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Good Samaritan (06/08)
He recovered as quickly as he had crumpled. I assume it was because his... extra hearing had decided to kick in. I had never thought it would actually hurt him. Perhaps the shock of it returning so suddenly? Though I suppose, with things that were high-pitched enough, his sensitive ears might very well hurt him. How on Earth did he stand Metropolis, of all places?
These thoughts flew through my head in all of a nanosecond. The time it took my gaze to sweep into his own. I met his wide eyes. His hand clenched tight around the doorknob, like a spring winding up, ready to launch. In his eyes there prowled genuine fear. This was not kids playing a bit too rambunctiously.
"Where are my children?" I asked.
For a moment, he leaned his head back and cocked it to the side. His gaze grew far away. Glassy. Not all there. He was listening.
Then he blinked and he was back in the room again with me. "Not in the house," he said, his bad pallor growing paler.
I stared at him for a long second.
"I don't believe you," I growled. I shot past him and down the hall. He thundered after me.
"Claire!" I shouted. "Annie!" My voice rumbled through the house, and I paused at the foot of the steps to see if they were responding. The thudding behind me stopped as suddenly as I had. All I heard were his and my breaths. And my heart. Thudding like a jackhammer without pause.
"Claire!" I shouted again. Nothing.
I could hear the small whine continuing outside somewhere, intermittent.
I skidded through the living room, stopping only to peek in the library through the double doors before I continued through the living room, the dining room, and then back to the kitchen and through the back door. I flung myself down the steps, looking wildly about the back yard.
The sandbox was empty. The lawn sat undisturbed and freshly cut. Birds chirped. The last remainder of the summer cicadas sent their percussive washboard-sounding greetings through the lazy air. Indian Summer had given us a reprieve from the steadily advancing chill.
The whine had stopped.
"Annie!" I called.
Nothing. I looked to Superman.
His eyes were hooded with pain, though I wasn't sure where it was originating from, his sickness, or just... tension. "My... special vision isn't back yet. And I can't pinpoint the noise unless they scream again," he said, his voice sounding raw and barren.
I looked back and forth. Back and forth. For just a moment, I felt panic seeping through. I felt... strangled. As though icy claws had reached around my throat, and were gripping. Tighter. Tighter still. The world grew narrow, focused, and curved, like I was being yanked into a tunnel slowly.
But his voice ripped me away from my mind's downward tumble. "What now?" he asked.
Everything snapped back into focus.
"You take that side," I gestured to the north side of the house and glanced at Superman, who nodded.
I ran south. The rose arbor was overgrown. Thorns scraped across my skin as I battled my way around the side of the house. I found no sign of them anywhere. I ran the length of my driveway. They weren't in the Explorer or anywhere near it. I jackknifed back toward my front door.
We met up at the landing at the front steps.
I paused for a moment, my chest soaring with hope as he dashed up to me, until I saw him make a minute shake of his head, and the downtrodden look on his face. Nothing.
I wiped the sweat from my skin, trying desperately not to hyperventilate, not to let the crushing feeling in my lungs sweep me away again. Where were they?
Another faint wail seeped through the air.
Superman's head snapped to the right. "It's coming from that way," he said, pointing across the street to Janet Elliot's little Cape Cod style house with red brick and black shutters.
Again, a scream.
It was definitely coming from Janet's back yard. She was one of the last remaining older people on the block. And her car was gone. She had mentioned something about visiting her grandchildren this weekend.
I darted across the street without looking either way. What would Claire and Annie be doing in the back yard across the street? What reason would they have to go there? I hadn't even been aware that they weren't in the house. They were in the library the last time I had looked. And it couldn't have been more than a half hour since I had last laid eyes on them.
I hadn't even heard a door slam. Kids slammed doors. They did. And there hadn't been a slam. There *hadn't*.
What if the screams weren't even theirs? Where would I look next? Where did Claire and Annie like to go?
