The Hero

Sue Buzzard

CREATION

The Hero was born on a cold winter’s morn in December.  The wind was blisteringly frigid and blowing to shake the eaves from the roof.  The weather was too dangerous to go out or for a doctor to come to the house, so the Hero erupted from his mother’s womb into the strong cradling arms of his father.  He did not cry, but opened his golden eyes and gazed serenely up at his dumbstruck parents.

GROWTH

The Hero loved adventure.  He spent his youth ambling through the woods surrounding his red farmhouse home, climbing trees, swinging from birch branches and jumping in muddy leaf-strewn swamps.  His father chopped wood in the backyard, swinging the axe with his muscled, pasty white arms, sweeping the raven-black hair out of his eyes.  He’d call out if the Hero wandered too far and the boy would run back, racing jackrabbits and squirrels along the way.

His mother cooked the most delicious chicken potpie in the world and sold her world-famous apple turnovers at the diner a mile up the road.  The Hero’s fondest memory is of running into the kitchen and seeing her in her favorite plaid yellow apron, her curly blonde hair tied back from her plump face.  The Hero would jump into her pudgy arms and she would spin him around and around, his legs dangling and swinging freely.  By the time he was eight, he could pick up his mother and spin her around and around over his head.  She and his father laughed so hard it hurt.

ACCIDENT

His mother caught him reaching into the cookie jar before dinner and grabbed his arm.  Fear turned his skin red-hot.  She shrieked and pulled away, her palm tender and ruby red, the acrid stench of charred flesh.  Appalled, the Hero grabbed her hand and blew on it to cool it off.  It became covered with ice.

Instead of spanking him, his father sat down on his son’s rocket ship bedspread later that night and talked about being careful not to hurt others.  “Your body is different from other peoples’, son,” he said.  “You have to learn to control it.”

“Daddy, if I can’t, will you make me go away?” The Hero asked, sitting under the covers.

His father ruffled his wavy blonde hair.  “Never, kiddo.”

SCHOOL

His parents told him to behave, but he knew that ‘behave’ meant ‘no powers.’

While the math teacher drew equations on the board, the Hero heard his thoughts about ripping off the English teacher’s thong with his teeth.  When his friends looked away, he warmed up the cafeteria meatloaf under the table with his hands.  When he didn’t feel like walking, he flew the rest of the way home, punching holes in cushy white clouds as he soared through.

The Hero liked to row crew.  He went steady with a few girls, but he was afraid that if he had sex with any of them he’d cook them alive.  When the principal’s blue Porsche appeared on the roof of the school an assembly was held, and the principal demanded that the culprits step forward.  The students looked around curiously.  The Hero sat in the back in his ripped jeans and polo shirt, smiling.

PART-TIME JOB

Walking home one day the Hero saw a gang of street thugs mugging someone in an alley.  He grabbed each one by the shirt collar and tossed them over his head like garbage bags.  When he reached his hand out to help the victim up, the guy screamed and ran for his life.  The Hero flew after him and threw his forgotten wallet at the back of his head angrily.

LIST

Flight.  Telepathy.  Super strength.  Super healing.  Heat powers.  Ice breath.  The Hero wrote them all down in his steno pad.  He hoped that X-ray vision would show up later, but the list stopped there.

HOME EC

His mom helped him sew his first uniform.  It was blue and red, with a shiny white mask that covered his eyes like oversized wingtip eyeglasses.  The Hero complained about it riding up in the crotch.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU

After stopping a bank heist, the Hero delivered the criminals to the chief of police personally.  He shook the Chief’s hand firmly and looked him right in the eye when he spoke.  This was his first interview.

THE GIRL

After returning some stolen nuclear weapons to the U.S. Military, he dodged the press by ducking into an alley.  She was waiting in the shadows, her long chestnut hair tucked behind her ears, pencil poised on a notepad. “How about a few words for the Reporter?” She asked in a mellifluous tone.  “How about over dinner?”  he replied.

Her name was Rhonda.  The Hero wore a suit and tie and a mask in the shape of Calvin Klein designer glasses.  He wore an apron while he made Chicken Florentine, and she sat on a bar stool in the kitchen drinking red wine as they talked.  A year later he moved in.  Before they made love for the first time, he took her hands in his and nervously led them to his mask.  She pulled it off and let it drop to the floor.

