Comic Book Hero Chapter 8

Tom threw himself through the night air, feeling it whistle coldly through the openings in his clothes. The fever of his recent exertions kept him warm, but the sweat drying on his skin soon began to take on a chill. That, and the fact that his goggles were still in the pocket of his sweatshirt and his eyes were tearing in the cold wind, soon convinced him to find an empty rooftop and land.

When he touched down on the graveled roof of an unknown office building, he realized that he still held Dieter Reisbach’s cane in one hand. Tom laid the cane on the roof, some half-formed idea of returning it occurring in the back of his mind. Nervously he began to pace, with an energy so intense it seemed to roll off of him in waves. He felt smothered, and hurriedly pulled the hooded sweatshirt off and threw it on the graveled top of the building, quickly followed by the ski mask and gloves. He ran shaking fingers through his damp hair, felt the wind on his face and gratefully drew it into his lungs, where it’s cool freshness hit his system like a shot of liquor. His mind finally began to function again, and he couldn’t believe what he had done.

A nervous chuckle slipped past his lips, as he stared out unseeingly into the night. There had been ten of them. Ten gangsters, ten bad-assed, drugged out, heavily armed killers, and he had beaten them all with a stick! They had guns, they had shot at him, but not only hadn’t they hit him, they’d never even come close. None of those bullets, and there must have been at least fifty or sixty shots fired, had come within a dozen yards of him. Well, except for that last shotgun blast, which hit the car he’d been standing on. But that didn’t really count, he’d been deliberately making a target of himself, hadn’t he? Hell, if it hadn’t been for the Reisbachs being held hostage, he could have taken all those guys down by himself, and in half the time, too.

Tom continued to pace, staring into the darkness, his mind focused on the night’s events. The blood still sang its heady song in his veins, intoxicating him like a drug. Something in his life had changed tonight, and he would never be the same. He sensed it, knew it for a certainty, down to the bottom of his very soul.

Could he have taken on more guys? How many? Another five? Another ten? Yeah, maybe. But what else could he do? Christ, the possibilities were mind blowing!

The competitive part of the human male has always taken pleasure in violent conflict. Books, movies, professional sports, even the fairy tales we read to our children at night, all glorify violence as a means of solving your problems. Although civilization and the so-called ‘enlightened modern mind’ deny it, in the long run it makes no difference; men like to win. They take joy in causing damage, in beating the other guy down and subjugating him, and thereby proving themselves the better man. The survivor, the one most fit to live, and to pass his genes on to the next generation. He’s the winner, he’s the champion, and he’s the one we all want to be. It’s primal, animalistic, and totally barbaric. And yes, we really, really love it.

Just like it says on the t-shirts and bumper stickers; Ye, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, ‘cause I’m the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. And being the meanest son of a bitch sure as hell is a trip, isn’t it?

Tom snorted disgustedly. Aw, Christ. All right Blackwood, let’s be honest. You haven’t been in a fight since the Army, and even then you lost as many times as you won. You didn’t need a broken nose and two fractured ribs from that guy in Charlie Company to prove that. You were no great shakes and you’ve always known it, but now suddenly you’re the ever lovin’ Terminator, and you get off on it. Your ego just got a kick in the pants, that’s all. And once it wears off and you realize just how close you came to being poked full of little bloody holes, you’ll probably get the shakes so bad your bones will rattle.

And yet, the last thing he felt like doing was curling up in a ball and whimpering like a baby. He felt great. He felt like he did when he first soloed, maybe even better. Hell, he felt like doing it again!

Tom stopped his pacing and grinned, so wide that it made the corners of his mouth hurt. Why not? It was still early, and this was a major American city, there had to be something nasty going on out there. Maybe he could find somebody getting mugged, or a drug deal, or some gorilla pimp beating up a prostitute. All valid excuses to whack somebody on the head. Okay, so maybe his motives weren’t pure and he wasn’t on the most solid of moral ground here, but so what? He wasn’t a cop or a priest, so who did he have to answer to them. Breaking up a crime wasn’t against the law, and if he did it just because he wanted an excuse to hit somebody, so what?

Yeah, so what?

