Hostile Takeover

by McLean, Patrick E.

  But all Billy could think of was sweet, windswept chrome. He nodded to Wilkins and set his hand to the hay.

  "You can use that pulley if'n you can work it without hanging ye'self."

  "I'll be jest fine, Mr. Wilkins."

  But halfway through the rick, Billy began to have his doubts. The hay wasn't much good. It wasn't too wet. It was too dry. Which accounted for the stringy animals penned up in the barn. Poor creatures, half-starved by a man who was too much of a skinflint to buy good food.

  It hurt Billy's heart when the cow looked at him with her infinitely soft eyes. Those eyes could absorb the suffering of the world, thought Billy. Billy didn't have a kind thought for Wilkins’ goat. That old goat looked too much like its owner. It was probably his son before the mean ol' man locked him in the barn.

  Maybe it was all a kind of sad circle, thought Billy. Bad hay for the cow. Sour milk for the farmer. Sour disposition for the rest of the world. Rings of sour spreading out from that mean, mean old man. Out and out and out. All the evils in the world coming right from the evil hay he was loading into the barn.

  To be sure, those 70 lbs. bales were too heavy for a 12-year-old boy. Even though Billy was strong for his age, and used to hard labor, the work was crushing. When he stopped for water, old man Willis yelled at him from the top window of the farmhouse,

  "Ain't payin for no breaks! You think I'm made of money, boy?"

  Made of bitter straw and sour milk. Billy dunked his head in the trough and considered his problem.

  There was still a lot of hay left on the rick. And the day wasn't getting any longer. He tested his right hand. Even through the glove it felt like the wire had cut through his palm. And every time he clenched it he could feel the bones grind together. Otherwise, he wasn't so awfully tired.

  Billy knew his system wasn't very good. It was a really a two man job, but to make the best of it, he had taken the hayloft ladder and propped it up against the front of the barn. It was just tall enough so he could manhandle a bale of hay up to the loft with one hand and slide it in. Then back for another bale. When the bales crowded the entrance, he would stack them proper. It worked, but it was slow.

  A cool breeze picked up from the south as if trying to seduce him into inaction. Why not, just set a while in the cool? Maybe have a glass of lemonade. But that same breeze meant that the storm was coming. He'd hate to wait another week for the bike. And if he didn't get it soon, he might be shut out by the snows. The almanac calling for a hard winter and an early one at that.

  Then Billy had an idea. For a strong man, it would have only been a half-bad idea. But for a boy of 120 pounds, faced with 70 pound bales of hay it was ridiculous—Billy decided he would throw the bales into the loft.

  But Billy didn't know he couldn't do it. After all, nothing great is accomplished by those who acknowledge limits. So he picked up a bale and gave it a heave. It went up like a shot, displacing the ladder and almost knocking a hole in the side of the barn.

  Billy looked around to see if anyone else had seen what had just happened. But only the goat commented, with an anticlimactic “Baaaa."

  So he tried again. When he threw this bale, his feet slipped a little in the dirt of the barnyard. The bale soared high, impossibly high in the air and then came down with crash of rattling boards. Billy let out a shriek of joy and spun around in triumph. He couldn't understand how or why, but mostly, he couldn't wait to do it again. He grabbed another bale.

  Crash. Crash. Crash. Three more bales were up. And the strangest thing was that with each bale it became easier. That wasn't supposed to happen. What was going on anyway? The wind came up from the west. The sweat on Billy's brow felt good as the cool wind of a coming storm wicked it away. Still he worked, throwing bale after bale into the loft. Each one was somehow lighter than the last.

  Then he started throwing them in one-handed! He laughed, feeling something every adolescent wants, but rarely gets—a sense of power. He raced through the last of the bales. And then he heard Ol' Man Wilkins shriek, "What in God's name is going on! Whut'd you do with all my hay? You cain't have put it all away."

  "Your hay is in the barn, ya old coot." Billy just couldn't restrain himself. Couldn't contain himself. He had POWER and he was going to use it.

  Wilkins looked up in disbelief. All the hay, everywhichaway in the loft.

