She didn’t think I was completely crazy, in other words.
But what good was her semi-faith in me going to do? It wasn’t going to end this charade of me being a powerless civilian with a bum leg, and it wasn’t going to help me get back to my own reality.
“I knew we were very close,” she said. “No more than a hair’s breadth away from success. I always thought the War Department acted too rashly in closing down the experiments because of our initial failures. After our respective Megaton and Meltdown projects failed so spectacularly, we just resumed our civilian lives…I, for one, never spoke of it again. But my colleagues would be very gratified to learn…”
“Have you kept in touch with the other eleven scientists?” I asked. “Not the one who disappeared—Willard Helveticus Brainard—of course, but the others? Rex Rigid and Winnie Wertz, for example?”
“I assume they finished college,” said Seedy. “They were brilliant kids, but they still had to complete their degrees. I never came across their names in the papers, least of all as the kind of megaheroes you describe.” She looked at me searchingly. “Why? What would they be able to do?”
I explained that in my reality, Rex went on to become Liquid Man and found a quartet of megaheroes with Yarn Man; Winnie adopted a number of megaheroic personas, most notably Gargantuella. More importantly, each developed a means of crossing over the dimensional barrier: Rex inventing the Time Turntable and Winnie a Dimensional Doorway.
Grandma Seedy was a sharp old bird, however. She spotted the flaw in my logic immediately. “But in your reality, they got separated, because Willard split the universe in two. Like I said, that never happened in this reality. If Rex and Winnie never got separated, it’s doubtful they would have had the motivation to invent the means to cross dimensions.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic.
In this reality, as I knew only too well—courtesy of the stack of comic books Trent had given me in the hospital—Liquid Man and Gargantuella were merely colorful costumed characters that appeared in comic books Quantum Quest Quartet and The Devengers, respectively…nothing more.
Seedy smiled empathetically. “And I doubt very much the government will give a retired physicist like me a grant to build a device that will get you back where you belong, Clarissa. At least however long you’re here you’ll be home with your folks while you recuperate.” Seedy stroked the bed upon which she sat. “Maybe I can sew you a new comforter—this old thing’s been in the family for ages…”
A lightbulb went off in my mind. “You like to sew, right?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Seedy. “It’s been my hobby forever. I’ve sewn all kinds of clothes and things for the family over the years.”
“Would you make me something? I mean, will you take a special request? Fall’s coming up, Halloween…would you make me a special costume?”
“What did you have in mind?”
I looked around for the stack of comic books. I spotted them tucked away high on the bookshelf. I had Grandma Seedy get them down for me.
I flipped through the pages to find an appropriate panel. “I want you to make me a costume based on this character,” I said, pointing to Megaton Man. “Only, fitted to my physique.”
Grandma Seedy thought she could do it, since Halloween was still a couple months away, although she had a hard time visualizing exactly how the primary-colored costume of the overly-muscled Man of Molecules would look on a skinny girl’s frame. So, we summoned Avie, who was upstairs in her room drawing, to bring down her sketchbook and pencils, to my room. She sat at my desk in my bedroom, and I folded open a comic book and instructed her to draw a female version of Ms. Megaton Man. She gave Grandma Seedy a funny look.
“It’s okay, dear,” said Seedy, patting Avie on the shoulder. “If being a costumed character for Halloween helps speed along your sister’s recovery, why not humor her?”
I wasn’t sure how a Ms. Megaton Man costume would help me regain my megapowers or help me get home, but it was worth a try.
The next scene I can remember, since my perceptions of time were still fast-forwarding, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Trent’s VW, with Avie in the back seat next to my crutches. I noticed my cast was off and my leg didn’t hurt as much, although it still felt uncomfortable. I had the feeling I had gotten through rehab and my hip was about as good as it was going to get. Trent was driving us out to Parmenter’s Cider Mill, he and Avie picked up several gallons of apple cider and a slew of those little donuts—it was the time of year for it—while I stayed in the car, admiring the changing leaves.
We continued driving out past Milford to a ramshackle farm with a desolate-looking little farmhouse and an even more dilapidated barn. “Where are we going?” I asked. “What’s this?”
“It’s what’s left of the Pflug family farm,” said Trent. “Obviously, it’s seen better days.
He parked the VW, got out, and came around to open my door. Avie handed my crutches to him, then proceeded to climb out the back herself—it was a two-door, and she practically had to climb over me with my seat folded forward part way. After that clumsy operation, the two of pulled me out and set me up on my crutches.
My right leg with the rod in the thigh felt solid enough, but it was still painful for my muscles to move it, or for me to put my full weight on it. I needed both crutches to support myself, and with my left leg to hobble forward. I must have been practicing this over and over again in rehab, because at least I didn’t make a fool of myself and fall flat on my face.
We could hear a dog barking from inside the house.
“What do you do here, on the farm?” I asked.
