Superpowers (19 page)

TUESDAY

Jack ran.

He wondered about time, and how it changed while he ran. He knew about relativity, but he wasn't sure he understood it. When he ran, only seconds passed, but it seemed so much longer—he could see the things around him and react to them, and he had lots of time for thinking. He was thinking now that maybe if he ran as fast as he was capable, then maybe he could go back in time and arrive before it happened. Maybe he could make it not true.

He was remembering things he hadn't thought about in years. He remembered a football game in junior high, when he'd started a fight with his own quarterback because he wouldn't throw to him. He remembered his dad watching him, and he remembered thinking that he should stop fighting, that he should walk away and count to ten or something. But instead he had kicked the other boy in the leg and knocked him down. He looked at his father then, and saw disappointment etched into his tanned and furrowed brow. When his father turned away from him, Jack started to cry.

He remembered another football game, one he hadn't played in. He had been a high school freshman at the time, and his brother Lloyd was a senior. Lloyd wouldn't drive him to the game, because he was taking a girl. Jack's father drove him to the game and parked his truck next to Lloyd's Nova. His father had asked him if he could find a ride home, and when Jack said he could, his father stabbed Lloyd's tires with his hunting knife. Lloyd had to buy new tires, and it wasn't until weeks later that he found out what had happened to the old ones.

Jack was crying now. Tears slid down his face and fell from his cheekbones, swept away by the wind of his passage. He wondered if the tears fell quickly as he left them behind, or if they became motionless with the world around him, ticking forward millisecond by millisecond. He wondered if there would be some spark of his father left when he got home. But there was no point. Even if there was a way for him to drag his father back into life and pain, he would not do so.

He ran until he reached the farm, and then he ran into the machine shed and pulled out a crowbar and a hammer. He ran to the old, leaning garage that had never recovered from the fall of the old maple's bough.

"Listen," his father had said all those months ago. "We've got to take down that garage. Your mother is threatening to do it herself."

"Uh-oh," Jack said. It was an old joke between them that his mother was incompetent with tools, although it wasn't true, and she got so angry about it that they never joked about it in front of her anymore. "I could come down tomorrow."

"I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow. How about Saturday?"

Jack hadn't asked what the doctor's appointment was for. He wondered sometimes if he should have, if asking would have been a countersign by which God would have known to clear the cancer up overnight. He wondered if his dad had been scared, if he had suspected what the doctor would find.

"Saturday's fine," Jack said.

The next day they'd found a tumor on his father's lung; on Saturday he was in the hospital having a biopsy done. By the following Thursday his parents were in negotiations with four doctors for a few extra weeks of life, and the garage was still standing. Leaning.

Jack carried a ladder over and tore the roof apart, shingle by shingle, board by board. The doors were already gone, so he tore out the framing and pried loose the siding, working carefully even though he was moving faster than the eye could see, trying to keep the structure balanced as he dismantled it.

When time ran out on him and the skeleton of the garage collapsed he stood looking at it for a long time. A long time was thirty seconds for him now. A long time was eight months of pain and helplessness. A long time was the rest of his life without a father.

"Morty?" his mother called from the doorway. "Morty, honey. Come inside."

He threw down the tools and ran to her, but slowly.

EDITOR'S NOTE

You've probably noticed by now that a man named Marcus Hatch appears in this book, and if you're an astute reader you may have noticed that Marcus Hatch is my name as well. I'm part of this story—this
true
story, as I feel I need to keep reminding you all. At the same time, it's not
my
story. I'm at best a minor character, and I've made an effort to keep that Marcus Hatch from obstructing the story of the principals.

Despite this, some of you may think I've sacrificed my objectivity by writing about myself, and in the third person, no less. Not to mention that this minor character used to sleep with one of the main characters. Might still have feelings for her, even. Might have been struck by self-doubt when she questioned my objectivity back on July 23. Might wonder if she'll read this, wherever she is.