Still grinning, Tom picked up his discarded clothes and quickly put them back on, this time remembering the goggles. So maybe he’d give Pablo’s superhero plan a try, see if it fit. He picked up Dieter’s cane, liking the feel of it, and hurled his body over the edge of the building and launched himself into the skies of San Francisco. He took a few moments to orient himself, and then headed straight towards the Tenderloin.

And hey, he wasn’t doing this just for the violence. There had been the feeling he’d gotten from saving the Reisbachs, too. He could still feel it, like a warmth in his chest, that made his heart beat sound like a drum. The gratitude in Dieter’s voice when he said that they owed him, and the look in Holly’s eyes when she had said, “Thank you.”

Those pretty blue eyes….

*****

Man, who would have thought that it’d be this hard to find a crime in the middle of San Francisco?!

Tom crouched on a building top, gazing down into a dark and filthy alley. The Tenderloin seemed to be filled with nothing but dark and filthy alleys, dammit. In the past two hours he must have searched over fifty of the things, and not one crime happening in any of them. Oh sure, plenty of signs of past offenses; old condoms, used needles, plenty of gang graffiti, and more littering and illegal dumping than you could stomach. But nothing happening now, tonight, right in front of him. Christ, where are all the crooks when you need them?

Tom sighed, dejected, and then crouched down and approached the edge of the parapet. Careful not to skyline himself, he peeked over, and finally felt that his diligence was rewarded. The alley was as dark and dirty as all the others he had seen tonight, the only illumination coming from a single light bulb over a doorway. Two cars were parked nose to tail under the pale cone of light, the one behind with its headlights on, shining into the open trunk of the one in the lead. Two figures stood in the space between the cars, a tall and scruffy looking guy with a scraggly beard and a denim jacket, and a much shorter and stockier figure wearing a three piece, dove gray business suit. The shorter guy stood silently, fidgeting, obviously unsure of what to do with his hands. In front of him the tall scruffy guy was carefully counting a huge wad of money, the contents of a legal sized brown envelope.

It was some sort of buy, obviously, but of what Tom couldn’t be sure. The scruffy guy was the seller, the car with the open trunk was just as old and as dirty as him, with two differently colored fenders and large rust holes in the body. And the little guy matched the other car as well, a late model tan BMW. Neither he nor his expensive car belonged anywhere near the Tenderloin. Just then the scruff finished his count, put the money back in the envelope and pocketed it, then nodded to the fat guy. Eagerly the smaller man surged towards the open trunk, no longer unsure of what to do with his hands, reaching for its contents under his car’s headlights.

Tom hissed, frustrated, still trying to see. So what was in the damned trunk? Drugs, guns, stolen art? He couldn’t see because the fat guy was in the way, but whatever it was it had him totally engrossed, and his upper body was now buried in the depths of the trunk. The scruff gave every indication of being bored, glancing at his watch and looking around. His part of the business transaction was obviously over, and all he wanted was to get out of there as quickly as possible. Tom had to see what was in the trunk. He grasped the edge of the parapet and slid his body over.

Tom shifted his gravity, so that to him the vertical brick surface of the building was now down, and then walked the two stories to the edge of the light. He stood there, unseen, peering down into the trunk, waiting for the little fat guy to move and give him a view. When he finally did, Tom felt the double blows of both shock and horror hit him in the stomach.

The trunk of the old sedan had been lined with pillows and blankets, forming a little nest inside the metal womb. Inside the nest lay a small form, that of a little girl. Tiny, perhaps six or seven years old, she had long black hair and wore a frilly white lace dress. Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be asleep. She looked like she was on her way to church, maybe her first communion, and had just lain down to take a nap. But Tom knew that she was unconscious, probably drugged, and that it was a mercy. She wouldn’t know about the pedophile freak in the dove gray suit who had pulled her dress up and was now fondling her.

Shock and horror bowed out and gave way for rage, a red hot wave that flooded through his body, rose in his throat like vomit, and temporarily drowned the reasoning part of Tom Blackwood. He held the cane in both his hands, clenched in a death grip, his knuckles gone white under the leather gloves. It wasn’t a superhero who leaped down into that alley, and it wasn’t some guy who just wanted an excuse to pound somebody. It was a father, gone down to battle the monsters who would dare to violate a child.

