Laura Lamoreaux
The smell of sweat and puberty hung heavy in the air of the Grantham Junior High School auditorium. It was the hottest, stickiest May in thirty years of L.A. history. The Warrior slipped two aspirin and swallowed them dry as he waited to be introduced. That last whiskey hadn’t taken enough of the edge off his hangover and his head was pounding.
“And now it is my special privilege to introduce our guest speaker,” the Vice Principal said. He was a large beefy man with drooping eyelids and arms too long for his body. They were roped with muscle, and covered in dark arm hair as thick as an ape’s. “The Warrior and his team the Super Six were some of the most important superheroes of World War II. The Warrior is personally responsible for saving the entire crew of the USS Arizona in the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Without his efforts, the ship would have been sunk and everyone on it would have drowned.”
The Warrior didn’t have many speaking events anymore. A group of professors at Stanford had decided that “The talents of superheroes, while helpful in a theater of war setting can do nothing but undermine the authority and efforts of law enforcement officers and elected officials in times of peace.” After that, the only speaking gigs he could get were at schools like Grantham. To supplement his income he had taken a job in construction. What else was a forty-five year old high school drop-out supposed to do to make a living? Super strength, the ability to fly, and imperviousness to bullets and knives weren’t exactly marketable job skills in the new post-war economy.
It hadn’t been too bad until California started to pass laws. They had names like the Anti-Vigilantism Bill and the Protection from Amateur Interference in Law Enforcement Bill. At first he hadn’t understood what they meant. But by 1950, every superhero in California had quietly, effectively been forced into retirement and the only work anyone wanted him doing was with a hammer.
“You kids have a real opportunity to meet a piece of American History,” the Vice Principal went on. “So let’s give a warm, Grantham Junior High welcome to The Warrior!” The ape man pounded his hands together and the students, whose attention had wandered during his speech looked around. When they saw the Ape Man clapping furiously a few joined in as he made his way to the podium.
“Thank you.” He paused to smile at everyone. “A superhero’s work is not easy. It can only be accomplished with the help of ordinary citizens like yourselves.” His throat was dry, his head pounding. He glanced up at the crowd as he switched cards. The kids were restless; their eyes glazed over like so many doughnuts. “When supers and citizens come together the result is teamwork. It was teamwork that allowed me and the Super Six to save so many lives in the Pacific Theater.”
He had fifteen more notecards like this one. Each had been prepared and vetted by his publicist and a team of public affairs analysts. He could probably do this speech in his sleep by now. He kept reading from the cards, his gaze wandering over the crowd. The first two rows were watching him. In the back, paper airplanes were flying, notes were being passed, and girls were giggling. In the middle of the center row, something caught his eye. In the sea of shifting students it was stillness that had caught his attention.
One boy sat with his back ramrod straight, his eyes fixed on The Warrior. His dark eyes gleamed, narrowing now and then as he took in The Warrior’s words. The Warrior thought vaguely that he might be familiar. Yes, that was the kid who cut the grass for the mansion behind his old carriage house. The kid’s old man was always shouting at him and brandishing an aluminum crutch. The Warrior tried to guess his age. It was getting harder to tell these days, but he thought he might be thirteen. No, that anger in his face was the look of fourteen.
“So listen to your teachers, be kind to others, and practice good citizenship. You never know when you might have the chance to be a part of a winning team.” He smiled and held up his right hand in a fist over his head. This was The Warrior’s signature move and the only thing his publicist had allowed him to keep from his days as an active superhero. “Are there any questions?”
“Can you really fly?” asked a bespectacled boy from the front row. He had the overeager look of a teacher’s pet.
“Yes, I can, but only when air traffic patterns permit it,” he said with another smile. That was a sore subject. In the city of Los Angeles, air traffic patterns never permitted it.
“Are you and Live Wire going to get married?” a girl with a pink headband and saddle shoes asked.
Something twisted inside him and his famous smile slipped for a second. “No, sweetheart I’m afraid not.”
“She hooked up with Turbo Man, stupid!” another student said.
The Ape Man was on his feet. He shambled over to the microphone and leaned in to say, “Children we will keep our questions respectful. Remember your Grantham pride.”
Uneasy silence fell. Then, a hand went into the air. “So what is the point of you then?” It was the unmoving boy who had caught The Warrior’s attention earlier. His voice was deeper than the other kids had been. Real anger throbbed beneath his words.
“What?”
“The city doesn’t want you. Live Wire doesn’t even want you. So what’s the point of you? What’s the point of superheroes at all?”