  "Wuh, wuh, wuh, well, you gotta stack that."

  "I know. If you weren't yelling at me, I'd be done already." This was for effect. The old man wasn't yelling anymore. At best, he was whispering in anger. He couldn't understand what had happened. And like most folks, he was just simply afraid of what he couldn't understand.

  "Oh, wait. There's one more bale." Billy grabbed with his right hand, and, with his gaze never leaving Ol' Man Wilkins watery and confused eyes, he tossed it over his shoulder and into the barn. The crash of the bale tumbling into the hay loft could have been Wilkins’ jaw hitting the ground. But then what would that make the creaking noise that followed?

  In slow motion, with an awful sound shredding timbers and shearing nails, the barn toppled over. It held there, like a parallelogram barn on a parallelogram farm, for just a moment. The cow lowed fear. Then, with a horrendous crash and roll of dust, the barn collapsed.

  The jail was cold. Since they brought him in, the only time that Billy had actually seen another person was when the deputy had nervously thrown a blanket into the cell. The man hadn't even opened the cell door. He had just crammed it through the slot and all but run away.

  Billy could hear people talking about him outside. They sounded scared. Why were they scared? And where were his parents? Billy wasn't exactly the best student in school, but he was pretty sure they weren't allowed to throw you in jail without calling your parents. Something about it in the Constitution, he'd thought.

  He'd pay for the barn. He had money. Maybe not enough for a whole barn, but for part of it at least. Was it all his fault? Other people had seen that barn. That barn weren't no damn good. Wasn't his fault Wilkins was too cheap to fix it. The way Billy looked at it, nothing about Wilkins weren't his fault at all. And being locked up in that cell just wasn't right at all.

  Then why did he feel so scared?

  "I tell ya, the devil's in that boy!" Out in the lobby, Wilkins was red in the face and rarin’ for justice. Or, at least, his idea of justice.

  "Ed, I know you're upset about your barn," Said Tinsley Willis, town sheriff, "but would you mind keeping your voice down? I'm pretty sure that boy can hear you."

  "He don't need no jail cell, he needs a priest, or a noose around his neck."

  "That's enough," the sheriff said in that quiet way that indicated to most folks with sense that he was done kidding around. He saw Wilkins draw in breath to speak and realized that Wilkins just didn't have no sense. "You say another word about hurting that boy, or possession by demons, and I'll lock you up in the cell next to him."

  "You wouldn't dare. Why, I knew you when you were just a..."

  The sheriff tuned him out. Some days the star on his chest hung heavier than others, that was for sure. Still, it was a quiet town, smack in the middle of nowhere, and that suited Tinsley right down to the ground. It was just that, out here, surrounded by the open sky and rows and rows and rows and rows of corn, people tended to go a little simple. Small things got blown all out of proportion. And Ed Wilkins was Exhibit A. No family, no real business of his own in the world. It was like he had decided his hobby was going to be holding a grudge.

  The sheriff looked to his deputy, "Have you called his parents?"

  "Yes, sir," answered the Deputy with a quiver in his voice. The sheriff shook his head a little. His deputy was simple, too. No doubt he was 'fraid of dee-monic possession. Was it something in the corn? Was it going to get to him next?

  "You're not going in there, are you?" Wilkins asked. The Sheriff stood with the door knob in his hand. He looked at Wilkins like that was the dumbest question he had ever heard. It wasn't, but it was cl
ose enough.

  "Ed, I'm going to talk to that boy. And unless he sprouts horns, I'm going to let him go when his parents get here. I can't charge him with anything. So—"

  "Can't charge him with anything? Trespassing! Vandalism! Uh, uh, assault! He killed my cow!"

  "Trespassing? He was workin' on your farm! You're just lucky he wasn't hurt when that barn fell over. And I'm sure Bill Sr. will have a few words with you about that point."

  "Sheriff, that boy's got the devil in him. And I'm gonna tell everybody. We're gonna purge this community! We're gonna make it right with the Lord! Hallelujah, we're gonna make it right!"

  There was a crash from inside the cells. When they got through the door, Billy’s cell was empty. And half a wall was missing. The Sheriff saw Billy in the distance, running down Main Street.

