The Book of Lies

42

Ring it again,” my dad says impatiently. The words come out in plumes of vapor.

I press the buzzer and put my ear to the frozen metal screen door. I don’t hear anything from inside, including the doorbell. I shouldn’t be surprised. The way the front porch is slanted and the overhead light is cracked, this place has more problems than just some peeling blue paint.

“C’mon! Anyone there!?” My father raps the door with his fist, clearly freezing as he hops up and down. His coat is on Serena, who’s rubbing his back as he settles into calm. I keep checking the length of the block, searching for arriving cars. Ellis . . . Naomi . . . neither of them is stupid. Each minute we’re standing out here . . .

“Easy, easy—I’m coming,” a man’s voice calls from inside.

Serena steps back, almost as if she’s checking that we’re in the right place. There’s no doubt about that. To the left of the door, the front windows that face the porch are filled with sun-faded posters and cards of Superman. A handwritten sign on a sheet of loose-leaf paper says, “Superman’s House!!!”

Serena stares at the sign. My brain flashes to the gun that shot my dad. What the hell does this all have to do with Superman?

The door swings open and an older black man with a Mr. Rogers sweater pokes his head out, careful to keep the cold from seeping in.

“Who is it?” a female voice calls out from deeper inside the house.

“Dunno,” the man calls back, eyeing me and my dad. Then he spots Serena. “I know you?” he asks her.

Like a turtle, Serena shrinks into the shell of her winter coat. “I—I don’t think so.”

“Man, you look familiar,” he adds, and just as quickly shakes it off. Turning back to my dad, he asks, “Where’s your coat? What you want?”

“We . . . er . . . we wanted to see if you . . . y’know . . . we found your address . . . on a comic,” my dad blurts.

The man rolls his eyes. “Oh, man—white boys in the ghetto—you’re fans, ain’t ya?”

“Yeah. Huge fans,” I jump in, determined to get some info. “Why? You get a lot of us?”

“Naw, just here and there. Comes with the house,” he says. “So. Again. What you want?”

I wait for Serena to maybe jump in and charm, but she’s still a turtle in her coat.

“I know this sounds crazy,” I begin, “but y’ever go somewhere and feel like you were just meant to be there?”

“Hoooo, you’re those kinda fans, ain’t ya?”

“We came really far,” I plead.

“How far? Shaker Heights?”

“Florida,” my dad says, bouncing lightly and reminding our host just how cold it is with no coat. “I was tan when I got here.”

It’s just enough of a bad joke to make the man laugh. “Aw, you’re lucky I got a sister in Jacksonville,” he says as he opens the door, shuffling back and revealing the checkerboard pajamas he’s wearing under his sweater. “Shoes over there,” he adds, pointing to a pile of old boots in the corner. “Wife’s request; not mine.”

We nod thankfully, then add our shoes to the pile and hand him our jackets, which he layers on top of an old coatrack. “If ya want, I can hang the backpack, too,” he offers, taking a double take on me. “Man, all that white hair—I thought you were old at first. Like me,” he says. “You get that a lot?”

“Sometimes,” I tell him.

“You should get it more,” he insists. “White hair’s mysterious.”

“He’s very mysterious,” Serena blurts, meaning every word.

The man doesn’t care. “Anyhow, your backpack . . .”

“I’m fine holding it,” I say, sliding it onto my back and getting my first good look at the house, which is centered around a main hallway with three side-by-side sofas running along the right-hand wall and an old, thick, projection-style TV on the left, just next to the stairs.

“Introduce yourself, Johnsel!” a woman scolds from the kitchen.

“Sorry,” the older man says, extending a hand. “Heyden Johnsel.”

“And Vivian,” adds an overweight black woman in a Cleveland Browns apron, entering the hallway with a surprising elegance. She reaches into her shirt and from inside her bra pulls out a tissue and dabs her eyes. “Not real crying—just onion chopping,” she promises, as if having three strangers in her house is just part of her daily life. But as I look around, I realize it is.

The far wall is covered from floor to ceiling with pictures, drawings, needlepoint, shelves with candles, even a wall calendar with Jesus on it, and in nearly every one, Jesus is pictured as black. It’s the same in the administrative offices of the shelters and churches we work with. True believers are always the most likely to take in weary travelers.

“So apparently, back in the twenties, this’s the room where the whole family used to gather round the radio,” Johnsel says, pointing to where the TV is and heading toward the worn stairs. “Though I assume you’re really here to see the bedroom, huh? In the attic?”

We all three smile and nod. “Absolutely,” I say.

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?” Johnsel asks, stopping on the first step.

None of us move.

“D’ya even know where you are? This is the old Siegel house— sacred ground—where young Jerry Siegel created Superman.”

“No, that we know,” my dad says, though I can’t tell if it’s the truth. As always, he’s a half-step ahead. And it’s the kind of half-step that’s getting impossible to ignore. “We’d love to see the bedroom,” he says.

Johnsel grins and shrugs. “Hoooo. Fine by me.” He’s in his pajamas at four-thirty. He’s just thrilled to have an audience.

In a slow spiral, he leads us to the second floor, then around to a shaky set of stairs that lead up to the third. The higher we go, I swear, the narrower the stairway gets—and with each shoeless step, the uncarpeted wooden stairs creak and scream far more than I’m comfortable with.

“Don’t worry, it’ll hold our weight,” Johnsel promises.

I grab for the banister and realize there isn’t one.

“Okay, now, here’s what people make the fuss about,” Johnsel says as he reaches the third-floor landing and extends his hand palm up like a model on a game show.

