Comic Book Hero Chapter 2

Tony Harmon stared across the wide expanse of his cherrywood and leather desk at the fat, balding man with the beady eyes, and remembered why he had hired him as his chief of security in the first place. As the site manager for Lydecker Laboratories’ new Sacramento plant, he had full authority to employ whoever he wanted to for that position. He could have hired some hard-nosed and flat-stomached ex-military type, an Army Ranger or maybe a Navy Seal. Or he could have picked any of a dozen highly decorated retired cops, some with twenty years or more experience, who had also applied for the job. But he hadn’t. Instead, Tony Harmon had hired Carlton Biggs.

Biggs had been a detective second grade in the Los Angeles Police Department, a twenty-three year veteran who had avoided a jail sentence by the skin of his teeth. The charges would have run the gamut from corruption and falsifying evidence, to police brutality and sexual misconduct. That his departure from LA’s finest did not include handcuffs and iron bars was due solely to the fact that it was an election year, and the mayoral incumbent was running on a law and order ticket. It would not have looked good at that time to have one of his officers tried and convicted for beating prisoners, or for running a protection racket on the local ladies of the night. And knowing this, Carlton Biggs had threatened to make any trial as loud and as messy as possible. It was an audacious gamble, and it paid off with Biggs losing his pension and all benefits, but with no charges filed. He was also allowed to resign, instead of being fired.

Of course these facts were not included in Biggs’ resume’, but they had come out easily enough in a cursory background check. In fact, they were the one and only reason Harmon had hired Biggs in the first place.

Harmon’s reasoning was that he really didn’t need a chief of security. The uniformed guards that roamed the halls at night and manned the reception desk during the day belonged to a local security company Lydecker had contracted with. They had their own supervisor, a grizzled old sergeant who assigned shifts and made sure they were covered, issued parking passes and ID cards, and did all the other day to day minutiae that were necessary. He performed these tasks adequately, and was paid two dollars an hour more than the uniformed men beneath him.

Carlton Biggs was paid eighty five thousand dollars a year. He wore Armani suits and a four thousand-dollar Rolex watch, and had a gold pinky ring with a one-karat diamond. He drove a company BMW, and he had an office with a large-breasted secretary just down the hall from Harmon himself. And it was doubtful if he even knew the names of any of the security personnel he was supposed to be in charge of.

On paper Biggs’ duties were entirely investigative. He conducted background checks on new employees, investigated accidents and vandalism, monitored employee theft and the occasional fistfight, and he acted as liaison to the police on the few occasions a crime was actually reported on company property. In short, officially Carlton Biggs did not do a damned thing that would begin to justify his outrageous salary and personal benefits package.

In reality, Biggs’ duties were whatever dirty piece of business that Harmon wanted done, and that he couldn’t afford to be caught doing himself. By and large, the site manager considered it money well spent.

Biggs read from his notes as he sat in a chair in front of Harmon’s desk. Or more accurately, from where he slumped in a chair. Although he now wore a $1200 suit, the ex-cop still managed to look like a sack of wet laundry.

“Okay, there’s no real doubt about what happened in Lab #6. The point of origin of the blast and subsequent flash fire were obvious, it was the central one of three gas spigots on the workbench. The blast spalling forms a textbook circle around that spigot, and where the other spigots show some rupturing, the center was the only one that was blown completely off. Besides, we found the spigot up in the ceiling, and the handle was fused in the open position.

“There was also a line of burnt rubber leading from a char-free area that matches the base of the type of Bunsen burner used in the labs. We found some pieces of burnt notepaper stuck in the rubber trace, and right next to that a partially melted glass ashtray with a bunch’a butts in it. Like I said, it’s textbook. That asshole Scarpelli was smoking in his lab again, started a fire, and this time the Surgeon General was right. Smoking was hazardous to his health.”

Harmon frowned. He knew there was no love lost between Biggs and Scarpelli, and honestly he hadn’t cared much for the egomaniac himself. But Scarpelli had represented a potentially huge windfall for Lydecker Labs, and therefore one for Harmon. In fact, he had lobbied furiously to have the irritating little genius sent here when Sacramento had opened. There was no help for it, his loss would reflect badly on Harmon directly.

