Arlo Guthrie’s melodious guitar plucking began to gently flow out of the car radio as I knelt in the middle of the back seat with my little brother Nate, peeking my head out from between the two front seats to watch my uncle’s car speeding along in front of us. The distance between his car and ours seemed to me to be growing ever larger as we continued on toward my grandmother’s house for Thankgiving dinner, so I shouted out,
“They’re going to beat us! Go faster, Dad!”
“Put your seatbelt on!” my dad barked at me, the force of his angry words alone pushing me from between the bucket seats up front back onto the long, brown, vinyl seat behind me.
My mom’s response was much calmer. “It’s not a race, Honey. Now sit down like your father told you.”
While I wrapped the belt around my stomach and buckled it, I heard my brother mutter sing-songily under his breath, “You got in trouble, ha Ha HA Ha ha.” Nate held his Aquaman action figure in his hand and was ramming it together with my Flash figure in a mock battle.
“Shut up, dufus!” I whisper-yelled at him, reaching across the invisible dividing line in the back seat to steal back my toy.
“Mom!” my brother yelled, immediately seeking parental retribution for my crime. He snatched the Flash figure back before I could wrap my fingers around it. “Steve won’t
stay on his side!”
“Only ‘cause he took my toy!” I protested.
“Nuh-uh! It’s mine.”
“It’s my toy, Mom. He took it from me when I put it down,” I argued.
“He wasn’t playing with it!”
“I was too! I just put it down for a minute!”
My dad was reaching his boiling point. “If you kids don’t quiet down...” He angrily hung the threat over our heads like an anvil.
Mom again intervened to save us from his wrath. “Nate, it’s his toy; give it back to him. Steve, stay on your own side and don’t pester your brother.”
I grabbed the action figure back quickly, smiling to myself over my victory. Nate was likewise smirking, also confident that Mom’s judgment had come back in his favor.
We both settled back in our seats. I stared at the Flash figure as I held it up in front of me.
Arlo Guthrie was speaking over his music, telling about how he had dumped Alice’s garbage off a cliff as a favor to her. The police, however, weren’t too thrilled with his job of sanitation and they asked him to come down to the station. He was trying to figure out what they wanted to see him for, saying “...but when we got to the police officer’s station there was a third possibility we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said ‘Obie, I don’t think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on.’ He said, ‘Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car.’”
I half-listened to the song, staring at the Flash figure as I squeezed its legs together. I was thinking about a lot of different things as I watched the Flash’s arms move with each squeeze of his legs. I was glad to see my uncle Wes again and that he was here for Thanksgiving. Last time he had come to visit, we had taken me to the comic shop and bought me a magazine about Dr. Who.
This time when he came up to visit us, Uncle Wes had somebody with him. Some guy. His name was Dan, and he was my uncle’s roommate. He was sort of weird and I wasn’t sure yet if I liked him or not. But Uncle Wes had brought me another magazine when he came up to visit, so I was glad to see them both. Besides, I thought to myself then, it’s not like he’s a criminal or something.
My mom and dad were talking quietly under their breath in the front seat. I looked cautiously over at my brother whose flame-red flock of unkempt hair met my gaze. His eyes faced out the window, watching the cornfields go quickly by, so I leaned forward a little, still pretending to be playing with my Flash toy but actually listening to what my parents were saying.
“He’s going to get pulled over,” my dad was saying with an edge in his voice.
“Let him. Don’t worry about it,” my mom reassured him.
“He’s going to get me pulled over.”
“Then slow down, Jim,” my mother reasoned with him. “There’s no reason for you to speed too.”
My dad was silent then for a moment, so I poked my head up to look out the front window. My uncle’s car was much farther ahead of us than it had been before, little more than a little white and orange dot ahead of us on the road. When the road curved to the left, the car disappeared behind a small grove of trees.
“I don’t see what his big hurry is, anyway,” my dad said then. “He can’t be in such a hurry to get to your mother’s house.”
