Hero

by Perry Moore

  What bothered me the most, though, was the certified overnight delivery envelope that I found wedged in the screen door. The return address said it was from the League's human resources department. My heart sank. I tucked it under my arm, unopened, and ran to the bus.

  I arrived shortly before the 10:15 tour, and the girl in the ticket booth sneezed on my tickets as she handed them to me. I wasn't thinking when I bought two tickets. Invisible people usually get in for free.

  I sat on a bench and looked for a sign of Mom, but I didn't notice anything. Two teenage girls sat down beside me and spilled a bag of M&M's out into their laps and began separating them by color while they gossiped.

  I looked at the envelope in my hands, rubbed my fingers around the sharp corners, and wished it would just disappear. But I'd decided I was tired of running away from things, so I bit down and tore open the pouch with my teeth.

  One of the girls did a double take when she noticed me.

  "Hey," she said. "Aren't you—"

  Then she stopped like she'd lost her train of thought, and popped a green M&M in her mouth as if it would help jog her memory.

  God, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I tried to pull my cap even lower, but it couldn't swallow my face. Where was Mom?

  Inside the pouch was a notarized letter from the League's human resources director, with their legal counsel copied at the bottom of the page. The letter was short but not sweet. It was notice of my termination from the League's probationary team. I folded it carefully, slipped it into my back pocket, and tried not to think about it.

  "Aren't you in my English class?" the girl said through a mouthful of M&M's, chocolate and colorful candy bits stuck between her teeth.

  "No," I said.

  I got up and asked the girl at the ticket counter when the tour was supposed to begin. She pointed to a group that had already started toward the entrance of the site and told me I'd been waiting with the wrong group. I rushed over and positioned myself on the outskirts of the group.

  "Excuse me? You, in the back, do you have a ticket?" the tour guide asked.

  I pulled both tickets out of my pocket and held them in the air for her to see.

  "Marvelous," she said. "Now, if you'll follow me. Please remember, there's no smoking, chewing gum, or food or beverages of any kind allowed. You'll notice a number of people here paying respects, so please keep your voices down and your cell phones off, thank you."

  She smiled tightly through bleached teeth. "This is, after all, a shrine to the dead."

  We passed by three students who were meditating by the entrance. They'd pasted together a banner that read NEVER FORGET out of death certificates and held it spread out between them. I was the last to go inside, and I was careful not to let my foot catch on one of their candles as I stepped past them.

  "Built in the early seventies," the tour guide began, "the Wilson Tower became the tallest building in the world, and stood as a monument to technological advancement and economic prosperity."

  I was bored already. I'd come here on a field trip once when I was in the fourth grade. After the rambunctious hour-long bus ride into the city, our class quickly discovered this tour was anything but fun. I remember it even made Angel Stanton, the toughest girl in our class, cry because she'd lost her aunt in the tragedy. Before the trip, I'd been afraid to show my dad the permission slip because of where we were going, so I forged it myself. I wished I'd stayed home from school.

  We entered the Corridor of Names, a well-intentioned but tacky holographic memorial that listed the names of all the innocent people who'd perished that day. I stood there and felt conspicuously lit up, the glow of the names reflected off my face.

  "We lost approximately nineteen thousand citizens that day, perhaps more." The tour guide gestured to the lists upon lists with a flick of her wrist. "It was impossible to tell, given the degree of devastation."

  "What'd I miss?" my mother whispered in my ear.

  "Where have you been?"

  A family of tourists with matching oversize T-shirts and fanny packs that read THE EVIL SHALL BE PUNISHED turned around and glared at me. The mother of the group held her finger to her lips and hissed, "SHHHH!"

  The tour guide continued walking, and I hung a few lengths back with Mom so we could talk.

  "Look at this place," Mom said. "They keep it like a tomb. No air."

  Well, I thought, a whole load of people tragically died here. At least it wasn't a McDonald's or a Wal-Mart. Yet. I heard the tour guide's voice echo down the tunnel, and both Mom and I stopped on her words: "Major Might."

