I, Superhero

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I, Superhero Page 23

by David Atchison


  He leaps—about ten yards up, twenty forward—just as a small wave pitches the Jet Ski’s nose down, and thus the stern up. The effect is one of being double-bounced on a trampoline. Ernest overshoots the target just a bit, but just a bit is all it takes.

  Oops.

  The couple watches Ernest catapult over their heads, and then land on the slope of the roof, splashing in a foot of water. They stare helplessly as Ernest’s footing gives way on the barn shingles. He pitches backward, tumbling into the water below. Ernest gasps and extends an arm, but otherwise behaves as any other piece of debris caught in the flood’s wrath.

  He disappears. In a matter of seconds, the current will drag him right past the old barn, destination unknown. Whether he’ll drown in the process remains to be seen.

  Instantly, the old man drops, flattening himself against the rooftop, offering what little help he can.

  Ernest is there. Hanging on. Latched onto the barn’s aging gutter and using the last two fingers of his left hand.

  The man reaches out.

  ‘No! Just stay—’

  Ernest’s next word is lost to floodwater, which slams into the back of his throat. He coughs and heaves brown water from his lungs.

  Meanwhile, Flynn has skippered the Jet Ski around the barn, executing a tidy U-turn. (She was right, as it turns out; she can drive the thing just fine.) Flynn steers alongside the barn’s roof, and alongside her father. Using his free hand, Ernest reaches out for the back of Jet Ski. Flynn releases the throttle.

  The superstrength comes in handy after all. Boat, man, and aging couple now form an orderly, interlinked line. Ernest contracts his left bicep. He’s able to clamp his other two fingers around the gutter’s lip—a gutter which is now submerged in 6 inches of water. While this rescue has been going on, the Missouri continues its steady march through the levee breach.

  ‘Walk!’ Ernest shouts toward the couple. ‘Over me! To the boat!’

  ‘Jet Ski, Dad.’

  Ernest’s eye roll is also lost to the flood.

  The man hoists himself to his feet and takes his wife by the hand. He tries to steady her by holding onto her waist with his other hand. The woman places one foot on Ernest’s back. The footing is unsure. She loses her balance, and the only reason she doesn’t get swept away to become catfish food is because her husband hasn’t let go of her hand.

  But she needs additional bracing.

  She needs something to steady herself as she navigates from roof to Jet Ski.

  Flynn Smith reaches out with the red scabbard of her katana.

  ---

  Once the couple is seated, Ernest turns.

  He catches a glimpse into the woman’s terrified eyes. She clutches at a small gold cross attached to a chain around her neck. Ernest is suddenly aware of his posture: arms outstretched, lying prone in the water, looking a bit like… No, Ernest thinks. Let’s not inject symbolism into this, lady. I’m hardly any kind of allegory. Besides, being in this posture didn’t work out so well for the guy you’re maybe thinking of. Plus, I’m much more selfish than him, or at least as best as I can tell. I have no interest in dying. All I want to do is watch my kids grow up and have kids of their own.

  Speaking of: Ernest hopes this couple has something like 50 grandkids. He hopes he just gave these two many more days of baking, and bedtime stories, and tying shoelaces, and fishing trips, and walks on the beach. Assuming, that is, these two will ever want to be near water again.

  ‘Go! Go!’ Ernest shouts to his daughter. ‘I’ll be fine!’

  He lets go of the Jet Ski.

  Flynn guns it. With the couple holding onto her waist, she races across the agitated, muddy waters, taking the shortest route back to an awaiting Phoebe.

  Ernest watches her go. He squeezes the gutter and hauls himself closer to the rooftop, which by now is just a line of shingles the width of a gymnast’s balance beam. Even that is covered by half an inch of water. Once he’s able to reach with his right arm, he hauls himself up and over, then flops onto the roof, looking skyward, listening to the receding whine of the watercraft.

  He coughs. More silt-filled water is ejected from his lungs. In his lungs, the water is an abomination. Rippling against his back, it’s a welcome relief.

  For a little while, anyway. Ernest notes that the water is lapping a bit higher on his ribcage than expected. If Flynn doesn’t return with that Jet Ski soon, he notes, the water will become an abomination once more.