“The Warrior saved hundreds of lives in the war,” the Vice Principal blustered. “Without him we wouldn’t—”
“But the war is over. That stuff was all a long time ago. What do you do now?”
It was a simple question but The Warrior felt like he had been hit in the heart with a javelin. Years of public speaking experience was the only thing that saved him. He smiled. “Thank you for your time Grantham. Remember we are all part of a team!” He raised his fist again in his trademark move. Before anyone could say anything else, before the Vice Principal could get order established, he bolted for the back door.
Wet heat rolled over The Warrior like a drunken lover as he rushed out of the auditorium. His fingers scrabbled at his tie, desperate to pull it free. He dropped it onto the asphalt. He shrugged out of his suit coat and threw it to the ground. It had cost him sixteen dollars, and he couldn’t afford a new one. He didn’t care. He bent his knees and pushed off into the sky.
The cold air on his face rushed over him, taking with it the smell of old booze from his pores, and the sound of that kid’s voice in the crowded auditorium. He flew north and east toward the Hollywood Hills. The Griffith Observatory loomed ahead of him, its domed ceilings and white painted walls as solid and sure as ever. He slowed then dropped down to land on the grounds. The heat swallowed him again when he landed, but at least the air was better up here. He undid the top button on his dress shirt, ran a hand through his tousled hair and affected a casual stroll up to the Observatory.
A blast of cool air met him as he stepped through the Observatory doors into the grand rotunda. He watched the two hundred and forty pound bronze ball suspended from the ceiling swing slowly back and forth. Foucalt’s pendulum marked the rotation of the earth and was in perpetual motion. The Warrior looked up at the Hugo Ballin murals that covered the ceiling, and the eight panels beneath it. His eyes drifted over Atlas and the four winds, the depictions of gods. Once he had felt like that. When the Six had worked together it seemed like they became the faces of the wind. No one or nothing could stop them. As a group, they had never been defeated by any enemy.
But that was before all the Anti-hero legislation came along. That defeated them all.
He headed down the gray and white tiled hallway to the gallery on the left side of the rotunda. The Hall of Superheroes was one of the Observatory’s most popular exhibits. All of the California superheroes were represented here with life-sized cutouts and photographs. Their costumes, favorite weapons, and catch phrases all stood on display. All of the Super Six were here: Live Wire, RockHound, Comet Girl, SpeedEagle, The Warrior, and BrainWave.
He moved slowly around the room saving his own exhibit for last. A plaque beneath The Warrior’s costume reported his given name, Henry Scalifino, along with details of his early life, his powers and the saving of the USS Arizona. He stared at the poster size photographs that showed him being needed, being wanted. His ears filled with long ago cheers as he stared at the picture of the V - J Day parade where the Super Six had been honored. His eyes drank the images in with the same desperate thirst with which he had drunk the whiskey this morning.
Beside his cutout stood Live Wire’s black and yellow costume and an account of her powers. He let his eyes rest a few moments on her face.
“You planning to burn a hole through my picture with your laser vision?” a woman’s voice said. His heart suddenly expanded so that it was taking up all of the room inside his chest, crushing his lungs closed so he couldn’t breathe. He turned around, sure it couldn’t be her.
It was.
Live Wire was dressed in civilian clothes just like he was. Her long, slim legs were encased in a pencil skirt and skyscraper heels. Her blue-black hair fell in a sheet to her waist. She was stunning.
“Ruby, is that you?” Why had he said that? As if he could ever mistake her for anyone else.
“Of course it is.” She gave him a short, hard hug, then stepped back, eyes searching his face. “Come to relive the glory days?”
He pushed his hand through his hair again, thinking of the debacle at the school. “Something like that. You?”
“Same.”
“I heard you got married,” he said, trying and failing to sound casual. He affected more interest than he really felt in the pictures of BrainWave as a kid growing up in Rancho Cucamonga.
“Yes. About a year ago.”
Her tone was hard but he let it pass without comment. After the way they had left things, there was nothing he could say. “Are you still doing the work?” he asked instead.
That was what they had called catching criminals. Doing the work. They had talked about it like they had been set apart by the Universe to do it. He trailed his fingers along the raised lettering of BrainWave’s plaque. It was hard being this close to Live Wire again. He took a deep breath. She smelled of rosemary and lemons, just like always.
“The only work I’m doing is housework.” This time the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. “Listen, I’m glad I ran into you here. I’ve been talking to Comet Girl for the past couple weeks. She says she has something that could be big for supers.”
“What is it?”
“She wouldn’t say. All she told me was that if I wanted in I should come to that place on Catalina Island where we fought Deathray.”
