by Erin Halfelven
 

1.7 War Stories

We were back in the garage, standing near the big old car with the airplane motor under the hood that Kevin had just closed carefully as if it were a museum case. We decided to head back to the house, but before that happened we had an argument.

It started out with me asking, "What happened to Joe, Jack, Beetle Boy? How…?"

Steve polished an imaginary speck off the fender of the car, looked at me and sighed. "How did he become your great-great-grandmother?"

I swallowed and it was hard to speak, so I just nodded.

"At first it was kind of slow, I guess," he said. "I didn't notice but…. Josie, Joe, wanted it to happen, wanted to be…. A girl, not a boy. And she, he, had a magic ring, so…. Well, she later told me that every night she made a wish on the ring, she wished she could be a girl."

"Well, okay for her!" I said. "But I didn't make any such wish!"

Gumpy just nodded, looking sympathetic, or trying to. "Josie got her wish but like I said, it happened slowly…." He trailed off looking off down into some lonesome personal memories from his expression.

I didn't want him to not tell the whole story. "Who was she, he? How did you guys meet?" I asked.

He told a little more. "When Joe and I met, in Egypt, his parents had been killed. English mother, American father, diplomatic corps with a side of espionage. This was just after I volunteered at the embassy and got signed up with Military Intelligence."

I nodded; he'd mentioned that before.

"Joe needed someone to look after him; he was just a little guy, thirteen years old and not five-foot-tall. I ended up being volunteered for the job by my commander. Uh, I had told them what I could do but not how I did it. They wanted me for counter-espionage stateside, so accompanying an American national minor looked like a good cover."

Kevin and I exchanged glances. This was a complicated story, and Steve wasn't telling everything, but I kept quiet because he was still talking at least.

"While we were in England, there was some trouble and I ended up using the Skarab identity to clear it up but Joe figured out who I was and how I did it." Steve grinned ruefully. "Clever little snot. It didn't go over well with the brass that suddenly Joe knew about our operations but there didn't seem to be much they could do about it. So we went ahead with the plan…."

"Plan?" I said to prompt him.

"To take Joe home to the States and for me to work counter-intelligence. We got stateside, and it turns out Joe's US relations were shitheads, and I wouldn't leave him with them. Drunks, con-artists, some of them in jail and none of them with what you could call a home."

Steve smiled sadly. "I just decided that I would keep him with me or with my own folks. And the brass let it happen because they couldn't think of a solution except some foster family. They tried that but Joe ran away and found me again."

He grinned. "And Joe knew too much to be forced into that when he wasn't willing. I had not quite seven years on him. David was five years younger than me so I thought of Joe as another little brother. For a long time, at least. He stayed with my parents and David for awhile but when I moved to Milwaukee on orders, he came with me."

He looked around at us as if surprised we were still there. "He insisted on it. I didn't know it but Joe had a crush on me. "

"We figured that out," said Kevin, and I nodded.

"Yeah, well. Joe sort of blackmailed me into giving him the green ring and we partnered up in the style of those times. Lots of adventurers and mystery men had teenage partners. I thought I knew what was going on until people started asking me, when Joe and I were out around town as Steve and Joe; people would ask me, 'Why does your niece dress like a boy?'"

Kevin laughed, and I glared at him. Then I glared at Gumpy on general principles.

"We battled mostly ordinary crime but sometimes the M.I. types had counter-espionage work for us to do. Usually sad little wannabe Nazis or other homegrown fascists. We got kind of famous, locally, because Milwaukee didn't have any other Mystery Men. At least, not ones that were on the side of the cops." He grinned and so did Kevin.

"When the war started in '42, I tried to get activated to go overseas but the War Department didn't want me clogging up their operations. They were already having trouble with maverick supers who wouldn't follow orders. We kept doing what we had been doing and got involved in fighting the Ruth Lester crime syndicate all over the Midwest."

"Joe to Josie?" I prompted. Ruth's daughter, Carol, still controlled a lot of crime in Illinois and Wisconsin, I knew from reading the superslicks; a tangent about her operations could last hours.

"One night…. Early 1943, we had figured out how to… to… use the extra dimensions in the rings to store costume changes. And one night, when Joe twisted the ring, he didn't become Beetle Boy. He… she… She was obviously a girl wearing a girl's costume."

"She tricked you," I said.

"Doofus," agreed Kevin.

