The Struggles of Johnny Cannon

by Isaiah Campbell

  “Get over here!” I hollered to them other fellas. They all came running and as soon as they saw what I saw, they started pulling on the slab to move it.

  “Daddy,” Willie said as he got up next to me. “Try and push it off.”

  “Can’t,” Reverend Parkins said. “I can’t move my hands.”

  The Three Caballeros was heaving as hard as they could. Carlos grabbed a piece of rebar, but then dropped it ’cause it was flaming hot. He pulled off his shirt and grabbed it again and stuck it under the slab to start prying it off.

  “Are you paralyzed?” Willie said.

  “No,” Reverend Parkins said. “I just can’t do it right now.”

  “Where’s Bob? Was he in there too?” I asked.

  “Yes, we were together,” he said. “Please, get this off of me.”

  I started pushing on the slab myself. After a few seconds of nearly popping all our back muscles, we got it moved. Reverend Parkins’s foot had been under it and it was pretty bad mangled up, plus he had pretty bad burns all over his legs and back. But not a one of us focused on those things, ’cause all of a sudden, we knew why he hadn’t been able to use his hands.

  He was laying on top of Bob Gorman, like he’d jumped on him to protect him from the falling slab. And he had his hand in a deep gash on Bob’s throat, pushing real hard like he was trying to keep him from bleeding to death. There was a bloody piece of glass on Bob’s smoldering chest, which must have been inside his neck before Reverend Parkins moved to save him.

  Meanwhile, Bob, who probably would have been better off to be knocked out, was wide awake, his eyes bulging, staring at Reverend Parkins’s face, his mouth gurgling but not saying nothing.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Reverend Parkins kept whispering to him. “The Lord is our shepherd. It’s going to be okay.”

  Mr. Thomassen jumped up.

  “Get a doctor over here! Now!”

  It only took a couple of seconds for Dr. Percival to get a gurney and two nurses over with him. When they saw the scene, they all froze. Reverend Parkins kept whispering a prayer to Bob.

  “Move!” Mr. Thomassen said.

  Dr. Percival sent a nurse to get more help and another gurney. All the while, Reverend Parkins kept on whispering the same thing over and over to Bob.

  I glanced over at Willie. I could tell he was freaking out something fierce. Even though it was probably weird and wasn’t what you was supposed to do with another fella, I reached over and grabbed his hand. He didn’t pull it away.

  When they got another gurney over, we all scrambled and started working on moving Bob onto the first of them. After we got him on, Dr. Percival moved around and worked to replace Reverend Parkins’s hand with his own. Right after Reverend Parkins’s blood-covered hand came out, they went to move him onto his own gurney, but Bob’s hand snapped up and grabbed Reverend Parkins’s wrist. He wouldn’t let them move Reverend Parkins away from him.

  “Somebody break his grip so we can move them,” Dr. Percival said. The nurses tried, but Bob was holding on for dear life.

  “We can’t,” one nurse said. Dr. Percival growled.

  “Fine, then bring the other gurney closer so we can move them together.”

  They did that and got Reverend Parkins onto the other one, and Bob didn’t let go of his wrist, not once. Reverend Parkins called to Willie to come closer.

  “I’ll stay right by you,” Willie said to him.

  “No, go on home and tell your ma that I’m okay,” Reverend Parkins said. “She’s probably worried enough as it is, and I don’t—” He coughed a whole mess of stuff up. “I don’t want you seeing me like this. So go on. For me.”

  Willie didn’t seem happy about that, but he nodded. They started to move them along and Willie was left standing there. He hollered after them to stop and he went real quick to Bob.

  “You need to stay alive,” he said. “It wouldn’t be right for you to die after my dad acted like a SuperNegro for you.”

  Bob nodded a little and they hurried to get into the ER so they could save his life.

  Willie went and asked Pa if he could take him home so he could do what his pa had said, and so we went and got into our truck and left all that trouble behind so Willie could be a good son. I probably needed to be taking notes, but I didn’t have no notebooks with me, so I hoped I’d just remember it later.

