True Heroes

by Gann, Myles

  and as she cradled his face with one hand,

  his eyes closed and a gentle whisper escaped his mouth:

  “‘It is not that my heart is cold,

  or my world is split,

  or that my feet will travel no more.

  It is that I have found

  through my endless march

  a path I must travel alone,

  and where your warm hand

  cannot reach.

  Farewell, farewell

  to all that is light

  although I will miss you so.’

  “Her hand,

  shaking with gratuitous feelings,

  forced the bread into her eager mouth.

  She felt the strength return to her legs

  and walked from the altar quickly.

  “As her body blotted the lone star in the distance,

  Kaneis sat heavily upon the altar stair,

  seeing red eyes pierce the darkness

  that would surround him furthermore.

  From the emptiness,

  the voice of malice spoke:

  “‘My highest regards, Man,

  as this journey would have taken a lesser

  crashing into cowardice.

  Tell this God of your name.’

  “Kaneis,

  his eyes closed and his chest gently heaving,

  stood again to face the darkness,

  and spoke:

  “‘I am Kaneis,

  of nowhere,

  my Lord Hades.’

  “Hades’ deep laugh rang to the edges of Tartarus,

  and the crackling embers from his mouth

  could be seen from his crooked smile

  as he spoke:

  “‘Thus spoke Kaneis:

  from nowhere did he spring,

  but the only thing any man has to give

  he gave without pause.

  As you did succeed,

  Tartarus will be kind to you.

  Your story will never reach Earth;

  Nobody will hear of your name,

  or your journey,

  or your bravery,

  and only when they meet me from the Styx

  will they learn the lesson that you bestow.’

  “Kaneis laughed as loudly as man could,

  the echo bouncing against the unseen Titans

  and men amongst him before he spoke:

  “‘I thank you for this punishment,

  as each man would try to live the life I have,

  and that is not the way man is supposed to live.’

  “Hades grumbled lowly,

  but received only a tired smile

  from the face of Kaneis.

  “And so it was:

  the man that stood for no flag,

  fought for no man, woman, or child,

  and abandoned his everlasting self

  became what the world needed most,

  and fought for what mortal man saw the least.”

  ---

  Everyone stood up and applauded except Caleb, who was staring intently into vacant air through his one good eye. Alice used the back of his hand to clap, allowing their contact to be maintained while every bit of her appreciation spilled right next to everyone else’s. David placed his hand tentatively on Benny’s shoulder after the poet had bowed a few times, and asked with a wide smile. “Benny, that was your best work so far, but you said it was going to be about someone in the group.”

  Benny looked up before darting his eyes back to the floor. “It was.”

  Everyone chuckled a bit and looked around. “Who was it about?”

  His eyes rose up as Caleb’s did. “Caleb.”

  As all eyes focused around Caleb and all mouths were slightly agape, Caleb could feel his hand be squeezed a little tighter as he gave Benny a slight smile and a noticeable nod.

  Chapter 18

  “Let’s do one-on-one time now.” David looked over towards Alice and pointed two fingers at her and Caleb, respectively. “Talk here,” he mouthed.

  Alice grabbed Caleb’s hand as they both stood and walked across the circle before anyone else could rearrange. ‘What idiocy is this?’

  ‘It’s another conference. Why are you in such a foul mood?’

  ‘I’m healing you the rest of the way after this little debacle.’

  ‘It was two weeks ago. Get over it.’

  ‘And yet you’re happier than ever! You have no pride, still.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell me what’s really eating at you.’ Power lashed against the side of his head. ‘Thanks for the headache.’

  ‘Leave me to my shrinking corner, then shout your silly questions from an opening plane and see if your widening intellect can’t deduce the logic of my anger.’

  “You’re mad because something that wasn’t yours was taken away,” Caleb whispered as they sat down. “Pride has no volume.”

  “Did you say something, Caleb?”

  His head upturned to David. “No, sorry.”

  ‘Yes, he wants to call you a worthless coward! A writhing stain that is trying to snatch away what is his while displaying the dominance of what is yours.’

  ‘Simmer down.’

  “Mr. Whitmor, Ms. Dorrel, thank you for meeting with us.”

  “My middle name is Krysta, with a ‘Y.’”

  Dyllo looked sideways at her. “Indeed so.”

  “You never told me your middle name.”

  Alice squeezed his hand and turned to lock eyes. “I just did. You never told me yours before and I can’t tell you something if you don’t tell me something, now can I?”

  “Actually, yes you can.” He smiled and flashed power in one eye. She smiled widely.

  “His is Daniel.” They both turned to Mr. Dyllo. ‘The eternal smile on her face is showing. Don’t you dare give him the satisfaction.’ “In any case, there is a reason David and I would like to talk to you both today.”

  “Yes, it’s been a while since you two have graced us with your presence.” David pushed at his glasses and cocked his head. “I was half-expected to see a wedding ring on your hand when you came back.”

  ‘Her smile finally twitched.’

  “We decided to have a little Valentine’s time to ourselves. Caleb needed to think before that, so we barely left the apartment.”