God, I didn't know. I just didn't.
I tried to hold the panic at bay as I ran through Janet's empty driveway and into her back yard, but it was ripping me apart from the inside by the time I shoved through the little gate that split her white picket fence in two.
I felt like my stomach had fallen out through my feet when I got a good look at Janet's yard. A sigh perforated my chest. Relief.
Annie stood at the foot of Janet's towering Magnolia tree, her head tilted up toward the top of the tree, lips parted slightly. This time, I heard Claire's shout, clear as a bell, and I followed Annie's gaze up along the thick trunk. And up. And up.
"Claire?" I shouted as I rushed over to the tree. It seemed taller the closer I got.
Annie yelped and ran to me. She wrapped herself around my leg, almost wrecking my balance and sending me to the ground in a heap. I stumbled, but remained upright.
My earlier relief faded quickly as I assessed the situation. Claire wasn't just up high. She was up *high*. She stood on one of the topmost limbs of the large tree, possibly thirty feet up, maybe a bit more. Through the thick leaves, I saw her clinging desperately to a branch that extended past her chest. The peak of the tree swayed drunkenly in the light breeze, and the fat, oval-shaped green leaves rustled.
Oh, lord.
"Daddy," Claire wailed, but stayed stock still.
How did a six-year-old climb to a height that rivaled my house's attic? Though, I supposed, if any tree was made for climbing it was Janet's Magnolia. The thick branches started nearly at ground level and extended out from the trunk at regular intervals all the way up to the top, tapering only slightly in width until the tree reached its zenith.
Where Claire was perched.
Precariously.
"Claire..." I began, at a loss for words. "What--?" I couldn't even finish the question.
"Baxter was stuck!" she said.
"Baxter?"
"The cat!"
I looked around and didn't see a cat anywhere.
"Well, never mind that now." I ran my hands through my hair. "Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"Can you get down?" I asked, though I knew the answer already. It was one of those questions meant to fill space. While I figured out what the hell I was supposed to do.
What the hell *was* I supposed to do?
"No."
Great.
I turned to Superman. "Can you..." I gestured weakly at the tree.
He shook his head. "Only my hearing is back."
I wasn't surprised. If he had been able to fly this whole time, Claire would likely have already been down from the tree.
"Don't worry, Claire," I shouted up the trunk.
I glanced at the Magnolia and stared at a moment. Shouldn't the fire department be called for stuff like this? No, that was stupid to waste their time when it was just a dumb tree which was about as climbable as a nice, solid staircase. It wasn't like they could get the truck ladders back here.
And who the heck was Baxter?
No, I was going to have to do this myself.
I directed planes for a living. What was a little tree? Big tree.
"Annie," I said, trying to pry the human barnacle away from me. "I need to go get Claire. Can you stay here with Superman?"
Her tiny fingers clutched tightly at my pant leg. I could feel the waistline grip more substantially on my hips as she pulled at the fabric, desperate. "No," she said, her voice weepy, which was precisely the last thing I needed at this instant.
"I need my leg if I am going to climb this tree," I tried to explain patiently. I think I snapped instead. I ran my hands through my hair again.
"No," she said again.
Superman looked at the tree, then back to me and down to Annie. "I could try and get her down," he offered.
I looked up at Claire and back to him. He stood there, barefoot, in nothing but my bathrobe. His color was still a bit bad, too -- it was especially apparent now that we stood in the glaring sunlight.
My cheeks flushed red. This was *my* kid. I was dressed and healthy, and Superman was more willing to save her than I was. God.
"No," I blurted quickly. "I'll do it, I just need to..." My voice trailed away as I stared down at Annie's blonde head. Her tiny nose was stuck soundly into my knee.
Superman nodded and knelt down. "Annie, sweetheart," he said, his voice gentle, and so far away from the stern superhero I was used to that I was barely able keep it straight in my head that the man kneeling next to my foot talking to my terrified four-year-old was the guy who lifted rockets into orbit.