Why not? I thought to myself then. Grandma’s house is so much fun on Thanksgiving. There’s all that food and then singing Christmas carols afterwards and playing Trivial Pursuit. Plus Aunt Helen and Uncle Roy are gonna be there too, and maybe they’ll bring me a new action figure like they did last time. I sure hope I get the new Firestorm one. Thanksgiving is almost as good as Christmas!
“Mom’s... prepared for him to be there,” my mother said apprehensively. “Besides, you said we were late.”
We were, of course. We always were, so I didn’t see what the big deal was. I wonder what Mom meant about Grandma being prepared, I thought to myself. Prepared for who to be there? Uncle Wes? Or Dan?
But my thoughts were quickly interrupted by my brother. We had just passed a sign on the side of the road, and he shouted out, “A in No Passing Zone!”
I groaned. “I don’t wanna play the Alphabet Game!”
“Come on!” he urged me.
“No! I wanna read!”
“I’ll play with you, Nate,” my mom said, placating him. “OK?”
“OK. B in Food Barn!”
I picked up a comic book off the floorboard and started to thumb through it, thinking to myself, That game’s stupid. There’s only a couple Js near that junction by Richview and only one Q at the liquor store after that. There’s not any Xs at all, so it’s just luck if you see one on a license plate.
Quickly the four-color adventures of the Flash began to engage my mind, and the noise of my brother shouting out random letters (and sounds of Arlo Guthrie singing about a trial and twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures) faded into the background. Gosh, I wish I had more of these old Flash comics. Maybe I can get Grandma to take me in town to the comic shop tomorrow, I thought to myself as I read the exploits of the Flash, a hero who, in the present, was dead. He had just been killed saving the universe from an anti-matter cannon in the recent crossover miniseries Crisis, running at such extreme speeds to outrace the cannon’s blast that he crossed over into the great beyond. Yet here he was, resurrected again in the pages I held before me. Knowing the events of his future left a sour taste in my mouth as I read the issue. I couldn’t help but wonder, Is this what the Flash feels like when he rides the cosmic treadmill through time? Would he try to change things if he could?
The Flash was fighting his archnemesis Professor Zoom, racing him across the world and slugging it out in exotic locations like the Himalayas. Fiona Webb had been destined to marry Barry Allen that day, but when Zoom appeared in Central City, Barry had to answer the call of battle in his guise of the Flash. The action freqeuently shifted back and forth between the melee between hero and villain, and Fiona standing alone at the altar. Boring! Get to the good stuff! I flipped past two pages of Fiona crying in the church to rejoin the fight, having here shifted to Miami Beach.
There was one particular reason that Prof. Zoom had to be taken so seriously. Years ago Zoom had killed Barry’s first wife, Iris, and now he was threatening to do the same thing again with Barry’s new fiancée. I knew the details about Iris’ death only secondhand, having only read Zoom’ villainous boasting about it in this issue as he tried to get the Flash riled up. Maybe they’ll have the actual issues at the comic shop tomorrow! Then I can read it for myself. I began to get excited about the prospect of searching for the back issues, even though a trip to the shop had not yet been asked, pleaded and begged for.
What I did not know was how the story I held in my hands ended. Again, my comic collecting being as sporadic as it was, I had this issue but not the one that followed it. In the final pages of the issue, the Flash had to do the unthinkable. Professor Zoom had returned to Central City, running for the church to kill Barry Allen’s fiancée Fiona Webb. But as he ran towards her, the Flash grabbed him in a chokehold. God, I hate this part, I thought to myself as I turned to the last page, craning my neck from one side to the other as far as I could.
Professor Zoom fell to the ground. Fiona Webb was saved and the Flash rushed over to her side. But Captain Frye, a groomsmen for Barry Allen and one of his co-workers on the Central City Police Department, stepped up ran over to check on the criminal who was lying immobile. He cried out as he ran toward the villain, “I don’t like the angle of the neck.” I don’t either, I thought to myself again moving my head from side to side.
The man knelt down and felt Zoom for a pulse “Just as I feared! Would someone call the coroner?” his word-balloons read, the last two in bold, thick letters. I don’t understand! The Flash was just trying to save her life! He's not a killer! I tried to reason with the police in my head. It must be a trick! Zoom is just faking; check his pulse again! I turned the page nervously to see the result of the Flash’s arrest.
