The Indestructible Man (4 page)

Bobby dozed through the opening acts
, and wondered how anyone could ever sit through them. Brooks was impressed with Eagle-Eye’s skill with the bow, especially when the archer knocked several arrows at once and shot a perfect smiley-face in the target. But they paid little attention to Mind Over Matter, an act in which the hairy,
overmuscled
strongman bent metal bars of varying thickness, and the caftan-clad Mentalist “unbent” them with his mind. Bobby tried to stay awake while he waited for Romulus to take the stage.

When the emcee welcomed the Indestructible Man, Bobby felt tiny pinpricks over his body. The applause from the jammed-in spectators was monstrous. When Romulus emerged from behind the curtain, Bobby felt the terrible grinding pain radiate from his mangled ankles up to his hips.

Bobby found Romulus’ act unremarkable. First he stood against a canvas target, blindfolded and holding a cigarette, while Eagle-Eye knocked three arrows to his bow, aiming for Romulus’ heart; all three bounced off him harmlessly, clattering on the varnished wood. Romulus dropped the cigarette and held his chest, gasping and staggering forward one painful step at a time. But the audience had caught on, and after his first step most were laughing. During the first light wave of applause Bobby noticed Brooks clapping too, and elbowed him in the ribs.

Next, the crew wheeled a gallows onto the stage. Romulus stood on the platform, a noose around his neck, reading from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as the floor fell out from under him. Though his throat was constricted and he could barely get the words out, Romulus kept reading as he swung. The audience loved it; Bobby thought it was pretentious.

After the stagehands cut Romulus down, they bound him to a tall wooden post, a pile of kindling at his feet. “Don’t try this at home, folks,” he said as they lit the fire. He thrashed about for a few minutes as the flames engulfed him, a faint shadow in the raging fire, then his head dropped and he hung limply from the post. A man next to Bobby stood up, his eyes wide, one hand over his mouth. Feigning panic, the stagehands put out the blaze with fire extinguishers and rushed to pull him down. His clothes were charred and peeling away in places, his skin covered with soot and ash. They lay him on the stage, where he sat up like a zombie. Again the crowd cheered. Idiots, all of them, Bobby thought—clapping and hollering when Romulus was never in any real danger.

After he wiped the soot from his face and hands with a wet towel and slipped a terry robe over his blackened clothes, Romulus thanked the audience for coming out. Suddenly a creaking sound came from the rafters, and Romulus slowly looked up in dread. “Oh no—not again,” he said, voice quivering. The grand piano seemed to fall in slow motion, driving his head down between his shoulder blades, his ribs into his hips. The piano exploded into slivers, shards of varnished wood and broken hammers littering the stage, the wires inside snapping and ringing like gongs. The violence of the impact shocked even Bobby. The audience was still as the sawdust settled onto the stage and the first few rows. Several people curled into fetal positions in their seats, sure he had gone too far this time. An old lady in the front row shouted, “Somebody help him!”

“Christ,” Bobby said under his breath as he waited for Romulus to dig himself out.

Sure enough, once the whole auditorium was in a panic, a hand emerged from the rubble. His right arm thrust out, then his left, and finally he stood up, waist-high in splinters, a coat of sawdust clinging to his face, hair, and eyebrows. Bobby plugged his ears to block out the wild applause.

And then the show was over, and Bobby felt a shiver rack his body. He wheeled himself little by little toward the stage. Romulus took a long dusty bow, slivers falling out of his hair, and before Brooks could pull him back Bobby was surrounded by people jumping out of their seats and cheering. The Human Marvels took the stage, joined hands and took a group bow. Bobby rolled closer, stopping about twenty feet from the stage. He noticed Jackson Wayne a few rows up, standing but not applauding; the Colonel glanced at him and his lungs froze.

Romulus waved to someone backstage, and a tall, willowy young woman with long strawberry-blonde hair reluctantly stepped out. She held his hand, and the furry strongman’s, and faced the crowd. Romulus leaned over and kissed her cheek, which drew a long “
awww
” from the crowd. Bobby squinted hard, hoping to find some obvious difference in the young woman’s face, her hair, the way she carried herself, but his last doubts had vanished. He was thirteen again, and loved her, wanting only to see her smile and wave at him from the stage. He folded his hands in his lap, spectators swarming around him, prepared to sit still until they tipped him over and trampled him.

Brooks pushed his way through the crowd, exchanging insults with a few people, and grabbed Bobby’s wheelchair handles. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he said, and tried to push Bobby toward the double doors.

“No,” Bobby said, clinging to a support beam. “Just leave me alone.”

Brooks shrugged and let go. “Suit yourself. I’m
goin
’ outside for a smoke. Just don’t take too long; I’m on breakfast duty tomorrow.”

Bobby remained until the auditorium was almost empty, his face in his hands, feeling as though an icicle had been plunged into his chest. When he could breathe again he started up the aisle, hoping Brooks had not left without him. As he neared the exit he was startled by light, quick footsteps on the stage behind him.

“Excuse me?” It was a young woman’s voice.

Bobby stopped a few feet short of the doors. “Yeah?” He did not turn around.

“Bobby? Bobby Mercer?”

“Uh-huh.” He craned his neck slightly. Behind him, halfway between the stage and the exit, was Abigail Wheat. She had bound her long red-gold hair in a ponytail, and she smiled when she saw his face.

