True Heroes

by Gann, Myles

  “Alice….”

  “David,” she said in a mocking tone. “If he wants to be a part of us, then let me help. He obviously isn’t going to let you in, and he won’t find anyone more friendly than me,” she said to Caleb’s face. “I’m five-foot-ten, about one-forty, my favorite color is blue and sometimes green, I’ve lived here for four years now and before that New York, my favorite animals are kittens and fish because fish hardly ever bite when you pet them. Relating to any of this yet?”

  Caleb swayed his body all the way around to her and tilted his head with a tiny smile gently furrowing his cheek. “I do like the color green.”

  “See, David? We’re like brother and sister already. Give me a chance to see if he’s worth your almighty guidance or not.”

  David flared his nostrils. “Fine he’s your project.”

  “He’ll stomp away now,” she whispered to Caleb as soon as David was out of earshot. “See how his shoulders are raised a little? He’s puffing out his chest to look tough. Does it when he’s mad. So cute. Anywho, come. Listen. Benny is about to read a poem for us.” Her voice continued to trail into a whisper as they walked closer to the circle. “He’s a poetic-path; he can turn anything into a poetic verse. I’ve never heard him talk without prose like he did to you. You must’ve really made him mad. You kinda look mad now. Well, half of you does. Remember I told you about that? Right now half of your face is looking around while the other seems set. Lefty is saying ‘I’m happy’ while righty is saying ‘I wanna kill her now,’ it’s so neat.”

  “Your friend is talking,” he snapped lightly at her.

  She leaned into his shoulder as they settled. “That was the grumpy side.”

  Benny stood in the middle of the circle with a wrinkled piece of paper. “He looks good in that outfit don’t you think? Really lights up his blue eyes and blonde hair.”

  Caleb gave her another sideways glance. Benny cleared his voice and straightened his posture. “This is called ‘The Last Feather.’”

  ---

  The lights went out suddenly. Somebody yelped as Caleb looked up. ‘No power.’

  “They cut us off again, ugh. All right everybody, we’ve gotta call it an early night tonight. Carefully find the door and keep in mind your feedback on Benny’s poem for next time.”

  Caleb waited for everyone to move around before extending enough power to clear a path to the door. ‘Use me correctly or not at all.’

  ‘This is the correct use for you.’ He clicked carefully across the floor and opened the double-doors, letting early streetlights spill as a beacon for the wandering diseased. Alice and David were the first out, her large recliner being carried by her own deceptive strength. They wandered as a quietly frightened group out into the night before Caleb released his polite hold on the metal door. He saw every one disperse into groups of two or less, and noticed David and Alice by the beat-up red truck. ‘His chest is puffed out.’ Caleb meandered just barely out of earshot against a wall and extended his power while closing his eyes.

  “I thought you sent the payment in, David?”

  “I just sent it off today, Alice. I’ll call them tomorrow and set it straight.”

  “You really think you can lie to me after all these years?”

  Caleb opened one eye and watched David straighten his posture and look directly into her tiny face. “I sent the money off today. I’ll call them tomorrow.”

  She studied him relentlessly, even when his face didn’t seem to emote at all from Caleb’s vantage point. “What’s she studying,” he asked in a whisper.

  “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow night then.”

  “Well, I was hoping we’d go out tomorrow during the day….”

  “Tomorrow’s Tuesday.”

  “Ah, I forgot, I’m sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow night then. Good night.”

  “Night.”

  The only physical sentiment between them was a touch on either arm by the other. Caleb didn’t smile. ‘What are you studying?’

  ‘That. That didn’t seem right or caring at all.’

  ‘Oh God you’re going to be interested in her aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m interested now, just not as much as you think I am.’

  ‘I’m keeping close tabs on your emotional state and I know all about where your interests lie. If she’s the one that breaks your will for me, I’d be just fine with that. Victory will fly on swift winds in that case.’

  ‘Or failure.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Caleb walked up behind the truck and was nearly hit in the crotch as Alice hoisted the chair into the scratched bed with one flex. David’s eyes glared against the rearview mirror as Alice pushed the chair to the back with one shove. “You’re a strong little pixie.”

  “I know, I try.” She smiled and chuckled. “Did you enjoy the poem at least?”

  “The little of it I heard, yeah.”

  “Hey, you heard most of it. I know I’m a big talker. That’s how I think. Most people tell me they have a little voice in their heads that makes sense of what they say and think and see and know. Not me. I talk out my thoughts, which gets embarrassing, and leads to more thoughts and bigger embarrassment. Not for me, for people around me. I don’t get embarrassed too often. I say some pretty awkward things sometimes, but everyone here’s so used to it that it doesn’t matter usually, but sometimes I say things like I think you’d look pretty hot naked and realize what I say and…,” she whispered a bit before resuming her regular tone, “on the bright side, it means I have no secrets, which is convenient for people.”

  “Is that what you tell them, or do you just tell David that?”

  “Everyone because it’s the truth.”

  “Then you lie to everyone?”

  “Hey now! You don’t know me. How do I lie?”