It's complicated, sure. But do you think that the corporate news giants,
The Wall Street Journal
and
The New York Times
and Gannett and AOL/Time Warner and Reuters have self-doubt, or even self-awareness? They're corporate entities. Hive minds. Juggernauts don't search their souls. They just keep on rolling, and woe betide the truth if it gets in their way.

I'm as susceptible as any journalist to accusations of not being objective. What Harriet had to say bothered me, and then I decided she was right. Not only was I not objective, I
shouldn't
be objective. Objective, in this world, means detached credulity. It means using the word
alleged
a lot when it's not legally necessary. It means forfeiting your right to be outraged.

I refuse to become that kind of a filter for what I see happening around me. I refuse to bleach the facts of all implication. When this story looks done I'll be tamping down the grounds to get those last bracing drops of outrage. Or maybe I'm a French press. The coffee metaphor is breaking down. The point is,
I was there,
and I'm not after ratings, I'm not trying to scoop the competition. I write in the service of truth, not objectivity. Witness the fact that the Marcus Hatch in this book is kind of an ass. The whole truth, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing but.

For those of you still clamoring for objectivity, I'll tell you in exactly what respects I am not impartial. One, I believe that your government—wherever and whenever you're reading this—is lying to you, often for what it believes is your own good. Two, I believe that corporations—all of them—are lying to you, for
their
own good. Three, I think that everyone else is pretty much just trying to get by.

So now you know where I'm coming from. Add hot water to this story and dilute it by the above and by a factor of Charlie Frost and United States foreign policy in the twentieth century and the English language and all of western civilization, and you'll have a cup of dark, steamy truth.

Simple.

THURSDAY

She landed on Christos's roof next to the man. He was holding a cigarette and staring at the capitol building, which stood out white-gray against the night, illuminated by spotlights.

"You aren't planning to jump, are you?" she asked.

She'd flown over downtown three times before she saw him. Mary Beth called it patrol, but to herself Caroline called it needling, because of the haystack quality created by the sheer number of streets and houses and cars. Caroline needled three or four nights a week and rarely found anything that required her attention. She'd been about to quit for the night when she spotted the man on the roof of Christos.

He must have climbed up the fire escape somehow; there were no doors on the roof. What she couldn't figure out was how he'd brought the chair behind him four stories up.

He glanced at her. He wore black pants and a brown jacket, and dark facial hair clung to his puffy face. He was young, but heavy.

"I know you," he said in an accented voice, and looked back at the capitol.

"Yes . . . they call me Blue Star. I was wondering if—"

"Shut up for a minute, will you? I'm enjoying the view."

Caroline had seen the capitol plenty of times, enough that it didn't impress her anymore. She wondered what the man was seeing.

"One of the guys I work with thought that was the Statue of Liberty," said the man. "He had heard of it, but never seen a picture." The accent was Mexican, but very faint. He had yet to give her a second glance.

"He thought the capitol was the Statue of Liberty?" she asked.

"Not the building," he said. "The statue. Up there, see?"

Caroline saw. It was a gilded statue of a woman with an eagle in her hand and a badger on her head. She wondered how stupid this man's co-workers were.

"I hope you're not planning to jump. I was at a wake earlier tonight—a good friend of mine's father died. His family is really hurting. I'm sure you wouldn't wish that on your family."

"My family?" He finished his cigarette and flicked it over the edge. "Those people are not my family. They are my family's family. I barely know them."

"What?"

He sat on the chair and pulled out another cigarette. "You don't know who I am, do you?" he asked once it was lit. "I told you, I know who you are."

Caroline wanted out of this conversation, but there was no choice, no one else around to hand this guy off to. "I guess you've heard about me on the news," she said. "I'm afraid I don't—"

"I saw you, the other night. You came out the back after we were closed. You thought everyone had left. You looked around like you were sneaking. Then you took off into the sky, like a little rocket." The man mimed a rocket taking off with his hand and blew smoke after it. "Super white girl."

He saw me.
Caroline stared, trying to place him. "Are you . . . do you work here? At Christos?"