  "Sounds like the tour is just about to get interesting," Mom said. I saw the strike of a match and then I smelled cigarette smoke.

  "You're not supposed to smoke in here," I reminded her.

  "Who's going to see?"

  "They'll smell it and think it's me."

  I saw her take a sip of something out of a flask. What was she drinking? Suddenly it really annoyed me that she wasn't visible.

  "Mom, why won't you let me see you?"

  I heard her take another swallow. "It's not that simple."

  "Sure it is, just make yourself visible."

  I heard another gulp. That flask must have been endless. Maybe there were two.

  "I can't," she snapped at me. Then she changed her tone back to the one I remembered. "Let's catch up with the tour, I want to show you something."

  She took hold of my hand and led me forward. "Besides, we don't want to miss the part where they start trashing your father."

  We caught up with the tour a couple of flights up in the memorial tower, built after the tragedy in a space directly across from the site, so you could still see the crack in the earth where the top half of the Wilson Tower had landed.

  "As a result of Major Might's failure," the tour guide said, "the government drafted the ban on non-superpowered champions, which outlawed so-called 'heroic' acts by people like Major Might, who lacked the necessary powers. If it hadn't been for the major's hubris that day, some argue we could have averted all casualties entirely. Can anyone tell me in which branch of the U.S. military Major Might earned the rank of major?"

  Silence from the audience.

  I wanted to raise my hand. Dad was in the army, and he won a Bronze Star for Valor the night his camp in Vietnam was overrun, and he was only my age at the time.

  Some goober with a trucker's hat affixed just so over his two hundred dollar haircut raised his hand and took a stab. "Coast Guard?"

  What an idiot.

  "No," the tour guide responded slowly. She relished the chance to play teacher.

  The youngest kid from the fanny-pack family stuck her plump ham hock high into the air.

  "The Boy Scouts!"

  Her family snickered at such a cute response. I didn't think she meant it to be cute. I think she was just plain dumb.

  I felt Mom let go of my hand, and someone smacked the top of the chubby little girl's head.

  "Ow!" She turned around and scowled at her brother. "Mom, he hit me!"

  "No, I didn't," her brother squealed.

  Their mother admonished the brother despite his declarations of innocence. When he wouldn't shut up about it, she finally had to slip him a Twinkie while the tour guide wasn't looking.

  "No, not the Boy Scouts, silly," the tour guide said. "You may find it interesting to know that his wasn't a military rank at all; his rank was self-appointed." She raised her eyebrows and dragged out those last two words, as if to say, Yep, you heard it here first.

  "That's not true," I said. What about the war? What about the Bronze Star? "He was in Vietnam."

  Mom squeezed my hand. The crowd whipped around and stared at me like I was a lunatic.

  The tour guide sneered; she wasn't used to being challenged. "Actually, although he did serve a tour of duty in the army," she continued, "he was only a sergeant. Major Might was a moniker he gave himself before he'd ever joined the armed forces." She gave me a look of false s
ympathy, like it was a nice but pathetic attempt to correct her.

  Well, no shit, he made it up—it was just a name. That's what people did when they became superheroes. They gave themselves catchy names bigger than life, to intimidate criminals into thinking twice before they robbed that liquor store or snatched a purse. What about Captain Victory? He'd been in the navy in World War II, but he was never a captain. Was this woman also going to attack Captain Kangaroo? What about Cap'n Crunch?

  "Some people find it a little offensive," she said in a loud whisper in my direction to rub salt in the wound. "It's not exactly the best way to honor those in the military who put their lives on the line every day so that we may enjoy freedom."

  Who actually talks like that? Yet most people in the crowd nodded along with her and agreed. The fanny-pack father looked at me and shook his head, his disapproval of Dad aimed clearly at me. I wonder what they would have done if they'd recognized me from the news, if they'd known I was his son. Burned me at the stake and sung the National Anthem?

