NOTE:  Characters in this story were created by Kurt Busiek and are property of Juke Box Productions.  No money is being made from this story, no infringement is intended.

****

This is like unto how it was, baby.

You come in here and you want information about the Beatnik? The Beatnik who Bounced?  Well, yeah, once in awhile we get people who want to know.  The ones who went through Kerouac and Ginsburg and all of that holy writ, and worked their way down to a super-hero.

Listen, little one, what I do is work, it looks like play but it is really work, and it activates the thirst response.  I am an American and I believe in pay for play.   You dig?  Oh, I knew you could.  Steve, bring me a tall one.  A couple of tall ones.  The lady here is payin'.  For refills, too.

Now, then.  You don't even tell me how you liked my licks yet, and you want to know about the Beatnik?  For shame.  Oh, no, don't worry, pet, I was only kiddin' you.  Life's not near fun enough for an Old Gold like me.  That's my nickname for folks of my age and background.  Used to be a cigarette, you know?  You do?  Good, pet, you did your research.  Writin' for an underground paper?  No?  A magazine?

You're doing a history thesis?

Oh.  Charming.

No, no, that's all right.  That's all right, honey, I'm not getting up in fulminatin' rage yet, now, am I?  You're a paying customer.  And you're paying for my Lowenbrau.  Ah, there, Stevie, there it is, what keeps me going.  And going.  And going, up to the point my kidneys fail.  No, pet, you pay, I tip.  That is the way it is, baby.

Ahh.  Vocalization, jazz piano, they are thirsty work.  You know, I feel sad for you kids nowadays.  You got Ken Burns TV shows about jazz, but that ain't the same thing as being there.  Just like I was envious of my dad being alive to hear people like Bunk Johnson.  Of course, he didn't hear ‘em, but he could have.  That was my point.  When we are gone, man, when we are gone. Who will even remember?

Okay.  Quit stalling.

To begin: it was, you might have guessed, a time of Conformity.  And I bless that time, pet, I bless the Fifties, because without that blessed Conformity, we would've had nothing to Nonconform against.  Without the man in the Grey Flannel Suit, by which I do not mean that mediocre Greg Peck movie, there would'a been no man in beret and sweatshirt and blue jeans and sandals and bongos and goatee and poetry slammin' before there was such a thing as a slam, can you dig it, pet?  I knew that you could.

And here, I am assured, to this very town, this Astro City, came the beamish boy you're concerned with.

Astro City, home of the heroes.

And oh, yes, we had heroes back then.  Not just talking about people like Bill Haley and Elvis.  We've had ‘em ever since the Old Soldier, who goes, they say, hundreds of years back, and maybe before then, I don't know.  Do you need a rundown on who they were?  No? Well, I may give you one later, anyway.  It's history.  Take it from one who was then.

Well, now: our beamish boy comes in on a Greyhound to a station which was quite a bit safer than it is today, though it was still a place you better've watched your beehind.  Comes in with a suitcase in his hand and dark glasses on his face and a red jacket to keep out the cold, and Keds on his feet, and a pair of blue jeans.  Yeah, the red jacket was because of what James Dean wore in "Rebel", but it didn't look much like it.  This thing was to keep out the winter cold, not to look cool.

Beamish was there to escape.

He'd been part of--oh, you can guess--the typical Ozzie and Harriet kinda setup, such as it was for working-class people back then.  He was smarter than most, but wouldn't've considered himself much of a hipster until, well...somebody gave him "On the Road" and that was it.  Got his mind into a shape it had been ready for.  Found out that all those things the olders were condemning in public might just be some interesting stuff, after all.  Well, not all those things, but some.

Especially the part about being an individual.  With one's own style, one's own vision.  Even if you had to, like, wear the uniform.  That said you were part of the army of resistance, pet.  And that's what our beamish boy thought of himself, and that's what he came to be: a soldier of liberation from the Mind Trap.  Never would've thought of wearin' a gun.  But what he had, he figured would do even better.

Can you dig it?

And I better not hear you quoting Isaac Hayes back to me.

He hit Mendelsohn Avenue ‘cause that was where the beatniks lived, or were said to, anyway.  It amounted to a few coffeehouses, music stores, bookshops, and a number of sub-let crash pads.  It was, pet...it was one of the places where the Sixties were born, though as of yet it had not gone through those freaky and sometimes poisonous mutations.

Yes, we had weed.  Beamish occasionally smoked some, you dig?  But not without great trepidation beforehand, because no matter what it was looked upon by the Beats, the Cops had a quite nastier opinion, and they cracked your knuckles a lot smarter'n they do today.  Yes, we had pills, but Beamish was smart enough not to trifle with those.  That's probably why he never became a trucker.  That's a joke.  Are you with me, pet?

At first, he was a Newbie. An Outsider. A Wannabe.  The regulars on Mendelsohn gave him the same lack of regard and cool reception any such group does until the newcomer proves himself.  To their satisfaction.  He'd come in and say, "Hi. Gosh.  I wanna be a Beatnik."  All in that Clark Kent kind of voice.  Only it'd probably be, "I, like, wanna be a Beatnik, Daddy-o."

You ever see five bearded guys and their chicks try to hold in the Vesuvius of laughter, quintupled?  We asked him to go out on the sidewalk so we could laugh.  He could hear us from there.  But he came back in and we said, "Baby, why?"

He said, "Because I read On the Road."

One of the old ladies said, "Oh.  Real in-fashion.  For two years ago."

"Uh.  Yeah," he said.  "Well, I'm just getting started, I'm not up with, like, the new trends."

A guy said, "There ain't no trend, baby, New, Old, or Simonized.  It's just Is.  That's all."

And somebody else said, "Pro-found," which is what he said about dang near anything when he'd been on muggles.

Beamish looked out at them and said, "Please.  I wanna be with you.  I want to be one of you.  I want to stay."

For awhile they didn't say anything.  Then one of them said, "Annie's is a couple of doors down, one flight up.  Two rooms, john in the hall.  35 small ones in advance."

He showed us some Errol Flynn in his mouth and said, "Thanks.  Thanks a lot."  And he didn't say "daddy-o".

Beamish was learning.

He left to go find Annie and lay some simoleons on her.  Another of the womenfolk said, "Why in hell did you tell him that?"

"‘Cause Annie needs the money," is what he said.

So Beamish began his apprenticeship at Beatnikism.

Do you want I should do a gloss?  I shall gloss.  Let us say that Beamish got himself a job as a busbarboy at a local coffee shop, The Sleep of Reason, that was its name, and applied himself well.  He got to know Annie and Too Much Ralph and John-O and Brother Blend and all the other folks he should know.  Plus a few he probably shouldn't.  It was part of the game, pet, it really was.

Cliched?  Very well, then, I cliche myself.  I am hip.  I contain jazz quartets.

Speaking of jazz, that was what the boy was into.  He loved Trane and Miles Davis and all the rest, that we have in common.  He could also play.  Play what, pet?  Why, music, of course.  Jazz.  Specifically.

