Krypton's Finest

Kal sat in his car waiting for the crew to arrive. With the music off and the air conditioning on, he could pretend he was far away from Miami. He watched his diamond shaped air freshener with its square jawed hero flying on it. The blue eyes looking at Kal with pride, because the boy who took his name had grown up to be strong and proud. Kal smiled back at his hero and got out of the car to greet his crew.

He nodded at the old hands and shook with the new guy. It was the kid's first day, an easy job just cleaning out a foreclosure. Kal gave the kid the foreclosure speech “Okay, we go through recording everything in the house. Any valuables get tagged and bagged. Lock it down tight, all in any bodies, run off any squatters. We clear?”

The kid gave a cocky stare that left Kal unimpressed. Kal stared back. “Let’s do this.”

Walking in was easy, nothing smelled of bodies and the house had been well-kept. He was always amazed at houses like this one. A few toys on the floor, dishes in the rack. It looked like they had just walked out. But sometimes the family thought that they could talk to the bank, cut a deal. Pretending that everything was fine. Right up until the sheriff locked the doors. He heard a scurrying upstairs. “Damn, rats.”

He would send the new kid up. The first time the boy ran into a roomful of rats he would lose that cocky stare of his. So he sent him up and waited. “Kal! You need to see this.”

Something in the boy’s voice told Kal that it wasn’t rats. He found the boy in the upstairs room. A little girl was holding a stuffed dog and looking at them. Kal hoped she has lost but knew that she wasn’t. It was the thing that he dreaded everyday, he preferred finding bodies to finding this—he found a family.

Kal spoke softly, “Where’s your mamma, little girl?”

“Mommy went to find a job so we can move home!” the little girl spread her arms to show off the house like it was a mansion. “She’s going to get a job and find my daddy, and he will live with us. We are going to have lights and TV and everything!”

“That sounds wonderful. She sounds like a good mommy; has she been gone a long time?”

A high pitched screeching voice came from behind the men. “What are you doing here? Get away from my daughter!”

She was a small woman who was a perfect grown copy of the child. “Momma's here baby,” she hugged the child hard and began rocking with her.

Kal knelt down beside the woman, “Lady, you ain’t supposed to be here. This house belongs to the bank.”

“This is our house. I can get a job, pay them.”

He shook his head, "We are going to go but I have to come back in twenty-four hours and do my job. If you are still here I will bring the sheriff; and they will escort you and her off the premises. Please don’t make me do that.”

When he stood, the other men had left the room. Kal found them bringing in their lunch boxes and setting them in the kitchen. Each man would set down his box somberly on the counter and walk out, leaving what food they had brought with them.

The new guy was standing by Kal’s car. “Are we really going to call the cops on a little kid?”

“That’s our job, if we don’t do it they will find someone who will. So it’s them or us.”

Kal got in his car and stared at his flying hero. “It’s them or us, right? I have to do it.”

The blue eyes stared back. They weren’t filled with pride now. Was that a scornful smile? Kal grabbed the air freshener pulling it and the mirror off the windshield. He didn’t notice a broken mirror was worth it. As long as his hero would stop looking at him like that.

“It’s them or me, right?”

-0-

The lights were off in Kal’s bedroom as he stared into the dark. As dark as it was he could still see the hope in the little girl’s eyes and the utter lack of it in her mother’s. The stereo playing couldn’t drown out his mother’s Jamaican lilt, “Kal, were you the best that you could be today?”

Normally when he heard her ask him that question he could smile and nod at the memory. But today he couldn’t, he knew why. He put on jeans and a T-shirt, then grabbed his keys.

The boarded up house waited for him, a shadow filled reminder of his days failure. “Lady, are you here? I know some place that you can go. I have a job for you. Please lady, where are you?”

Only the shadows answered, their silence told him what he needed to know.

The End