by Chris Lynch
“I hear about that club you got goin’, down there at the shop.”
“Ya,” I said, making a mental note to punch my uncle Lars in the stomach.
“I hear your club’s maybe got some freaks in it. Like, a freak club. Maybe a Sally Sweetboy club.”
I updated my mental note, to punch Lars elsewhere.
“No way, Dad. You know me. It’s a Johnny Chesthair kind of a club.”
He cuffed me. The cuff with a smile.
“That’s good. I knew that’s what it’d be. You wouldn’t dare turn sweetboy on me, I know that. But you know, Swimmer, there’s only one Johnny Chesthair around here, right?”
“Right, Dad.”
“That is such a disgusting-sounding name,” Mom said.
He didn’t hear her, even though he did. “And that makes you…”
“Johnny junior,” I said, like a good son.
Buster laughed, punched me in the chest, rolled up his window, and shot away.
I closed one eye, aimed with my finger, and I shot away. Blew out both rear tires. The car flipped over, slammed into the pumps at Hector’s BP gas station. Burst into monster flames. Mom crawled from the wreck unharmed. She walked home alone and made me a snack.
“Have you been here since I left you on Sunday?” I asked Ling-Ling, who sure looked like he had been. He was sitting slumped in the back of the Lincoln, head about three inches above his knees, which held a stack of comics. He looked up.
“Of course I haven’t,” he said, then went back to reading.
We were the first two there, as would become standard. We met at the club on Saturdays in the morning, and on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons. I always beat Jerome and Wolfbang to the meetings. I rarely beat Ling.
“Think I could have a look at some of those?” I asked.
He quickly thumbed the deck, as if he were taking inventory, figured he was holding two dozen magazines, and decided he could spare two. One Batman, one Wolverine.
“You’re really into these, huh, Ling?”
He looked up at me, squinting, a puzzled look. “Well, why wouldn’t I be? Comic books—the real ones, anyway—they’re only what everything is all about. I mean, like Wolverine, sheesh.” He snorted a little chuckle through his fleshy panda nose, as if we were talking about what everybody should know. Like Abe Lincoln and honesty, or Michael Jordan and basketball. “Wolverine is the whole story, the whole story of man, right there.”
I stared down at it, held it feathery in my hand, weighing it. It wasn’t even fifty pages, for crying out loud.
“You’re nuts,” Lars said into Ling-Ling’s open window.
“Beat it, you,” I snapped. “This is a private club and you are not welcome, ya rat.”
He stepped back from the car. “What’s got into you, neph?”
“What did you tell my old man?”
“Nothin’.”
“Rat. Lying rat.”
Ling-Ling dropped his head and went back to reading while we argued across him.
“Lars, did you tell my father I had some kind of freak club down here or didn’t you?”
Lars blushed. “Oh, that. Listen, kid, all I said was—”
“Rat. What did you go and tell him that for?”
Ling looked up at me, totally serious, totally calm. “Well, you do, right?”
“Arrrrgh,” I said. The club was already making me say that so much, I was thinking of making “Arrrrgh” our motto.
“I never said you were freaks,” he answered. “All I said was I was concerned. Curious. You know your old man, he overreacts, that’s all. So I had to promise him I’d look out for you, and provide a little right-thinking guidance, and he was cool with that. You’re lucky. He might have broke up your club if I didn’t promise to show you boys the Way.”
“Super,” I said sarcastically.
“And I think I should start with this.” He whipped the X-Men comic book right out of Ling-Ling’s hand. Without a stutter, Ling just went right on, turning to page one of the next mag on the pile. “This,” Lars said, “is not what it’s all about. Jeez, you guys really are such kids, ain’t ya? This stuff, it ain’t life, it’s baby food. Wait here, I’ll show you what it’s really all about.”
Lars bolted toward the front of the shop, passed Wolfbang and Jerome on their way in, and disappeared into his office. Then he ran back out waving some magazines of his own, passed the two slowpokes again, and tossed me and Ling each a magazine. Ling-Ling held his up. It was Soldier of Fortune. Mine was American Survival Guide, subtitled The Magazine of Self-Reliance.
Hmmmm.
“Wolverine’s tougher,” Ling-Ling said, and tossed me his magazine.
