“At first blush I thought you were just a weirdo in a cape, and on second blush, I still think just about the same, but I know this can’t be true. So, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where were you born? What’s your real name, because, if there’s a God, no parents would name their child Captain Alex. Speaking of your parents, where’s your family? Where were you headed to when I hit you? Wow, now that I’ve started wondering, I’m dying to know all these things!”
“Easy there,” said Captain Alex as he pulled away from curb. “If you slow down, I’ll be able to tell you easier. Eh-hem!” The Captain cleared his throat and began his tale.
And O what a crazy tale it was. Ha. Man. Just to think about this crazy tale makes me, the narrator, laugh until my sides hurt.
Part 7
Captain Alex’s Story
“I’d just gotten off my shift at Organic Foods,” said Captain Alex, “where I work as a cashier, when I was headed to the Caped Avengers convention—”
“BORING!” Notmie declared. “Don’t start there. Start somewhere else.”
“Let’s see.” Captain Alex removed both hands from the steering wheel to rub his chin pensively. “Where should I start? The beginning is a good place. But whose beginning? How about my Phil’s history?”
“I guess that’s a good place, considering he was the bane of my family’s existence.”
“All right, then…. So, you know your family’s side of the story, but you don’t know my family’s side. Here’s how it happened: My great-to-the-seventh grandpa was on his way home from saving the family farm—what exactly he had to do to save it was never actually known, I’m pretty sure that was just something that people had to do a lot back in those days—when he was bitten by a rattlesnake. He walked for fifty-two miles barefoot—and as I’m told, miles were longer distances back then—through snow—even though it was summer (I think it had something to do with global warming)—before he came upon an old house on the outskirts of what seemed to be a ghost town.
“Since Phil was afraid of ghosts and didn’t think they would be of much help to him anyway, he figured he’d stop at this broken down little shack to see if he could get some medical assistance.
“If there was one thing he’d learned from his childhood, it was that the best thing for a rattlesnake bite was tobacco, so he saw this old man—now I know it was Baron—sitting on a porch, smoking a pipe, rocking back and forth and throwing rocks, and he asked him if he could have some tobacco for his wound.
“But apparently Baron was kind of a bastard. He refused to help, saying it was summer and tobacco was hard to find, so Phil could die for all he cared; he wasn’t going to hand over nothing to nobody, especially someone as hideous (because there was no other way to describe Phil) as this stranger.
“That’s what provoked the curse of hideousness on all of the descendants of Baron’s youngest daughter. The way I was always told had nothing to do with Opposite Day. In fact, I always got spanked if I ever mentioned anything about Opposite Day. I never understood it, and my parents never explained it to me, they just said, ‘Don’t you joke about things you can’t possibly understand!’ I always thought I understood it, but now know I was wrong.”
As Captain Alex fell silent for a moment to dramatically emphasize just how wrong he had been, Notmie took the opportunity for some follow up questions: “Well, what happened to Phil? Was he okay? Did he die from the rattle snake bite?”
“No,” The Captain said, “he survived. I mean, he eventually died just like everyone, so it doesn’t really matter either way now, because he’s dead. Actually, the way he died was much more painful than it would have been to die from a rattlesnake bite. He probably would have preferred the bite to the crazed man with a saw…”
Notmie grimaced at the thought.
“But no,” Captain Alex continued, “he didn’t die at this point in the story. I was always told that he was actually a very limber man, and he was able to suck the poison out of his own wound, giving him enough time to get back to his home before any serious damage was caused.”
“That’s good!” Notmie found himself feeling personally vested in Phil’s fate.
“Well, okay,” The Captain conceded, “so there was some serious damage. I mean, he was paralyzed from the waist down. And now that I think about it, he might’ve been able to escape Crazy-Eyes George and his saw if it weren’t for that.” Captain Alex’s face scrunched as he recalled the accounts of Crazy-Eyes George that he’d been told as a child.
