“She’s reckless. She might even be crazy,” I say. It isn’t going to be an easy night and we haven’t even gone out on patrol yet. There are times when I know that this job is too much of a burden, and I would be better off diving into a sink full of dishes in the back of some low-rent Mexican restaurant. How are we going to fight the Beat when we’re like this tonight? I can picture my brother becoming another victim with the way things are going. The Auxiliary Corps could’ve made this transition easier on Smokey and me. The four of us are going to have an interesting night, and one of us could end up dead if the Beat or the Black Shirt attacks us. This would have been a good night to call in sick, but what about Rudy? I know I can’t walk away because I know I have to look out for him.
When does a child stop thinking he can control his world? Is it when you find out that your mother’s back don’t doesn’t really break when you step on a crack? When your favorite soccer team doesn’t win? I remember praying for Arsenal to win because I liked the cannon logo on their shirts. I remember praying for my favorite American football team. But no matter how many times I prayed for them, they never won.
When does an adult think he can stop start controlling his world? When you think your paycheck will be enough to pay your bills? When you punch in at the time clock at a regular job? The same kind of job that normal people work. When you think you might have a life with a girlfriend? A wife? A house? When does a member of the Auxiliary Corps know their life isn’t normal? When they finally realize that they will never have any of those things. It’s on this night that I realize I can never control my world. I will never have anything normal in my life, even my dog is only a tattoo on my skin. Spike isn’t normal, and neither is Smokey. Now even my family isn’t normal. My brother sits next to me here at the Templeton, and there is nothing I can do for him. I had tried to steer him on the right path, to a normal life, but that didn’t work. He had been drawn into my world. How can he escape when I don’t know the way out of it myself?
But I will try one more time. He is my brother, and I can’t give up on him even if I know somewhere in the back of my mind that it won’t help. Rudy is family, and I had been taught to never give up on my family.
“I’m here to help,” says Rudy indignantly. “And the way things have been going on your patrols, I would think that you would like to have some extra help.”
“Get up,” I say to Rudy. “Come outside with me.”
“There’s nothing you can’t say in front of Smokey,” says the hard headed Rudy.
“Oh snap, you didn’t say that,” says Smokey. “You better go outside, kid, because if you don’t, I might throw you out the door myself. And you better listen to what he has to say. Your brother might even save your sorry rookie-fur tonight.”
Rudy is surprised by Smokey. He seems calm, but there’s a mystery about what really goes on inside Smokey’s brain. He surprises me all the time and I’m amazed at his support for me tonight. At first, Rudy looks at Smokey, and then at me. Then he sees that neither one of us is going to put up with his smug attitude on the first day of work.
We walk to the back of the Templeton and I grab Rudy by the front of his shirt. It’s the first time that I have ever done anything intentionally physical to my brother. We have never fought, maybe because I’m more than a few years older than him and we’ve always been too far apart in age to have those kinds of disagreements in our childhoods.
“Let go,” says my brother. When he sees that I won’t, he says it again, but this time he’s really mad, “Let go of me.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that. Once the Beat sees fresh meat like you out there tonight, I don’t know if I can protect you from him.”
“I’ve had level one training, and the Corps thinks I’m ready.”
That makes me laugh, and I let go of his shirt, “The Corps…they throw fresh meat like you at the bad guys all the time. Some live, but most get injured or killed. The Corps doesn’t care about us.” I grab his wrist this time and try to turn it, but this time Rudy is ready for me.
“I’m going to hit you if you don’t stop,” he says.
“Be quiet and let me see your wrists,” I say.
He thinks about it, and he almost doesn’t want to show me, but when he finally turns them over I am happy to see that it isn’t there. “I haven’t gotten it yet.”
“That’s right.” I had forgotten. He won’t get it unless he makes it to the ceremony next month.
“Someday, I will get the Corps’ tattoo.”
I laugh. “Yeah? Well the mark of the Auxiliary Corps doesn’t do anything for you. It’s a death sentence. Go home and be with Grandmother. Be with our sisters, but most of all stay alive. Go home.”