“But it’s not 100% certain though, is it?” Harmon asked, grasping at a last straw, knowing that was what he was doing. “The melted tube, the burnt paper. All that could have been done by the explosion. And the fact that he had an ashtray on his workbench doesn’t mean that he was smoking at that time.”

But Biggs was shaking his head in disagreement. “Sorry, Mr. Harmon, but it does. The front desk logs show that Scarpelli entered the building fifty five minutes before the explosion. There were four butts in that ashtray, and the janitors would have emptied it the night before. He wasn’t just chain smoking, he was puffing away like one of those old time wild west steam trains.

“And that paper wasn’t just charred, Mr. Harmon, it was burned.” Biggs saw the puzzled look in Harmon’s eyes and elaborated. “In an explosion, you get a lotta heat, but you also lose all your oxygen. No oxygen, no flame, ‘cause the explosion snuffs it out. No flame, no burn, so those papers had to have been burned before the explosion. Same thing with the rubber tube, it was melted on top of the paper, so the paper must have been what melted the tube. I’m sorry, Mr. Harmon, but that’s the way it went. Scarpelli snuffed his own ass.” Biggs shrugged, as if acknowledging a hard and unchangeable fact of life.

Harmon leaned forward, rubbing his chin in thought. Absently he replied to Biggs. “Scarpelli isn’t dead, you know. He’s just in a coma.”

Biggs snorted derisively. “He might as well be dead, for all the good he’ll ever be. His hands and his face are half burned off, and if he ever wakes up the docs say he’ll probably be blind for life. Ugly blind cripples ain’t much use, even ‘genius’ ones.”

Harmon sighed, resigning himself to the inevitable. Doom was going to come down on him from all sides, and he’d just have to weather it somehow.

“And Scarpelli’s files, Biggs? Is there at least some good news with them?” he asked, hopefully.

But Biggs just shook his sweaty bald head again in the negative. It seemed, to Harmon, like Biggs was always sweating, as if being dry was against his very nature. It was a disturbing thought.

“I’m sorry about that too, Mr. Harmon. Scarpelli cleared out all his research files for the last year when he transferred up here from Berkeley, there’s nothin’ about his new project anywhere down there. He never transferred it to the system here ‘cause they hadn’t installed the terminal in his lab yet, and when we searched his house he didn’t even have his own PC set up, either. He must’ve kept everything important on his laptop, and that’s as much toast as Scarpelli himself. We got some retrieval experts trying to restore what they can from his hard drive, but they say there ain’t much hope.” Biggs ended with another dismissive shrug, and Harmon felt as if the gesture signaled his own doom as well as it did Dominic Scarpelli’s.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way we can make this all go away, is there, Biggs?” he asked, already sure he knew the answer.

But the expected answer never came. Instead Biggs began to smile, a slow smile, filled with the smugness of a man who is inordinately pleased with himself. Harmon perked up, a surge of hope washing through his gloom. Maybe this was why he had hired Carlton Biggs in the first place.

“Actually, Mr. Harmon, I think it already has.” He crossed his legs and sprawled even more in his seat, stretching out like a great, fat cat with a warm canary in its belly. He was about to tell Harmon just how smart Alice Biggs’ little boy actually was.

“It turns out, the fire investigator they sent out was an old buddy of mine from L.A. I let him walk on a morals charge once, and after that me and him had what you might call a ‘mutually beneficial relationship’. And for a price, he was willing to renew this relationship with me.”

“I see,” said Harmon, who did indeed see. “And what would that price be, Mr. Biggs?”

“$20,000, Mr. Harmon. For that price, he not only gives us his original report, he also files exactly what we want him to.”

Harmon nodded, satisfied. The man’s price would probably be $5,000, he knew, with the rest going into Biggs’ own pocket. Harmon didn’t mind, in this case Biggs had certainly earned it. In fact, he would have paid five times that amount to make this mess go away.

