Cain v. Abel, 1979

by Matt Nute

If God created the earth in seven days, I want to know on which second of whatever minute of whatever hour of which cursed day he found it in his allegedly pure and loving heart to create the god-damned mosquito.

Ninety-plus degree heat, I can deal with. I've done tours in Northern Africa in hotter than this. And the constant humidity isn't a bother. I spent two weeks shore leave in Panama last May, when the monsoon season made the jungle wetter than a village whore on payday.

It's the damned bugs. A whole cloud of these little invisible bastards at the edge of my vision, just sucking at the sweat beading on my skin, soaking my clothes. I blink twice, crushing one or two in the corner of my eye. Almost imperceptible pricks at my neck let me know I've angered their brothers.

Good. I'd hate to be the only one pissed off in this goddamned jungle hell.

I hate Laos. It's like Vietnam without all the Agent Orange. Too many more places for some guerrilla fanatic to pop out of with one of those Chinese-made assault rifles and fill you full of 7.62mm ball.

Hell, if any of them can see me here, they're welcome to pop a cap in me. I've been buried in leaves and loamy soil for about thirty hours now, ever since Echo Battery dropped their artillery in the wrong goddamn grid square. Completely annihilated any chance of my original plan of action, and so I find myself here, looking through a Leopold 4x10 scope mounted on a standard-issue M-14 rifle. I can see the huts down the cliff side from me, thatched roofs and mud-packed walkways. These people live simple, giving the word "dirt-poor" a literal meaning.

And I'd put a round in every man, woman, and child of them if HQ gave me the word.

But that's not today. Today I have one target, and I'm praying to any gods listening that he shows up before I shit myself here in the dirt. Human feces attracts the local wildlife, and if the bugs are bad, some six-foot monkey trying to get a bite of my ass could really make my day less enjoyable.

Movement in the scope. Breathing stops. Finger flexes and relaxes. It's someone emerging from a hut.

Jesus H. Mother-Fucking Christ on a crooked crutch, it's Him. I can feel my finger twitching.

Pull don't pull the trigger pull the goddamn trigger mission don't compromise the mission...

And in the moment it takes me to blink, everything changes, and I hear one thought go through my brain...

"You fucked it up again, Steve..."

***

So there I was, six years old. Smallville, New York. July, 1949. I can still remember it, as if it was yesterday. No, hell with that. I can remember it like it was now.

It was the Fourth of July.

Ma wanted me there holding her hand as we watched the parade, and then the fireworks. But I hated standing next to her and all the American Legion veterans, wearing those crisp uniforms, some of them with a sleeve or trouser leg folded up and pinned. More than I cared to see.

The Fourth of July was for heroes, and heroes didn't always come home. At six years old, I knew Dad hadn't come home, and wasn't going to. Every night I watched Ma drink her wine straight from the bottle and read that yellow telegram, like her tears could change those words "The United States of America and the Department of the Army regret to inform you..."

Ma always ended up crying at the parade, anyway. And as any of us six-year old Smallville boys could have told her, crying didn't change a thing. It got you fingers pointed and laughs and the jeers of "crybaby" and "little girl". I don't ever think my Dad would have cried.

And heroes' sons don't cry either.

So I was running in the fields with some of the boys from Yancy Street. Big Words, Scrapper, Tommy, we were ducking around the broken-down tractors and abandoned plows in Old Man Ross's back forty. Tommy and Scrapper were the Germans, and they were chasing me and Words through the wheat.

And then the fireworks went off, and we all fell flat on our backs, watching the reds, and the whites, and the blues. Sparks and showers, whistles and screams. The V.F.W. was firing off their cannon, and I remember Tommy getting to his feet, and throwing his hand up to his forehead in a child's idea of a soldier's salute. Tommy's mom had just got her telegram, too.

So I got up and joined him, and the other two guys followed. There we were, four young boys, who didn't have the words to explain what we knew in our hearts Our fathers weren't coming back, and we'd never really understand why.

Forever is a long time, when you're six years old.

And as the fireworks cast their light over our faces, we heard the whistling overhead. I can still remember looking up, wondering if one of the sparkler rockets had gone astray, and was going to sail into the field.

