The Indestructible Man (21 page)

1

       
The paramedics found him face-down
on the floor in his small efficiency, a pair of sparely-decorated rooms near the center of town. When they turned him over and the thick horn-rimmed glasses slid off his face, Casey, the older of the two, recognized him immediately. “Aw, Jesus,” he said, and took off his ragged Yankees cap. For the past several years the old man had largely stayed out of sight, appearing only to rescue the occasional child from a burning building or retrieve a kitten from the high branches of an elm tree. But the strong, square jaw, the lone spit-curl dangling over his brow, the blue suit barely concealed by his loose button-up sweater, were unmistakable.

       
The old man seemed small, as if they had expected a hulking, barrel-chested giant capable of twirling a station wagon over his head. But his jet-black hair had gone silver, and his powder-blue sweater and tan slacks hung off his withered frame like loose skin.
 
In his right hand they found a silver butterfly-shaped locket engraved with the initials, “LL.” Though he knew it was sacrilege, Smits, the younger man, could not resist opening it. Inside was an old black-and-white photograph: the dead man in younger days, thick and muscular, cradling a woman with wavy black hair and a pillbox hat, his bulging arms wrapped protectively around her. When Casey saw the locket he snatched it away. “Have some respect, for God’s sake,” he said, and folded it back into the corpse’s fingers.

       
His body was surprisingly heavy as they lifted him onto the gurney, as if gravity had finally anchored him down and refused to let go. Casey thought of his first trip to the city when he was eight, the blue and red streak passing overhead, the rush of wind that nearly blew his windbreaker off his shoulders. He wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing, if his father had pointed to a low-flying plane trailing a red banner and his imagination had filled in the rest.

They closed the corpse’s half-open mouth, gently placed his arms at his sides, drew the white sheet over the body. Casey had once read that the heavy sheet could flatten a body’s nose, so out of respect he raised it slightly over the face. After they wound the red canvas straps around the body he held his hat over his heart. Being an atheist, he knew no prayers, so instead he recited the first verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Smits had never seen his partner so solemn and did not know what else to do, so he joined in.

After they delivered the body to the morgue, they went to a tavern just around the corner to get drunk. They did not speak. Smits drew designs in the condensation on his mug, pretending to be fascinated by the hue of the beer in the dim light. Casey glanced at the TV hanging over the bar: a baseball game, plodding into extra innings. Any minute the networks would break the news.
 
He looked around the bar; because it was Wednesday and late in the afternoon, the place was empty except for a fat biker puffing cigar smoke across the bar. The windows were covered and blocked out most of the waning sun, and the bare bulb above the bar winked on and off. It flickered dull and yellow, shrouded in smoke, but he stared at it a long time, wanting to absorb every moment of its fading light.

2

The old woman had been sitting
at her kitchen table for two days when the network affiliate finally made the announcement. She had hardly moved in all that time, and her back was stiff and sore from the hard wooden chair.

He knew he was dying; it was his heart, always his heart, the price for years of stunts and miracles. He’d always been adamant about living apart and dying alone; she would have to answer too many questions otherwise. So when she rushed to his side, she did not spoil the moment by arguing. She touched his wrinkled cheek, then reached back and undid the clasp of the locket he had given her long ago. He smiled as she pressed the locket into his clammy palm and closed his fingers around it. His eyes went to the door; she nodded and leaned over to kiss him one last time. Holding her breath to keep from blubbering, she turned her back to him and shut the door behind her, then went home to wait for the news.

In the end, the newscaster said, he was just an ordinary man, mortal as any other.

She was not surprised when the mayor, his face grave and somber, went on TV and said the city had been duped by a hoodwink artist, his feats accomplished with smoke and mirrors, melodramas staged to entertain bystanders. She was not even surprised when the Ivy-League professor appeared on the evening news, proclaiming him a figment of popular imagination, an excuse to deny responsibility for our actions because
he
would always be there to save us.

She sighed, shook her head. Fools, all of them. Of
course
he was an ordinary man; that was the stunning, humbling beauty of him. She knew it the first time she saw his true face beneath the thick-framed glasses, and if the idiots on TV would just stop talking and think for a minute, they might realize it too.

3

The first thing
the medical examiner noticed, as he pulled the sheet from the body, was the corpse’s hands, hardly perfect and unblemished: the fingers gnarled from wear, fingertips caked with dirt and ink, palms scarred and thickly callused. His chest was pale and sunken, dotted with thin white hairs that swirled in tiny circles from the nipples up to the shoulders. A dozen indentations the size of bullet-holes marked the protruding ribs. The suit lay in a plastic bag on the floor, a crumpled wad of red and blue.

Though he feared the scalpel blade would splinter against the skin, it went in easily, cutting a “Y” into the soft bloodless torso with the gentlest pressure, exposing the heart, lungs, bowels. Because he had been told to probe deeply, he examined the body with the greatest care, taking blood and tissue samples, feeling the spongy masses with his latex-coated fingers. But after many hours he found nothing remarkable. The heart seemed particularly weak, sitting pinkish-yellow and inflamed in the chest cavity.