“Are you sure we can trust him?” he asked, but already sure he knew the answer.

Biggs grunted in amusement. “Oh, yeah. That morals charge? It seems this friend of mine likes young boys. Very young, you know what I mean?”

Harmon winced. As was inevitable, Biggs had once more ruined a conversation with something crude and distasteful. The man’s humor was like a large brown turd, sitting on a white tablecloth at a banquet. Harmon decided that he did not really want to know what the ‘mutually beneficial relationship’ with the fire inspector had been. He looked down at his folded hands, contemplating his perfect manicure. Perhaps he’d be able to make his doubles match tonight after all.

“Very well then, Mr. Biggs. Withdraw the money from the discretionary funds account. Get it to him as soon as possible, and be sure that you destroy that original report.”

Biggs nodded and rose, knowing he had been dismissed. He didn’t mind, he didn’t like the prissy little asshole’s company anymore than Harmon liked his. But he’d do whatever the guy said, as long as the money kept coming in.

And as he walked out of Tony Harmon’s spacious office, Carlton Biggs was sure of one thing. He would not destroy that Fire Investigation Report. If there was one thing Biggs had learned as an L.A. cop, it was the value of owning somebody else’s secrets.

*****

It was the itching of his back that first woke Tom Blackwood. It began at the shoulders, at that hard to reach spot just below the neck, and extended downward between his shoulder blades. It spread slowly, like a carpet of crawling ants with needle sharp feet, flowing across his ribs and down his spine to the hollow just below his tailbone, the entire area now covered by pink new scar tissue. It was a torment, a burrowing irritation that crept into his dreams, grabbed him by the balls, and tried to bring him kicking and screaming into the light. Grimly he fought back, holding on with clawed fingers to the last vestiges of sleep, and eventually his valiant efforts were rewarded as the real world once more faded into the background.

“DAAA-AAADDYYYYY!”

Tom jerked up in bed, the impossibly high-pitched shriek driving an ice pick into his ear, and then twisting it viciously behind his eyes. All possibility of sleep vanished in an instant, as Tyler’s four-year-old voice rang through the house from the hallway right outside his bedroom door. Christ, even his teeth hurt!

With a groan of defeat Tom buried his head in the pillow, then gingerly rolled over onto his back. Fuzzily he marveled at the incredible power behind those little lungs, backing up a voice so sharp it could etch glass. Was it just little girls, he wondered, who had that power? When Benny was four he’d never screamed like that, especially in the morning when the grownups were trying to sleep.

Well, almost never.

Tyler’s voice echoed back again from the other end of the house, and with a grumbled curse Tom finally hauled himself from the bed, shrugging away the stiffness from the muscles of his itching back. The itch had started a couple of days back, and at first he welcomed it, considering it a pleasant change from the numbness he had felt since he awoke in the hospital. But that was two days past, and now it was just another pain in the ass he had to endure.

He pulled on a robe and grabbed his towel and shaving kit, and then made his way down the hall to the bathroom he shared with the girls. The cap was off the toothpaste again, and a large blob of the blue gel stuff was sitting in the bottom of the sink. That would be Desiree’s, he knew. She would have brushed before going off to school. Tyler could never be induced to brush her teeth before noon. He used a piece of toilet paper to wipe it up.

After using the toilet, brushing his teeth and shaving, Tom climbed into the shower, bending down to remove the four plastic toys in the bottom of the bathtub and the soapy clump of long brown hair from the drain. With a sigh he finally closed the pebbled glass door of the shower and turned on the water, feeling it’s warmth flow over his skin, letting it wash the last vestiges of sleep and sweat from his body.

Tom was just beginning to lather his hair with shampoo when he heard the door of the bathroom creak open. Tyler’s voice again, this time modulated to a more endurable level, called out over the sound of the running shower.

“Unca’ Tommy? I gots to pee, Unca’ Tommy.”

“Can you wait ‘til I’m done with my shower, honey?” Tom called, as he closed his eyes to keep out the soapy water.