They moved away from BrainWave’s exhibit to stand in front of SpeedEagle. A replica of his trident spear was mounted on display beside him so that it looked like his cutout was holding it. The Warrior glanced around to be sure no one was listening. “When are you supposed to go?”
“Tomorrow night at sunset,” she said with a look over her shoulder. “I’ve been trying to get the word out to all the Supers I know.” She glanced at her wristwatch. It looked like solid gold. Just one more thing her rich husband had given her, he supposed. The Warrior could barely turn on the TV these days without seeing him in all of the Pan Am commercials. He had one of those classic square jawed faces that women seemed to love. Plus he was part of one of the oldest, richest families in the country. “I’ve got to go. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He watched her walk away and for a moment it was like no time had passed at all. It might as well have been eight years ago before everything fell apart. He had the same hollow feeling in his gut. The same taste of bitterness in his mouth.
The Warrior didn’t linger long at the Observatory after that. He called a cab to take him back to the one bedroom carriage house he was renting. When he got there, two men in suits were waiting for him. They were sitting on the low wall that flanked the steps to his front door, sweating in the heat.
He tried to head them off. “Look if this is about the unapproved flight this afternoon, I’m sorry, I just had to—”
“Henry Scalifino?” Nobody called The Warrior that. No one called him anything anymore.
He paused. These guys didn’t look like they were here about an illegal flight to Griffith Observatory. “Yes?”
“I’m Agent Blake of the FBI. This is Agent Petrick,” the taller man said. The shorter man nodded at this introduction as if they were exchanging names at a cocktail party. The two men were wearing nearly identical grey suits with red ties. Despite the heat, both wore their suit coats and hats.
“What can I do for you?” The Warrior asked. He let his hand drop before it touched the doorknob. No way was he going to invite these clowns inside.
“We are here to tell you that you have been summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
“I thought they were trying to find communist subversives. What do they want with me?”
“You were named as a potential Communist,” Petrick said. He handed The Warrior a thick envelope. “The official charges against you and the time and day of your hearing are inside.”
The Warrior stared at him. His brain worked furiously trying to process what he had just heard, to make some sense out of it. “Named by who? Who is accusing me of being a Communist?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” said Blake as he folded himself down into the driver’s seat of a black Ford. “If you’re thinking about running, don’t. It will only make things worse for you. And they already look pretty bad.”
“What looks bad? What are you talking about?”
The doors slammed shut and the Ford’s engine caught with a snarl. “Until next time Mr. Scalifino,” said Agent Blake as they rolled past.
The Warrior stood there for a moment, breathing in the Ford’s exhaust, trying to understand what had happened. His thoughts buzzing like angry bees, he turned the key in the door and went inside. It wasn’t much cooler than it had been outside. But there was cold beer waiting for him in the fridge.
The next day, things only got worse.
“You gotta be kidding,” The Warrior said, outraged. “How can you be firing me?”
“Look, this job site is being run by Cisco steel. And Cisco is already being investigated by the House. The last thing they need is any Commie pinkos workin’ for ‘em,” the foreman said. He was a big, blond man with perpetual three day stubble named Ralph O’Reilly.
“I’m no Commie!” He glanced around to see if the other men were in earshot. “Come on, O’Reilly. You know who I really am.”
O’Reilly sighed and crossed his arms. He stared off into the middle distance for a moment, his jaw working furiously on a tiny piece of gum caught between them. “Look, it ain’t up to me, all right? So just take your tools and go home. You can always come back once all this blows over.”
The Warrior turned away without another word. They both knew that was a lie.
He got into his battered 1945 Buick. He turned the key but didn’t know where to go. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his hot little carriage house to sweat through another day. He put his face into his hands, pressing his fingers into his eyeballs as though he could erase the pain behind them with enough pressure. He thought of his speech at Grantham, about Live Wire walking away from him, and the packet of documents the FBI agents had given him sitting beside him on the seat. He dropped his hands, and pushed his hair out of his face. He put the car in gear and pointed it toward Santa Monica pier.
* * *
When The Warrior stepped off the Catalina Island Express onto the dock at Catalina Harbor later that evening, Comet Girl was waiting to greet him.
“Warrior, it’s been a long time. Welcome.” Comet Girl was the plainest woman The Warrior had ever known. She had hair that was neither blond nor brown, large teeth, and a figure that was both lumpy and flat chested. She extended a hand to him, and The Warrior took it, glad to see her. Before they had all been forced into retirement, Comet Girl had been grace itself as she streaked through the air or ran at race car speeds on the ground. Now it was hard to imagine.