Tom landed behind the guy in the trunk, totally ignoring the scruff in the denim jacket. He held the cane like a baseball bat, swung it with all his rage-backed might at the back of the fat freak’s thighs. The cane hit with a meaty thwack, the sound echoing in the narrow alley with the sound of wet rags thrown against a wall. Blood vessels ruptured, bone bruised but didn’t break, as the diseased thing fell to the ground, squealing in a girlishly high falsetto voice. Tom spun, glaring at the scruff, who stared back, stunned. They froze like that, black rage facing shock, until Tom took a menacing step forward and the tableau broke. Cursing, the scruffy guy backpedaled, his right hand clawing for something under his jacket. Tom didn’t wait to find out what kind of weapon he had hidden there. Instead he grasped the cane at both ends, stiffened his arms and held it out straight before him. He launched himself, flying the ten feet through the air, the cane backed by his full two hundred plus pounds slamming into the scruffs mouth like a bar of iron. Teeth and blood and some pieces of lip flew, and so did their owner, slamming up against a green metal dumpster on the other side of the alley. The alley rang with a metallic gong as the scruff crashed into the dumpster, sliding down to the dirty concrete of the alley, unconscious.

Tom wasn’t satisfied. He stepped forward and raised the cane, brought it down again and again, pounding at the limp figure. He stopped, though, when he heard the scrabbling sound behind him. Tom turned, to see the pedophile bastard he’d first struck trying to crawl to the BMW, murmuring piteously, dragging his legs behind him like something broken. Tom stood upright and strode forward, implacable, unstoppable, the very figure of a righteous justice. He reached the form crawling across the greasy concrete like a gray slug, raised a booted foot and stomped down on one of the reaching hands.

Fragile bones broke with a snapping sound, and the crawling monster screamed, his agonized wail trailing off to end in a wet, choking sound. Tom just stood there, his foot on the other man’s wrist, staring down, waiting. Finally the freak raised his shaking head up and looked at the black figure looming above him. Tears rolled down his doughy cheeks and his mouth trembled as he tried to talk.

“W-W-Why?’ he gasped. “W-Why are y-you doing this?”

Tom made a disgusted sound as he removed his foot from the freak’s broken wrist and shifted his stance, and then his other foot snapped out in a vicious kick to the downed man’s jaw. It connected, jolting him back, rolling his unconscious form against the brick wall of the alley. He stared down at the inert body, his silence the freak’s only answer.

Tom turned away, the two fallen scum already forgotten in his urgent need to see to the child. She still lay inside her nest of blankets inside the trunk, unmoving, and unresponsive when Tom touched her cheek with the back of his hand. She was Oriental, he saw, with more than just the prettiness that’s inherent in all little girls. She had the sort of face that artists dream of, framed by hair as shiny and black as a raven’s wing, that flowed over her shoulders and probably reached all the way to her waist. The white lace communion dress came with a pair of gloves, with a sky blue bow around the waist. He noticed the bow when he lowered the dress to cover her exposed nudity. The bitter thought came to him that this girl was undoubtedly priced higher than the normal run of the mill sex toy.

Tom checked the pulse at her neck and found it slow, raised an eyelid and squinted in the dim light, found that the pupils were dilated. Okay, so they had drugged her, which made sense. When you’re transporting slaves inside a city, you don’t want them waking up and making a fuss, do you? There was no telling what they had given her, or how long she had been locked up inside that damned car trunk. He had to get her to a hospital.

Tom looked around at the two forms lying in the alley. What could he do about these two? He didn’t have any rope, and no time to find any to tie them up with. If he left them here while he took the girl to the hospital, chances were that they’d be gone by the time he got back. Could he kill them? God, but that was a tempting thought! But as he looked at the two helpless forms at his feet, he knew he couldn’t do it. No matter what they’d done it would be murder, pure and simple, and he realized he just didn’t have that in him. Deep down, a part of Tom that had been holding it’s breath, let it out in a sigh.