“Noo-oo, I ca-aan’t, Unca’ Tommy. I haveta go no-owww,” Tyler said, in that universal singsong all children use to impart urgency. He could just imagine her dancing from foot to foot as she said it. It made him smile, the first one of the morning.

“Okay, honey, go ahead. Just try and be done before I have to get out of the shower, alright?” he replied. Tom didn’t mind the interruption. The pebbled glass of the shower door with its two racked towels provided more than enough privacy for modesty’s sake. Nor was he embarrassed by his niece’s bodily functions being performed in his presence, he had changed far too many of her and her sister’s diapers to be bothered by this sanitized version. Besides, he had gone through the same thing with his son, Benny.

The thought of his own child brought a rush of bittersweet memories to Tom. The small pajama clad body that would crawl into bed between him and Miko on Saturday mornings. The tiny hand that held his so tightly as they walked down the sidewalk. The finger paintings stuck to the refrigerator with magnets shaped like cartoon animals and robots. He missed him, his son, and all the thousand and one little things that went with being his dad.

He smiled into the spray. There had also been times, he remembered, when a four year old Benny “had to go no-owww” when his father was in the shower.

Tom stiffened, his eyes going wide as he remembered what else had happened at those times. Hurriedly he reached for the faucet handles, but it was too late.

Tyler flushed the toilet.

*****

At lunchtime Mike Blackwood came out of his study and headed for the kitchen, twisting his neck to stretch the kinks out, and blinking in the bright sunlight. Mike had just spent five hours staring at a computer screen, and it had left him with a bad case of ‘square eyes’. As a freelance computer consultant he was used to it and, as he often joked, it sure beat the hell out of working for a living. Still he would be glad when this particular job was over. It had been a month of ten and twelve-hour days, but the pay off would be worth it. Enough for that trip to Disneyland he had promised the kids, with maybe enough left over for that hot-tub spa that he and Cathy had been drooling over.

Mike entered the kitchen and found the remnants of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich littering the counter, proof that his brother Tom had already fed Tyler and probably put her down for a nap, too. Breadcrumbs and driblets of purple jam dotted the tiles, with the bread and jam still out, while the peanut butter stood open with a butter knife sticking straight up out of it. Mike frowned in irritation. Having Tom here had been a godsend, especially after the first couple of days when he had been able to move around by himself. Tyler’s daycare center had been closed for over a week since a burst pipe had flooded the building, and having his little brother there to watch Tyler had allowed Mike to get a lot of work done. He knew how much of a handful his over-energized daughter could be, and he appreciated Tom’s help. Still, he wished the guy would learn to clean up after himself, at least while he was a guest in Mike’s house.

Sounds of movement directed Mike to the door that led into the garage, where he found Tom hanging tools on a recently installed pegboard over a spotlessly clean workbench. The lifetime accumulation of tools, appliances, old toys and whatever that a family of four can gather had long ago turned Mike’s two car garage into a Fred Sanford junkyard. Out of boredom Tom had taken on the task of cleaning the place up, and the transformation was almost complete. The loose items were all picked up and put on shelves or in boxes. Trash had been thrown out by the bag full, the concrete floors swept and even mopped, and a ten-foot square scrap of dusty carpeting had been vacuumed and laid out in the center of the floor. Mike was suitably impressed at the transformation, and also by his brothers’ initiative.

So why can’t he clean up after a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

“Hey,” he called, taking the one step down into the newly cleaned garage. Strange, but for some reason he felt like knocking first and asking permission to enter. As if it was no longer his garage, but had somehow become his brother’s.

“Hey, yourself,” Tom answered in a monotone, as he hung up the last wrench. He paused, looking around at his accomplishment, trying to spot something that still needed tidying. Nope, nothing. Okay, Mr. Clean, so now what do you do? There was an uncomfortable silence, awkward, as the two brothers briefly tried to find something to say.

“Uh, did you put Tyler down for her nap?” asked Mike, the first to succeed.

