The Ables (32 page)

“Unless seven punches the six of us in the stomach and runs away laughing,” Henry said.

“He’s not going to do that, Henry,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t end up helping our team, he’s not a bully anymore.”

“So says Chad,” Henry scoffed, clearly not ready to buy Chad’s story. “Like I said before, once a bully … always a bully.”

“You guys don’t think a person can change?” It was Dad, who’d been reading his paper in the other room, and as it turns out, eavesdropping.

“Well, Mr. Sallinger,” Henry countered, “my dad says you should always trust what you can see with your own eyes. And I’ve never seen a bad guy turn good.”

“Me neither,” James chimed in, giggling.

“Well, I have,” Dad replied knowingly. Without us having to prompt him, he knew we wanted to hear him continue. So he did. “How many of you have heard the story about my dad, Thomas Sallinger?”

We all raised our hands because we’d covered it in Superhero Studies earlier in the school year. It had only been the slightest bit awkward for me.

“Who can tell me what happened—you don’t need to include all the details; just give us a refresher.” He leaned forward, folding his paper and laying it aside. It was the most engaged he’d been with the real world in weeks.

Bentley, of course, was the first to respond. “Your father was killed in the Battle of New York, right?”

“That’s correct.”

Bentley continued, “he was betrayed by his best friend Luther, who used his powers to keep Thomas from defending himself against Artimus.”

“That’s correct. Very good. My father, Thomas Sallinger, was killed by Artimus Baxter, a notorious killer and villain who was attempting to take over New York City entirely.” We shuffled a bit from our seated positions, turning to face Dad and inching closer. “Artimus was a cold-blooded killer, an electro with an attitude, you might say.” An “electro” was a slang term for someone whose powers involved the use of electricity. In Artimus’ case, he was a modern day Zeus, hurling lightning bolts at will to destroy his enemies.

“Near the end of the battle, the heroes had things well in hand and had cornered Artimus, who leaped to the top of the Empire State Building and began firing electric bolts in all directions. He was desperate and out of options. His armies were defeated. It was only a matter of time.” Mrs. Crouch hadn’t given us anywhere near this level of detail.

“Luther and my father were sent up to bring Artimus in since they were partners and had hunted the villain together for years. But on top of that building, in the driving rain, Luther turned on my father unexpectedly, encasing Thomas in a no power zone temporarily. That allowed Artimus to kill my father easily … one final act of villainy and mayhem. He fired his lightning only once at my dad—a direct hit—sending him flying off the building and down onto the rain-soaked street one hundred stories below.

“Luther felt so guilty that he immediately turned and used his power on Artimus and then shoved him off the top of the skyscraper to his own death. Still … Luther stood trial for his heinous acts. And he even served time in Sperrington.” Sperrington was the name of the remote custodian prison facility, located somewhere north of inhabited Canada.

“Now,” Dad continued, “the part of the story you probably haven’t heard before is this: After Luther was released from prison, he went on to live a healthy, productive, and crime-free life. And he never chose evil again. So you see, a tiger can change his stripes. A villain can become good again, and a bully can change his bullying ways.”

“But how do you know Luther never turned evil again?” Henry asked. “He could be out killing people right now for all we know.”

“Ah, but he can’t do that. He can’t. Because if Luther was out killing people … who would look after his corn?”

It probably took about five seconds for me to even begin putting together what Dad was saying. I didn’t understand the reference to corn when the entire previous story had been corn-free. By the time it dawned on me, I could tell the others were having moments of realization as well.

I turned toward my Dad in shock and surprise. “Dad?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes, son. Luther’s last name is Charles. The infamous criminal who murdered a hero and the quiet old man who comes to dinner every month are one in the same.”

***

“Dad?”

It was later the same night. All my friends had gone home, and Dad had let me stay up late to read and watch TV. I’d spent most of the time mulling over the revelation that old Mr. Charles had killed my grandfather. I wanted to know more about why this evil man was allowed in our house … and in our town. Was he no longer evil?