He pulled the suit out of the bag, tugged at it, held it up to the light to see if it possessed any supernatural attributes he had not considered. It smelled faintly of medicated powder and newspaper ink. Though he expected to find bullet-proof lining or other reinforcement, he realized it was merely a pair of sky-blue long johns, the yellow and red “S” embroidered on the chest in yarn; threadbare crimson boxers; and a pair of thin rubber boots spray-painted blood red. The wrinkled cape was cut from an old flannel
bedsheet
and fixed to the shoulders with Velcro.

The medical examiner tried to picture the old man in his skin-tight outfit, swinging his legs over the edge of some rooftop and launching himself into the air, cape billowing behind him like butterfly wings. For a moment the idea crept into his head to lock himself in his office, put on the suit and cape, take the service elevator to the roof, and dive off to see what happened. The rush of air and adrenaline would feel wonderful in those first few seconds, before his arc deteriorated and he smacked against the sidewalk twelve stories down. He wondered if the old man ever felt that kind of exhilaration, if he was somehow able to extend those few seconds into minutes, into hours, until the laws of physics no longer applied.

The medical examiner finished his work, stitched up the body. His superiors would be unhappy, but the proof was right in front of him: those callused hands were those of a normal working man—a steelworker, perhaps a carpenter. Yet, if the stories were to be believed, they had once bent steel bars, smashed through brick walls to save kidnapped children, subdued gun-wielding thieves and madmen too many times to count.

He shook his head, drew the white sheet back over the corpse. It was all a lie, of course. Any sane person could see that. He returned the body to the cooler and closed the metal door with a clang. The suit still lay spread across another table in the examination room, waiting to be stuffed back into its plastic bag and shut up in a locker. He felt the cape fabric with his fingers, lifted the suit and let it unfurl before him, held it against his body to look at his reflection in the window. The fit seemed perfect.

He sat in his office for hours, staring at the makeshift costume laid out across his desk, until it was dark outside and the staff had gone home. Finally the phone rang, startling him—his wife, asking when he would be home. “I’m on my way,” he said, pushing away from his desk. He gathered up the blue suit, stroking the red “S” with his fingertips before folding it gingerly back into the bag.

That night he dreamt of shadowy figures in black
trenchcoats
emerging from alleys and manhole covers, knowing their chance had finally come. They scattered in the dim moonlight, heading for the shops, banks, and homes of the city. Inside their houses people huddled together for protection, casting hopeful glances toward the sky. His eyes snapped open and he found himself panting, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, and though he tried to calm himself he could not go back to sleep.

He rolled out from under his wife’s arm and reached under the bed, careful not to let the rustling of plastic wake her. Stumbling in the dark bedroom, he threw on some loose clothes and went for a walk in the cool night air. He had gone only a few blocks when his ears caught the distant wail of fire engines. At the very limit of his hearing he thought he could make out the muffled cries of children. He squinted in the direction of the city, miles away; in the pre-dawn light he saw a long plume of black smoke rising above the jutting skyline. Somewhere, he knew, children were trapped in a burning high-rise, beyond the reach of firemen’s ladders, their escape blocked by flames. His heart beat hard in his chest; he felt the blue fabric snug against his skin, the flowing cape folded beneath his cardigan. On the corner was an empty phone booth, its door hanging open, inviting him inside. He closed the door behind him; his twill pants and sweater fell away, and in seconds he emerged, breaking into a run, each crimson-booted footfall lighter than the last, until gravity began to lose its hold and his feet no longer touched the ground.

To The Sleeper

       
You were gone three days
before I found you, caked with dirt, dried leaves clinging to your shirt, curled up and snoring under an old elm with sagging branches. It took the children and me an hour just to lift you into the cart to carry you home. You did not wake. Nothing could wake you, not my prodding in your side, not smelling salts, not even lit matches touched to your fingertips.

       
No one since has been able to explain what happened to you, though for years I heard the rumors: you were lulled into the woods by soft unearthly music that caused you to fall into a timeless and irretrievable sleep. At the time I thought it more likely you had simply drunk far more whiskey than your body could withstand. I thought you would die soon, but the doctors told me you were merely sleeping, that for all they knew you could awaken at any moment. That was twenty years ago, almost to the day.

       
I could not do much with you then but remove your soiled clothes, wipe the dirt from your face where it was pressed into the earth, slide you into a clean nightshirt, and lay you in bed in an out-of-the-way corner downstairs so you would never be out of our sight. At first, because I was lonely and the house grew chilly at night, I slept next to you; the rhythm of your breath, the warmth of your body, comforted me at night, and I would fall asleep counting your snores.

       
But soon I realized it was not enough, that your snoring and still form could never replace the sight of you parading around the yard, one of our children clinging to each leg, another riding piggyback, arms snugly fastened about your neck. It was not something I was accustomed to seeing, but there were a few such moments and that is the way I would prefer to remember you. Until you wake, it will do.

       
You lie in the same corner
even now, your bed pushed against the wall so you do not obstruct the daily chores. You do not seem to require food, though the doctors do not know why and, grudgingly, I will admit it now seems likely that a spell has caused your sleep. Every so often the doctors insist on tapping at your joints, listening for your heartbeat to see if anything has changed, but there seems no need for concern; your heart is strong, your breathing normal, and so all that remains for me to do is change your nightshirts now and then and brush the fresh dust from your face every morning. I still tickle your ears and nose with the feather-duster, hoping to rouse you in disgruntled laughter. It has been a long time since I heard you laugh. But you are silent except for the snoring.