Chapter 9

The shopping trip finally ends, and I go looking for Kendall. He is with the other neighborhood guys. They are all hanging out in Jonathan’s yard, sitting around his giant elm tree.

“You missed a helluva game, Shrader!” Jonathan calls.

“Yeah?” I respond.

“I was throwing passes like you wouldn’t believe! Me and the twins beat the pants off Kendall and Norman and Jeff,” he brags.

“Hmm … cool!” I say. “That would have been something to see — all of their butts in the air!”

Everyone laughs.

Jonathan, two years older than me, thinks he is a gridiron hero. He dreams of being a coach, and he likes to draw up plays that make him look good. When I am drawn into a game — “Come on, Riley! It’ll make the sides even,” he will plead — we play in the empty lot next to his house. He always plays quarterback and assigns us to other positions. Why he passes the ball to me, I don’t know, but I always seem to be the one getting tackled. So, I don’t much like playing football with these guys. Ironically, I can throw a pretty good pass myself. “A mean spiral,” Kendall has said.

I sit next to Kendall, who is lying on his stomach. Jonathan is propped against the tree. The twins, Ronny and Donny, who are in the eighth grade, sit cross-legged on either side of him. They are fraternal twins and look nothing alike. Donny is muscular and has dark hair. Ronny is thin and has sandy blond hair. They are about a foot taller than me. They are loud-mouthed punks who take after their older brothers, Charlie and Bill. Bill is in prison, and Charlie, who dropped out of high school, runs around town causing trouble. I’ve seen Officer Hopper talking to him on several occasions. Charlie will probably join Bill behind bars one of these days. 

I think someone in that family stole my pogo stick. I can’t prove that accusation, but I did find it in their yard with the spring snapped in half. How that happened, I’ll never know. Their yard is full of old junked washers and dryers. The family used to run a laundromat, but it went bankrupt. There are also half a dozen or so rusty cars sitting on blocks. There’s a Corvette, a Camaro, a Trans Am, a Charger, and a couple of others. Sometimes, we each get in one to “race.” I always pick the Trans Am and pretend I’m in the Daytona 500.

Jonathan has been the “Leader of the Pack” ever since we started playing together. As young rebels, the boys and I pretended to be in a motorcycle gang. I would sing that song whenever we rode, remembering it from Mama’s oldies station. We rode our trikes and bikes everywhere — as long as we didn’t go in the street. Mama would not allow that. We cruised up and down the sidewalks on our block. We also built cities out of old refrigerator boxes that Jonathan’s dad got from his job at the hardware store. 

Loud voices break me out of my musings. Kendall and Jonathan are debating the merits of their favorite comic book heroes.

“Spider-Man is way better than Superman,” Jonathan says. “He is the coolest superhero — my big brother says so. He reads Spider-Man comics. He says Superman is boring. And I think he is, too.”

Kendall and I are aghast. But Jonathan’s opinion does not surprise me. He always talks about how cool his big brother — his half-brother, actually — is. Howie goes to college in St. Augustine, so he’s not home very often these days. When we were younger, he would pick us up and swing us around. He would perform magic tricks for us, and I was amazed when a tiny toy airplane emerged from his belly button. He would take us for rides in his car, and we would drag Main. If I had a big brother, I would want him to be like Howie. 

“Boring!? How can you say that? Superman puts the ‘super’ in superhero,” I say.

Kendall holds up his fingers and counts off his powers. “He can fly. He has super-speed. He has super-strength. Nothing can hurt him —”

“Invulnerability,” I explain.

“Yes,” Kendall continues. “He has X-ray vision, heat vision, and telescopic vision. He has super-hearing. He has super-breath and ... and …”

“Super-ventriloquism?” I offer, although I know that is a lame power. 

“Uh, yeah. Super-ventriloquism,” Kendall says slowly. He glances at me with arched eyebrows but nods his agreement. He adds that power to his list. He has run out of fingers. “He — he has all the powers.”

Kendall has made an excellent argument. We turn to Jonathan and await his rebuttal.

“Well, he has a lousy secret identity,” he maintains. “Glasses? Really? Does he really think nobody recognizes him?”

“It’s not just the glasses that disguise him,” I say. “You saw the movie last summer, right? Christopher Reeve was excellent. As Clark Kent, he acted humble and shy. He slouched and stuck his gut out — like you! (Jonathan eats a lot of Best of the West cheeseburgers.) In the comics, he appears shorter and fatter than he does when he’s Superman. He also acts clumsy and uncoordinated.”

“Like you?” Jonathan sneers. Everyone laughs. “Oh! And if he and Lois Lane are doing it, he would launch her into the sky when he, you know ...” 

We all laugh, but this isn’t the first time we have had this debate, and I’m kind of tired of it. I change the subject.

“Hey, do any of you know about this guy downtown, Herk?” I ask.

Ronny answers. “Herk the Jerk? … Yeah, you don’t want to mess with him.”

Donny says, “No, you do not! He killed a guy. Went to prison for it. Bill knows him.”

“Who did he kill?” I ask.

“I heard that he crushed a guy’s neck,” Jonathan says.

Ronny offers, “Yeah, it happened in Oklahoma. He killed someone in the ring when he was a pro wrestler.”

Donny jumps in, “No, he killed someone in his own family. Right there in that old house he lives in.”

“My dad knew him,” Kendall says. “He says he was a good wrestler. He probably was — until he killed that guy.”

“Charlie and his buddies get into fights with him all the time,” Ronny says. 

“Really?” I say. “Charlie fights him? Doesn’t he get pounded? Herk is huge!”

“Well, Herk never hits back,” Donny answers. “He just stands there and takes it.”

“He’d probably kill Charlie if he ever punched him,” Jonathan says.

“He eats out of garbage cans,” Kendall says. “He slinks in and out of the alleys, picking food out of the garbage behind Curley’s!”

“He stinks! He never takes a bath,” Jonathan adds. “Don’t get too close to him. It’ll rub off!”

They are all laughing. Apparently, Herk is a legend. But I have never even heard of him. The conversation dies down. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t tell any of them about my encounter with “Herk the Jerk.” But now I know for sure that I want to stay away from him. I remember how our eyes had locked. I remember that angry stare. And his sinister smile.