“You’re dreamin’, kid,” Lars shot back. “You don’t know nothin’.”
“That’s not very helpful,” I said to Lars. “For a guy who’s supposed to be giving us guidance.”
“Okay, then. Kid—what’s your name?”
Ling told him.
“Still stickin’ with that story, huh?”
“That’s the name.”
“Right then, that’s cool. My code name with the Survivors is Hollow Tip. So here goes, Hollow Tip versus Ling-Ling, your magazine against mine.”
There were lots of times I did not follow what was going on in my uncle’s head. There were other times when I did and thought it was cool. There were still other times when I thought he was out of his skull. But all the time, he was so sure and so excited about whatever it was that was going on up there that you just had to cut him a little slack for enthusiasm points.
However, he could still embarrass a guy for being related to him.
“My magazine could mop the joint with yours,” Lars said to Ling.
Wolfbang had wheeled up tight to the action, bumping into the back of Lars’s legs. “Get him, Ling!” he cheered, without knowing, or caring, what was going on. “Get him, Ling, get him, Ling.”
“What’s going on?” Jerome said, sliding into the front seat. Jerome, of course, needed to know. I waved him to shut up.
Ling looked to me. I shrugged.
“Get him, Ling,” I said.
“Wolverine is a man, Lars, okay? He does all his own fighting. And he fights for what’s right.”
“Fighting?” my middle-aged uncle wheezed. “You call that fighting? Kid, you’re talking about cartoons there. Your Wolverine fights cartoons. Even I could fight a cartoon and win. Even you could fight a cartoon and win. Jeesh.”
Lars was never any good at jokes, so the thing here was, he was serious.
“These boys here, well, just look at them. Soldier of Fortune, boys, soak it up, because it’s the future, it’s the now. It’s life as we’re gonna know it in this country. The men in that magazine”—here Lars broke off into a little spooky uncontrollable laugh for himself, h-h-h-heh-hah—“those are the men of this country. And they ain’t no cartoon men, lemme tell ya that right now.”
Ling stopped looking at Lars, turning instead to me for translation. I hadn’t a clue. I turned to Jerome, hoping he might be able to wrap his big juicy brain around my uncle’s logic.
“I don’t know,” said Jerome, taking up my copy of American Survival Guide. “They sure do look like cartoons to me.”
I leaned in closer to look over Jerome’s shoulder as he browsed. He was right. The pictures running with articles like “Getting the Most Out of Body Armor” and “Primitive Living Challenge” sure did look awfully G.I. Joe. Big puffed-up guys. Big puffed-up gals. Staring down the camera like they were going to bite it. Muscled outdoorspeople, pack animals, electronics for the field, pads and armor and camouflage and cool ranger hats and guns. Guns. Guns, that is. Did I forget to say guns? The guns were just too big and too shiny and too accessorized to be for real. The centerfold—yup, they had a centerfold—was a picture of some kind of weapon that had a handle on it, so I supposed somebody was supposed to hold the thing in one hand, but it seemed to me that anyone with a hand big enough and strong enough to hold that th
ing didn’t need any weapon of any kind. I slapped the magazine closed and held it down, like the contents could blast their way out if somebody didn’t keep them in there.
“This is actually kind of scary, Lars,” Jerome said.
“This is actually kind of awesome,” Wolfbang said, lapping up Soldier of Fortune like it was a girlie mag. “You don’t actually know people like this, do you?”
Lars folded his arms across his caved-in little chest area. “Know people like that? Boy, I happen to be people like that.”
“This is the best club,” Wolf said, pumping his fist. “Except we still need to get that redhead cookie girl back.”
The bees. The angry bees, I guess, were set up for good in my belly, because every time Wolfbang mentioned Monica…it made the buzzing unbearable.
“Shaddup, you,” I warned.
“Oooo,” Wolf taunted. “Got a little problem there, Tagalong?”
I lunged for him. “Don’t call me that. Don’t you call me that. And don’t you ever…”
Wolf and I were sitting, together, in his wheelchair, clawing and choking and slapping at each other and not really accomplishing anything. My uncle grabbed me by the back of the shirt. Then he wagged a finger at me. “Not over a dame,” he scolded.