It wasn't fireworks.

Whatever it was hit right behind us, tossing us all forward on a wave of weeds and dirt. I spat out dust and got up, when I could find the breath to move. Tommy was crying over a skinned knee, and the other two were shaking their heads like they just got off the Coney Island coasters. I turned, and I saw the ditch, still steaming. And something smoking at the end.

It looked like a big silver egg, about the size of a barrel. It was steaming, and some of the weeds around had caught little fires. I could hear some of the grownups running around behind us, and I knew that Ma would drag me away soon as she saw me near it.

So I did what any boy would do. I touched it.

It was like sticking my hand flat onto Ma's iron. I jerked away, blowing on my fingers, then the egg started hissing. I thought it was some kind of German bomb that they had dropped on Smallville, and we were all going to die. I closed my eyes, expecting the explosion. I heard Ma behind me, and Mrs. Lang, and Rabbi Rosenthal, and what must have been half the darn town.

And then I heard something else. Not an explosion. I heard... a baby?

I opened my eyes. And my world changed.

***

After the town doctor checked the kid out and gave him a clean bill of health, I guess everyone in the town agreed to keep hush-hush about it. After all, who'd believe some comic-book story about a baby falling from the sky?

And then they let Ma take the kid. I suppose it was natural, what with her not being able to have any more after me, the doctor said. I remember the night Ma brought him home, she made me promise. Promise never to tell him where he came from. She said everyone in town had agreed, but it was important for me not to ever let my new little brother think he wasn't like the other boys.

So I promised. She was my mom, what else was I gonna do?

And she called him Jonathan, after Dad. Johnny grew up pretty fast, too. And if anyone could tell we weren't brothers, they never said a word.

Not like it was hard to tell. I was rail-thin, with corn-yellow hair and a few freckles. Johnny's hair was as dark as the night sky, and his skin was like ivory, I mean pure. Never a mark on the kid.

Stevie and Johnny Rogers. We were inseperable. Some kid picked me for his ball team, he picked Johnny too. A bully pushed Johnny in the hall at school, we both wound up in the office after I pounded the guy. I bet people in Smallville even forgot we weren't real brothers.

As far as Johnny knew, we were. I'd watch him sleep at night, and wonder where he came from. I'd heard people whisper that he was some project of the Russians', or maybe the French. I didn't care. No matter where he came from, he was my little brother, and the pride and joy of Smallville. Our own little secret fromt he world.

Then my world got turned upside down again. Turn the calendar forward a few years. I'm sixteen years old, and learning to drive in Pete Ross' Chevrolet. Johnny insisted on coming along, so he hopped in the backseat while Pete rode shotgun. I got the hang of the clutch pretty quick, and we were zipping down those country roads. I had the windows down and caution thrown to the wind. Pete, who'd just turned seventeen, was flapping his hat in the wind like a rodeo cowboy, and little ten-year-old John was bouncing around in the back

I swear to this day I never saw that dog. Not until we were right on top of him. John screamed, and Pete reached across the dash to grab the wheel. I jerked the steering wheel to the left, and felt the car lean as the front wheels went into the ditch. I saw the sky flip around me as we rolled down the hill. Glass crunched and metal shrieked, but none of it was louder than me screaming at the top of my lungs.

And then, it was quiet. Like a grave. My head was throbbing, and blood was in my eyes. I looked over, and saw Pete's face going pale white. His legs were out the window, and the car was tilted to the right. I realized that if I moved, the car would crush his legs like matchsticks. I turned to call for John, to see if he was all right.

He wasn't in the car. I started calling his name, and Pete was howling, and I'd never been so scared.

And then... the car moved. Not forward, not rolling to the side. It moved... up.

Only a few feet, but Pete slid out the broken window like a rag doll, rolling around on the grass. I pushed the door open and fell to the ground, coughing. I wiped blood from my eyes, then turned around. What I saw chilled me to the bone.

There was John, overalls in tatters but not a scratch on him. Lifting the Chevy over his head like a toy.

Nothing was ever going to be the same.

***

Six months later, John started flying. Fell off the roof, and just decided not to come down. Me and Pete and him agreed to keep it between us, because who knew what would happen if the grownups found out what John could do.

