Chapter
Four
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Archie continued to give Warden and Mentalon little tests and exercises. Archie was silly at times, though; for a while he actually acted like Warden could do the things that Mentalon did. It made Warden uncomfortable. All of that belonged to Mentalon; he was just Warden, after all.
Eventually, Archie realized his mistake and stopped behaving like Warden had access to the powers, too. He told Warden never to sell himself short, however, and then, for some odd reason, asked if Warden had ever seen a movie called Dumbo. Warden, of course, hadn’t. Archie said he was amazed that there was a kid in America who hadn’t seen all the Disney movies. A moment later Warden asked what exactly this “Disney” was he spoke of.
“Mickey Mouse? Donald Duck? Bambi? Anything here ring a bell?”
Warden shook his head.
“You’ve never heard of Mickey Mouse,” Archie stated. After a second, Archie’s perplexed expression at how the Disney marketing machine had missed an American child was replaced by one more sympathetic. “Your folks were sick a lot of the time, weren’t they?” he asked.
Warden just nodded.
“Come on. You have a lot of catching up to do.”
Archie took him upstairs to a room that Warden had never been allowed into before. It must have been Archie’s. It was cluttered and filled with junk; papers, books, mementoes, pictures. Archie had evidently gone to great pains to maintain the rest of the mansion just as it had been when Winchester had owned it, and this was the one room where Archie felt free to assert himself. Whereas the rest of the mansion was a museum of tasteful, elegant decorating, this room was a jumbled collision of rumpled, packrat functionality and staid, middle-class practicality. The effect of moving into the room from the hallway was whiplash inducing—from high class into low camp. In this room, potboiler detective novels, dog-eared cook books, MAD Magazines, Conrad, Melville and psychology texts all shared space on a night stand that threatened to tip over from the shear weight of the accumulated, eclectic interests heaped upon it.
Archie sat on the bedroom floor in front of a huge, old steamer trunk at the foot of his bed (a bed which housekeeping insisted on making every day, much to Archie’s quiet consternation). The trunk opened with a creak and Archie began rummaging through it. “It should still be in here,” he mumbled.
As Archie searched, Warden wandered over to the dresser. Sitting next to a framed autographed picture of Betty Page made out to the Red Knight was a large class portrait of about fifty young men in police uniforms under a banner that said.... well, it said something, but Warden certainly didn’t know what, aside from the number 1937.
Warden picked it up and studied it carefully. It didn’t take long for him to pick out Archie’s sly grin on one of the young men’s faces.
“You were a policeman?” Warden asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Long time ago,” Archie replied, still looking through the trunk. “And it didn’t last.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say they considered me an iconoclast.”
Warden was quiet for a moment. “What does ‘iconoclast’ mean?” he asked.
Archie defined it. “Jerk.”
Warden smiled and put the picture down, but continued to look at it intently, hoping that through pure dint of will the words on the banner would become meaningful to him.
“I wouldn’t have traded the time I spent as a cop for anything, though,” Archie said. “Even made detective. For about a week. Hey! I forgot about this!” Archie pulled out a 12-inch action figure of the Red Knight. He pushed a button on the back and the sword lit up. “Batteries still work. Not bad,” he murmured as he handed it to an impressed Warden who had never seen a toy so extravagant. A little intimidated, he set it down carefully on the growing pile of stuff Archie was making beside the chest.
“Superpowered zippidy-do is all hunky-dory,” Archie continued, “but it’s just a tool; one of many if you’re smart. You can’t let a few impressive powers become a crutch. If you let your flashy whiz-bang define you, then you’ll have nothing of your own when the whiz-bang cuts out. And trust me, sooner or latter, the whiz-bang always cuts out, if only for a little while. Besides,” Archie said with a dry chuckle, “it’s always good to have something to fall back on if the world suddenly decides it doesn’t want superheroes, after all.”
Warden had often thought very much the same thing. Mentalon was exciting and all, but Warden wanted to contribute in some way, too. “I bet it’s neat being a detective. Knowing how to figure crimes out and stuff.”
