Fun with Heavy Objects: A Danny Adventure
By Chip Masterson

Danny had been extra truant lately at the tech so Cole had been extra insistent 
he show up for some tests on Saturday.  Danny yawned.

“I’ll blow the instruments apart,” he said, drawling out “as usual.”  He grinned 
really slowly.  “I’m off the charts.  They haven’t even invented a scale to 
measure me.  Every time they try to think one up I exceed it.  Someday I’ll test 
MYSELF, to see what my own limits are…” (and here he stretched and flexed his 
arms) “and their puny brains will melt on the spot.  Sure you can afford to put 
ME to the test?”

Cocky smug son-of-a-bitch.  What made me so angry was: he was right.

This time Cole yawned, which made Danny really smile.  “Finished with your 
speech, little Caesar?  These aren’t those sorts of tests.  The school has to do 
something to matriculate you.  It’s just bullshit paperwork.  Should take all 
day though.”

“No it won’t,” said Danny.  “What have we got to do?”

Cole explained: he had to satisfy his calculus professor, a man who barely spoke 
English, being an exchange scholar from Beijing; he had to prove his proficiency 
in both written English and History; he had to show progress in drawing; he had 
to demonstrate his musical abilities; and finally, satisfy his foreign language 
requirement.  Cole knew he hadn’t been studying anything.  And the institute 
still insisted he was only 13 years old.  Which was technically true.

“An hour, tops,” said Danny.

I got there about half an hour late and could hear Danny singing from down the 
hall.  When I walked into the lab, my mouth dropped open, which matched everyone 
else.  Danny wore a cocky half-smile on his face because even concentrating 
intensely on his work he still noticed the effect he was having on the men in 
the room.  Let me try to explain what he was doing all at once, so you can maybe 
grasp the full impact of what I saw.

He had two computer terminals before him, hooked into the main supercomputer of 
the college.  I mentioned before he was ambidextrous; polydextrous would better 
describe it, I was later told.  With his right hand he did research at amazing 
speeds on the computer to work out calculus equations and create computer 
simulations to test them out.  As usual, the entire college was shut down to 
reserve power for the computer.  With his left had he searched the on-line 
library for comparison texts and wrote, again typing with one hand, a stunning 
essay on Tocqueville and the errors other scholars made; he read it the original 
French and translated the passages himself.  With his bare fucking feet he 
sketched a facsimile of the view of Florence from the Duomo with such 
proficiency and close cross-hatching it could have been a Victorian etching.  
Vocally he sung Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d-minor, somehow producing almost 
the complete score in a blended harmony.  And he had earphones on: he was 
learning Mandarin at high speed.  

The effect was maddening, infuriating, stomach-knotting: his brain clearly fired 
highly enough to enable each limb and physical sense to operate independently of 
each other, to produce sketches sight unseen and from memory, to process both 
numbers and textual analysis and command three separate languages as well as 
music SIMUL-FUCKING-TANEOUSLY.  And while a vein throbbed in his forehead to 
reveal the strain and concentration, he still had that cocky grin to show he 
noticed, he could still fucking notice, the awe and near-worship of grown men.  

I’m not queer, I know I’m not a fucking queer, I have sex, sometimes really 
angry, hot sex with Rachel two, sometimes three times a night and she begs for 
more, and I swear to God that during it I think only about her or someone else’s 
knockers I’ve seen or I think about nothing at all, but seeing Danny DO all this 
made my groin feel funny, like some invisible cord was tightening around my 
cock.  I looked around to see if anyone noticed but of course nobody noticed ME.  
But the Chinese professor had a chubby going too, and looked like he might just 
stroke out, he got so red-faced.  When Danny finished warning lights burned on 
the main computer consoles and they had to shut the thing down and turn on dime-
store fans that rotated across its surface.  

The essay made the English prof’s crotch grow, so sarcastic yet incisive was 
Danny’s analysis and translation, which the French professor verified.  But the 
new language was Mandarin, with which he discussed, and explained, his calculus 
paper and computer models, which had to wait to be run until the computer 
recovered from the strain of Danny’s working it.  The professor got so flustered 
at Danny’s brilliance exceeding his own he stuttered into some dialect, and 
Danny sadistically corrected his grammar: and I know for certain Danny didn’t 
know a word of Chinese before this morning beyond “kung fu” and “General Tso’s 
Chicken.”  The sketch’s perspective, shading and proportion were without peer, 
and the recording of the Bach piece revealed not only perfect pitch and a 
shading of tonality that rivaled any majestic organ’s, but an almost complete 
rendition of every fucking note through an unsuspected and never-before 
encountered ability of his vocal cords to fire staccato notes so rapidly they 
blended into complete multi-note chords.  Men excused themselves from the room, 
clearly tortured by the realization of what their excitement, clearly more than 
simply mental or emotional, meant about their natures.  And Danny drank it all 
in as praise he was merely due.

