Chapter One

Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky …

—REM

“… Don’t fall on me,” the boy sang out loud, not realizing it. He did that sometimes and he hated that about himself. But that was just one thing. There was a lot to hate.

Nelson spent most of the morning walking the railroad tracks that cut through the northern tip of McFalls County. He’d never actually seen a train come through here, and the foot-tall skunk weed that grew up through the brittle wooden ties made him believe the tracks were now a relic of the past, but at night sometimes from his bedroom he’d hear the whistle blow. Or maybe that was his imagination. He bent over to pick up a glass Coke bottle and hurled it several feet down the tracks. It shattered against the iron rails and echoed out into the morning, spooking a flock of nesting swallows that took to the sky in an inky swirl. He kept walking awhile, stopping to toss crushed soda cans and chunks of rock against the concrete embankment under Slater Street Bridge. Eventually, the boy slid the wire headphones down to his neck and made his way to the pond. After a short hike through the woods, careful not to disturb any of the early morning spiderwebs, the boy emerged through the tree line and crossed the clearing until he reached the water’s edge.

Nelson dropped his Walkman and his backpack onto a smooth chunk of limestone and sat down. The breeze sweeping off the pond was cool this time of day and it felt good blowing around the boy’s shirt collar. It also helped tame the dull ache of his blackened left eye. His father, Satchel, had popped him pretty good at supper the night before and left a doughy pink welt that had morphed into a patchwork of violet and yellow bruises. It hurt like hell. Nelson rubbed at his face. He’d never been fond of the way he looked, even when he wasn’t toting a black eye. The kids at school told him all the time that his eyes were too close together. He reckoned that was true. In fact, all of his facial features pooled together in the middle of his face, making his forehead and cheeks appear swollen.

He felt a sudden urge to jump into the pond. He did that sometimes to try and wash the salt out of his wounds, but he decided against it. Instead, he reached over, unzipped his backpack, and began to rummage through it, looking for the cathead biscuit he’d snatched up before he left the house. When he found it, the smell of fresh churned butter and mashed blackberries made his mouth water. He unwrapped the paper towel and took a bite. He closed his eyes and chewed slowly to make it last. He knew this was most likely all he’d get to eat today. He swallowed hard, set the biscuit down on the rock beside him and then reached back into his pack and slid out a shiny, flat comic book.

Batman—number 428.

The cover gleamed in the morning sun and Nelson handled it as if it were made of spun glass. The boy loved comic books. Most people dismissed them as drugstore garbage, just picture books for little kids. But for Nelson they were much more than that. Comics had helped him learn to read way better than any schoolbook. The way the words came in short bursts along with pictures to help him understand, instead of just rows of letters all lined up in a black-and-white jumble on the page. They allowed him to concentrate—to enjoy the story more. He’d tried to explain that to his teachers at school several times, but they never understood—or they didn’t care. But he loved those comics regardless. They were his most prized possessions. His mama used to buy them and hide them in his room to keep Satchel from finding them and tearing them up out of spite. That was the type of love Nelson had come to know from his folks. It came folded down the middle, like a stash of one-dollar bills cupped into a handshake, like a bribe. And now Nelson’s mama was gone so these comics were all he had.

Nelson flipped through the pages but couldn’t stop rubbing at his swollen eye. He heard the echo of his father calling him a retard as he hit him. He called Nelson that all the time. Especially without Mama around. The boy snorted and rubbed some more at his sore eye before hoisting a middle finger up at the clouds. The common belief among most of the people residing in the Blue Ridge foothills is that God never gives someone more weight than they can carry, but by the time Nelson McKenna was sixteen years old, he’d abandoned that ration of nonsense and took to his own belief—that sometimes God just likes to have a fucking laugh.

He felt a bug sting hard at his neck and shooed it away with a mangled left hand—another blessing from the good Lord. His hand was twice the size of a normal person’s hand—all curled and swollen—with shortened, fused, and stubby fingers. It made holding flimsy things like comic books difficult, but he’d learned to manage. He balanced the book on his bad hand and turned the pages with the other. He felt something else graze the back of his head and swatted at the air before picking up his biscuit and taking another bite.

“Oh shit,” he said, as he read. “Are they really going to kill Robin?” Nelson thumbed back another page. “No way.” For the first time that day, he forgot his monochrome existence and began to get lost in the four-color world playing out panel by panel at his fingertips.

He felt another bite on the back of his head and this time Nelson smacked himself hard enough to hurt his hand. “What the hell?” Nelson whipped his head around to look behind him—and his heart sank.


Copyright © 2024 by Brian Panowich