Jackson Humes is Not a Superhero

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In all the years we'd been neighbors, I'd never been inside Mr. Saltzman's house. It was smaller than my aunt's house, but it was very tidy and uncluttered. Except for a flat-screen TV, and a laptop sitting on the coffee table, all the furniture appeared to be at least thirty years old. But it was the type of old that had a worn, comfy look to it.

"Hey Jackson." Marv and Graham were sitting on the couch watching TV. Well, Marv was watching TV while Graham nervously glanced from me back to the large dog taking up most of the space on the couch. Marv was still in dog form for some reason. "Wow, you look like shit."

I had a huge purple bruise on my face where I'd gotten punched. My body felt like it had been tied up to the back of a racecar and dragged around the track for 500 laps. I had bags under my eyes from lack of sleep, and my aunt had basically extended my punishment well into next summer. Shit didn't even begin to describe the way I was feeling at the moment.

"Why haven't you changed back?" I asked.

Marv nodded to Mr. Saltzman who had just taken a seat in an old recliner. "He thinks it's best for me to remain like this in case the cops parked in front of your house decide to come over."

I was about to squeeze between Marv and Graham when I noticed Marv's doggy bits were exposed. "Umm," I waved in the general direction of his crotch, trying not to blush. "Maybe you should, you know, cover up or something."

Marv glanced down and tried to cover himself up with his paws. When that failed he grabbed one of the throw pillows on the couch and used it to cover himself up. Once satisfied that he wasn't flashing the whole room he looked up and caught me staring. "Stop trying to get a peak at my junk."

"I'm not," I protested.

"You're the one who pointed it out," he argued.

"I was doing it to be polite," I countered. "Would you have preferred for me to just let you sit there with all of your bits and bobs hanging out?"

"What are you trying to say?" he demanded. "Are you suggesting that I'm small?"

"Boys!" Mr. Saltzman slammed his hand against the arm of the leather recliner. "I need the two of you to focus."

"Ask him how he knew about me," Marv said.

"How did you know Marv was human?" I asked, sitting down next to Marv. "And how did you know I could understand him? And why aren't you more freaked out about all of this?"

He nodded three times, as if ticking each question off in his head. "I knew something was up when I saw you walk out of the woods in mid air and climb into your bedroom window. Then yesterday, I saw the three of you casually chatting in the orchard."

My mouth dropped open. "You saw that?"

"Of course I did, it was the middle of the day. I may be old but I'm not blind. Both of you," he pointed a crooked yet steady finger at each of us in turn, "need to start being more discreet. Now, it'll be easier if I start from the beginning."

Mr. Saltzman let out the type of sigh only a person past a certain age could produce. "Years ago, I was probably just a few years older than you are now," he nodded at me, "I enlisted in the army. I joined to get away from my old man. He was a mean son-of-a-bitch, and I didn't want to grow up to be like him. I also didn't really have a whole lot of opportunities open to me at the time and had no interest in settling down, so military life suited me well.

"After I retired, I bounced around from city to city and job to job, finally landing in Kane where I worked as a late night security guard at a bank. It was boring work, but it paid the bills. One night after work I was driving down Old Mill Road when this thing shot out in front of my car. I must've been doing seventy when I hit it. It flew through the air, crashed onto the concrete, and got right back up. It came straight at me, so I pulled my gun out of the glove compartment and unloaded the entire clip into it.