So sometimes Beamish's hands found themselves a set of 88's and he would stroke them into life, doing what he knew best, not spectacularly at first, but enough to show: the kid had talent.  Sometimes he got gigs, even.  Playing at local do's where they wanted more than just some guy with an occasionally-struck bass behind a poet.  Beamish was there, like Kilroy.  I don't know how many would remember him.  It's kind of like...ah, war veterans these days.  Hell, how many people you know even went to a Beatles concert?  And that wasn't that far away.

So, by, let us say, ‘58, Beamish was no longer a wannabe.  He was a sophomore hipster.  He was accepted on Mendelsohn and even made the occasional call back to his mom and dad to let ‘em know yes, he was doing okay, no, don't come get me.  They even came to visit him a few times.  They couldn't wait to get back, but they couldn't pull him back with them.

1958.  Sputnik had gone up the year before.  The first satellite, and it wasn't even Big Daddy Uncle Sam's.  That impacted, baby.  All of a sudden, people were pushing for more Science.  More Education.  More Brains.  We had to catch up to Evil Ivan, and we had to do it fast.

You've seen The Right Stuff, pet?  All that footage of rockets collapsing on the launch pad and sendin' up big clouds of smoke like a bad World War II flick?  That was the time. That was back then.

I think it even spread to the super-villains.

Ah, now we're getting to the good part, right?  You just know I'm about to tell you about our bouncing baby boy.  Well, hang on, let me lay it down to you.

The battles of Astro City sometimes ranged all the way into Mendelsohn.  Not often--it was like they were slumming--but even the silk stocking district up on Kane wasn't immune to it.  So it was when the N-Forcer and Starwoman rolled down Mendelsohn Avenue havin' a big Pier Six with the Nuke of Earl.

The Nuke was some renegade scientist hooked up with the kinda armor that gleamed like the chrome on a brand-new Chevy.  But he could radiate pure U-235 from his hands, and it could be deadly...or weird.  N-Forcer was protected by his own armor, and Starwoman had power to spare and kept out of the way of Nuke's blasts.  Most of the cats in the neighborhood found the nearest cellar joint to hit while the thing was going over, and paid the cover charge gladly.  A few were out front, lookin' at the fight like kids on a London rooftop watchin' the Battle of Britain.

Oh, I am gettin' too poetic there.  Too poetic.  Do forgive me, pet.

Well, as it turned out, one of those spectators was Beamish himself, with John-O and Annie standing nearby, and they were wonderin' whether to take cover themselves.  But nah.  This was a better show than George Pal coulda put on, and you didn't have to pay to get inside.  So they stood there, watchin' Starwoman turn loops and Immelman turns around those green radiation blasts, and watchin' N-Forcer come in with his fist wound up like he was Sugar Ray Robinson in a tin suit.

Turns out that our three beloved beatniks were standing right in front of the Sparling Pet Shop.  This is important, so remember it.

Well, the N-Forcer uncorked his Sunday Special right in the Nuke's face, bent in the metal plating, and knocked Mr. N.O.E. right on his--excuse the phrase, pet--can.  One of Nuke's hands was outstretched, and it let off a last blast.  Starwoman dodged it, and it went right on to where our three hipster friends were standing.  Only by this time they were huggin' the sidewalk.

The blast shattered the darned window in the pet store and set a number of prisoners in cages free.  They didn't get far; they'd gotten enough radiation to make a Hiroshima cockroach croak.  So two parakeets, a Mynah bird, and a chameleon slipped the ever-lovin' bonds of Earth forever.  And, pet, so did a frog.

But not before that frog leaped out, did a ribbit, landed on Beamish, and, with its dyin' act, bit him on the face.

Beamish cried out.  It wasn't that hard a bite, but it felt weird.  Somethin' had gotten into his bloodstream that wasn't supposed to be there, and, for all he knew, he was gonna turn into the Amazing Colossal Beatnik any minute now.

Then he collapsed.  It's hard to collapse when you're still huggin' sidewalk, but he did it. That achievement alone is worthy of Guinness.

Anyway, the gendarmes came and carted away the Nuke.  The reporters came and took down a few words from our friendly non-neighborhood heroes.  The insurance man came down to tell Sparling his store wasn't insured against radiation.  And Beamish spent the next week off his feet, in bed.

He was back on the job after that, still good ol' Beamish, bussin' those tables.  But there was somethin' added to him, maybe, just barely on the edge of perception.  All the regulars thought he was still just a mite sick.

Then came the day that Ruddy Bitch and his Drummers, the local motorcycle clique, rolled out in search of a little blood sport.  They liked bustin' into cellar joints, takin' what they wanted and doin' what they wanted with it--or with them--and ridin' off in a way that'd make you truly hate Marlon Brando for ever havin' made Wild One.  Usually the cops didn't give a damn one way or the other, and nobody much wanted to carry guns round Mendelsohn, so what could you do?

You could stand up and get the hell beaten out of you, or step back and let ‘em do what they wanted.

But not this time.  No, not this time.

Ruddy kicked in the door to the Sleep of Reason.  There he stood, with that coal-scuttle helmet and black leather jacket not coverin' up his gut or his knife, with four of his auxiliary standin' on the steps behind him.  He had droit du seigneur, or however you pronounce it. So he came in with enough grease on his hair to supply Elvis for a year, and enough B.O. to make a cake melt.  He swaggers in, interruptin' a girl in mid-poem and a slow bass between notes.  Everybody froze with their hands around their espressos.

The big guy grabs the poetry girl by one wrist, and she looks Casperish.  He says, "You're new ‘round here.  That's good.  Dubs on this one, fellas."

That's when they hear the words, baby:

"Not now, greasy kid stuff.  Not ever."

The badsters look in the direction the voice was comin' from, goin' for knives or zipguns or whatever they had with ‘em. But it came on just too damn fast.  Like a yellow Atlas missle on a pogo stick, complete with flat cap and goatee, propelled by the strongest human legs on the planet.

The legs of a cat with the proportionate power of a frog.

And within a minute flat, Ruddy and his Drummers had a solo done on their empty heads and was left unfreakinconscious like somebody dumb enough to spill beer on Buck Jones's shoes.  The cat what had done it had moved so quickly, boundin' around like a Super Ball about eight years before its time, that the denizens could hardly follow his moves.  Poetry in motion, baby.

Beatnik poetry.

"Call the cops," the cat said, bouncing out the door and up the steps.  "Or better yet, Daddy-O, call the garbage man."

And one of them said to the other, and I promise this is true: "Who was that strange cat, anyway?"

That's when he stuck his head around the door, with a grin so wide it would barely fit through, and told ‘em.

"The Bouncing Beatnik, baby."

Then he jumped away.

Mendelsohn Avenue had its own super-hero, pet.

Can you dig it?

I knew that you could.

 *****

So what does a beatnik super-hero in 1959 do?

He does what he has to, baby.

When thugs from Uptown started trying to strongarm into Mendelsohn territory, the Beatnik was there.  Considering he was facing firepower without anything more than his enhanced abilities and his guts, well, he deserves a little credit.  When bullies from the biker gangs or just sawed-off toughs tried pushing around the regulars, he was there, too.  Not always fighting.  Sometimes talkin’ ‘em down, sometimes even, I kid you not, challenging ‘em to a jumping contest.  Loser leaves the neighborhood.  They got wise to him after awhile, started demanding handicaps, like chaining him to a couple of barbells before he jumped.  But he won.  He always won.

