Enhanced

by Cosca, Paul

  June 15th, 1999

  It’s been about seven months since the last time I saw Antoinette, but we talk on the phone almost every week. From what I hear from her and her trainer, she’s doing better than anyone anticipated, working hard and getting better all the time. She officially “aged out” of the foster care system not long after I left, and moved into an apartment, using money I send her for rent and food. She graduated about a month ago and is now training full time. We’re anticipating bringing on our first sponsor very soon, but the past few weeks I’ve noticed that something seems wrong, and now that I have moved back to Chicago, I’m able to drive over and see her. My trip has come slightly sooner than planned.

  The drive around the lake and up into Michigan is beautiful in the blossoming summer, and on another day I might take it slow and enjoy the sights. But I got a phone call from Nick, Antoinette’s trainer. He called as they were driving to the hospital, and I arrive as the last bit of sun fades from the sky.

  I knock on the door and interrupt a tense exchange between Antoinette and a nurse. Though I’m not sure what the discussion is about, I think the nurse is relieved to have an excuse to leave. Now it’s just her and I. She looks frustrated and tired.

  ANTOINETTE: You didn’t have to come all the way up here. I’m glad you did...I don’t want to be ungrateful or anything. I’m sorry. But I’m okay. I am.

  We both look down at her arm, which sports a bright blue cast that covers her hand and extends half way up her forearm. Her face is covered in bruises, including a shiner that looks like it’s still developing.

  They thought I had a bad concussion, so that’s why they’re keeping me here. They were wanting to run tests and all that, but I told the doctor what was really going on, and they gave me the IV.

  “What is it?” I ask. She drops her eyes, now shimmering with tears, and there’s obviously something I’m not seeing.

  You’re going to be mad at me. I know it. I’ve been trying to keep it all together, but I messed up bad and now you’re going to be mad at me. And I wouldn’t blame you for it. What I’ve been doing...it’s stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And I’m so scared, because if you’re mad you’re going to leave and then I won’t know what I’m going to do. This is what I’ve got now. It’s all I’ve got, and if I lose it because I was stupid, I’m never going to forgive myself.

  I take her hand, the one without the cast, and tell her that I won’t be mad. Tears are rolling down her cheeks and she makes no move to wipe them away.

  It’s my brother Eli. I didn’t want to tell you about it, because Eli’s not your problem or anything. Not your responsibility, you know? But...a couple of months after you left, he got kicked out of the home he was staying at. The family...they just dropped him. Stuck him back in the system. He’s a good kid. He’s not a thug or anything, he just got into a little trouble. It’s how kids do. Nobody’s perfect, you know? But that family put his ass right back in the system. I guess it’s only fashionable to keep a poor black boy around if he behaves like he’s supposed to.

  ...I’m sorry. I...the whole thing just makes me so mad. He really is a good kid. But he’s not young and cute anymore. He’s not five years old anymore, you know? His chances of getting taken in by a family are pretty much nothing, so now he’s in a group home where they treat him like crap. I’ve been in places like that. I know how it is. There are so many kids...there’s just not enough of anything to go around. Food or support or...anything. They have to make sure you don’t starve to death, but they don’t have to give a shit about you.

  So...see, you’re going to be mad. God I’m stupid. I should have just told you or...just figured out something different. I don’t know. But...I’ve been taking the money you’ve been sending and I’ve been buying stuff for Eli. Food and school supplies and all that. Making sure he’s doing better than

  just getting by. I’d take him if I could. Be his guardian. But there’s no way I could do that. They’d never give him to me. So I’m doing what I can to make sure he’s okay. I took a night job at a hotel, cleaning and stuff. Sleep in the morning, train during the day, off in time to see Eli after school, then off to the hotel after that.

  You know what really sucks about this? My training has been going really well. It has. I’ve been getting a lot stronger and faster. Nick’s been teaching me boxing and I feel like I’m doing really well with that. I’m working at the martial arts stuff too. I’m proud of it. For the first time in years and years I’m really proud. But at the same time I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep it all going forever. I haven’t been sleeping or eating much at all. And it all hit me today, I guess.

