Buddy Cooper Finds a Way

by Neil O'Boyle Connelly

  “Mom!” Brook yells from ringside. “Don’t!”

  “Pay heed to the girl,” the assassin says. “Stay back.”

  “Al,” I say again.

  But she takes another step. “We can talk this through. No one needs to get hurt.” Though she holds her empty hands up and in the open, and she’s offering good-faith negotiations, my wife is far from harmless. As part of Parents’ Night at Tae-Kwon-Do for Tots, she drove her elbow through concrete blocks, flip-kicked target boards against the grain. Sensing the very real threat Alix poses, the assassin taps the barrel against Trevor’s jaw. “Hold your ground, woman.”

  “Cut,” Trevor insists, incoherent.

  “Silence!” the assassin screams. Alix freezes, still too far away for action, and far from cover. Beside me, my daughter sniffles and whispers, “Daddy,” a word I haven’t heard in a decade. It seems to fill the hangar. Over the man-child assassin’s shoulder, Alix’s eyes rise to mine.

  It’s nothing I’m proud of, but I understand the assassin. I know what it means to be fueled by delusion. And what is about to happen is clear to me. If I do nothing, then Trevor—this man who stole my life and my joy, this man I’ve murdered in my dreams—will die. But I also know the terror that awaits Brook and Alix, the horrible unknown future of a life completely different than the one they had planned. My daughter’s stepfather, a good man, is in danger. My wife’s husband is in danger. And despite all my many failings, they look to me for action. Incredibly, miraculously, I’ve been given yet another shot.

  The man-child and Trevor are almost ten feet from the edge of the ring. Even in my champion days, when I was Bull Invinso and my signature move was the Bull from Heaven, I couldn’t fly that far. But I suddenly find myself in a place beyond logic, and between breaths my body becomes a blur. My legs drive me forward, huge strides that stomp the canvas, and just as I pass Hardy I launch myself up, eyes focused on the top rope, boots landing and balancing, bruised body riding the elastic bounce down and then up, and I am launched skyward, rising righteous and light. My arms extend like wings as I float in a perfect arc, and my eyes fix on the gun in the assassin’s hand, and for an instant I fear that I may actually drift away completely, but then gravity takes hold and in a fast-forward flash I crash, collide with flesh and bone and concrete.

  The assassin struggles beneath me, but weakly, and I pin him down as I scan the concrete, check his hands for the gun. I find instead a megaphone, loosely gripped. My eyes turn to his face, and Trevor, stunned and blinking, stares back at me. A pair of legs stands beside us, and when I look up, the man-child leers down at me, sighting my face along the barrel of the gun. His eyes are wild, the purest chaos. I search for something to say, last words that will resonate with significance. But all that occurs to me is what Hardy said, so my final utterance is an act of plagiarism: “I ain’t afraid of you.”

  The assassin nods and a bright red dot shines on the side of his gun. A backfire pop makes me twitch and close my eyes, but in the next instant I find myself still alive. The assassin still stands exactly where he was, his arm is still aimed at me, but the gun has vanished, along with two of his fingers. He yanks his bleeding hand up to his chest, where the red dot now hovers above his heart. I follow the clear beam of red that extends from the dot on his chest to the laser scope on Lieutenant Tyrelli’s 9mm, firmly grasped in his outstretched hands. He stands on the edge of the camera line, partly hidden in shadow. “Police,” he says. “Get on the ground.”

  The gray-haired boy stares down at the floor and me, as if this is an impossible place for him to descend to. He looks back at Tyrelli. “You shot me.”

  “I de-gunned you,” Tyrelli corrects. He steps into the open, keeping his gun trained on the boy. “Standard operating procedure.”

  In the space he leaves behind, I see strong, long legs, red hair, and remarkable green eyes in the half light.

  The man-child assassin faints to the floor next to me, or maybe it’s more of a collapse from shock and pain. Regardless, Tyrelli plants a knee in his back and handcuffs him roughly. Then he gives me a look. “Small world,” he says, in the same tone he used just yesterday.

  “You bet,” I say. “Smaller every day.”

  Alix rushes in and I roll off her husband. Trevor moans when she props him up. Brook charges over, kneels down, and wraps her arms around both. It’s good to see her embrace her mother. I’m trying to decide if I’m jealous that their group hug includes Trevor and not me when Hardy, still in the ring, says, “Uh-oh.”

  We all turn. He’s got one hand over his bad ear and has the look of a dog tuning in a distant and high frequency. “Mr. Cooper, sir, I think we’re in awful trouble.”

