And then I just felt all this cold air on my face. I know now what he was doing- he liked to take bad guys to someplace a little secluded, like an alleyway, and finish punching them up there. Just close enough he could hear the lady if she screamed for ‘help’ again, but far enough away that she’d be alright if she was the type who’d get all traumatized seeing some get beat up.

Well, he dropped me down and I felt pavement under my feet. He grabbed me by the straps of my harness and looked me up and down.

“Wings?” he said, “huh.” Then he flipped the buckles on my chest- they were modeled after a pilot’s safety belts, after all – and slipped me out of my second skin with two or three tugs.

And then’s when I really came to.

He took a step back, with my harness in his hands. Somehow he found the button that made it fold up again. I realized for the first time that though he may have looked like the kind of guy who’d hang out in chess club, he had really broad shoulders and thick biceps. Military life had probably already gotten him into shape even before he got hit by that lightning bolt, and since then he’d probably had every trainer, boxer and dietician that Uncle Sam got get ahold of, putting him through his paces to make him a strong, amazing, fistfighting superhero that could take on just about anyone and come out on top.

But he didn’t beat me up.

He took my wings, held it by one strap, swung it like a great, big tetherball around his head three or four times and slammed it into the brick wall of the building next to me.

I heard the crunch as the panels broke, the pulleys snapped, the plastic ‘feathers’ in the wings cracked and smashed like dinner dishes dropped from the top of a building.

I screamed, tears and yells mixing in a loud torrent as I saw the American Airman, America’s Mr. Nice Guy, destroy in three seconds what had become my baby and my life’s work, the one thing that had kept me going, helped me not care when the other kids had rejected me, had made me popular for the few days I’d ever actually been accepted in my life. Brought me the only real joy I’d had since I was old enough to know I was different. And the Airman had smashed it into the walls of a dark, stone alley like it was a bag of garbage. Turned it into so much garbage, so much trash, in three fucking seconds.

I sank to my knees, pleading with him not to do it, still pleading with him as he pulverized them. Sobbing, my eyes wide open with grief and horror when I realized that they were broken beyond repair, and that I’d never fly them again.

And when he was done, The Airman opened up my pack and poured out the pieces, watching them clatter and bounce and some breaking even further as they hit the pavement. I collapsed on the ground, wailing and trying to keep all the rage and anger and sadness inside, trying to keep him from even noticing me, keep him from turning on me and trying to destroy me, just like he’d destroyed the only good thing I had left in my life now that I couldn’t even live at home with my parents.

After he emptied my backpack the Airman looked at me. He’d still been wearing that gosh-gee-whiz face of his, the face of a schoolteacher telling little Jimmy that he was gonna get an ‘F’ for cheating, but I hope you’ve learned your lesson, young man. But after he’d finished and saw me break down he just looked kinda puzzled. I think now he was used to seeing people he squared off against swear revenge, or try to kill him with a knife or a gun. But he wasn’t used to seeing an opponent sink to his knees and then face down in a filthy street sob like a little . . .

Thanks, Jane. Appreciated. No, no worries. The Kleenex helps. Right now I just have . . . yeah, allergies. Darned new cleaner boy they have in here. Nice kid. Terrific kid, but the bleach and cleaner is just awful on the eyes. No, I’m fine. Thanks for the Kleenex. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. I was blubbering like a little kid. I just wanted to hide and never see anyone again, especially if he were some kind of hero that everybody but me loved.

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“I . . . Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson, young man,” he said. “There’s, ah, there’s only really room for one flier in this town, and, well, um . . . don’t- don’t cause any more trouble, alright?”

I barely heard it. I kept crying. What the hell kind of thing was this? This never happened in the comic books! The Airman was supposed to see my potential, and put me on the right path. Not rip apart my life and be all awkward afterwards.

Well, he couldn’t have felt too bad about it. Thanks Jane, I appreciate that. But the truth is someone must have snitched about that night. Because in the comics for the rest of the run they did American Airman, the ole’ archenemy Mothman never did learn his lesson, did he? The Airman would always foil his schemes, rip apart his latest set of wings, and cart him off to jail. And somehow he’d get out, go back to his underground lair beneath his mansion, and make up a new set of wings with some new kind of special effect each time. Those were pretty interesting ones, let me tell you, Jane. One month, Mothman had flamethrowers on his wings. Another time he had mounted machine guns. Other wings fired poison darts, threw knives, whatever. Each and every time, I had to hear the kids around me in the city, on the radio plays, all talking about how the great American Airman beat the evil Mothman. And every time, Mothman got his wings ripped off and destroyed in a different way. Sometimes they got crumpled into a ball, or tossed off the Empire State Building, or thrown into the waterfall of Hoover Dam. Hell, I think one time the comic-book guys were short on ideas, so they had the Airman shove them into some kind of super-cannon and fire them into the heart of the sun. Dammit, Jane, I didn’t deserve to have the worst moment of my life served up again and again, shoved in my face for little kids to laugh at and given a new and awful twist each time.

And do you think that leather-jacketed numbskull ever apologized? Even after he wrecked my life’s work? Nothing! Zip! Zilch! Tell ya, Jane, I wouldn’t have made those wings if the Airman hadn’t existed. I can admit that now, a good forty-odd years later. But then again, I wouldn’t have been the bad guy if he’d taken a minute to talk to me before he ripped the thing I loved most in this world and smashed it like it was a bag of trash against a brick wall.

So what did I do? After I finished crying, I looked around. The lady in distress, her car, her kids, the Airman, all of them were gone. Vamoosed. I picked up the pieces I could of my wings and went looking for a phone. I called Mike from a pay phone collect at the bar I knew he liked to hang out at while he waited for me to finish my flying time through the city, and he showed up in the town car a half hour later.

Mike was great. He helped me pick up every single piece that the Airman smashed. Every nut, bolt, spring and string got found and put into the trunk of the car. And you know what? Mike was great in so many ways. I was having to operate on my own, dad-less, for the last few months while I finished high-school and all the rest. But that night Mike gave me the kind of advice a young man needs when he hits a major speed-bump on the road of life. He saw me through his rearview, slouched, defeated, life just squeezed out of me like I was a tube of toothpaste that had gotten run over by a schoolbus.

“Russ,” he says to me, that was what he called me, “Russ, I’ve seen guys where you’re at, and I know what you’re going through.”

“Bullshit.” I said. Remember, I was eighteen. I’d celebrated my birthday the week before, and the joy I’d had celebrating with the servants and the kiss I’d gotten from Anna the maid was all so much steam-and-ashes.

“No, really. I know. Someone you thought would be your friend just cut your lifeline, and you feel like your life, your whole damn world ain’t never gonna be good again. Some of us have it happen when our best friend sneaks our girl, sneaks our job, or switches teams right before the championship game and they get the trophy. Whatever it is, you’ve been betrayed. You know what you gotta do, Russ? You listen to me, now. I’m near thirty, and I’ve seen more of the world than you. When a pilot crashes in his plane? My dad worked the airfields during the War. He said if a pilot got shot down or crashed, they made those pilots go right back up again after resting for maybe a day. One day, at most. Any more than that, they were afraid to ever fly again. Now you, Russ, you listening? You do that. Or you’re gonna be stuck in that alleyway for the rest of your life, remembering how shitty you felt whenever you try to do anything great, anything to do with flying ever again.”

“How the hell’m I gonna fly, Mike? You want me to dive off the Empire State Building? My wings look like an anchovy pizza. And I’d look just as bad if I tried flying with that mess.”

“Russ,” says Mike, “you can’t fly right now. But you can build your wings again."

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TO BE CONTINUED....