The old man told me it would change me. It didn't matter who I'd been, once you wear that damn suit for a while something changes in you, and you never get to be just you again.
Honestly, that was kind of OK. Larry Lindstrom—that's me—had been down on his luck since high school. You know those guys: Captain of the football team, but just getting by in grades; a good enough player to get to state once, but never really good enough for a scholarship. I stayed in town when we graduated and found out the arm and good looks that get you through four years of being a teenager mean squat in the real world. I was that guy who peaks his senior year and just being black haired, blue eyed, and 6'4" means you can work the tire machine better at your dad's friend's garage.
At least until he catches you with your hand in the till. Yeah, I did it. I stole from the boss a couple of times and got careless and got caught, and in a town as small as mine reputation means you don't get another job. Soon you're 25 and still living in your dad's trailer doing odd jobs. Gave me time to stay in shape though and I could occasionally hustle some cougar down at the bar across the county line (we were in a dry one) and get a little cash and maybe demonstrate a little steel, you know?
It wasn't going to last though. I needed to get out of town, but with no real prospects, I didn't want to be a homeless guy living out of the back of my '74 Ford LTD. That was when the carnival came to town, and that was when I first saw the old man.
Dad and I went for the hell of it, both too old for such crap, but he liked carny games so we were walking around tossing rings and shooting broke-ass BB guns trying to win stupid prizes and I was trying not to feel like I was still 10. That's when we saw the show. There was no way this was approved by the lawyers, but they did this thing where you saw some guy in a trench coat acting like he was robbing one of the carnies and then run up onto this stage thing. Suddenly there was a blaring trumpet like from the first movie, and Superman came swinging down on wires. It was fun in a stupid way, and the kids loved it, but again you could tell they got nobody's permission from anybody to do this. And their Superman was old. Now, as a kid I'd occasionally catch that old fifties show in reruns, and this guy even looked older than that. But he really played it up, and the kids loved it. Dad and I were laughing at some of the "crook's" slapstick when some guy tapped me on the shoulder. It was the carnival's owner. All he said to me was that I looked like Superman.
I'm not even sure why I agreed, and my dad laughed a bit, but I told the owner I could learn this shtick and spend a summer hitting little southwest towns wearing a cape. He told me the old man they had now, Jerry, he'd been doing it near on thirty years. When I got close to the suit I could see it was pretty well worn. So was Jerry. His black hair and spitcurl was a hairpiece he wore and when he pulled it off he had a few stringy colorless hairs he pulled across a bald head. He was about my size though, and the next morning as they tore down I saw he did a lot of the work. I got into it too. It was nice to have something worthwhile to do and even nicer I was going to get 1500 bucks a month for the next three months traveling with them.
Jerry and I were sharing a bottle of Black Velvet in his trailer when he told me about the suit. He had actually worked at some theme park when the first Chris Reeve movie came out, and it was official. Then there was a falling out over his wife nailing the guy who played Lex Luthor in the show and he just walked off with it one day. Jerry couldn't even remember when he had first gotten in with the carnival, but he did know this: After 30 years of watching kids' eyes light up when he came swooping down, he'd realized he'd changed. Quit smoking. Only drank when locked up in here. Helped people. When he wasn't with the carnival, he worked with a bunch of homeless shelters in El Paso. The suit had changed him, made him more than he was. Like there was a responsibility to live up to when you had that cape on your shoulders and that 'S' on your chest.
I asked him why he was giving it up. He told me he was getting old, and it was ok. He'd been Superman and was proud of it and how many people get to say that?
I wore the suit for the first time when we set up in the next little town. I don't even remember the name. I think it was in Arizona. I had to learn how the whole rig worked, the harness under the thing, the cape kind of hiding the wire. It would look stupid if I was going to swoop down to catch Dave—he was our star villain—and turned upside down or something. We practiced a couple of times and then did the show three times that day. On the second one I noticed Jerry in the crowd and I think he was crying a little. But he smiled at me and nodded and he stayed on the rest of the summer making the show's plot a little better and the gear work a little better and seemed to have as much fun as Superman's pal as he did as Superman.
And you know what? It was great. I had a great time and sure enough when you put that suit on you stood a little taller and your voice got a little deeper and suddenly you cared what people thought and you wanted to see kids smile.
We finished the season in Victorville, California. The boss rented a little hotel for all of us so we could have like an end of show party following the last day before we packed it all up and trucked back to Austin where the thing was headquartered. I'd have to fly back home then, but I had made up my mind to change some things. I was going to get a job, go back to school. I'd learned a lot wearing that suit, that stupid set of blue tights with the underwear on the outside. I wasn't going to ever be Superman, but I could be more than Loser Larry Lindstrom.