  Today was supposed to be my first real fight in the gym. I was up against this girl who was a lot bigger than me, but I knew I was faster. I should have been. I would have, except I just didn’t have the kind of energy I usually do. I guess it’s been a couple days since I’ve really eaten. Nick could see it, too. He wanted me to back out, but I told him no. Maybe it’s pig-headed to think of it like this, but I know I’m lucky to be here. I’m lucky, and the last thing I want to do is complain. I don’t have the right to be tired. I don’t have the right to be hungry. My job is to go in there and give it all I’ve got, so that’s what I did. Or what I tried to do.

  I should have just listened to Nick. I wasn’t in any shape to go out there. I was slow. Tired. The longer we went, the more I felt like I was going to black out, but I fought it as long as I could. At the end she had me down and had my arm all locked up...if I’d been on it, I would have gotten out of that no problem. But I did exactly the wrong thing and I felt the big pop as my wrist broke. And I guess my body took that as a cue to give up, because the next thing I remember was being in Nick’s car on the way to the hospital. I feel stupid talking about it. My wrist will be fine in a couple days.

  It’s not what I should have done. I know that. And if you will give me another shot I promise I’ll...I’ll find a way to do it better. But I’m here to be a superhero, right? I mean, that’s the end goal here. Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what that means. What it means to me. Being a superhero isn’t all about running fast or lifting heavy things. It’s not about being in good shape. It’s about helping folks who can’t help themselves. And my brother...he’s not getting robbed or raped. I can’t just go up to the foster care system and punch it in the face. I wish it were something that simple. But if I let him get swallowed up in the system like that...I just don’t think I could ever call myself a hero if I let that happen to someone I love. So, if you have to let me go because of this...I understand. And I’m sorry.

  By the time I leave Detroit the next day, Antoinette’s fridge is full, and there’s enough money in her account to take care of both her and Eli. Being a superhero means making difficult decisions, and someone who is willing to sacrifice themselves for others is exactly the kind of person that deserves this opportunity.

  November 11th, 1997

  I am down in South Carolina today. A snowstorm has been rippling up the eastern seaboard, and the small town of Allendale got a touch of it too. Not enough to hamper, just enough to make the landscape look bright and fragile. I’ve been in contact with Brandon Cooper, an English professor at the nearby University of South Carolina Salkehatchie. As a favor (and something I was proud and happy to do), I guest lecture in one of his classes about my experiences in the publishing world. With my nearly singular focus on this project, speaking with students gives me a chance to gain a little perspective. After a quick lunch with Brandon, he takes me back to his two story home where I get to meet my interview subject for the day.

  Phillip Cooper isn’t quite seventy, but the years have taken their toll. Deep lines cross his dark skin, and what little hair he has remaining is nothing but grey tufts. He wears sunglasses so dark it’s a wonder he’s able to see anything at all, but he smiles at us as we walk in. I introduce myself and his handshake is still firm. He sips dark, aromatic coffee as we talk and I happily accept a
glass of iced tea.

  PHILLIP: Y’all got me on a good day. I am still feelin’ it, but I’m doing pretty okay today. Used to be better. Used to be there was more good days than there was bad ones. Now I’ll go on half the week not being able to do nothin’. Just lay in bed, trying not to scream or cry or somethin’. But today’s good. ‘S good. Did I offer you any iced tea?

  Oh, I did. I see it there now. Sorry ‘bout that. Memory just ain’t what it used to be. Hell, nothin’ ain’t what it used to be. Everything, me an’ the whole world, we all done gone over plenty of changes. My daddy was the first person I knew with it. We sure hadn’t heard any of those words back then. I don’t think my daddy ever knew the word “virus”. And I ain’t never heard the word “genetic” till I got my own diagnosis back in...what, 1988? That’s over forty years from when I got it to when I done finally heard about it.

