Minion

by John David Anderson

  I feel a lump in my chest, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.

  What exactly is he building?

  The masked man holds up one gloved hand. “Until tomorrow, my loyal citizens. Adieu.” Then the screen goes black, replaced an instant later with Nicki Minaj dressed like a pink-haired vampire. Viola continues to stare for a moment, then literally jumps in her seat, startled, madly fishing her buzzing phone out of her pocket. She checks the message and quickly stuffs it back.

  “It’s my friend,” she says breathlessly. “She just canceled.”

  She looks at me. She’s waiting for me to say something. To call her on it. Her long, thin fingers wrap around her cup. A musician’s fingers, probably like her mother’s. Viola. Second to the violin.

  “I should probably go.”

  We both say it at the same time. She gives me an odd little smile. All around us, clusters of people are murmuring to each other excitedly. Viola starts to get up. Before I think better of it, I reach out and grab for her hand. It’s dumb instinct, but I follow it. And I’m surprised that she gives it a little squeeze before letting go. She shows off her dimples, then snaps her fingers. “I almost forgot,” she says, reaching back into her pocket and putting something small, smooth, and round into my hand. I open my fingers to find Honest Abe. The penny I picked up from the ground at the park.

  “It’s warm,” I say.

  “I’ve been holding on to it,” she says. I go to give it back to her, but she pushes my hand away. “No, really. I want you to have it,” she says. “For luck.” Then she adds, almost as an afterthought, “Put it in your shoe.”

  “What? Why?”

  “That’s what makes it lucky,” she insists. “An old superstition.”

  I reach down and tuck the penny inside my sneaker, wiggling it under my heel. There is another pause, bulging with expectation, and I can feel the question working its way to the surface, but before I can ask it, she turns for the door.

  I let her get three steps from the exit before I stop her, calling out her name. There’s so much I suddenly don’t know, but one thing I’m almost certain of.

  “I’ll see you around,” I say. It’s not a question.

  “I hope so,” she says.

  And then she goes.

  And I let her. Because I have to get back. I have to talk to my father. Find out what, exactly, he’s working on. I look back at the TV, where the local news has cut in with a special bulletin featuring the announcement we all just heard, the Dictator’s face frozen on the screen. The man behind all the recent robberies and raids. Probably the whole reason the Comet bothered to land in New Liberty to begin with. At least the town finally knows who it is dealing with.

  Even though I’m just starting to find out.

  He’s sitting at the table when I arrive, staring at the door, looking as if he’s been waiting for hours, even though it is still the middle of the afternoon and he was the one who kicked me out to begin with. Maybe he spotted me from the street. Or maybe he’s saddled me with a tracking device. I check my pockets for little black boxes and find only what’s left of the cash.

  “We have to talk,” he says.

  Funny. I was about to say the same thing. Except when parents say, “We have to talk,” it usually means “I have to lecture you.” But I’m not going to let that happen. I have way too much to say.

  “You saw the announcement?”

  “Yes. But that’s not what we need to talk about,” he replies softly, and for the first time I notice that his end of the table holds a stack of brochures, full color, neatly folded. The first one says COME EXPERIENCE THE WONDER OF MONTANA.

  We don’t know anyone who lives in Montana.

  I walk up to the table, put my hands on the back of a chair. “Oh,” I say. “All right. So you don’t want to talk about the masked maniac who just came on television saying he had a plan for taking over the world. Fine. Let’s talk about what you’re working on downstairs that I’m not allowed to see.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that either,” he says, coolly adamant.

  Of course not. I want to look at him, stare him down, but my eyes keep flitting back to those brochures, wondering what he has up his sleeve this time. “Fine. Then what do you want to talk about, Dad? Want to talk about the blue freak of nature who you keep hoping will just up and fly away or the fact that you came home this morning with doughnuts and hundred-dollar bills? Maybe you want to tell me what that phone call was all about, the one you made in the middle of the night? Or maybe you want to tell me why, if you are trying so hard to protect me, you shut me out? Because it feels like you are pushing me away. Because you are into something, aren’t you? All this . . .” I spread my arms to indicate the house, the city, the universe, whatever. “All this . . . this hiding . . . it’s really starting to get on my nerves. So—what? What is it that you so desperately need to talk to me about?”

