The Indestructible Man Read online

  For nearly a month he watched only PBS; there were no commercials and the documentaries put him to sleep faster than any pill. He drank beer with Brooks and let Cindy wheel him through the park by the river, and thought very little of Romulus Wayne.

  One day, after his physical therapist finished the painful job of stretching and bending his legs, he wheeled himself to the newsstand and bought a paper. As he flipped through his thumb caught the edge of the “Arts and Entertainment” section. The cover story caught his eye—a feature on the Indestructible Man’s traveling show. He studied the gathered troupe: a hairy, grotesquely-muscled bald man with a cheesy handlebar mustache; an Indian with black hair down to his waist, a long bow over his shoulder; a thin man in a long caftan dotted with embroidered eyes; and in the center, Romulus Wayne. But no Abigail—he wondered if she had been there, just out of camera range. The caption read, “The Indestructible Man and his Human Marvels.” Bobby stared for a long time, his sweaty fingertips absorbing the ink from the paper. In ten days Romulus and the Human Marvels were to perform at the Simms Theater in Rockford, an hour away. Bobby balled the insert in his hand and wheeled down the sidewalk, searching for a phone booth to look up the Simms’ box office. He did not know what he would see at the show; he only knew he was going.

  Since the Self-Help van did not go as far as Rockford, Bobby had to ask Brooks to drive him. He knew it would take some convincing, since Brooks rarely left town for fear of being recognized.

  “Is it really that important?” Brooks asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, then. But if anybody even gives me a sideways look, I’m outta there.”

  He did not tell Cindy where he was going or why. Had he mentioned the show she would’ve wanted to come; had she known the whole truth, she would have thrown something at him. He could already think of a hundred good reasons not to go, and did not need another.

  By the time the minibus pulled into the Simms’ parking garage Bobby’s hands were raw from clinging to the rail. With Brooks in tow, Bobby—in a black baseball hat and zip-up sweatshirt with the hood up—wheeled himself toward the stage. They were early; the auditorium was empty except for a stagehand examining a shiny black grand piano hanging unsteadily over the set, and a white-haired grizzly of a man who walked in behind Bobby and Brooks. Bobby almost gagged on his own saliva when he realized it was Romulus’ father. Colonel Jackson Wayne took a long look at him, one eyebrow raised to a sharp, silvery point. Bobby had always feared him; he was an ex-Marine, the tallest and thickest man he’d ever seen. When he was twelve Jackson Wayne’s mere presence had been enough to keep him far from Romulus. He grabbed his wheels, ready to flee if the Colonel recognized him. But Jackson Wayne only nodded hello as he passed, climbed the wooden steps to the stage, and disappeared behind the curtain.

  “A little jumpy, aren’t you?” Brooks said. He slouched low in his seat so that only the top of his head was visible from the entrance. He did not expect trouble, but saw no point in taking chances. “You sure all this is worth it just to see a girl?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Bobby said. “I’m fine.” He pulled down the brim of his cap to hide his face, and waited for the crowd to filter in.

  Bobby dozed through the opening acts, and wondered how anyone could ever sit through them. Brooks was impressed with Eagle-Eye’s skill with the bow, especially when the archer knocked several arrows at once and shot a perfect smiley-face in the target. But they paid little attention to Mind Over Matter, an act in which the hairy, overmuscled strongman bent metal bars of varying thickness, and the caftan-clad Mentalist “unbent” them with his mind. Bobby tried to stay awake while he waited for Romulus to take the stage.

  When the emcee welcomed the Indestructible Man, Bobby felt tiny pinpricks over his body. The applause from the jammed-in spectators was monstrous. When Romulus emerged from behind the curtain, Bobby felt the terrible grinding pain radiate from his mangled ankles up to his hips.

  Bobby found Romulus’ act unremarkable. First he stood against a canvas target, blindfolded and holding a cigarette, while Eagle-Eye knocked three arrows to his bow, aiming for Romulus’ heart; all three bounced off him harmlessly, clattering on the varnished wood. Romulus dropped the cigarette and held his chest, gasping and staggering forward one painful step at a time. But the audience had caught on, and after his first step most were laughing. During the first light wave of applause Bobby noticed Brooks clapping too, and elbowed him in the ribs.

  Next, the crew wheeled a gallows onto the stage. Romulus stood on the platform, a noose around his neck, reading from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as the floor fell out from under him. Though his throat was constricted and he could barely get the words out, Romulus kept reading as he swung. The audience loved it; Bobby thought it was pretentious.

  After the stagehands cut Romulus down, they bound him to a tall wooden post, a pile of kindling at his feet. “Don’t try this at home, folks,” he said as they lit the fire. He thrashed about for a few minutes as the flames engulfed him, a faint shadow in the raging fire, then his head dropped and he hung limply from the post. A man next to Bobby stood up, his eyes wide, one hand over his mouth. Feigning panic, the stagehands put out the blaze with fire extinguishers and rushed to pull him down. His clothes were charred and peeling away in places, his skin covered with soot and ash. They lay him on the stage, where he sat up like a zombie. Again the crowd cheered. Idiots, all of them, Bobby thought—clapping and hollering when Romulus was never in any real danger.