Was he a prisoner of some kind?

But more than any of that, I wanted to know about my grandfather. Who he was and how he’d died.

“Yes, Phillip?”

“Tell me about Grandpa’s power?”

“What’s that?”

“His power. That day in the cornfield you told me it was absorption, right?”
Just like Finch’s.

“Yeah.”

“Well, tell me more about how that works.” No need for Dad to know my ulterior motives for asking, at least not yet.

“Well,” Dad said with a sigh, looking up from his newspaper. “Well, Phillip, his power is called absorption. People with the power of absorption are incredibly powerful. The power is basically like a sponge, soaking up the powers of any other superhuman people in the vicinity. It’s one of the rarest powers around. They say it only shows up a handful of times in each generation.”

I thought about that a moment. “So … he had every power?”

“Well, probably throughout his entire life … yeah. I guess he probably did have every power at one point or another. But they weren’t permanent. He only possessed the powers of others while he was close to them.”

“How close?” I’m a stickler for details; it helps build the mental pictures I use to “see” things. Plus, this was information I sort of needed to know in case I ran into Finch again.

“I don’t really know, son. Maybe fifty yards? It’s not a very large distance. But while within that distance, he could make use of any power nearby. He could be fast, he could fly, he could even shoot lasers out of his eyes … if he was close to someone else that had that power.”

This only made the next question all that more pressing to me. “So if he could do that, then how did he get killed? I mean, can’t he just use the power of his attackers against them?”

“Sure could. Yep. But my father didn’t really see his attacker coming.”

“Mr. Charles,” I murmured.

“Correct. You see, Grandpa and Mr. Charles were partners. But more than that, they were lifelong friends. They’d defeated hundreds of villains together throughout a long career, and they were virtually inseparable. Then one day, Mr. Charles betrayed your grandfather. He was supposed to use his NPZ against Artimus, but instead, he used it on my dad and killed him.”

“Well,” I said, playing devil’s advocate, “Technically it was Artemis that killed him.” I think I was searching for reasons not to hate Mr. Charles completely.

“Isn’t it really the same thing, son?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” I was dejected. “Then why do you treat Mr. Charles like such a good friend? Why don’t you hate him or kill him or something?”

“Mr. Charles paid his debt to society long before I met him, Phillip. He served twenty years in prison. And while inside, he was a great resource for the custodian police forces in tracking down some of the last remaining old-generation super-villains. The entire hero population has deemed him rehabilitated.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you have to invite him over for meatloaf.”

“Phillip, something I hope you learn one day is that forgiveness is far more powerful and fulfilling than anger and revenge.”

I was instantly skeptical anytime an adult told me that I would agree with them later on in life. “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” I responded honestly, but not argumentatively.

“Well, someday it will, son. Someday it will.”

Christmas came entirely too quickly, most likely because I was dreading it so much. It comes too fast any other year, when I’m a normal kid and I just want to open presents and stuff my face with homemade food. But this Christmas, for at least one year, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a young man, growing up too quickly as a result of his mother’s coma.

I tried for weeks to ignore the coming holiday, instead telling myself that Mom would wake up in time to take on her usual array of holiday-cheer responsibilities. It was almost as though Christmas without her would end up being some sort of morbid milestone. A note of finality to her damaged state. I couldn’t imagine the season without her, so I simply pretended as though it wasn’t upon us. A Christmas version of denial.

Believing that she would be fine and back with her family for Christmas was the only way I was able to make it this far without falling apart.

But two weeks prior to the big day, I had a total change of heart. The holiday was going to come, whether I wanted it to or not. So I went the other direction. Instead of putting on blinders, I became obsessed with Christmas. I convinced myself that, somehow, despite all logic to the contrary, if I were able to keep Mom’s vision of the season alive for our family, perhaps God would let her come back to us. It wouldn’t be the last time I would try to force the hand of fate with my own insignificant actions.