He couldn't be hurt, not by any fire or knife. Or any gun, as we found out when Pete was fooling around with his dad's shotgun. We managed to tell Ma that John's Sunday shirt had been ruined by a dog that he was roughhousing with. Ma never spanked him. She never laid a hand on either of us.

He could see right through things. Could read books without even opening the covers. Tell you what was in your pockets, who was behind a closed door. He'd hear a conversation from across a busy room, as if he was standing right next to you.

And he could start fires just by looking at things. Nearly burned down the silo when he found out he could do that. But never once did he ever brag about his gifts, or hold them over us. To him, he figured he was still Johnny Kent, my little brother. And he was. He'd always be.

About that time there started being other people like John, well, not really like him. We'd see them on the news, or read about them in the papers. The legendary "Bat-Man" haunting the streets of Gotham. The Spider-man, swinging from the spires of New York, hassling J Jonah Jameson at the Daily Planet.

John never wanted to be one of them. All he wanted to be was my brother, and I was happy with that. We all were.

Flip a few more calendar pages. It's 1966. I'm twenty-one and working like a dog in the mill. John's the high-school football star. And baseball star. And class president. Scholarships already pouring in. I'd never seen one. Who gives scholarships to a scrawny farmboy with a 2.2 GPA? John was an honor student, too. That super brain of his must have had something special in it, too.

I got home one day, and Ma was looking at me like I was a ghost. John was at the table, crying. My little brother, crying like a baby. At fifteen, he stood a good four inches taller than me and had at least seventy pounds of muscle on me. And he was bawling his eyes out.

Ma handed me the letter with tears in her eyes. I read it, but only one word stood out.

"Drafted"

***

The United States Marine Corps was my new family, but instead of Vietnam, they sent me to some science compound on some Pacific island. They told me I was 4-F, unfit for military duty. But they had a project that would make me into the soldier they needed. A super-soldier, even. They told me they would make me a hero.

My father was a hero.

There were injections, and serums, and weird electromagnetic radiation baths. And the training, god, the training. Hours each day with boxing and judo instructors, men that would make Marine drill sergeants wet themselves. And then they brought in the Marine drill sergeant.

Gunnery Sergeant Castiglione. The nastiest bulldog-faced grunt I had ever met. And he beat my ass into the ground every day, before I would go back to let the doctors work over me. Ten, twenty, thirty mile runs in full pack. Pushups until my bones would ache. Climbing ropes until my hands were hard with callus.

Drill Sergeant Frank Castiglione made me into a soldier. But Professor Emil Hamilton made me into more.

By the end of the year, I was five inches taller, and had almost doubled my weight in hard, lean muscle. Then the real stuff started. NATO and Warsaw Pact weapons training. Intelligence and linguistics courses. Sniper, scuba, and survival school.

And in March of 1968, they let me go to Vietnam. Not as a line soldier, but as a one-man battalion. They would give me orders: reconnaissance, sabotage, even an assassination of a VC general or two. And I carried out each order with the zeal of a true patriot. While I dreamed of John scoring touchdowns and going to college back home, I was racking up a VC body count that rivaled the Spanish Inquisition.

Three years later, America had almost had its fill of the war. From what I was hearing, people back home were protesting in the streets, or moving north of the border to avoid the draft. They said the war was a waste of time, a waste of lives. The news wouldn't even call it a war, they used the words "police action".

I didn't care. I was doing what I was ordered to do. That's what a good hero does. If they ordered me to die, I would look them straight in the eye and ask how, where, and by what method would they prefer. My country would be proud of me. My father would have been proud of me.

Well, I wasn't making any paper headlines. I didn't get any news reports. I sure as hell wouldn't be getting any ticker-tape parades when I went home. They told me there weren't any heroes in Vietnam. Not like back home, where the news had it that some Green Lantern fella had just stopped some VC sympathizers from dropping barrels of arsenic into the Fort Stewart Reservoir. I usually used the news reports to… well… we didn't have Charmin in the jungle, after all.

