Heroics
I write my own stories. Gregory the Hero. While the other kids are outside playing wall ball or four square, I sit alone on a bench in the far corner of the playground by the drinking fountain, a pencil in my left hand—because with pens the ink smears—and an open binder sprawled against my lap.
To the adults on yard duty, I probably look lonely or sad. But I’m not sad. I’m not even there. I’m out having adventures—flying above cities, lifting derailed trains, sifting through crumbled buildings. Fighting supervillains, befriending the entire city.
I write my books out of order. Gregory the Hero #43, Gregory the Hero #72, Gregory the Hero #19. And so on. One day, I’ll have the whole collection. One day, the pieces will make sense.
***
My parents have a junk room. The room is dusty, so one enters the room without reason. Inside, we keep our exercise equipment and the blankets we inherited and some baby clothes my parents refused to donate.
One rainy Saturday, I’m playing Space—which is entirely different than Gregory the Hero because saving the galaxy is not at all like saving earth—and my intergalactic adventures bring me to the junk room. Those pesky aliens have me pinned against the wall. I manage to turn around but the aliens press my face hard against the window. I look outside. Our fence—it’s missing—must have blown down in last night’s storm. And our dogs. They’re missing too.
***
Gregory the Hero Issue #1: Origin story—Six-year-old Gregory Rapier discovers his dogs are lost. Nobody can find them, not even his parents. While searching for his dogs in the rain, Gregory gets struck by lightning. Equipped with superpowers—super-speed, super-sight, super-hearing—the newly-minted Gregory the Hero does what no one else can: he finds his dogs.
***
I’m in kindergarten, fantasizing, as I often do, about gluing myself to my desk chair. I have a glue stick inside my pencil box; it’ll be easy. Just roll the glue all over my seat and sit down—then, when it’s time to leave for the weekend, I won’t be able to stand. They’ll call the fire marshal, the principal, maybe my parents will move to the school for the weekend, and my classmates won’t be able to stop talking about me. I’ll be the cool kid who stayed in school after everyone else left.
I’m also fantasizing—again, as I often do—and there’s really no way to say this other than to say this—about rolling my purple glue stick all over my hand and gluing myself to one of the girls, because when you like someone, you hold hands, and if you hold hands enough, you fall in love.
We’ve just finished show-and-tell at the beanbags in the corner of the classroom, and Mrs. Broff asks us to return to our desks. I race toward mine, hoping the transition between activities will give me enough time to enact my plan. I fling open my pencil box, rub the glue stick all over my seat and sit down.
And the girl I like—whose hand I fantasize about—catches me. She tells on me. Practically yells. She tells on me so loud the whole class hears.
I want to hide.
***
Gregory the Hero Issue #54: Evil supervillain Mr. Stick replaces the water in the Sacramento River with super glue. Gregory the Hero’s attending a local birthday party when one of the girls falls into the river and gets stuck. So he slips on his mask and saves the girl. They hold hands. The girl asks for his secret identity, but he can’t reveal it; it’s not safe.
***
The summer before second grade, my parents and I pick out a new dog, an eight-week-old Shar-pei named Buddy. He nibbles on my finger the first time I hold him. I hope never to let go.
***
Sixth grade. We return home our yearly vacation to Santa Cruz. A handwritten note hangs on our front door: Call me. My mom rings the number and hears the voice of our neighbor next door. He asks her to sit down then tells her while we were gone Buddy chewed a hole in the fence and escaped, then he attacked some woman and killed her dog. The pound got a hold of Buddy, and he’s in heaven now.
***
Gregory the Hero Issue #13: the 100-foot-tall Dog-Man is on a rampage, tearing through Sacramento, Godzilla-style. He sinks his claws and teeth into the tallest building and works his way to the top. He wants to dismember the roof and eat everyone inside. Now, our titular hero must fight to save the city from his arch-nemesis.
***
Gregory the Hero Issue #71: Gregory the Hero flies so high he tears a hole through the sky and releases all the souls held captive in heaven. Maybe they don’t want to be in heaven, he says. Let them choose. Souls of the deceased drift back to earth like specks of dust. Then they choose. They choose heaven—all of them—and Gregory the Hero learns sometimes he’s not a hero at all. Sometimes, he’s just Gregory.