  Mom pulled me back as they started up the next flight of stairs.

  "Let it go," she said in a reassuring tone. "We have bigger fish to fry."

  I had to listen to that tour guide drone on for another two hours as we wound our way up the tower, before my mother finally pulled me aside and told me to crouch down and pretend like I was tying my shoe.

  "Why should I do that?" I whispered.

  "So the guide won't see you, and if anyone turns around, they won't get suspicious."

  "Suspicious of what?"

  She knocked me over and rolled me through a door into the emergency stairwell, which ran hidden, parallel to the main staircase.

  "Let's go," she said, and I felt her grab my hand.

  We climbed down what must have been at least twenty flights, then down again, into the catacombs below the memorial. I couldn't see anything, but Mom seemed to know the way. For a time, Mom's hand separated from mine, so I followed the sound of her voice in the darkness.

  "It wasn't his fault, you know," she said. "The way he chose to handle it, that was his fault. But the event itself, he did the best he could with an awful situation. History forgets that part. Watch your step."

  We stepped up and into a new corridor.

  "You can't believe everything everyone tells you. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut. Do you honestly think your father would have needlessly risked all those lives just because he thought he was powerful enough to defeat that creature on his own?"

  Of course I didn't think that. I always believed the best of Dad. It was the rest of the world who couldn't see him the way I did.

  "You want a bottled water? You look thirsty." Mom handed me a plastic bottle of water. I felt for the cap, twisted it off, and took a gulp; the cool liquid felt good as it sloshed down my throat.

  "The two things I've learned to hate most after all the years on this job are magic and outer space. Never did understand a damn thing about either of them. That goes triple for time travel."

  We continued on through the corridor. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it was getting lighter.

  "Your father, though, nothing ever intimidated him. He was on the scene before anyone else in the League had a chance to respond. Even before Justice."

  "Where were you?" I asked.

  Mom stumbled slightly over a step, and I saw her catch her flask.

  "Justice had me on assignment." Then she added softly, "Justice had me on a lot of assignments."

  "Meaning what?" I wanted to know.

  "That," she said in between drags, "is a story for another time."

  I tripped over the same step that made her stumble and stubbed my toe. I gritted my teeth and tried not to care.

  "This is it," Mom said, and flung open a door. "Cover your eyes."

  My eyes immediately hurt. I squinted, but still it was impossibly bright. Shafts of light shot up through the cracks between the floorboards and pierced the darkness all around us.

  "What is it?"

  A crowbar floated over to the corner, and I saw that we were in what looked like the biggest basement I'd ever seen. It went on so far in one direction that I couldn't even see where it ended.

  "This was the concourse level of the tower," Mom sighed. The crowbar dug into one of the floorboards and pried it up. Brilliant light burst forth into the room, and I shielded my eyes. "This is what's left of that creature after it tried to go supernova. Crystal."

  It was beautiful. I couldn't understand why anyone would cover it up, keep it hidden underground.

  "Here, give me a hand while I tell you a story." The crowbar presented itself to me, and I grabbed it. I looked down at the floor for a good spot to pry open.

  "Go ahead. Don't be gentle." I felt Mom's hands grasp mine, and she plunged the crowbar into the floor and showed me how to give it a good yank. The boards were surprisingly ramshackle and brittle, not as strong as they looked, like someone had been more concerned with getting it covered up fast than covered up well.

  Another crowbar appeared, and Mom began working beside me.

  "The first time I met your father I was in complete awe. I didn't even think I could bring myself to say hello. All I could think of was that he was so much more handsome in person than he was in the newspapers.

  "After a few months on the probationary squad, one day I gathered up the nerve to ask him to help me with my hand-to-hand combat training. No, actually, I just worked up the nerve to say yes when he offered to teach me. I'd had my ass handed to me when I'd tried to stop an attempted break-in at Fort Knox by some two-bit hood that wore a glorified doggie costume and went by the name Anubis the Jackal. Unfortunately for me, his bark wasn't worse than his bite. Your father showed up with the rest of the League before the guy could do any permanent damage to me, but I was pretty beat up. I'll never forget the drubbing your father gave that man. Captain Victory had to pull him off the mongrel.

