Captain Nobody

by Dean Pitchford

  As I walked home that afternoon, amused and puzzled by my day, I remembered that my parents hadn’t seen me yet. How would they react? They might have laughed to see me in Chris’s old clothes on Halloween night, but what if they freaked out now? Upsetting them was the last thing I wanted to do.

  I broke into a run, determined to get back home and change before Mom or Dad got back from the hospital. And I would have made it, too, if Cecil’s walkie-talkie hadn’t squawked just then.

  “This is Cecil Butterworth calling Captain Nobody. Come in. Over,” came the scratchy voice from inside my backpack.

  For a moment I considered ignoring Cecil, but when he added, “I’m not foolin’ around. Over,” I laughed and pulled the walkie-talkie from my bag.

  “What do you want, Cecil?”

  He sounded out of breath. “When you’re finished talking, you’re supposed to say, ‘over,’” he said. “Over.”

  I sighed. “Okay. ‘Over,’ already.”

  “That’s better,” he replied. “Captain Nobody, come quick! Over.”

  “What? Why?” There was a long silence until I figured out what he was waiting for. I pressed the “send” button and grumbled, “Over.”

  “I can’t explain, but meet me in three minutes at the corner of Warren and Kander. Over,” he said. And before I could say, “What for?” Cecil snapped off his receiver.

  I paced back and forth on the sidewalk, caught halfway between my house and the street corner Cecil had named. The way Cecil had shouted “Captain Nobody, come quick!” had tweaked my curiosity. So I had a choice: I could go home and change clothes in time to greet my parents, or I could spend just a little longer as my inner other.

  What would you have done?

  Cecil started waving frantically the moment I turned onto Kander Street. “Captain Nobody! Thank goodness you’re here!” He was holding the long, black handle of a low, red wagon.

  “What’s that for?” I asked as I got nearer. “And what’s so important that I had to come quick?”

  “I could tell you,” Cecil said as he headed down a nearby alley, “but it’s easier just to show you.”

  I followed as he pulled the wagon, bumping and bouncing over the potholed asphalt, past Dumpsters and garbage cans.

  “There!” he exclaimed as he pulled to a stop. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

  On top of a Dumpster packed full to the brim with crates and boxes sat a big bass drum. Its shiny metallic blue frame was dented all over and one of its two little kickstand legs was bent at a wonky angle.

  “It’s pretty banged up,” I noted.

  “Not where it matters!” Cecil assured me. “Look at that skin—not a tear anywhere.”

  It was true. From where we stood, the drumhead—the place you hit to make the noise—looked pretty good.

  “Even so,” I said slowly, “there’s a reason someone threw it away.”

  “So what if it’s got a few dings? That doesn’t change the sound.” Cecil gazed up fondly. “It’s the first piece in my very own drum kit.”

  After a long silence, I finally spoke. “Hey, Cecil? I don’t mean to break up your little love affair with the garbage, but why am I here?”

  “Because! There’s no way I could possibly climb up there and bring that thing down alone.”

  The way the Dumpster loomed over my head, it might as well have been a skyscraper. My fear of heights immediately kicked in as my palms began to sweat.

  “You know what?” I suggested. “Why don’t you climb up there and hand it down to me?”

  “Well, that’s just dumb,” Cecil scoffed. “If I slip and drop it, that thing could crush you.”

  “But if I slip and drop it, then you’ll be crushed,” I pointed out, before adding quietly, “And besides, you know I hate heights.”

  “That’s why this job calls for Captain Nobody. He’s fearless!”

  Cecil said that last part with such conviction that my heart gave a little kick in my chest. After all, who knew what Captain Nobody was capable of? This discarded drum was Cecil’s dream. And there it was . . . just out of reach. How could I not help?

  I set down my book bag and, wiping my damp palms on my red sweatpants, I walked to the back of the Dumpster. Slowly and carefully, I climbed the rungs sticking out the side of the big steel box. When I reached the top, I pulled myself over onto the trash heap and stood up.

  Big mistake! The instant I saw how high up I was, I dropped to my hands and knees, panting furiously. Fortunately, Cecil was so busy positioning his wagon that he didn’t see my panic.