"Can you please let go of your father?" Superman asked. "I really could use your help."
Annie sniffled. "With what?"
"Well, Baxter must be around here somewhere, right?" he asked. "We should find him to make sure he's okay."
Her grip loosened.
"After all, your sister climbed so very high to rescue him," Superman explained. "We should be sure that he's all right so your sister didn't do all that climbing for no reason. Don't you think?"
The fixture around my pant leg slowly let go. "... Okay," she said.
As soon as she let go, Superman wrapped his arms around her torso and lifted her expertly to his chest. Her short legs clamped around his waist and he smiled at her. "What does Baxter look like?" he asked.
My throat started to burn as I looked at them. He was so natural with her. He...
"Claire says he's gray," Annie explained.
Superman's brow furrowed. "You haven't seen him?"
"Have too!" Annie protested firmly.
For several moments, he was silent as he held her. I saw his Adam's apple bobble as he swallowed once and looked at me for a moment. It was the minutest of assessments. I could almost feel his gaze prying into me. Perhaps his x-ray vision was back. I felt laid bare.
But just as quickly as I had caught his pointed glance, his eyes were back on Annie, twinkling. A smile tickled the corners of his lips. "All right," he said agreeably, "Well, let's go look around, shall we? Should we go get some tuna from the kitchen? Perhaps we can lure him out of hiding."
"Claire says he likes fruit!"
Superman didn't miss a beat. "Well, that's a special cat right there. Do you keep any fruit in your kitchen?"
"Yes, there's bananas."
"That sounds like wonderful bait. Let's go get it."
"Okay."
With that, they turned to leave. As they departed, I shook the burning sensation away from my throat and the backs of my eyes.
I turned back to the tree. "Claire, I'm coming up now. Hang on."
"Okay," she called down. Her voice sounded trembly. As though she were trying to sound as though she was in complete control of the situation, but was so terrified that she just couldn't pull it off.
I got my purchase on the first branch.
"So what happened?" I asked. It was best to keep her talking, right? That was what rescue people did in the movies.
Damp bark crumbled slightly in my grip as I purchased my way to the next set of branches. There was a reason that people stopped climbing trees when they grew up, I thought. There was a reason that I had *never* climbed trees.
"Baxter ran away with Ken. Then he got stuck up here."
One of the thinner branches snapped off in my hands and I fumbled for a thicker one.
"Who's Ken?" I gritted. And why didn't I know about a cat named Baxter? Was it a neighbor's or something?
"Barbie's husband."
"Right." I knew that.
Time passed with a painful slowness, until every time I extended a muscle to climb just a bit higher, I felt the sear and strain. It probably didn't help that I couldn't get myself to loosen up. My parts felt like they were grinding together rather than moving fluidly, and clenching at every joint was exhausting me far faster than if I had just sucked it up and relaxed.
But I couldn't. Couldn't relax.
That was Claire up there, still what seemed miles above me.
I was two-thirds of the way there when Claire giggled.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Annie is running around our front lawn with a banana."
"Superman is with her, right?"
"Yeah, he's looking at our bushes."
What? Why would he... Oh. Right. He was looking for the damn cat.
I made it to the top, slightly out of breath, tendons burning. I stared at Claire. This was going to be a bit trickier than I had originally assumed. I was far too big to maneuver well in this tree, and a branch still separated us. Her foot was eye level with me.
"Claire," I asked, "Can you climb down on your own if I go with you?"
"I think so," she said. Her voice had lapsed back into that weepy faux-brave tone she had used earlier.
I reached across, my arm ready to snake out and grab her if she fell. She unsteadily descended to the next lowest branch so that we were even.
"Okay, ready?" I asked.
She nodded.
I sent a foot down in search of a branch. By the time I found one, I felt like my leg was going to fall off from being forced to do splits, which was unnatural enough for me when I *wasn't* twenty-five feet in the air in a tree. I just wasn't acrobatically equipped.