But he couldn’t just let these scum get away, either. Quickly Tom went to the front of the older car, opened the right side door and started searching. The foot wells in the passenger side and back seat were covered in trash, mostly old fast food bags and candy wrappers. He found a sheathed bowie knife under the front seat, and in the glove compartment he found the vehicle registration and proof of insurance. He emptied a large brown McDonald’s bag of its trash and put the documents in, along with the knife. He searched the BMW, which was immaculate, and took all the relevant documents from its glove box too. Then he searched the two men he had beaten senseless, taking their wallets and the envelope full of cash from the jacket of the scruff. The guy also had a snub nosed revolver in the front left pocket of his denim jacket, a hole cut in the back of the jacket so he could reach the pistol without unbuttoning the pocket. Tom grunted. Clever. If he was ever arrested and had to ditch the gun, there’d be no embarrassing shoulder holster to explain. He put the gun in the bag, too.

Tom flew to the top of the building and stashed the bag and the cane in a dark corner, underneath some trash and boards that littered the roof. He took out his GPS locator and saved the current spot in memory so he could find the rooftop again, then turned to the directory and found the nearest hospital, one within five miles of where he was at now. He set that as his next destination, strapped the GPS to his wrist, and flew back down to the alley. The scruff by the dumpster was just beginning to stir, as Tom gently picked up the girl, carefully wrapping her in some of the blankets from the trunk. Tom gave the alley with its two battered inhabitants one last look, then launched himself and his bundled passenger into the sky.

The girl never woke as Tom carried her through the night skies, snuggled warmly against his chest. She seemed so light, even lighter than Desiree or Tyler, his two nieces. She felt fragile, as if her bones were hollow. Tom held her even more tightly, and flew on.

Within minutes they were hovering over the hospital, looking down at the brightly lit parking lot over by the emergency room entrance. Tom looked down, considering. How to get her into the hands of the right people without being seen himself? After some consideration, he came to a decision.

Tom dropped silently into a darkened part of the lot as close to the entrance as he could get. He found a car with MD license plates in the reserved parking, coincidentally another BMW. Gently he laid the bundled girl on the hood of the car next to it, pausing to smooth out her blankets and push back a wayward tendril of hair from her face. When he had made her as comfortable as he could he stepped back, turned to the Beemer, and kicked in its side window. Immediately the parking lot was filled with the siren sound of a violated security system, the shriek piercing the night like a hopped up banshee. Tom looked at the girl, who still didn’t stir, even being this close to the unearthly din. Someone would be here soon, and shortly afterward she would be in the care of the hospital’s doctors. He had done all he could for her. Reluctantly, he launched himself into the night, hovering a hundred feet over the parking lot, a guardian angel for a wounded innocent.

He stayed there long after the guards had come, and the orderlies with their gurney to take her away. He didn’t know how long he stayed, hovering in mid air, just letting all the emotion drain out of him. But finally he turned, pulled out his magic electronic guide, and keyed in the rooftop he had so recently left. It pointed the direction and Tom flew off, disappearing once more into the night.

The GPS took him unerringly back to the alley. The stuff he had stashed on the rooftop was still there, but as he had feared the two scumbags were long gone. Tom slipped the documents out of the bag and into the pocket of his sweatshirt. He picked up the bag with the knife and gun still in it and grabbed the cane, and then took to the air again. It took him almost twenty minutes but he finally found them, a patrol car with two cops in it, sitting in an empty parking lot, eating their dinner. Probably donuts, Tom thought. He dropped the bag on top of the car’s hood from twenty feet up, where it hit with a resounding clatter. The two cops bailed out of their car, clawing for their sidearms. Tom didn’t stick around to see them open his little present. With any luck the gun and knife had the scruff’s fingerprints all over them, and could maybe be traced to some other crime.

Reaction was setting in and Tom was tired, bone weary to his soul. He wanted to go home, to the bed in the warehouse he’d been sleeping in this past week. But he couldn’t yet, he still had one more thing to do.

According to the locator there was a Catholic church just around the corner from the hospital where he had left the little girl. Tom flew there, found a sequestered spot in the lot next door and landed. He removed the goggles and the mask and hid them under a bush, but kept the gloves, hiding his hands in his sweatshirt’s pocket. He pulled the hood tighter over his face, bowed his head and hunched his shoulders, then walked next door to the church.

