Another Monday, another free story. Like the previous two, Carnival Park and Chinatown, this one is from is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

Old Heights
by Greg van Eekhout

Maybe he's a retired heavyweight who owns a cigar-stained Italian restaurant downtown and still spars with the kids when he runs his youth boxing camp. Or maybe he's a cowboy actor who exaggerates his Texas drawl when he does commercials for his Ford dealership. Possibly, he's an old news anchor who emcees the annual leukemia telethon and does a radio show early on Sunday mornings.

Every town has one, the old local celebrity who represents the people in a way an elected politician never could. Whoever he is, you can be sure he's a raconteur, that he's been entertaining people for as long as anyone can remember. People agree that he's simply the nicest guy in town, though there are some faded rumors about womanizing, and some drunk driving allegations. But those happened so long ago, and anyway, they somehow make him human and better loved.

Around here, for my generation, at least, that guy was the Green Thunder.

The Green Thunder was the grand marshal in the Settler's Day parade.

The Green Thunder visited kids in the hospital.

.The Green Thunder judged the Daffodil Queen pageant.

You remember that commercial campaign the city did? A guy throws his fast food garbage out his car window, and a kid walks up, and he stares at the garbage, and he stares at the trash can across the street, and the voice-over says, "What would the Green Thunder do?" I still think of that commercial every time I see litter in the street.

The Green Thunder once had his cape pressed at my dry cleaner shop. Dropped it off himself, paid cash, and when I asked him for an autograph, he gave me that billion-dollar grin and got out an 8x10 glossy. He signed it, To Sidney, My Dry Cleaning Hero. Thanks! Green Thunder. Drew a little thunder bolt and everything.

His dry cleaning hero? It was the first time he'd ever been to my shop, and I hadn't even pressed his cape yet. He didn't have to do that for me, but that's the kind of guy he was.

And, look, I'm not defending what he said to that reporter. It was dead wrong. I think he was just trying to be funny, and that's how people talked in the neighborhood when guys like Green Thunder and me were growing up. When it comes right down to it, didn't he help a lot of people, no matter who they were? He didn't care if you were black or white or yellow or green. If you needed help of any kind, the Green Thunder was there.

On the other hand, I understand why people got upset. My wife, she's Korean, and when we were driving cross-country on our honeymoon, some of the looks we used to get ...

I keep telling people the Green Thunder was more than a remark made in a moment of bad judgment. He was a real part of this city for a long time.

They say he and that reporter had some history between them. They'd been friends back in the old days but had a falling out of sorts. Something about a signal watch, something trivial.

Anyway.

It's just sad.

I was sweeping in front of my shop the day he left. I heard the boom, the bang, the sound of the sky ripping apart that people who grew up when and where I did had come to associate with hope, and I looked to the sky, and there he was. Not the fast streak of green across the morning blue. Just an old man, slowly passing out of view.

He wasn't even wearing his cape.

Some people get a little upset when they see his photo hanging on my wall. I've had once-loyal customers stop coming in because I won't take it down.

Heck, sometimes I want to take it down myself.

What's the right thing to do?

I don't know.

I don't know what the Green Thunder would do.

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Old Heights by Greg van Eekhout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.