Just like Darla and Alfalfa and Spanky. I panicked.
“No way, sludge monkey. Not this boy.”
Wolf snickered.
“Can we get back to important club business?” Ling cut in. “Our man Lars here…”
I couldn’t let it get away from me like this. “What are you talking about? He’s not in the club, ya dope. He’s a”—long pause for total disgust effect—“grown-up geezer. Get out of here, will ya, Lars.”
“I might be a geezer, but I know what’s what in a he-man’s world. And you boys could sure learn a lesson. You want a lesson?”
“No,” I snapped, even though he wasn’t addressing me.
“Sure,” Wolf piped.
I looked to Jerome, who stared up at Lars with big baby-seal, don’t-club-me eyes.
“Cartoon boy, what do ya say?” Lars asked Ling-Ling. Ling looked like he might cry, which would have surprised no one.
“Show me,” Ling bellowed in a mighty sure voice, which surprised everyone.
“This is my club,” I raved as I followed the rest of them out to Lars’s car. “I’m the boss, remember? You don’t just run off with another guy without my say-so. We need order! We need rules here!”
Wolfbang’s wheels skidded on the oily garage floor as he braked to a stop. He spun to face me. He sighed loudly.
“So, can we go, Dad?”
I was caught by surprise. Stumped. I wanted to scream some more. I wasn’t finished screaming yet. I thought.
“Bus is leaving, children,” Lars called.
“It’s going to be so crowded in his car,” I muttered. “His stupid car is so…not like my car. My car is big, and roomy and strong and…”
“His car runs,” Jerome pointed out.
“Shaddup over there. Mine’s going to run. Just wait. When I—”
“Steven,” Ling called, very impatiently. “Are you going to come or not?” It seemed awfully important all of a sudden to Ling.
“Not,” I said.
Without hesitation Lars, Wolf, and Ling were out the door. Jerome stood there waiting.
“Couldn’t hurt, you know, Steven,” he said. “It might even be interesting, whatever it is he wants to show us. Are you afraid of something you’re not telling us? I mean, he is your uncle, right? Your father’s brother? Is there a fair chance he’s going to drive us all off a cliff or sell us to a circus or something? If he is, you should tell us, I think. And if he’s not…” Jerome shrugged. “We joined up for adventure, right?” A squiggly scared smile cracked across his face.
“No, Lars is okay. It’s just…it’s my club. Is it or isn’t it my club?”
Just then Lars cranked his car, a sonic boom of straight, unmuffled pipes. Jerome jumped.
“It’s your club, Steven. Everybody knows who Johnny Chesthair is around here.”
The smoothie.
“But still, we kind of want to do stuff, you know?”
“I guess,” I said. Without even agreeing to, I started following Jerome out the door.
I felt it happening to me as I went out. That I was going from being the head of the dog to being the tail. I was even walking with a slight side-to-side waggle. I had to hold on to something here.
“But I get to ride in the front seat,” I insisted.
“You’re the boss,” Jerome said.
9.
Captains America
FIELD TRIP. LARS COULDN’T bear the lame condition of my club.
“Buckle up, young Americans. My club is going to show you-all the way.”
I thought he meant it as a figure of speech, like “buck up.” You never can tell with Lars. But no, he meant it literally. He slammed his foot down on the accelerator and whooped as he took the hard corners of the city at forty miles per hour. He lit a cigarette, beeped his horn at nothing. He nearly clipped a pedestrian, but then didn’t bother beeping. He screamed. He laughed at himself. He created an odor. Laughed at himself again. When all the passengers were nearly asphyxiated, I tapped him on the shoulder and he finally opened the window. Did I mention that the driver’s window was the only one that worked? Somebody in a worse car than Lars’s made a left turn across his path. He beeped and beeped and gestured and screamed until long after the person was probably parked and eating dinner at home. Every bolt in the car shook as Lars demanded much more of the vehicle than was probably fair.
We screeched to a stop.
Jerome vomited out into the street.
Lars stepped past Jerome and his mess, stared at it. “What are those in there, Alpha-Bits? Well, no wonder you’re sick, that stuff’s no good for ya.”
