An Open Letter to Captain America.
Dear Cap,
I’m not completely sure what the appropriate salutation is, when you’re addressing a letter to a super-hero. The address itself needs some help…the truth is, I don’t know if you have one. I thought I should at least specify a state or something, so I shut my eyes over an atlas and picked Ohio – but my brother said I was being a nincompoop. How could anyone, or anything like you come from Cincinnati?
I closed the atlas and then my eyes again, and then it hit me – Washington DC. Of course! I asked my brother what he thought, but he’d already gone out to play. (He’s big on sports, and not wholly convinced that creatures like you exist.)
So I wandered into the backyard because we’ve got one, and asked my parents if it was a good idea to address a letter to you via Washington DC. They said probably. I went a step further and suggested maybe trying the White House as well, then they said I was being a nincompoop. I’ve decided the envelope’s just going to say ‘Captain America’, and I’ll spend the rest of the month hoping for the best. You can probably tell how nervous I am, whether or not those are super-powers you’ve got.
I don’t think anybody believes me yet. Ever since that August afternoon ten years ago (almost exactly ten years ago! – I’m calling it our tenth anniversary), other people have engineered pleasure from telling the story for me. Complete strangers; passers-by who weren’t even there; ordinary folks who don’t believe in genetically altered human beings.
My brother’s willing to accept, just for a little while and for argument’s sake, that there are such things as super-heroes, “but what would any of them want in the middle of Africa?” My parents think I’ve got a vivid imagination, one I should turn into a writing career one day, but with fewer semi-colons. The dozen or so eye-witnesses who saw you save my life, I bet they had to have surgery just to convince themselves they weren’t dreaming – some say it’s possible you were an angel (that’s done some great business for a few of the churches), and others… they just can’t find the words, and swear they never will. I must say it’s not entirely possible to differ with either side.
I may never fully believe it myself, is really what I’m saying. I still barely believe, or not really, the way the accident happened – how quickly it happened and where it happened. I was gazing out the window at a life I wasn’t living, far beyond the clouds, far away from the bus-driver’s blaring radio. Suddenly it was mine; what I can describe, near perfectly, is the mixture of fear and excitement I felt as the bus capsized, after the partial collision with the truck and the man in the SUV. I was sat right at the back, enslaved mentally by the routine of attending class and going back home everyday, then in an instant my window was on the tar, my face was on the window, my heart was in my mouth… We’re a bit unsure what to make of death in Africa, because life is a constant executioner all on its own.
The bus spun once and regained stability, in a sense, but the driver had lost control. Here I am, recounting all this, and yet obviously you had the best view of all. We were headed for a wall, we were a literal speeding bullet with a fire spreading towards us from the bus’s bonnet – just me, the driver, and a couple of other guys. News reports were cautious about reporting the incident as gospel truth, but apparently your shield came out of nowhere. It split the engine in two, ‘cause its constitution is of some super-alloy, and it travelled along like it owned the air, ‘cause it does whatever you want it to.
I barely believe the round dent your shield made in the bus’s roof, to absorb your entry. I barely believe how flawlessly you came tumbling in, and back then, in the moment, I barely believed the colours of you, right there in that miniature hell. I remember being the last one out, if this memory is made of anything real. You offered me your hand, and I hesitated, and we were surrounded by flames. If you really were the Grim Reaper, you were shinier, prettier even, than I expected.
Fleeing that bus-wreck, I felt just as though I was being lifted into the glow of the afterlife, cradled in a flag.
I woke up in the backseat of a taxi, to a crowd of curious eyes, to a world that largely had no clue who or what Captain America was.
I hope to dream of nothing else, every night before sleep captures me. I try recreating almost dying that day, or perhaps actually dying, ‘cause somehow I think I did… but then an ocean wave that’s your red, white and blue washes ashore, and everything’s left to my fertile imagination again. Honestly? It’s never bored me this definitively, my fertile imagination.
I’ve done some digging around, read everything there is to read. Artists never quite get a hold of how brightly you shine, but your balance and your grace – it’s all there. The writers say you’re torn two ways inside, just like your country, which I could never have guessed just from looking at you.
Your Wikipedia page is epic, and sprawls about as far down as any politician’s or president’s. I wonder what ever happened to Bucky, to Hawkeye, and I wonder what it does to you, not having them by your side. I daydream about learning the ropes from you when we meet again; I could take up the shield and the suit, whenever you feel you need to take a break – just like Bucky did. My brother often walks in on my reverie, and bursts my bubble by saying I’m going to need a green card first.
Forensic investigators said they had conclusive evidence you were dead. But somebody with a story just like mine said she saw your shield someplace.
Your Biggest Fan,
Steve.
HEADLINE! A report on iMDb suggests a movie entitled ‘The First Avenger: Captain America’ is headed to the big-screen for a July 22nd release in 2011! Joe Johnston – Jumanji, Jurassic Park3, The Pagemaster – is being ear-marked to direct; ear-marked to play the man in the stripes are Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles, Chris Pine, and, yes, Will Smith! (Marvel Comics themselves are said to be keen on Leonardo di Caprio ,even though he’s on the record as verbally shying away from grown men-in-tights movies.) Johnston’s just wrapped up filming The Wolf Man, slated for release this November. Phwoar!’s take on this whole situation? AT LONG LAST!!!