“Yeah, she’s down,” his brother answered, then sighed as he left the garage. Mike followed, turning off the lights. “She didn’t even fight me on it, this time. I think she’s finally getting it that her uncle isn’t such a soft touch after all.”

Mike snorted, not believing it for a second. Everyone but Tom seemed to know that he was a total sucker for the girls. Hell, they knew it, and used it shamelessly.

With an unspoken agreement, the two brothers stopped in the kitchen to make their own meal, two ham sandwiches and a couple of canned Pepsis. With a raised eyebrow and a pointed look at the PB&J mess, Mike got Tom to clean up the leavings of all three sandwiches without too much grumbling, and then they took their lunches into the living room, Mike to his LazyBoy lounger and Tom to the couch that he had pretty much taken over since his arrival a week earlier. They ate in companionable silence, the familiar routine temporarily soothing nerves that were becoming all too frayed.

Tom finished first and wiped his mouth, balling up the paper napkin and tossing it into the waste can across the room. A toy backboard and net had been mounted on the wall over the can, and Tom’s napkin dropped through it like a Michael Jordan setup. Two points! A minute later his brother’s napkin followed, but missed the net by a bare half inch. Mike shrugged, nodded at Tom to acknowledge the win. The following silence was comfortable, a welcome change from the past weeks tension.

Eventually, Tom said, “Hey, you mind if I log on and check my e-mail? I want to see if Benny wrote me anything last night.” Mike nodded, then paged through the TV Guide while Tom was gone, in no hurry to return to his project. Ten minutes later Tom returned, the look on his face not boding well. He dropped back down on the couch, wincing when his back hit the cushions, his scowl deepening at the pain.

Mike sighed, dropping the TV Guide on the coffee table, pretty sure he knew where this was going.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, “Something from Miko, right? What does she want now, your manhood in a pickle jar?”

Tom glowered sullenly back at his brother, but said nothing. Miko Takahashi, the former Mrs. Thomas John Blackwood and the mother of his son, was a sore subject between Mike and him. Mike didn’t approve of Miko, or of the way that Tom had handled his divorce and Benny’s custody, and he wasn’t averse to expressing his opinion on the subject. And it was becoming particularly onerous because Tom secretly agreed with him.

Mike held his brother’s glare for several long moments until Tom finally gave up and looked away, then grudgingly answered his question. “Miko wanted to ‘inform’ me that she had decided to stay in Osaka an extra six weeks for more training. Which means she won’t be bringing Benny back to the states until the middle of August.”

Mike said something profoundly expressive and obscene. “Christ, Tom. That means you only get to see Benny for what, two weeks, before school starts in September. That’s crap, man! Why the hell do you put up with that bitch?”

“Yeah, like I have a choice!” he snapped back, anger and humiliation twisting his voice bitterly. “Since she got that job with Asana, she makes three times what I do, even with the comics on the side. She laughed when the judge asked her what she wanted for child support. She can afford a dozen lawyers, and all I’ve got is Aaron Stempel, and besides the courts always side with the mother. And you know that, so get off my back, dammit!” Tom spit out the last part, springing to his feet and beginning to pace, deliberately turning away from his brother’s accusations. Leave it alone, Mike, just leave it the hell alone. I am not in the mood for this crap!

But Mike couldn’t hear his thoughts and just bulled on, his own temper rising. He knew it wasn’t logical, or right, that he should be offering support rather than raking up old arguments. He knew he should back down, but stubborn pride and the accumulated annoyances of the last week wouldn’t let him. He found himself rising to his feet without thinking about it, confronting his brother from across the expanse of the living room.

“Well whose fault is that, huh? Everyone told you to go back to college when you got out of the Army. Me, Mom and Dad, Tina. Just two more years and you could have gotten your degree, and then you could have been the one making a hundred grand a year. Instead you married the wicked witch of the Far East, put her through college, and now that she doesn’t need you anymore she takes off. And you know what? You did that to yourself, man.”

It was too much. Lines had been crossed and words said that couldn’t be unsaid. Emotions were flaring like match heads, and for the first time in almost twenty years the two brothers were close to physical blows. Tom was almost snarling when he answered.