“That’s not so different from what my family’s always told me about the exchange,” said Notmie. “Well, I mean, there’s the whole snake-bite thing, the whole intentionally-cursing-Baron thing, the whole Phil-not-being-a-nancy-boy thing, and the whole… Well, it’s just vaguely the same story, come to think of it.”
The car was quiet now. Notmie was preoccupied with letting his imagination run away with him as it tried to think of what Crazy-Eyes George would look like, and Captain Alex seemed to be having a hard time deciding what else to tell Notmie about himself, but before long, he resumed his tale.
“So, I suppose you want to know a little bit about me.” Captain Alex threw a glance Notmie’s way.
Notmie didn’t look at him, or even register that he had heard anything.
“ Sooo,” repeated Captain Alex a little louder, “ I supposed you wan to know a little bit about me and my past.”
“Yes, yes, I guess so, but jeez, no need to yell. I’m right here.”
“Right then. Well, as you might have guessed, my real name isn’t Captain Alex. Alex is part of it, but it’s only my middle name. My full name is Brodie Alexander Jones—”
“Beh-aaa-jjjah…”
“What the hell?”
“Beh-aaa-jjjah,” Notmie repeated with more confidence this time.
“What did you call me?”
“Nothing, I was just saying what your initials spell: B-A-J.” Notmie spelled the word in midair with his finger.
“That’s just ridiculous. What has that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to see what it spelled. But go on with your story.”
“O-kay. So anyway, my name was Brodie Alexander Jones—still is, actually—and my parents were both librarians. My dad worked full time while my mom worked part time.”
“Not meaning to be rude,”—Notmie actually was meaning to be rude— “who cares?”
“Right. Yeah. So, then what do you want me to talk about?”
“Ooo! What about that cape?” Notmie was excited about this story; he knew it would be good.
Captain Alex shrugged him off. “Eh, it’s not that great of a tale.”
“I don’t believe you. It’s a cape. Who wears a cape? Nobody, that’s who. There’s got to be some cool story, or at least an explanation of why you’re sporting it.”
“There’s an explanation, but it’s really not that interesting, and it’s definitely not important.”
“Well, just go ahead and tell it anyways.”
“Fine. I got it from a fortune-telling Frenchman.”
Notmie tried to jump out of his seat, but the seat belt locked and he was jerked back down, holding his neck after his head had accidentally been snapped forward. “What! How is that not a great tale? Elaboration, please!”
“Oh, all right. Well, I was at this big annual carnival that my town’s police department held. We all knew the whole thing was just a good opportunity for them to drug test everyone; we all knew there was no such game as ‘Pee into the cup of good luck’; we all knew why they took a Polaroid of each person along with their name and contact information, which they taped to each person’s urine, but we all did it anyways.
“So I was hanging out with some of my school buddies outside of the Hair Sample of Fortune booth when we saw this small, beat up trailer with a sign that read ‘Fortune Telling’ hung on the front door. My friends dared me to go inside, so I thought, why not? and went in.
“It was damp and dark and smelled of quiche—”
“Wait, I thought quiche was an Italian thing,” Notmie interrupted.
“What? No, you’re stupid. It’s definitely a French thing. Now shut up and let me tell my story.”
Notmie obeyed.
“Anyway, when I entered the trailer, I was immediately greeted by a Frenchman wearing a beret who grabbed my hand and told me to have a seat. Only problem was that there weren’t any seats. There weren’t even cushions. It was just the wood floor. But that really has no relevance to my story.
“The Frenchman asked for my money, and I gave it to him, then his eyes began to roll back in his head. He began to speak, but it was in French, so I said to him, ‘Hey man, I didn’t pay you two dimes to tell me things I can’t make sense of in French; I paid you two dimes to tell me things I can’t make sense of in English,’ and so he started to tell me my future, only in English this time.
“‘You come from a far away land,’ he said. But I replied, ‘No, actually this is my hometown. I was born here,’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘but what I meant was that in relation to my homeland of Paris, you come from a far away land.’ That was the point where I said to myself, ‘Man, this guy is full of crap.’
