There comes a point in every man’s life when he realizes he is nothing, or if not nothing, then very little. Ephraim Pontoon realized this earlier than most, primarily because of the considerable help he received from his parents, who offered continuing reminders of how unlikely he was to amount to anything. It wasn’t that they hadn’t liked him as a child; they’d expended much of their parenting energy inculcating this view into all four of the Pontoon children. Ephraim, being the oldest, had simply heard it the longest, and had taken the message to heart well before entering secondary school.
“Ephraim,” his father intoned over countless dinners, “the last thing this world needs is more people, particularly people like us. We Pontoons are altogether ordinary, and society is structured to ensure that ordinary people get nowhere and achieve nothing.”
Ephraim was never certain whether his mother agreed with her husband’s defeatist sentiments. The boy had no recollection though of ever having heard her contradict him.
“You listen to your father, Ephraim,” she was fond of saying. “He knows what he’s talking about.” It wasn’t clear whether this was tacit acquiescence or simply her method of avoiding confrontation. In either event, Ephraim and his siblings heard some variation on this philosophy nearly every day from their fifth to their eighteenth birthdays, and, for the most part, it had taken deep and unyielding root.
* * *
A crisp black Friday night has descended upon Leeds, England. But it’s not so late as to have the city dwellers home and asleep–around nine, let us say. Near the intersection of Bishopsgate and Neville Streets, about one hundred meters southwest of Leeds Shopping Plaza, people mill about, some scouting for an open pub or dance club, others walking nowhere, curiously peering in the windows of the closed shops. The weekend has begun and the youngsters are out in force, looking for a bit of excitement or at least something of a diversion from the ordinary hum drum of Yorkshire working life.
“Bloody HELL! There he is!” comes the sudden cry from the far side of Neville Street, near Chamberlain’s Chemists. The shrillness with which the cry pierces the English night is such that most who react do so by looking in the direction of the sound, not toward what the voice is decrying. Quickly though, all eyes in the area seek out the subject of the outburst. What meets their disbelieving gaze is at once delightful, shocking, and bizarre—something they will tell their friends about in the coming weeks and months. For they have seen Lightning Man.
Lightning Man—legend of Leeds. Not a legend in the sense of the Loch Ness Monster, who many claim to have seen, but none can prove. This is an honest-to-God super hero, or super hero aspirant at any rate. He is simultaneously folk hero, tourist attraction, and, in the local parlance, loony.
Lightning Man both defies and demands description. But we must make the attempt, for it is the visual experience that makes the legend. Witnesses tend to see him from some distance and only for fleeting intervals. Hence, the details have been the subject of lively debate in pubs from one end of Leeds to the other. The initial impression though is one of brilliant and absolute redness. He is clad head to toe in some manner of reflective and impossibly tight red fabric. The tightness with which the material ensconces his physique is made the more notable by Lightning Man’s less than super body shape. He is of below average height and decidedly above average girth, an image which though increasingly ordinary in the western world, is ordinarily and mercifully lacking in the panoply of super heroes one recalls from childhood. He has the sort of build of one who would have to put serious effort into getting to look merely paunchy.
The glistening tight red fabric stops at the neckline, the wrists, and the ankles. The hands are bare, the feet clad in what appear to be track shoes. And atop Lightning Man’s globular head sits a relatively ordinary bicycle helmet, made less ordinary by the degree to which its sheen and hue perfectly match the shining red outfit beneath. Covering his eyes are the only material in his ensemble of other than red, a simple black eye mask of the sort made popular by archaic heroes such as the Lone Ranger or Zorro.
But the piece de resistance of Lightning Man’s accoutrement is the flowing red cape that trails behind as he makes his way across the square. The shimmer with which the enormous piece of fabric vibrates in the night air beneath the streetlights suggests silk, satin, or some equally ethereal and weightless material. And the reason that Lightning Man’s cape flows with such splendor is the rapidity of his chosen means of conveyance – a 1970 Raleigh Robin Hood bicycle, so altogether unique and wonderful as to merit a story all its own.
Like the man perched astride it, the Robin Hood is blindingly red, as perfectly pampered and polished as the day it left the factory in Nottingham some thirty-five years hence. The frame and fenders gleam beneath the glare of mercury vapor streetlights. The chrome spokes are a shimmering blur as Lightning Man pumps with all the verve he can muster. Still, the bicycle is an incongruous choice of transport, for though the fat tires and upright handlebars suggest many things, speed is alas not one of them.