  "I spent a week in the hospital, and your father came to visit me every day and read me the minutes from the League meetings I'd missed. He offered to teach me to defend myself better, and I knew I needed the help if I wanted to make the big time. He'd been generous the same way with Right Wing when Right Wing was his sidekick, always showing him ways to make himself better, not to rely solely on his powers. Honestly, I don't know where your father found the time, but he always made a point to be there for anyone who needed him.

  "So he made time for me, a second-stringer. We began a daily routine, staying late after League meetings every night when he'd teach me how to work the punching bag."

  I thought about Goran. I'd never had much of a right hook until he showed me how to push off with my back foot.

  "I started to get pretty good. In a few weeks, I could beat the stuffing out of that bag. It did not go unnoticed that I was better in my fights with supervillains, too. I moved up the ranks, and your father kept practicing with me after the rest of the Leaguers had gone home. One night, later than usual, he told me it was time to learn to kickbox. He said I had great power in my legs and could do more damage with a kick than with a punch, and he didn't want to see me ending up on the wrong side of a fight with someone like Anubis ever again. At first I thought this was criticism of my punching skills from the master, but it was really something else. I figured out later that your father lived in mortal fear that something bad would happen to me. So kickboxing was the next answer to the question of my safety in the field.

  "I didn't take to it at first. In fact, the first few times I tried to kick the bag, I was so shy that I stayed invisible. I didn't want to look stupid in front of him, especially with my legs splayed out in different directions. You have to understand, Thorn, I'd had a deep crush on this man for a very long time."

  I understood what it was like to have those feelings for someone. If she'd stuck around the past few years, maybe she would have known just how much I understood.

  "Your father asked me, very politely, to make myse
lf visible so he could see me to make sure I was doing it right. I became so self-conscious with him watching me that when I tried the kick, visible, I completely missed the bag. I lost my balance, and instead of connecting with the bag, I kicked him in the gut, knocked him to the ground, and fell over on top of him.

  "I was so embarrassed I thought I'd die. But he didn't laugh at me. He was careful with my feelings back then, really kind. I was so mortified that instead of getting up off of him, I just lay there frozen. My hands were still resting on his chest, and I must have had this look on my face like a little girl who'd been caught with a broken cookie jar she'd knocked off the counter. He gently placed his hands around my wrists—your father had such strong, smooth hands—and asked me if I needed help getting up. I couldn't move, I was utterly enthralled. When it became clear that I didn't have the wherewithal to pull away from him, he leaned up, his face inches away from mine. And then he kissed me."

  I found myself wishing that I'd asked Goran to show me how to kickbox back when we still worked out together. I wondered if I'd ever have the chance to see him again.

  "Are you listening, Thorn?"

  "Yes." I stopped thinking about Goran and pulled up another board.

  "So our late-night workouts turned into dates. We'd work out, clean up, then go out to a midnight movie or dinner at some quiet cafe, where no one would see us. We kept our relationship a secret from the rest of the team for as long as we could. This was my request, not his. No one would take me seriously as a hero, I thought, if they knew what was really going on. Plus, I didn't want people to think I was trying to sleep my way to a top spot on the League. Do you remember Velvet Vixen? No, of course you don't, you're too young. Well, she was a real slut, and I didn't want anyone thinking I was easy like her.

  "And we were still taking the training very seriously. The more your father grew to care for me, the more he cranked up our workout sessions. We did a pretty good job keeping our relationship under wraps, but it became a problem sometimes during fights. He literally wouldn't let me out of his sight, he was so protective of me. God knows how he could see me, but somehow he always knew where I was. Some of the Leaguers began to notice that he was often out of position during combat. Right Wing especially: he even brought it up in a meeting.