“But then he started to get a little bit more accurate. ‘I see two adults and books… Your parents are librarians. I see a great cloud of mystery surrounding a tree… There are people growing off of this tree… It’s a family tree. Yes, I see mystery surrounding your family tree. There’s a most terrible curse… but it’s not affecting your family… I see the letter P… now I see an H… now an I… now a Q—no wait, that’s an L. The name Phil is appearing to me. Is there a Phil in your family?’ he asked me. At first I said, ‘No,’ but then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, he was the one who put a curse on this one guy a while back. Man, that was a good curse.’
“The fortune teller wasn’t really listening to me, because he immediately began to continue with what would happen in my future: ‘You’ll wet your bed uncontrollably at the age of twenty-one. You’ll set things right in the end, but first you must embrace who you are.’ Then his eyes focused on me and he said in a normal tone, ‘Considering your adventurous future, I think a cape would suit you well. Lucky for you, I just so happen to have one.’ So, he pulled out a bright purple cape with tassels dangling from the edge—”
“But your cape is red and blue now.” Notmie was one to be easily hung up on insignificant details.
“Yeah, I know. You can’t seriously expect that dinky little cape to have lasted this long. I had to buy another one a few years back, and to be honest, purple isn’t my color.”
“So, was the fortune teller right?”
“Yeah, but it was just an awkward stage, I promise. I ended up sleeping on newspaper every night, but I got through it.”
“No, that’s not what I was asking about, but that’s really disgusting.”
“Oh, you mean was he right about me setting things right? Yeah, I set things right about my problem, but I don’t know what he meant by ‘embrace who you are.’ Maybe I’ll never know.”
“Seems fairly unimportant, anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you.”
“Yeah, I’m not. That guy was obviously a fake anyway.” Captain Alex honked the car horn viciously as he was forced to slam on his brakes for a car that had just cut him off.
Notmie’s seat belt caught him again, and he resumed rubbing his neck. “So, where were you going when I hit you with my limo?”
“An international conference,” replied The Captain.
“Vague, yet it sounds important. What for?”
“For caped avengers.”
“Say what?”
“International Convention for Caped Avengers—the ICCA. It’s a yearly event that the International Federation of Caped Avengers—the IFCA—holds each year. I’ve been an IFCA member for quite some time, but I’d only heard about the conference this year. I thought I’d check it out, you know, mingle with my own type of people.”
“Okay, fair enough, but since when are you an ‘avenger’?”
“Since my parents were killed by Frenchmen.” Captain Alex stated this matter-of-factly, but that’s just because when you’re a caped avenger you see a lot of life’s catastrophes as matter-of-fact.
“Captain, I’m beginning to see a pattern of bad relations between you and the French.”
“Yeah, but who doesn’t have something like that in their past?”
“I don’t.”
“But I believe you do, you just haven’t known it until today. Wait, Notmie, didn’t we just talk about this like, ten minutes ago? Remember, the French are after you? You don’t remember, do you? All that stuff in the trunk of the limo? The French limo driver? The family tree? Okay, let me tell you about it.” Captain Alex recounted all the events they had just experienced in the past hour.
After The Captain finished, Notmie stared at him blankly. “Yeah, I know. I was there, remember? Man, your doctor needs to cancel your prescription for crazy pills or something.”
“Jeez, Notmie, if you remembered, why didn’t you tell me rather than letting me recount it all to you in great detail!”
“You did what?”
“Anyways, back to my story.”
Sounded good to Notmie. “So, a caped avenger, eh? How does one go about becoming one of those?”
“Well, one of two ways. You can either save a woman’s baby from rolling down a steep hill in its stroller, or you can milk an uncomfortable cow that’s been neglected for more than twelve hours.”
“So are most caped avengers dairy farmers?” Notmie asked.
“Surprisingly no,” said The Captain. “I mean, I’m definitely not. I did try to get in to the IFCA by means of the second option, but apparently I was a little off in identifying what a cow looked like, so I had to settle for the first option.”