  On our way up the hill, Willie stared out the window and I figured he was real worried about his pa, so I patted him on the back, which was somehow more awkward than when we’d been holding hands. He looked at me.

  “Hey, Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking,” he said. “Mercury needs a hideout.”

  It took me a second to respond.

  “Mercury? You mean your made-up superhero?”

  “SuperNegro, and yeah,” he said. “If Mercury had a hideout, like the Batcave or something, he could have a whole mess of computers and such and probably be able to do things like figure out the cipher in that letter and all that lickety-split.”

  “Boy, I can’t believe you’re thinking of that letter at a time like this,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “It’s easier than the alternative.”

  I nodded.

  “On top of that, I can’t believe you’d default to the Batcave for the hideout. What about the Fortress of Solitude? Superman’s got Kryptonian computers in there that can do what them Batcomputers couldn’t never do.”

  “But Mercury ain’t Kryptonian,” he said. “And, anyway, the Batcomputers are more realistic.”

  Now, normally that would have set off an hour-long argument over which was better, Superman or Batman, and we’d both get real mad at each other and dig out comics to prove our points and all that. And normally, I’d have won, but he’d claim he did, which would have started another argument. And it’d be a grand old time of fun arguing.

  But a lightbulb had just went off in my head that made me not feel up to arguing. Instead, it made me feel up to mystery solving.

  “ ‘A solitary fort,’ ” I said. “Ain’t that what the hidden message said?”

  He blinked a couple of times. “Yeah,” he said. “ ‘If a solitary fort is a Scottish lake.’ ”

  “The Fortress of Solitude,” I said. “That’s the solitary fort.”

  His eyes got wide. “Whoa, that makes sense. But what’s a Scottish lake?”

  Pa must have been listening. “It’s a loch,” he said. “Like Loch Ness.”

  Me and Willie both had more lightbulbs busting. “The Fortress of Solitude is the lock!” we said at almost the same time.

  “What’s the next part?” I asked.

  “ ‘Then what is its resident?’ ”

  “Superman,” I said. “Obviously.”

  “But it didn’t say ‘who,’ ” Willie said. “It said ‘what.’ ”

  “Well,” Pa said, “I don’t rightly know what y’all are talking about, but it would seem that if the first line is about the lock, then the second line is about the key. That’s how riddles usually work out.”

  “Superman is the key,” I said. Then I realized what that meant. “It’s ‘Superman’!”

  “Dadgummit,” Willie said. “Of course it’s Superman. How come we didn’t think of that before?”

  “You didn’t have me around,” Pa said with a chuckle. “I’m real keen at riddles.”

  Willie leaned into my ear and whispered to me.

  “Go get the letter and bring it to my house. We’ll figure it out now, that’s for darn sure.” He looked out the window and got that glimmer in his eye. “Meanwhile, I need to get a hold of Short-Guy.”

  We dropped Willie off at his house and his ma was standing on the porch, watching the road real worried-like. I reckoned that wasn’t going to be the best of conversations he was about to have, telling her what happened with Reverend Parkins and all. Which meant he’d be primed and ready to scat as soon as I got back. Which
was fine by me.

  We went up to our house and I hurried inside to grab the letter. Sora was sitting on the couch with a wet rag covering her eyes, and she was holding on to a pillow like it was a parachute.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “I don’t feel well at all,” she said. “I think this baby’s trying to kill me.”

  “Well, don’t let it. There’s already been enough folks getting rushed to the hospital today for my taste.” I ran up to my room and grabbed the letter. I peeked at it for a minute to see if I could figure it out on my own, which of course I couldn’t, but I still owed it to myself to try. I could hear Pa checking on Sora the same as I had, and him saying just about the same thing I did. Then he went out to his radio shack and I reckoned I was clear to run back over to Willie’s.

  I started out the door, but Sora stopped me.

  “Did something happen with Rudy today?” she asked.