The branches hadn't seemed so far apart on the way up. There was no way she was going to make it down that gap by herself.
"Okay, can you move over here? I'll try and lower you down myself," I explained.
She squirmed her way around to me. I propped myself precariously on one of the intervening branches and clutched my hands around her torso. I slowly took her full weight onto my arms and lowered her to the branch below. Suffice it to say, she had certainly grown since the last time I had picked her up. My vision was going a bit hazy when she finally met with something solid and the weight that tugged down on me lessened.
We followed the same procedure for the next two branches as well. I was panting and achy by the time we had gotten only half way down.
"Can you get down to the next one without me lifting you?" I asked. It looked a lot closer than the past three had been.
She nodded.
Her little arms clutched around the trunk of the tree and she sort of shimmied her way down. I was almost ready to think we might make it with no incident, when her foot hit a knot in the trunk and she lost her balance. With a shriek, she lost her grip and started sliding.
"Don't fall!" I shouted. I nearly toppled over the branch that supported my midsection as I leaned forward and stretched my arms out. My feet slipped out behind me and I swung forward like a gymnast going over a bar. In a tangle of limbs and hair and clothes, I managed to grab hold of her shirt. She grunted and stopped, dangling.
"Daddy!" she cried.
We teetered there for a moment.
"Hang on," I said. The wind was nearly gone from me. The intervening branch that was all that held me from a head-first descent to the ground was forcing the air out of me as Claire's weight pulled me down.
"Grab onto my arm," I wheezed as blood rushed to my head and my skull started to feel heavy.
A death-grip encircled my wrist, but the weight pulling down on the shirt clenched in my fist didn't lessen.
"I'm going to swing my legs back down. Don't let go."
I tried to fling myself down to the next branch like a seesaw, only to fail dismally. Claire dangled precariously by my grip, and I couldn't really seem to get enough air into my lungs. I gasped and panted. Too heavy. I was too big to be in this tree. And Claire was too big to be dangling from just one arm.
Time slowed to a halt. Her grip began to slide across my skin, losing purchase to my rampant perspiration. I heard the seams ripping on her shirt, and her breathing sounded really funny. God, the shirt. It was probably cutting into her neck.
"Hang on, Claire," I panted. "Don't let go. Don't you dare."
The breath had bled so far out of me that I think the last words were just spelled with my lips. I had no way of knowing.
"Don't let go," I urged again, though I couldn't hear myself speaking.
Don't leave me like she did.
I let her weight pull me even closer to vertical, and then, with a strength I didn't know I still had, I flopped my legs backward in a sweeping motion until my feet met the lower branch and I was standing again. I scrambled to get Claire out of her dangle. She clawed at my wrist and I felt a searing pain rip at my muscles as I thumped my arm badly against the bark of the branch above me. There was a snap. I think the branch broke. Leaves fluttered down past me.
But I pulled her back.
And she stood under her own power, just as Superman came crashing back into the yard, Annie running a few steps behind and considerably slower. He must be in pretty good shape to move that fast even when his powers were gone.
"Are you all right?" he shouted.
Of course, he must have heard me.
"I've been better," I said faintly.
I think I was starting to see spots, but when I heard a branch below me stutter and creak with someone's weight, I blinked. "No," I shouted down at him. "I can do this."
And I did.
When we reached the ground, my wrist was throbbing so badly that I was growing lightheaded. "Did you find Baxter?" I asked. But my voice was really, really far away.
How odd.
"Claire, are you all right?"
In the blur, I saw her nodding. But she wasn't looking at me. She was staring at my wrist, eyes wide.
The last thought I had before I saw my bathrobe smacking into my face was that for the barest, tiniest of moments, when Claire had been dangling from my grasp, I had felt something that I had been convinced was long gone.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 06/08)