It got to where straights from uptown and from all over would come to Mendelsohn, just to see if the Beatnik would make an appearance.  Sure, the straight heroes had their followings, and big ones–(insert names here).  But the Bouncer was something with a different spin.  Beatniks were unique enough, but now they had their very own superhero.  That gave ‘em status unheard of.  Even the beats in San Francisco and elsewhere started gettin’ a bit chesty about it, since Astro City finally had an attraction they couldn’t match.

Eventually, the Beatnik got a couple of villains of his own.  One of them was Pieter Popoff, the Russky mad scientist type inventor.  That led to the first team-up the Beatnik ever had, with, though nobody would believe it, the Gentleman.  Yep, that ultra-powered ultra-proper-talking guy who looked like Fred MacMurray, if Fred MacMurray could fly.  The Beatnik kidded him a lot about My Three Sons when they met.  The meeting came about when Popoff teamed up with the Organization Man and tried to use his gimmicks (among them, a giant flying hammer and sickle) to, like, take over Astro City.  First Astro, then the world.  Had to admire the men for starting out small, that’s the American way.

But the Beatnik and the Gentleman took ‘em to the cleaners...probably the dry cleaners where the Gent took his tuxes...and got on pretty well, all things considered.  The Astro City Rocket wouldn’t let ‘em get away until they’d taken a pile of pictures of the two of them standing together.  For one of them, the Beatnik gave the gent his beret and the Gent traded him his evening jacket.  That was how they took the pic, both of ‘em smiling with one arm around the other’s shoulders and their other arm fisted on the hip, a real super-hero pose.  That one made the cover of Life, and gave Bob Hope a few good one-liners.

And yeah, the Beatnik was invited to help out the Honor Guard once, and did his part.  They were fighting a bunch of shark-people from another dimension. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum.  Even though that was years before...well, you know.  Really, I ought to have sung “Mack the Knife”.  Bobby Darin was a killer, really, pet.  Metaphorically speaking.

He did a few more gigs with the Honor Guard, and tried to get along with the band. Max O’Millions, Starwoman, Cleopatra, Leopardman, Kitkat, even the Silver Agent, God rest his soul. Didn’t really have any animosity.  Yet, there was...there was a sense that it was a different trip.  You know?  He was just not...ah, pet.  Let me explain it.  They were Eisenhower.  You dig?

I knew that you could.

But...things happened.

What were they?  Well, to begin with, pet, Jack Kennedy died.

Oh, you know about that.  But you weren’t there when it happened.

Jack Kennedy was a man that I think even his enemies liked.  Maybe.  Maybe not Khruschev, all right, but I can’t imagine that dude liking anyone, unless he had a secret letch for Uncle Joe.  He was like the bright star of the Sixties.  Uncle Ike was gone, and things were gonna change.  He was gonna do more than send in troops to schools.  He was gonna by-gosh integrate, kick the crap out of the KKK, do something about poverty, the whole Democrat nine yards.  And we were ready for it.  No, I haven’t mentioned the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Crisis.  Those things were important, but I’m talking about the changes over here.

Of course, it all kinda came apart under Johnson.  But that’s gettin’ ahead of myself.

The deal went down in Dallas.  I...Beamish was doin’ his gig, playin’ piano and bussin’ tables down at the Sleep of Reason.  By this time, believe it, he was part owner.  Because he had learned, pet, he had learned to play piano right good.  Doing it for four years will do that for you, if you have any talent whatever.  And he had some, you understand?

So the people were coming to see him, not great crowds, but damn well enough to fill the place on Friday through Sunday nights, and many in between.  On occasion a real hepcat from the upscale jazz community would come down, and watch, and sit in.  Then the night was electric.

Those were the nights Beamish lived for.

His parents would come down occasionally.  They’d give him the whole trip, why don’t you come back home, you’ve got talent, you’re wasting it in this dive, yah yah yah.   But Beamish would say, I’m wasting it the way I choose.  These are my people.  They, we understand.  And finally, mom and dad quit askin’.  But they didn’t quit comin’ down.  Beamish appreciated that, and made the journey back home a few times.  But he didn’t stay.  Nothin’ for him there.

One time, he even got ‘em to come down to the club to watch him play.   They were like Eisenhowered to the maximum, but they enjoyed the music, if not the settings.  The wine seemed to accommodate them somewhat, and Beamish had told the crew beforehand to make ‘em feel at home, so they did.  As much as they could.

Afterward, Daddy-O (for such we used to call ‘em back then, sometimes, for atmosphere) said, “Son, I’ve gotta say that I still hate where you play.  But I love what you play.”  There wasn’t much Beamish could say to that, but he didn’t have to.  He just hugged Daddy-O, and Daddy-O hugged him back.   Momsy shook his hand, and said she wished he’d come back, but if he was going to stay there, at least he knew how to play piano like a ragin’ fool.  He laughed and hugged her, too.

Then they went back.

There was also a girl.

Oh, now does that seem surprising?  I see you, pet, I see you trying not to smile.  Go ahead and do it.  It makes us old jazzmen feel like part of the human race when you smile at us.  There you go.  Ready?  I’ll continue.

Her name was Misty and she had hair, I mean she had long black hair, and it was long and black and that is all one really needs to know.  Besides the fact that she had blue eyes and full red lips and legs that would have graced all three of the Graces, plus a brain.  And she liked jazz.  The perfect package, no?

Well, besides the fact that she wore glasses and slacks and was a middle-class day-trippin’ daughter of a gun.  But Beamish felt he could get her through that.  He picked her out after a set, told the boys he was takin’ five with some of the customers, zeroed out her table, and sat down with an imported beer at the table she shared with her boyfriend.  Before long, he was zeroed out.  He knew what was going on, and he was just about to challenge Beamish to fight.

Beamish declared, “I’m a peaceful man myself.  War is like, so uncool.  It really gets up my back. You understand, platter-rat?”

With that, his hand kind of flexed on the beer stein, and bent it inward perceptibly.  That could have, you understand, been a reflexive reaction.  He did have to pay for the stein.  But Platter-Rat’s eyes got bigger than the labels on two Ramsey Lewis sides, and he suddenly decided the both of them should leave.

Beamish protested, asked them to stay, got the waitress to bring them a couple of Schlitzes on the house, and got them calmed down.  They stayed for the rest of the set.  Afterward, her boyfriend wanted to take her home, and he did.  But Beamish gave her a look that told her, Be back tomorrow night, pet. Won’t you?

And she was.

Relationships accumulate.  Before long the she, Misty, was cribbin’ with Beamish.  She did her graduate work in college on an art scholarship thing, and at night she was there, at the Sleep of Reason.  After the gigs, they went on to reasonable sleepin’.  But that is something over which we will draw a discreet curtain.

Of course, the lady was after him to improve his status in life.  To be satisfied with nothing less than something more, and all that.  To be all that jazz can be.  In short, to get real gigs, to stop playing in just one dumpy little beatnik joint, and go beyond.

He was a bit frightened of that.