Catalina Harbor was on the western side of the comma shaped island, far away from the bustle of the tourist city of Avalon. The way up from the harbor was steep with nothing but scrubby chaparral on both sides. The Warrior hadn’t thought there was anything on this part of the island, but when they crested the hill a graceful three story Spanish villa came into view.
“Wow,” he said. It had been 1938 when they defeated Deathray. Back then, the only thing on this hill had been a one story ranch house with a bunch of undeveloped property. Comet Girl led them past a graceful fountain and across a Spanish courtyard full of bright pink bougainvillea flowers up to the house. “Whoever bought this place sure fixed it up.”
“No one bought it,” said Comet girl. He shot her a confused look, but she pretended not to see it. She opened the heavy oak door and preceded him inside. “David, this is Henry Scalifino, better known as The Warrior.”
David came forward to greet them. He was a tall, thin man in his early fifties with hair going attractively gray at the temples and a silk ascot. The Warrior automatically extended his hand to shake, but froze before their hands touched.
“Deathray!”
“I prefer David or Doctor Bloomberg these days.” Deathray said with a slight smile as if this amused him.
The Warrior glanced from Deathray to Comet Girl, looking for an explanation. “What’s he doing here? What’s going on?”
“I live here, my good man. This island is owned by a friend of mine.”
The Warrior stared in disbelief. “You’re friends with William Wrigley?”
Deathray smiled. “Please follow me to the study. All of your friends are waiting there.”
Still suspicious, The Warrior followed Deathray down a tiled hallway into a graceful room flanked with glass doors that had a view out of the eastern windows onto the coast. It was dominated by enormous carved-oak book shelves on all sides. Live Wire, BrainWave, Rockhound, and a couple of other California Supers The Warrior knew by sight were already seated on wooden chairs. He took a seat in the back of the room beside Live Wire.
“Where’s Turbo Man?” The Warrior whispered to her when he sat down. He was careful not to lean too close, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking in a deep breath of her scent. “Didn’t he want to come?”
Live Wire’s smile was tight. “It’s just me tonight.”
Comet Girl closed the glass doors and took a seat in the front row. This seemed to be a signal.
“My friends, welcome,” said Deathray. Or David. Or Whoever. “Comet Girl and I have been working on something very exciting these past few months and we hope you’ll agree to join us.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be serving three life sentences?” said BrainWave.
“It turns out the world needed my ray guns for their wars more than they wanted to punish me for my many crimes,” Deathray said with a smile. “My release was negotiated so long as I continue to supply the government with all the death rays needed and refuse to supply them to anyone else.”
The Warrior shook his head. That was the government for you. “So what are we doing here?”
“You’re here because the government has thrown you away. Like me, it now believes you have outlived your usefulness. Some of you have even been accused of being un-American.” His eyes rested for a moment on The Warrior before moving on. “Well I say forget about being forced into retirement. Forget about Antihero laws—that’s all in the past. We’re putting together a new superhero cooperative. Instead of fighting crime, we will fight injustice. Instead of catching muggers and thieves, you will have the chance to overthrow dictators and stand up for the oppressed.”
“Where are we supposed to be doing this?” Live Wire asked. The bite of sarcasm was in her voice. “There are laws against interference from Supers.”
“Yes, there are laws in America. But there are so many more places than that in the world.”
“Would we be working for the United States?” asked RotoBlaster. The Warrior had met him a couple times back when the Super Six was helping with a crime wave in San Francisco.
“No. The Sentinels will be an independent entity, privately funded by me, and answerable only to ourselves. This would be fighting evil in its purest sense. No politics, no hidden agendas, just using your powers for good and getting paid for it again.”
“But none of us have any experience doing that kind of thing. Having powers doesn’t mean we know how to rescue people from tyranny or what have you,” said RotoBlaster.
“I thought that some of you here were invincible, could read minds, and could electrify a three-mile radius. Those sound like the skills that will bring down a minor war lord to me. Don’t you agree?” Deathray leaned back in the throne-like chair he had been sitting in at the front of the room. He looked relaxed, like nothing the supers in the room did or didn’t do could bother him. There was silence for several beats. “If you’re interested in joining us,” he went on. “Comet Girl is handing out information on our first mission. The man calls himself General Biobaku, though he was never more than a captain. He’s holding the water rights to an entire village in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari desert. As long as the people pay, they get water. If they don’t . . .well, you understand how this works.”
Comet Girl was leaning over him to hand him a packet of papers. He took it. She leaned down and whispered. “David wants you to know he’s aware of your little problem. If you join us, it can all go away.”
