lightning pallor, the silk-screened logo was no longer a bright yellow bolt in perfect strike stance. The gold foam belt in threads and torn around the sewn shut buckle, hanging like the branches of a skeleton Christmas tree just below his waist were the anthem to his devotion. Snags running down the inseams of both legs and the frayed cloth tie at the neck, one side a permanent rope of tiny knots and the other, soaked in spit from the corner of his mouth, where the longer end reaches just past his mask, prime for sucking or biting on while watching TV. From the living room to the bathroom, the suit often developed a few stray drops of pee from pulling up the one leg of the suit high enough to release a small stream into the toilet. * “Flash needs a new suit,” his older sister said. Maxe was standing in the doorway with his eye mask pulled up into his mess of blonde curls. Dinner was almost ready and he could hear the Good Humor truck in the distance. A few minutes later, the Flash lightning-sped to the ice cream truck with a few Sacajawea-faced silver dollars his mom gave him. The miniature superhero jumped up and down waving his hand at the driver just in time to stop the truck before it went down the other street. His sister hurried after him and asked for two bomb pops, one for her and her older brother, as Maxe carefully pointed to the famed superhero cone with a red caped-crusader on the paper wrap. Now other kids were coming up to the Good Humor truck. And they formed a line of eight behind him and they waited. The good humor man waited and big sister waited. Back on the porch, big brother waited. Everyone waited impatiently for the little superhero’s fingers to fumble the coins.
The neatly wrapped superhero cone was the one and only confection for the Flash on August afternoons. The very speed propelling him so fast up the sidewalk was to be replenished by the superhero cones. Like a battery for the suit. He ate his ice cream in full sun on the front porch and it soon dribbled down his chin, down the chest of his red suit, running into the split fibers of the electric storm and sending shivers to the backs of nearby spectators, now eating their own confections.
into kicking his feet and rocking his chair.
*
*
One month later, it was the cookie cutter shape of a speedy red elf hopping around the tree, a blur in the digital camera photos. The flash of color devouring the green packages like wrapped peppermint candy. On New Year’s Eve, it curled up with him while he slept through the ball falling in Times Square.
“Flash needs a new suit,” Grandma laughed On Boxing Day, the red suit had its last wear. Upon arriving home late in the as she carried in the mail. evening with take-out Chinese food, we The thin chocolate ribbon from the found Starr, the babysitter pulling a crest of the cone smeared like ointment clean towel from the bathroom cupboard in the right sleeve of the red suit and in her skinny jeans and t-shirt shaking no amount of soap or water would her spiked-up head at the small boy in the ever restore its initial brightness. bathtub. Bubbles and bath toys floating The shooting-star sprinkles of red and all around him, Maxe was in the bath and blue stuck to the foam belt like fleas in the suit. hanging onto clean skin. Sugar stain tattoos of waxy powder and the thrust “Flash needs a new suit,” she smiled, “and of a lapping tongue had fixed a rainbow I could not take it off of him to wash of spit and artificial color from the it, so we just decided to have a speed tip of his nose to the pout of his lower bath.” lip. The blue dye had reached the collar, having streaked the fibers below his This teenager from the bowling alley down the street had figured a way to chin to a dull purple. get him out of the suit that we had rarely seen him out of in more than a Ten months passed year. She lifted him from the water and Nearly ten months since the famed two wet yellow foam printed boots design of the silver age superhero suit went squish on the bathroom floor. had arrived pristine in its crackling The red mask still circling toward the plastic package, designed for a single draining bath water in the tub, Maxe night of Halloween splendor. This suit pulled at the string tying the soaking had seen the fall leaves come and go. Had thing clinging like cello-wrap to his it belonged to any sensible boy, it was 45-pound body. He wriggled his body and the suit slid down his belly and landed perfect for one night of wear. on the bathmat. He kicked it with his Maxe went for the suit as often as Barry foot in disgust. A wet suit was not Allen went for his. He was still diving the same. Maxe pulled on his dry pajamas into it every day in November. Long after and dug a wrinkled fingertip into his the last piece of candy from the molded left ear. skull bucket disappeared, the threadbare suit was underneath his corduroy pants A week later, we moved on to Batman. and polo on Thanksgiving; it was the suit bristling all of the lightningspeed energy left in its poly-blend veins Pulse - 85