But speed he does – straight on past the small crowd of disbelieving onlookers. They have heard of Lightning Man; everyone in Leeds has heard of Lightning Man. He is the Loch Ness Monster, the Shroud of Turin and the Sasquatch all rolled into one so far as Leeds is concerned. For the past five years, Lightning Man, so dubbed by the locals for his obvious attempts at (and utter failure to actually achieve) the blinding velocity suggested by his crimson costume and conveyance, and his wonderfully whipping cape.
He first appeared nearly two years ago, for no apparent reason, and to no apparent purpose. Now, nearly every week or two produces a Lightning Man sighting. His modus operandi is consistent and unnerving. He appears, nearly always at night, and at widely separated locations across Leeds. He utters not a sound, and his visitations generally last no longer than ten to fifteen seconds. His points of entry and exit are carefully selected so as to allow both a surprise entrance and a hasty difficult-to-follow exit. Many in the city have seen him, some on multiple occasions. He has been photographed countless times, appeared in more than one local newspaper, and been written about in at least one international publication (“Urban Curiosities around the Globe” section B2, two columns, with illustration).
Unlike most superheroes, Lightning Man does not actually do anything other than appear on his crimson Raleigh and as quickly disappear. So far as anyone knows, he has not thwarted any evil-doers, or performed any good deeds at all, save for putting Leeds on the map as a bit of a local curiosity. Though unaware of it, he is the topic of much conversation. There is rampant speculation about who he is, why he does what he does, and what the life of a fake superhero must be like.
* * *
“I was never told anything whatever about the provenance of my surname, nor have I felt the slightest proclivity to look into it. I can assure you of this though—I am the only Pontoon in all of Leeds!”
“Leeds? Good God, man. I’ll wager you’re the only Pontoon in the entire bloody Western Hemisphere!” (“bloody” being, in this instance, a word of common employ in the United Kingdom as alternative to its more crass American counterparts such as “fucking” or “goddamn,” which epithets I will eschew throughout this story, lest I give offense to more sensitive readers). Ephraim Pontoon (in fact, one of three Pontoons in the United Kingdom, though he is unaware of and only distantly related to the other two) sits at a small booth in Wittington’s White Swan Pub in the southeast corner of Leeds. He sips daintily at his third pint of Boddington’s and listens as his interlocutor, Malcolm Giles, speculates about the rarity of his friend’s surname.
“Now Giles,” Malcolm continues, “there’s a damned common name. London phone book’s got three pages of us—enough paper there for a decent arse wipe. And I expect we’re all related if you dig back far enough. But Pontoon—wherever do you suppose that came from?”
“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,” Ephraim responds, wiping a bit of foam from his upper lip. “Just me and my folks, as far as I know. I’m the only son, and I haven’t any taste for marriage or kids, so I expect I’ll be the end of the line, eh?”
“Well, Ephraim, there’s a pity. No more Pontoons! What’s humanity to do? You’re bloody exclusive is what you are.”
“Yeah, well perhaps in name, but that’s about it. I suppose with all this exclusivity, I should have done something a bit more adventurous with my life than chartered accounting.”
Ephraim has been a chartered accountant with Ian Bartley & Company of 197 Otley Road, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England LS16 5LQ since the day he completed graduate school nearly fifteen years hence. His association with the august firm began, in fact, two years earlier even than that when he first interned with the company between his junior and senior years of university, thus setting him on a path of banality that nothing since has done a thing to derail. There was never really any doubt where he’d end up. Indeed, there has never been much doubt about the entire course of Ephraim’s life.
“Do what you can to blend in,” he still hears his father intoning. “Make no waves and you’ll have no trouble. Remember, Ephraim, it’s the tallest blade of grass gets the first whack from the mower.”
And so Ephraim Pontoon rises at precisely 6:45 each morning (weekends included, so as to preserve the routine). He can tell you to within plus or minus five seconds how long his shower, shave, and other ablutions require. He always catches the 8:10 bus from the corner of Wembley and Cornwall, and always reaches his office chair at 8:37, where he both duly and dully sets to work managing the accounts of three of Ian Bartley’s longest-standing (and entirely average-sized) corporate clients—a brewer, a ball bearing manufacturer, and a women’s apparel wholesaler (strictly outer apparel – not the naughty bits). The monthly, quarterly, and annual filings of these three concerns are, and have been for the past seven years, Ephraim’s sole and unrelenting responsibility.