  “More like Rudy happened to something,” I said.

  “He called me,” she said. “He seemed in a panic. Insisting that I come and meet him. Like it was life or death.”

  “I don’t reckon you ought to,” I said. Then I told her the whole story about Rudy blowing up Bob’s shop, and about him being a Trafficante, and the whole shooting match. She clutched the pillow harder to her chest while I told it all. She shook her head and I almost thought she had tears in her eyes.

  “I knew he hadn’t changed,” she said. “Once a Trafficante, always a Trafficante.”

  “Wait, you knew he was a Trafficante?”

  She nodded. “But he swore he’d left that lifestyle behind. Trying to be a better man. Making his own name in the world. A name worth taking.” She breathed out a long sigh.

  I didn’t really much care for that sigh. “I thought you was Tommy’s girl,” I said. She looked startled at that.

  “I am,” she said. “Rudy is just—he’s like a brother to me. He’s always taken care of me. And I know he’s so in love with me, because he always tells me.” She looked me in the eyes. “Tommy never said that to me.”

  He should have. But that was Tommy.

  “Well, I don’t reckon Rudy’s as different as he claimed.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I don’t feel the same for him as he feels for me. I’ve just never really told him. But I need to, for both our sakes. I’ll go meet him and tell him to leave without me.”

  She started to get up, but then she groaned a little and sat back down.

  “Just leave him be,” I said. “He’ll get the hint. And maybe get picked up by the sheriff. That’d be a happy ending, for sure.”

  “I can’t do that to him. Regardless of what he’s done, he’s always been good to me.”

  She tried getting up again, but groaned even louder.

  “You’re going to kill yourself if you try heading out there right now.”

  “If he gets arrested or killed before I get the chance to talk to him, I won’t be able to live with myself. He’s staying around for my sake. It’d be my fault.”

  Now I was the one that groaned. Why’d I have to be so danged addicted to doing things for other folks that wasn’t helping me live my life one bit?

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  She didn’t seem like she believed me and started to try and get up again.

  “No, really,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Because you think it’s safer for you to go than for me? Trust me, Rudy is a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy. If he thinks you’re trying to get him in trouble—”

  “He won’t,” I said. “He don’t know I know he’s a Trafficante, or that he blowed up half of Main Street. I’ll just tell him I’m bringing a message from you. Besides, I’m a shoot-first kind of guy too. So I’ll be fine.”

  She probably would have kept fighting me on it if it wasn’t for the fact that she felt like a dead squirrel that had been left out for two days and then reheated in a pie pan for dinner. She told me where he was planning on meeting her, which was down by a stream just about thirty yards out our back door. Which wasn’t very far at all, when you’re walking it to skip rocks or something.

  But, when you’re headed to talk to somebody that likes to shoot before he says hello, it’s the longest walk you’ll ever take in your life.

  And there I was without my gun.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BLOOD AND GUTS

  I found them two crazy fellas right about where Sora said they’d be, but I didn’t barge right in between them off the bat. Instead, I hid behind a couple of trees so I could listen in on their conversation. ’Cause, brother, was they having a conversation.

  “No!” Rudy said, waving his arms around like a chicken trying to learn how to fly. “No, we can’t go back into town, you idiot! They’re looking for us.”

  “But . . . but what about them fellas we left in there?” Eddie said. “What if they didn’t get out? What if we—what if they’re dead?” His voice quivered a bit when he said that.

  “Did I know it was going to blow?” Rudy said. “No, no I didn’t. I lit my cigar for effect. It’s what you do, you leave an impression so they’re afraid of you. Oldest trick in the book.”

  “But you threw your match on them fireworks.”

  “Who leaves boxes of fireworks in an auto shop? If the idiot owner died, he deserved it.”

  Eddie got real quiet after that.

  “Anyway,” Rudy went on, “that Tigger was strong enough to drag him out of there. And getting hit with a tire iron won’t kill you. Trust me, if I had a nickel—”

  Didn’t really want to hear the end of that sentence, mainly ’cause I could tell Eddie was real close to blurting out some truth that he wouldn’t want Rudy to hear. So I stepped out of the trees.

