The Hardyman | Page 6

hallway to Mr. Bigsby's office where, much to his boss's surprise, Jack would tear the door from its hinges, grab Bigsby by the clavicles, climb out the nearest window, and clamber up the side of the building until he had reached the antenna at its peak. There, Jack would swing from the skyscraper in the Hardyman suit like a newfangled animatronic King Kong, waving Mr. Bigsby around as his boss shrieked like Fay Wray. Eventually, a cadre of helicopters would shoot him down as the whole city watched it all play out live on their T.V. screens. The woman who drove the garbage truck would weep for him over her T.V. dinner as the credits rolled. She would be very sorry, indeed, that she had left him standing at the curb.
That night, Jack writhed and pitched in a dream, lost in a maze of hallways within his childhood home. He was a boy once again, and small, running from empty room to empty room, screaming at the top of his lungs. Something was chasing after him and, without ever looking back, by its monstrously thundering footsteps and its distant angry call, Jack knew what it was. It was his long dead father, steering for him at the helm of the great and terrible Hardyman. If his father ever caught him, Jack knew, he would pin Jack under the awful weight of his massive metal arms and breathe death into Jack's face until he could no longer bear to inhale.
The next morning, Jack woke up and realized he was all alone.
9
That week, Jack took the train home, sandwiched between bodies crammed into swinging loads of sweat boxes. In a strange way, for the first time, it was a comfort to be a part of this teeming mass of people. When the train reached his stop, Jack didn't disembark, instead using his employee status to ride deadheading trains as their drivers aired them out on return runs. The doors at either end of the trains stood wide-open, the wind sweeping in as the men barreled through the dark night, diving into black tunnel mouths, clattering across elevated tracks. Sometimes Jack sat up front, next to the driver in the railfan's seat, peering out at the coming distance as they drove headlong into it.
Whether the system was filled to overflowing or solitarily empty, if the train was making stops or not, no matter the hour of the night or morning, Jack searched for the woman. Maybe she drove the garbage truck everywhere she went, picking people and cars out of the way with her robot arm. Maybe she was chauffeured at all times by a gigantic boyfriend from Herculaneum, Missouri, who punched people for a living. Maybe she was hiding from him, somewhere inside this cement and steel labyrinth of a city. No matter what he did, he could neither locate her nor expunge her from his consciousness.
It was not until almost a week had passed that, at the corner-store, an idea came to him. In the rows of greeting cards announcing, "You Have a Boy!" and "What a Friend You Can Find in Jesus!", Jack found a card. On the cover was a drawing of two robots eating ice cream cones. Inside, the card was blank.
That night, Jack made his way out to the curb, dragging his garbage can behind him. Once there, he attached the envelope with the card inside it to the top of the can. Back inside, he looked out his bedroom window to make sure the card was still there. He could see the white square floating in the darkness. HELLO, he had written across the front.
The following morning, the sound of the garbage truck woke him like an alarm. Without turning on the light, Jack made his way hurriedly over to the window. He could see the shiny metal grill of the garbage truck plowing its way down the street. In the half-light, the truck came closer. It seemed to be slowing as it neared. By the time it reached his driveway, it was crawling. Finally, it stopped in front of his house. The truck sat there, as if it was debating.
With a sudden snap, the truck's arm darted out towards the garbage can. For a moment, Jack thought it was going to grab the garbage can and chuck its contents and the card into its belly along with all the other rubbish. But it was reaching for the envelope, grasping and grabbing. She was trying to pick up the card with the truck's arm, he realized. For what seemed like an eternity, Jack stood at the window, watching and waiting. It was not possible, he feared.
Abruptly, the truck's arm retracted. Jack stared out at the scene from behind the slats of his Venetian blinds. He had