I was confronted then with letters from fellow comics readers to the writers of the comic book. My questions about what would happen next would continue to go unanswered; the issue was over. I sat there, trying to reason out what must happen in the next issue, how the story would be resolved. They don’t really arrest the Flash. He’s not a crook; he’s one of the good guys! Zoom’s the one who’s the killer. The cops’ll realize he’s not really dead and let the Flash go. Confident I had the comic book world of heroes and villains figured out, I threw the comic down on top of a pile that sat in the floorboard in front of me.
I became aware again of my surroundings. Arlo Guthrie was still singing, now about sitting on the Group W bench in the draft office. He sat there, branded a criminal, looking at the true criminals around him. He said, “There was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!”
My brother was standing on his seat, staring over the passenger’s seat in front to look out the front window. He was searching the countryside for letters on billboards and
license plates, when something caught his eye. “What’s that?” he said in a confused tone.
I looked out the front window for myself and saw, up ahead by the side of the road, a police car had pulled someone over. What’s going on? I thought to myself, my eyes widening as I started to recognize the other car. That looks like Uncle Wes’s car!
Mom confirmed my fears when she turned around to my brother and said, “Nate, sit down and put on your seat belts.”
My dad groaned loudly, and I noticed that the car was slowing down and sliding over onto the shoulder of the road. “I knew it. I knew he would get pulled over,” he said angrily.
“Yes you did,” my mom said, challenging him with sarcasm in her voice. “You must just love being right all the time.”
“What’s your problem? It’s not my fault he’s...”
“Just be quiet, Jim. Just be quiet.” I couldn’t believe how furious Mom sounded. I looked over at my brother to see if he noticed her tone too, but he was oblivious. He just kept trying to peek around my mom’s seat to see the flashing lights of the police car.
Our car slowed to a stop behind my uncle’s car, and I too then joined my brother in staring out the front windshield. I could see the police officer standing on the passenger side of the car. He turned toward us and stared for a moment, his eyes covered by dark mirrored sunglasses. Then he turned back forward and poked first his head and then his whole upper body into the car through the window. “What’s he doing?” Nate asked no one in particular.
No one answered. We were too preoccupied with what we were watching. The officer pulled himself out of the car, holding something between his thumb and forefinger. I tried to see what it was but couldn’t quite catch a glmipse of it over the dashboard. My attention turned toward my mom, when I heard her whisper to herself, “Oh no.” She let her words out softly, like the slow labored breaths of a wounded animal.
I stood up to try and see what was going on, my feet trampling on the comics in the floorboard. The police officer was carrying what he held around the back of the car and walking up to put it in his vehicle. I had a clear view of it then, and the hurting words my mother had let slip free just a moment ago echoed in my head as my brain tried to process what I saw.
It was a gun. It shone silver in the sun. The cop opened the front door of his car and set it down in his passenger seat. I watched, my mouth agape, as he then opened the rear door of his vehicle and walked back toward the car.
“What is it? What’s going on?” my brother asked as he craned his neck higher to try to see. Arlo Guthrie sang about his fingerprints enshrined somewhere in Washington. The police officer opened the driver’s door of the car and Dan got out.
“Shut up,” I yelled at him. Dan was placing his hands behind his back, and the officer was putting handcuffs around his wrists.
“You shut up!” he shouted and gave me a shove. I slid a little on my feet and the cover of the Flash comic book under me tore. Uncle Wes got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side as the police officer dragged Dan to the back seat of his vehicle and pushed him in.
I picked up the comic book and inspected it. The cover was completely ripped off and the back two pages were hanging off the staples that held them in. “Look what you did,” I yelled at Nate with tears in my eyes. I balled my hand up into a fist and lunged toward him.
“STOP IT!” my mother yelled. We stopped. I sat back in my seat and looked at the Flash, being arrested in the last panel of the torn comic I held in my hands. Arlo Guthrie and his audience were singing the chorus of his song, as the cop car drove away with Dan in the back.