  ---

  Roadside, Phoebe shields her eyes as her daughter approaches. Over the noise of the Jet Ski, she hears the high-pitched wail of emergency vehicles.

  Then: another noise, more piercing still.

  It’s the unmistakable whinny of a motorcycle, the kind whose seat pitches the rider forward, rather than back. It’s the cry of a bike meant to be ridden one way: fast.

  The motorcycle pulls to a stop a few yards away from Phoebe. A cloud of dust soon follows. A tall figure dismounts, emerges from the puff of dust like a Vegas magician out of fresh ideas. The figure removes his helmet, revealing a male face. His long pomp of dark hair is plastered back over his high forehead. He’s dressed in slim-fitting blue jeans and an orange-and-black leather jacket.

  ‘I should probably introduce myself,’ the man says. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

  ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Jupiter Blackshear,’ says Phoebe Smith.

  ‘Ah. OK, then.’ Jupiter nods at Phoebe, then looks out over the water with all the alarm of a land surveyor, then sucks his teeth. ‘You know, Phoebe, there’s a hundred families who are going to be affected by this flood,’ he says without turning back. ‘You think saving this one couple is going to make any difference?’

  Phoebe keeps Jupiter in her sights as she maneuvers over to the Outback’s open hatch. ‘For that couple?’ she asks. ‘Yes.’

  She lifts the spare tire storage and grabs the only weapon available: the tire iron. She glances out toward the water. Flynn has almost arrived, and Phoebe debates screaming out a warning to her daughter. But she doesn’t want to give Jupiter the satisfaction that he’s capable of causing the utter panic she now feels. Plus, her daughter would just ignore her anyway, because that’s what she’s best at.

  Phoebe slams the hatchback door shut. She tucks the tire iron behind her leg, fear pulsing through every nerve. ‘If you so much as lay a finger—’

  ‘Phoebe. Really.’ Jupiter angles his head. ‘Put the tire iron away. This isn’t about you. Or her. Or those old farts on the Jet Ski.

  ‘This is about me. My legacy. My gift to this city I love. So just relax. Because the only person who can stop me right now is…’ Jupiter looks across the water to the figure of Ernest on the rooftop. In the distance, the superhero looks rather small, helpless. ‘… waaaay over there. and he’s not going be able to do anything from waaaay over there. Not unless he can fly.’

  Flynn arrives. She grounds the watercraft on a riverbank that’s been a riverbank for less than a day, giving the couple just enough room to dismount onto dry land.

  ‘That was kinda the plan all along, Pheebs. Part of it, anyway. For this all to gel, I needed this,’ Jupiter says, gesturing toward the floodwater, ‘and also I needed that,’ he says, pointing to Ernest, who is now standing knee-deep in water, waving his arms in what cannot possibly be a more futile gesture. ‘I still can’t figure how he survived the whole housing development thing. But, it works out fine this way as well. I guess I don’t need him dead. I just need him… aside.’

  Flynn dismounts the Jet Ski while Jupiter is discussing her father’s survival skills. Immediately, she unlatches the katana from her back.

  Jupiter responds with laughter. ‘Christ. I swear, you Smiths… stubborn. Every last one of you. But also foolish.’ Jupiter’s right arm lengthens at his side, taking on the shape of a huge, spiked mace. The prongs stop just inches from the ground. They look like they’d be perfect for smashing through a suit of armor. Or a katana.

 
Flynn draws the weapon anyway, its steel blade glimmering in the sun. ‘I won’t let you hurt these people.’ She takes a defensive stance next to the Jet Ski.

  ‘Flynn! No!’ Phoebe makes her way toward the combatants, positioning herself a foot or two in front of Flynn.

  ‘Mom.’ Meaning: stop with the helicopter parenting; I got this.

  ‘Flynn.’ Meaning: watch it with the backtalk.

  The couple manages to make their way off the watercraft, the old man slipping to a knee in the process. When he rises, he looks confused and bewildered and on the verge of collapse. He shields his wife, and the two back away from Jupiter as best they can.

  Jupiter raises the mace, its business end covering half his face. He otherwise remains rooted to his spot, moving neither to attack or retreat. He clicks his teeth. ‘You should listen to your mother, Flynn.’

  Phoebe’s voice is icy fury. ‘Jupiter. Do not even think of hurting my daughter.’