Rudy doesn’t say anything, and I can tell by his face that he isn’t going to listen to me.
We wait an awkward minute in silence. I turn to go inside, and that’s when Rudy speaks. “You think you’re the only one who can be a hero. Well I can be one too. I want our family to be just as proud of me as they are of you.”
“If that’s your reason for joining then you are just as dead as me. The Auxiliary Corps will suck you in. It will consume you until there is nothing left. They don’t care. They really don’t.” But Rudy isn’t listening to me. His mind is made up, and I see myself when I was on my first day at this job. I remember being excited about wanting to prove myself. I hadn’t had someone screaming at me on my first day, and here I am giving Rudy, the brother I love, a hard time. Grandmother will be ashamed when she hears how I’m treating him.
I soften my mood towards him, “Rudy, I’m sorry. You’re here to help, and it’s your first night, and here I am yelling at you. I’m just worried about you, but I shouldn’t be yelling at you. Darn it. Just stay close to Smokey or me. We’ll make sure you’re okay tonight.”
“I’m really here to help. That’s why the Corps placed me here. They must think I’m able to do something right,” says Rudy. He looks sad, and I know that I have alienated hurt my brother.
We’re both facing the same direction when I say, “Let’s go back inside. I’m sorry. Let’s get you through your first night on patrol. I’m sure that Smokey is waiting for us. He gets nervous when there’s a lot of change. I’m sure that he’s more worried about Lady Jane and you. Smokey knows you, but he knows Lady Jane more, and she has a bad reputation.”
“Why do you think the Corps brought her back?”
“To help, but maybe it’s because she’s been kicked out of the Hero Corps. The Auxiliary Corps had to take her, and since we are their most pressing problem, they decided to put her with us. They might be thinking she could defeat the Beat, but maybe they’re also thinking that she’ll mess up again and they can get rid of her for good,” I say. We walk inside the back door of the Templeton.
We make back to the table and Lady Jane is now sitting with Smokey. When I look at her, I know there’s something familiar about her, but I know I’ve never met her before. She isn’t the person that I had pictured in my mind. I can’t pinpoint why exactly she seems familiar.
“Are you going to stand there gawking or are you going to sit down?” asks Smokey when he sees me coming back towards the table. I must have stopped in my tracks when I saw her.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It took a second for my legs to start moving again. I wanted to stay where I was and keep looking at her, but even I realize that’s very awkward. The Lady Jane moves over in the booth and she’s drinking a cup of the Templeton’s coffee. She doesn’t say anything, but I guess she must want me to sit next to her. I sit, and I steal another glance. Smokey continues to be very Smokey-like and smiles at me. I’m sure he wants to get out on patrol so he can start eating the next course of the meal his stomach would want him to eat. If we sit here and wait for the Lady Jane to start tonight’s patrol, I’m sure in his mind he’d delay his feeding schedule longer than he needed to.
“Where is your brother?” asks the Lady Jane of me when I get comf
ortable in the bench next to her.
I turn and look around. “ I thought he was right behind me,” I say. I had been so focused on the Lady that I had forgotten about Rudy. “He must…he must be in the…”
Smokey interrupts, “I’ll look for him. He’s probably in the toilet. I have to use the facilities myself before we go out. I’ll leave you with this beautiful woman to yourself.”
“Thanks, dear,” says the Lady Jane to him. “By the time you come back, I will have finished my coffee and we can leave. I am sorry to keep everyone waiting.” She turns to me and says, “Val, it’s been awhile but we have met each other before.”
“I would’ve remembered if we had met before.”
“I don’t think so. You were a baby the last time I saw you.”
I laugh because I don’t know what to say. I want to let her continue with her story, but Smokey shouts at us and stops her. He’s only been gone for a few seconds.
“The window in the men’s toilet has been broken. There’s glass everywhere. Val, I think someone has taken Rudy.”
