Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (47 page)

It didn’t take many rounds of this until Jonathan had to confess he couldn’t drink anymore. She started to pour again and he waved his hand at her in defeat. She put the bottle on the ground, carefully, and then the glasses.

She turned around, sliding across the bench toward him, and then reclining into him like a chair. Her head against his chest, he sat back until the bar holding his weights caught him. He crossed his hands around her and held her.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she said. “I knew you were here. I could hear you hitting the mats over and over again. I don’t need to talk about it, I just wanted company.”

“I’ll try to be good company,” he said.

Some time passed. No one spoke. He couldn’t see her face, just her bare feet crossed at the end of the bench. She didn’t seem to be waiting for him to say anything, so he just enjoyed her warmth against him. Finally, she broke the silence.

“Doesn’t this place make you lonely?” Her tone was different than it had been a moment ago, inquisitive, as though she’d been distracted from whatever memories she’d been avoiding by examining the furnishings of Jonathan’s cocoon. “You’re always in here, by yourself.”

“I get lonely, but I like it here,” he admitted. “When I’m around people, they always want to talk. Somewhere along the line, talking got too exhausting, too complicated.”

She tilted her head so he could see her face, smiling at him. “Yes, well, we’ve seen you struggle on that front.”

“Humph,” he responded, a laugh that only lasted one breath, “It’s hard to find someone, who’s comfortable for long in silence.”

She nodded, and then she pulled away from him. He missed the warmth of her. She turned and looked him in the eye, her head tilting seductively.

“Can I take your picture, Jonathan?” Leah asked.

“Now? Here?” He asked.

“Yes,” she said. “This place is you, but without you in it, it’s just a garage.”

She took the camera from around her neck and turned to face him. She looked at him through the lens, turning the focus to capture him how she wanted. She shook her head. He could see from her concentration, she wasn’t finding what she’d hoped. With her hand she indicated for him to stand.

He was unsure what she was looking for, but he rose from the bench and walked about the garage. She watched him patiently. When he turned back to her for help, she only nodded, as if to say,
I’ll tell you when I see it
.

Finally, when he stood in front of one of the large mirrors, she asked him to stop. He waited, looking at his reflection, unsure what to do with himself; unsure what she saw. She snapped a few shots and frowned.

“It’s missing something,” she said.

He shrugged, not knowing how to help.

“It’s your face,” she said. “Your expression isn’t right.”

She gave him that look he liked so much, when he could tell she wanted to ask him something, but didn’t want to cross a boundary. He already knew she was going to ask, her restraint always lost to her curiosity.

“That night, with Grant, you had this look,” she said. “After he’d hit you, when you stood, when you picked yourself up and turned to face him. It was your real face.”

He thought he should be more alarmed at what she was bringing up, more uncomfortable. He wasn’t. She was the first person who ever seemed to want to see that face.

“It was, it was just rage,” he said.

She shook her head.

“No. It wasn’t a snarl, it wasn’t mindless anger. I knew when I saw that expression that Grant was in real trouble. It was exciting, in a way,” she said. “I thought
, this is the face of someone who won’t be stopped
.”

He was quiet for a moment, looking at her reflection behind him in the mirror.

“I can’t do it on request,” he said.

She nodded. Then he could see she was trying to think of a way around the problem.

“What happened? In your head, what changed at that moment, after he’d hit you?” she asked.

He thought about it. Only one word came to mind.

“Permission,” he said.

“Permission?” She tested the sound if it, seemed intrigued by it. Her expression changed then, she nodded and she set the camera down, apparently having given up on capturing what she’d hoped for. She stood and walked to him. When she was within his reach, she stopped.

“Permission to what?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure,” he said.

She held his gaze awhile longer, but seemed to believe he wasn’t being vague on purpose. A moment passed, and she stepped closer.

“You know why I like you?” she asked, changing the subject.

He shook his head slowly.

“You…” She poked him gently in the chest. “Are always so busy. A girl wouldn’t have to worry about you getting clingy or overly attached, if…” She paused. “If she were looking for someone who wouldn’t get clingy, or overly attached.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

When she kissed him, he knew he’d lied. He could easily get overly attached. If she knew, than for the first time, she hadn't called him out on it.

She was asleep next to him. He could see her bare back rising and falling with her breath in the dim light coming in from the window. The room was pleasant Jonathan thought, though sparse for a girl with so many hobbies: No mirrors, no art, just dark wood furniture and the bed. He liked that. The bed itself was the only extravagance, a queen with a white down comforter. It was like a bed sized cotton ball in an otherwise elegant room. The digital clock on her night stand said two o’clock in the morning in large blue light.

He didn’t remember falling asleep or when she had rolled away from him in the night, the liquor fogging his memory. He no longer felt its effects, but he was thirsty.

He slowly got out of the bed so as not to wake her. It was tomorrow after all, the anniversary was over, if she slept deeply and woke without a hangover maybe she would just remember the good parts of yesterday. He found his jeans and t-shirt on the floor and silently slipped them on. Jack had been asleep for hours, but he didn’t like the idea of the kid finding him walking around their home in his boxers.