PAPER OR PLASTIC

They shopped together in the supermarket every Sunday.  Scheming to make the fangirls jealous, she hung on his muscular, costumed arm and giggled while he kissed her forehead and called her pet names.  Around the corners, teenagers wept and sighed longingly.

HARD DAY

The Hero flew home in the middle of the night after narrowly escaping a battle with the most recent criminal mastermind bent on his destruction.  As he stumbled through the door, the light next to the sofa flicked on, revealing Rhonda’s terrified face.

“Lie down,” she said in a steady tone. She took off his mask and dressed his wounds.  The Hero clasped her hand that clutched the moist cloth in both of his.

“Marry me,” he said.  Then he passed out.

FOREVER

Their wedding was small and secret.  The priest was Franciscan, and both of their parents came to witness.  Her dress was a masterpiece of white satin, matching his new mask.

PARTNERS

He took on a sidekick, a promising young crime fighter whom he kept running into on his nightly beat.  The new guy’s costume was based on the Hero’s design, only yellow and black.  “This job is taxing, and it doesn’t exactly pay,” the Hero told him one night as they scouted the city from the rooftops.  “Do you have someone to support you?”  “Oh yeah,” the sidekick replied, pointing to a high-speed pursuit that raced along the streets below.  “My boyfriend’s being great about the whole thing.”  He jumped off the edge to join the pursuit as the Hero did a double take.

PRECIOUS

It was a girl.  The sidekick baby-sat while the Hero worked the wee hours and Rhonda worked on her master’s dissertation in Journalism.

LATE HOURS

“You’re home late.”

“I guess I am.”

“Again.”

“Yes, it has been known to happen before.”

“How long are you going to keep this up?  Pushing us aside, ignoring your family-”

“You think that’s what I’m doing out there, all day and night?  You think it’s just some hobby to get out of the house?  I save people, dammit!  I hold this city together-”

“You can’t even hold us together!  We’re falling apart and you can’t even see it!”

Every night for a week they argued.  Their nine-year-old sat in the corner of her bedroom, making her dolls float in the air to distract her from the screaming.

FIX-IT MAN

Sundays were cleaning days, and when the kitchen sink leaked the Hero would lay flat on his back to repair it, head cut from his body by the darkness of the cabinet.  His mask lay next to his toolbox, and his daughter would sit next to him on the tiled floor, hugging her knees and handing him tools with her mind. “You’ve got to use your hands someday,” he told her.  She fidgeted with the hem of her yellow dress, her long brown hair covering her face.

IN PEACE

The Hero’s father died on a Tuesday.  They buried him on the farm, and the Hero wore a black hooded mask that covered the entire face.  His mother couldn’t bring herself to cook for the wake, so he made a cold pesto pasta dish – his father’s favorite.

RETIRED

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fight anymore, just that the little things were more valuable now.  His daughter smiled onstage for the first time at her ballet recital.  Rhonda’s books were selling off the shelves and she got offered full-time status at the University.  It was time for him to take a break from all the violent stuff, the police commissioner admitted glumly.  “Volunteer.  Plant trees.  Save the rainforest, for God’s sakes – you fly down in the morning, back in time for dinner.”  His costumes, which had gone through many alterations and upgrades, hung shabbily in glass display cases in his office.  Through the window outside, the family of three fished off the side of his boat – a present from the cops, who bestowed it with a hidden rejoice at symbolically getting their jobs back.

END

The Hero outlived Rhonda by decades and saw his great-grandchildren graduate from Yale, Bryn Mawr, and UCLA.  None of his offspring felt a calling to follow in his footsteps.  When he felt the end coming on he flew to the arctic in case his demise resulted in an atomic explosion.  He passed away peacefully in his icy shelter in a self-contained spontaneous combustion instead.  The sun forever shone on his end of the earth as his costume and body shriveled.

Sue Buzzard has always loved writing.  Ever since a Thanksgiving story she wrote in middle school brought her teacher to tears, she has had a passion for communication through the English language.  A violinist at Berklee, her other passion is in playing, teaching and spreading string music around the world.