“Oh, you know,” said Trent. “Same as it ever was. We raise a few chickens out back; we grow some vegetables. Here, let me show you.” He led us around the house, past the derelict barn, to the back of the house. A lone, large tree stood next to the barn; underneath, there was a small chicken coop of about a dozen hens. A few of them were roaming out and about outside the chicken-wire fence. The vegetable garden was quite large—not acres, or anything, but larger than a city dweller or even a suburbanite would have in their backyard. There were a couple dozen staked-up tomato plants still producing tomatoes, rows and rows of cabbages that were growing enormous, plus squash, cucumbers, and carrots. There was also a pretty big pumpkin patch and thirty or forty good-sized pumpkins.
“We’ll have plenty to bring to market this year,” said Trent, with some pride. “Unless I decide to just set up a stand on the side of the road somewhere.”
We stopped at the coop. Trent let Avie throw some feed in front of the roaming hens. Trent obviously loved his chickens and was proud of his vegetable garden. “Came in good, this year,” he declared. “Not enough for more’n a couple weekends at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market, I suppose, but better’n last year.
There were sprawling fields extending in every direction, but they were untended.
“Is all this your property?” I asked.
“Used to be,” said Trent. “My folks sold most of it off to a developer years ago; said they were planning to build modern subdivisions.” He pointed to two model houses in the distance, horizontal, ranch-style houses facing the main road. “But the population of southeastern Michigan hasn’t moved out quite this far yet. They never got the funding to go through with it, I guess. Don’t know what they’re planning to do with it all now. Not my problem. Just have to worry about this little parcel we kept for the house and barn and the back forty,” he said, referring to the garden. “Anyway, I’ve got a couple brown grocery bags on the porch full of tomatoes and cabbages for you two girls to take back to your folks, along with some eggs.”
We walked back around to the front of the house, me hobbling on my crutches. Someone let the dog out of the house, unless she managed to open the screen door on her own, and she came scampering up, barking.
“Duchess, be quiet,” Trent ordered the large, brown dog. “Don’t’ worry,” Trent said to me and Avie. “She’s just excited to have visitors, but she’s friendly.”
The dog continued to bark and dance around us. Avie was especially encouraging, holding out her hand to be sniffed, saying, “Hello, Duchess, hello, girl.” But the dog kept prancing up and down. As we neared the front of the house and where we were parked, she nearly knocked me off balance with my crutches.
“Well, Clarissa, I don’t suppose we can postpone it any longer,” said Trent. “You still want to check in with Clyde, or what?”
“Is that what we’re here for?” I asked, surprised.
“What do you think we drove all the way out here for?” Trent replied. “You’re the one who wanted to visit your old man.”
“I suppose so,” I said, uncertainly. “Just to say hello.”
“Let me go inside and see what kind of shape he’s in,” said Trent. He bounded up the porch, then turned. “But I should warn you…”
“What?” I asked. “That he’s still drinking?”
“Worse,” said Trent. “He’s gotten sober.”
Avie petted Duchess, who had calmed down, as we stood outside. The sun was beginning to set, lighting the cirrus clouds with pink and orange. Outside the city, without buildings of any height, the sky loomed large over the flat, midwestern topography.
“I thought it was kind of odd, too, that you wanted to see your biological father after all this time,” said Avie. “Especially after what he called you the last time. How old were we?”
“I don’t remember,” I said, honestly. In fact, I had never met my father in this reality, to my knowledge, and didn’t know what to expect. “Why, what did he say?”
“Don’t you remember Mama bringing us out here that one time? She wanted you to meet your real father…I think I was six or seven, you might have been nine or ten. We caught him on a day he was drunker than a skunk, and meaner than hell. He called you his bastard child, called us all the N-word. I don’t know how you could ever forget a thing like that—I never will. Lucky for him Daddy wasn’t along; when you told him what he said, Daddy wanted to come out here and beat the hell out of Clyde. Mama refused to tell him the directions, or he might have done just that. That’s the one and only time Mama ever tried to pay Clyde a visit with her daughters ever again. I don’t know where Trent was; I think he might have been up in Canada, dodging the draft.”
Trent appeared at the screen door. “Okay, come on in.”
Now, I really didn’t know what to expect. We entered the farmhouse apprehensively. The living room was surprisingly cozy. Clyde Pflug was sitting in rocking chair, his legs covered in an Afghan, next to a reading lamp. A radio sat on a side table, blaring some fire-and-brimstone revival preacher. Next to it was a Bible and plenty of well-worn Gospel tracts. Clyde was recognizably my father, but he seemed much older, thinner, more frail. The lighting was bad, or I might have noticed yellow around his eyes; he didn’t look good. He’d lived a more stressful, dissolute existence. The Clyde Phloog in my reality—even when he was in his civilian form, and not the over-muscled Silver Age Megaton Man—was robust, vigorous, and handsome. This version was sickly, emaciated.
“I’ve been praying for you,” said Clyde, sizing up my crutches. “As soon as Trent told me about your accident, that you’d gotten yourself dinged up a bit, I turned things over to the Lord.” He straightened the Afghan over his own useless legs. “You take after your old man after all,” he said, pointing to the collapsed wheelchair in the corner. “I haven’t been able to stand on my own two feet since 1963…. Trent tells me you saved his baby boy—very heroic, like one of those characters in the comic books he brings back from the flea markets—whaddyacall, ‘America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero’…”
“Megatron Man,” said Trent.