I get up. What has happened to my brother? I get to the men’s toilet and I look around quickly. There is broken glass, but it isn’t where I’m expecting it to be. The glass isn’t shattered from the outside alley. The window had has been broken by someone on the inside. Maybe Rudy. I ask, “Has Does anyone seen him?” When I don’t get an answer from either of them, I leave the restroom and go outside. I don’t see him right away. It takes a moment for my eyes to focus. Then I see him. I see my brother. He’s sitting on the ground. I run to him.
Rudy turns he’s his head towards me. I see him smile at me and he says, “I’m okay, he didn’t hurt me. He just knocked me down.”
My pace slows down, and I’m relieved. When I get to my brother, I offer him a hand to get up. I don’t see anyone else, but I don’t care because he isn’t hurt.
“I think I scared him off,” says Rudy, brushing himself off. I can tell he’s been in a fight and he looks none the worse for wear. I’m thankful.
I smile, and. I’m happy he’s alive.
Finally he says, “It was the Black Shirt.”
Book Two Chapter Three
From the Journal of Marcus Walker, Professor of Contemporary Superhero Culture at City College :
All heroes can be broken into two classifications. Those who have natural abilities or super powers, and those who do not. Of those that have natural powers, sixty-three percent of them have first noticed their powers during puberty. Many of these powers are very trivial such as the ability to bend spoons, or to attract dogs, as in the case of Thurman Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa. Morrison’s mother had never known of a time when there wasn’t a stray dog pawing at the door of their middle income house. As Morrison got older, so did the number of stray dogs that showed up at the family’s front door. Morrison’s mother states, “By the time Thurman was in junior high school, he always had five or six dogs following him on the way. They even followed him to church or to the store.” As Morrison got into his later teens, so did the number of dogs that would follow him. His mother continues, “It got so bad that the school asked that Thurman no longer attend, that he would have to be tutored by a special teacher instead because there were too many dogs showing up at the school building every day. The dog catchers would even wait for Thurman to show up at school. Two or three trucks would be waiting for the dogs to arrive and then they’d take them to the pound.
There are signs that Thurman was depressed and he also gained weight. It was never determined if the increase in Thurman’s weight accelerated the surrounding area dogs being attracted to him, but when Thurman’s weight reached 250 pounds, the Des Moines City planner, the mayor, and his neighbors had to ask the City Council to have Thurman Morrison removed from the city. They told him never return to the municipality of his childhood.
Morrison eventually moved into a vacant farmhouse in Madison County, Iowa, but that didn’t stop the dogs from coming to him. At age thirty-five, as his weight came close to 360 pounds, it was reported that over a one hundred dogs were located at his farmhouse property. Some had traveled as far as 125 miles away to reach him. Morrison could not seem to escape his powers or abilities, and on March 25, 1965, Thurman Morrison shot himself in the head. With his death, the number of dogs that were attracted to him was decreased dramatically, but it is still reported that an occasional canine can be seen lying on top of his grave in Madison County Cemetery. As for Morrison’s mother, she stated, “I don’t think Thurman even liked dogs.”
Jane will always be a superhero. And while I’ve heard the accounts about the Lady Jane, they couldn’t take away her abilities or her heroic nature. We had all heard about her trial, and while she had been found innocent in the real world, the Hero Corps had looked down on what she had done, and they had drummed her out.
I hope someday I might be able to move up to the Hero Corps, but the Lady Jane’s dreams have been dashed. There’s almost no hope she’ll move back to the Hero Corps ever again. She had her one shot. Once you blow it, that’s basically it.
When my brother and I finally return to Smokey and Lady Jane, it surprises me that neither one of them look like they have a care in the world. They don’t even seem too concerned about Rudy. When they finally notice the two of us standing next to them, it brings them back into a disappointing reality. There’s an uncomfortable silence that lingers in the diner. It’s almost as if we’ve caught them doing something besides just talking to each other. Smokey looked disappointed that Rudy and I had come back at all.
They’re hiding something from me. I know it. The Black Shirt? Rudy?
“We should probably get going,” says Smokey, but when he looks at Rudy, he asks, “Are you okay, kid?”