  “I’m not ‘supposed to be’ anybody,” I reminded myself in a whisper. “I am Captain Nobody.”

  That calmed me down enough that I managed to crawl over the piles of crumpled boxes, lawn cuttings and plastic garbage bags. When I reached the drum, I tugged it to the front lip of the bin and called down, “Y’ready?”

  “Ready!” Cecil shouted. But when I looked over the edge of the Dumpster, I found that he was standing in the bed of his red wagon, reaching up.

  “Get out of that thing, Cecil!” I yelled down. “If it rolls, you’re going down like Humpty Dumpty.”

  “Oh. Good thinking.” He hopped to the pavement and pushed the wagon to one side. “See? That’s why you’re Captain Nobody and I’m the sidekick.”

  It was hard work, but by gripping the drum’s battered rim and letting it slide over the side, I was able to slowly ease it down into Cecil’s waiting hands.

  “Got it?” I asked.

  “Got it,” Cecil grunted, taking the full weight of his treasure into his upstretched arms. He staggered for a moment, dropped to one knee, and lowered the drum into his red wagon with a thump. Then he straightened up and, with an open palm, he thwacked the drum skin.

  Boom!

  “Wow . . . wow . . . wow,” Cecil repeated over and over.

  I guess it had all been worth it.

  With great care, I crawled back to the rear of the Dumpster and swung a leg over the edge. My foot searched around until it found the first rung, and then I clambered down backward.

  I was feeling pretty pumped up from my first “adventure.” At least until a gnarled hand suddenly shot out from a stack of cardboard boxes piled against the wall and grabbed me by the ankle!

  I screamed like a cheerleader in a horror film.

  12

  IN WHICH CAPTAIN NOBODY FIRST COMES TO THE RESCUE

  “What’s goin’ on, man?” Cecil hollered as he dashed around the corner of the Dumpster.

  The hand belonged to an old, gray-whiskered man slumped on the pavement. When Cecil saw the guy, he shouted, “Hey! You! Get offa him, mister!”

  The man flinched at the sound of Cecil’s voice. He let go of me, and then he shook his head and rubbed his red eyes as if he were just waking up. My first thought was that this guy was drunk and had stumbled into the alley to sleep. But once I got over the shock of being grabbed, I saw that he was sort of nicely dressed.

  And that’s when I realized that I knew him.

  “Mr. Clay?”

  The man looked up at me and blinked. “Tuesday. It’s Tuesday,” he said.

  “You know this guy?” Cecil asked.

  “Mr. Clay’s a locksmith,” I explained.

  I should have said, Mr. Clay was a locksmith. Over the years, Mom would sometimes arrive at a house she was trying to sell only to discover that she had forgotten—or lost—the keys. That’s when she’d call Mr. Clay. He’d zip right over and pick the locks or re-key the doorknobs, and then he’d cut extra keys with the machine he had in the back of his little cherry red van. Mom had used him for as long as I could remember, but about a year ago, I overheard her tell Dad, “I’m afraid that sweet Mr. Clay is beginning to drop the ball.” She hasn’t called him since.

  Mr. Clay looked up with wide, watery eyes and extended a closed fist to me.

  “Watch it!” Cecil warned. “The guy’s probably a wino.”

  “Mr. Clay’s n
ot a wino,” I said. “But I think he’s got that thing older people get . . . where their mind gets fuzzy?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cecil said. He gave Mr. Clay a sympathetic look. “My Grandma Butterworth got that. It’s no fun.”

  I reached my hand out to his. Mr. Clay dropped an empty plastic medicine bottle into my palm.

  “Oh, I get it. He’s out of medicine,” I explained to Cecil. “Is that what happened, Mr. Clay? Did you go for a walk and get lost?”

  He stared at me, confused and hesitant. “Do I know you?”

  I knelt down and took him by the arm.

  “Mr. Clay, my name is Captain Nobody,” I said, helping him to his feet, “and I’m here to take you home.”

