As if the world is dying. The storm sounds hungry, eager to teach him a lesson about power.
It is 500 miles wide, 400,000 times bigger than a man. It is nothing more than a heartless, unpredictable, inevitable and remorseless set of natural coincidences. But to Excelsior it seems the storm has an evil will of its own. Excelsior is dwarfed, humbled by the wall of wind and water before him. And inside the costume, inside his bowels, he knows fear.
He puts it from his mind. Isn’t he a hero? Heroes don’t feel fear. Or don’t have time to feel fear flying that fast. There is nothing to do but fly the pattern. Get it done. He banks to the right and gives it all he is worth. In spite of the rain and the wind, the metal grows hot in his hands. He grips it tighter and loves the pain.
The sky explodes with moisture, as if the sea has been ripped from the ocean floor. He chokes on the air. Yet still he flies faster and faster in tighter and tighter spirals. He yells at the top of his lungs. His hands grip through the metal in several places. Of course he is more than human. But even he has limits. And reaching beyond the limits is a test of will, rather than power.
Around and around and around and around. Until finally the wind drops. He slows and catches a glimpse of the stars. He has broken the storm.
But this time, the laws of physics cannot be denied. Even as Excelsior stops circling, the fluid in the center of his skull keeps spinning at a frightening rate. Dizziness overcomes him. The horizon spins. The now flat ocean exchanges places with the sky again and again as he fights to make progress towards land.
He hits the beach like an artillery shell. Sand explodes outward. In the bottom of a crater, he vomits seawater. Exhausted, he collapses into his own vomit. Is this victory? He doesn’t care. All he wants to do is lie here for a moment.
Curious faces peer over the lip of the crater. There are a thousand questions they could ask, “Are you okay? Do you need anything? Can we help?” But when a small boy speaks from the crowd he asks the question on everyone’s mind. “Did you save us?”
Excelsior nods as he wipes a strand of spittle from his chin. “Yeah kid, today, I did.”
Excelsior stands up. He doesn’t want them to see him like this. But as soon as he’s up, his legs give out. Only his ability to fly prevents him from collapsing onto the sand again. He throws the boy what he hopes is a jaunty salute, and heads up into the sky.
He flies East with all the speed he can manage. What he needs now is the sun. The light of the sun, which will somehow regenerate his powers. He had once joked with Gus that they should test his blood for chlorophyl. A good joke because there is no needle that will pierce his skin.
As he crosses the coast of Africa, he really begins to feel it. This time, he might not make it back to the light. Might have to lay himself out along the plain and wait for sunrise. But just as he gives up hope, he sees the first glimmer of dawn. At the speed he’s going it takes seconds for him to be engulfed in the light. He feels the power roar back into him. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why. But in the light of a new day, he is somehow made whole again. What does he care of how and why? He stopped the hurricane. It’s a pure win.
Chapter Twenty
Marauding Through The Night
“Faster you dolt! Faster!” screams Agnes as if the British Empire was losing India all over again. The deputy doesn’t need much encouragement to pour the gas to his rattley old patrol car. The flashing lights, the blaring sirens and the roar of the wheels against the road are really the only perks his job offers. Sometimes he drives far out into the county at night and pretends to be chasing someone. Just to relieve the boredom of it all.
But this? This is different. This is a real chase. And it is exciting. At first he had resisted the strange woman’s urgings to chase down the truck. She had used all kinds of words he didn’t understand. Words like ‘Miscreant’ and ‘Commonweal’. But when she said ‘Hot Pursuit’ – well hell, wasn’t that his job?
“Tallyho!” Agnes cries. She slaps the Deputy on the shoulder and points through a stand of scrub pines. There, on the far side of a long flat curve, is the Semi with a bulldozer on the back. The patrol car strains to create acceleration.
Inside the truck, Clarence has passed out cradling a bottle of bourbon. The sheriff’s has devoted all his attention to the stripper. Topper doesn’t care. He has The Rielly Estate pulled up on the GPS and is making for it with as much speed as he can muster. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that he can’t put his foot on the floor and is relying on the stripper’s legs. Every few minutes he has to stomp on her knee to get her to return her foot to the pedal. This has been awkward, to say the least, but now the lunacy in the truck cab has settled into an orderly pattern. He kicks the stripper, the stripper moans, the sheriff thinks he’s doing well and the truck goes faster.
But it is an inherently unstable system. If you take away any one of its components this diabolical apparatus will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity. This does not concern Topper. He doesn’t like to think in terms of theory. All theory ever does for Topper is tell him what he can’t do. And Topper doesn’t like being told what to do.
Theory says that the bumblebee can’t fly. But the little bumblebee says, “screw it” and flies anyway. And, if the bumblebee can get away with it, then Topper figures he can too. If this was the way it had to be, then this was the way it had to be. Topper doesn’t care if he has to out drink every redneck and shitkicker from here to the Mason Dixon Line. Edwin is in trouble, and he is going to come through for him.
Topper sees flashing blue lights in the truck’s side mirror. He yells in the Sheriff’s face, “It’s the cops. You told me you were the law!”
The shouting brings Clarence back around. He doesn’t immediately open his eyes, but instead reviews recent events. He remembers losing a bet. He remembers not liking it. He remembers drinking heavily. His sides hurt. Has he been in a fight? There had been laughter. Lots of laughter. Probably before losing the bet. He doesn’t like to lose. Why would he laugh after losing? Something isn’t right here, but everything is so sloshy in his head, Clarence can’t begin to put these facts together. Until he hears the air horn.
And with the horn blast, a key fact drops into place. He’s in a truck. He hears a child yell, “Holy Shit and thar she blows! It’s Liberace’s outhouse!” But what kind of child would yell that?
Clarence opens his eyes. In front of them is a hill. At the bottom is a white planation house covered with blurry – he rubs his eyes – frilly white bits. Focus doesn’t make the place look any better to Clarence.
“Yessir,” says the sheriff, “That’s the Widow Rielly’s place. Most ridiculous goddamned thing in the county.”
Underneath the Sheriff’s smokey, crackling laugh, Clarence hears a woman giggle. What is going on here? He almost has it, but clearly he is missing some key piece of information. He leans forward slowly. Nothing catastrophic happens, so he decides to turn his head. And then he sees a midget in a suit. The midget’s tiny hands rest on the steering wheel and most of his body is cradled between a naked woman’s fake breasts.
Topper pulls on the air horn again and it all falls into place for Clarence. As he opens his mouth to speak, he is slammed backwards into the seat. The truck roars forward as Topper shrieks, “Muwahhhhhhh!” The horizon dips and bucks as the truck tears through the fields. Clearly something must be done. Can’t anyone see that?
“Double Clutch. Double Clutchhhhhh!” cries Topper over the sound of grinding metal.
As the house grows larger and larger in the truck’s front windshield, Clarence’s common sense finally breaks through. It has been surrounded and outnumbered for most of the evening, but it has not given up. Now clear of the haze of alcohol and hormones and stupidity, it has just enough energy left over to send Clarence one clear message – “It’s your truck.”
Clarence dives across the sheriff and grabs the wheel. The wheel spins and it slings Topper into the window. Topper swears and spits and fights for control, but it is too late. This party has gone on too long. And now it is time for physics to step in.
In any high school physics class, they will tell you that inertia is the tendency of an object to remain at rest. This sounds very polite. Very Newtonian. But the fact is inertia is an object’s resistance to change. And resistance is