We didn't have superheroes in Vietnam. We had a war, something they'd never be able to deal with. It's one thing when your enemy's wearing bright red longjohns and spewing lightning over the sky, you know who he is then. When it's a wrinkled grandmother, or a five-year old girl with a grenade taped to her chest that you don't see until she hugs your leg and pulls the pin, I don't think any so-called "superhero" would stand a chance.

They couldn't do what I was doing. Hell, deep down inside, I don't think I liked what I was doing. I wanted to be a hero, and heroes followed orders and did what they were told. So I occupied my mind with other things, philosophy, history. Things that would drown out the harsh images of what I was doing in the name of "heroism".

I read from the works of Sun Tzu, and Jung, and Nietzsche. I became captivated by the idea of man's duality, and thought about how those men who wore the masks were just pale examples of the masks all men wear. I saw myself wearing the mask of a warrior, a killer. Inside I believed I was a patriot. Something more than an ordinary man. Nietzsche spoke of the man, and the superman. The superman was one who was more than his peers, one who brought death by dint of his very existence. He was what normal man could become, or could only hope to become.

Were those "superheroes" truly his idea of the UberMensch? Or was I?

Ninety-seven bodies later, Nietzsche still hadn't given me an answer.

***

I thought we didn't have any heroes in the jungle. Six months later, I found out I was wrong. The news reports started coming in. "VIET CONG DRIVEN BACK BY AMERICAN SUPER-SOLDIER." "SUPERHEROIC VALOR DEFEATS INSURGENTS AT CU CHI." And more kept coming. In Hanoi, I finally picked up a local paper that had caught this guy on camera.

I looked at him, dressed in his "uniform". Black and white, striped like a monocolor version of the American flag. A mask that covered his hair and eyes, but showed that proud, All-American jaw, even down to the perfect cleft in the chin. Little eagles' wings over the ears, with cherry-red gloves and boots.

They called him "The U.S. Agent."

I called him a Nietzschean nightmare. This guy wasn't a hero. He was Hollywood. They said he could fight like an entire army by himself, leading our troops against any foe. I saw John Wayne movies when I was little. But even then, I knew what was real. This was war, not the movies.

We didn't have superheroes here.

Superheroes wouldn't do what I was doing. They didn't have it in them to knuckle down and burn their dreams just to fuel the engine that they'd become. They couldn't be a killer. I don't think any one of them would make the sacrifices for their country that I was making. The sacrifices my father made. The kind of sacrifices a real hero makes.

Then the war was over.

We'd won. We'd won what they said was an unwinnable conflict. Peace between North and South Vietnam. The total dissolution of the Viet Cong, and Communism driven back into the bowels of Mother Russia. I finally got to go home a hero, I thought.

Until I got into Saigon and saw the papers littering the streets.

"AMERICAN HERO US AGENT WINS WAR FOR DEMOCRACY!"

And my hate started to grow that day.

***

The Corps kept me around after that, loaning me out to the CIA, or some other acronym organization. I did what they told me to do, all in the name of democracy and the good old U S of A. Fifty-four countries in eighteen months. I tried to count faces, but they all blurred into anonymity in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Triple-digit anonymity.

In Rwanda, I infiltrated the stronghold of a dictator that kept his people oppressed, and put a Ka-Bar knife through the back of his skull.

Less than a day later, the New York Times had a color picture on the front over the headline "US AGENT BRINGS GRAIN TO STARVING RWANDA REFUGEES."

In Beirut, I pulled twelve American citizens out of a terrorist hellhole where they'd languished in squalor, ignored by the United Nations and world government. But of course, the nightly news showed my nightmare counterpart standing behind Ford and Sadat at Camp David, signing peace accords.

I stopped buying the newspapers after that. I hated too much. I'd let it consume me. And Nietzsche said, the superman was beyond that. Beyond hate or rage. He was beyond all human frailty and emotion. So far beyond it that man could not even comprehend him.

I read that book until the spine cracked, and the pages fluttered to the winds of Afghanistan, or the Falklands, or Cambodia. And then I got myself another. And I kept reading. And believing. And becoming that superman.

Then they told me, "Steve, you're going to Laos." I'd hated it the first time I was there, and didn't expect to like it in the aftermath of a typhoon. They told me I was supposed to prevent an assassination this time, and that I'd have full military support backing me up. So I saluted and I yes sir'ed and I got on that plane.