  I realize I’m almost shouting, but he had it coming. He brought it on himself.

  Dad just sits there calmly.

  “Wyoming,” he says.

  “What?” I’m sure I didn’t hear him right.

  “Or Winnipeg,” he adds. He slides the pamphlets to the center of the table and fans them out like a travel agent. I see brochures for New Haven, Fort Worth, Cheyenne, Toledo. I shake my head.

  “Winnipeg’s in Canada,” I tell him, my big heaping pile of frustration suddenly blanketed with confusion. “Nothing happens in Canada,” I explain.

  “Exactly,” he says.

  And then it dawns on me. He’s not suggesting a vacation.

  He wants to leave.

  Leave New Liberty. Abandon the house. The gangs and the graffiti. Zach and Tony and Indiana Jones and Mr. Hyung and the little place on the corner that sells the best pastrami sandwiches, and all the schools I never bothered to go to, and all the people I never got to know.

  And the one I’m just starting to.

  “Wait . . . you want to move?” I pull back the chair and take a seat on the edge.

  “I don’t think New Liberty is right for us anymore,” he says. “It’s not safe.”

  “Safe?” I choke. “When was it ever safe?” I mean, seriously. I could make him a list. Rattle off the string of Saturday-evening carjackings and brawls between street thugs. The kidnappings and purse snatchings and random acts that made for a New Liberty weekend. But of course that’s not what he means.

  “Michael, please don’t make this any harder than it has to be. You’re right. I should have realized sooner. I hoped maybe it would even itself out, but last night was too close, and today, and with everything else . . .”

  He can’t finish the sentence. And I see it finally. He’s afraid. Even if he won’t say it. His skin is white, his normally shrewd eyes saddled with concern. He’s scared.

  “When?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Take what we need. Start fresh.”

  “And just leave the house?”

  “More or less,” he says.

  I don’t even want to know what that means, or I’m afraid that I already do and don’t want to think about it. Dad wouldn’t want to leave a trace of his work. We would leave nothing behind. “And how are we going to get there, to Winnipeg or wherever it is you think we’re going? What do we do with all our stuff? We drive a Civic, Dad.”

  “We buy new stuff,” he replies. “We will have money. Enough to build a new life.”

  Money. So all of a sudden money isn’t the problem anymore. I think about what Zach said once, about Dad and me going on a crime spree. Retiring in Aruba. Or Venice. Or Wichita. I think about leaving Zach behind. And this house where I’ve spent the last four years. Where I learned to ride a bike and mix explosives, where I fell asleep each and every night listening to the sound of the freight trains rumbling under the South Street bridge. I can feel the penny settled beneath my heel.

  “And what if I don’t want to go?”

  “It isn’t up to you. I’
m your father. It’s my decision.” I can see the spark return to his eyes now, summoning his courage, or maybe just losing his patience. This isn’t easy for him either. New Liberty is his home even more than it is mine. The house and everything in it another of his boxes, built up over the years. He can’t just pick up and leave it all behind.

  “So now we have to run, because you’ve gotten in over your head and all your quotes and little inventions aren’t enough to protect you anymore?”

  “This isn’t about me,” Dad murmurs, fixing me with his eyes.

  I point to myself. “Me?” I shout. “How is this suddenly my fault?”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault,” he shoots back. “But you have to understand. I have responsibilities. I’ve made promises.”

  “To who?” I yell. I’m up from my chair now, fists on the table, leaning across from him, staring down at him. “To Tony? Or is it this Dictator? Because that’s who you’re working for, isn’t it? That freak in a silver mask!”