Gumpy nodded, smiling a little still. "She was a minx. She had it all figured out. Army Intelligence would give her a new identity and when she turned seventeen, we would get married. Pretty much worked out that way, too."

Once again, I had the impression that Steve was leaving a lot out. "You said something earlier about three or four other boys who got turned into girls by wearing the ring. Who were they?"

"I did?" He looked blank then glanced at Kevin. "David wore the green ring a couple of times, no problem. And Mike wore the green ring once, became Beetle Boy but then he gave it to Tanya, and I gave him the blue one. The green one didn't change him, obviously, but that whole thing didn't work out…." He trailed off, thinking about something.

"Quit stalling!" I insisted.

He sighed. "Some memories are painful, honey." He stared at me. "You look so much like her…."

My turn to look uncomfortable. "This has something to do with how she died?"

He nodded.

Kevin piped up. "You don't have to tell us right now, Unk…"

I interrupted, "But I want to know!"

Steve grinned a little ruefully. "You're like her in more than looks. Okay. But let's go up to the house first. And you'd better bring those clothes from the bathroom with you, so you'll have something to wear later."

That's when it turned into an argument. I couldn't tell if he was serious about it. "I'm just wearing these while I'm a girl, when I change back, I won't need them," I said.

"But you don't know how long it's going to take before the ring will let you change back."

"What? A few hours? Isn't that what you said?" I protested. I didn't like the implication.

Steve sighed. "Honey, it might be days or even longer. As long as you're being stubborn about not wanting to be Damselfly.… This is a magical protective entity you're dealing with; it doesn't operate by logic or reasonableness. It's going to get your co-operation one way or another. It's forced mine, more than once."

I looked down at myself, at the bulges in the pink top I was wearing. I sighed. "I don't want to take the clothes," I said. "I don't want to wear girl clothes, as soon as I get to the house, I'm going to put on some of my own stuff."

"It's not going to fit very well," Kevin pointed out. "You're kind of teensy now."

He would have to point that out. "I don't care. I don't like wearing this stuff, it makes me feel creepy." Actually, it had stopped feeling creepy almost immediately–and that creeped me out in an entirely other way.

"There may be times you'll need female clothes. Being Damselfly may not always involve being in costume," Uncle Steve said. "Bring the clothes."

I made a face and Kevin snickered. "I'll get them for you, Darla," he offered. "That way you won't have to admit you're giving in."

"Oh, fine then," I said, not happy about it. And him calling me Darla was just dog-do on my cupcake. I suspected that I might be pouting, but I tried hard not to think of it that way.

Steve and Kevin looked at one another, nodded, then shrugged, and Kevin went to the bathroom in the barn to get the clothes. "There are paper grocery sacks in the bottom drawer, use a couple of those to bring her underwear and shoes along, too," Steve told him.

"They're not mine," I muttered but they pretended to ignore me.

"Ooo," said Kevin, apparently already looking in the top drawer at the bras and panties. "Lingerie. Are you wearing a cute pair of panties, Darla?"

I was; a person has to wear underwear, but now I pretended to ignore him. "I thought you said that if I agreed to be Damselfly when needed that the ring would let me change back," I asked Steve.

The old man nodded. "Sure, when it's convinced that you are going to keep that promise. Tell the truth now, if everything went back to where it was, would you even think about putting the ring back on?"

He had me there. I sighed. "But Gumpy, it turned me into a girl. I don't want to be a girl."

"You sure sound like a girl," Kevin commented from the bathroom. “I'm just saying.”

"I do not sound like a girl," I said. I had been trying hard not to. "Do I?"

I could tell Uncle Steve was having a hard time not smiling. "Um, well, yes, you do. The pitch of your voice went up a bit.... But it's not just that, I think the ring is nudging your emotions, just enough that you're reacting... differently than the boy you used to be would have."

"This is just so not fair," I said. I knew I wanted to cry, but that would be just too girly, so I tried to get mad instead. "This is all your fault, Gumpy. What did you give us those rings for if you knew mine would probably turn me into a girl?"

"The world needs Skarab and Skarab needs Damselfly," he said.

"Oh, like there aren't enough supers around? L.A. is crawling with mutants and cyborgs, aliens and overmen and yes, a few magical crusaders already. They've got a fifty-story tower full of Protectors in Hollywood. Why does the world need me to give up being a guy?"

He shrugged. I was beginning to hate seeing him do that. "I don't know, but I know that it does." He made it sound final in his deep rumbly bass. I turned my face turned away so he wouldn't see me cry.