Damn. I hoped Sophie’s family wasn’t watching Redneck Zombies. Or Deliverance. You try to tune this crap out till it sneaks up and socks you, like the sad day of Demon’s slam-book education. It’s everybody out there. Reading about us being shit-eater loser trash jerkoffs.
“Your teeth are A-okay,” I said. “She probably thinks you’re the exception to the rule.”
He looked defeated, shaking his head. “People want somebody to kick around, I get that. But why is it us? Why couldn’t it be, I don’t know, a Dakota or something? Why not Florida?”
“Just bad luck, I reckon. God made us the butt of the joke universe.” At that point I knew it probably wasn’t God. But I had nothing better on offer.
Where Tommy used to draw skeletons, now he collected proof of getting scorned. I told him to quit torturing himself, but he was as hooked on his poison as I was on mine. Even the comic strips were against him. Those came in a packet every week, and he had to pick out four to lay out on the last page. All lame, unfunny four-panels of kids acting rated-G naughty, talking dogs, yuk-yuk. Tommy could choose any three, but the fourth always had to be Stumpy Fiddles that they’d been running forever: lazy corn pones with hairy ears, big noses, patched clothes worse than any I wore as a foster. Old Maw nags, old Paw skips out on any threat of work to hide behind the outhouse with his shine jug. It wrecked Tommy to run this strip. I offered to draw in palm trees to make it Florida, which we both knew would not fool anybody. It was the same deal. This was the one comic strip of existence with so-called local interest.
“Local my ass,” I said. “Whoever draws this has never been here. He’s blowing his wad on us every week, everybody out there laughs, and we swallow the jizz. Stumpy fucking Fiddles is garbage.” To prove it, I wadded him up and threw him away.
“Oh Lord,” Tommy said to the trash can. “Pinkie’s going to tan my hide.”
“It’s not even good drawing.” I got it out, unwadded it, and flattened it on the light table. “Look how he puts the same face on every character. Men, women, babies. That’s just lazy.”
Tommy got this wild look. “Okay, let’s see you do better. Superhero needed here. I’ll watch.” And he did. Just like in our Creaky Farm days of old.
I’d been thinking of this guy my whole life. And his universe. Not Batman’s Gotham City or Superman’s Metropolis or Captain America’s New York or Green Lantern’s Coast City or Antman’s LA. I’m discussing Smallville, where Superman’s nice fosters looked after him till the day he got his wings and tore out of there. I recall some ripping up of pages, as a kid reading that. Not even understanding really why it broke my heart. But Jesus, even a kid knows the basics. Why wouldn’t any of them want to look after us?
I made him a miner, with a pick, overalls, the hard hat with the light on the front. I gave him a red bandanna like the old badass strikers that had their war. No cape, he doesn’t fly, just super strong and fast, running over the mountaintops in leaps and bounds. This guy is old-school. I drew it in the vintage direction where the characters are somewhat roundheaded with long noodle limbs, in constant motion. Fleischer style is the name of that, part Mickey Mouse, part manga. It was a style I could do, and it felt like getting back to the roots.
First panel: my guy spots an old lady crying in her little home up in the woods, because she can’t pay her bill and the electric’s gone off. Dark, stormy night. Second panel: the hero grabs a lightning bolt out of the sky and shoves it into the wires. You see it running all the way into her trailer home, the lights and stove all coming back on. In the last panel I made music notes coming out of her radio and lights shining out the windows into the night. The lady and her little old man are dancing outside on their porch.
Just kid stuff, obviously. That’s all comics were, as far as we knew. I’d started with a different version where he swaps out lines at the pole, so instead of lightning he’s stealing the power of a mansion house up on a hill. You see it all fizzle out up there, satellite TV, outdoor security lights, while the little trailer goes bright. But Tommy said that might get him in trouble with Pinkie, so I went with the natural forces. I put a lot of emotion and contrast shading in the last panel, where you see the miner hero out in the dark woods, watching the happy old couple on their lit-up porch. I named my strip Red Neck. Signed, Anonymous.
50
I got our light bill paid. Now we had a leaky gas stove and a furnace going to the dark side. I turned on the blowers to test it, churning up some bad business in there with the smell of burnt cat. Dori said the gas had always leaked, and it wasn’t cold yet. We had a fight over why you’d turn on the furnace if it’s not cold. My position being: It’s freaking September. The world turns. Hers being: Why did I have to make everything so hard. Another day in our happy home.