  “It doesn’t matter who, it only matters why. I’m doing it for you. For us.”

  “I don’t want you doing me any favors,” I snap.

  “It’s not a favor. I told you, I have an obligation.”

  “To who?”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “Who?” I shout.

  “To your father, damn it!”

  He slams the table, and the Toledo skyline slips over the edge and plummets to the floor. I watch it fall and just stare at it for a moment.

  “I promised your father,” Dad says again, slumping back, instantly deflated. “Right before he left you. Right before he left for good.”

  I suddenly feel dizzy, as if the whole floor is tilting like an amusement-park ride. And if it wasn’t for the chair still behind me, I probably would join Toledo on the floor.

  Turns out he was there.

  The night that I was abandoned, left in the very back booth in my car seat with four hundred dollars cash and onion grease on my fingers. The night St. Mary’s came to get me, Benjamin Edson was there. But not just there.

  He was the one who left me.

  I sit and stare out the window as he tells me about it. I sit and stare up at the shadowy sky, at the smattering of stars that are barely bright enough to pierce the haze of electric afterglow that settles like a fog. Light pollution. The reason you can’t see much from here. The mask we’ve put on the sky to push back the darkness. Dad speaks in little more than a choked whisper as he tells me the story, spilling the one secret he’s kept bottled up. As he talks, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the last picture, the one of “just a friend,” setting it on the table between us. It shows two men leaning against each other, dressed in matching blue button-down shirts. The one I can tell instantly is a young Benjamin Edson, the professor fresh from his college years, face fuller, hair redder, freckled cheeks. The other is taller, stockier. Thick brown mane, rugged, goateed face. He looks slightly familiar. Like someone from an old commercial you watched too many times growing up. They both wear sunglasses.

  “Your father’s name was Renfred,” he explains. “Though we just called him Renny, the few of us who really knew him. He had several others. Aliases. Kept a wallet full of fake IDs. He looked a lot like you. Same furrowed brow. Same questioning expression, never quite certain of anything. He had a great sense of humor, though. And that’s not all you had in common.”

  Dad—Benjamin—presses two fingers to his skull and narrows his eyes.

  Suggestive hypnosis. Mind control. Abracadabra.

  He could do it too. My father. My real father. He was the one who passed down my gift.

  “I acted surprised when you told me. I had to, of course. But you have to admit I took it in stride. Your father was admittedly a much more accomplished telepath. He was older. Had had more time to practice. He could convince a camel to part with its hump. He saved us quite a few times with his talent.”

  “He was your partner,” I say.

  The professor nods. “We started working together when we were young. Small-time robberies. We weren’t interested in hurting anyone. Your father was a goo—” he starts to say, then stops, revises. “He was honorable, in his own way. Between my gadgets and his knack for getting people to see things his way, we made a formidable team. Probably could have made a real name for ourselves, but we weren’t that ambitious. Renny was never interested in taking over the world. We would have been content taking only what we needed.

  “But then he met your mother. Gina was her name. At least that’s what she told us. She was beautiful, I have to admit, though I’m not the best judge. You’ve got her eyes, I’m afraid.”

  I think about my green eyes. Same color as the man sitting across from me. For some reason I always thought that meant something. That maybe it linked us somehow. Guess I was wrong. About a lot of other things.

  “Your mother had a history as well, had gotten her fingers dirty more than once. Our paths merged, and we became a trio. She had no powers, no talents to speak of. What she did have were connections—and an uncanny ability to get your father to do whatever she asked. She used him, Michael. Sought to abuse his power. She got us involved in more dangerous work. Kidnapping. Extortion. Said we needed to up the ante. Your father held her in check, or tried to, at least. We had a few scrapes. Mostly with the cops . . . sometimes worse. Barely escaped from Mr. Malleable once,” he says, a little wistfully, “but that’s a story for later. Suffice it to say we built up a sizable tab with the authorities, though they still didn’t know who we were. And your mother still wasn’t satisfied. She was selfish. Wanted it all. And she had cast such a spell on your father that I was sure she was using some mind control of her own. I guess love will do that to a person. Make you look past their faults.”