Does that seem strange?  It should not.  True, in his other self, Beamish was the Beatnik who Bounced.  He could take on a whole gang of bad types and lay them out with kicks that savate guys would look upon with envy.  But Mendelsohn Avenue was the place he’d stayed for five years and over.  He was a long way past newbiehood.  Indeed, the was one of the Wise Old Men by that time.

As for the Beatnik, he was one of the established heroes by now.  That is, established non-establishment.  There were times in which the gendarmes called for his cooperation, which he gave, also at times.  Some things threatened the entire city, nay, the entire world, and that meant Mendelsohn as well.  Also Annie, and John-O, and Too Much Ralph.

And Misty.

So he was unwilling to give up his point.  Misty nagged him, but he was stubborn.  He feared it might mean he would lose her.  But between losing his selfhood, which he thought tied to a point in space, and her, it was a hard choice.

But, as I said, Kennedy was dead, in a scene that even made the beatniks weep.  Beamish couldn’t come out for several days after that.  Once he did, he made it back to the Sleep with what they said were haunted eyes.  The crowd was silent.  He opened with an original rendition of Danse Macabre and pounded away at that mother like he wanted to do something to the piano even Jerry Lee Lewis couldn’t.

It took him a hell of a long time.  Maybe an hour, maybe longer.  But by the time he’d finished, Beamish had taken those folks on a ride.  He surely had.  They’d followed him down to the inner deeps, into the place where he wept, and he tore what he had to out of his soul and served it up on very thin ivory platters.

After that he did a few bars of Lincoln Portrait, and the crowd eased back a bit.  Then he went on to the stuff they’d come to hear, and it was balm, pet.  Oh, yes indeed it was.

And so it went.  But it wouldn’t go on for long.

This was now the era of Johnson.  Things got a lot more...a lot more intense, in that period.  You think you know it?  Pet, you do not.

It seemed as though things were going to start out okay.  Uncle Lyndon was for education, relief, integration, all the stuff that we’d been in favor of since we knew about them enough to be in favor of them.  But there were things we didn’t know were going to happen.  Not really.

After the Gulf of Tonkin, we found out about them.

Yeah.  That wound us up in that big little war a lot more than we ever thought we would be, maybe more than some of us ever wanted to be.  I mean, hell, pet, there were tons of people got married within one night just so they could legally dodge the draft.  It was a thought that had occurred to Beamish.

But Beamish didn’t do that.  Y’know why, pet?  Because of Kerouac.  Kerouac had served, and he was proud of it.  It wasn’t about the war.  It was about doing right by your country.  Can you dig it?  Even if you can’t, it doesn’t matter.  Yeah.  He was proud of it.  And he was still a beatnik.

Misty had broached the topic to Beamish.  She didn’t want to see him go Over There, and she didn’t want him to have to jump the border into Sgt. Prestonville.  She offered to marry him.  But it was like...Beamish wanted it to be something special.  Something of love, not of necessity.  So he said no, because, what’s the damn phrase about honor and how he could not love thee, if he loved not honor more?  Does that sound stupid coming from someone in Beamish’s position?

I hope not.  I sincerely hope not, pet.

To wit: at first, all the straights were pretty much pro the war, as long as they didn’t have to go.  I mean, let’s face it.  World War II was less than twenty years back.  We’d won that.  Figured we could win anything, except maybe they hadn’t learned the lessons of Korea too well.  At that point, nobody knew, pet, how long the thing would go on, and how much it would cost.  I mean, Jesus knows, Beamish didn’t.

He just wanted to keep the hell out of it, unless he was asked.  If he was, he’d serve.  If he was assigned to combat...I imagine he would have figured something out.

Something honorable.

Beamish was, like, under no illusions as far as Communism went.  About Socialism, yeah, we had a lot of illusions, and were damn proud of ‘em.  But a left-wing Hitler, pet, is still a Hitler.  By their works ye shall know them.

Anyway, lest I dialate too philosophically, let me bring it back down to this: things were changing.  It was, Dylan-like, blowin’ in the wind.  And although Brother Bob would ride that breeze out, there was a sense that a lot of us just weren’t gonna be catchin’ that boat.

The Beatles came along and kind of, you know, eclipsed the hell out of what music had been doing up to the time.  Whether it was jazz, or rock ‘n’ roll, or folk, or what we sometimes called r&b back then and sometimes called race music, or the crapola pop that got played on most radio stations, or even country and western, which is white man’s soul, pet, believe it.

They also cooked up a most unsettling brew called lysergic acid diethylamide and started serving it up on little blotter tabs and sugar cubes, and it really wrenched the minds of those who partook of it.  Some could handle it.  Billy Link, one of Beamish’s neighbors, was one who could not.  He was strictly from babblesville from the day of the Dropping forward, and the last Beamish heard, he was still in Bellevue.  So...Beamish did not do much investigation down that avenue.

By 1965, at Hogarth University, they had their first teach-ins about the war.  People who would have been hauled up before HUAC ten years earlier, hell, six years earlier, got to speak their piece.  So did others.  People were...dying over there in Nam.  Some of them we knew.  Randy Andy Callahan, who was one of the young beats that mothed over to our flame, he lucked out all the way. Drafted, went, got in the 183rd, and by 1966, body-bagged.  On Mendelsohn, we heard about it almost as fast as his family did.

It cast a pall on the proceedings that night.  Then again, maybe it was just a deeper pall.

In the morning, which was the time when they went to bed, Misty asked Beamish, “Do you think this is the ending?”

And Beamish asked, “Of what?”

She said, “Of this.  Of all of this.”

I think he sighed and said, “Everything phases, honey.  But some things are to last.  Like me and you, I think.”

She said, “Are you sure of that?”

He said, “About as sure as I can be of anything, Sister Red.”

She said, real quiet, “About how sure can you be, these days?  Of anything?”

Beamish just looked at her.  Then they went to bed.

As for the Beatnik, well, things still happened occasionally.  But they were gettin’ a lot further between, you know?  When some business led him to Hogarth, and he had to ask some kids there if they’d seen a bad guy, they, like, put him down.  Severely.  Cruelly.  Lettin’ him know that he was strictly old-style, old-phase, old-hat.  They compared him to Maynard on Dobie Gillis, which was, to them, an insult, because Maynard had gone into the Army.  “Hit the road, Jack Kerouac, and don’t’cha come back no more, no more, no more, no more.”  The Beatnik tried arguing with them, but it wasn’t much use.

It would be like arguing with you about the Dave Clark Five, you know what I mean?

The jazz scene was still visited by the habitues, but the psychedelic clubs were taking over.  I remember Jim Morrison and his boys playin’ one of their early gigs at one of them.  Went and saw them before they could get away.  Talented, but they had nothin’ I wanted to assimilate.  Especially that two-word salute near the end of “The End”.  Morrison was a moth.

Beamish played the gigs, kept with the club, and wondered how long it was to be.

The protests happened.  Slowly, but gatherin’ steam. At first it was just against the War, then it became against the USA.  Beamish didn’t know what to make of that.  Sure, there is the wish to stay current.  But there is disagreement, rebellion as carried out personally, and then there is destructiveness and nihilism, and he wanted none of that.  Neither, usually, did his brother Beats.

More and more, they were movin’ away.

