“Nope. I learned something important. I’m a fucking dope. She didn’t never have no power over me I didn’t give her. Them pipe cleaners and the hair, hell, she forgot about that fast as she did it. Just some way to pass time for her, and I made it something special. It was just me giving myself an excuse to be in love with someone wasn’t worth the gunpowder it would take to blow her ass up. She just liked having power over the both of us. Maybe Jesus will figure that out too. Maybe me and him figured a lot of things out today. It’s all right, kid. You done good. Hell, it wasn’t nothing I didn’t know deep down, and now I’m out of excuses, and I’m done with her. It’s like someone just let go of my throat and I can breathe again. All these years, and this thing with Felina, it wasn’t nothing but me and my own bullshit.”
About seven in the morning X-Man woke up Marvin.
“What’s the matter?” Marvin asked.
X-Man was standing over him. Giving him a dentureless grin. “Nothing. It’s Christmas. Merry Christmas.”
“You too,” Marvin said.
The old man had a T-shirt. He held it out with both hands. It said X-Man and had his photograph on it, just like the one he was wearing. “I want you to have it. I want you to be X-Man.”
“I can’t be X-Man. No one can.”
“I know that. But I want you to try.”
Marvin was sitting up now. He took the shirt.
“Put it on,” said X-Man.
Marvin slipped off his shirt and, still sitting on the floor, pulled the X-Man shirt over his head. It fit good. He stood up. “But I didn’t get you nothing.”
“Yeah you did. You got me free.”
Marvin nodded. “How do I look?”
“Like X-Man. You know, if I had had a son, I’d have been damn lucky if he’d been like you. Hell, if he’d been you. ’Course, that gets into me fucking your mother, and we don’t want to talk about that. Now I’m going back to sleep. Maybe later we’ll have something for Christmas dinner.”
Later in the day Marvin got up, fixed coffee, made a couple of sandwiches, went to wake X-Man.
He didn’t wake up. He was cold. He was gone. There were wrestling magazines lying on the bed with him.
“Damn,” Marvin said, and sat down in the chair by the bed. He took the old man’s hand to hold. There was something in it. A wadded-up photo of Felina. Marvin took it and tossed it on the floor and held the old man’s hand for a long time.
After a while Marvin tore a page out of one of the wrestling magazines, got up, and put it to the hot plate. It blazed. He went over and held it burning in one hand while he used the other to pull out one of the boxes of magazines. He set fire to it and pushed it back under the bed. Flames licked around the edges of the bed. Other boxes beneath the bed caught fire. The bedclothes caught. After a moment the old man caught too. He smelled like pork cooking.
Like Hercules, Marvin thought. He’s rising up to the gods.
Marvin, still wearing his X-Man shirt, got his coat out of the closet. The room was filling with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. He put his coat on and strolled around the corner, into the hallway. Just before he went outside, he could feel the heat of the fire warming his back.