  I’m…sorry. You’re lookin’ for a story, and I’m just jumpin’ all over the place. That’s how it feels up in my head these days. Just can’t seem to sit

  still on nothin’ too long. Can you believe I lived in Tuskegee all my life and never did get it till I joined up for the war? Ooooh Tuskegee. The thing we all don’t talk about. Nobody talks. Nobody listens. No proof. No records. We all supposed to just hush up about what went on down there. Nobody wants to listen to no poor colored farmers go on about what happened all those years ago, right? My daddy ended up getting the virus. His brother, too. I skipped Tuskegee and joined up to fight Hitler and wound up just the same.

  My girl and I was eighteen in 1946. I met Eloise ‘bout a month before I went off and we decided we was in love. I went off to Fort Jackson here in South Carolina for basic training some, then married her before I shipped out. That’s what a lot of kids did back then. Most of those girls knew that they was marrying boys who weren’t never gonna come back. Hitler and those Nazis, they was a machine. A war machine feeding on all them Allied boys. She married me and we got to have our night together before I went off. And I thank God for it, too. It meant that we got to have our son before I went off and got all different.

  I don’t think I can tell you too much about the details. About what they did to us before we all shipped out. That’s probably the stuff you want to know most, but I just don’t have too much memory of all that. Between what they gave me and the fighting I saw over there, there’s lots of stuff from right around then that I just don’t got anymore.

  I remember there was a big bunch of us who was getting ready to ship out to England, except we didn’t get on a plane. They put us on trucks and drove us across a few states to some other base. And there...I guess that’s where all the stuff happened. I remember they was all real nice to us. Almost...too nice.

  I don’t mean that all the folks in the Army was bad to us, but these folks...it was like the way you treat a dog who’s real sick and dying. But the food was good. The beds was even good. I know there was lots of tests, but

  I don’t remember the details.

  I wasn’t in the special group or nothin’. Just normal. Or at least, not bad enough to get kicked out and not good enough to get special treatment. I was like a lot of guys in my unit. You could feel something was different. Something had changed, even if they didn’t tell us so. I couldn’t have even imagined what it was doing in there. It’s still a little tough for me to get my head around. Remapping, they call it. Just a fancy term for scramblin’ eggs.

  I don’t think my time in the war’s really what you’re after anyway. I had a time like a lot of other boys did. Saw a lot of rough things. Stormed a beach. Took a bullet, kept fighting. Got some shrapnel in my leg that still acts up when it’s cold. That’s a hell of a little thing there. When it’s cold, my head is better but my leg is worse. You can’t win for losin’ none, can ya? Anyway, I lasted over there. Met a lot of pretty girls who liked a boy in uniform. Lived long enough for that Nazi bastard to kill himself and found my girl was still waiting for me when I got back home. And by then my little boy was already a toddler. I had a family.

  The headaches started up in earnest not too long after all that. The docs at the VA said it was nothin’. Old concussions. Maybe even psychological, ya know? These days they’d probably call it...what’s it that PT something? The post traumatic thing you get after going through something bad. That’s what all the boys come back with these days. And maybe there was something to that, but there was something else, too. I knew it.

  Nobody ever talked about it back then. It’d be another 30 years before I done ever really heard about it officially. They didn’t even have no official words for it before then. But I didn’t need no official words to know that my headaches was getting worse and worse.

  I stopped being able to read way back in ‘74 or ‘75. I ain’t been to the movies in almost fifteen years. No loud music or bright lights. Gotta wear these sunglasses all the time. I also don’t need no official words to tell me that

  I couldn’t have no more kids. Don’t know if I gotta blame that on the virus or not, but it seems as likely as anything. When they put something in you that they don’t know what it’ll do...who can say?