  ‘Fine by me.’ Jupiter says.

  He pounces, swinging his arm toward Phoebe. It’s a strike meant to kill.

  Phoebe screams, bracing for impact.

  Jupiter’s strike does indeed kill.

  The spiked right hand strikes its intended target, and the Jet Ski’s engine experiences a death both violent and instant. Plastic and fiberglass shatter and are thrown skyward, as are sparks from metal clashing with metal.

  Flynn takes a defensive stance. She maneuvers the katana across her chest, using the blade as a shield against further fury from Jupiter.

  ‘There we go,’ he says. ‘Hope your old man’s a strong swimmer.’

  Raising the katana overhead, Flynn takes a step forward.

  She’s stopped by Phoebe’s arm.

  Sirens blare. Two fire trucks have just crested the embankment half a mile from their position, and come barreling down the hill toward the small gathering. ‘Let him go, Flynn. This isn’t our fight.’

  Jupiter glances to his left, toward the approaching fire trucks. ‘You ever heard the police say, “You know, there’s really nothing we can do?” Well, they really mean it. I would know. They’ll be here in about, oh, twenty seconds. Which means I’ll be ten seconds ahead of them. On a motorbike.’ Jupiter walks over to the bike. Grabs his black helmet, holding a shine so deep it looks wet. ‘Which means, well, it means I have fifteen seconds now, don’t I?’

  Jupiter dons the helmet, hops on the bike, and starts the engine. ‘And your mom is right. This isn’t your fight, little girl.’ He flips the visor of the helmet. ‘Toodles!’

  The engine screams. Its back wheel spits up great clouds of earth and sand, some of which is sucked into intake manifolds of the two fire engines, just now arriving.

  Jupiter Blackshear has made his grand entrance, and simultaneously, his escape.

  Forty Two

  Ryland Washington is second to arrive.

  He brings his sedan to a halt on the strip of packed dirt running parallel to the farmer’s submerged crops. He sees that the older couple is now in the caring hands of the paramedics. He turns toward Phoebe and Flynn, who are headed his way. They meet within feet of the open doors of the ambulance. The old woman is being helped into the back.

  ‘Ernest?’ Ryland asks.

  Phoebe points to the rooftop. Or at least to the place where the rooftop was last visible. The barn is now completely submerged, and Ernest waves from its rooftop, looking rather puny in the distance.

  ‘Dear God, look at that!’ The old woman beside Phoebe clutches her the cross of her necklace and begins mumbling in prayer.

  In fairness, Phoebe concedes, the whole backdrop has turned a bit biblical in scope. The flood. The rescue. The obvious symbolism of a man appearing to walk on water. But please, lady, Phoebe thinks. He’s no savior. You have no idea what I put up with, living with that man.

  Phoebe turns to Ryland. ‘Do you have a boat?’

  ‘And a chopper. Both are headed this way.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ten minutes. Maybe less.’ Ryland scans the look of worry etched onto Phoebe’s face, and the scans the skies overhead. An additional news helicopter has joined the original one. ‘I can radio one of the news pilots. I’m not sure of their training, though.’

  ‘I’m not sure we have time,’ Phoebe says, looking back at Ernest again. He’s now knee-deep in the rising waters, holding his arms outstretched, asking as best he can: What the hell?

  She then looks further downriver. Sees something in the distance. The professional mediator does a brief mental triangulation of time, distance, and possible outcomes. She snaps her head back to the collection of emergency vehicles, tilting her head while she contemplates one in particular.

  ‘Can I borrow your car?’

  Ryland’s eyebrows knit as he looks at Phoebe.

  ‘Actually,’ she adds, ‘I should rephrase that.’

  ---

  Ryland’s Ford Taurus barrels down the dirt road.

  This time, Phoebe is hunched over the steering wheel, heading east, down current from Ernest’s position.

  Or make that former position.

  After Ryland handed over the keys, and Phoebe told her daughter to jump in the passenger seat, she signaled to her husband: Jump! Make a swim for it.

  Ernest, for his part, tried to signal back that he isn’t a terribly good swimmer, but the message was lost on his wife; pantomime can be difficult theater. Instead, he resorted to placing both hands around his neck, indicating that if he jumped in the water, he might well drown.