“Megaton Man, actually,” I corrected him. “A megaton is a million tons of…”
“You want to sit down?” Trent asked me. He motioned to an old overstuffed couch by the front window.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back up,” I said, carefully balancing on my crutches. “We’re not going to be long, are we?” I hoped not.
Avie and Trent sat down, but I remained standing.
The preacher on the radio was shouting about the Book of Revelation and the End of Days; Clyde made no attempt to turn down the volume.
“Are you girls right with the Lord?” Clyde asked earnestly.
Avie and I looked at one another and shrugged our shoulders.
“You know, Jesus has a plan for your life, Clarice,” he said.
I didn’t correct him, although I should have; for the moment, I wasn’t sure exactly what my name was in this reality.
“And…what’s your name? April, isn’t it?” he said to my sister.
“Avril,” said Avie. “Close.”
Clyde continued, “Jesus has a plan for both you girls, even if you were born of sin. None of us have very long on this Earth—you’d be surprised how fast it goes—before each of us is called to a Final Judgment. We’ve got to get right with the Lord…”
“Cousin Clyde’s given up the bottle for the Bible,” Trent explained. “Twenty-four hours a day, it’s radio preachers, Billy Graham crusades on TV, a different Holy Roller church every Sunday that he makes me haul him too, and often Sunday night, too. Instead of the liquor store, he sends all his money to radio ministries, anymore…in Winnipeg, Manitoba.”
“Trent doesn’t believe me,” said Clyde. “But I’m praying for him, too. Jesus has a plan for each and every one of us…”
“I’m glad you’re doing better, father,” I said. “I’m glad you’re sober, at least. I know a little about sobriety myself…”
“I’ve been a terrible sinner,” Clyde confessed. “I didn’t do right by your mother…”
“Excuse me,” said Avie, shaking her head. “But, of what sin were we born, exactly?”
Clyde looked at each of us awkwardly. “Well, uh,” he said. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Trent, putting his hand to his forehead.
“No, it’s not obvious,” said Avie, insistent.
“Well, girls,” said Clyde. “Your mother’s a…oh, what’s the word they use these days? Not darkie…Negro…? And your fathers, of course…”
“My father may be white, too,” snapped Avie, leaping to her feet. “But at least he’s not a racist. My father didn’t get drunk and screw a black woman in Detroit and run off to the country like a coward and get drunk some more. He loved her and he lifted her up…. My daddy’s ten times the man you’ll ever be, you broken down, old…”
Duchess was up now and barking, not sure if it was time to play.
“Oh, I’ll be waiting outside,” said Avie, storming out. Duchess trailed after her before the screen door shut.
Clyde said, “I just mean that the Lord doesn’t want the white peoples and the dark peoples to…”
“Oh, heck, Clyde,” said Trent. “Don’t you know proper manners? You’re not supposed to call attention to people’s skin color anymore. Even I know that much.” He stood up. “I’m sorry, Clarissa. But I tried to warn you what he’s like.” He went outside after Avie.
“Hey, close that door!” Clyde called after him. “It’s getting cool now in the evenings.”
I hobbled over and shut the door, then hobbled back. I stood there on my crutches, in front of my broken father for a long moment.
“Forgive me, Clarice,” he said.
“It’s Clarissa,” I said.
I was pretty sure now, in both realities, it was Clarissa.
Clyde finally turned down the radio. “Clarissa. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything. I know I wasn’t there for your upbringing; I wasn’t there for Alice. Trent tells me you’re doing fine in school…”
My father had told me the same thing in another reality, as well. Only in that case it was because he’d gotten stuck in another dimension for twenty years.
“I’ve told Trent he was to do right by that Stella girl he got in trouble,” said Clyde. “I told him not to make the mistakes I made. A man’s got to do the right thing. I think he’s trying. All Trent ever does is talk all about you smart folks down in Ann Arbor. He’s so proud just to know you. I’m proud, too.”
“I’m proud of you, too, Dad,” I said.
“Proud of me? How could you be proud of me?” My father wasn’t asking for pity or fishing for a compliment; he was truly mystified.
“Because I can see something in you that you don’t know about yourself,” I said. I hobbled forth on my crutches, bent over, and kissed his forehead. “You’re America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero,” I said.
He laughed. “Maybe in some other lifetime,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “In another lifetime.” I hobbled over to the radio and turned it on. “Look, Dad, we have to head back to town. It’s a school night.”
“Next time, plan to stay a little longer,” said Clyde. “I don’t bite, you know.”
“Next time we’ll do that,” I said.
Of course, I couldn’t get out of there before he’d foisted a couple Gospel tracts on me. I tucked them into the front pouch of my Abyssinian Wolves hoodie…
Next: Secret Identity
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Archival Images:
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| Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man, c. 2018. |
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| Clyde and Clarissa, unpublished sketchbook drawing, 2019. |
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