  After he wiped the soot from his face and hands with a wet towel and slipped a terry robe over his blackened clothes, Romulus thanked the audience for coming out. Suddenly a creaking sound came from the rafters, and Romulus slowly looked up in dread. “Oh no—not again,” he said, voice quivering. The grand piano seemed to fall in slow motion, driving his head down between his shoulder blades, his ribs into his hips. The piano exploded into slivers, shards of varnished wood and broken hammers littering the stage, the wires inside snapping and ringing like gongs. The violence of the impact shocked even Bobby. The audience was still as the sawdust settled onto the stage and the first few rows. Several people curled into fetal positions in their seats, sure he had gone too far this time. An old lady in the front row shouted, “Somebody help him!”

  “Christ,” Bobby said under his breath as he waited for Romulus to dig himself out.

  Sure enough, once the whole auditorium was in a panic, a hand emerged from the rubble. His right arm thrust out, then his left, and finally he stood up, waist-high in splinters, a coat of sawdust clinging to his face, hair, and eyebrows. Bobby plugged his ears to block out the wild applause.

  And then the show was over, and Bobby felt a shiver rack his body. He wheeled himself little by little toward the stage. Romulus took a long dusty bow, slivers falling out of his hair, and before Brooks could pull him back Bobby was surrounded by people jumping out of their seats and cheering. The Human Marvels took the stage, joined hands and took a group bow. Bobby rolled closer, stopping about twenty feet from the stage. He noticed Jackson Wayne a few rows up, standing but not applauding; the Colonel glanced at him and his lungs froze.

  Romulus waved to someone backstage, and a tall, willowy young woman with long strawberry-blonde hair reluctantly stepped out. She held his hand, and the furry strongman’s, and faced the crowd. Romulus leaned over and kissed her cheek, which drew a long “awww” from the crowd. Bobby squinted hard, hoping to find some obvious difference in the young woman’s face, her hair, the way she carried herself, but his last doubts had vanished. He was thirteen again, and loved her, wanting only to see her smile and wave at him from the stage. He folded his hands in his lap, spectators swarming around him, prepared to sit still until they tipped him over and trampled him.

  Brooks pushed his way through the crowd, exchanging insults with a few people, and grabbed Bobby’s wheelchair handles. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he said, and tried to push Bobby toward the do
uble doors.

  “No,” Bobby said, clinging to a support beam. “Just leave me alone.”

  Brooks shrugged and let go. “Suit yourself. I’m goin’ outside for a smoke. Just don’t take too long; I’m on breakfast duty tomorrow.”

  Bobby remained until the auditorium was almost empty, his face in his hands, feeling as though an icicle had been plunged into his chest. When he could breathe again he started up the aisle, hoping Brooks had not left without him. As he neared the exit he was startled by light, quick footsteps on the stage behind him.

  “Excuse me?” It was a young woman’s voice.

  Bobby stopped a few feet short of the doors. “Yeah?” He did not turn around.

  “Bobby? Bobby Mercer?”

  “Uh-huh.” He craned his neck slightly. Behind him, halfway between the stage and the exit, was Abigail Wheat. She had bound her long red-gold hair in a ponytail, and she smiled when she saw his face.

  “Do you remember me? Rock Valley Junior High? It’s me, Abigail Wheat. Well, Wayne now.”

  He turned to face her, his hands trembling on the wheels. “I remember you.”

  She cupped her hands together and smiled. “I thought I recognized you. I’d heard you still lived in Rock Valley. It’s been—what? Eight, nine years?”

  “Ten.”

  “Wow. That long. God. I always wondered what happened to you after….” Her gaze shifted to his wheelchair, then the floor. “Well, after.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s good to see you again. How have you been?”

  His terror began to subside, and he started to relax. “Okay, I guess.”

  “That’s great,” Abigail said. “Let me get Romulus. It’d mean a lot to him that you came. Can you stick around a minute?”

  Bobby felt an icy lump in the base of his throat. He wanted to get up and run, but his traitorous body would not permit it. “No,” he said. “I have to go.” He turned quickly and rolled to the exit. Once he reached the sidewalk he spun his wheels as hard as he could. Brooks trotted after him, but years of chain-smoking had dulled his wind and Bobby easily outdistanced him, rolling out of sight until he was far from the theater.

  He sulked in the shadow of a darkened bakery until his hands stopped trembling. In the parking garage Brooks was leaning against his back fender, finishing a cigarette. “Sorry, man,” he said, and helped Bobby up the ramp.

  After Brooks dropped him off, he took the phone off the hook on the slim chance Romulus and Abigail cared enough to look him up. He spent the rest of the night in his dirty bathroom, wheelchair pushed up against the cracked lime-green plaster, striking his forehead against the wall until it went numb. He shouldn’t have gone; he knew he would see her there. Romulus Wayne could not have hurt him more had he thrown him from his chair and twisted his legs like putty. He wanted to hurt Romulus back, badly, to hurl a grenade between his legs and blow him through the back wall of the auditorium. But it wouldn’t be enough; he would only pull himself from the rubble and take a bow, the crowd cheering as if it was part of the act. It was hopeless. Bobby leaned back in his wheelchair, prepared to spend the rest of the night staring up at the lighting fixture. But he leaned too far and tipped over, the back of his head striking the scuffed tile.

