1The Average Life of Steve Rogers
War broke out in 1941, and Steve Rogers saw it as his civic duty to serve his country. He volunteered for service in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, but no branch would have him. A ninety-pound asthmatic had no business in a war for the fate of the world.
After that, nothing. No chance meeting with a brilliant scientist. No super soldier serum. No extraordinary adventures, no time spent frozen, no costumed vigilantism. Not for him, and not for the world. The age of marvels never came, and he lived his life as a man. A good man, a better man than most, but simply a man.
This is the story of that life.
August 15, 1945, age 27:
He ducks into a bar off Madison Avenue in Midtown. Outside, the ticker tape rains like the tears of angels. Music blares from somewhere, big brass echoing down the steel canyons of Manhattan, mixing with the roar of the tremulous crowds. Alcohol is flowing inside and out, but at least he won't be trampled in the bar.
He gets a beer and a seat. He sets his portfolio in the seat next to him.
A minute later and she's there.
"Mind if I sit here?" she asks.
He looks at her. In later years, he'll recall her then, and remember how of all the women he'd ever met, he'd only seen unqualified beauty in her. In that moment, he has not the words to describe it, so he stammers and moves his portfolio, setting it on the bar top.
"Thanks," she says. She buys a drink herself and sips it. "Crazy day out."
"Yeah," he says, not sure what to do with that. "Victory. Never thought it'd come."
"Why not?" she says.
"I don't know. You get so used to a thing, it's almost like you can't imagine it stopping. To have it all done and through with, it's..." He shrugs, unsure how to continue.
In the silence, she points to his portfolio. "What's in that?"
"Nothing," he says.
"Ah, so it's an interesting nothing."
"I'm sorry?"
"People never mean nothing when they say nothing. There's something in there, so it isn't nothing. But the nothing you just nothinged isn't a boring nothing. You nothinged an interesting nothing."
"Is that so?" he says.
"It is. And I'd like to see the interesting nothing."
"Tell you what," he says, "I'll show you on one condition."
"Shoot."
"You let me buy that beer, and you tell me your name."
"That's two things," she says, cocking her head to the side. "Show me and you can buy the beer. If it's a real good nothing, I'll tell you my name."
He grins. "Deal."
Inside the portfolio is his artwork, process pencils for a comic book he has created. The character is red, white, and blue, a veritable hero for the allies.
"And what's his name?" she asks, pointing at the star-spangled drawing.
"Captain America," he says. "He's in all the newspapers."
"Yeah, on the pages I don't read." She looks at him, as if for the first time. "You do this for a living?"
"I do," he says. "That an interesting enough nothing?"
It is. He buys her beer. Her name is Bea Williamson.
September 10, 1959, age 41:
Most days he takes his work home, and it shows. The office is cluttered with sheets of drafting paper, ink pots, painting supplies, and blending rags. The ads practically paper the walls, dozens of brands from three different agencies—Coca Cola, Ford Motors, Mohawk Airlines, Hershey Chocolates. The tag lines are everywhere, too. He's surrounded by it. The curse of a freelancer.
But it pays well.
Owen runs in. The kid is eleven and he's interested in everything. Steve doesn't hear him enter, and the kid whacks an easel with his elbow. It tips, the canvas sliding. Steve whips around and grabs it before it falls.
"Damnit, son!" he says before he can stop himself. He goes to make amends but the kid is already crying.
He hears hell for it before dinner. Bea is at the stove when he finds her. "He's upstairs," she says.
"Ah hell, hun. I didn't mean to snap at him like that."
"I know," she says, in a way that communicates what a jerk he's been without needing to say it.
"I'm working too hard," he says, for her.
She chops at the meat with her wooden spoon, slicing it as it sizzles in the pan.
"I know I'm taking on more than I should, but I've gotta make up for it. I stuck in the funny papers too long."
Chop chop chop. Chop chop chop.
"Okay, okay. I'll talk to him."
He finds Owen with his sister, upstairs. He has a notepad and pencil in his hands.
"Wanna see something?" he says to his kids. They do. They gather and watch as he scribbles. He starts with an oval, then a second. His pencil moves on reflex, sketching shoulders and arms, muscles and fabric, stripes, a star, and a capital A over a smiling face.
"Who is he?" his daughter asks.
"He's Captain America," says Steve.
"What's he do?" she says, tugging at his knee.
Steve lifts her onto his leg as he finishes the drawing. "Lots of things. Mostly he fights evil by throwing his shield there. It's totally unbreakable."
"You came up with him?" his son says.
"Yep."
"Who is he?"
"He's Captain America."
"All the time?" his son says. "He doesn't have a real name?"
"No, son." Steve tore the drawing out of the notepad and passed it down to his boy. "He's just a made-up hero."
His son takes the drawing from his hand—an apology taken—and runs off to play. His daughter scurries down after him. Steve sits in their bedroom for a moment longer. He looks at their small beds, sitting on opposite ends of the room from one another. He thinks about the house, the mortgage, and how much he needs to get something better. Owen won't be 11 for long, and he can't keep living in the same room as his sister.
He looks back at the notepad. The outline of his old character is pressed into the paper. He shakes his head, grabs his notepad and pencil, and heads back downstairs to work.
July 20, 1969, age 51:
The TV flickers as the colorized news desk gives way to black and white images from the surface of another world. Neil Armstrong steps off the LEM and touches boots on the moon. He speaks words, but Steve doesn't register them. His daughter claps. She is twenty years old, home from her sophomore year at college. Bea is on her feet, arms folded behind her head, unable to believe what she's seeing.