Welcome to the jungle, Stevie-boy. Welcome home.

***

Back to the now. Finger tightening on the trigger, crosshairs dancing over the dirt. Black-and-orange framed in my sight. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, let out half a breath. Center the crosshairs over center of mass. And squeeze.

The rifle kicks against my shoulder like a rhino. I blink, reacquiring the target as my hand works the bolt, chambering a round. I go to fire again, but I see my mark down, in the prone. I look to the left, to the right. The village is empty. No sign of Him in sight.

Slinging the rifle across my back, I unholster my .45 and make my way down the cliffside to the village. I'm making damn sure this bastard's down. If he's who I think he is, that bullet may not have been enough. All my bullets may not be enough.

I pivot from side to side, scanning the narrow passages between huts. No villagers, no inhabitants. Nothing moves, no bugs, no chickens, no dogs. And not my mark.

I make my way over to where he's sprawled. One glance tells me I hit the target. His whole upper chest is caved in, courtesy of an expanding .308 round. Somewhere in the back of my mind, medic training informs me that shock set in almost instantly, and suffocation was unpreventable as blood and shredded tissue clogged the lungs. The unmistakable scent of human shit tells me that he's deader than Trotsky. Emptied the bowels as all the muscles go slack. With the tip of a stick, I peel back the crimson-stained mask.

White hair, eye patch. It's him all right. Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson. Agent of HYDRA. He was basically the Army's previous attempt at the project that gave them me. Only he went rogue, a mercenary working for anyone that'd pay him. I'd taken his eye a few years back in Northern Africa with a swipe of a tribal hatchet. In return, he'd given me a nasty scar stretching from my left hip to my right chest, crossing right over my heart. But I got the last shot in.

I knelt down by him, removing the large pistol from his hand. Ejecting the clip, I inspected the rounds. Weird shaping, hollow-point. Sickly-looking glowing green metal for tips. I slapped the clip back in and jacked a round into the chamber. No doubt Control would want to take a look at this. I was about to head back to my exfiltration point when I heard the footsteps behind me. I brought Wilson's pistol up in a two-handed grip and whirled.

There He was, big as life. Bigger than his pictures. That black-and-white Old Glory stretched across those muscles of his. And that perfect goddamn face showing from behind the mask. That bastard dared to sneak up on me, and then look me in the eye? Who in the hell did he think he was? And then he spoke to me. Just one word, and everything I'd come to believe for the last ten years started to crack like glass under a hammer.

"Steve?"

I didn't lower the pistol as he raised a hand, pulling the cowl back from his face. No. No. My mouth moved, but no words came out. I felt my fingers trembling, and I held the gun tighter, like it was my only hold on the world.

I will not falter. I will not fear. I am beyond that. I am the superman. I am not afraid of this bastard.

I am not afraid of my brother.

I speak.

"Hello, John."

***

A full minute passed. John didn't say a word, I didn't move the gun. Finally, he made a move, trying to step forward.

"Steve, I…"

"Don't fucking move an inch."

"Steve?" John sounded puzzled. I growled, realizing how much my voice sounded like Gunny Castiglione's at that moment.

"Don't you fucking move another goddamn inch. Wilson brought this hi-tech shit into this god-fucking-forsaken jungle to kill your ass, and I'm betting that this may be the one thing that can do just that, Johnny. Now stay right where you are, or God help me, I'll put a fucking crater in your chest."

So he stayed where he was. The superhero that used to be my brother held his ground and stared me down. And then he began to speak.

He told me how he'd graduated form high school, and read all the letters I'd sent home, the ones that made it through the censors. And how he'd cried when I stopped. He told me how Ma never gave up, how she lit a candle for me at Mass every night.

Then how Pete Ross came to him. Pete, working for the government. Pete Ross, who sold John a line about his country needing him, about the world needing him. Pete Ross, who told him how he could be a hero, just like his brother and his old man.

He told me about going to Washington, and hearing the same thing from the CIA, from the men in black suits From Director Gyrich all the way down to the tailors that had already made him his "uniform".