When he got to the kitchen he poured himself a glass of water, then he turned and noticed that the light was on under the door to the garage. There had been no light a moment ago, he was almost sure. Maybe Jack was awake after all. Why was he in the garage at 2 am though? Jonathan walked over and slowly opened the door. Peeking in, he didn’t see anyone, just the metal statue. It looked more complete than he remembered, so he stepped inside to take a better look.

It occurred to him then, he was dreaming.

The light was coming from a workbench off to the side of the statue. Sitting on a stool in front of the bench was a man, his back to Jonathan, wearing a blue collar shirt and hiking boots. Between them was a hoist, suspending a truck engine from chains. Jonathan remembered the engine, from his father’s garage, the one he’d thought to fix himself the day of the funeral. The one he’d quit on before even starting.

He hadn’t dreamed of his father again, not since the night after he’d drowned the Ferox. The dreams betrayed themselves, never lulling him into a false illusion of reality for long. Their inconsistencies with the world he recognized were always glaring in the details, a man who should be dead, an engine in the wrong garage.

Things out of their place in time.

As the day drew closer, Jonathan had expected more of the same dreams he was used to: moving shadows, chains, choking, the face of monsters, the little girl in the pink coat, but not his father.

Douglas had been a mechanic after leaving the military, yet Jonathan hardly knew a thing about cars. Meanwhile, the woman sleeping next to him could weld a ‘catalytic converter,’ to a vehicle like it was just something everyone knew how to do. He wasn’t being sexist, something just seemed to have gone wrong. It still troubled Jonathan, since his father’s death, that he hadn’t spent more time in their family garage with the man. He’d known so much, he could have taught him so much. Why couldn’t he have been wise enough to know there wasn’t a bottomless well of time to learn it.

I don’t even know what I need to know,
he thought.

“You’ll figure it out,” said Douglas from behind the engine.

Jonathan walked barefoot across the cement floor, taking care not to step on metal shaving and leftovers from the construction of the statue. He stood next to his father and watched him work on the engine.

“I have a confession,” Douglas said as he wiped grease off the wrench in his hand with an old rag from his back pocket.

“What’s that?” Jonathan asked.

Douglas’ hands now clean, he pulled off his glasses.

“I didn’t know what was wrong with this thing either,” he said. “I never had enough time to figure it out. If you had been old enough, I’d have had you help me.”

Jonathan smiled.

“When did you know you wanted to be a mechanic, dad?”

“Didn’t happen all of a sudden. I had the knowledge; I was sick of working for someone else. Eventually I had the capital, so it happened,” he said.

“I guess I meant why did you want to run an auto shop then?” he said.

“I was good at it, son,” he said, “and it made me happy to do something I was good at.”

“Did you ever think I was good at anything?” Jonathan asked. “What did you think I would be?”

His father put his glasses back on and looked at him.

“Jonathan, when you were a kid, no one knew what the world was going to look like when you were grown. As a father, I tried to see your character more than I looked for talents. You weren’t quick to emotion; you worked hard when it mattered.” Douglas laughed, then, “and nothing pissed you off more than making decisions when you didn’t have all the facts. I can see that hasn’t changed.”

Douglas tilted his head and looked at him over the rim of his glasses.

“I knew you were clever, Jonathan. You weren’t going to let the world outsmart you. When you didn’t know what you should do…” Douglas paused. “You never stopped trying to figure it out.”

“Clever isn’t enough to win,” Jonathan said.

“No,” Douglas said understandingly. “But if you can’t win with your head. You’ll just have to want it more than the other guy.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Jonathan said. “I don’t even know what these damn Ferox want. How can I want it more?”

“What made you go out and face the Ferox last time Jonathan?”

He thought about it, but didn’t like the answers that were coming to him.

“Death. Dead children,” Jonathan said, looking away from his father in shame. “Guilt, revulsion, anger. I was so afraid, that somehow people would know I’d had the power to do something and I hadn’t shown up to do it, that I’d be blamed for their deaths.”

Jonathan cringed as he faced the memory. How Hayden had been willing to follow him to face the Ferox even though he knew the danger, to drag Jonathan through his own cowardice.

“But that was before it all got so complicated. Before I knew that the only deaths that matter were the Ferox or my own,” Jonathan said.

“Son, we both know in our guts, that damn alien isn’t lying about the implications. I don’t think anyone goes to the trouble to make a man face a monster in an arena outside of time and space if there isn’t a damn good reason,” Douglas said.

Jonathan nodded.

“I’m afraid,” Jonathan said. “I’m afraid that whatever these monsters want, they want it so badly I won’t be able to stop them. That winning is more important to them than their very lives.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, son,” Douglas said.

Jonathan smiled. Douglas had often made him laugh as a child by using that old phrase. He’d always done it when his mother wasn’t around to hear him swearing in front of Jonathan.

“I’m in here with you, Jonathan,” Douglas said. “It’s not as though you’re alone in a box describing the insides while I am on the outside taking your word for it. I know the contents of this box as well as you do.”

“I’m not lying, Dad,” Jonathan said defensively.

“No, you’re deluding yourself. It’s subtly different,” Douglas said.