It started small. A piece of tinsel here, a little snowman figurine there. With Henry’s help I was able to find the spot in the garage where all the decorations were stored away each year and bit by bit began to unwrap the knick-knacks and place them throughout the house.

But once I started, I couldn’t stop. I lost myself completely in the pursuit of recreating what this time of year was supposed to feel like when Mom was around. Within a day or two, I was keeping Christmas music playing on the stereo around the clock—something Mom always enjoyed during the holiday season. The little village—which Mom used to put together one day at a time over the course of the month of December—I assembled in one hour flat, complete with the artificial “snow” and all the little townspeople figurines.

By day three, I had gone through all the decorations in the house and began looking for other ways to bring the spirit of the season into the house. I lit cinnamon-scented candles and put out little glass jars of Hershey’s Kisses. I even hung an Advent calendar, though it was from 1995.

I found out when all the usual yuletide specials were set to come on television and made sure to have them on when I was home—even when no one was watching them or when I was home alone.

I spent an entire Saturday baking—a first for me. Probably a last, as well. Between my inexperience in the kitchen and my lack of sight, it was challenging, to be sure. I forced Patrick to read me all of Mom’s recipes and tried to follow them to the letter for holiday treats like candy-cane-shaped cookies, zucchini bread, and apple pie. I baked for five straight hours, and when Dad got home from work, the kitchen looked like a culinary battle zone, with delicious shrapnel strewn all over the counter, floor, and table.

He set his coat on the back of one of the dining room chairs as he walked slowly toward the kitchen. His mouth was hanging open a bit, and he rubbed his temples furiously.

At first, I thought he was going to be mad at the mess I’d made. He just stood there, wide-eyed, looking around the room over and over again. He looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before, which I now know was concern. At the time, I just thought he was in shock at the mess. “I’m going to clean it up,” I promised cheerily as I continued banging the pots and pans around.

“It’s okay,” he said, still staring at me.

It’s easier now, long after the fact, to look back and understand my father’s unique position. He had to have been just as upset about Mom as Patrick and I were, if not more so. This was his wife, his best friend, and his true love.

And yet, he also had two kids to look after, which included things like getting us fed and off to school every day. But it also had to include concern and worry for our mental well-being. Seeing me go from zero to “Captain Christmas” in about forty-eight hours probably caused Dad to think I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

He didn’t know what it meant or how to handle it. It’s not like there are guidebooks for how to cope with a spouse in a super-power-enhanced coma. He was making it up as he went. I’ve always regretted not being more mature and alert to his struggles during that time. I could have tried to make things easier for him.

But to his credit, he didn’t get mad or show frustration about any of it. He didn’t get mad about the mess in the kitchen—though I definitely had to clean it up that night. He didn’t get mad about the decorations, the insomnia, or Patrick’s newly emerging nightmare problem. He just went about his duties as a loving father, all the while shielding us from his own worry and pain.

In fact, I’m not sure my father got upset with us boys even one time in the weeks after Mom’s coma. To our credit, we didn’t do too much to rock the boat during that time either. Whether it was our own trauma, or just an instinctive sense that Dad didn’t need misbehaving boys to deal with on top of everything else, we were little angels for the most part.

Christmas morning, we loaded up a picnic basket and several presents into the car and went to the hospital to celebrate with Mom. The ride wasn’t nearly as difficult as usual. It was the first and only time that visiting that room felt like a good thing.

The nurses and staff on duty greeted us warmly, and even the hospital hallways had been decorated with wreaths and holiday greens. I think Mom would have appreciated that.

The clunking machine noise in her hospital room faded quickly into the background, drowned out by the little radio I’d brought to play carols on. We sang carols while Dad clumsily strummed his old acoustic guitar—I sang the harmony part that Mom usually sang, though I missed several of the notes. We ate sticky bread and licked our fingers clean. It was almost a regular Sallinger Christmas.