I’d been thinking of this guy my whole life. And his universe. Not Batman’s Gotham City or Superman’s Metropolis or Captain America’s New York or Green Lantern’s Coast City or Antman’s LA. I’m discussing Smallville, where Superman’s nice fosters looked after him till the day he got his wings and tore out of there. I recall some ripping up of pages, as a kid reading that. Not even understanding really why it broke my heart. But Jesus, even a kid knows the basics. Why wouldn’t any of them want to look after us?
I made him a miner, with a pick, overalls, the hard hat with the light on the front. I gave him a red bandanna like the old badass strikers that had their war. No cape, he doesn’t fly, just super strong and fast, running over the mountaintops in leaps and bounds. This guy is old-school. I drew it in the vintage direction where the characters are somewhat roundheaded with long noodle limbs, in constant motion. Fleischer style is the name of that, part Mickey Mouse, part manga. It was a style I could do, and it felt like getting back to the roots.
First panel: my guy spots an old lady crying in her little home up in the woods, because she can’t pay her bill and the electric’s gone off. Dark, stormy night. Second panel: the hero grabs a lightning bolt out of the sky and shoves it into the wires. You see it running all the way into her trailer home, the lights and stove all coming back on. In the last panel I made music notes coming out of her radio and lights shining out the windows into the night. The lady and her little old man are dancing outside on their porch.
Just kid stuff, obviously. That’s all comics were, as far as we knew. I’d started with a different version where he swaps out lines at the pole, so instead of lightning he’s stealing the power of a mansion house up on a hill. You see it all fizzle out up there, satellite TV, outdoor security lights, while the little trailer goes bright. But Tommy said that might get him in trouble with Pinkie, so I went with the natural forces. I put a lot of emotion and contrast shading in the last panel, where you see the miner hero out in the dark woods, watching the happy old couple on their lit-up porch. I named my strip Red Neck. Signed, Anonymous.
50
I got our light bill paid. Now we had a leaky gas stove and a furnace going to the dark side. I turned on the blowers to test it, churning up some bad business in there with the smell of burnt cat. Dori said the gas had always leaked, and it wasn’t cold yet. We had a fight over why you’d turn on the furnace if it’s not cold. My position being: It’s freaking September. The world turns. Hers being: Why did I have to make everything so hard. Another day in our happy home.
In my first days of knowing Dori, I’d put in so much effort thinking of her around the clock, being amazed, planning how to get with her. I was high on wanting. Now I had her, and all the air hissed out. I was living life as a flat tire.
Generally speaking, I kept it together, dosing myself to the sweet spot that gets you out of bed without knocking you ass-flat stupid. Making my fortune down at Sonic, one Red Bull slush at a time. Then going over to help Tommy. Some people must have noticed my comic in the Courier, because one wrote in to say it was the first they’d ever run that wasn’t toilet paper. Tommy said why not do some more. Which I did, now and then. It took a lot of time to get one perfect though, and Dori wanted me home of an evening. Mornings also. Ideally all times of day. I tried mentioning how handy it was to have money, and that the hours might fly by if she tried doing something around the house. Huge fight. Why did I move in with her if I was going to be gone all the time? She threw a pout, shot half a morphine patch, and that’s Dori over and out.
I’d made this bed of thorns, and needed to talk to the type of friend that doesn’t tell you to shut up and lie in it. Angus had started community college, headed for the big leagues, so our friend days were numbered. I decided to cash in my credits before they expired. She said sure, let’s meet at Hoboland, which was our name for the little park in Jonesville. It had the usual things of vet memorial, picnic shelter, steps up a hill leading to nowhere. A pine grove. One time we surprised a guy sleeping up there with all his worldly shit tied up in a Walmart bag, so. Hoboland. Our small imaginations ran wild in those days. We’d roused him from a safe distance.
I found her up there under the pines, wearing a leather hat like Abe Lincoln only not as tall, sitting on a blanket with a pile of Saran-wrapped triangles. I sat down on the other side like it was our campfire, and we stuffed sandwiches into our faces. Mattie Kate’s BLT’s are the sober man’s smack. We asked questions with our mouths full, how was my knee, how was college. She said it was nice to swim in a bigger pond, she was meeting people with a lot in common. I looked at this girl in bike shorts and a top hat, and wondered how that worked exactly.
She said Coach was worried about me. I brushed it off, but she pressed the point. He was still my legal guardian for another year. Things were not great at the house. U-Haul was pushing ugly rumors at school. I recalled our standoff where he’d hinted about dark things he was holding over Coach, not to mention the heinous air-fuck. But Angus said these rumors pertained to Ms. Annie screwing somebody behind her husband’s back. Mr. Maldo.
Christ’s sakes, poor shy Mr. Maldo. You could sooner see him making a hit country single. But certain parents were jumping all over this, wanting people fired for their ethics. I said it was just the usual round of farts and the stink would pass. Angus said sorry, but there’s worse. U-Haul was saying I was a party to the scandal and had witnessed the lovers together at June Peggot’s house on the Fourth of July. If people didn’t believe U-Haul, they were to ask me.
U-Haul’s front teeth needed to make a date with the back of his skull. I asked Angus if he had ever made any moves on her, and she got a little wide-eyed. But didn’t say yes or no.
In time I got around to telling her about my life with Dori turning into a shit show, as far as her keeping house or putting in any effort. I made the suggestion of Angus talking to her woman-to-woman, to get Dori to shape up. Angus laughed so hard she spit tomato, and said right there I just wrote the dictionary definition of what “woman-to-woman” is not.
I tried to make my case. Dori had looked after her daddy hand and foot, but now had no interest in the bigger picture. What picture, Angus asked. I said cleaning up the house, making decent food. Which admittedly Dori never did before. Also, as far as never wanting to be left alone at the house, not new. So, I had pantsed myself here. Angus leaned back on her elbows and watched with that smirky grin she had, where her mouth pulled completely over to one side.
“You chose her, Demon. This was the real deal. Remember? What was that about?”
I remembered. Watching Dori’s face and body, feeling her hit my veins like a drug. Such a killing beauty. She still was. And sex was still great. Not the string of firecrackers it once was, due to us running on a half cylinder apiece. But sometimes we hit it right, and those were the Aerial Dragon Egg Salutes in the vast wasteland of our otherwise fruitless and constipated days. I spared Angus the details. She sat up and started packing up our picnic mess.
“Whatever you love about her, you get to live with. And the other stuff, you live with that too.” Angus was this Yoda individual. It was probably good you talked to her, even if it wasn’t.