Read Online It's Superman! A Novel by Tom De Haven - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tom De Haven
Ads: Link
chain-smoking, gum-chewing grocery clerk/factory hand/short-order cook who sneered at him, resented him, and probably would have beaten him three times to the month if his mother had not always intervened?
Yet the man Lex Luthor has become, is still becoming, that man, he has often mused, is undeniably the offspring of Wesley Bankton, who once cut a dashing, aggressive figure, taking options on thousands of acres in the Middle West, establishing towns—Wesley, Iowa; Bankton, Missouri; Wesdale, Nebraska—and serving as mayor of each one, at least till it failed or he grew bored or, in the case of Wesdale, he fled under cover of the night.
A thousand times during his childhood, Lex heard about Gorsline Easy, a wild-eyed Holy Roller who owned less than fifty acres planted in corn, a nobody, a shabby, drawling down-and-outer with a rawboned homely wife. Gorsline Easy. Gorsline! What kind of name was that? And what kind of fool was he to imagine he could win an election against Wesley Bankton? Not only that, what kind of imbecile was this corn farmer to think he could publicly accuse Wes Bankton of looting the town’s treasury and get away with it?
On the ninth of September 1908, Wesley Bankton found this stupid nobody at work in his smokehouse and shot him dead.
Good. Lex Luthor would have done the same thing.
But then?
Then his father hastened away in darkness with his imperious wife and their three-year-old redheaded boy, and was ruined forever. It was not doing murder that changed him, unmanned him. It was the crushing fear that followed—fear of capture, trial, humiliation, imprisonment, execution. Fear was what a man could least afford. That was the only useful lesson that Lex ever learned from his father, the father he knew as Dick Plenty, Jerome Little, John Biggs . . .
The father whose memory continues to fill him with disgust.
“Well, finally!” says Lex as Paulie and Stick climb into the front of the town car. “I was beginning to think you boys were conducting funeral services.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“You said you wanted us to clean it up real good. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find no blood in there, sir.”
The Lincoln follows a brewery truck to the corner of Seventh Avenue. When the truck turns left, heading south, Paulie asks, “Where to, boss?”
Lex checks his watch. No point going back to the Broadhurst now. Besides which, the play he was watching when he got the tap on his shoulder—phone call for you, Alderman, says it’s an emergency—was a complete bow-wow. One of those phony jobs with a “cross-section of humanity” stranded together, this time in a Bar-B-Q on the Arizona desert, everybody speechifying like they were giving lectures at the Cooper Union.
“Boss?”
“Oh,” says Lex offhandedly, “why don’t you just run me up to Rockefeller Center and drop me off? Ray Noble’s playing at the Rainbow Room.”
V
Skinny Simon. Lois Lane, reporter.
Murder in the first degree. Insult to injury.
●
1
Betty Simon—the girl all the boys call Skinny because she is anything but—meets Lois Lane just inside the entrance to the Emergency Room. Taking her by a wrist, she leads her to a row of chairs. Nearby, a deli-man in a grimy apron hunches over, cradling a hand wrapped with a bloody towel. Despite his misery, he is unable to conquer the temptation to give a side glance at Skinny’s extravagant breasts, hips, and rear end. Now, that’s a nurse.
“Sit. Lois ?”
“But what are they saying ?”
“He’s still in surgery.”
“So why aren’t you there?”
“Because I’m not. Sit. Do you want some coffee?”
“No, I don’t want any coffee. I want to know if Willi’s going to be all right! ”
“We all do, Lois, okay?”
“Where did this happen ?”
“I’m not sure—somewhere on the East Side. Had you seen him tonight?”
“We had a big stupid fight . . .”
“Listen, why don’t I go check, see what I can find out?”
The deli-man lifts his eyes again
Yet the man Lex Luthor has become, is still becoming, that man, he has often mused, is undeniably the offspring of Wesley Bankton, who once cut a dashing, aggressive figure, taking options on thousands of acres in the Middle West, establishing towns—Wesley, Iowa; Bankton, Missouri; Wesdale, Nebraska—and serving as mayor of each one, at least till it failed or he grew bored or, in the case of Wesdale, he fled under cover of the night.
A thousand times during his childhood, Lex heard about Gorsline Easy, a wild-eyed Holy Roller who owned less than fifty acres planted in corn, a nobody, a shabby, drawling down-and-outer with a rawboned homely wife. Gorsline Easy. Gorsline! What kind of name was that? And what kind of fool was he to imagine he could win an election against Wesley Bankton? Not only that, what kind of imbecile was this corn farmer to think he could publicly accuse Wes Bankton of looting the town’s treasury and get away with it?
On the ninth of September 1908, Wesley Bankton found this stupid nobody at work in his smokehouse and shot him dead.
Good. Lex Luthor would have done the same thing.
But then?
Then his father hastened away in darkness with his imperious wife and their three-year-old redheaded boy, and was ruined forever. It was not doing murder that changed him, unmanned him. It was the crushing fear that followed—fear of capture, trial, humiliation, imprisonment, execution. Fear was what a man could least afford. That was the only useful lesson that Lex ever learned from his father, the father he knew as Dick Plenty, Jerome Little, John Biggs . . .
The father whose memory continues to fill him with disgust.
“Well, finally!” says Lex as Paulie and Stick climb into the front of the town car. “I was beginning to think you boys were conducting funeral services.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“You said you wanted us to clean it up real good. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find no blood in there, sir.”
The Lincoln follows a brewery truck to the corner of Seventh Avenue. When the truck turns left, heading south, Paulie asks, “Where to, boss?”
Lex checks his watch. No point going back to the Broadhurst now. Besides which, the play he was watching when he got the tap on his shoulder—phone call for you, Alderman, says it’s an emergency—was a complete bow-wow. One of those phony jobs with a “cross-section of humanity” stranded together, this time in a Bar-B-Q on the Arizona desert, everybody speechifying like they were giving lectures at the Cooper Union.
“Boss?”
“Oh,” says Lex offhandedly, “why don’t you just run me up to Rockefeller Center and drop me off? Ray Noble’s playing at the Rainbow Room.”
V
Skinny Simon. Lois Lane, reporter.
Murder in the first degree. Insult to injury.
●
1
Betty Simon—the girl all the boys call Skinny because she is anything but—meets Lois Lane just inside the entrance to the Emergency Room. Taking her by a wrist, she leads her to a row of chairs. Nearby, a deli-man in a grimy apron hunches over, cradling a hand wrapped with a bloody towel. Despite his misery, he is unable to conquer the temptation to give a side glance at Skinny’s extravagant breasts, hips, and rear end. Now, that’s a nurse.
“Sit. Lois ?”
“But what are they saying ?”
“He’s still in surgery.”
“So why aren’t you there?”
“Because I’m not. Sit. Do you want some coffee?”
“No, I don’t want any coffee. I want to know if Willi’s going to be all right! ”
“We all do, Lois, okay?”
“Where did this happen ?”
“I’m not sure—somewhere on the East Side. Had you seen him tonight?”
“We had a big stupid fight . . .”
“Listen, why don’t I go check, see what I can find out?”
The deli-man lifts his eyes again
Similar Books