“So,” Malcolm continues, after ordering another round. “What is new and exciting in the world of chartered accounting? Surely there’s been some corporate upheaval or internecine intrigue. Regale me with tales of danger and thrills. I’m out there selling shoes, for God’s sake. I look to you for my vicarious thrills.”
“If that’s so,” says Ephraim, “then you’re a pitiable bloke indeed. Excitement in my office is when someone makes a rounding error and the client calls in to complain about it.”
“C’mon, man! No secret love affairs, no bumping and grinding back in the copier room?” Ephraim winces at his friend’s salacious suggestion. He is utterly single, and the closest he’s ever come to a date was his high school senior prom, which he almost went to with a girl, but cancelled out of at the last moment claiming allergies. Ephraim knows less about women than he does any other topic on earth, though he talks a convincing line, echoing the lewd jokes and comments he’s picked up from coworkers and his few friends.
“’Afraid not, mate! Only skirt on my entire floor worth two looks is Amy Langhorn, and she’s the Vice President’s niece. Mess with that, and it’s lights out for you.”
“Sounds like someone down there needs to grow a pair and have a go then.”
“Right! Someone with no career aspirations. You haven’t seen Applegate when he’s on about something ordinary. Start a family mess, and the guy’d go berserk, I expect.”
“Hey,” Malcolm says, suddenly changing the subject, “Henley says there was another sighting of the Crimson Wonder on Friday night, over by the mall.”
“No shit!” rejoins Ephraim. “What’d he do this time?”
“Same thing he always does—nothing but peddle his farcical arse across the square and into some dark alley. It’s the weirdest thing, you know. People stand and look and take pictures and yell after him and what-not, but no one ever chases him down. You’d think someone would have a go at him, wouldn’t you?”
“Have a go? How do you mean?”
“I mean run after him. Catch the loony bastard. Reveal the man behind the mask. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do to superheroes? He’s bloody whacked, if you ask me. A grown man wearing a cape and spandex. It’s damned weird’s what it is.”
Ephraim raises a tentative hand in the waitress’s direction, motions for another round of pints. “Just because he’s different doesn’t make him daft. Maybe it’s just a hobby.”
“A hobby?! A hobby is collecting stamps or butterflies or some other harmless waste of time like that. This wacko’s riding around on a rusted Nottingham Robin Hood making this city a laughingstock. He’s a damned menace is what he is!” The pace of Nathan’s drinking accelerates when he gets worked up about something, and he tosses back nearly the entire new pint the waitress has only just set on the table. “Tell you a little secret—me and a couple of the lads are going to track his silk-clad arse down one of these days. Just waiting for the right moment, that’s all.”
“Bit of a trick, don’t you think?” Ephraim replies, slowing down his own drinking pace. He doesn’t tolerate alcohol as easily as his friend. (Malcolm will become increasingly derisive about this fact, as his own consumption level accelerates away from Ephraim’s) “How do you expect to pin someone down when you’ve no earthly idea where he’s going to spring up next. Could be anywhere in the flippin’ city, for all you know.”
“Yeah, well that’s the bit we haven’t sorted out just yet.” Malcolm tips the glass upward, letting it hang vertically over his gaping mouth, waiting for the final few bitter drops to hit his tongue. He slams the glass back onto the table surface so hard it momentarily abates the considerable noise level in the room. “We’re having a think about that one. But we’ll figure it out, and when we do, Wonder Boy’d better watch his vermillion backside, which will be splashed across the front page of the Yorkshire Post. Damned perverted is what it is.” Malcolm frequently goes off on this topic, and once wound up is difficult to redirect onto something else.
* * *
It’s been a late night by Ephraim’s conservative standards, even for a Friday. As he fidgets with the key and the sticky door lock of his single-bedroom west Leeds apartment, his friend’s words still bandy about in his slightly dizzy head. There’s a threatening tenacity in Malcolm’s tone which if applied to his professional pursuits would have seen the man ascend above the ranks of simple shoe salesman. But it’s not aspirational; it’s mean-spirited, driven by the deep-seated belief that those who aren’t like everyone else should be driven away, beaten down, or, at a minimum, mocked and humiliated. Ephraim ponders his friendship with Malcolm, one of the few he has. He’s the sort of fellow it’s good fun to tip a pint with, so long as you can stomach the not-infrequent racial joke or lascivious comment.