  Phoebe ended the back-and-forth by shouting a single word:

  ‘FERGUS!’

  As in: where the hell is Fergus? As in: swim your ass to shore, Ernest Smith, and let's go get our boy.

  Thus Ernest’s super jump into the raging waters.

  And thus Phoebe’s dash to Ryland’s Taurus.

  Now in the water, watching his wife and daughter drag-racing down the narrow access road, Ernest does the only thing he can: he swims. Despite his formidable strength, the river has a few million tons of force working on its behalf.

  In the car, Phoebe presses the gas, urging the muscular sedan even faster. If doesn’t reach her husband in time, she sees, the next place the water will carry him is around a gentle curve defined by a natural depression in the land. From there, he’ll drift back into the Missouri River proper. After that… what? Phoebe wonders. A rescue helicopter? The Gulf of Mexico? She doubts that Chief Washington’s car has enough gas to make it to New Orleans.

  On the bright side, she thinks, part one of her plan to rescue Ernest is going smoothly. It’s part two that worries her.

  ‘Put your seatbelt on,’ Phoebe says to Flynn.

  Flynn clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘You serious? What do I need my seatbelt for?’

  ‘Would you not argue with your mother JUST THIS ONCE!’

  Flynn rolls her eyes. ‘Whatever.’ She slides the seatbelt across her shoulders nonetheless.

  Phoebe now has the car about 30 yards ahead of Ernest. There’s a lone cottonwood tree ahead, just off the shoulder of the road, about the length of a soccer field away. The tree looks relatively young. Phoebe hopes this isn’t wishful thinking.

  Flynn cranes her neck, looking past her mother’s head. Through the windshield, she watches her dad pull himself against the current, bobbing up and down on the water like a lifebuoy.

  Phoebe punches the gas. The engine of Washington’s souped-up police cruiser thrums; the Taurus lurches forward.

  She’s now twenty yards from the cottonwood tree. She turns the wheel to the left, and the car leaves the road.

  Ten yards. It gives Flynn only enough time to say, ‘Mom! What the—’

  The rest of Flynn’s sentence is a shriek.

  The car then shrieks, crashing at full speed.

  Both airbags deploy, delivering an eye-watering nose punch to both driver and passenger. The air in the cabin is filled with an acrid white powder.

  Fortunately,
the tree is about the age Phoebe hoped. Fortunately, the car has a reinforced frame to withstand collisions, as Phoebe had hoped.

  For a petrifying moment, nothing but the sound of the Taurus’s engine dying a noble death. Then the thing Phoebe was hoping for more than anything else. Without this, this whole exercise would have been a complete waste of time—not to mention a nice automobile.

  But fortunately, the ground surrounding the tree has become saturated by the rising waters.

  It takes several agonizing seconds, but the cottonwood finally pitches forward, young roots and all. Roughly thirty feet of tree fall into rushing water. Not exactly a marvel of engineering, Phoebe thinks, but it’ll do.

  Part two of Phoebe’s plan is a success.

  The rest is up to Ernest.

  Phoebe and Flynn swing open their respective doors, and the crumpled metal protests with a loud creak. They scamper to the water’s edge. They wait.

  Ernest’s pinwheeling arms pick up their pace. Judging from the speed of his arms and the froth of water behind him, he seems to know the stakes as well.

  He’s fifteen yards from the tree. But not closing quickly enough, Phoebe decides. He’s going to drift by. He’s going to miss.

  Ernest floats by the cottonwood. Five yards away.

  He disappears under the surface of the water.

  Phoebe’s next inhale catches in her throat. Has fighting the flood devoured too much of Ernest’s strength? Has he been sucked into some kind of eddy?

  Has he given up?

  Flynn gasps. Points.

  Ernest emerges at the end of the cottonwood, clinging to a thin branch that doesn’t look like it has any business supporting his weight. Maybe the water is helping after all, providing just enough buoyancy so as not to snap the branch. He sputters, coughs, and spits out another lungful of water, reaches for another handhold, and starts to crawl to safety.

  Phoebe starts to run, but catches herself. Although virtually helpless, she can offer a lot more aid from shore, she figures, than she could were she to be swept into the Missouri River, and have her body recovered by some shrimp trawler on the Louisiana Bayou.

 

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