“You’re talking about what I did? You punk, I’m the one who had to bust his ass in uniform for six years to get an education in the first place. You’re the one Mom and Dad sent to college, you’re the one who partied every night and boned coeds and never even got a part time job to help pay for his goddamn tuition. Dad racked up overtime and Mom went back to work for you. And then you get busted and expelled for growing pot on the roof of your dorm! And you’re trash talking about me?!”

Mike felt the heat come to his face, the burning at the back of his neck. He spit his own angry words out like they were bullets.

“Dammit, you’ve been throwing that crap in my face for thirteen years! I make one freaking mistake, and every time I see you I have to hear about it again and again. I did two months in county for that, and when I got out I busted my ass and put my own self back through school.”

Rage and old resentment coursed through Tom’s veins. A familiar red haze darkened his vision, the anger and frustration he had been feeling so much of lately, but this time with a difference. Yellow sparks of gold now flashed on the corners of his eyes, the phenomenon noted distantly by the hind brain, then stowed away somewhere beneath the anger for later consideration.

“And don’t go telling me how bad you had it in the army either, man. You spent three years in Germany and two in England, and I know damn well you weren’t spending all your free time in church! You think I don’t remember your beer stein collection, or those pictures you took, or the time you… you….”

Mikes words abruptly trailed off, along with his anger, like cold water poured on an open fire. His eyes suddenly lost their spark, growing wide in astonishment, and his jaw went slack. Bewilderment and confusion now warred across his face, as he looked up at his brother from across the room.

Tom felt his own anger escaping, turned to puzzlement at the look on Mike’s face. Confused, his mind latched onto one strange fact; Mike was looking up at him. What was his six foot three inch brother doing looking up at him?

Mike’s eyes moved up and down, his gaze flashing from Tom’s face to something on the floor, and then back again. Tom glanced down, his eyes following Mikes, seeing only the faded brown pattern of the carpet below his feet. Too far below. With a strangely subdued jolt, he realized that he was floating almost two feet off the ground.

The air left his lungs in an explosive rush, as the tingling along his spine and the yellow sparks at the corner of his eyes faded as fast as had his anger at his brother. In a barely audible voice he murmured “Oh, shit” and crashed to the floor.

The thud as Tom hit the ground snapped something awake in Mike, the sight of his recently hospitalized brother rolling dazedly on the floor of his living room sparking concern. He crossed the floor in an instant, dropping to one knee, his big hands reaching out to grab Tom’s shoulder.

“Tom! Man, are you all right? What the hell was that? Say something, Tom, tell me you’re all right!” Words of concern and astonishment tumbled from Mike’s mouth, falling almost unheard on his still dazed brother. Shaking his head cleared it enough for Tom to mutter “ ‘m okay, ‘m okay,” weakly clutching his brother’s arm as he pulled himself to his feet, Mike grunting at the effort. Despite the just witnessed and completely unexplained miracle, Tom still outweighed him by almost seventy pounds.

After helping him to his feet Mike stepped back, concern for Tom battling with his wariness of the unknown. He swallowed, a nervous sweat beginning it’s run down the back of his neck.

“Dude,” Mike whispered, his voice like a rasp in the quiet room. “What just happened, man? Tom, were you really, uhmn, you know...flying?”

“I dunno,” Tom muttered, still feeling stunned. He looked up, catching his brother’s eyes with a sudden intensity. “Mike, I was...floating. Mid-air, feet off the ground, scraping the ceiling floating, wasn’t I? No tricks, Mikey?”

“No, man, no tricks. There’s no way I could of come up with something like that. You?”

“No. Hell, no.”

“Well…Okay. You were really floating. So, can you do it again?”

Tom looked at him, blinking. “Again?” he muttered, not really surprised, realizing that the idea had already begun to form in the back of his own mind.

“Yeah. Yeah, Tom, try it again. Try…” Mike waved his arm, gesturing at what, he wasn’t sure. “You know. Just try it again.”