He’d worked up a minor sweat and acted like a complete asshole by talking 
Chinese at us as we walked out, mixing real words with the sort of made-up mock 
“chi chaw” words that ignorant people use to make fun of Asians.  Yes, he was in 
fact really only 13 after all.

* * *

That afternoon Cole and Salas drove us out to the old Navy yard, where a turn-
of-the-century dry dock was used for salvage operations.  This wasn’t one of the 
new floating dry-docks but one built right into the shoreline, with hinged doors 
and everything.  The doors could only be opened when the tide was lowest but 
still going out, and fill up when the tide came in to float whatever was inside.  
It took eight hours to pump it dry.  At the height of its operational power the 
doors could only open when the water in the tidal basin was a quarter-way up; 
now they were almost permanently rusted shut, with the corpse of an old ship 
inside that had been stripped for parts but not for scrap metal. 

Danny was brought here to do the Navy a favor.  After the trio’s recent wrecking 
of a Marine base (including buildings leveled and permanently weakened by Cole 
and Salas, and Danny’s single-handed destruction of a lab, an Abrahms tank and 
two helicopters), the government decided it would be best to work with them than 
against them.  Nobody trusted anybody, but still my friends would help the 
government out by performed services that only their muscle could speed along, 
and the government would in turn supply them with whatever they needed … within 
reason, of course.

The Navy was going to fill-in the old dry docks with cement.  Trouble is, some 
numbnut had already taken the motors away from the cranes and there was no way 
to get the boat inside out, and they still needed scrapping.  Danny, Salas and 
Cole were there to shred it in a single afternoon.  The yard was mostly empty; 
the Navy wanted as few witnesses as possible.

When we arrived, I gaped at the size of the boat.  It had been a WWII destroyer, 
hundreds of tons of steel still there, after all the fixtures and equipment had 
been removed.  Holes loomed where some of the plates had been removed, so 
clearly it couldn’t be floated out, even if they had managed to get a million 
gallons of WD-40 on the rusted locks.  Before they got moving, Danny wanted to 
test himself a little bit.

“Wow!” he said, jumping down into the dock—about 50 feet.  He landed smoothly, 
with a solid thump I could feel in my legs as his denser-than-normal kid-body 
hit the floor.  “Let me see if I can pick this sumbitch up!”  I hate that.  Ever 
since he saw some old movie about a guy actually named Buford Pusser who hit bad 
guys with a baseball bat, it’s been “sumbitch” this and “sumbitch” that.  

“I don’t know, Danny,” cautioned Salas.  “You’ve never lifted anything this big.  
It isn’t just tons, it’s hundreds of tons.  Even if your muscles could lift it, 
which I doubt, your skeleton might not be able to stand the strain.”

“I promise I’ll drop it if it gets to heavy, MOMMY.”  Danny walked over to the 
hulk that leaned against the side of the immense hole.  The keel was thicker 
that Danny could ever get his small fingers around, and the whole thing was so 
rusty they’d already gotten tetanus booster shots, in spite of the fact their 
bodies seemed to annihilate germs as if their blood cells had super-charged 
muscles.

Danny found a spot where a great rib of still was exposed.  “This’ll do for a 
start.”  He grabbed hold of it, took a deep breath, and tugged.  A sighing groan 
like the deep sea rang through the hulk as a crane-like force challenged it and 
strove to match the destroyer ton for ton.  The steel frame shifted slightly and 
quivering groans built inside while the far side actually scraped against wall 
and sent a cascade of concrete shavings downward.  Danny began to growl and 
suddenly cried out harsh rasping yells.  His back split into hundreds of 
galactic-muscles and his triceps bloomed beneath capstone shoulders.  My jaw 
fell yet again as I saw the keel bump up slightly off the ground, only to fall 
back into place.  Danny had actually lifted a fucking destroyer off the ground!  
I felt like I had to piss.