There were two occupants inside the church, a white haired priest who looked to be in his sixties, and a middle aged woman in a mouse brown coat who was in earnest conversation with him. Quietly Tom slipped into a back pew and waited.

Eventually the woman left, and the priest turned back to the altar to do something priestly, Tom wasn’t sure just what. He rose from the pew and strode down the aisle, his face hidden in the folds of the hood. At the sounds of his footsteps the priest turned around, the expectant look on his face becoming concerned at the ominous looking figure that approached him. The old man flinched when the dark figure pulled something from its pocket, but relaxed somewhat when he saw it was just an envelope.

Tom handed the priest the envelope of money, $35,000 in hundred dollar bills. He had counted it on the roof by the alley. It was a lot of money, but he hadn’t been tempted, he knew what it had been meant for. It just felt dirty to him.

“There’s a little Chinese girl in a white dress who was left at the hospital next door tonight. Somebody hurt her pretty bad. Make sure she gets this money, Padre.” And with that the strange figure shoved the envelope into the priests hands, turned and walked quickly out of the church and disappeared.

Tom reached the roof of the warehouse and stumbled inside. He stripped off his clothes and climbed into the shower, letting the hot water and soap wash over his tired body, cleansing more than just the dirt and dry sweat.

After the shower Tom made his way to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a sandwich and opened a bag of chips. He downed them with a glass of milk, hungrier than he had thought. He almost made another, but decided on sleep instead. He left his plate and glass on the counter and started for the bedroom, but then stopped and looked at the telephone. He should call Pablo, tell him what had happened to his friends, let him know that they were all right. But he knew that if he did he’d have to tell him everything, and he was just not ready for an interrogation.

Instead he sat at the desk and booted up his laptop, then got onto his mail server. He wrote Pablo a quick letter, covering the basics of the attack at the school. He stressed that the Reisbachs were okay, but Dieter would probably be spending a few days on his back. He downplayed his own part in the fight, and kept out the story of the little girl. He ended by telling Pablo he’d be unavailable for at least a couple of days, and would call him when he got back to Sacramento. He sent the e-mail, and then shut down the computer. He unplugged the phone, crawled into bed, and crashed for ten hours straight.

*****

It was just past noon when Tom awoke. He lay in bed for another half hour, staring up at the ceiling, thinking. Finally he arose, dressed, and packed his bags. He gave the apartment a quick cleaning and locked it up, then took the elevator down to his pickup. By two o’clock he was on the road, headed back to Sacramento.

He made the long drive home on autopilot, barely remembering the trip. His mind was in a whirl, his thoughts spinning and tumbling like chaff in a windstorm. He kept seeing the fight, Dieter’s valiant stand, Holly’s fear and desperation. He felt the impact of the cane against flesh, saw the splash of blood, and heard again the curses of the Union Square Psychos. Over and over he experienced the roller coaster ride of emotions from last night, the fear and terror, the thrill and the elation, and the horror and rage. But over it all he saw the girl, so small and vulnerable, lying in that trunk, being pawed by that thing in the gray suit that masqueraded as a man. Each time he saw again that scene in the alley, he felt a chill that reached down to his soul.

And time and again, he asked himself the same question that Pablo had; he had the power, so now what the hell was he going to do with it?

When Tom got back to his apartment he found it…changed. Everything was the same, none of the furniture had been moved, the dirty glass he had left in the sink was still there. Okay, nothing had changed, but the apartment was still different. It was smaller, that’s what it was, or maybe it just seemed that way. Or maybe his world had just gotten bigger?

There were seventeen messages on his answering machine, and as expected most of them were from Pablo. Tom erased them and unplugged the phone. He still felt the need for some private time. He unpacked his bag, fixed himself a quick meal in the kitchen, ate it standing up over the sink. He wandered around the apartment, straightening things that didn’t really need to be straightened, one thought bouncing around in his head like a ricocheting pinball.

What was he going to do with it?

After this past week he could no longer deny the possibility. Pablo was right, he really could become some sort of super hero. Maybe not exactly like in the comics, but close enough. There were a lot of problems to work out, practical things that DC Comics and their characters never seemed to consider, but those could be resolved. But the main thing was, he really could do it.

