Superman's Cape (28 page)

Spew,
he wondered, trying to think of what his doctor once called it. No, not spew -- sputum was the word.
Puke-in … Sputum
, he joked to himself and then mumbled a laugh at the name. He laughed past the fever. Past the pain of his broken face and the smell of his infected arm and the rot of his feet. He laughed at the name until he started to cry. He wondered if Death was standing or kneeling next to him and laughing along. Was Death playing jokes with his breathing and laughing while holding a stopwatch and counting the time until it was over. All over. Kyle raised his hands in the air and pranced his fingers up and down in a rhythm to the sound of the name. He repeated the words in a menagerie of rhyme, laughing and crying.

“Duke-in -- stutum … duke-in -- stutum … duke-in -- stutum,” Kyle sang and laughed and cried some more to the sound of what came out of his mouth.

“Hey George, ya around, I’n duke-in -- stutum,” he yelled out into the darkness.

Kyle stopped singing when he heard a branch breaking through the trees. He froze in place and waited. A moment later and he heard the large branch crash to the ground. The sun was gone and the air was wet. Heavy rains had chased the drizzle out of the woods as though strong-arming its way in for an extended stay. They drenched every tree and threatened to flood the grounds if they decided to overstay their welcome. He tried to see the tree tops, but only saw the silhouette of branches and leaves against stormy gray skies. He watched the arguments between the tops of the trees. The winds bullied them into another exchange, ending with a loud thud. It was closer. He thought a large branch might fall on him. And he wondered if that was what Death had in store for him. Something quick. But he doubted it.

“George – ya around?” he asked, half expecting to see his friend join him on the floor of the woods. He thought in his last hours he might see George’s bobbing head. He half hoped his friend would participate in some philosophical discussion he’d seen his parents enjoy on Saturday nights. He’d see them sipping glasses of wine. Later there might be three or four more glasses before he and Jonnie were shuffled off to bed. He’d hear his parents continue their discussions about the different things grown-ups liked to talk about. And then later, he’d hear them making love. And sometimes he’d giggle, but most times he’d just fall asleep knowing all was right with the world.

But the only sound he heard was more clashes of tree bark from branches above him. Kyle dragged his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them. The pins and needles that hollowed his legs to mere mannequin stumps, shallowed to a dull and empty ache. He pulled his legs in anyway in an attempt to fight the chill that was shaking every part of him.

“George -- not sure if you’re there, I’n sick … I’n really sick,” Kyle said in a breath that came out in chunks as another lung puck landed on his tongue.
Sputum,
he thought again and put on a weak smile while he raised his hand and spat the lung puck into the middle of his palm. The glob floated on his hand. Threads of bright red blood ran along the edges like a creek or spring cutting through the woods. He wondered if it would move. He wondered if there were maggots inside it or maybe they were in his lungs. He poked the glob in his palm again as though threatening it, daring it to poke back, daring it to jump to the floor of the woods and run away from him. Kyle peeked in on the class of maggots in the Boar cut and saw only the vaguest motion of them beneath his skin. The Boar cut was crusting over again, amidst swelled flesh that he could smell. Heck, the forest could smell it.

“Dang,” he muttered, and knew the infection in his lungs was a bad one. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the lung puck. His heart wasn’t in it. He tossed it to the ground and waited for it to run away from him. But it didn’t. It didn’t do anything.

“Kinda going green just like ny school,” Kyle told the trees around him, and started to cry again, only he didn’t know why. He didn’t know if it was the fever, or if it was because his lungs hurt or if Death was causing the clouds in his mind that grew gray and dark like the ones above the trees. Kyle thought the infections were spreading into his blood and his brain. He was filling up with infected leftovers that eroded his thoughts. He sobbed.

Kyle Connely wondered if it was time to roll over and die. “Roll ober and Die,” he mumbled, just like the bullies at school sometimes spat in the cafeteria when stealing your last handful of french fries.
Eff off, Roll over and Die
, they’d say and laugh while you secretly wished to see them choke on the stolen fries.

