Superman's Cape (25 page)

When George was sated, he clutched what he didn’t finish and lifted off the ground throwing another rush of winged air that pushed against Kyle’s face. Kyle closed his eye as the air pressed over him and decided to keep it closed and just listen to the wings of his hawk friend throwing more feathered air to the ground. The sound of the wings faded and for a while Kyle let an unfamiliar serenity rest in him.

More rain drops fell around him and some fell onto his fevered skin. Kyle’s eye remained closed and his breathing deepened and then shallowed. And then his breaths stretched further and further apart. He was dying.

Splintered wood of the door in Jacob’s mind dripped with his brain matter and blood. The person behind it, the one who’d begged to be heard, who screamed to come out and thumped and thumped until blood spilled from Jacob’s right eye, was now standing in full view. Jacob stood on the other side of the door just as he had so many times before. Except he wasn’t standing there searching for his gift. He wasn’t searching for his sensitivity. His gift, his insight, all of it left him as the tumor in his brain grew until the knocking and thumping from the room was loud enough to spill his blood.

Standing across from the door, Jacob saw the face of a man he only recognized from a distant memory. The man didn’t see Jacob, or perhaps he chose not to see him. Instead the man pushed his face through the splintered cracks of wood and yelled up and down the long corridors. He screamed for Sara and for Jonnie and Kyle.

Jacob recognized the man; it was Chris – Sara’s husband. And then confusion, a chaotic twist that flipped him end over end. He was Chris. That is, Chris was in his mind and his mind was his. Jacob was lying on his back, and pushing down the black and white tiles of the Dairy Queen floor. His body refused to work. It ceased all sensation from where the bullet entered his belly.
I’m paralyzed,
he thought and saw from the corner of his eye Chris’s hand reach up and touch a young boy’s face.
That’s Kyle,
he thought and then Jacob heard Chris’s voice speaking through his mouth – he was telling the boys he loved them. Blood flooded the back of his throat and crept into his mouth until it spread across his teeth and gums and bubbled over his lips.

Chris screamed louder down the corridor and commanded Jacob’s body to get up from the trailer floor. “Sit up,” he demanded, as his legs and arms began to move. He shouted about the time that remained and how no more of it could be wasted. No more of it could be spilled, like the blood coming from his eye. He shouted that he was going to stay for just a little while. He shouted about how so much had to be done, oh so much, and time was everything.

Jacob stirred and groaned and tried to open his eyes. But his eyes, or Chris’s eyes, were already open and Jonnie had Superman’s cape which was a fresh blue, not the cleanest blue, but not the blue he saw in the trailer with the patches of aged blood, Chris’ blood. Jonnie knelt to his side and told him that he’d fix the bullet. He told him that Superman’s Cape would fix it as he covered the bullet hole with blue and wiped the corner of his mouth. Jacob felt the blood spill around him and he choked on it as more of it filled his mouth. The paralysis from his middle was creeping up past the bullet hole. It was invading his chest as his lungs tightened and a feeling of drowning took over. He was fading. He was dying. And the more blood that spilled out of him the more it cloaked the faces of Jonnie and Kyle and the strangers around him in a veil of white. It thinned their features, every one of them, and gave them a distant look. The veil of white was over his eyes, erasing everything. As most of the DQ began to disappear from in front of him, Jacob realized this was Chris’s death. The boys, the strange faces, even the pain was leaving him –
a mercy,
he thought as the exhaustion of trying to breathe and to move and to live left him alone.

When Jacob started to understand the juxtaposition he and Chris were in, he knew why his gift had left. It was gone. That is, in a sense that he knew or understood. But it wasn’t gone completely, that much was true; not forever.
Recycled
, he thought and then thought
borrowed
seemed more fitting. Just as Jacob was a part of Chris’ death, Chris was now a part of his life.
Temporarily,
he hoped. Chris brought his hands up and began pulling the splintered wood from the door frame that was covered in brain matter and blood. Jacob watched while Chris removed one large piece at a time. The thumping in his head continued with each piece of the door being torn and discarded.