  “I don’t know you, but I know what truth is. You always say what’s on your mind at the time, right? Well that just shows what’s on your mind, not what the truth is. Even your mind can trick you into lying without the ability to think things through for a few seconds. There are things you don’t talk about because there are things you don’t think about when you’re around them, so at the very least, you do have some secrets.”

  She broke their eye contact while shooting quick gazes around him and muttering. ‘Listen to her talk now.’ His power leapt on its own whim from his ears to listen, but her whispers stopped too soon for it to catch anything. Her face re-shifted back to Caleb and her eyes dazzled as she spoke again. “You don’t have any secrets?”

  ‘Only one.’ “Only one.” They said it together.

  “I guess nobody needs to know it then?”

  “One person, someday.” ‘Nobody, ever.’ Again.

  “Anyone I know?”

  They both smiled as she skipped up to the sidewalk, becoming taller than him from her perch and his trough on the street. Her short hair fell apart into harp strings as her head flipped on impact. Her lyrical fingers played across the plentiful chords in a long note; a soft whine flying from the friction of her soft hands against dead strands. Against the wind of the street and gathering chill of the dissenting moon light, her motion seemed a calling. Her beckoning hands plangently guided the pale gaze of night’s third eye into the bastard child of life and death; unto Caleb it poured, unnatural fluorescence and harping. It poured in careless bundles, all because of her balladic strum.

  “Well, I’m sure your face is interesting to a lot of people, so it could be anyone. You going by the coffee shop tomorrow?”

  Caleb and Power were shaken. “Probably at some point.”

  “Good, you’ll see me then.”

  “You work there?”

  “Nope.”

  “How will you know when I’ll be there, then?”

  “That’s a fun little surprise for you to see tomorrow.”

  She backed away from him before skipping down the paved walkway. One of Caleb’s arms had a run of goose bumps while the other hung limp at his side.
‘Let’s go. The stragglers are staring.’

  Caleb laggardly moved with his mind stuck on a carousel. The side alleys ran into a single, endless hall. Dumpsters showed the same filthy smear while holding random derelicts from the rancid puddles swirling beneath them. He wasn’t aware of the world until his apartment came into view, and he was through the window and into his room before his power disengaged from his senses. The dark room was lit only by the afterglow of the low remnants of the dark night’s mechanical grind. Across the room, his power flipped on the light and drug the brown book to his hand and opened to a random page. ‘Amuse yourself before you sleep.’

  Caleb didn’t bother responding. He plopped down against the wall and dragged the book closer to his eyes. “Middle one it is. May twenty-sixth, nineteen-eighty-nine. The scene set itself constantly. I was washing up after a delivery; bloody sinews of placenta washing down the stainless-steel drain before I tore my gloves off and threw them into the waste bag. A nurse handed me bad news once I got out of there: Audrey’s boy was riddled with genetic defects. Asperger’s, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, CHS, Familial Dysautonomia, Abetalipoproteinemia, and some sort of mutation within both irises. He’s cursed with those. When I told Audrey, she was hopeful (that’s the best word I could find for her reaction). I told her over and over to be, and thankfully she listened. That kid is in for a hell of a short life, worst case scenario, but there’s never been a combination like this. There’s never been a child like this. After I left her room, I went to the observation room and found Caleb from the window: row c, column three. He was sitting up, looking at the other babies as they cried around him, like he was wondering what they were crying about.”

  He lost the page and stared off with a smile. “One more? All right, you pick. A recent one, nice choice. November twenty-twelve. I finally got into the Whitmor house…today….Why was he there? I had a few men to quietly move everything into a P.O.D.S. and paid them with furniture. I moved Caleb’s room myself. I tried so hard to walk to Audrey’s, but I couldn’t. Every time I hit the landing I felt like screaming. It was almost as sad in his. He was a remarkable boy before all this happened; now he’s a lost man. There was a replica of the Venice Square made out of Legos in his room. Made me laugh. Right about here it all hit me. I sat down on his bed and picked up a necklace of his, and I couldn’t move for a while. I was in my head deep enough to fall out my ass, and I couldn’t talk to him about it anymore. He isn’t him anymore. The container will be under Titan.”

  He closed the book and felt his head swallow hard. ‘Why did he bother if it would hurt him so?’

  Caleb sat forward to answer. ‘That’s who he was.’

  ‘Why was he so hurt over you?’

  ‘I supposed he cared that much about me.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Caleb, you would break into a crying mass if we had to clear Carol’s house, but if we, say, went to clean the good doctor’s house, you would be far from inconsolable.’

  ‘He was a good friend.’

  ‘I agree, and yet he’s treating you like a lovable saint.’

  ‘Everyone did back then.’

  ‘And here we are.’

  ‘Don’t blame this on them.’

  ‘Oh, I’m thanking them.’

  ‘You have no business speaking of them.’

  ‘Just as he had no business crying over spilled milk.’

  Caleb stood and worked his way to the window, suddenly needing the night air. The book rested at his feet as he breathed in the fresh air from the east that blew across his nose. ‘I was their Titan….’

  ‘Exactly. A being of semi-dietic lineage that was never meant to ascend. They treated you as Zeus when you were always Achilles.’