He opened his jacket to show a white work shirt. "This is my secret identity, Joseph. But by day I am that master of spray-arm and garbage disposal, Jose the dishwasher. My power is invisibility." He held out the pack of cigarettes. "Smoke?"

"Thanks." Was he going to blackmail her? She needed Charlie here, to tell her what this guy was thinking. She took his lighter and looked for a place to sit. "How did you get the chair up here?"

"Twine. I tied one end to the chair and the other to my belt. When I got up here I dragged the chair up." Caroline remembered Vincent accusing some of the cooks of putting chairs on the roof as a prank a couple of weeks ago.

"I— Is it Jose or Joseph?"

"I can't decide. Call me Joe."

"It's nice to meet you."

He nodded. He was still staring at the statue on the capitol. "Your friend's father, was he a good man?"

"I didn't know him," Caroline said. "But his son—my friend-he's very upset."

"Of course he is. I think I am jealous, actually. I never knew my father."

"Me neither."

"How long have you been flying?"

"About a month now. A little more."

"How did that happen?"

Caroline shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Well. That seems about right."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you made it to college, right? And you're white. So obviously you also need the added advantage of a superpower."

Caroline considered telling him about Harriet but decided that would just make her sound stupid. Besides, he already knew more than he should.

"So what's it like?"

Caroline squatted on the roof to rest her legs. "What's what like?"

"Flying. What'd you think?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Who does, then? You're the only one who knows."

Caroline hoped that wasn't true. Lately she had been thinking that there must be someone else somewhere who could do what she could. In the beginning she had liked the idea of being unique, but in the last few days the thought had become frightening.

"It's like freedom," she said. "It's like—I didn't realize it until I could fly, but before that I was chained to the ground. I was stuck there. Now it feels like I can do anything."

"You can fly," said Joe.

"Yes. It feels good."

She was starting to feel uncomfortable. She was too close to him, and the costume was too revealing. He knew who she was.

"Are you going to tell anyone what you saw?"

"Who would I tell?"

"I don't know. The people you work with."

Joe shook his head. "We speak the same language, but they are not my friends. You know what their greatest ambition is? To own a BMW. They don't know how they would pay for it or what they would do with it once they have it, they just want it. It is the highest achievement they can imagine."

"What about you? What's your ambition?"

"I aspire to become a busboy."

Caroline laughed. "Not really."

"It is the best I can hope for." He flicked the last half-inch of cigarette at the roof's edge. "My mother wanted me to come to America, you see. To go to school here. I was only allowed to watch American TV, so I could learn English."

"Your English is very good."

"Thank you. As you can see, it has been a great aid to me in my career. My mother died, you see, and I decided to come here because she wanted that. It was a mistake."

"I'm sorry. I ... I was at that wake tonight, watching my friend and his family, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to lose someone that important to you. It's never happened to me."

"Never?"

"I've never even been to a funeral before. Tomorrow will be the first."

"Amazing. I have been to at least fifty. What about grandparents?"

"My mom's parents died before I was born."

"So your mother is all you have."

"I'm not even sure I've got her sometimes. I mean, my family is just different. I love my mom." She was afraid he would say something sarcastic about her being a poor little white girl again, but he was quiet.

"Are you going to go to school here?" she asked.

"I am an illegal alien with very little money. As well as that worked out for Superman, I lack even the power of the GRE."

She put out her cigarette on the roof and stood. "Is that why you're up here? Are you going to jump?"

"I am not going to jump," he said very slowly, as if she might not understand. "I come up here at night to smoke and think, and to avoid my cousins. You may be excused to find someone else to save."

"OK. Thanks for the cigarette. I guess I'll see you at work."

"I guess."

"You won't tell anyone?"

"Ai yi.
I won't tell anyone. Go away now. Go call your mother."

He stared out over downtown, at the banks around the capitol, at the Convention Center to the south, at the faint shimmering of the lake beyond.

Caroline took off into the night. She was tired, and the funeral was tomorrow at eleven. She was going for Jack's sake, but she didn't think she was ready.