  “He went to work. Joy says he’s never absent and has only been late once.”

  “Yeah, that time was my fault….”

  Caleb smiled and scratched his nose.

  “Lovely.”

  Dyllo cleared his throat. “Our reason, David.”

  Caleb smiled. ‘You can’t tell me the anxiety between them isn’t cheering you up a little.’

  ‘To hell with their marriage counseling. We’re going to have to leave early or I swear it’ll be the fifth level of hell in here soon.’

  ‘I’m going to tell Alice on you.’

  ‘Keep trying me.’

  “The group did go on without you here, and while we did, we were met with some massive resistance when it came to Mr. Dyllo’s teachings. They all swear that he’s wrong and you promised to help them find out how.”

  “So you really haven’t been going on without us, have you?”

  David had Dyllo’s hand on his shoulder quickly. “Our concern is that they’re not accepting advice that’s meant to help them.”

  Caleb leaned back in his chair and smiled. “They’re not accepting advice they choose not to accept.”

  “You had them arrive at that choice.”

  “Maybe. But more likely is they know that your so called truth isn’t the truth that they live by. If they don’t live with your truth, then it can’t be truth, therefore, your truth is not truth.”

  Alice was staring hard at David as he spoke. “The military is still buzzing about you.”

  Caleb turned his neck and dropped his head haphazardly. “Careful who you point a loaded gun at.”

  “It’s still pointed at the ground, but I do have a few te
n-digit numbers I could find quite a return from your name and whereabouts at.”

  Alice tensed in Caleb’s hand. “You wouldn’t—”

  “That’s the choice Alice. Caleb,” he turned on a swivel, “I believe you have something to say to the group.” He stood up quickly. “All right everyone, we’re going to begin with Caleb addressing us with something very important.”

  Chairs and bodies moved around Caleb and Alice. ‘We always knew it would come to this.’

  ‘You could’ve filled me in if you had a suspicion.’

  ‘Look at the paltry worm: you have power over him through Alice. He thinks this will re-establish his order. His power. Give me an inch of room and I’ll tear him to shreds.’

  ‘Then you’d be no better than him.’

  ‘I’d be alive. That accounts for something.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  Caleb finally stood and joined Alice next to her large recliner and rubbed at his face. ‘Don’t you dare make more problems for us.’

  ‘You’ve been screaming for blood since we got here.’

  ‘This would bring a hammer a thousand bodies large. Even we’d drown in that much blood.’

  ‘I get nervous when you waffle.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘It’s a figure of speech.’

  ‘It makes no sense.’

  Caleb lifted his head. “Has anybody else ever noticed how misleading some figures of speech are?” He looked around at the upturned, attentive faces. “Seriously, throw some out I’ll show you what I mean.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Joy offered.

  “That’s a good starting one. We use it at the warehouse all the time, and it bugs me lately. The context is almost always the same as saying ‘no problem’ or even ‘you’re welcome,’ but it’s different somehow. It insinuates that everything you do in a day’s work is a part of the job, which isn’t true, but also the context pushes aside the idea that you’re working for reward and towards working for the sake of work.”

  Mr. Dyllo spoke loudly. “It is a defense mechanism designed to distract both the liar and the sensor from the fact that there is no action that is done free of reward.”

  Caleb didn’t look at him. “Another one. Anyone.”

  Christopher sat forward and cleared his throat. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  A few of the circle laughed at his inflection. “Ah, this could lead into an entire debate over good and bad, but then again, maybe its self-apparent what’s good and bad. What’s good for me isn’t good for someone else, much the same for supposed bad things—”

  “Which makes them delusions,” Mr. Dyllo interjected. “Completely unnecessary constructs of feeble minds trying desperately to justify their choices that are without meaning or purpose.”

  “So, as it follows, good and bad are not absolute constructs, but have the ability of inversion. By that I mean the ability to change from ‘my good’ to ‘his good’ or ‘her good,’ and even to the perfect form of good: ‘the good.’ Good riddance, then, is the same as saying ‘There is some good,’ and bad rubbish would be ‘there is some bad.’ The entire phrase, at its most basic, is then ‘There is good and bad.’ A few more.”

  “Power corrupts all.”

  Caleb smiled over towards Benny. “The idea behind this saying is that those with power will automatically become harbingers of a big-and-scary doomsday at most or at least will forget the values or ideals that brought them to that point. Power is…well, according to Mr. Dyllo, we all seek power, have some degree of it, and are, therefore, corrupted by it. Isn’t that right?”

  “It is the human condition, one that we cannot escape or divert.”

  “Such is your power: deductive, cognitive, philosophical ponderings. That allows you to reason and rationalize your own nature down to a reasonable conclusion. Corruption is, as a prerequisite, everlasting as long as you have the power to philosophize, and yet you were not born with the power to philosophize any more than Benny was born able to tell tremendous stories or than Chris and Angela came out of the womb holding hands. You acquired a power that you believed was infinite because the practice was infinite, therefore enhancing your corruption to the same level. However, as you chose to become a philosopher either actively or unconsciously, you chose to break from a path that had no power besides your natural state and attempted to gain more power. At that point, you decided your own acquisition of power was more important than anything else, but you yourself chose to corrupt your lifestyle.”