  I held Mr. Clay’s hand and walked him the six blocks to his house. I knew where he lived, because when he wasn’t off doing a job, his cherry red van was always parked in front. Cecil followed us, hauling his drum in the wagon. None of us said anything until we turned onto Mr. Clay’s block.

  “I know this street,” he smiled weakly.

  “I bet you do,” I assured him.

  Cecil waited on the sidewalk as I led Mr. Clay up on his front porch. I was about to ring the doorbell when he put out his hand to stop my finger.

  “Mrs. Clay will be worried,” he said with an embarrassed wince.

  I nodded and left him there on the porch so he could ring the bell himself.

  By the time I’d run down the driveway and joined Cecil at the curb, the front door had opened and a woman’s voice cried, “There you are! I was worried sick!”

  Over a low hedge, Cecil and I watched as a little lady with gray hair in a flowered dress—Mrs. Clay, I guessed—hugged Mr. Clay with all her might.

  “How did you get here?” we heard her ask in a voice choked with emotion.

  “Captain Nobody walked me home,” said Mr. Clay.

  “Oh. Captain Nobody, huh?” Mrs. Clay chuckled as she scanned the empty porch and wiped tears from her face. “I hope you thanked him.” She gently led Mr. Clay into the house and closed the door.

  Cecil and I exchanged a smile.

  “You saved that man,” Cecil said.

  “Oh, c’mon,” I scoffed. “I walked an old friend home.”

  He held up a hand, and I high-fived him. Then we rolled his precious bass drum over to his house, thumping it as we went.

  13

  IN WHICH DAD MEETS CAPTAIN NOBODY

  It was getting dark by the time I got home and saw Dad’s car in the driveway; the perfect end to an awesome day! I raced across the lawn and burst into the house, shouting, “Dad! Hey, Dad! How’s Chr—”

  I screeched to a halt in the kitchen doorway when I saw that Dad was on his cell. He looked me up and down, and said into his phone, “Listen, let me call you back” before folding it shut.

  That’s when it hit me that Dad was meeting Captain Nobody for the first time.

  All thoughts of Chris flew from my head. In the awkward silence that followed, I gulped and shifted from one foot to the other, more nervous and uncomfortable than I had been in the last twenty-four hours. If Mom had been the first to see me dressed the way I was, I’m pretty sure that she’d have been amused, but I couldn’t figure out whether Dad was angry or concerned.

  Finally he shook his head and said, “We are so sorry, Newt.”

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “For neglecting you.” I started to speak, but Dad put his hand up. “No, it’s true. We—your mother and I—we’ve been very, very distracted lately. Then today we started getting calls at the hospital. First it was your principal, then Mrs. Young, then your guidance counselor, and, my gosh, our cell phones were going all day. And we think we owe you an apology, because we . . .” He gave a big sigh. “We just never stopped to notice what you’ve been going through.”

  “What am I going through?”

  “This!” He waved his hand at my clothes. “The folks at school seem to think that you’re so upset about your brother’s situation—”

  “I never told them that!” I blurted.

  “Well, they’re smart people. They figure these things out. And they’re very concerned—and so are your mom and I—that Chris’s accident has disturbed you so much that you seem to have—how’d they put it?—that you seem to have ‘lost touch with reality.’”

  “I what?” I almost laughed. “They think I’m crazy?”

  “Nobody used that word.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Well, you wore your Halloween costume to school.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ,” I started to say.

  “And they’re your brother’s clothes.”

  “He gave them to me, so they’re technically mine,” I insisted. “And besides, I feel really super amazing in them. It’s like magic, Dad.”

  “Clothes do not have magical powers, Newt.”

  “Really? What about your ‘lucky hat’ that you wear to all of Chris’s games?”

  “That’s not exactly the same thing—”

  “And Mom? When she’s close to selling a house, she puts on those green shoes she calls her ‘seal-the-deal-heels’?”

  “All right, all right, I get it,” Dad stammered. “But, still . . . you told people your name is ‘Captain Nobody.’”

  “Pretty cool, huh? It sort of came to me.”