Tom took a deep breath, and then let it out. He closed his eyes, trying to remember just what it was he had experienced. Let’s see, I was angry. There’d been a…a tingle feeling on his back, where the scars were. Funny, the nerves there had been dead since the accident, and except for the recent itching the skin over his spine had been one big arc of numbness for weeks. And his vision, hadn’t there been something there? Yeah, like some sort of gold electrical flashes, at the very corners of his eyes.

Deliberately, Tom willed the tingle and the flashes to return. And they came, a sudden rush of sensation, the intensity a surprise that made him gulp. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and so did the rest of him, as he opened his eyes and once again found himself looking down at his older brother.

“Oh, man,” Tom muttered, as he bobbed gently in the air. Glancing across the room to Mike, who stood with eyes wide and mouth open, he felt a nervous giggle climbing up his throat, struggling to be born. Desperately he clamped down on the impulse, fearing that if he ever gave in to it he wouldn’t be able to stop. One long, never ending laugh that would lead him straight to the rooms with padded walls, and the funny white jackets with really long sleeves. Isn’t that where they sent people who thought they could fly? But hell, he didn’t just think he could fly, he really was flying. And it was just so cool!

But being committed wasn’t a worry for Mike, who was slowly shaking his head and grinning like a loon. He laughed out loud, turning it to a whoop and slapping his thigh in shear exuberance.

“Tom, that’s awesome, man! Incredible! Hey, you think it’s the accident? Maybe some of that stuff they couldn’t get out of your back after the operation?”

“I don’t know, Mike. I guess it’s the only—whoa!”

Tom had shrugged in reply to Mike’s question, and the action had set his bobbing body into a slow spin. He tried to compensate, not thinking about it, he just stretched out his arms as if he were floating in water. But air has a lot less mass and resistance, something Tom found out as his flailing arms sent him into a tumbling spin.

“No, don’t, stay back!” he yelped, stopping Mike in his tracks before he could interfere. He froze, instinctively realizing just how vulnerable he was, afraid that Mike’s well meant help would only make matters worse. Still dipping and bobbing like a carnival ride, Tom caught his breath and with an effort of will, ordered his body to STOP!! And miraculously, it did. Tom found himself still floating in mid air, but now horizontally, face down roughly five feet over the hard wooden floor and its thin brown carpeting below. But he was stable, and the wild gyrations had stopped. Triumphantly, he raised his head to grin at his much relieved brother.

“Daddy?”

The sleep thickened little-girl voice behind him caused a startled Mike to spin around, to face his four-year-old daughter Tyler. Behind him an equally startled Tom lost his concentration, along with his newfound control, and found himself plummeting face first to a floor that suddenly looked to be much harder than it had been before.

Mike heard the loud thud and grunt of Tom’s landing behind him, but resisted the urge to look back. Instead, he placed his body between his daughter and the sight of her sprawling uncle, stepping forward to quickly but gently lift her in his arms and carry her out of the living room, expertly cooing daddy talk in her ear to keep her distracted. A quick trip to the other end of the house, and four year old Tyler was soon ensconced in the children’s playroom, taking up the solemn conversation with her seven dolls that she had left off just before nap time.

Mike returned to the living room, wondering if it had really happened, or would the miracle have disappeared while he stepped back into the real world. The world of parenting and responsibilities and mortgages, where miracles don’t happen and overweight brothers don’t fly like birds. Or crash like the Hindenburg.

But Tom was still there, although now standing on his own two feet. The look on his brother’s face, though, reassured Mike that it wasn’t a dream, and that something awesomely great had indeed just happened in his living room. That, and the small trickle of bright red blood dripping from Tom’s swollen nose.

“Did she see anything?” Tom asked, his voice as sober as Mike had ever heard it.

“No, man,” he replied, his own voice equally as serious. A look traveled between the two brothers, a complete understanding and total agreement, with no words necessary. Instinctively, they had closed ranks against the common enemy. “But I don’t think we ought to tell Cathy and the kids about this.”