The star of most of The Kid’s stories was Smooshie Smith, Talk Show Host of the Future. Smooshie was the most popular talk show host in the history of TV because he had a time machine that let him go back and forth through the years and interview all sorts of people. He interviewed cowboys in the Western stories, soldiers in the war stories, aliens in the outer-space stories. Sometime he got caught up in battles and fights, but mostly he stuck to broadcasting his highly-rated show from different points in the timeline of the universe.
For the first issue of Extraordinary Adventures back in fourth grade, The Kid’s mom made copies of the original comic at her school. Then The Kid and Matthew sold as many as they could to other kids for fifty cents each and used the money to make copies of the next issue at the print shop on Vermont Avenue. With the money from that issue, they paid for the copies of the next issue, and so on. That was how it worked. Ten or twelve pages, usually, per issue. Black and white drawings because color copies were too expensive.
Since that first issue, they’d sold fewer copies of the comic. More kids didn’t like The Kid, didn’t want to buy the comic. The Kid had always been picked on, had always been smaller than the other kids, not as tough as the other kids, but things got really bad in fourth grade. A girl in his class said that The Kid’s breath stank. She may have been right, The Kid didn’t know. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, plenty of kids’ breath stank, but it stuck to The Kid. Someone told someone and someone told someone else and before The Kid knew it almost every day some kid was telling him that his breath stank. And then his armpits. And then his hair. They said that he was contagious. They didn’t want to touch anything that The Kid had touched. It grew like a weed, this idea of The Kid as an awful thing. It tangled around everyone and everything.
Around that time, his class had done a history unit where they learned about people in India who were so despised that they couldn’t even be brushed up against, could barely be looked at. That was where the name came from, the untouchables, the name for The Kid and Matthew and Michelle Mustache. Things got so bad that for the last issue of the comic they’d made, right at the end of the last school year, they’d only sold one copy. The rest were under The Kid’s bed, or boxed up in the garage back at the house, hidden away, embarrassing, a failed thing.
He’d tried to keep it from his mom and dad. He was ashamed of this, the way other kids thought about him. He didn’t want the germ of the idea to be planted with his parents, that he was dirty, that he was contagious. He was afraid that they would start to think this, too.
Of course his mom got it out of him. She noticed all the unsold comics, his increasing fear about going to school. He finally told her what was happening. She talked to his teacher and the principal of his school, but that only made things worse, really, only made the other kids angry about being lectured to. He pleaded with her not to say anything else, just to leave it alone, let it go away on its own.
But it didn’t go away. It had only gotten worse since his mom had been gone.
Matthew didn’t want to work on a new issue of the comic before dinner. He didn’t see the point. No one would buy it anyway. He said that instead he had a superhero scene he’d been thinking about, that he’d come up with a good idea, but he’d have to tell it to The Kid and The Kid would have to draw it because he wasn’t allowed to draw superheroes anymore. The Kid adjusted the Captain America comics in his waistband, made sure they were still covered by his shirt. Got a blank sheet of the big paper, a couple of colored pencils, started drawing the scene as Matthew told it.
There was a giant robot that was trying to destroy Los Angeles. It was a robot the government had made to pick up trash, but it had gone haywire when all the computers went berserk on New Year’s Eve, and now it was trying to destroy the city. The robot had big metal jaws with broken-glass teeth that it was supposed to use to eat garbage but now used to eat people. Matthew had The Kid draw a panel where the robot was walking through the downtown buildings, scooping up businessmen in its iron fist and biting them in half as other businessmen ran around screaming and waving their arms.
In the second panel, a superhero team arrived. This was the team’s last fight. They would have to give up their powers once they defeated the robot, because they’d found out that their powers were a gift from the Devil and not a gift from God, as they’d originally thought. They were pretty sad about giving up their powers, but they’d all banded together one last time to try to save the city.