  My teeth begin to rattle and my bones feel as if they are shivering. The rumble comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once. All the citizens of Studio B look around for some explanation. As the trembling intensifies, those standing have to put their hands out for balance. Somebody shouts, “Earthquake!” but Rhonda shakes her head. “No,” she says. “It’s the asteroid.”

  Perhaps because her statement is so factual, so calm and free of emotion, no one panics. Tyrelli hoists the man-child up by an elbow and the Mad Maestro escorts Hazel. Alix and Brook duck beneath Trevor’s limp arms and Hardy simply picks up Marna—wheelchair and all. Paul, crying inconsolably, hobbles along with his cane and drags his Slinky dachshund over the cables. Rhonda ends up by my side at the back of the pack. Her eyes tell me she witnessed my act of heroism. “Quite a leap,” she says. “Brave and stupid.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m in the business.”

  With the ground quaking beneath us, we all stumble toward the gray daylight of the door like refugees.

  Outside, everyone has spilled from the other buildings to bear witness to the cataclysm. A couple hundred people are scattered across the parking lot and the field with the pine trees and the water tower. In the dusky twilight, cowboys from the Wild West show steady their reeling horses. The Creature from Beyond Tomorrow is on his knees, casting two of his lobster arms over his antennaed head, a clearly penitent pose. Fifteen feet from me, Patrick Swayze holds a mermaid in his arms like a bride and gazes heavenward. Cro-Magnum points his caveman club in the same direction and says, “Holy shit.”

  The monstrous rock is the size of Texas, a dark glacier slow tumbling across the dome of the sky, closing in on the hazy sun. This impossible sight makes me think for a moment that perhaps this is some special effect for a movie with a billion-dollar budget. By the catering truck, a huddle of believers—aliens, gladiators, wrestling fans—recites the Our Father. Hazel and the Mad Maestro begin to kiss passionately. At my side, Rhonda asks, “Is that thing falling or just passing by?”

  I’m about to tell her that I have no idea, when the asteroid’s rotation swallows up the little sunlight remaining. Its shadow casts us into eclipse. With the darkness, a remarkable silence descends over those congregated, the superstars and the extras and the has-beens and the wannabes. All are perfectly quiet. Even the prayers cease. Around the cragged edges of the asteroid, sunlight warps and flickers like the aurora borealis, wispy wings of flowing orange and red and yellow. In the artificial night, the stars reignite, and Hardy points for Marna, probably explaining constellations. Meteors spark and flare across the sky like huge match heads being struck. One explodes, silently, harmlessly, in the upper atmosphere, and the crowd lets loose a collective “ooh” as if we were watching a Fourth of July fireworks display. Maybe it’s just the intoxication brought on by the threat of imminent extinction, but when the next meteor pops, people greet it with applause and even laughter.

  “This is totally nuts,” I say to Rhonda.

  She keeps her face aimed upward. “Sure. But it’s beautiful.”

  On the far side of Rhonda stand my ex-wife and daughter, looking skyward and still supporting Trevor. Neither one notices me watching them, and I’m bothered briefly by the faint desire to occupy Trevor’s position. Even if this is the end, I s
ee little point in having some last connection with Alix. After all, we said good-bye so long ago.

  No, I figure I’m pretty much where I should be. If I’m to meet my doom I’ll do it here with Rhonda. She rests one hand on my shoulder, though I can’t tell if it’s a sign of affection or simply to help hold up my wounded body. I look again into her upturned face, bathed in the kaleidoscope spectrum of the asteroid’s aura, so bright with wonder and delight, and I see that she’s not fearful of what may come. And for the first time in a long while, I find myself feeling the same way.

  The colors shift on her face and I turn to the sky. Splinters of light pierce through on the far side of the asteroid, a sideways sunrise in the heavens, and the crowd erupts with thunderous applause.

  Rhonda and I smile at each other, but we don’t embrace. Her lips move, but the deafening roar—wailing and laughing and clapping—is too loud. I shake my head and cup a hand behind my ear. She repeats herself, shouting now, but I still can’t make out her words. Then Hardy steps in, offering his hand. In his palm rests the Miracle Ear, and he nods at me and grins strangely. Beside him on shaky legs, Marna watches. Without really thinking it over, I accept. I pick it up and work it into my ear and find that it fits just fine. And then slowly I turn back to Rhonda and wait to see just what I might hear, now that this apocalypse has passed.