“Let’s get you some ice,” says the Lady Jane, getting up out from of her spot at the booth. “You probably won’t feel that tonight, but you’re sure going to feel it in the morning.” After she gets a makeshift ice pack from the waitress, she tries to press it to Rudy’s face, but he takes it from her and does it himself.
When the bill has been paid, the plates are taken away by the waitress. Thankfully, Rudy is going to be okay, and now the only thing left to do is to go out on this evening’s patrol.There’s an uncomfortable silence that lingers in the diner, and it’s almost if we’ve caught them doing something besides just talking to each other. Smokey looked disappointed that Rudy and I had come back at all.
“We should leave,” says the Lady Jane. “The Hero Corps…er, I mean the Auxiliary Corps isn’t paying us to talk all night. There must be some real bad guys out there waiting for us to harass and abuse their civil rights.” She tries a smile, but it has a hard time finding her face.
“Let’s lawyer up, people!” exclaims Smokey trying to sound like John Wayne, trying to make a joke, but it leaves no one laughing.
It’s a difficult time of the morning, and now the cold will grip all of us until the sun comes up. There will be no more warmth and I wish that I had brought another jacket along with me.
More clothing is always a problem for me because it means a more difficult time getting quick access to Spike and my other tattoos. Smokey doesn’t mind the cold, and the colder it becomes, the happier he seems to get. Now that I think about it, Smokey is the opposite of me. He hates the heat, and in the summer he had made sure our patrol was assigned nights. That kept him out of the sun and seemed to suit him. There were a few times when we did daylight patrols, but Smokey had always seemed miserable. I had always thought it had been too hotSure, the heat had something to do with it, but for Smokey there were too many people for him, especially during lunchtime when all of the downtown workers made it out of their office buildings and out onto the streets looking for food.
The Lady Jane and my brother don’t seem to mind the cold either, so I keep my mouth shut and don’t complain about the temperature. I’m wearing my usual thin zippered hooded jacket and resign myself to pulling the hood tighter and putting my
hands in my pockets. There will be a time in the spring when I won’t need a jacket, and for those few months I’ll be able to do my job in comfort.
The usual crowd is there in front of the YMCA Hotel on Beatty Street; they’re trying to follow our city’s strict laws and smoke their cigarettes outside before retiring for the evening. We know most of those who stand in front of the stairs to the old brick building. We greet a few when we walk up. A young boy with spiky hair offers me a smoke, but that’s a habit I never wanted. He says, “It will warm you up.”
But I raise my hand and decline, give him a smile with a polite refusal, and continue to stand next to the boy while The the Lady Jane and Smokey start to talk to the other group of men. Rudy stands next to me after a few minutes. I knew he was going to get impatient after a short wait.
“Why can’t we get going again? We aren’t doing much good standing here. Are we ever going to start moving?” he asks me in a tone that’s getting annoying.
“Relax,” I say back to him. “We’ll get going soon enough.” I agree with Rudy. I am colder standing here, and walking gets my blood pumping a little bit. I start to stamp my feet to get it going in my legs again. It doesn’t help, but my body needs to do something.
“We should go,” says Rudy, who has had enough. “Do you come here every night?”
“Sometimes we come here when we want to get information. It isn’t every night, but we haven’t been on patrol in a while and the Lady and Smokey don’t want us to go out there blind. We have found when we have a little information it usually makes things go smoother.”
Rudy is surprised. I know it’s hard to wait, but sometimes there are bits of info are out there for us, and if we don’t take advantage of them, then who knows the consequences we might have to face. There are always dangers out there and maybe if I had been more insistent, Smokey and the Old Hippie would have taken extra precautions on the night Daphnia was killed. I think about her every day and always question my actions. I tell myself things like I should have stayed with her, I should’ve made Smokey slow down, and I should’ve insisted and made sure we didn’t get separated.
Auxiliary Hero Corps: Collection of books one, two, and three in the Auxiliary Hero Corps series. (Superheroes Of The Hero Union Corps) Page 7