The Kid drew a panel where the robot had reached their middle school. Kids poured from the doors, screaming as the robot crushed the building with its giant metal boots. The Kid gave each classmate an exaggerated distinguishing feature that made Matthew laugh and nod with approval. Brian Bromwell was flexing bulging muscles, Razz was wearing baggy pants ten sizes too big, Michelle Mustache had a real mustache, a dark brick of hair on her upper lip.
Matthew had the idea that he and The Kid should be two of the superheroes, that they should each have their own costume and power. The Kid drew Matthew flying into the scene, drew his oval head, his big round eyes. Drew him wearing gloves and boots and a long blue cape.
“What superpower do you think I’m going to pick?” Matthew said.
The Kid shrugged.
“Guess.”
The Kid found a blank corner of the page. Super strength, he wrote.
“Heat vision,” Matthew said. “And cold vision. One in each eye. That way I can melt things or freeze them in a block of ice.”
The Kid colored one of Matthew’s superhero eyes red, colored the other one blue. He finished drawing Matthew’s costume, decorated half with flames, half with icicles.
“But before I attack the robot,” Matthew said. “I shoot my beams at some of the other kids. The kids we don’t hate so much are getting frozen with my cold vision, but the kids we really hate are getting melted with my heat vision.”
The Kid drew cold beams shooting out of Matthew’s blue eye, ending in an icy cube around some of the kids who didn’t give them such a hard time. He drew shiver lines wiggling out from their bodies, tiny puffs of frozen breath coming from their mouths.
“Now draw the others,” Matthew said. He was sitting on his heels, starting to rock with excitement. “Draw the others getting melted.”
The Kid drew a blast of heat vision shooting from Matthew’s red eye, then a ring of fire burning on the ground around Brian and Razz’s feet. He drew shaded tendrils of gray steam rising from the tops of their heads, big beads of sweat leaping from their brows. Then he went to work on their faces, distorting their eyes and noses, stretching their features, melting their skin in the heat. The more he drew, the more he wanted to draw, the more gruesome detail he wanted to add. He drew blood pouring from their eyes, bile oozing from their mouths. He set their clothes and hair on fire, opened their bellies to spill their guts.
The Kid stopped, finally, put the pencils down. He and Matthew looked at the drawing. A riot of colors, filling the entire page. They could hardly make out the individual figures in the gory mess. The only character who could be easily identified was the superhero Matthew, standing in the middle of the scene, causing the carnage, cold and heat beams shooting from his eyes.
“Now draw yourself in there,” Matthew said, breathing hard from the excitement of the scene. “Draw yourself using your power for the last time.”
The Kid leaned back into the page, drew a tiny gray figure way up in the corner, a red cape fluttering behind.
“What’s your power?” Matthew said, rocking back and forth. “What do you do?”
The Kid didn’t answer. He kept drawing, sketching skinny arms reaching out from his sides, skinny legs stretching out behind, the superhero Kid soaring, passing the puffy clouds, leaving the scene, flying away out of the picture.
Sea green light in the fish fry on Alvarado Street. Darby and Bob sat in their booth by the window, looking out into the dark parking lot. A knot of people stood at the curb waiting
for the bus, women in nurse’s scrubs, men with toolboxes and lunch pails, slump-shouldered, the fatigue evident in their bodies.
Bob was laying waste to a large basket of fish sticks and tater tots. Darby picked at his filet, the greasy roll wrapped in a page of car ads from the morning’s paper. There was a TV on a high shelf behind the counter. Darby could see its reflection in the window, a news report on the survivalist group up north, the same footage from earlier in the day, a long-lens shot of the buildings behind the high fence.
“He wanted to haggle about the price,” Bob said. “That room was a heavyweight job and he wanted to haggle about the price.” He dunked a fish stick into one of the cups of tartar sauce, tossed it back into his mouth. “I told him that if he wanted to haggle, I had twenty-five biohazard bags full of he-knows-what that I was willing to dump back up in that room, just give me the word.”