But did he want to?

Tom paced the apartment some more, glanced at the TV and stereo in the corner, quickly dismissed them. He finally ended up in the second bedroom, which he used as an office for his side business. He had tried keeping up with the website and the online shipping while he was away, but knew that for the last several weeks since the accident he had let it slide pretty badly. Idly, he opened the closet doors and looked at his inventory.

Six white cardboard file boxes lay on the closet floor. Each one he knew was filled with comic books, individually sealed in clear glassine envelopes. He had never read them, in fact he hadn’t read a comic book in years. He read the trade magazines, kept up on the story lines, but comics had long ago become just another commodity to him, to be bought and sold for profit. Now, though, he found himself staring at the white boxes, as if they might hold the answers he longed for. Hell, maybe they did.

He knelt, and pulled out the first box.

*****

Tom finished the comic and closed it with a sigh, then slipped it back into its glassine cover and returned it to the pile on his desk. Pulling off the white linen gloves he leaned back in his office chair, stretching his back with an accompanying sound of popping tendons. He rubbed the grit from his eyes as he rose from his desk, taking the pile of comics with him to the back room, where he carefully filed them back in their appropriate cardboard file boxes. He then turned to the kitchen, rescued a cold bottle of Tuborg from the refrigerator, popped its cap and took a long draft that emptied half the bottle. With a muffled belch, bottle still in his hand, he turned his steps to the sliding glass door at the back of the apartment and out onto the balcony. It was late, almost 10 o’clock, and the light behind him spilled into and was absorbed by the warm California night. A narrow slice of the wooded lot across the fence was exposed, the old growth oak and pine trees towering over the two-story apartment complex. He knew the tree line stretched for a good hundred yards in either direction, but past the limits of his own apartment’s glow was nothing but shadowed blackness.

Tom let the warm breeze with its smell of pine and humus flow over him, enfolding him, blowing the fog and fatigue from his mind. It had taken him two days but he had done it, read every single comic in his inventory cover to cover. The yellow legal pad on his desk was filled with notes, page after page in his cramped hand, but only half a page of conclusions drawn from those facts. Precious little to show for so much work.

Tom leaned against the wrought iron railing across the patio and stared out into the dark, eyes unseeing, as he looked inward and recalled that half page of conclusions. It didn’t take long, dammit.

1. Comic book heroes got their powers in three ways. They were given them, usually by a mad scientist, wizard, or space alien, and often one who was dying. At other times they came by their powers naturally and were born with them, the most popular theme being either mutants or by being themselves one of the above named space aliens. Or third, they got their powers in some bizarre accident, just as Tom himself had. Radiation, industrial mishap, toxic waste, and being bitten by something radioactive were all accepted ways to suddenly find yourself with your very own comic book. And of course there were the guys who didn’t have any special powers at all, just some nifty gadgets and some cool kung fu moves, but since Tom had neither he felt it was safe to pretty much ignore this last type.

2. People finding themselves afflicted with these superpowers seemed to go into the hero biz for a limited number of reasons, also. Sometimes it was patriotic duty, especially for those who got there powers back in the ‘40s. Others got in because of some deep personal loss, such as family or friends being victimized by criminals. And a few even got into it out of guilt or a sense of obligation, like the guy who let a crook get away who eventually killed somebody in the hero’s own family. Again, none of which seemed to apply to Tom, who didn’t feel guilty or obligated, and didn’t have any handy Nazis to hate, either.

But then there was the most overwhelming popular reason for putting on the spandex and making a target of yourself, and that seemed to be for no reason at all. You got powers, and you became a hero, end of story. Kicks, maybe? Or maybe just because it’s expected? Again, not sufficient reason in his mind to get into that kind of insanity.

Tom sighed, shaking his head. He was honest enough with himself that he knew he was just looking for a reason to justify what he wanted to do in the first place. Anybody who’d ever been a little kid could identify with the urge. Comic books and cartoons, movies, the radio shows of fifty years ago, and now the Internet and E-Gaming. Hell, even before that, with the village storytellers and traveling entertainers, from cradle to grave mankind has always been bombarded with the image of the hero. The brave and intrepid warrior, fearlessly fighting the good fight. We think it’s the coolest thing in the world, and so simple, too. You see something wrong, and you fix it. You see a monster, and you kill it. People worship you, and they cheer your name, you’re the hero and the sun shines out your ass, so who wouldn’t want to be that guy?