  “Are you saying my philosophizing is corrupting me?”

  “I’m saying you philosophizing is fulfilling you, but it is at every point in which you find yourself too afraid or incapable of moving forward that you’ve corrupted an entire lifetime of ideals. I’m saying that you’ve always had a choice, even with power, when it comes to corruption. You’ve just always made the wrong choice.”

  Dyllo stood up quickly. “You know nothing about me.”

  “I know you’re intelligent. Possibly enough to see the entire practice to the end, but you stopped at yourself because that’s all you could see anymore.” Caleb looked away and raised his hands. “One more.”

  Alice placed her hand on his forearm and gently moved it to her armrest. “All good things must come to an end.”

  Caleb didn’t look up to her. “Good, here, means something more than good, and less—a simultaneous split.” He stood up suddenly and walked over to David, swiping his pen and a piece of paper. “My real dad taught me about this when I was very little.” He wrote Alice’s name on the paper and showed it around, including the still-standing philosopher. “Odd-numbered things are perfect in that if you break it all down to ones and take away an equal amount from both sides, you’ll always be left with one.” He began crossing out letters in Alice’s name. “Take away two letters on the left and two on the right, and we’re left with ‘I.’” He swung around. “What’s that look like to you, Benny?”

  Benny leaned forward and smiled. “This letter resembles to me a tiny farm peasant with the sun beating from above his head.”

  Caleb nodded his head slowly, making everyone giggle. “Andrew, what’s it look like to you?”

  He looked for only a second. “The number one.”

  More giggles sounded as he turned back to Alice. “What about you, Alice?”

  She sat forward with a small smile on her contemplative face. “I want to say it looks like a little girl, looking up with an idea in her mind. It does look a lot like that. But I know it’s just the letter ‘I.’”

  Caleb threw the paper in the air, making everyone but Dyllo and David laugh. “That is the good of this statement: a perfect syllogism formed out of the idea of perfection itself. What it means to say is ‘All perfect things must come to a rational end,’ because it is in the nature of perfection that it does not will itself to live, or to thrive, or to die, or to forcibly scour anything; perfection, in its purest form, is the total acceptance of life as life, as self as self, and of the responsibility to uphold right and wrong beyond the individual, group, or social desire.” Caleb turned slowly back to Dyllo and David. “Perfection of this type gives you complete power, no power, and just enough power to overcome any moral, ethical, or spiritual problem; it gives you the ability to go in a circle, and arrive somewhere completely different.”

  Mr. Dyllo finally sat down. ‘He looks winded.’

  ‘I feel winded from all your talking.’

  Caleb turned around as everyone mumbled excitedly and looked at Alice. ‘What’d you think?’

  ‘You want to know what I thought?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Eloquent, but not done yet.’

  ‘I know, but it will be. With her it will be.’

  Alice stood up and wrapped around his neck. “Thank you, from all of them.”

  “All in a day’s work.” She kissed him slowly and quietly before Caleb felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “You need to leave
now.”

  Caleb didn’t bother turning around to see David’s face. “No, I think I’ll stay. They want me here.”

  ‘He looks remorseful, just so you know.’

  “I called them before you got here.” Caleb turned around quickly then. “I was angry. I’m sorry.”

  Caleb let his eyes shift along the floor. ‘That’s troublesome. I guess we are leaving early.’

  ‘We won’t ever be coming back if they brought enough men.’

  ‘They’re only going to bring one. They don’t pour money down holes without at least properly testing something.’

  ‘Then it will be your former classmate. Either way, Alice cannot follow us.’

  ‘She’ll never agree to leave my side.’

  ‘We have no choice. Telling her the truth will work for us both this time around.’

  Alice was suddenly on his back. She leaned against his ear and whispered, “Just one question before you go. I know it’s dangerous. I’ll be at home waiting for you…. Is what we have perfect?”

  Caleb didn’t turn to see her face, but could feel her staring hard at the corner of his eye. “Can’t know yet.”

  ‘Her breath was sharp.’ “I thought so, too.”

  “I know you did.”

  “You always know what I think.”

  He turned around and kissed her quickly. “I’ll see you soon.”

  As soon as he whirled again, Power was illuminating his eyes and checking the street outside. ‘As expected. He has someone with him.’

  Caleb pushed open the doors and walked out, making eye contact immediately with Stephen. The rays pulsating from his skin had changed; all whites and greens had been replaced with varying shades of purple. Some darkened to such an extent that it took Caleb’s mind back to the field; ‘That was the only time I’ve ever seen a color darker than this.’

  “Mr. Whitmor,” the man next to the glowing Stephen began. “We’d like to perform a more thorough test of our new technology.”

  The man’s German accent made it difficult for Caleb to understand him. ‘Allow me to handle this. I need to let out my aggression.’

  ‘Wait, you’ll get your chance. Can you unwire that thing again?’