By 1966, it was obvious that the new phase had set in.  Hippies, not Beats.  Acid, not muggles or wine.  Rock, not jazz or even rock ‘n’ roll.  Protest, not rejection.  We were too old for it, and a lot of us just didn’t like it, or a percentage of it. Some tried to latch on, but they gave up.  They were just too damned old.

And the war just went on, and on, and on.

Then, in 1967, it happened.

Let us say that, back then, and for many years thereafter, there was a man who made connections.  He had once been, in a manner of speaking, a serpent of a somewhat crimson hue.  People like Steeljack and Handgun knew him a lot better than the Beatnik did, because the serpent worked the Black Mask side of the street.  He was like a temp agency.  Let us put it like that.

Because of a favor which the Beatnik had done for one of the serpent’s clients, on occasion the client would give with information which the Beatnik needed.  Sometimes for a price, sometimes not.  On other occasions, another of the serpent’s clients would give with the goods.  The Beatnik never met the serpent directly, and that was all to the good.

The Beatnik was gettin’ damn long in the tooth by this time.  But, while Beamish was takin’ five in between the ivory sets, one of the waiters passed him a note. He nodded gently in the direction of a corner table, and even through the smoke and shade, Beamish could recognize the guy.  It was an information packet, to be sure.

Beamish was known to the informer as the man who took messages for the Beatnik.  Maybe they figured out what Beamish and Beatnik’s relations really were, but it didn’t much matter as long as they didn’t hassle him and his.  Save that secret identity scrabbling for Clark Kent, baby.  Mendelsohn looked after its own.

It seems that the Nuke of Earl was back in town.  The Honor Guard wasn’t.  They were out chasing some interdimensional bandits who’d made off with, I don’t know, maybe the formula for Coca-Cola or something.  It had been a very, very long time since the Nuke had shown his armored face in Astro.  He’d been in prison for most of the time between.  Even though he created the Beatnik, the Nuke wouldn’t know him from Adam Smith.

But he was back.  And as far as Beamish knew, that left only one super-hero in town to take care of him.

So he got on the horn and said to the crew, he told them that he was going to have to sit this one out, the boys in the band would take over for him, and if he could, he’d be back for a later gig that night.  The guys gave him that weird kinda look that they did whenever he pulled that.  Maybe they knew.  But they never said anything.

Misty followed him back to the dressing room.  She asked if he was going out again, and he said yeah.  She furthermore asked if he was going to risk his damn-fool neck again, and he, very quietly, said, “Yeah.  Looks like it.”

“What in hell for?” she said.  “Some stupid straight-cat super-villain that the freakin’ Honor Guard could take out with their left pinkies?”

Taking off his shirt, Beamish said, “The Honor Guard ain’t here.  They’re out.  That leaves only me, baby.  Now, if you please.”

She was granite, pet.

“This phase has gone too long,” she said.  “If this isn’t the end of it...it’s the end of me.”

Beamish gave her a very long look.  Then he said, “I ain’t got time to argue.  This cat is the one who made me.  I owe you bigtime, baby, but I also owe the City.  It made me what I am.  And if the Beatnik don’t stand for it tonight...it could very well die.”

Misty looked ultrastark.  But she also looked a bit more understanding.

“After this one...only the jazz gigs?  Please?  For me?  Otherwise...”

Beamish looked at her and said, “We will talk about otherwise afterwise.  I honor you, pet, but I honor life as well.  I can’t see a couple million people snuffed ‘cause I copped out.  Now, if you’ll step aside...this cat gotta bounce.”

She rushed him then and hugged him tightest and lay her head on his shoulder for the longest moment, and he responded.  Then he disengaged.   By that time, he was in costume, but he took a long coat and a big hat off the rack and went out.  He was out of the back before too many could ask for the time of night.

A few seconds after that, the hat and coat were on the roof, and the world’s coolest cat of a hero was leaping from building to building.  He had a lot of track to cover, that night.

And if the only thing Astro City had between it and the Nuke was a Bouncing Beatnik...

...well, hell, pet, that was just gonna have to be enough.

Wish there was a stirring cry to frame this piece, like, “And there came a day when only one hero stood between Astro City and Disaster, the sole champion of the forces of Light, and the very most righteous daddy that ever battered a bongo while bopping a bad guy, the bombastic, beautiful, Bouncing Beatnik!”  Hey, if I could do that, I should’ve been writing for funnybooks.

But believe it, pet, none of that kind of stuff was goin’ thru the Beatnik’s mind at the time.  All he could think of was how outclassed he was up against the Nuke of Earl, what a great chance he had at becoming a radioactive barbecue, and how little the chance was that he’d be coming home to the arms of sweet Misty in the morning.

Still, he didn’t quit going.

And below him, Mendelsohn gave way to the streets of the more upscale city, still a far piece away from Mount Kirby and the Shadow Hill neighborhood...tales there are to be told of that place, pet, but now is not the time.  Sharp-eyed rubberneckers below were catchin’ sight of young Lochinvar, leaping from building to building, startling the pigeons in his wake.  They pointed up, and wondered who was answerin’ the clarion call.  Don’t think they’d have believed it if they knew who it was.

There is something to be said for travelling to a gig in some way other than your own power.  Saves more energy for the battle, and all that.  But the Beatnik did not have no Beatnikmobile, pet, nor no Beatnikcopter.  If he’d had bread for that, you can imagine he would have used it in more interesting ways.  Such as buying a house, or refurbishing the interior of the Sleep of Reason, or getting newer instruments yet for himself and the band.  Or just taking Misty and himself off on a vacation.

Yet he had power to spare.  It wasn’t much to him to leapfrog all the way across Astro City on the strength of just one hero sandwich.  He’d have enough to do what he had to, when he got there.  The only question was: when he got there, what was he gonna do?

For the Nuke of Earl, pet, had invaded the waterworks of Astro City and intended to contaminate it at midnight.

That meant that when people got up for their morning coffee, OJ, or whatever, they were gonna be imbibing a hit of something as hot as pure U-235.

Yes, the Beatnik had put in a call to the cops.  He did it along the way.  If he fell, there was going to be some who could possibly take the guy out themselves.  But he wasn’t kiddin’ himself, the Beatnik wasn’t.  It had been around 10:30 when he got the info.  If anybody was gonna stop the Nuke of Earl...

...it was gonna have to be the Beatnik himself.

So the Beatnik leaped over the last building roof, which took some doing, because there was quite a gap between that and the waterworks building.  Took just about everything the Beatnik had, and he had to make certain that the hit was just right.  Like a riff off Elmore James’s piano or a Coltrane solo.  Man, it had to be there, or there was gonna be a busted ankle or a torn ligament or just an impact that cracked a bone in his legs or something.  Tell ya, pet, jumping across that distance and landing on a concrete roof.  It hurts.

But it went all right.

The Beatnik made the proverbial perfect two-pointer, bounced up as soon as he hit, tryin’ to disregard the hurtful feeling it made in his soles, and did a few more bounces around the roof to lessen the impact and momentum.  There were a few civilians down below, across the street, and they’d caught a sight of the jump that would’ve made a bunch of Olympians decide to give it up then and there.  It was night, true, and the guy in the yellow suit wasn’t the easiest thing to see.  But there were a few lights, and some people got good eyes.