But is a childhood fantasy enough of a reason to endanger himself, and possibly his friends, and his family? No, of course not. There had to be more.

Tom finished off his beer and turned around, closing the patio door behind him as he retraced his steps to the kitchen. He set the empty bottle neck down in the sink to drain, and then wandered out into the living room, his movements a study in restless energy. He stopped in the middle of the floor, just standing there, his eyes roaming the room. Maybe he was looking at this the wrong way?

He had looked to the comic books for answers because they seemed to be the only place that dealt with his kind of problem, but did they really? Okay, he had a super power like the guys in the tights, but they weren’t real, were they? Fictional characters, made out of the imaginations of the writers and the talent of the artists, brought to you courtesy of the hundreds of employees in the publishing industry. Superheroes didn’t exist, despite the recent spate of comic book generated big budget movies. And as far as he knew he was the only person in history who actually had a super power, so why was he seeking answers from them? Alright, then who else would know why you became a superhero?

Or maybe just a hero?

Tom looked towards the back wall, and the 25” Zenith in it’s yellow oak entertainment center. The VCR rested on the shelf above the TV, but on the shelf above that one was a row of boxed video tapes. Some favorite movies, a couple of home made movies of his son Benny, some blank tapes for recording, and--ahh, there it was. Tom reached forward and retrieved a brown plastic case, one with no title on the outside, just the date ‘09/21/01’.

Tom removed the tape and placed it in the VCR. He sat down on the couch and picked up the remote control, turning on the Zenith just as the tape started to play. As static gave way to the opening shot, memories began to flood Tom’s mind, bringing with them the shades of powerfully felt emotions. It was unexpected, the power that those memories still provoked, and for the next two hours of the tape Tom Blackwood gave his soul up to them, allowing himself to be swept back into a national nightmare.

Tom had woken up to his clock radio at 6 A.M. on Tuesday, September 11th 2001, and found that while he slept the whole world had changed. Fifteen minutes earlier, terrorists had piloted a hijacked commercial passenger jet into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York city. It had exploded on contact, it’s nearly full tanks pouring hundreds of gallons of jet fuel into the burning structure, instantly killing thousands of American citizens who had just arrived for work. As Tom listened another hijacked airliner plowed into the south tower of the WTC, the horror of a few minutes ago incalculably magnified and compounded past the point of mere numbers. And it didn’t end there either, as in the next hour a third plane in Washington D.C. crashed into the Pentagon. Almost anticlimactically, a fourth hijacked plane headed for the Whitehouse dove into a field in Pittsburgh, the results of the courage of the passengers who had rushed the hijackers and crashed the plane themselves, knowingly sacrificing their lives rather than let the terrorists succeed.

If the terrorists had thought that the American people would be demoralized, they were sadly mistaken. Anger-fueled patriotism spread across the land like wildfire, waking the sleeping giant, and sparking a resurgence in national pride that left almost the entire country burning with the need to do something to help. Blood banks were flooded with volunteers, Armed Forces enlistments skyrocketed, and funds and charity drives for the victims and their families sprang up everywhere. And the biggest and most successful of these charities was A Tribute to Heroes.

The A Tribute to Heroes telethon was organized almost spontaneously by the American entertainment industry, and the response to it was overwhelming. Just ten days after the WTC attack, thirty-one channels across the nation provided free airtime for the live two-hour broadcast. Scores of celebrity volunteers performed onstage, read tributes and recited stories of heroism, and answered phones to take pledges. All of those famous gathered together, major stars of stage, screen and music, and not a single one had their name mentioned. It was an unprecedented outpouring of spirit and unselfish generosity, and every cent of the $150 million raised went to the families of the WTC victims.

That night Tom had taped the telethon, and he and Miko had held each other and shed tears, both of grief and of pride. In a rare show of complete agreement, they had called and donated $1200 that they couldn’t afford, but didn’t for a second regret. He had never looked at the tape again, but after the divorce it had somehow ended up in his possession.