  “Hey there, fellas,” I said.

  Rudy whipped his gun out of his shoulder holster and spun around. I raised my hands in the air.

  “Sora sent me,” I said.

  Rudy stared at me and his eye twitched a bit. Must have been a trait he got from his pa. One of many, I was beginning to believe.

  “Why didn’t she come?” he asked. “We have to get out of here.”

  “She ain’t feeling up to it,” I said. “She’s sick as a dog.”

  He put his gun back in the holster.

  “She’s not going into labor or something, is she?”

  “No, it ain’t nothing like that,” I said. “She just ain’t feeling up to it.”

  He didn’t seem too convinced.

  “You’d tell me if she was going into labor, right?”

  “Can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t,” I said. Course I didn’t tell him I couldn’t see any reason why I would, either. Didn’t want him pulling that gun out again.

  He glanced at Eddie again, who was sitting on a log with his head in his hands.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Rudy said, nodding and thinking while he talked, which never was a good idea ’cause that’s how you blurt out what you got your brother for Christmas. “This is okay, she’ll feel better soon. And then she’ll join us.”

  “She said something about you going on your own. Leaving her behind.”

  “No!” he said. “No, I’m not going to do that. She’s got to go with me. I can’t—” I’ll be darned if that fella didn’t start crying out of his eyeballs. He wiped them tears off with his wrist. “She’s all I’ve got anymore. She has to go with me. With us.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, ’cause I really didn’t.

  He fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out a notebook, then he used a tiny little pencil to write something down. He ripped the paper out, folded it up, and handed it to me.

  “Give this to her. Please,” he said. “As soon as possible. There’s not any time to lose.”

  I turned to run off, just glad that I didn’t have no bullet holes in me. I heard Eddie sob a little and realized how ate up he must have been over his pa. I looked over at him.r />
  “Bob’s gonna be okay,” I said, almost without thinking.

  He shot me a look, then he glanced at Rudy, but Rudy seemed too messed up over Sora to have heard nothing I said. Eddie nodded at me and pulled himself together. And I ran off, ’cause I’d done more than I needed to as it was.

  I got up to the house with that little note in hand, intending to give it to Sora and then run over to Willie’s with my letter so we could finally solve the mystery. Pa stopped me before I headed inside, though.

  “Sora is laying down,” he said. “So don’t you go bothering her none. She said she feels worse than she’s ever felt before. I tried to call the doctor, but they’re all busy with the folks from the explosion.”

  I reckoned Rudy’s note would have to wait.

  “Where you off to?” I asked, ’cause I saw that Mr. Thomassen was in his Cadillac, waiting in the front.

  “Short-Guy contacted me,” he said. “He’s heading back to town. Said he lost something and asked me to meet him at Mr. Thomassen’s so we could try to find it. You want to come?”

  Not even if he paid me. If I knew Short-Guy, he knew exactly why he’d lost them keys and he was ready to use his fancy CIA interrogation methods to get me to squawk.

  “Nah, I ain’t good at finding nothing, you know that.”

  He chuckled and headed off, and I walked on over to the Parkinses’ house.

  Mrs. Parkins was on the phone, talking to somebody that was apparently giving her the runaround at the hospital. She was asking to get connected to Reverend Parkins’s doctor, and they kept setting the phone down or something. As soon as I got inside, Willie grabbed me and we went to his room. He took the letter out of my hands and started blabbering.

  “Okay,” he said. “Since the word ‘Superman’ has a lot of letters from the second half of the alphabet, we’ll line up the letters in reverse order after the N, starting with Z.”

  I still didn’t understand a bit of that, but he showed me by writing it down.

  Then he wrote down the coded words under it.

  JVSJN IND KQUZT

  “Okay, so here we go,” he said. “J equals S. V equals M. S equals A. Then there’s J again, which is S.”