The door on the roof was locked.  He kicked it in.  He was good at that, pet.

Down the stairwell.  Down to the level at which pumps pushed water in and out of filtration systems.  Down onto the catwalk, where, like it or not, he would be visible.  And he damn well was.  Yellow costume, bright as a Yield sign.  When he came in view of the working floor, the Beatnik ducked low, hugged the floor.  That was a good thing, pet, let me tell you.

Because a purple bolt went through the air at about what his chest level had been a second or two earlier, and if you’ve never smelled what it’s like after a lightning strike, baby, I can tell you, it was something similar.

Only a lot deadlier.

The dude spoke.  “Who in Hohenzollern are you?”

The Beatnik was already in the air by then, leaping from the catwalk to the floor of the plant, only about 30 feet from where the bad guy stood.  There he was, duded up in silver armor with a red cape and a mask that had holes for his eyes and nose and mouth, a big yellow-and-black radiation circle on his chest, and one of his gloves was still glowin’ purple.  The Beatnik had seen that glow before, in 1959.  It still scared him.

There he was.  The soldier of the new Atomic Age.  The Nuke of Earl, himself.

Story was that he’d been created by the government to be their ultimate Cold Warrior.  But things didn’t go exactly as plotted.  They thought the suit would protect people from his radiation.  It didn’t do it well enough to shield the Nuke’s wife, who died of radiation poisoning the week the Nuke went on rampage in Mendelsohn eight years ago.  It also didn’t prevent certain changes from taking place in his personality, in his mind.

Bad wiring, pet.  One two-legged nuclear plant that was gonna China Syndrome a long time ‘fore we ever knew the term.

Still, as tight a scene as it was turning out to be, our hero had enough couth to introduce himself.

“Um, the name is, like, the Bouncing Beatnik, baby,” he said.  He tried easing a little closer, but the guy put a hand up real quick, like a snake getting ready to strike.  The hand glowed.  So the Beatnik stayed right where he was.  “We haven’t exactly met, but I have seen you before, believe it or not.”

Adam Atomic cocked his head and said, “Where?”

“Oh, the last time you were out,” said the Beatnik.  “Wanna fill me in on the whys and wherefores about this scene, Big Daddy?”

The Nuke shook his head like he was disgusted.  “I might have known.  I thought every super-hero in town was away.  But in this city, you just can’t cover all your bets.”

“I sympathize, man,” said the Beatnik, helpfully.  “Let us, like, reason together.  I feel your pain.”

Bad choice of words.  The guy looked at me and his eyes glowed blue.  “No one can feel my pain!  NO ONE!!”

The Beatnik backed away a step or two, his hands held up.  “Okay, okay, daddy, you don’t want your pain felt, that’s spice so nice with me.  All we want to do here is talk.  As for the pain, I don’t feel yours, you don’t feel mine.  Deal?”

The guy’s jaw halfway floored. “What kind of nut are you, anyway?  Is this supposed to be funny?  Are you some kind of distraction?”

“Man,” the Beatnik said, “I am, of this moment, the only hero left in Astro City.  I am also, like, the only other guy you got to talk to in this entire building, unless I miss my guess.  What did you do to the night shift?”

“I killed a couple of guards,” he said, kind of offhand.

The Beatnik paused.  “Killed two guards?”

“It wasn’t much,” the Nuke said.  “Just the kind of op you’d run in any enemy territory.”

“Enemy territory?  This is, like, the United States, baby!  We are your own people!”

“The only people I have are in costumes, like yours,” he said.  “White masks or black masks, makes no difference in the end.  This city made me what I am.  It took my wife from me.  She died in my arms, Beatnik.  In my very arms.”  He held them out in front of him, and a crackle of energy like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s dreams sparked from one arm to the other.  “I intend to follow her, Beatnik.  At midnight, I will drown myself in the waters of Astro City and give its citizens a taste of what my wife tasted.  They will follow us, Beatnik.  They will follow me.”

Music was going through the Beatnik’s head right then, the kind of stuff which plays when you’re in a concrete hole full of dynamite and you’re trying to keep the level of fear low so that your mind can riff out what you’re gonna do next.  He tuned it down, just a tad.

“Why midnight?” he asked.

The Nuke said, “Because that is the anniversary of her death.”

That sobered the Beatnik some.  It would also be the anniversary of his rebirth.  The day that he took the radioactive bite of the frog on Mendelsohn Avenue.  It was truly not the way he would have chosen to celebrate.

And it was just ten damned minutes away from midnight.

“And you don’t care about the people?”

“I will sleep as soundly as Harry Truman did, after he heard the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima,” the Nuke of Earl said, and looked like he meant it.  “He got a good night’s rest after it was done.  So will I, in the bosom of Neptune.  So will all the city.  And mankind will know, afterward, never to unleash the nuclear menace again.”

“Right,” said the Beatnik.  And all of a sudden, it was like somebody’d turned off the music in his head.  And the fear.  And turned his internal radio to a different kind of station, pet.  One that was broadcasting the information he needed to tell him what to do.

“You’re talkin’ about killing a whole lotta people who never had anything to do with you, or your wife,” the Beatnik said.  “You want to murder daddys, mommies, and a bunch of babies just because you don’t feel right about the world.”  He stepped a step closer.

The Nuke raised his arm.  “I’m warning you.”

“That is on the absolute opposite point from cool,” the Beatnik continued.  “The city didn’t mean to kill your wife, man.  What you are now, you agreed to, am I right?”

“They didn’t tell me what it would do to me!” he yelled.  “They didn’t let me know everything!”

“You think I knew everything, daddy-o, when you sent that nuke-blast through a pet shop window on Mendelsohn, and I got bit by a frog you hot-wired?”  The Beatnik took one step closer, and the guy’s hand was glowing like St. Elmo’s fire.  “That’s the reason I can jump the way I do now, baby.  Maybe it’s a stupid thing, gettin’ the power of a frog.  Maybe it’s to laugh, baby.  But maybe it’s not.  Because that’s like Mother Nature passin’ along a little somethin’ extra to you.  A little gift from the animal kingdom to a human cat.  Maybe it’s somethin’ natural.  Maybe it’s somethin’ a lot better than what you’ve got.  Because the only thing you’ve got is somethin’ that destroys.”

“And it will,” said the Nuke, and both his hands were sparking like they were full of barium and a kid had touched a match to ‘em on the Fourth of July.  “And what can you do, to stop me?”

“Baby,” said the Beatnik, “I can jump.”

And he did.

Right over a twin-burst of nuclear fire that the Nuke of Earl sent his way.

The Beatnik landed, rolled, bounced up again, just missing another blast that burned a nasty track in the flooring.  It glowed like phosphorus.  He had to take care where he put his feet, but he didn’t know that he’d have the option of being that careful.  In a situation like that, every soldier knows, pet, the main objective is somethin’ besides seein’ you come out on the other side.

It was like a crazy ballet on pogo sticks, the way the Beatnik moved that night.  And we are not braggin’, pet, you understand, just informin’ you that this was the Beatnik’s command performance.  He had to jump, he had to leap to heights and in directions that would confound the Nuke, that would keep him from triggerin’ any of that nasty bad plutonian crap over the water.  Because that would have gone ahead and made the corpse-count inevitable.  On top of that, he had to try and keep the Nuke from knowin’ what he was doin’, or to make sure that he didn’t have a chance to blast in any other direction than what the Beatnik wanted him to take.