“Do you remember me? Rock Valley Junior High? It’s me, Abigail Wheat. Well,
Wayne
now.”

He turned to face her, his hands trembling on the wheels. “I remember you.”

She cupped her hands together and smiled. “I thought I recognized you. I’d heard you still lived in Rock Valley. It’s been—what? Eight, nine years?”

“Ten.”

“Wow. That long. God. I always wondered what happened to you after….” Her gaze shifted to his wheelchair, then the floor. “Well, after.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s good to see you again. How have you been?”

His terror began to subside, and he started to relax. “Okay, I guess.”

“That’s great,” Abigail said. “Let me get Romulus. It’d mean a lot to him that you came. Can you stick around a minute?”

Bobby felt an icy lump in the base of his throat. He wanted to get up and run, but his traitorous body would not permit it. “No,” he said. “I have to go.” He turned quickly and rolled to the exit. Once he reached the sidewalk he spun his wheels as hard as he could. Brooks trotted after him, but years of chain-smoking had dulled his wind and Bobby easily outdistanced him, rolling out of sight until he was far from the theater.

He sulked in the shadow of a darkened bakery until his hands stopped trembling. In the parking garage Brooks was leaning against his back fender, finishing a cigarette. “Sorry, man,” he said, and helped Bobby up the ramp.

After Brooks dropped him off, he took the phone off the hook on the slim chance Romulus and Abigail cared enough to look him up. He spent the rest of the night in his dirty bathroom, wheelchair pushed up against the cracked lime-green plaster, striking his forehead against the wall until it went numb. He shouldn’t have gone; he knew he would see her there. Romulus Wayne could not have hurt him more had he thrown him from his chair and twisted his legs like putty. He wanted to hurt Romulus back, badly, to hurl a grenade between his legs and blow him through the back wall of the auditorium. But it wouldn’t be enough; he would only pull himself from the rubble and take a bow, the crowd cheering as if it was part of the act. It was hopeless. Bobby leaned back in his wheelchair, prepared to spend the rest of the night staring up at the lighting fixture. But he leaned too far and tipped over, the back of his head striking the scuffed tile.

Bobby had never experienced an epiphany, but he recognized one when it came. His cheek pressed to the linoleum, he suddenly understood how all those people could sit through the show when Romulus was never in any danger—they thought it was an elaborate illusion. It was the drama; they didn’t know the arrows could never pierce him, that he could step out of the fire without a blister, that the piano would disintegrate around him without puncturing his skin. They didn’t know it was
real
. But if they found out, they would lose interest and stop filling the auditoriums and theaters.

After the vision ceased, Bobby stayed on the cold tile until dawn, considering his discovery. In the morning he struggled to pull himself back into his chair; then, sweaty and tired, he called Brooks to help him figure out how to do it.

5

Brooks was not surprised
at the request. “I know where you’re coming from,” he said. “Sometimes a guy’s
gotta
do things so he can sleep at night. But you’d better be sure about this. We
ain’t
playing around.”

“I can’t stand it anymore,” Bobby said. “I want to
hurt
him.”

Bobby called in sick at the auto parts store, and half an hour later joined Brooks at Roscoe’s, where he bought pitcher after pitcher of the German stuff, Brooks’ fee for helping him.

“As I see it, it isn’t attempted murder if you know you can’t hurt him. Public discharge of a firearm, maybe assault with a deadly weapon—you’re looking at a few months, maybe a year if you get the wrong judge.”

“What do I do?”

“You’ll want something public. Not at a show—people will think it’s staged. It has to be in a mall, a movie theater, anywhere there’s a lot of people.”

Bobby poured him a refill. “Where, then?”

Brooks downed half his beer in one gulp, fingered his stubbly chin, and looked off into nowhere. Bobby dared not interrupt; Brooks had bombed his high school principal’s car and (thus far) gotten away with it, so if he was thinking this long his solution was bound to be good. His attention drifted back to Bobby; his thin lips curled inward, eyes narrowed to squinty slits. “Has he got family?”

Bobby was intrigued. “His dad still lives here. So do her folks.”

“Hmmm.” Brooks scraped his knuckles against his stubble. “They still talk to each other?”

“His dad was at the show last night.”

“Good,” Brooks said.

“I can’t hold his family hostage. His old man’s a monster.”

Brooks shook his head. “Think, kid. Thanksgiving’s coming in another month or so. They’ll probably go home, at least meet up somewhere. Hell, they might even make a big deal of it in town—a big homecoming or something. If you’re lucky you can nail him right in front of the hometown crowd. The
story’ll
get around, believe me.”

“And if he doesn’t come home?”

“Then you waste a couple of days and try again at Christmas. Look, I told you what to do. It’s easy. All you have to do is go to the house and wait for him to show.”

Bobby nodded grimly. Brooks’ plan made perfect sense. “You planning to help me?”

“Sure,” Brooks said, sucking down the foam from the bottom of the pitcher. “Got nothing else to do.”

In the weeks before Thanksgiving
Bobby scoured the television and newspapers for news of Romulus Wayne. With revenge so close, he forgave himself the obsession, failing to return Cindy’s calls for days at a time and phoning his mother to let her know he would not be home for the holiday. Something had come up at the shop, he said, and he couldn’t get out of it no matter how much he begged. He would try to stop by later, if he could.