Kyle waited for Death’s hand to lay a bony grip on him. Not just because it was time, but because it was the right thing to do. The merciful thing to do.

“Dad,” Kyle asked as his lungs revolted and threw a lung puck which he struggled to swallow down.

“Dad … can you hear ne?”

“Dad … I’n done,” he mumbled while easing his back onto the pine needle floor. He rolled over and tightened his curl into a fetal position. He opened his eye once and then closed it a final time. He didn’t care that he was wet or cold. He didn’t care that he lay onto his side where the Boar cut pressed against pine needles. Even the hunger, and the pain in his face and arm, seemed to be an old memory that faded like the bumble-bee paint on Beasty. He didn’t care that the rain and the winds grew stronger and that they were pushing down on his body. He ignored the fever in him and the chills that caused him to shake and clench and pee in his pants. He half hoped that the rattle and tickle stabbing his side would throw another lung puck that would get lodged in his windpipe. He thought he’d leave it there. He’d leave the green infected plug where it landed and let everything around him go black just as long as it meant he didn’t have to feel the way he felt anymore.

The cold wind and rain filled the cab of the WJL-TV van. It pushed errant locks of hair in front of Jill’s eyes as she watched her friend struggle to live. But Steve died. Blood dripped from his neck and the driver’s side door. “So much blood,” she mumbled as her eyes glanced around the cab. She jumped when the van’s windshield wipers tracked back and forth. They followed a mechanical demand with no sense of knowing the glass was gone. The scratchy voice of the blades made an odd thud sound when one of them hit the tree branches. The wipers stopped, they seemed to think a moment, but then returned to where they came from.

Jill was vaguely aware that she was crying. She was in pain from the accident. She was in pain from a broken knee. Images of Steve struggling to live played back in her mind. She couldn’t shake them. She’d never seen anyone die before. She wondered if he had a family. She wondered if he had someone to love or who loved him? “I am so sorry,” she told him.

“But I’m not dead, Steve. I’m sorry – but I have to go,” she exclaimed and after another minute, Jill concentrated on helping the living. She eased herself back from his seat. He was dead after all, and there was nothing more she could do. She settled into her own seat and hugged the jacket she wore. In that moment, she tried to capture any of Jacob’s smell or sense of him that might be left over.
Adolescent
, she thought, and blurted a small hysterical giggle. Lifting her chin from the jacket, her eyes fell past the mosaic of fractured glass left in place of the windshield. The gravel road they were on ended where she saw the Connely’s trailer. Next to it she saw the small search party tent. Relief settled in her a little when she saw a few people heading in her direction.

They must’ve heard the accident. Or maybe they saw it -- they saw the tree fall and kill Steve
, she thought. Jill pinched her eyes past the distorted view to see if any of the volunteers in the tent looked like Jacob. She squeezed her eyes searching past the curtain of rain and wind that was standing between her and the tented group. As if a switch were flipped, a torrential rain emptied everywhere. The colors of which were thick and masked the faces and shapes of the volunteers. Frustration settled as stretches of minutes had the storm continuing at a fast pace, leaving her to see almost nothing at all. When it did slow, Jill saw the volunteers moving their vehicles – grouping them together as though building something. A few of the volunteers fought the winds and rain and were nearing her van.

Umbrellas were useless
, she thought. Jill saw the nylon parkas they wore. Some were red and others were green, but most of them were yellow. To her, the parkas seemed to trot around like pieces on a game-board where God-fingers directed their next move. With each turn, a piece was moved to a new position on the board of play.
Come move me
, she thought and waited for some miraculous motion of the van from beneath the tree. But nothing happened.

The volunteers fought the weather as they approached. Raising their arms up to shield their faces, Jill wished she had a parka of her own. She watched three men, their parkas a convenient Red, Green and Yellow make their way through the heavy weather. When they reached her, they climbed over the remains of the large tree until their feet were square with the van. From there they could see inside to where she sat. They saw her clutching Jacob’s jacket. They saw her batting away tears and mouthing a thank you for coming.
Hurry
, she wanted to yell out to them.
Please hurry. Please. I can’t stay in here anymore
. Green came around the passenger side where she sat. Red and Yellow worked their way along the driver’s side. They struggled with their footing as they stepped around the larger pieces of broken tree.

