Legacy

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Lucas parked the truck and poured himself from the seat, plodding across the lot to the main building. The garage doors were already up. Big Lou’s Gas Up & Go was open for business; too bad the mechanic wasn’t in yet.

  This is gonna be bad.

  Lucas considered sneaking in through the bay, but he thought better of it. Might as well confront Big Lou and get it out of the way. He entered through the office door.

  As he pushed the door open into the air-conditioned room, a bell clanged happily, sending a spasm of pain through his skull.

  Big Lou was settled in behind the front desk, receipts and bills spread out before him as he got ready to do the monthly books. His trademark cowboy hat was atop his gumdrop-shaped head; from beneath it, he stared at Lucas with beady eyes. An unlit cigar—he was trying to quit—protruded from the left side of his wide mouth.

  “What’d you do, sleep in your truck?” he asked, his nose wrinkling in disgust.

  “Matter of fact—” Lucas began.

  “Your mom’s looking for you,” Lou interrupted, placing a yellow receipt on a stack of others.

  “Let me go over and speak with her, and then I’ll get right to work,” Lucas said, turning eagerly toward the door.

  “You can talk to her later,” Lou said.

  Lucas turned his head, certain that more info was coming.

  “I want you to take the tow truck out to Garrick Road. Got a call a little while ago that somebody’s broke down out there and needs a tow back here.”

  “Sure,” Lucas said as Big Lou maneuvered his gigantic belly out of the way of the desk drawer to fish around for the tow truck keys inside. He tossed them to the boy.

  “Make it quick,” Lou said as Lucas caught the key ring. “Gotta get some money into this place before I lose my shirt.”

  Without another word, Lucas was gone, leaving the office and crossing the lot to where the tow truck was parked. If anything should have made him feel better, it was the fact that he didn’t have to listen to Big Lou’s words of wisdom.

  Maybe it wasn’t going to be such a disastrous day after all.

  But then he thought about his mother and how he’d stayed out all night without giving her a call, and he knew that was wishful thinking. That meeting would go exactly as expected. Badly.

  It took him less than ten minutes to get to Garrick Road. His eyes searched the lonely stretch, and as he caught sight of an all-too-familiar car awaiting his arrival, his day moved from the disastrous category into one of the worst in his life.

  He knew that black Ford Mustang; no amount of road dust could disguise it.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Lucas grumbled beneath his breath as he pulled up behind the vehicle.

  Inching the tow truck as close as he could, Lucas lay on the horn. The blaring sound nearly caused him to pass out from pain, but it would have been worth it to scare the old man into a heart attack.

  Through the grimy, bug-spattered windshield, he watched the guy slowly emerge from the driver’s seat, using the cane to help him stand.

  Didn’t need the cane to beat my butt last night, Lucas thought, watching as the old man slammed the car door closed and stood there. Like to see him try that again when I’m not drunk.

  Lucas could feel himself growing angry already. He opened the door and climbed from the truck.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lucas demanded.

  “Sorry about the keys,” the old man said, handing them back to Lucas. “You weren’t in any condition to drive.”

  “I’m done with this,” Lucas said, grabbing the keys and getting up into the old guy’s face. “I want you to stop following me … or whatever it is you’re doing. I bet you don’t even need a tow, do you?”

  The older man sighed, crossing his arms.

  “No.”

  “Dammit,” the boy cursed, kicking at the dirt angrily. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I don’t have it, all right? Go away, back to wherever it was you came from. I don’t need you in my life now or ever and—”

  “We need to talk, Lucas,” the man interrupted him.

  “See, that’s what I mean. No, we don’t need to—”

  “We need to talk because I’m afraid your life, and the life of your mother, could be in danger.”

  Lucas couldn’t believe his ears.

  “What did you just say?” he asked, his voice becoming louder. “Did you just threaten my mother?”

  The man lifted one hand while leaning on his cane. “I did no such thing,” he explained. “What I said was there is a chance that you and your mother could be in danger … because of me, which is why we need to talk.”

  At first Lucas thought this was some sort of twisted joke.

  Judging by the serious expression on the man’s face, though, he seemed to mean what he was saying.

  “You expect me to listen to this?” Lucas asked. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would I—”

  “Clayton Hartwell,” the man said, extending a hand for Lucas to shake.

  Bells—very loud bells that hurt like hell—went off in Lucas’s head. Clayton Hartwell—where had he heard that name before?

  And then it came to him.

  “Holy crap! You’re like a billionaire or something.”

  “Or something,” the man agreed.

  “You’re lying,” Lucas accused. “Prove that you’re who you say you are.”

  The older man sighed, reaching into his suit-coat pocket to produce a wallet. He riffled through it, found his license, and handed it to the boy.

  “If we could just make this quick. There really is an awful lot I need to share with you before—”

  “It is you,” Lucas said, staring at the photograph.

  “Imagine that,” Hartwell said, reaching out to take the license back from the boy.

  Lucas watched as the man put the identification back into the wallet and returned both to his coat pocket.

  “Satisfied?” the older man asked.