  But if I’m real honest, I’m not mad about all that. Not really. I was a soldier, you know? Maybe it’s a sad way to look at it, but in war, a soldier is just like the gun he carries. They’re tools. You make ‘em work as best you can so you can go kill the other guy better. Making a better soldier is like making a better helmet, ya know? I can’t blame ‘em for trying to win the war. But my daddy...I ain’t never been done being angry about that. My daddy wasn’t no soldier. He was a farmer. He never carried a gun or fought for nobody. He wasn’t a tool. He was a human being. He was my daddy. And they went and treated him like one of those lab rats. He didn’t get hardly nothin’ for it except cancer. The blood sickness...that’s what he called it. He had bad blood. And for two goddamn years I had to hear him groan and moan and cry like a woman because he was being eaten from inside out. There ain’t no reason that he had to die like that. No way. They can say that just because he was in the program don’t mean he got cancer from it. They can say that all day long. They can say that every goddamn day till the walls come down, but that don’t mean I believe it. Those sons of bitches killed my daddy. And that...I think that’s worse than anything ol’ Hitler did.

  August 8th, 1993

  Mel had begun the evening looking intensely exhausted. But the more we talk, the more energy she seems to get. Her eyes burn with passion and she looks so relieved to finally be talking about this. I can’t imagine how she kept it all secret for so long, but I admire her for it.

  MEL: What happened between 1927 and 1932 is anyone’s guess. The records for those five years have been wiped clean. I’ve pulled every string and called in every favor I could, and risked burning my ass in the process, but I never could find it. However, I think we can probably put some pieces together. What I know is that the boy left Fort Leavenworth. From there, he must have been taken to a facility that was better equipped to study him. Wherever it was, it must have been a place of serious technological advancement, and it was almost definitely within the United States. There’s no way they’d let their pet project slip outside the border. I’ve heard rumors pointing to all kinds of places, but nothing definite. I’ve even heard it told that the base out at Groom Lake, Area 51 they like to call it, was built to house him. Then again, they say that same thing about all good conspiracy theories, don’t they? Makes me laugh a little bit thinking about that little boy stored on a shelf next to the Roswell aliens and Bigfoot.

  Unlike the aliens and Bigfoot though, we know that patient zero was taken by the army. And we can take an educated guess and say that between 1927 and 1932, a group of scientists set themselves to find out what made this little boy tick. And they found it. Or at least they found enough to garner a little more study.

  I’m not a scientist. I don’t really have a head for that kind of stuff. Never did. But I’ve tried to understand as much of it as I can. I kn
ow that studying viruses was pretty new back then, so they must have been right on the cutting edge of the technology. Somewhere in late 1931, the wheels really

  began to turn. They had isolated the virus. Now they wanted to wind it up and watch it go.

  February of 1932 marks the first record of an interaction between the US government and the man known as Theodore Freeman. Teddy, to those who thought they knew him. For a guy embroiled in government business, he was as covert as it gets. If he was on someone’s payroll, that record is long gone. He wasn’t a scientist. He was a facilitator. He was a guy who could get things done. Swam through red tape like a fish. Something made Teddy Freeman turn his attention to the RGR virus, and he was determined to put together a study.

  Mel sets a file folder on the small table. The folder is several inches thick and a little intimidating. I start to leaf through it. It looks as well read as a favorite paperback. There are perhaps 300 pages in front of me, so careful study might take months.

  This is every single piece of paper I can find on the existence of Teddy Freeman. No birth certificate. No death certificate, for that matter. I believe he was born in America, maybe somewhere in the south, though I wouldn’t trust that. I also think he may not have died in America. There’s enrollment info with Yale, but no diploma. It seems that someone recruited him at that point, though what agency or organization that might have been...I really don’t know. He drops out of existence ‘till 1931, when his name starts appearing on documents at the White House. Somehow, Teddy Freeman caught the ear of president Hoover, and from there he began putting the pieces together to launch a large scale study of the virus we now know as RGR.

  Mel flips a few pages in the folder (she knows the whole thing well enough to identify pages upside down as they face me) and I’m looking at a document signed by President Herbert Hoover. Having watched my fair share of “Antiques Roadshow”, I idly wonder how much this bundle of documents, filled with famous signatures and fascinating history, would be worth. Then I remember the fate of Dr. Grant. That, it seems is what