The Warrior bit the inside of his cheek but said nothing. He couldn’t see how the House Un-American Activities committee was just going to drop their investigation against him, no matter what technology Deathray promised them.
“So what do you get out of all this, I mean if it’s so pure and all?” Rockhound held his papers away from his body as if they were a bomb that might explode.
Deathray smiled. “Profit, my dear fellow. What else? When the governments of the world have seen what The Sentinels can do, they’ll fall all over themselves to get us on their side which will only happen through negotiations with me. Once they do, what do you think will happen to all of that Anti-Hero legislation that’s keeping you down? How long do you think it will be before they’re too frightened of what The Sentinels might do to them to deny you the right to use your powers?”
“But we’re not anarchists. Supers have always worked within the law,” said BrainWave.
“And you still will, once the laws change in your favor.”
“But what if it goes the other way,” said LiveWire. “What if this makes the government see us as an even bigger threat and they come after us?”
“My dear, would you want to try fighting against a community of superheroes with lethal powers who are being backed by the single largest producer of weapons in the world?” He paused for a beat while everyone considered this. “Trust me, it will not happen.” He pushed himself up from his chair, looking bored with the whole thing. “Ladies and gentlemen the choice is yours. Go back to retirement or board my plane tomorrow and get rich doing the work you once loved. My butler will show you all to your rooms. Good night.”
Talk broke out as soon as Deathray had left the room. BrainWave and RotoBlaster immediately put their heads together and started talking in low voices. The Warrior stood up, feeling the creak of his knees and the extra weight he now carried in his belly. He didn’t look at Live Wire as he moved outside through the east-facing doors. He found himself in a rose garden overlooking the sea. The cool, salt-tinted air felt good on his face. He tensed, but said nothing when she came to stand beside him. “What do you think?” she said.
“I don’t know.” He scowled and tried to put the rush of feelings and tumbled images in his mind into words. “Deathray wouldn’t be doing this unless he was getting some hefty profits out of it, and not just from the government.”
She let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I know. He was our first supervillain. He can’t have changed that much.” She paused. “But even if he does have an agenda, does it really change anything? If we get the chance to help people again, to matter again, is it really important who is backing us?”
He tightened his grip on the terrace railing, stomach roiling.
“You do what you think is right,” she told him. “But come tomorrow, I’m going to be on that plane. Super villain or no, if Deathray has a way for me to use my powers to help people, then I’m taking it.”
* * *
When The Warrior got back to his tiny, rundown carriage house two weeks later there were several eviction notices taped to his door. The first of June had come and gone while he was in Africa, and he hadn’t paid his rent. Once, that would have bothered him, but not now. He shouldered the door open and tore the notices down. He left them on the entry hall tiles and pushed further into the house. It had the musty, unused smell of standing vacant for two weeks. A litter of mail, dirty cups, and a bowl of now-blackened fruit were strewn across the kitchen island. He wrinkled his nose at the sight of the empty whiskey bottle, still standing where he had left it two weeks ago. He hadn’t had a drop of booze since then. First thing tomorrow he was moving out of this dump.
There was a knock at the door. Surprised, The Warrior put down his suitcase and went to answer it, expecting to see his landlord. Instead he was looking down at a boy, about fourteen years old.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the boy said.
The Warrior looked at him carefully, the dark hair, the intense expression in the eyes. “You’re the kid who cuts the grass next door. The one who asked me that question at Grantham.”
The boy had the grace to look ashamed. He flushed and nodded looking at his feet. “I've been meaning to apologize, but you haven’t been around since then.”
The kid had the lean, hungry look of a wolf. An apology looked like the last thing on his mind. “What’s your name kid?”
“Marty. Marty Fisher.”
“Come on in, Marty,” The Warrior said, holding the door open. The kid stepped over the eviction notices on the floor and followed him to the breakfast bar, where he sat down on one of the barstools. “What are you really here for? We both know you aren’t really sorry.”
Marty’s head jerked toward him, surprise written across his features. His dark eyes darted around the kitchen, peering towards the doors at the end of the hall.
“Can you keep a secret?”
The Warrior raised an eyebrow. The kid flushed again but went on. “Ok, this is why.” He held out his palm. It was on fire. Marty glanced up at The Warrior’s face and after a second the flames went out again.
“Have you told anyone about this?”
“No. I don’t know who to tell or what I should do. Nobody wants superheroes anymore. I don’t know why I even told you. There’s no point to being a superhero these days.”
The Warrior patted his shoulder. “Oh yes there is, kid. Now more than ever there’s a point to being a superhero.”