  “I guess,” I murmur.

  “Before long, our threesome became a foursome.”

  He waits for it to sink in. I point to myself.

  Dad counts in his head. “Fourteen years and five days ago, in fact.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “You’re telling me . . .”

  “That I know when your real birthday is?” Dad nods. “We’ve celebrated it every year. You just didn’t know it.”

  Five days ago. A special occasion. I think about the monkeys and the giraffes. The fatherless lizards. The cotton candy and ice cream. As close as I’ve ever come to having a birthday cake. No candles. Nothing to make a wish on. But it was something.

  “You changed him, Michael. Renny didn’t want to drag you into the life we’d fashioned for ourselves. It was a choice we made, but it wasn’t one he felt he could impose upon you. So he tried to get out. Except your mother disagreed. She called him a coward. Said he was wasting a golden opportunity, squandering his talents. When he insisted on quitting, she took nearly all the money we had and disappeared.”

  I snatch the picture of the two of them—Benjamin and my father—from the table and stare at it. All this time I imagined my parents as total strangers. Not even real people. A couple of college kids too burdened by loans to raise a kid. A teenage mom dropped out of high school. They never had a real story. They were just extras, little more than props. And here they were: my two dads. Standing side by side.

  “And you never saw her again?”

  The professor shakes his head. “I don’t know where she is, Michael, or if she’s even still alive. All I know is that she left your father when you were still an infant. Who knows? Maybe she’s even the one who turned him in.”

  “Turned him in?”

  “You were only a few months old when the authorities caught up to him, arrest warrants for a whole host of crimes, most of them her idea. Except she had disappeared, using your father as a scapegoat to cover her tracks. The day the cops found him, he showed up on my doorstep with a diaper bag on his shoulder and a pistol in his belt. Said it was too dangerous for you. That they were after him. He made me promise, Michael. He made me promise to take care of you. But I
couldn’t. I was twenty-six years old. A criminal myself. What did I know about raising a child? My father built rockets. My grandfather built coffins. I come from a long line of men who knew how to package death, but none of them knew anything about life.”

  Dad’s hands are shaking, even though he has them clasped together; his voice wavers with them.

  “So you dumped me,” I mutter, “at a White Castle?”

  He frowns, guilty and disappointed. “It was close to the orphanage,” he explains. “I needed you to find a better home than any I could provide. Say what you will about St. Mary’s, they kept you safe. Safer than I could.”

  “Then why not just leave me there?”

  “Because you didn’t belong. You said that yourself. They couldn’t appreciate what you were capable of. They were brothers and sisters, but they weren’t family.”

  “Neither are you,” I snap. Though as soon as it comes out, I regret it. I watch the words cut into him. He physically contracts. But I’m not going to take it back. Part of me wants him to hurt, for hiding it all this time. For not trusting me with the truth.

  “Your father and I were very close,” he whispers.

  “So then what happened?”

  “The night I took you, the police cornered him. I still don’t know what possessed him to carry that gun. We never used them. He could have gone along with them. Waited for a moment when he was alone with one of them and performed his little trick. But they surrounded him and he panicked. Maybe he was reaching for it, maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t matter in the end. None of us are bulletproof.”

  As soon as he says it, he realizes his mistake. “Almost none of us.”

  I sit just there, motionless. I know I am supposed to feel something—ticked off, heartbroken, confused. But more than anything, I just feel empty all of a sudden, hollowed out, leaving me raw inside. I don’t know how to respond.

  “I always planned to come back for you, Michael. You have to believe me. I never let you out of my sight. I had boxes, cameras, hidden in every room of that school. I watched you grow up. I always knew what you were capable of.”

  I try to think back to St. Mary’s. I was told every day by the sisters at St. Mary’s that the Father was always watching over me. I never believed them.