Ephraim steps inside, drops his keys onto the kitchen counter, and leans down to offer a welcoming stroke to the back of his cat William. The cat leaps effortlessly onto the counter, twitches the tip of his tail with satisfaction, takes a seat. Though he lives alone, Ephraim’s apartment is immaculate if spartan. It comprises a bedroom, small kitchen, oversized living room, and a small study whose walls are lined with books, mostly fiction. It is a ground-floor flat, with a sliding glass back door that opens onto a small cement patio beside which is a large shed. Extending back from the patio is a modest, well-tended lawn, and at the rear of this a large iron fence with a gate that opens onto the road that runs along behind the apartment.
The third entrance to Ephraim’s apartment is through the kitchen, a six-panel door between the fridge and stove that leads out into a small single-car garage. In the garage sits an infrequently used sixties-vintage Volkswagen micro-bus (in classic red and white two-tone) that Ephraim inherited when his grandfather, Taylor Pontoon, passed away some fifteen years hence, and which has amassed no more than three thousand miles in each of the years since then. The vinyl-covered rear seats of the bus have been removed and lean precariously against the back wall of the garage, stacked high with boxes of old magazines and comic books. Ephraim seldom has the need for extra passenger space, whereas he periodically requires the commodious cargo space of the vehicle’s rear cabin. As if suspecting that somehow something may have changed since he last drove the bus three days ago, Ephraim steps to the passenger’s side window and peers into the back. The Raleigh Robin Hood is there as before, lying on its side, bright red fenders gleaming in the harsh light of the garage’s single unfrosted overhead bulb. He thinks again of Malcolm’s words as he steps back into the kitchen, reaching out to flick off the garage light. William leaps again onto the kitchen counter and makes a sound clearly indicative of an anticipated dinner.
* * *
Monday morning and Ephraim sits pensively over his morning bowl of oatmeal, wondering what it is makes a grown man do ridiculous things. His Friday evening conversation with Malcolm has remained with him through the weekend, and it has cost him no small amount of sleep. He is up today nearly an hour before his regular time, and the upset to his routine has him feeling flummoxed and bleary-eyed. He spent the better part of Sunday polishing the Robin Hood’s red-painted fenders, chain guard, and frame, greasing up the gears and other moving bits, and generally making sure the antique bicycle was in top working order before returning it to the back of the bus. He is keen to make another appearance this coming weekend, and though he hasn’t yet decided on a location, he feels already the onset of the adrenaline surge that attends each outing.
It is, he supposes, nothing more than an unusual form of performance art, one with the added elements of anonymity and spontaneity. Lacking the recognition or pecuniary rewards of more traditional performance, it is, he supposes, that much nobler. It is also an outlet, a harmless one, in a life of otherwise clutching mediocrity, the sort of life his father always intended for him, and in which his mother was at least complicit. Ephraim places the half-eaten oatmeal on the floor, to William’s delight, and rises to repair to the living room, where he turns on the television to catch the morning news, another deviation from his normal morning routine. With nearly an hour yet before his bus, Ephraim mindlessly flips through the channels and rubs the spot behind William’s ears.
Malcolm’s words will not leave him be, and he finds himself reviewing his typical outing scenarios, wondering if there is some flaw that might be used to bring his friend’s plans to fruition. Leeds is a large city, and his appearances are random and ephemeral. He cannot imagine how it could happen.
For no reason that he can name, he walks out to the garage and opens the door to the microbus. Unzipping the small canvas backpack that holds Lightning Man’s uniform, he extracts the long glistening cape. It is actually a twin-sized bed sheet, whose fitted companion and matching pillow cases lie unused in his linen closet. He found the set in a sale at Marks and Spencer nearly two years ago, and still recalls the sales girl’s curious look when he checked out with them. Lightning Man’s uniform is, oddly, genuine silk—silk underwear to be precise, shipped all the way from the U.S., item No. TA48160 in the L. L. Bean catalog. It is intended less for cycling and more for winter sports such as skiing, hiking, etc. It is intended not at all as an external garment in general or a super-hero outfit in particular. Still, it has served its purpose well, and has a lifetime warranty. Ephraim carefully replaces the uniform and the black mask in the bag before zipping it closed. He carries the carefully rolled cape/sheet (folding makes unsightly creases) into the living room and places it inside his briefcase before walking out to meet the 8:10 bus to the office.