“You just have to know the right questions to ask and how to get the answers; not just from people, either, but from places, things and situations,” Archie said. “A detective just listens to what all of those things have to say and separates the truth from the chit-chat. It’s a little bit like the psychic stuff. As Mentalon, you can feel the lingering psychic vibrations at a crime scene and know what happened, while a detective can form the very same picture by putting clues together and knowing how to look at them. And, I’ll tell you what; the best detective in the world can walk into a room and know more about what’s gone on inside it than a psi can.”
“Really?” Warden asked.
“You wouldn’t ask if you’d met the guy.”
“Who?”
“The best detective in the world. Pay attention, son.”
The best detective in the world. The idea tugged at Warden. “Is he in the JLA?”
“Nope. He’s just a dodgy old beekeeper who lives in Sussex. Lex Luthor knew him from his military intelligence days during World War II and recommended him to me when I was putting together a few people to help fight....” Archie then paused for a moment, his expression suddenly darkening considerably. “…something awful.” Archie pulled out some photo albums out of the trunk and set them down roughly, with angry thuds, his demeanor now completely different.
Warden flashed on the vivid image he’d seen in Archie’s mind: The leering, white plastic face and comical, multi-hued suit that even The Joker would find garish. Warden wanted to ask, but didn’t.
The room was silent for a minute or so, punctuated by Archie dropping bits of the trunk’s contents on the floor beside him.
“Finally,” Archie said, voice brightening again. “I knew it was in here.” He pulled out a medium-sized motion picture film canister and handed it to Warden. “It’s not Dumbo, which--trust me--you really need to see, but it’s the best I can do on short notice.”
The can was heavy. There was a strip of tape on the side of the canister with words written on it in faded blue ink. He looked at Archie, uncertain how to react.
Archie stood up and took the film can back. He looked at Warden. “It’s a cartoon. Mickey Mouse, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Warden said unconvincingly.
Archie peered at him. “No, no, no, no. You have a better memory than that.”
Archie walked over to the dresser and picked up the photograph that Warden had been looking at earlier. He showed to him again. “Can you tell me what the banner says?”
Warden looked down at his shoes.
Archie put
the photo down and sighed. “I guess we’ll be bringing that tutor in sooner than
I thought. Okay, tonight we start catching you up with prime American kiddy
culture and tomorrow we start catching you up on as many r’s as necessary.
Deal?”
Warden nodded.
Archie took Warden to a small screening room on the mansion’s first floor and they watched Mickey Mouse brave the beanstalk and defeat the giant. Afterward, as the house lights came up and the sound of the projector rewinding hummed behind them, Archie told Warden, “Okay, now *that’s* Disney. There will be a quiz, so pay attention.”
“Really?” Warden asked, a little apprehensive.
“No.” Archie looked at Warden. “Tell me; do they have humor in Kentucky?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Goodwin.”
Archie opened his mouth to say something but stopped himself. “Okay, another thing you have to learn is what a straight man is, and why being one is to be avoided. I’ll ask the tutor to work that into the syllabus. So, what did you think of the show, anyway?”
“It was kind of funny. I think I understand Jimmy a little better now, too.”
“Same kind of thing, yeah. Actually my favorites are put out by a movie company called Warner Brothers, but Annette was always partial to the mouse, so what can you do?” Archie then explained how Annette loved all animation. In fact, she could enjoy cartoons in ways she couldn’t enjoy movies and plays--being a telepath and an empath for too long had spoiled them for her. On the stage, the actors were always transparent to her, their displayed emotions counterfeit and hollow. Movies were slightly better, but a lifetime of experience feeling other people’s emotions and linking them to their expressions and body language, rendered it impossible for Annette to see anything on the screen but the glaring artifice. Animation, however, was completely divorced from such concerns. It was just as vibrant and alive, but there was nothing to shatter the illusion.
Afterward, Archie left Warden with Elaine, the maid, so she could properly mother him as usual. Archie then spent a few hours in the library going over some of Jonathan’s old case files, immaculately typed and filed in a large brown leather case. With the way Warden’s eyes had lit up when they’d talked about detectives, Archie suspected that Warden might get a kick out of some of them.
Without even noticing, Archie no longer thought of him as “the kid.” He now thought of him as Warden.
Chapter Five: “Common Sense”
But he was still just a boy; a boy who’d had to act like a grown up for most of his life. Archie knew Warden didn’t deserve this and, more importantly, that sooner or later he would decide he’d been patient for long enough.