Being Johnny Saturn – Part VI by Benita G. Story. Copyright 2008 by Story Studios, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Before you read this week’s installment, I am going to ask you to reread last weeks. Why? Because I skipped the first part of it when I posted it, and if you reread it, it will make more sense. Click here to get to it quickly, then come back to this post to read today’s episode. I sincerely apologize for this goof-up on my part. BGS
The next morning, after a quiet breakfast with no Victoria Shelbourne in attendance, John took Greg not to the Army base, but to an area several hours outside of town and high up in the mountains. The house they arrived at was isolated and no other sole was present.
John took a bag out of the trunk of his bike and led Greg into the house. It was cold, barren and dusty. John tossed the bag onto the only piece of furniture in the one room building, an army cot in the corner next to the empty fireplace.
“Wood is out back. Why don’t you bring in some while I bring in your bike,” John suggested. Then he walked out the front door.
Greg stood still for a moment, then did as he was told. He no longer questioned the man he looked up to as his superior in every way. There was a large stack of split firewood just outside the back door. Greg could also see the frame and roof of a well, the rope from the wench disappearing down through a hole in the lid.
He gathered up as big an armload as he could carry and took it back inside. John was just parking Greg’s bike against the back wall of the room.
“You have in that bag some matches, some Army rations, a flashlight, a notebook and pen, a blanket and a small, blow-up pillow,” John said indicating the bag on the cot. “I’ll be back in a few days. You are to stay here until I return.”
“And do what?”
John gave Greg a hard look. “Think.”
With that John walked out of the room. Greg heard the motor of the big Harley start up and, before he could get to the front door, John was gone.
Greg took a deep breath and let it out, his cheeks puffing out as he did so. He looked around him slowly, taking it in. He looked at the motorcycle, tempted to just get on it and follow John back to his house. Then he shook his head. This was part of his training. Something here was supposed to teach Greg how to be stronger. Shivering in the wind whistling through the two open doors, his first move was to build a fire.
The house never got warm enough for Greg not to see his breath. His one blanket was hardly worth the trouble of unfolding it and he slept in his clothes and coat that night, hands tucked in his armpits and teeth chattering. By morning, he had gone from inwardly cursing John Underhall to cursing him out loud.
When he went outside at daybreak to relieve himself and gather more wood, the view stopped him in his tracks. A hard frost had fallen overnight and the bare branches of the trees were hoary white with it. There was a mist rising up from the valley below him and the rising sun turned the clouds at the eastern horizon into soft pinks, lavenders and peaches. Everything sparkled with the freshness of the dawn. He had not realized how high John had taken him into the mountains.
After washing his face and trying to clean his teeth (John could have at least packed him a toothbrush) with the icy water from the well, John sat down and looked at his choices for breakfast. It wasn’t a cheery sight and he pushed it all back into the bag for when he was really hungry.
That day, he alternately tended the fire and brooded. By sundown, the rations allotted to him finally began to look appealing and he was surprised to find that they had tasted better than expected. He carried in as much wood as would fit between the back wall of the house and the back door, the activity helping to warm him. He stoked the fire and watched it roar. Later, he banked the fire as best as he could and laid down on the cot. That night he actually slept.
That next morning was a repeat of the previous one. After washing down breakfast with the icy well water (John could have provided a coffee pot and some coffee as well), Greg decided to take a look at his surroundings. He quickly discovered a path at the back of his house and followed it. The views around him caused him to pause and stare every few hundred feet, and it was mid afternoon before he thought of turning back toward “home.”
John had left him there to think. Fine. What was he supposed to think about? Tactical? Wissenschaft? What he was going to do once he got back to Spire City? Greg frowned and sat down on a stump. Fine. So he would think.
The silence finally pierced his awareness. There were no birds there, high in the mountains in the late autumn. In a couple of weeks, it would be Thanksgiving. What had he to be thankful for this year? What had he to be thankful for in any year?
For the first time since he had decided to become Johnny Saturn, Greg felt his old constant companion, depression, settle over him. For the first time since he had visited The Tailor and discussed his new costume did Greg want something harder to drink than the expensive port wine John and Persephone had poured for him each night after dinner. For the first time since he had gone out and bullied Manny and his crew into giving him information on Wissenschaft’s whereabouts did Greg remember that he was Greg Buchanan, Pretty Boy Detective and the laughing stock of the entire police force, and not Johnny Saturn, vigilanti/hero.
He suddenly understood Victoria Shelbourne’s frustration at being a non-powered person in a meta-powered world. Who did he think he was, trying to play in a game bigger than himself? What made him think he could take over and make things better just by wearing a stupid costume and using his fists? What gave him the right to take other’s lives into his own hands and manipulate them to his own vision?
For that matter, what gave Wissenschaft and Tactical that right?
Greg stood up and began walking back toward his little hide-a-way in the mountains. The more he thought, the quicker his steps became and soon he was almost running.
Then he stopped. Why was he running? Was he running toward or away from something? That made him think harder. What was behind his intention of being Johnny Saturn? Was he really trying to make the world a better place, or was he just trying to destroy one man? And, what made that one man worse than any of the others in the first place? Was it because of what he saw as a child while with his father and uncle?
It was gone. His memory almost produced something that had set him on his self-imposed path of self-destruction and the destruction of Dr. Karl Wissenschaft. But it was gone. Greg sat down where he was and cried.
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