Steve doesn't move from his chair. Owen is not there.
"This is incredible," his daughter says, over and over again. She hugs her mom. The TV keeps broadcasting history in the making.
The history goes on for some time. Apparently it can't be made quickly. The astronauts walk around a bit, set up a flag, take pictures. At one point, the president speaks with them via radio. His girls have gone to bed by this point, but he keeps watching. "Don't stay up too late," Bea tells him. He pats her hand on his chest, tells her he loves her.
The president tells the astronauts what heroes they are. He commends their efforts and the efforts of all of NASA, the American people, and he thanks the spirit of almighty God.
Steve's eyes leave the TV and settle on the folded flag on their mantle piece. It came with a note from the head of the army. He's never bothered reading it. He wonders if it invokes God and country. Probably does.
He turns off the TV and heads to his office. The house is bigger than the old one, and so is his office, but it still feels cramped. Ad slogans and print paintings drape everything. Old portfolios pile up on chairs and stools.
On his main easel sits an ad for Pepsi. He looks at it, a the white swirl bisecting the red and blue. He wonders if the astronauts care about god and country, all the way out there, in all that cold and dark. He wonders how anyone can think of the abstract when concrete suffocation is but a mistake away.
He turns the Pepsi draft over and begins something new. It starts with an oval, then a second, and soon he has the musculature down—musculature he has never had himself, nor ever will. The costume sketches itself. The shield encircles the figure's arm with ease.
He considers it. Perfect. Proportionate. Just like he always used to draw him.
So he ruins it with colors. Black and red steak the uniform, one wrapping around the other in tight serpentines around his biceps, midriff, and throat. There is no god in these colors but truth. He shouldn't have ever drawn this man wearing red, white, and blue. There was nothing bright about what he stood for.
The red is dark, arterial and old. The black is ever-present, insistent, uncompromising.
Who is he? Owen had asked, once, when he was still a boy. Before he left home and came back as a note with a flag, wrapped up in a manilla package marked Standard Rate Mail.
No one, Steve had said, because he believed that once. Now he knows better.
Blue, then, just this once. In the free white next to the figure, he made to scrawl the answer he should've given, but realized he had no answer to give.
He sits down and looks at his creation, its colors drained and replaced. Red and black outfit. Red and black shield. Red and black eyes. No hope in his grimace, no levity in his eyes, no subtly in his costume. Just hate.
Steve takes a long breath.
November 3, 1980, age 62:
"Did you hear what I said, Mr. Rogers?"
Steve nods. He hears fine. Apparently, his hearing isn't the problem.
"Colon cancer," he says. "Inoperable."
The doctor speaks, he listens, but its just so much noise. He has a year left, tops.
Then the questions begin. Does he have anyone who can take him home? No, he does not.
Will he need a cab? No thank you, he'll drive himself.
Is he sure? Yes.
Will you pursue treatment from here? Depends what's on offer.
There isn't much on offer.
He drives home alone. Bea is gone, lost three years back. He thinks about calling his daughter. She's as old now as Bea was when he met her. Her first child is three. She's in Texas, out there with a new job. Her husband seems like a fine man, though they've only spoken once.
He busies himself cleaning out his office. There are folders upon folders of commissioned art for brands beyond counting. He looks at them in a new light, thinks of his daughter cleaning them out once he's gone, and decides he'll do it for her. The commissioned work has no use anymore. Everything is photographed now. The ad game moved past him, and he doesn't miss it.
He dumps the work into a drum in the backyard and lights it. While it burns, he takes trips back and forth from the office, throwing more and more in. The blaze runs into the night.
When the ad work is done, he's left with only his creation. The paintings are everywhere, a riot of separate color palettes and different attempts at the same character. Over time, the iconography of his creation deteriorated, remixed and reworked into reflections of moods. Red, white, and blue. Black, red, and white. Green, yellow, and red. Sometimes the figure is defined, sometimes it is a blur. Sometimes the costume runs into the background, swirling and mixing and becoming something new and terrible. Sometimes it is hopeful, triumphant.
The sketches are just as numerous. They are filed chronologically, starting with the pencils of his old comic work and becoming finished, inked works as recent as last month. No one has published them in years. No one would care to, now. Captain America doesn't mean anything to anyone but him.
He thinks about destroying them, too. Will his daughter even care? Will his grandson?
He leaves the art where it is and goes back to watch the drumfire burn.
July 4, 1981, age 63:
He wakes up knowing that today is the day. His daughter is on her way into town, but he knows he won't make it that long. He makes his breakfast and notices how weak his hands have become. He eats eggs and toast with the knowledge he'll never do so again.
In his bedroom, he's erected a canvas of his latest painting. Not quite complete, it shows the Captain as a robed figure, his shield eschewed, his defined shoulders and chest tapering to a flowing, formless cloak of red, white, and blue that all merge into the bottom and background of the piece. It is raw, but its colors are true—the classic red, white, and blue pushing away the dark at its edges.
Steve is tired. He lays back in bed around noon. Outside, he can hear the crackle of the neighbors' children lighting off fireworks. The sound dims. He looks at his painting, letting his vision sink into it. The image of his creation stares at him. "Who are you?" Steve thinks to ask, unsure if he does, but having always known the answer.
As his vision narrows, he sees his creation as it is, was, and could have been, and it reaches to him, the only thing left in the encroaching dark. Steve slips free, his everything fading from all he has known to all he will never know, and in that moment, the swirling shade of Captain America speaks to him, telling him of worlds unseen, deeds undone, promising to him the marvels that await.