After the show, Dave and I went ahead and stowed our stuff to save some time in the morning before heading into the party, so we were running late. Jerry had gone on with my bag, so I was going to change when we got to our rooms. I threw Dave's bad guy prop trenchcoat on over the suit and Dave drove us into town. On the way he decided he wanted to pick up a particular kind of beer for the party, so we pulled into a gas station to see what they had. Dave grabbed the key from the guy behind the counter and went out back; that's how old this place was, didn't have an indoor john. I walked around feeling a little goofy in a trench coat with bright red boots sticking out. Dave was taking forever. Some woman came in with a kid. For a minute he looked like he recognized me as I flipped through a car magazine wondering what my dad was doing with my old red Ford. The lady was buying some milk on the way home from the carnival and then McDonald's but needed to make sure her kid had cereal in the morning.
That's when the tweakers came in. These guys were flying high, and one locked the door behind him while the other pulled out a .22 pistol, a little Ruger automatic, and pointed it at the guy behind the counter. The guy at the door had some little gun too, actually looked like a toy or a starter pistol or something, but I didn't want to find out. Guy with the Ruger started shouting to give him money and smokes. Then the lady screamed, and the kid started crying. Now, now, NOW the tweaker shouted at the guy behind the counter. And then he turned the gun on the kid and said he was going to blow the little bastard's brains out.
I realized it at that moment. Those comics we read as kids, those movies; they all have those Supervillains. Lex and Brainiac and Metallo and whoever or whatever else. You know what though? They aren't just characters in a cartoon or on a page. They are us. They are people gone wrong who are monsters because they don't choose not to be. I looked in the eyes of this guy and they hardly even registered the world around him. But he'd turned a gun on a kid for the twenty bucks he might get out of a register so he can have one more hit. He and his buddy were both twitchy, and it would only take one twitch and either this kid or his mom or the fat guy behind the counter would be a story on the news and gone.
But then I realized something else. Those comics we read as kids, those movies, they have all those superheroes: That's us too.
I slid off the trench coat and stood up taller and I dropped my voice and I told them to put their guns down and get out. The one by the door did it. His eyes bugged out of his head, but he dropped whatever toy he was waving around and frantically clawed at the lock he just latched and tore out into the dark. I stepped toward the one with the Ruger.
He stood his ground, but at least he had the gun on me and not on that kid. I told him again to put it down. The kid stared wide-eyed and happy while his mom started to drag him away. The guy behind the counter dropped out of sight. The little tweaker asked me who the hell I thought I was, and I told him. I'm Superman.
He started to shake and maybe even wet himself, but the real problem was, he twitched. Not much, just a little. There was a loud pop and the Ruger sounded like an M-80 firecracker going off and there was a pain like I'd been punched in the chest by someone wearing cinderblock gloves. The front window spiderwebbed suddenly. I fell back a step and with the horrible ache that was spreading through my chest I looked down expecting a spurt of blood from a little .22 caliber hole.
There was nothing; there was a big red S.
The tweaker and I both looked at the window and realized that it was cracked by the bullet that had bounced off my chest. I look back at him, and although it felt like every rib I had was broken, I smiled.
He fainted. Well, no. He curled up in a little ball and cried, dropped his gun, which I kicked out the door. I almost hit Dave who came in expecting to tell me what kind of load he just dropped and instead could only ask what the hell happened as I stood over the would-be robber on the floor. The kid was cheering and I looked at him and smiled, a nicer one than I had given the Tweaker. I asked if he was OK and he said yeah Superman, he was fine. His mom cried, but the kid, God I wish you could have seen the look in that kid's eyes.
I didn't get to the party. After talking to the cops, I spent the night in the emergency room where they wrapped up two cracked ribs. Jerry was there and found the bent buckle on the harness that went under the suit, and he showed it to the Doc. She smiled and shook her head, talking about what a one in a million chance it was that the bullet hit at just the right angle to ricochet like that, and how lucky I was it wasn't a .38. A couple of days later the Carnival headed back to Austin, and the boss gave me a bonus in my envelope at the end, even though I could barely help unload on the far side.
I didn't have a long good bye with Jerry. He just nodded when I handed him back the suit, and he put it in his car where his wife had come to pick him up from the storage yard. He waved as he drove away. I got a surprise when my dad showed up there to give me a ride, and we had a good road trip together back home. I started college that Fall, Criminal Justice, but I lined up my classes so I would have the Summer off to tour with the Carnival again. Got a call from the Boss though; after the whole thing made the news he got a cease and desist order from some lawyer about unlicensed usage. He offered to let me run the game where you win posters by popping balloons with dull darts, but I figured I would just do classes if I wasn't going to get the old act again. I asked about Jerry, but he said Jerry'd died in the Winter, about a week after the letter came. After I hung up, I cried for a while.
So here I am now. I've been a cop here in my little town—it doesn't matter where—for about four years now. I don't even get the funny looks from my old boss at the garage anymore. Most of my time is spent keeping teenagers from setting things on fire while they sneak cigarettes, or grabbing out of towners who think that 35 mile an hour sign is a joke. Every now and then though, I turn just right and the little tweak I feel in my chest reminds me of that night when Superman saved a mother, a child, and me. It makes me smile to remember standing up in that suit and facing down that little junkie with the gun. I remember the look in that kid's eye and remember how important it is to be one of the heroes and not the villains.
I've been Superman and am proud of it and how many people get to say that?