“Are you alright --” Green shouted to Jill through the passenger-side window, “-- can you move, or maybe try and open the door?”

“I … I think I’m alright,” she yelled back and then looked over to Red and Yellow before continuing, “Steve’s dead.”

“They’ve got your friend over there – let me help you get out of the van,” Green yelled over the storm as he pulled and pushed on the door handle. A crack in the tempered glass of the window stretched from the bottom corner to the middle. From there, it spidered in different directions, like lightning across an August sky. The collection of fine cracks broke Green up into jagged puzzle pieces. When Jill looked at the puzzle pieces, she saw that Green was a young man, about her age, whose thick square glasses with wide black frame looked oddly heavy on his narrow face. They looked uncomfortable and rain beaded up a mess of spots on the lenses. She wondered how he could see; she thought it must look too carnival to recognize anything. He also wore an out-to-save-the-world expression that told her the boy, Kyle, was still missing. She was certain of it. This lifted her hopes that Jacob was in the trailer, safe from the storm, waiting for them or as the case me be, waiting for her.

The door was heavy and might have been caught on something. When she pushed, she heard the sounds of metal crunching against metal. The anxiety of being stuck in the van was building as she struggled to push from the inside. She pushed and lifted on the handle some more. Urgency welled up like a warm blanket. It edged up and then wrapped around her chest and neck until exploding from each hand. She felt sick and desperately needed to be out of the van. She had to get away from the dead body that was her friend and whose chaw and blood smell remained fresh in her nose as his last garbled words echoed in her ringing ears. Teardrop strings of blood continued their trek from the cuts in her head and face. She thought the bleeding stopped, but warm streams flowed across her cheek and down her nose.
I’m going to need stitches,
she thought as blood drops became heavy and fell from her face. She wondered if Green could sense her urgency. He began to pull on the door handle only to hear the same crunching metal in protest. The fresh blood added to the graveness of her being trapped and she thought in a moment she’d start screaming if the van’s door didn’t open. She could feel her heart thumping and before she realized it, she was slapping at the fractured glass and screaming to Green to help her. The door stayed closed. It was stuck.

Green looked back at her through the glassy spider veins and then took a step behind him and turned his head from side to side. Briefly she thought he was going to leave her. And she thought it was a crazy punishment for letting Steve die. She realized she was in shock and her senses and thinking might be failing. She turned to the window and motioned to Green. He raised his hand as he sized up the mess of tree and metal in front of him. After a pause that seemed to last longer than it should, he looked back to Jill and then over to Red and to Yellow who had also stepped away from the van.

“The frame is bent up. Bent bad – doors are jammed, they’re not going anywhere,” he hollered over the sound of rain before blowing water from his upper lip. He turned and stepped toward Jill and yelled through the glass, “I’m going to have to break that window and pull you out, okay?”

Jill saw Red and Yellow begin to climb across the front and step over the gnarled remains of the tree. The God-fingers moved them to new positions on the game-board. But Jill had no move of her own to make, other than the one Green suggested. She nodded to Green who nodded back.

“Wait!” Jill yelled as Green looked for something to break the glass with. She tapped the glass and said, “Let me try to break it from in here. The glass is already cracked.”

Green nodded and stepped back out of the way. Red and Yellow joined him at his side and the three together looked like some kind of expressionist art gallery photograph. “You gotta be kidding,” she smirked as she looked at the lineup of game-board pieces in front of her. She wondered if the God-fingers were watching and ready to make another move. Three men in parkas of Red, Yellow and Green. Standing on a gravel road, with heavy woods of autumn orange and brown behind them. A hazy downpour bouncing up from the gravel and filtering all but just enough light to see the image.