  ‘I haven’t always been this way; maybe I won’t always be this way.’

  ‘Caleb, whatever small chance you had to becoming anything more than man without me left as soon as you forgot how to care about people, and that happened when you unearthed me.’

  ‘Maybe I just need a reminder.’

  ‘You won’t find it.’ Power trailed. ‘You were one of a kind when you were small, and you’re aiming for oneness again. You won’t find it here.’

  ‘I have to.’

  Power sat still. ‘I promise to apologize the day that you find out how meaningless this entire journey is.’

  Caleb closed his eyes and felt his head hit the metal windowsill. He didn’t move for nearly half an hour, waiting for the world’s prod to burst from the sky, but instead only saw the small book beneath him. ‘How long would it take us to go back to New York?’

  ‘At full power, maybe three hours. Hoping a road trip will ease your mind?’

  ‘No, just sharing your skepticism about the doctor. He did this for a reason.’

  ‘If we indulge this semi-farce, let’s at least be smart about it. Those places are open twenty-four hours, call them have them deliver it to some out of the way location so we can carry it back.’

  ‘That would blow our cover just as much.’

  ‘Then we’re not bringing it here. The military won’t overlook this for long.’

  ‘The coffee shop. We’ll ask them in the morning.’

  ‘Wonderful. Until then?’

  ‘We’re still going to visit it tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have nothing better to do.’

  Caleb leapt from the window, and they were off. The world was a blurred space with no fixations or fixtures; the bending of light came and went with the light itself for seconds, minutes, and then hours. The warp lengthened into an elongated flash for onlookers, but Caleb was made to experience every second as it came, and found himself waiting longer and longer snippets of eternity for the next one.

  They flashed to a low building top just past midnight and caught their breath. Caleb’s legs ached from the extended running while Power throbbed from the lengthened push. ‘We’ll have to stay here for an hour for me to recover.’

  ‘We can take our time back.’

  ‘How do you know where we’re going anyways?’

  They leapt to a phone booth and opened the electronic directory. Their fingers moved too quickly for the electronic synapse simulator, but they moved at a timely pace until directions to the closest container housing appeared before him. ‘Superman Storage. That’s how I know.’ He was out of the box and to the place in a few moments, making sure to land near the parking lot to keep appearances. An older man set down his book and flashed a smile as Caleb walked forward. “Evening, sir.”

  “Good evening. I’m here to check the contents of a container.”

  “Got a storage name and I.D.?”

  “The name is under Titan.”

  He typed in a few things as Caleb thought quickly. “Ah, no identification required. It’s right behind me here in the fourteenth one on the ground floor. Here’s the key.”

  Caleb nodded and smiled before walking through the security gate. ‘Not odd at all?’

  ‘That friend of yours was resourceful.’

  He walked along the long line of metal containers until the stillness of the fourteenth aligned with his body. The lock was off and the gate pushed up with his own might, releasing self-contained nostalgia across the walkway. Boxes were piled neatly throughout the long shell up until the last three feet, creating a small foyer. Caleb attempted this only to stumble into something and to hear a large crash. He retrieved a flashlight from outside the breadbox, and saw that he had knocked over a stool, an older television, and a DVD player. His hands brushed across the layers of time coating the television and saw a small case next to his foot. “‘Play me.’ Only him.”

  He was back to the gate in an instant. “Hey, would it be possible to get this thing delivered across country?”

  “Yes sir. We deliver from coast-to-coast. Where’d you have in mind? I’ll give you a cost estimate.”

  “Cost isn’t a factor,
but delivering it to Cincinnati: how long would that take?”

  “Oh, that’s not too far. Probably a day for processing then we could have it there in another day. Looking at next Thursday, at the latest.”

  “That sounds great. Can you get it started using the information on that account?”

  “Yes sir, but it won’t start processing until tomorrow when our trucking company opens.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Caleb strolled away with the DVD case under his arm until he was sufficiently shadowed, and then was off again. Power groaned in his ear, but Caleb tuned him out with an excited buzz. Their journey was shorter; Power found itself struggling when Caleb willed a stop outside of Columbus. ‘Take a breath. I’m going to watch this.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  Caleb walked into the neon district’s sole building surrounded by tall, imposing corn stalks that refused to see light after dark. Three women immediately approached him flaunting gifts given to every woman. He worked through them and came up to the window, immediately hearing more temptations from behind bulletproof glass. “You’d rather go solo than take some of that fine tail?”

  Caleb laid ten bucks on the table. “What can I say I know how to please a man.”

  The guy smiled and rolled his toothpick between his lips. “Number five.”

  Caleb went through the filth-encrusted door and soon found his disturbingly quiet room. ‘Think of all the life wasted on these floors, all the careless aims to please one’s self. We’re burning this outfit later.’

  ‘Recover and let me watch.’ Caleb opened the DVD player and case gingerly and placed the unmarked disk into the cradle. His revulsion kept him standing in the middle of the room, as opposed to the chair or leaning against the wall, as he pressed play. The doctor appeared on screen with all the age and wear he’d last seen him with, but was sitting behind a new desk, still mahogany but with large stacks of books at his back; unshelved and unbound.