More blood welled up in his eyes and spilled to his cheeks. Jacob continued to stand in front of the door until Chris could take a step into the corridor. A step later and he was standing toe to toe with him. It was only now that Chris saw Jacob or saw past him to what was outside. Chris was looking to Sara and to Jonnie by her side. Chris stepped again and was now behind Jacob. As Jacob turned around, he saw the door. It was whole again. No brain matter. No blood. The door was complete and closed as though it had never been touched. It was latched shut. It was locked and Jacob was standing on the wrong side of it. He was inside of the room. Behind the door. And it was his turn to knock on the wood and beg and plead to be let out.

Chris sat up on the floor of the trailer, and threw his arm around his middle. He felt his skin through his shirt and searched for the bullet hole and the blood. When a hand tugged and pulled at the fabric in front of him, he picked up the stranger’s fingers and brought it in front of his face. He turned the hand over and back and then closed and opened the fingers. He dropped the stranger’s hand when a gross weakness told him to. He wanted to lie back down and close his eyes. But at the same time, he was compelled to move on. An instruction was burned into him that could not be changed. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The blood he expected to taste in his mouth was gone. The smell of gun powder was gone. The congestion of collapsed lungs was not there. A smile peeked from his pressed lips. And while he wouldn’t have thought he was the healthiest of people, he did know the living from the dead and living was a better place to be.

When he took another breath and captured all the smells around him he stopped. He inhaled again and searched for what was familiar to him. Chris opened his eyes and drank in every bit of the room. He didn’t recognize the stacks of cardboard boxes or the paneled walls. He didn’t recognize the couch he was leaning against, or the small ceiling fan that rocked a slow motion ballad of back and forth while its blades whispered air onto his skin. The fan, the air, it was all forgotten sensations as foreign to him as the room he found himself in.

Chris turned to see Sara. Only she was older. Not aged older, but tired and sad and he thought she looked afraid of him. The liveliness and glow that was hers had been replaced. Now he saw skin that was flat. Lines that were teasing the corners of her green eyes and drawing down on her lips. But it was Sara. His Sara. When he looked into her eyes, Chris spoke volumes without a single word. And just as he was about to open his mouth and say her name, Jonnie ran from behind his mother. He ran with his Superman’s Cape knotted around his neck in a mesh of his fingers.

“Daddy!” he yelled and lifted his fingers to release the Superman’s Cape before falling into Chris’s arms.

Chris took it all in. He pulled the arms he didn’t recognize around his son and welcomed everything he could feel. He pulled his son into him and let the boy’s hair fall against his chin and nose. Chris breathed his son in. He kissed and hugged him with his eyes open out of fear of missing a second of any of it.

“Hi Jonnie,” Chris said and kissed his boy on the cheek before looking back up to Sara.

Sara stood there. Her mouth stayed open and her face frozen. Her eyes stayed fixed and then moved as she studied what was happening in front of her. Lifting her hand to her mouth she nodded and mouthed the words
No
before closing her eyes to leave.

Before she could get up Chris reached out and found her hand. He closed his fingers on hers and rolled the wedding band he’d put there years earlier. He felt a selfish relief when he found the wedding ring between his fingers. Sara turned back pulling her arm towards her chest.

“Chris?”

Chris searched the unfamiliar room and saw the stack of cardboard boxes again. This time he saw the one that was open. The one with the letters ‘LUL-LUF’ scribbled in black marker along the sides and smiled returning his eyes to Sara’s own.

“Love you Lots,” he breathed and reached for her hand again as she started to cry.

“Love you Forever,” Sara told him and closed her fingers on his.

Jill could hear the storm over the ever present noise in the WJL-TV cab. The rains beat against the windshield in heavy sheets leaving pock-marks on the glass that faded to nothing or lost their innocence to the windshield wipers.

It was warm when they left the station, so Jill never bothered to grab a jacket. The excitement of a field report was all she could think of as she rushed to get in the news van. That was hours ago. It was earlier in the day. And now it was late and the sky was a dark gray. The kind of gray you knew to be afraid of as a child. The kind that threatened bad storms with loud thunder and danger.