He told me how they'd told Ma that John was away at college in Europe, while they sent him to Vietnam and trained him to be his own army. They gave him a new alias, a new life when he came back. Jonathan Rogers just faded out of existence, and the U.S. Agent kept fighting the forces of communism across the globe.

He told me Ma died two years ago, never having stopped going to Mass for me.

And all that time, my finger never left the trigger.

Finally, I found the words coming to my throat.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you let me know? Goddamit, Johnny!" I spat the words out like a cobra spitting venom. I wanted them to sting his ears, make him feel what I was feeling. "You're so goddamn amazing, you probably heard me every step I made in that jungle. You probably saw me in every ditch, behind every filthy Third World broken wall. And never once did you let me know. Why, dammit?" I hissed. "Why didn't you let me know this was you?"

John met my eyes with a cold stare in his blue eyes. His teeth ground, and it was like granite on granite. With a barely restrained voice, he responded.

"Why didn't you tell me where I came from?"

And I let out a breath that I'd been holding for almost thirty years.

"John."

"Don't fucking patronize me, Steve." It was the first time I'd ever heard my brother swear. But in his eyes, I could see his anger started rivaling mine. "You let me think I was your blood. You lied to me, Ma lied to me, the whole damn TOWN lied to me!" I could hear his knuckles crack from across the village square.

"You treated me like a brother, but it was all a lie, wasn't it?"

"John…"

"WASN'T IT??" His scream blew leaves off the trees, but I would not move.

I stared him down, over the barrel of that pistol. His eyes narrowed in reply. All our lives, everything we had ever been, it all came down to this one moment in time.

Don't fuck this up, Stevie-boy.

"So why here?" I asked. "Why'd you find me here? You knew where I was, you always knew, you had to. Why here and now?"

"Because you know what today is." He replied, and that voice was suddenly back. Not the superhero, but my little brother. And I almost wavered.

"It's August 13." I tried to be deadpan, but knew he could hear my heart going a mile a minute.

"It's the day Dad died." He said it. He DARED to say it. I stepped forward, aiming the gun right between his shining blue eyes.

"Don't you fucking dare." I cried. "He wasn't even your father, you never even knew him. Don't you dare use that against me."

"Then why did you use it against me?" His riposte threw me, then he continued. "Yeah. You wore his death like some goddamn badge, every day. You were the son of a hero, and you were gonna be a hero. Well, what about me, Steve? What did I get to be, besides the hero's little brother? The kid that everyone had to keep safe? What about me?"

And it hit me. For everything I'd done to try and be like my father, the hero, I'd become everything a hero wasn't. I'd lost everything pursuing some ideal that I only saw in a book.

I'd wanted so much to be a superman, but in the end, the tears coming down my cheeks proved me to be only a man.

Only a man.

Looking up at my brother, I saw it there, too. He wasn't a hero, wasn't a superman.

He was just a man.

"I wanted to be a hero." I croaked. "I just wanted to make them proud."

"And what do you think I wanted?" John rasped back. "You wanted to be Dad. I just wanted to be you."

With infinite slowness, like time had become molasses, I stepped forward towards the US Agent, towards my brother.

And I dropped the gun.

I felt his arms that could crush steel hold me to his chest. His tears in my mud-caked hair were just as hot as my own against his crisp uniform.

"So what now?" I wept, ashamed of myself.

"Now…" John whispered. "Now you be you. And I can be me. And maybe we can unfuck these lives we've made."

I walked out of that jungle, with my brother beside me. I wanted to be a hero, and in the end, I don't know if I got what I wanted. But I'd learned one thing that would definitely start me on the way there.

Heroes cry.

***

In August, 1979, the US Agent went on a classified mission, and was never heard from again.

In January, 1980, a superhero joined the Avengers, and became a symbol for liberty and justice everywhere. Over time, and in everyone's eyes, he became a hero.

His name was Captain America.

I was proud to call him my little brother.

Me, I work for the Daily Planet these days, covering political correspondence from Washington. Occasionally, my brother draws an editorial cartoon, and I get it in on page 27.

Jonathan Rogers can't ever come back to the public eye, not with the media circus that the US Agent's disappearance turned into. But he still stops by from time to time to check up on me, and reminisce about old times.

He likes me to call him "Clark" now. God only knows why.

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