  “Why?” Lucas suddenly said.

  “Why?” Hartwell repeated. “Why what?”

  “Why now?” the boy questioned. “Eighteen years I’ve been on this planet. Why now do you decide to come and find me?”

  Hartwell chuckled. “You get right to the point,” he said. “Definitely a Hartwell trait.”

  “Yeah? Do you have a bad temper too?” Lucas asked. “’Cause if you don’t start telling me what this is all about, you’re gonna see an example of mine.”

  “I’m dying,” Hartwell said unemotionally. “Let’s cut right to the chase.”

  Lucas felt a bit unsteady on his feet, but he blamed it on the escalating heat and the fact that he was still feeling the effects of last night’s drinking.

  “You’re … That sucks,” he said, regretting his words, but he had no idea how to react. It wasn’t as if he knew this guy. It was like being told a total stranger was about to get hit by a bus.

  So what?

  “It does at that.” Hartwell nodded. “And it’s also the reason I needed to find you.”

  “You wanted to track me down to tell me that it sucks to be dying?” Lucas asked.

  “No, I wanted to track you down to give you something.”

  Lucas’s heart started beating a little bit faster. This guy had more money than God, and if he was looking to give some of that away …

  “Is this about your will or something?” he asked.

  “Much more than that,” Hartwell explained. “Let’s just say I’ve lived an extreme life, one filled with excitement and often great danger. But now it’s coming to a close.”

  The man paused, as if considering his next words.

  “The world needs to have somebody like me in it,” Hartwell explained. “I have to pass my legacy on to someone else before it’s too late.”

  “Your legacy?” Lucas asked. “What, like the family business? I don’t know anything about running a business. I can’t even give out the right change at the gas station.�
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  And then he noticed the man had removed his suit jacket and draped it over the roof of his car.

  “Hot or something?” Lucas asked, a little startled as his father began to unbutton his shirt.

  “I have something to show you,” the man said. “And then hopefully you’ll understand.”

  Lucas started to freak. All he needed now was to have one of his buddies drive by and catch him standing on the side of the road with a half-dressed old dude.

  “Look, leave your shirt on, okay?” he said. “If you’re hot, we can go sit in the car.”

  The man, however, pulled his shirt open to reveal something strange. At first Lucas thought it was a red and black T-shirt, but then he noticed the symbol.

  An open bird’s claw.

  A talon.

  “What’s that?” Lucas asked.

  “It’s my insignia,” Hartwell said.

  “Your insignia?”

  The older man nodded.

  “I’m the Raptor, Lucas.”

  Lucas continued to stare. He nodded slightly to show he understood, but inside his head, he was screaming.

  Holy crap, my father is a superhero!

  “This is a joke, right?” Lucas asked, fighting the urge to turn and run. “Like, maybe some reality show or something?” He looked around, searching for hidden cameras, and found nothing but lonely road.

  Hartwell shook his head. “No joke,” he reiterated. “I am the Raptor. But my days as a hero are coming to an end.”

  “This is impossible!” Lucas screamed. “I can’t believe you’re standing here in front of me telling me this crap! If you’re the Raptor, prove it.”

  “I’m an old man and I kicked your butt last night in a parking lot,” Hartwell said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” Lucas spat. “I was drunk and … and you could’ve gotten lucky.”

  Hartwell sighed.

  A strange hum filled the air.

  “Is this enough?” Hartwell asked as bolts of crackling power leapt from his wrists, striking an old tree about ten feet away. The tree exploded into flames, as if it had been hit by lightning.

  “How’s that?” he asked calmly. “Do you believe me now?”

  The tree at the side of the road was still burning, and Lucas watched it wither away as the flames consumed it.

  “You’re a superhero … and you … and you want me to take over because you’re dying.”

  “That’s the gist of it,” Hartwell said. “You’re my son, and that makes you special. You’re one of the few people in this world who can pick up where I leave off.”

  Lucas felt numb, like he was trapped in some sort of bizarre fever dream. “What does this have to do with my mother?” he finally asked, all emotion sucked from his voice.

  “Let’s just say that doing what I do has made me some enemies over the years. Enemies who might try to target those who mean something to me.”

  Lucas stirred from his funk to stare at the man. “She hasn’t had anything to do with you in close to twenty years.”

  Hartwell shrugged. “They’ll lash out at anything that could even remotely hurt me.”

  “So you’ve put her … us in danger by coming here?” The realization was slowly dawning on Lucas.

  “Yes, but it was necessary that I find you. The Raptor can’t die, and he won’t if—”

  Lucas had no idea why he did it, but he couldn’t stop himself. He stepped closer to Hartwell and threw a surprise punch that knocked the old man backward into the Mustang and then to the ground.

  Shaking the sharp pain from his fist, Lucas stood over the fallen figure. “I can’t believe you,” he snarled. “I’ve never even met you before, and you come here and dump this in my lap … as if I’d even want it.”

  Hartwell grabbed the car’s bumper and pulled himself to his feet, blood running from his nose to his lips. “I understand how upset you are, but there’s more at stake here than—”

  “No,” Lucas interrupted flatly, silencing the man. “There’s nothing else to say.”