Jill tried massaging her arms. She tried kneading her bare skin beneath her palms and fingers. She was willing to try anything in an effort to settle the rash of gooseflesh that flared when the stormy air touched her skin. Casting her eyes down, she looked at her front and then looked over to Steve. She was distracted. She was embarrassed. And she wanted to see where Steve might be looking. The chill that caused the gooseflesh on her arms had also tipped her nipples. They poked from beneath her blouse and she was certain he could see them. She wasn’t convinced the padded bra she wore concealed enough. She also wasn’t sure if the lighter color might help hide what in her mind looked like torpedo boobs. But Steve didn’t notice. He didn’t even turn an eye to her. Relieved, she saw that Steve was locked on the van’s steering wheel with eyes glued to the road in front of them.

She rubbed her arms again before turning back to the windshield. More of the raindrop pock-marks appeared with an audible tick sound and then scurried away. Jill pulled the corner of her mouth up in a shy smile thinking of the words, Torpedo Boobs. Boobie pops were fine, and even funny, in the company of your girlfriends. Jill thought it was best left that way. But there could always be exceptions. And in this case it could be a boy, if the boy who stole a peek was a man. A man she might want to entice into stealing a peek. Jill smiled again and then reached for Jacob’s station jacket after the bundle rolled out from beneath her seat. She unbundled the WJL-TV jacket and smelled Jacob in the fleece lining. Her knee protested to the sudden move, but she didn’t care. The pain was more reasonable. She turned to her side and dropped her arms in and through the jacket. She covered her bare skin and fell back into her seat. There, she imagined being wrapped in a warm blanket, her feet up, and the sound of nothing to interrupt her while comfort settled in. Jill embraced and hugged the jacket once more before letting go and opening her eyes back to the reality of the van’s cab.

The wind pushed against the van and the rain beat a heavy wave onto the windshield. Hurricane Dani wasn’t far enough up the coast to consider it a landfall moment, but Jill considered what Andy told her during her last call to him. He told her the winds and rains were spawning smaller storm squalls. And that the small stuff was doing enough damage to keep most of the news room busy. He told her about the tornadoes that were born off of the hurricane’s edges. Andy told her to play it safe. Go back for Jacob, but play it safe. He finished the call by warning that if the storm crept up alongside of them, then it was time to pull over somewhere and let it pass;
don’t race the storm,
he told her,
don’t race against what you can’t beat
.

Steve mumbled something, he started and then stopped. Jill thought he’d been mumbling for a while. His cockiness was gone. His crassness to all things, from driving the van to the way he looked at her, changed. As the rains and winds grew wilder, so did Steve. His eyes hinted a frantic look. She thought he stood at the edge of hysteria, dipping his toe in just enough to test the waters before taking the plunge.

Jill grew afraid. She needed Steve to keep it together. She knew she couldn’t drive, not in this stuff anyway. She needed him to put away his panicky mumbling and get them where they were going. Jill closed her arms across her chest and realized she was a little disappointed, maybe even a little mad.
Grow a pair
her Dad used to say to her brothers,
grow a pair and get on with it,
he’d said more than once. Steve needed to grow a pair. She needed him to buck up and get them back to the Connely’s place. For all they knew, Jacob might be dying.

The decision to leave Jacob bothered her. At the time it seemed the right thing to do. At the time it seemed the only thing they should do. Sara Connely offered her door. She offered, and without a second thought they helped Jacob up the steps and into the trailer. But now, as they drove back, Jill didn’t understand why they just left him there. If anything, they should have put him in the back of the van and started their trek back to the station or to a hospital.

“What were we thinking?” she asked, loud enough to distract Steve from his frantic mumbles.

“What … wha-what, what’s that?”

Jill frowned in his direction and said, “Didn’t say anything. I’m just thinking aloud.”

“Ahhh. Ok then. We’ll be there soon, we’re only half a mile or so from the road leading back to the trailer off Route 17 -- man, the weather really picked up – didn’t it?” he yelled, though Jill still had trouble making out the words over the increasing noise of the storm.