  Bobby had never experienced an epiphany, but he recognized one when it came. His cheek pressed to the linoleum, he suddenly understood how all those people could sit through the show when Romulus was never in any danger—they thought it was an elaborate illusion. It was the drama; they didn’t know the arrows could never pierce him, that he could step out of the fire without a blister, that the piano would disintegrate around him without puncturing his skin. They didn’t know it was real. But if they found out, they would lose interest and stop filling the auditoriums and theaters.

  After the vision ceased, Bobby stayed on the cold tile until dawn, considering his discovery. In the morning he struggled to pull himself back into his chair; then, sweaty and tired, he called Brooks to help him figure out how to do it.

  5

  Brooks was not surprised at the request. “I know where you’re coming from,” he said. “Sometimes a guy’s gotta do things so he can sleep at night. But you’d better be sure about this. We ain’t playing around.”

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” Bobby said. “I want to hurt him.”

  Bobby called in sick at the auto parts store, and half an hour later joined Brooks at Roscoe’s, where he bought pitcher after pitcher of the German stuff, Brooks’ fee for helping him.

  “As I see it, it isn’t attempted murder if you know you can’t hurt him. Public discharge of a firearm, maybe assault with a deadly weapon—you’re looking at a few months, maybe a year if you get the wrong judge.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You’ll want something public. Not at a show—people will think it’s staged. It has to be in a mall, a movie theater, anywhere there’s a lot of people.”

  Bobby poured him a refill. “Where, then?”

  Brooks downed half his beer in one gulp, fingered his stubbly chin, and looked off into nowhere. Bobby dared not interrupt; Brooks had bombed his high school principal’s car and (thus far) gotten away with it, so if he was thinking this long his solution was bound to be good. His attention drifted back to Bobby; his thin lips curled inward, eyes narrowed to squinty slits. “Has he got family?”

  Bobby was intrigued. “His dad still lives here. So do her folks.”

  “Hmmm.” Brooks scraped his knuckles against his stubble. “They still talk to each other?”

  “His dad was at the show last night.”

  “Good,” Brooks said.

  “I can’t hold his family hostage. His old man’s a monster.”

  Brooks shook his head. “Think, kid. Thanksgiving’s coming in another month or so. They’ll probably go home, at least meet up somewhere. Hell, they might even make a big deal of it in town—a big homecoming or something. If you’re lucky you can nail him right in front of the hometown crowd. The story’ll get around, believe me.”

  “And if he doesn’t come home?”

  “Then you waste a couple of days and try again at Christmas. Look, I told you what to do. It’s easy. All you have to do is go to the house and wait for him to show.”

  Bobby nodded grimly. Brooks’ plan made perfect sense. “You planning to help me?”

  “Sure,” Brooks said, sucking down the foam from the bottom of the pitcher. “Got nothing else to do.”

  In the weeks before Thanksgiving Bobby scoured the television and newspapers for news of Romulus Wayne. With revenge so close, he forgave himself the obsession, failing to return Cindy’s calls for days at a time and phoning his mother to let her know he would not be home for the holiday. Something had come up at the shop, he said, and he couldn’t get out of it no matter how much he begged. He would try to stop by later, if he could.

  Brooks would supply the weapon: a double-barreled twelve-gauge, conveniently sawed-off, normally kept under his bed in case federal agents came in the night. Bobby took extra time off to plan and prepare; rather than firing him, his bosses kept asking if everything was all right. With a pang of guilt he told them everything was fine.

  A week before he and Brooks were to make their move, Cindy came to his flat with a canister of margarita mix. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Something going on I should know about?”

  “Oh, nothing,” he said. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not right now.”

  “You can tell me when you’re ready,” she said. “Hey, got a blender? The mix was on sale.”

  Cindy mixed the margaritas far too strong and they were both drunk after one helping, but they finished the pitcher and laughed like idiots for hours, slowly peeling off their clothes until they ended up in his bed, the window half-open. He was too drunk to function properly, so he held her instead, her head resting on his chest.

 
“I’m really glad you’re here right now,” he said, gently squeezing her.

  She reached up and tweaked his nose, laughing. “Me too. Where’d that come from?”

  “Oh, nowhere,” he said. “I might not get to see you again for a while.”

  “Why not? Work? You’ll still get days off, won’t you?”

  “It’s not that,” Bobby said. A sad, heavy feeling came over him; he was sure to be locked away after his business with Romulus was over, and he wondered if she would wait for him.

  “Then what is it?” She rested her chin on his breastbone and looked into his eyes.

  Though at first he thought it was the tequila and triple sec, Bobby felt as whole as he had ten years before, in those few seconds with Abigail Wheat. He told Cindy about the fall, Brooks’ plan, what would probably happen to him afterwards. When he was finished, she laughed so hard she snorted. “Hey, no fair,” she said. “You’re having fun with me. You’re more sober than I am.”