All that day he feels different than he ever has before in the office (particularly for a Monday). He cannot describe the sensation, but it is pervasive and utterly enjoyable. Best he can tell, it fells like evolution of a sort, as though he is changing into something. Merging would, upon reflection, be more like it. For the two years or so that Lightning Man has publicly existed, he has been an altar ego, a partner, a dynamic yin to Ephraim’s mundane yang, but always the two have been distinct entities. The characteristics that define Ephraim Pontoon are antithetical to those that comprise Lightning Man. Whereas the one is ordinary, remarkably unremarkable, doing everything possible to blend in, the other is daring, brash, and stands out in any conceivable setting. Ephraim’s goal at the office is to make it through each day without being addressed by anyone. Lightning Man cries out to be noticed and succeeds marvelously at every opportunity.
There is definitely something taking place. He catches himself whistling twice that morning. At around ten thirty it happens as he passes Amy Langhorn in the hallway. She notices, makes a curious noncommittal face that an optimist might take as a smile. At noon, though he has packed a lunch in his briefcase, he nonetheless asks a colleague who sits near him to go out to lunch, something he has no recollection of ever before having done at Ian Bartley & Company. Ephraim cannot explain what is occurring, but he reasonably supposes it to be somehow related to his having brought the red cape to work—it is the only thing he has done differently in his routine in over two years. Tomorrow he will test the theory by bringing his mask as well. Riding home that evening, instead of reading from his worn copy of Dubliners (He had stopped on Friday’s ride home at the story about the daughter Eveline, who when given a chance to escape a life of crushing drudgery, passed it up at the last moment.) he chats instead with a complete stranger in the seat next to him.
By Thursday, Ephraim is carrying his cape, mask and entire red silk suit inside his briefcase, taking up so much space that he leaves in the office some of the papers that he has been carrying home every day of his accounting career. Friday morning he awakes an hour before his two alarm clocks go off. He catches an earlier bus, whose driver he doesn’t know, but says hello to nonetheless. He arrives in the office at 7:15, marveling at what a difference an hour makes in the way the lighting looks pouring down through the office’s high windows, reflecting across the rows of identical steel desks. He is the only one in the large still-silent room, and after setting his briefcase and coat down at his desk (third row, second from the left), he walks directly toward the General Manager’s office in the front, where a light shines out from behind the partially opened door.
“Morning, sir!” he offers enthusiastically, poking his head inside. He hasn’t seen the inside of the office since his hiring interview years ago. “And a good Friday to you, sir.”
“”Morning, Pontoon,” the rotund man rejoins with brusque surprise, looking up from his writing. “Why so early? Something up with you, man? I’m hearing the odd comment or two this week, you know. You’ve not gone dizzy on us, have you?” There is the trace of a smile.
“Not to worry, sir. Just resolving to enjoy things a bit more is all.”
”Quite,” is the curt reply. “Well, don’t be afraid to spread it around a bit, Pontoon. Quarterly reports are coming due next week. Lots to get done. A bit more enthusiasm can’t hurt around here, eh?” A genuine smile this time before peremptorily returning his gaze to the desk.
“Cheers,” Ephraim offers, withdrawing his head from the doorway and making his way back to his desk.
Afternoon tea comes around quickly, and Ephraim takes the opportunity to ring Malcolm. They arrange to meet tonight at the Swan. Nine o’clock, not a moment later. Ephraim hangs up. Most of his coworkers are still in the break room eating, drinking, socializing. Ephraim sets his briefcase in the center of his desk and opens it carefully, almost reverently. The contents fit tightly and have not shifted about. The brilliant red fabric fairly glows from within the briefcase. Next to the carefully rolled red cape lie the silk bottoms and jersey on whose chest is emblazoned a newly sewn yellow lightning bolt. He closes the case, sets the locks, places it back on the floor beside his desk. He glances at the small desk clock—quarter to three. He wonders if he ought to catch an earlier bus home tonight. He needs time to get to the apartment, load up the micro-bus and still make it back downtown before eight thirty. He doesn’t want to be late to the Swan tonight. There’s going to be a show.