They had dinner on the nights The Kid was over at the Crumps’, usually in the same booth at the same fish fry. Bob was always eager to have a meal away from home. After a couple of marriages and head-case girlfriends, Bob had lived for the past few years with his elderly Aunt Rhoda in her claustrophobic old house in Boyle Heights. He took care of her as best he could, though there was nothing really wrong with her but old age. She never left the living room, the couch in the living room, where she slept, where she watched game shows and the daily Mass for Shut-ins.
“I don’t mind the cleanups,” Bob said. “The fluids and matter and all of that shit. It’s listening and talking to those people that wears me down.”
A bus pulled up to the curb. The group at the corner climbed aboard, leaving the stop empty. Darby scratched at his hand, a small scab on the black-script W above the knuckle of his index finger.
Bob coughed into a napkin, wiped his mouth. “How’s my guy?” he said.
“I had to pick him up at school again today.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody pissed on his clothes.”
Bob shook his head. “Don’t let them fuck with him, David.”
“I know.”
“You think they’re little kids so, so what, what’s the worst they can do.”
“I know what they can do.”
“Get on the horn to their parents. Call their fathers. A phone call to the father yields fearsome results.”
“He won’t say who’s doing it.”
“Find out. Get a name and make a call. I’m telling you. These little kids can be fucking animals.” Bob tossed his napkin on top of his empty plate, let out a rolling belch.
A waitress came by with the check, set it on the table. Bob slid the check toward Darby.
“This is yours.”
“How do you figure?”
“The job took four hours this morning,” Bob said. “You bet dinner on three.”
The sleigh bells over the door jangled. Two young Mexican girls came inside, selling tissue paper flowers from an emptied coffee can. Bob signaled to them, dug into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet.
“I’ll get one for Rhoda,” he said. “A souvenir from the outside world.”
He accepted a flower from the smaller of the girls, passed her a dollar bill, smiled.
“Gracias, mijita,” he said.
Darby picked The Kid up at the Crumps’ and they drove home in silence. At the house, they pulled the trash and recycle bins out to the curb. Garbage night. Something caught Darby’s eye out on the sidewalk, some movement under the twin holes set into the manhole cover. A trick of the streetlight maybe, something reflected. He saw it again, called The Kid over. The Kid crouched down next to the cover, looked into the holes. Put his ear to the metal, listening. Stood up and shook his head. He didn’t notice anything.
Darby still had remnants of the feeling from the job site that morning, the headache, the nagging tug. While The Kid got ready for bed, he sat on the living room couch with his eyes closed, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples.
The Kid came back downstairs in his Dodger pajamas. He stood in the kitchen for a moment, head down, taking deep breaths, composing his thoughts. Darby never knew if The Kid was nervous before he started, before he stepped through the threshold into the living room. Didn’t know if The Kid’s imaginary audience caused actual stage fright.
The Kid hosted a nightly talk show called It’s That Kid! He’d done this for a couple of years running. It was a highly successful show. It lasted about ten minutes—fifteen if The Kid had a particularly intriguing guest. He’d come up with the show as something to cheer Lucy up during the baseball off-season. Every night before bed, back when he was talking, he’d burst from the kitchen with a full-face smile and launch into his opening monologue, a few bits cribbed from the taped real-life shows he’d watched that morning before school, jokes he’d heard around the neighborhood, some real groaners from his book of knock-knock gags. Then he’d give a little intro where he told the audience about that night’s guest, their history and accomplishments. His guests were usually celebrities, sports figures, world leaders, people The Kid had seen on TV or heard about in school. Sometimes they were long dead; sometimes they were fictional. Past presidents were recurring guests, superheroes from his favorite comics, members of Dodger teams Lucy had told him about, men who played long before The Kid was born. The guest would come out and The Kid would stand politely while they waved to the audience, basking in the applause. Thank you, no, please, no, this is too much. The Kid sat on the other end of the couch from Lucy. His imaginary guest sat in the empty armchair a few feet away. The Kid asked questions about the guest’s current projects and past accomplishments, then answered in the closest thing he could approximate to the guest’s voice. The voice never sounded anything like the guest’s actual voice, but The Kid didn’t bill himself as an impressionist. He’d ask a question and alternate between his impression of the guest’s response and his reactions as host. When the guest told a joke, The Kid would laugh his ridiculous horse laugh, snorting and rocking like this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, egging on the audience, finally taking a minute to pull himself together before moving forward with the next question.