I crane my neck to peek over Johnsel’s shoulder. I’m not from money. I live in a converted motel room. But even by my standards, the small finished bedroom is a wrecking ball of a room, filled with pile after pile of milk crates, plastic bins, and old furniture. The entire back wall is hidden by mini-skyscrapers of paperback books—all with titles like Elijah and King of Kings. Up top, huge hunks of the slanted plaster ceiling are cracked and missing, revealing the old wooden slats underneath.

“Hoooo—it’s definitely seen better days,” Johnsel admits. “But like they say, you gotta sorta imagine: This was it . . . the exact spot where a teenage kid was lying awake in bed one rainy summer night and came up with a hero who could fly above all the world’s problems. Can ya imagine: one sweaty night to change your whole life?”

I don’t have to turn around to know my dad’s watching me.

“What about Jerry’s father?” Serena interrupts, sounding far more interested than I expected. “Any idea how he died?”

“I thought it was . . . maybe a heart attack?” Johnsel guesses. I don’t bother correcting him. “I think Jerry was in high school.”

“Is that when he made this?” I ask, realizing it’s time to show some cards. From my backpack, I pull out the wax-paper protective sleeve that holds Action Comics #1. Johnsel takes an excited step toward me. I take a step to the left, stealing a quick peek out the double-square windows that overlook the front yard. They’re so thick with dust, I can barely see out.

“That’s— Hoooo— Where’d you get an attic copy?” Johnsel asks.

“A what?” I ask.

“Those copies—with the—” He glances down at the typed message on the wax paper. “And you got one with an address,” he says. “Hoooo, this’s— You know what this’s worth?”

My father shakes his head.

“Last I heard, when the movie came out . . . something like 1.2 million,” Johnsel says.

“Million?” my dad and Serena ask simultaneously.

I stay silent.

“Cal, maybe we were wrong,” my dad says. “Maybe it’s the comic that they wanted instead of the—” He cuts himself off, watching me carefully.

“You knew,” he adds. “You knew how much it was worth.”

He’s right. I had Roosevelt look it up before we left.

“Why didn’t you say something?” my dad asks.

Again, I’m silent.

“What? You thought I’d swipe it from you? You really think I’m that much of an animal?”

For a moment, I close my eyes and try not to picture the fact that my dad knew about the coffin key. Or which block this house was on. Or that we should even come here in the first place.

“Let’s just focus on what’s important,” I tell my dad, and turn back to Johnsel. I hold up the comic. “Sorry, you were about to tell us what this is.”

“Already did: It’s an attic copy,” Johnsel replies. “Just like it sounds, one of his personal copies from the attic.” Seeing we’re lost, he quickly adds, “Action Comics Number 1 is the very first appearance of Superman. . . .”

“We gathered that part,” I tell him.

“Then you also know how rare they are. Less than a hundred copies still exist—and of those, most of them are beaten and torn, because back then, who knew to save them? Well, I’ll tell you who: the young kid who was so darn thrilled to see his creation in print.”

I stare at the tiny room with the torn-away ceiling and try to imagine the teenage boy sitting up in bed. “Jerry Siegel.”

“Why not, right? When each comic came out, the publisher used to send a few free copies to all the writers and artists who worked on it. Again, most would give ’em away or do whatever with ’em. Even Joe Shuster—the Superman artist and co-creator—never kept ’em.”

“But Jerry Siegel saved them.”

“He did save them—even preserved them in his own makeshift wax-paper sleeve. But more important—Jerry Siegel forgot them. In the attic. Within months, his new Superman idea took off, young Jerry finally got a bigger paycheck, and he eventually moved to New York to get closer to the action.”

“But the comics stayed here,” I surmise.

“With Jerry’s mother. The owners before me said they bought it from the Siegel family when his mom died in the early forties. Skip forward a few years later when they eventually start crawling through the attic, and look what’s there—tucked away where no one would find them—half a dozen pristine copies of some old Superman comic . . .”

“They didn’t even know what they found, did they?” my father asks.

“. . . which they quickly sold at a garage sale for something like a buck or two apiece, thereby scattering these attic editions back into the population—”

“And kicking off the ultimate geek gold rush for Jerry Siegel’s so-called personal copies,” I say, running my fingers across the melted edges of the wax paper and rereading the typed address in the bottom corner. I know it’s worth $1.2 million. And sure, people kill for much less than that. But that haunting look in Ellis’s eyes. All this talk of Cain. There’s still no way this is just about a comic.

Across from me, Johnsel rolls up the arms of his sweater and stares out the double-square windows. As if he’s looking for someone.

Oh, Lord. If he’s stalling us . . .

“I think we should go,” I insist.

“No,” my dad says. “This comic— The address said to come here.”

“Just what are you boys looking for?” Johnsel asks, confused.

“Mr. Johnsel, is this it back here?” a voice calls out behind us.

Following the question, we spin around to see Serena outside the room, standing at the landing at the top of the stairs. She’s got a single finger pointed upward.

“That’s the one,” Johnsel replies as we join her on the landing and raise our chins up toward the unfinished wooden square that’s set into the ceiling. I didn’t even see it at first. The entrance to the attic.

Serena keeps staring at it. “Think there’s anything left?” she asks.

“Hoooo—you’re dreaming big dreams now,” Johnsel says, laughing.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she teases, smart enough to keep it nice. “Maybe there’s something still up there.”

Again, Johnsel laughs. “It’s been over sixty years—plus all the people that picked through it before we got here. Trust me, there ain’t nothin’—”

“When was the last time you were up there?” Serena interrupts.

Johnsel cocks his head, confused. “When we first moved in. Why would I wanna go again?”

“Wait. Hold on,” I say. “You haven’t been up there since you first moved in? When was that?”

“Not that long. We came in . . .” He thinks for a moment. “1972.”

If I had water in my mouth, I’d do the full spit shot.

“Okay,” my dad says. “We need a ladder.”