It was a tough order, pet.  But he managed.

Bouncin’, bouncin’, bouncin’ like the little ball over the lyrics in an old movie sing-along song.  Bouncin’ like the beat of a jazzman, when he knows what he got is righteous.  Bouncin’ like the beat of the heart, like the beat of the drum, like the pulsin’ of nerve jive from the brain tellin’ the body what to do, how to move, how to jump.

Bouncin’.

The city had never seen a display of movement like that before.  And the tragedy was, pet, that the city never saw it.

Nobody saw it but the performer and his audience.  A one-man show.  But Houdini once played his act to the one kid who showed up for a performance, pet, and Beamish would have done no less.  He did no less, pet.

It was the night of the Bouncing Beatnik.

And when the time was right, when the stars were aligned, the Beatnik made a leap across the floor, not away from the Nuke, but to him, yes indeed, pet, Pinky square, and yelled a yell like a karate guy would do, and lashed out with one foot and planted it right in the Nuke of Earl’s exposed face.

The guy went over on his ass, on his back, and skidded a long ways along the floor.

Man, but that felt good.

But it wasn’t enough.

The Nuke raised himself up on one elbow, pointed his hand, and blasted away.  His face was bloodied and he was not too pleased.  The Beatnik barely side-jumped the hell out of the way of the burst, which set a stretch of linoleum flooring on fire.  He leapt up to the ceiling, where a batch of exposed steel support beams were hangin’, and he crouched up there like a cat on a roof’s edge.

There was a big clock on one of the walls, large enough for him to sneak a glance at, and it was readin’ at less than five minutes to midnight.  The Nuke had to be keepin’ track of things, too.  And with him on the floor, and the Beatnik near the ceiling, there was, like, precious little to keep the Nuke away from his objective.

So the Beatnik said, “Geronimo!”, ‘cause there wasn’t really nothin’ left to say besides that, and launched himself off of that beam, flippin’ and twistin’ in the air to bring his legs and feet down in the right position, seein’ another burst of purple fire goin’ between his ankles as he fell, but gaugin’ things right, baby, estimatin’ ‘em right enough to come down right on the bad guy’s chest and knock him over like a spiffy new high-tech ash can.

The Nuke went WHUMP and hit hard on the concrete flooring, not gettin’ much protection from the linoleum and tile at all.  It didn’t look like he was going to get up any too soon, so the Beatnik hesitated just a moment, just a fraction of an instant, before doing his rebound jump.  That was fatal, pet.  Bad timing, as any jazzman will tell you, can wreck a whole set in an instant.

In that instant, the Nuke reached out, grabbed him by the ankle, and poured on the purple hell.

Do you expect a description?  Do you really want to know what that was like?  You do not, pet, and I cannot provide it.  It was pure-dee, crud-flamin’ agony, the Devil’s pitchfork rammed through the Beatnik’s ankle and takin’ a guided tour of his whole body.  His vision blanked out for a minute and what he saw looked like a stuck slide of film burnin’ up in a projector.  His body...he could smell it, pet.  He could smell it burn.

He could hear himself scream.

The pain.  My God, the pain.

There are some things, pet...there are some things best left behind the veil.

It probably didn’t last for more than three seconds.  But the Beatnik flopped flat on his back, eyes open and glazed like the corpse of Johnny Ringo.  I couldn’t even testify that his chest was goin’ up and down, up and down.  Most likely, it’d just forgotten how to.

The Nuke was more than a bit worse for wear, himself.  He was havin’ a bummer of a time draggin’ his armored backbehind off of the floor.  But he did it.  The waters of the filtration system weren’t fifty feet away.  He had to drag one leg, but he was determined.  He was gonna make that anniversary date, and there was, like, no man who could stop him.

Except one.

Maybe the Beatnik was right.  Maybe Mother Nature had given him a gift, because there sure didn’t seem any way human that he could flutter his eyelids a few seconds later, that his lungs could start pumpin’ again, that he could feel his left ankle and leg hurtin’ like a regular bitch anna half.

He could hear again.  He could hear the Nuke of Earl gaspin’, taking one step at a time, draggin’ himself over to the waters.  The Nuke couldn’t be that far.

The Beatnik sure as hell didn’t know how much of the old system was still operational.  One leg was completely out of it, even if he could manage to get up.  He’d have to do this on one wing and a prayer, like the wartime song said it.  If he could even manage to do that.

But his thoughts went to Kerouac.  Yeah.  Jack Kerouac, and how he was proud of having served.  How he’d done his duty, and then went on to do the things that made him a hero.  To Beamish, and to all the righteous Beats from that day to this.

Funny how you can pull out a bit of incongruous inspiration at times like those.  But it ain’t so funny after all, is it, pet?  Anything that can get your butt off the floor, anything that can make you work again, anything that can get you fighting, that has to be righteous.  No matter what it was.

And if it was just the memory of Jack and Dean racin’ each other across America almost twenty years before that night, well, that’d do and then some.

Somehow, the nerves and muscles seemed to connect with each other again. Somehow, the Beatnik got himself up to a sitting position, then braced himself with both hands on the floor and his bum leg at least curled where it couldn’t do no harm, and his good leg–-or, at least, the one that wasn’t so bad—bent and ready as it could be to do the job.

The Nuke was about ten feet away from the water.

One leg would have to do.

The Beatnik let the music play one more time in his mind.

And then he jumped.

One leg.  Just one.  Not as accurate as he would have hoped, not as strong as he would have hoped.  Nowhere near a 9.8 on a scale of 10, let me tell you.

But he came down on the back of the Nuke of Earl just as the bad cat had his hands upraised to plunge ‘em into the aqua.  And he grabbed both those purple-flamin’ fists about the wrists, gettin’ another dose of poison and pain, while his knees came down in the back of that cat and slammed his face into the concrete retaining wall around the waters and busted the cat’s jaw and laid him out colder’n Alaska.

The Beatnik had to pull him backwards, so that he wouldn’t fall into the water.  He had to hold on to the cat’s sparkin’ wrists and keep his knees in the Nuke’s back and fall backward onto the concrete floor, with the armored dude whumping on top of him, and barely managing to knee him off his body.  The Nuke of Earl rolled over, face down.  He was not getting up, anytime soon.

The Beatnik was lying face up.  He figured maybe that made him the winner.   He could also hear the waters, bubblin’ sweet as they passed through the filters.

Then there was blessed darkness.
 
 
 
 
 

The Beatnik was not sure what religious scenario he would awaken to, if and when he awakened.  Yeah, he had sins, pet, believe it.  But he figured, in his last conscious moments, that the gig he’d played in the waterworks had probably set those debts to rest, even if his other sessions as the Beatnik weren’t added to the ledger as well.

It was a pleasant thing to know that the first thing he’d open his eyes to in Heaven was Misty’s face.

She said, “He’s awake.  Look, everybody, he’s awake!  Hot damn!” She was smiling unbelievably when she said it, and starting to recry too, from the wet tracks she’d already irrigated her face with.  She was holding the Beatnik’s hand.