Notmie’s eyes lit up. “You saved a woman’s baby?”
“Well, yeah. It would have been a rotten thing not to do after I pushed the stationary stroller down the street. That would have been considered ‘manslaughter’, or ‘babyslaughter’ which would just be wrong by all accounts.”
“All of a sudden, that story doesn’t seem so heroic.” Notmie was actually quite appalled.
“Oh, it really wasn’t. Did you expect it to be heroic? I guess I can see where you might’ve thought that, but I hope you didn’t expect it to be, because that would be a shame and a let-down for you.”
Notmie nodded because it was both a shame and a let-down for him.
But he rebounded quickly. “Are you missing the Caped Avenger Conference because of all this?” he asked.
“I’m skipping it, but I’m sure not going to miss it. There’s only a bunch of weirdoes in capes there anyways.”
“Oh, yeah, I can see how that would get annoying. Man, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with people like that in my life.” Notmie wasn’t actually being sarcastic. “Now, is Captain just a name you gave yourself because of the whole caped avenger thing?”
“No, actually, it came from my childhood years. As you can see, I have a ridiculously receding hairline, and since I’m only twenty-four—”
“ You’re only twenty-four? ” Notmie was flabbergasted. “Good lord, I would have guessed you at around forty-nine or so.”
“Wha—? No way! I could see maybe thinking I’m in my early thirties, but there’s just no way I look like I’m pushing fifty. Just because you won’t look like this when you’re fifty—”
“Cap’n, I won’t look like that when I’m a hundred and fifty.”
“I—okay, fine. Whatever. That’s not the point, the point is at the age of only twenty-four—”
“I want to see your ID,” Notmie said, interrupting again. “I won’t believe you’re only twenty-four until I can see an ID.”
“Ugh,” groaned Captain Alex, leaning to the side so that he could pull his wallet from his back pocket. “There,” he said, handing h
is driver’s license over to Notmie. “Does that prove it?”
Notmie held the ID out at arm’s length and squinted at it because that’s what he thought people were supposed to do when they looked at photo IDs.
“What year is this again?” he asked.
The Captain told him.
Notmie began counting on his fingers, going through four hands’ worth plus four more fingers. “Wow. I guess you’re telling the truth. Crap, dude. That sucks for you, being almost completely bald and all. How does that go over with the ladies?”
Captain Alex somehow managed to keep his patience. “I’ll be honest, it’s embarrassing. What’s worse is that it’s been like this since I was twelve, so I would always wear a cap. Well, you know how it is in Texas: sunny. So, naturally I got a tan from the cap I would always wear. When I would take my cap off to swim, all the other boys my age would make fun of me and call me ‘Cap-Tan Brodie.’ I would always go home and cry to my parents about how my friends made fun of my premature male pattern baldness, and my parents would tell me, ‘Whenever your friends tease you and call you that name, tell them, “Yeah, you bet I’m Captain Brodie!” and then they will respect your new name!’ Well, I tried that one time, and it actually worked for the most part. They could no longer call me ‘Cap Tan’ so they started making fun of my name. ‘Brodie? Don’t you mean booty?’ and they would all laugh.
“I decided to changed my name to Alexander, and the next time they called me Booty, I said to them, ‘My name’s not Brodie anymore, it’s Captain Alexander!’ Naturally, they were in awe. From then on I got about as much respect as a scrawny twelve-year-old with male pattern baldness could get, but all the boys got tired of calling me ‘Captain Alexander’ and just started calling me ‘Captain Alex,’ and that’s where I got my name.”
By the end of the story, Notmie was snoring.
Captain Alex patted Notmie gently on the head. “Damn you, Notmie. Damn you.”
Part 8
Encounters of the French Kind
Notmie was awoken by a finger jabbing his ribs. Slowly opening his eyes, he saw that Captain Alex was still driving.
The Fraud Page 6