  Wilkins started right in. The Sheriff just turned his head and spit on his own floor. "Aw, hell."

  In the kitchen of their weather beaten, clapboard farmhouse, Nancy watched her husband, Earl, hang up the phone. It was rare thing to get calls way out on the farm. Folks usually just came by for a visit. It was even rarer for the phone to ring during supper. Who called during supper? Wasn't everybody eating?

  When her husband sat back down at the table, he looked at the meatloaf as if he didn't recognize it.

  "Is it Billy?"

  "Yes'm. Get dressed, Momma, we're going in to town."

  "What happened?"

  "Deputy said the boy was in some kind of trouble. Didn't think it was Billy's fault, but was sortin' it out all the same."

  "Is he hurt?"

  "Didn't sound so."

  "You didn't ask?"

  As they headed into town, Earl held his foot close to the floor. The old pickup wasn't worth much, but he didn't often get to test it when Momma was riding shotgun. She didn't much care for drivin' and certainly didn't like drivin' fast. Which was why it came as some surprise when she asked,

  "Earl, does this vehicle go any faster?"

  "Yes'm," Earl said softly.

  "Then proceed."

  The pickup rattled and wheezed and jolted something fierce on the dirt road. But Nancy didn't complain. Earl choked back a smile. But damn if she didn't look uncomfortable enough. Wedging herself one hand on the dash and another behind the bench seat—bracing with both legs. It was enough to make him want to find a few bumps. Not big ones, but bumps all the same.

  "You okay, Momma? You want I should ease up a little?"

  "You just drive, Earl," she managed to chatter out.

  Earl'd have to give the boy a whuppin' for the mess he'd gotten himself into, but he was findin' a little enjoyment in it. He just hoped the boy hadn't done anything too stupid.

  At first, Billy had run blindly, not caring where he went, only wishing he could run faster. But that wasn't the way his powers worked, at least not yet anyway. How had he knocked a hole through a brick wall? It was hard for him to feel anything other than fear as his legs and lungs pumped for all they were worth, but he did remember being angry.

  He was so angry, he had done about the dumbest, most useless thing a person can do. He punched the wall. Then the wall wasn't there anymore. When he saw the street beyond, he started thinking about what they would say when they saw the wall. Then he panicked and made a run for it. He heard Wilkins screaming about him being a demon as he fled.

  He was a good boy, generally, and being on the run from the law was very disconcerting to him. Normally, when he got himself in trouble, he'd take a switching and be done with it. He knew that wasn't going to happen this time.

  When he stopped to drink from a spicket, it was the best water he had ever tasted. The first taste of true freedom was strong and intoxicating. How would they keep him, if they caught him? The jail didn't work. And that had to be the strongest wall this town had. Even though he didn't know how his strength worked, he bet shackles wouldn't be any good either. Oh, they'd have to listen to him. Oh, they'd listen to his side of it now.

  Not knowing where else to go, he headed home. He imagined that his father, Earl, would be mad at him. His fault or not, he was going to get a switching, for sure. But that was just the problem. It wasn't his fault. But he was going to get blamed for it anyway. The thought of such injustice, about the worst injustice a sheltered boy from a good family could imagine, made him angry. And as his anger grew, so too, did his speed.

  He was going so fast on the state highway that he almost missed the turnoff onto the dirt road that lead out to their lonely farm. As he got closer to home and the inevitable switching, he ran faster and faster. The corn on either side of the road became a uniform blur in the moonlight.

  By the time saw the lights of the oncoming pickup, it was too late. The anger turned to fear and his powers went away. The laws of physics took over. An object in motion, he stayed in motion until he hit the truck.

  The rushing sound stopped. Billy had the sensation of a giant hand pushing him backwards down the road for a distance. Furrows of dirt pushed up around his feet. He felt the hot fluid from the radiator on his leg and jumped backwards. When he looked into the compartment of the truck, he realized that it was empty. How could that be? There had to have been someone driving the truck.