When there was a particularly important or interesting guest, The Kid taped the show with a small cassette recorder Bob had given him for Christmas one year, using the microphone to interview his guests and deliver the opening monologue. When the tapes were full, Lucy marked them with the guests’ names and the dates of their original broadcast, and The Kid kept them in a shoebox up in his room. This allowed him to air occasional reruns, play a tape instead of a live show on nights when he didn’t feel like interviewing a new guest or when he wanted to revisit an especially successful episode. Lucy made requests sometimes, asked The Kid to replay a show with a guest she liked, a funny monologue she remembered. The Kid opened each pre-recorded show with a brief announcement to the audience, slightly apologetic for not having a live show to offer.
It’s That Kid! had been the highlight of their night. Lucy would grade papers on the end of the couch, glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, sipping a glass of wine, smiling at The Kid’s bad jokes, his ridiculous impressions. Darby would sit in the chair in front of the TV, looking at that morning’s paper, drinking his coffee, watching his wife, watching his son, their day ending, his just about to begin.
The show had changed in the last year. Now The Kid wrote the questions in his notebook, listened as the guests answered from the empty chair in a voice only he could hear. Darby had to sit beside The Kid on the couch and read the notebook to follow the half of the show that was available. The Kid no longer performed the monologue at the beginning, or made the flattering introductions. It was too much to write. The shows were no longer recorded, of course. The tape recorder and cassettes had been packed away in the garage.
The Kid’s guest that night was an artist of some kind, a painter. From what Darby could gather from the notebook, the artist painted murals under bridges. The Kid was asking him if he was
worried that his murals were going to disappear under all the graffiti that was happening. If he was worried that one day he would walk under a bridge and find that his work was gone.
When the show was finished, The Kid thanked the painter, walked him off stage, giving a last wave to the audience. Darby followed upstairs. The Kid got into bed, switched off his light, set his notebook and pencil on the bedside table. Darby leaned down and kissed The Kid’s high forehead, whispered what Lucy had always whispered when she tucked The Kid into bed.
“Congratulations on a good show, Kid.”
It didn’t sound the same coming from Darby. He knew it, was sure The Kid knew it. But he said it anyway, every night. Congratulations on a good show, Kid.
He sat back down in the living room, flipped channels on the TV. It didn’t take long to find him, selling a steam-cleaning mop on one of the higher-numbered stations. Sometimes it was the mop, sometimes it was the car-finish repair kit. Sometimes it was the weight-loss program, two books and a series of videotapes. Earl Patrick, Lucy’s father, gone for almost a year and a half but still haunting the outer reaches of late-night TV.
Darby kept the sound off, watched Earl’s demonstration of the mop on a tiled kitchen floor. Lucy had looked more like her mother than her father, but she had his physicality, the strong, deliberate presence in rooms. Earl pushing a mop across a TV studio set; Lucy walking up and down the rows of desks in her classroom. Darby pictured her there clearly: insistent, determined, the students listening with varying degrees of interest, restlessness, teenage boredom. It is a day toward the beginning of November, a little less than a year ago. They are nearing the end of the unit on the 1960s, so she’s talking about Robert Kennedy and his run for the Democratic Nomination in ’68, his swing through California, his visit with César Chávez in the San Joaquin Valley, the famous photo, the two men sitting side-by side in a soybean field. A lesson he’d heard many times in various forms as she talked to herself in the kitchen, back at her desk. He pictured her asking questions in the classroom, looking to see if anyone remembered details from the lessons she gave the week before, poll numbers, troop levels, dates of sit-ins and marches.
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