Now Tom sat silently, re-watching the whole two-hour telethon for the first time since he’d recorded it. He listened to the music, heard the words to those stirring songs, performed with real passion by some of the most talented entertainers on the planet. He watched the solemn faces of the famous, as they told the stories of people who had sacrificed and fought and then died so that others, strangers, would have a chance to live. They had no super powers, no special protections against the collapsing buildings or the knives of the animals who called themselves warriors of God. But yeah, they were heroes. In every sense of the word, Tom knew that they were heroes.

The tape ended and Tom rose to his feet, his body flushed and tense with emotion. His throat was tight, and he knew that if he talked his voice would be hoarse. Sweet Jesus, what had he been thinking!?

He could fly, so that made him think he was in the same league as these people? With the guys who carried a woman in a wheelchair down 68 flights of stairs in a collapsing building? With the firemen and cops who went back in there time and again to pull people out, until the towers collapsed and buried over three hundred of them? Or with the rescue workers, some of them just guys off the street, who worked for days trying desperately to dig out any survivors? What had he ever done to compare to them?

Nothing, that’s what. He had never done anything heroic in his whole miserable little life. Even in the army, he’d never done a thing that made the slightest bit of difference. He was a divorced, overweight, out of shape computer nerd slash comic book seller. He’d never taken a chance or risked his neck, and here he was actually comparing himself to these people.

But then, who were these guys, anyway? Okay, the cops and the firemen were professionals who risked their lives, or were prepared to risk their lives, every day. But the guys on the plane, and the people in the towers, who were they? Stockbrokers, janitors, secretaries, maybe even some techies just like him. They could have been anybody. They weren’t heroes the day before the attack, they were just people who went to work and raised their kids and lived their lives in relative obscurity, and generally they never did anything that made the slightest bit of difference, either. So what was it that made them heroes?

Tom started to pace, his brow furrowed in thought. Behind him the TV blared on, and through the window came a distant honking and the sound of a car stereo playing Rap music too loudly. But Tom noticed none of this, his mind totally focused on these new thoughts.

Okay, so what did it, what made these people do such heroic, self-sacrificing things? Opportunity, for one. The right place at the right time. Something had to be done, and they were the ones who were there, so they did it. But was opportunity enough? Would just anybody who was thrown into that position have responded the same way? Hell, no. A lot of people, maybe even most, would have concentrated on saving their own lives first and to hell with everybody else.

Would he have?

Tom suddenly stopped his pacing, the power of the question striking him to the core. Would he have run for it, let someone else play the hero? Or would he have stayed, risked his life, even died, trying to help. Coward or hero, which would he be? He knew what he wanted to say, but could he, honestly, say that he would have been as heroic as those real heroes of September 11th? In all honesty, he didn’t, couldn’t possibly know.

So that was it, wasn’t it? The equation, the definition of what a hero was. It’s somebody caught up in an insane situation, who at great personal risk does something to help, because they’re the only ones who can.

And was Tom in that position?

He could fly. Without a plane, without wings, with no more effort than walking across the room. Nobody else in the world could do that. Could it help people? Could having a guy who could levitate make a difference in an insane situation? Yeah, in most cases it probably could. He had proved that with the Reisbachs and that little girl in the car trunk. So did that mean he had some sort of duty to use his power to help people, even if it was dangerous?

Maybe it meant he had a choice, a choice about the type of man he wanted to be. Was he the man who charged the cockpit, or the man who sat in his seat and waited for someone else to do something? And if he did, would that make him a coward? No, it didn’t, not necessarily. He wouldn’t be a hero, but that didn’t mean he was a coward, either. And even if he did take the safe way, who would care, who would even know? He could still fly, still enjoy the thrill, still feel that god-like rush that no one else could ever know. The power was his, and nobody else would ever know how he used it.

Tom sighed and shook his head. The decision was made, and with it came a sort of peace. He walked over to the couch and sat down, reaching for the telephone, dialing Pablo Murray’s number by memory. It was after midnight, but he knew his friend’s habits, knew the little man would still be up working on some new gag for his next movie. Besides, he’d really want to know what Tom had to say.

Because it was all about the kind of human being you wanted to be.