“What are we doing?” I asked as my uncle pulled the wheelchair out of the trunk. We were parked in front of a dilapidated used-auto-parts yard with a twelve-foot fence surrounding a small lot and a cinderblock bunker of a building. Even by junkyard standards, the place was a pit.
“We’re going into my club,” he said. “Don’t let appearances fool ya. These are the kind of people who like to keep a low-down profile, but the true fact is that these guys in here are the greatest collection of Americans in…in America, anyway. There’s, like, the modern Paul Revere inside here…the contemporary Patrick Henry…John Wayne…the whole shebang of American patriotic history.” Lars brought the wheelchair around to the door, where Wolf climbed in. “You,” he said, pointing then to Ling-Ling. “Now, my man, is when you are going to meet some superheroes. Every one of them is a Captain America.”
“I think I’m going to sit in the car,” Jerome said.
I went over and pulled him out by the wrist. “You’re the one who got me into the club business,” I said.
Wolfbang was struggling, his skinny wheels spinning over the rough terrain of the yard. But he seemed to enjoy the rough going, like one of those four-wheel-drive nuts in mud. Ling had him beat, though, brushing by him and practically running up Lars’s back to get into that building and the Captains America Club.
It took us a little longer, with me pulling Jerome like a sled over dry pavement, but finally we joined everyone inside. The members of my club stood thunderstruck, silent, watching the members of Lars’s club hug and growl and slap each other hard.
They looked like they’d stepped straight out of the pages of Lars’s magazines.
We met Kevin, in his red-and-black-checked wool jacket, unbuttoned down to his naked belly. Jimma, who was wearing the T-shirt that Kevin was not wearing, topped off with a…thing, like a vest with straps and pads all over it. Boo, who was as large and bearlike as Ling-Ling, only with a face so scarred up it looked like a car had been dropped on it. Since Boo was wearing filthy coveralls and was apparently the garage owner, this may have been possible.
And we met Officer Ti
mmy, who wore a crisp dark-blue outfit, shiny black shoes, and enough medals and ribbons across his chest for a king or a fancy hotel doorman.
“Are you a police officer or a military officer, Officer Timmy?” Wolf asked.
OT looked down on Wolfbang in his chair, as if he hadn’t seen him until that moment, and made a face. You know the face. He was disgusted either with Wolf’s question or his voice or—from the way he was looking him over—his disability.
“I am an officer of my god,” he sneered, “and of my country.”
“Ooooohhh-kaaayyy,” Wolf said, smirking.
Jerome was quick in my ear. “That’s it. Really, this time, I quit. Don’t bother to see me to the door—”
“Shhhh,” I said. “He might hear you.”
“Heroes,” Lars sang. “Kids, I hope you realize how lucky you are. You want to be men? You want to run a club called He-Man? Here’s your prototype.”
I looked around at our prototype. I looked at Lars to see if he was kidding. Not. I looked at my guys. Wolf had his hand over his mouth but wasn’t trying too hard to hide his laughter. Ling was mesmerized, entranced, looking at the place, the faces, the scars, the uniforms of one kind and another. Yes, Ling was taking this very seriously. I looked at Jerome. Jerome looked at me. Jerome bolted.
“Hey, come back, Jerome,” I called. But by the time I got to the flung-open door, he was halfway home, bounding like a gazelle over moving cars and pedestrians and everything.
“’Bye, Mary,” Kevin called. “Come see us again soon, ya stud.”
Jimma, with the padded vest, stepped up to me. “I could track him. You want me to track him for you? I usually charge, but since you’re with ol’ Lars…”
I stepped back, shook my head no. “That’s all right,” I said. “I think we’ll let him go this time.”
“You let me know, you change your mind,” Jimma said.
On the desk near the door, a small black-and-white TV buzzed, the screen doing one long non-stop horizontal somersault. It was a talk show playing, with a very neat-looking blond lady named Wendy Wightman talking to a married couple who lived in an abandoned oil tank.
Lars went around then like a matchmaker. “This is the magazine kid,” he said, literally shoving Ling-Ling toward Boo. Boo smiled, looking down at the literature in Ling’s hand. “I started out with Marvel comics myself. It’s a good start. However…” and the two of them pulled over to a corner, where Boo broke out a crate of his own preferred reading.