from his father's scotch-soaked tongue. “There are only two types of people in this world: the hunters and the huntedâand you had better make up your mind right now that you're going to hunt! I won't allow the empire I've built to be taken apart by the government, and I sure as hell won't turn it over to a bookworm son with a head full of comic books and no stomach for survival.”
Patrick swept up the shotgun. The polished barrel reflected the dimming light as the man pushed the weapon into young Thomas's hands.
“Be a man!
Show me
you're a man!” Patrick growled into the face of his boy. “Use this! Kill something!”
Thomas stopped shaking, his eyes suddenly focused and unblinking. His lips split apart revealing clenched teeth. His hands gripped the stock without thinking.
“
Show me!
” Patrick screamed.
Thomas turned, raising the shotgun up in a quick motion as he had seen his father do a dozen times on the skeet range behind the Manor.
The barrel crossed Patrick's face in its arc.
Thomas frozeâthe barrel wavering on his father's face.
I could make it stop. I could pull this trigger and make him stop. He would go away and stop hurting me ⦠hurting Mother ⦠hurting anyone. Everything would be better if I could make him stop ⦠make him stop â¦
But the boy's finger did not move.
Patrick stepped around his son, standing behind the youth as the barrel shifted uncertainly in the air. Thomas could almost feel the hairs of his father's mustache on his neck, smell the sour breath.
“What are you waiting for?” Patrick urged, his voice rumbling in his son's ears. “Do you think they'll wait for you? Do you think they would hesitate a moment if they were after you? Go on, son. Kill them ⦠kill them before they kill you.”
Thomas's hands began to shake once more.
“KILL THEM!” Patrick screamed.
The shotgun roared. The recoil from the shotgun blast slammed the butt of the gun into the boy's shoulder, pushing him back as he stumbled awkwardly against the mass of his father behind him. The ceiling exploded in noise and motion, the bats filling the air with their own sound and confusion. The walls of the cavern vanished in the flow of leather wings and the outraged cries of the bats.
“Again, boy!” Patrick yelled. “Do it again!”
Thomas felt the hand on his shoulder. The steel-bending hand â¦
He had no choice.
Tears streaming down his face, he fired again â¦
And again â¦
And again â¦
SPELLBOUND
Aparo Park Docks / Gotham / 1:12 a.m. / Present Day
You can't run ⦠you can't hide â¦
Batman dropped down onto the square of cement, landing in a strong crouch, his cape settling around him. It softened his silhouette in the darkness. His right fist pressed against the ground, and he raised his head.
Come out, come out, wherever you are â¦
It was a nightmare landscape dragged from an M. C. Escher drawing. Iron stairs leading away from the small cement balcony connected in impossible ways with still other stairs. The mind-tortured stairs led to more landings and more impossible stairs, a cascade of metal works extending into infinite space. Hooded work lights hung at cross angles from one another. Their feeble rays barely illuminated the shadowed figures that stood beneath them. Some were on opposite sides of the same stairs as though gravity were a matter of personal perspective. Their shadowy outlines twisted nervously in the dark. Revolver, automatic, shotgun, rifleâa variety of weapons pointed at bizarre angles into the space. Each was different and each was alike in important aspects.