  Miraculously, one of the truck's headlamps was unbroken and still lit. When he looked behind him, its uncertain, dying light revealed a figure lying in the darkness. He went to it as if in a dream.

  Her face had been badly damaged by the trip through the windshield and the unkind embrace of the country road, but he knew her by her hair and her blue dress. Then he realized what had happened. He hugged his mother to his chest. "Mom? Mom. Mom?" He started crying for help. At first for his mother—and then, when he realized that she was dead—he called for help for himself. Screaming for help as only a man who fears he has damned himself can.

  The lone headlight dimmed and went out.

  The next day, they found him in the road, clutching the corpses of his parents. He would say nothing but otherwise was a docile as a lamb. Even though there was nothing outwardly wrong with him, they had taken him to the hospital. He was placed in a clean white room. Doctors tried to understand what they were faced with, but they had little or nothing to go on. They could take no blood: needles broke on his skin. They could hear his heart beating, feel the pressure of the blood in his veins, but in every other way he was impervious to their art.

  Billy could only remember fragments of those long, blank, white days in the hospital. The muttering of doctors, the murmuring of nurses, white curtains blowing in the wind. And then there was Gus. A man who was strong and confident in all the ways that Billy was not. Gus had been bred in honor and forged in war. So he could see what all the doctors had missed. That thousand-yard stare.

  Billy had look of a man who had done horrible things and thought there was no way back. But Gus knew the way back.

  With no introduction or preamble, Gus said, "You think that's the end of it?"

  "Yeah," said Billy. It was the first time he had spoken in three months.

  "If you want it to be. But there's another way."

  "What?" said Billy, still lost within himself.

  "You can't bring them back. But you can save others."

  And that had started the job. It had become Billy's job to save everyone, everywhere, all the time. Years and years of going where they told him, when they told him. No life left over for himself. While he was doing it, he had always thought that it was penance. That it was just the way things had to be if he was ever to atone for what he had done.

  But now that he had stopped, now that being trapped below the ground had forced him to take time to think about it, he realized that if he wasn't forgiven by now, he never would be. And maybe there was no forgiveness. Maybe things just were. Maybe all he had ever been was a fancy kind of slave.

  In the present day, deep under the earth, Excelsior-who-had-been-Billy felt movement against his skin. How strange to feel again and to hear. There was a sound, an
d it was growing louder. It was a sound that he should have had a word for, but it had been so long since he had used words and heard sounds.

  He was so tired. He could remember the word “tired.” The bare flicker of what remained of his consciousness was steeped in tired. But the sound grew louder and louder. It was rhythmic and urgent and undeniable. Sound sound sound sound sound sound sound sound sound.

  No, faster than that. Suh-suh-suh-suh-suh-suh-sound. Why couldn't he remember what it was called? It was a, uh… Again he felt the earth shift around his skin. It distracted him. Then the tired came over him again in a wave. He wished the sound would go away, but it was coming closer and closer. Relentlessly on. Sharper and louder and drilling right into his brain.

  When the bit of the jackhammer hit his skull and shattered, he remembered what it was called.

  "I've got something!" cried a voice.

  "Lower me down!" commanded another voice, ragged and hoarse. There was coughing, and the sound of debris falling into a pit. Excelsior felt the rock lift away from his face. He felt fingers brushing dust and concrete from his hair and skin. He opened his eyes for the first time in three years. He could see nothing. He blinked and struggled to clear his vision.

  "Billy," he heard Gus yell, from far, far away. "Billy! Come back to me!”

  Gus leaned back and yelled up to the top of the hole, "I need water!" Gus flopped out of his wheelchair to lie in the pit next to Excelsior. He cleared off more of Excelsior's face, revealing the husk of the once mighty hero. If Gus hadn't seen him move, he would have sworn that the hero was dead.

  A lone beam of light fought its way through the dust and the sweat and the pneumatic hoses to rest on Excelsior's gaunt face like a gift of grace. With the sunlight, power flooded back into his limbs. His eyes cleared and he knew his strength to be his own again. He coughed pulverized concrete free from his lungs and sucked in fresh air. As his lungs expanded, the excavation shifted wildly and Gus struggled not to lose his footing.