  He turned and headed for the tow truck.

  “Lucas, please,” Hartwell called after him. “There’s still so much I have to explain.”

  “I’m done,” Lucas said, climbing into the truck. “Get out of my life and take your stupid legacy with you.”

  He backed down the road and turned the truck toward the garage.

  The image of the old man with a dark secret gradually diminished in the rearview mirror, until finally it was gone.

  That afternoon, Lucas went home sick.

  Big Lou wasn’t very happy, but since Lucas had never taken a sick day, and had agreed to finish the waiting repairs before he left, Lou grudgingly agreed to let him go.

  Upon returning to the garage that morning, Lucas had gone about his work on a bizarre kind of autopilot, his mind filled with images of that strange meeting on a lonely stretch of road. It was bad enough his deadbeat dad had found his way back into his life, but to claim he was a superhero—who wanted Lucas to carry on his legacy—well, c’mon. Enough was enough.

  So Lucas went home to figure out how he was going to talk to his mother about this. There was no way he could avoid it, especially after Hartwell’s threat.

  He must have sat at the kitchen table for at least two hours, staring into space. No matter how he approached it, what he had to say sounded completely insane. Unless his mother knew her old boyfriend was a superhero?

  That just complicated things all the more. If she knew about his extracurricular activities, why hadn’t she shared that information with Lucas? Didn’t he have the right to know his father was the Raptor?

  Lucas grabbed the sides of his head. He had thought his hangover was bad; this information was like an atom bomb ready to explode in his mind.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm down. But all he could see in his mind’s eye was the image of Hartwell, destroying the tree with crackling bolts of electricity.

  “Dammit,” he sighed, opening his eyes.

  Just as his mother came into the trailer.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, setting a bag of groceries down on the kitchen counter.

  “I’m fine,” he answered, not looking at her.

  “Big Lou came by for a coffee and told me you’d gone home sick. I was worried.”

  “No need to worry; just got a headache is all.”

  “You could’ve had a bullet in your skull for all I knew,” she said, taking some milk and butter from the shopping bag and putting them in the fridge. “You didn’t come home last night, so I had no idea what kind of condition I was going to find you in.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had a little too much to drink, and I fell asleep in my truck.”

  “At least you had the common sense not to drive in that condition,” she said from inside the refrigerator as she rearranged things. “Did you take anything for the headache?” she asked, closing the fridge.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m just gonna ride this one out.”

  “Oh, playing the martyr, are we?”

  She left the kitchen, heading for her room to change out of her uniform. The whole time she was gone, Lucas tortured himself over how he was going to tell her.

  When Cordelia returned, she set about making supper, attempting small talk as she worked. But his answers were short—a word or a grunt—and eventually she just quit trying.

  After a while, though, Lucas couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “What do you know about my father?” he finally blurted out, watching closely for her reaction.

  She was peeling potatoes in the sink with the water running. She stopped for a moment, then continued. “Nothing much, I’m afraid. Just what I’ve told you in the past,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “It was pretty much a one-night stand. I’m not proud of it. I led a wild life back in Seraph. But you know what? If it wasn’t for my getting pregnant … if it wasn’t for you …”

&nbs
p; “Clayton Hartwell,” he said quietly, still watching her.

  She dropped the potato and the knife into the sink with a clatter.

  “He’s that rich guy we see on TV and in the magazines all the time … right?” she asked, trying to keep her composure.

  “You tell me,” Lucas said. “I hear there’s a lot more to him than that.”

  She looked at him; then she left the sink and went to the cabinet, reaching for the bottle of whiskey and a glass.

  “Don’t do that,” Lucas said.

  “If we’re going to talk … really talk, I’m going to need this.”

  She put some ice in the glass and brought it and the bottle to the kitchen table.

  “First off, tell me what you know,” she said, pouring the golden liquid over the ice.

  “He came to the garage a few days ago and then kept popping up wherever I went,” Lucas said.

  “So he told you he’s your father,” she said, taking her first sip.

  Lucas nodded. “And the Raptor.”

  “I can’t believe he did that,” his mother said with a gasp, setting her glass down before she could drop it.

  “He told me, all right,” Lucas said, flashing back to his father’s display of power. “And he also told me he was dying.”

  “Dying?” Cordelia asked in a concerned whisper.

  “He said he’s sick and he needs somebody to carry on his legacy.”

  Cordelia gasped again and raised the glass to her mouth with a trembling hand. “This is what I’ve always been afraid of,” she said, more to herself than to Lucas.

  “What?” he asked. “What are you afraid of?”

  “After learning who he was … who he really was, I was always afraid the lifestyle would somehow find its way back to you. That some bad guy with an attitude would put two and two together and come after us.”

  She paused, drink midway to her mouth.

  “After you.”

  “And that’s why you left Seraph City,” Lucas said.

  Cordelia nodded. “I ran away. I was pregnant with you, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anything hurting you, then or ever … so I took off to the most out-of-the-way place I could imagine.”