  “It ‘came’ to you?” Dad looked worried. “This Captain Nobody, what should I know about him? Is he going to try to fly or stop a bullet with his teeth?”

  I sighed. “Dad, I haven’t lost my mind.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Behind the mask, I’m still me.”

  That seemed to console him. “Okay, then let me ask you: When do you think you’ll . . . stop?”

  “Stop?”

  “Stop being Captain Nobody.”

  If Dad had asked me that question two hours before—before I helped Cecil rescue his bass drum and before I saw the light go on in Mr. Clay’s eyes—I probably would have had a different answer.

  “I’m not sure,” I shrugged, and then I did something I don’t remember ever having done in my lifetime: I reached up and patted my dad on the shoulder. “But you’ll be the first to know,” I assured him.

  Dad smiled. He seemed relieved to end that conversation. His pager beeped, but he punched the button that switches it off and turned his attention back to me.

  “So, are your teachers right?” he asked. “Are you thinking about your brother a lot?”

  I felt like I’d been poked in the heart.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said quietly. “A lot.”

  We sat at the kitchen counter and ate sloppy joes that I made from a can. Dad told me how Chris’s doctors were “baffled,” but they were continuing to “feel optimistic.” He talked about the machines Chris was hooked up to and the tests they were running, and how there were so many balloons and flowers in my brother’s room that the nurses started to distribute them around the hospital.

  Then Dad took a picture of me with his cell phone and sent it to Mom.

  Suddenly, in the middle of our great conversation, the walkie-talkie in my backpack squealed.

  “What’s that?” Dad asked.

  I jumped off my chair and grabbed my bag. “Sorry! Cecil’s trying out this new gadget on me,” I said. “I’ll take it in the dining room.”

  Once I was out of earshot, I pulled out the receiver in time to hear: “This is Cecil Butterworth calling Captain Nobody. Come in, Captain Nobody. Over.”

  I pushed the “talk” button. “What is it now, Cecil?” I groaned before I added, “Over.”

  “We need you, Captain Nobody! My uncle wants to move a freezer out of his basement, and I told him I know just the guy to call. Over.”

  I stared in disbelief at the walkie-talkie in my hand before I squeezed the “talk” button again. I made hissing and crackling noises, “kshhrkkkkpppfffsshhhh . . .”—sprinkled with fragments of words—“. . . can’t hear you . . . pssshhhh . . . losing battery
pow . . . bbbbblljjjkkkshhhh.” Then, just before switching off the walkie-talkie once and for all, I said very clearly, “Over.”

  I finished my homework and was getting ready for bed when Dad stuck his head into my room.

  “Your mom got the picture of Captain Nobody. She says she hasn’t stopped laughing, and she’s showing everybody in the hospital.”

  “Really?” My smile was about two feet wide. It seemed like a good moment to ask the question I had been wanting to ask all evening.

  “Dad? When can I come visit Chris?”

  Dad sat on the edge of my bed and patted a place for me to sit beside him.

  “Right now, kiddo, Chris’s doctors still have tests they want to run. They have specialists they want to consult. Until then, they’re saying, ‘No visitors.’ As a matter of fact, Chris’s coach dropped by, and his teammates keep showing up. But nobody gets in.” Dad put an arm around my shoulder. “So, can you give us another day or two before you come by?”

  I squeezed my lips together and nodded.

  “Sure.”

  “But,” Dad said brightly, “just because you can’t visit doesn’t mean you can’t see your brother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, visiting hours are over for the night,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of its holster on his belt, “but look what your mother took for you.”

  He flipped open his phone, pushed a button, and there, on the tiny screen, was a short, wobbly video of Chris lying in his hospital bed. He looked pretty much the same as when I go to wake him in the morning, except that bundles of wires and tubes snaked out from under his hospital gown and connected him to a bunch of machines with green blips rolling across their screens. Dad explained what every machine was for. Since the little movie lasted only about ten seconds, we played it four more times.

  When we were done, my eyes stung and I couldn’t think of anything to say. After I closed the phone and handed it back to Dad, he kissed the top of my head. “When the doctors say it’s okay, you’ll be the first one through the door.”