He managed to say, “Watch your language, baby,” and squeezed her hand, too, a bit feebly.  She hugged him as tight as your average anaconda, say.  And he wondered what percentage of his body was still his, and who everybody was that was supposed to know he was awake.

Well, the next face he saw was a familiar one, and it was smiling, too, in strength.  The Gentleman said, “Welcome back, Beatnik. Glad you’re still on this side of the street.”  He took the Beatnik’s other hand, and shook it.  “You won.  You saved the city.”

“Is he awake yet?” some woman said, and somebody else said, “Looks like it.”  Before you knew it, there were other faces around him as well.  Max O’Millions, in that funky little black eyemask of his.  Starwoman, smilin’ down underneath that big beehive hairdo she wore.  Cleopatra, in her Egyptian headdress.  Leopardman and Kitkat.  The N-Forcer.

And even, though it was the last time he saw him, pet, even the Silver Agent.

The Honor Guard was standing around the Beatnik’s hospital bed like an Army unit checkin’ out a wounded brother at a V.A. ward.  Which is not a bad analogy at all.

The Beatnik managed to get an arm up and stroke Misty’s hair.  He saw that his hands were bandaged but good, and his leg was too, and numb to boot.  There were a couple of drip-feeds along both sides of his bed.  If he’d gotten out of this one, pet, he hadn’t gotten out unwounded.

“Misty,” he said.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it back on time.”

She choked back another flood and said, “You did just fine, baby.  You did everything just...fine.”

The Beatnik looked up at the Guardsmen.  “I hope...your gig went okay too,” he said.

The Silver Agent said, “It did, Beatnik.  But without you here, we wouldn’t have had a city to come back to.  On behalf of myself, and the Honor Guard, and all of Astro...thank you.  You served honorably.”

Would it be too sentimental, pet, to say that the Beatnik had to try about half a minute to get the next syllable out?  And all it was, was “Uhm.”

Cleopatra spoke up and said, “The police broke in about eight after midnight.  They found both of you there, got you to a hospital, got him in lockdown, and were told by the doctors that you wouldn’t make it through the next 48 hours.  The mayor managed to get in touch with us.  Starwoman and I proved them wrong.”

“Oh, man,” the Beatnik managed to say. “You ladies...you ladies saved my life.”  He held out his bandaged mitt, and both Cleo and Star took it in turn and shook it, kind of easy-like.  Then the Beatnik’s eyes went in another direction.  “Physically, I mean,” he said. “Spiritually, it was this other woman who saved me.”

He was still holding Misty’s hand, and she put it up against her wet cheek then.  He could feel the wetness right through the bandages.

“The docs say you’ll make a full recovery, thanks to Cleopatra’s magic and Starwoman’s science,” said Max.  “But...well...”

“Let me say it, Max,” the Gentleman cut in.  “What he means, Beatnik, is that...your leg is a bit weakened where the Nuke of Earl grasped it.   You’ll be able to walk, to run, to function normally with it.  But as for super-normally...”

“Let me guess,” the Beatnik said. “For this beat, there ain’t gonna be no more bounce.”

The Gentleman breathed out, kind of softly, and then nodded his head.  He looked sad.

“The Nuke isn’t dead?”

“No,” said the Gent.  “He’s in a super-security cell.  His life expectancy isn’t too long, for whatever that’s worth.  The next time we see him, he’ll be in state.”

“Which is where over a million people would be, if you hadn’t been there, Beatnik,” said Starwoman.  “You are one valiant Earthman. Our thanks, again.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the Beatnik.  “It was a good gig.”

Then he went back to sleep.

That was the way it was for the next couple of weeks.  He’d wake up, and Misty would be there, with some new faces.  He’d say hi, and try to eat, and go back to sleep while the body did what a body has to do, under the circumstances.  Mom and Dad were there once, and that made him glad.  The mayor was there, too, and the Beatnik managed to fall asleep pretty quickly listening to him.

And then there was one other face he saw, and there didn’t seem to be anybody else in the room.  It was at night, so it could possibly have been a dream, pet.  Couldn’t testify to that.  But it seemed like...well, it was like unto this.

The man with the other face stepped up to the bed, said, “I don’t have a lot of time.  Just passing through.  They told me what you did.  You did good.”  Then he stuck out his hand, and didn’t leave until the Beatnik had shook it.  The door closed behnd the man, and he never saw him again.  In three dimensions, that is.

Because in two dimensions, pet, it seemed that he had seen that cat a whole lot of times.

It was on the back of a battered dust jacket on a book all about two cats who, one fine and furious year not so long ago in the scheme of things, took it on the road.

So what happened after that?

Well, first things came first, which was that Beamish and Misty got married, about as soon as he could crutch it up to the city hall with her to do the deed.  The city had, in its gratitude, given him enough of a reward for bringing in the Nuke to pay for a ring, and some rent, and some new instruments for some of the band and repair work on others.  There was also a bit of bread left over after that.

They used it to buy an old bus.

It took a bit of persuasion, and at least one personnel change while they were still in Astro.  But in the end, as they say, the bus pulled out with a band on it, and all the musical stuff in the back. And Misty, as well.

Beamish and his boys were, at last, on the road.

They made it work, too.  Found places to play, found people to listen to them, wound up cutting some sides, did all right for themselves.  Jazz is not as big as rock, pet, to be certain, not even as big as country, but it does all right for itself.  People listen.  As long as there are people like Beamish playing it, they listen.

Sometimes, they listen when I play it, too.

The Beatnik...well, his time was over.  There were other changes in the wind, other boats floatin’ in the harbor, each breeze blowin’ an old fleet out and a different fleet in.  So he left the crimefighting to the heroes of Astro City, and they were much obliged to him.  Sometimes he sees them, for old times’ sake, when he comes back for a gig there.  Sometimes he’s pretty sure he sees them in the audience.

But maybe the time of the Beats isn’t quite over.  Or if it is, what of it?  As long as we carry a bit of it with us, pet.  As long as we know what it is that makes us individual, and different from the norm, and makes us poets and painters and music fiends and people who, every now and then, get out on the road and howl.

Yeah.

Oh, now, pet, are you getting suspicious?  It’s true I favor this leg a bit, but it’s possible I got it slippin’ down the stairs the wrong way.  And I do play piano, pet, you bet I do.  But there are lots of cats what do that.  Lots of ‘em to do that after we’re both long gone.

What’s my wife’s name?

Come on, pet.  Lots of women are named that.

I hope you got what you were looking for.  Or at least close enough for what you wanted.   Did you, pet?  That’s good.  Solid, in fact.  You take care.  You have one more on me, okay?  Just for me.  And the Beatnik.  And the Beats.

Time for me to get back on.  Nice talking to you.

Hey.  Welcome back!  Got a second set to play tonight, so now that Louie’s gotten back from the men’s room, let’s see if we can get it.  Okay, boys, together.

On the beat.

On the bounce.

Yeah...

 *****

This one’s for Kurt, plus Jack, Allen, Dean, and all the ones who remember them, and all the ones who will learn of them in days to come.  So much for that.

 *****

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