***
High School, junior year. It’s Greg now. I’m with a few church friends in the courtyard by the memorial garden. We’re hanging out in a circle, waiting for our parents to finish talking. A girl I like asks why I’ve never had a girlfriend. I deflect; I’m good at deflecting.
Then she says to another of our friends—and he agrees—that I’ll probably be one of those people who end up marrying their first girlfriend. If I can ever get one.
***
I get my first girlfriend at eighteen around the time I stop writing for pleasure. All those years living inside my own head have extracted a toll.
Lissette’s turns 21 two months into our relationship. I google: The perfect gift for someone who’s been your girlfriend only two months but who is also celebrating a milestone birthday. Four million results; none perfectly fit.
We’re driving home from a movie date when Lissette mentions she wants a pet—a baby tortoise so small she can hold it in the palm of her hands. She has small hands.
A week later, I go to the pet store and buy a terrarium and a heating lamp and a calcium stone and everything else google tells me I need, then I pick out the store’s smallest tortoise. The pet shop owner warns me the tortoise will probably outlive me. He raised this tortoise from a baby, and he needs to know I’ll commit to it for life. I tell him not to worry—the pet’s not for me anyway. Then I hand him my credit card.
I present the tortoise—without asking—at a birthday party at the house where Lissette lives with her parents. She loves the tortoise, but I don’t think her parents love me.
The tortoise fits into her palm with room to spare. She names it Libra.
***
Gregory the Hero, issue #68: Gregory the hero trusts someone enough to take off his mask. His secret identity is revealed. Or something like that. This whole superhero thing is pretty stupid. I’m over it.
***
I ask Lissette’s parents for permission to marry her. They say yes.
***
Lissette and I get married. We move from California to New Jersey then Florida. Libra stays behind. I start writing again. We switch apartments each time the landlord raises the rent. We adopt a dog. Lissette gets pregnant; we buy a house.
On September 28th, 2020, Pierre Isaac Rapier is born in Boca Raton, Florida. We choose this name for its literary quality. Pierre Ra-Pierre. He sounds like the type of sophisticate Ralph Fiennes would play in a movie.
***
Lissette sets down her book, pulls the covers snug against her chin, then leans against my shoulder. My mom called today, she says. It’s been eight years, and she’s tired of watching Libra. My mom says Libra either flies out to Florida or we get rid of her.
Lissette’s eyes tell me she wants Libra here. I don’t. We have a one-year-old, and the CDC says tortoises carry bacteria that can kill children under five. Their site strongly recommends no tortoises in homes with young children. So I tell her that. I say no.
She’s mad at me, and I’m mad at me too.
***
Lissette cries.
***
Lissette asks again about Libra. I waver, but I don’t break. I think she needs me to be the bad guy here. But I’m not sure.
It’s the right thing, I tell myself. You’re doing the right thing.
***
I normally write at my desk, but today I’m at my favorite recliner in the living room with the family. I open a word document, but I can’t concentrate. The movie Cars blasts through the TV for the third time this week. Lissette’s listening to music through Alexa, and she keeps raising the volume on both Alexa and the TV, searching for the golden ratio where she can hear both at once. Pierre runs around in his diaper, screaming, laughing, pushing his toy firetruck along the tile, trying to ram it into our English bulldog-mix, Ernest.
Pierre plops down onto the cold floor. Leans against the corner of the house. Ernest looks over his shoulder—no more yips, no more chases—so he turns around, trots to Pierre’s side, nudges the firetruck with his nose, sits. Pierre rests his tiny palm against Ernest’s chest, and together they look out the window.
***
Gregory the Hero #99: Final issue. Our aged hero is tired of fighting Dog-Man, and he’s not sure he’s much of a hero either. He sets down his cape and mask. And he hopes one day, maybe, a new story will emerge where Dog-Man isn’t an arch-enemy, a story with no villains and no heroes. Just people. Gregory the Hero sits down in his recliner and writes a new story, signing his name just Greg. The Adventures of Pierre. Issue #1.
Greg Rapier is a writer and pastor. He has degrees in English and Film and is currently getting his doctorate in Creative Writing and Public Theology (Yeah, that’s a thing). You can find his work at places like The Nervous Breakdown, Fathom, and The Princeton Theological Review.