“Yahooooo!” Danny screamed.  “That felt GOOOOOOD!”  Did you see the sumbitch 
jump when I barked?  Who let these fuckin’ dogs out!”  Danny stamped his feet 
and cracks opened; the entire yard felt it and rocked.  He flexed his arms in 
the sunlight and suddenly PUNCHED one of the two-inch thick steel plates: 
punched through it, that is, denting the metal and shooting shrapnel against the 
far bulkhead.  Then, grabbing hold of the plate from the inside, pulled slowly 
backward.  Again his lats swelled and his free hand tensed for balance; again 
the entire ship seemed to shift its weight toward him as the dimpled steel bent 
back outwards, tenting as his relentless arm kept making the steel obey. Danny 
started to deride it: “Come on, you pussy.  Try to stay bolted to this ship.  
Try to stay in your place.  Think you can disobey this arm?  Think you can hold 
your own against my muscle?  Well come on then, show me.”  And still the steel 
plate shuddered as rivets blew out of their rusted holes and with a snort of 
contempt Danny pulled the whole distorted plate off, peeling out the edges of 
the surrounding plates along with it.  He tossed it into the air, over the side 
of the dry-dock, where Cole caught it and laid it as flat as it would go.  I 
went over and jumped onto its crease and all it did was rock beneath me: no 
matter how hard I stamped on it, it didn’t change one bit.  Only made my ankles 
hurt.

“Come on you lazy sumbitches!  Let’s get on with it!”  Danny had one goal 
clearly in mind: make it lighter bit by bit until he could hoist as much of it 
off the ground as he could.  

Cole took the bow, Salas the stern and Danny crawled around like a monkey 
through the guts of the tub.  My vision was somewhat obscured as I watched the 
spectacle from the hole in the middle of the iron plate: the hole made by 
Danny’s fist.  I couldn’t so much as budge even the smallest of the steel 
fragments shorn inward by his thrust.  My workout was to hold the heavy fucker 
up while they tore the ship apart and use it to protect myself against shrapnel.  
Of which there was plenty.

Each worked his own way.  Cole pried the plates off from the outside and stacked 
them neatly, working his way down from the top deck.  Salas slipped inside and 
pounded the plates off with a boxer’s jabs—the sort that would kill an army of 
Mike Tysons—working up his rhythm until it only took two punches to send the 
plate flying.  BOOM and the plate would bloom outward, rivets loosening and 
flying; BOOM and folded nearly in half as it flew outward.  They each worked 
methodically and fast, as if they had a bet going (which they probably did).  

Danny, on the other hand, was just a kid in a candy store.  He clambered around 
and taunted the ship.  It would have turned some Admiral’s stomach to hear him 
humiliate a ship that had defeated the Japanese navy and turned the tide of the 
war into an American victory.  But Danny didn’t know about that stuff.  Sure, he 
could recite more battles and strategies than anyone I knew, but he didn’t 
really know, in his heart, what it all meant.  How could he?  He was just a 
little brat.

Danny shadow-boxed bulkheads and pounded the steel downward with his fists, 
ripping the walls apart and then wadding up the steel like cardboard.  A solid 
wall was quickly reduced to a ball as the steel was folded over itself and 
crushed together like it never thought it could be.  He took hatch-doors and 
pried them off their hinges and folded them up like homework assignments to cram 
into his pockets.  He hung from the ceiling and simply tugged downward, caving 
in the upper floor.  Ladders were almost a nuisance, which, like pipes, he 
simply pressed flat and wound the long steel lengths into ropes that he then 
impossible coiled up with swift hard movements into near perfect circles.  Which 
he proceed to press together.  Terrorized steel screamed and groaned and sang in 
pain greater than anything Tojo’s war machine had ever dished out.  No car-
crusher could keep up with him for turning huge piles of steel into tiny, heavy 
pieces.  In fact, despite his haphazard and fun-making approach, his speed and 
vigor revealed he would beat both Cole AND Salas put together for total tonnage 
rendered.  

Suddenly Danny leapt to the ground and looked at the piles of torn, twisted and 
crumpled steel around him.  “Hang on, kiddies!” he yelled and walked back to the 
rip in the middle of the ship, now more naked than ever.  Gripping it, he heaved 
again:  and again his arms and back and legs split open, revealing more and 
deeper throbbing muscle beneath the bulges and ripples.  Again the ship sang and 
shifted: it still must weigh a hundred tons or more.  That’s 200,000 pounds!  
And while it shifted in his hands, Cole and Salas cried out and grabbed hold of 
something to keep from falling, and I saw it rise and inch, then two inches off 
the ground before he had to drop it.  

Sweat rivered off him from the strain and he practically flew up into the 
bowels, howling and slamming his fists and feet around until it rang like some 
bell from hell, Salas and Cole covering their ears from the pain and screaming 
for him to stop: but his own yelling and the clanging of the ship’s interior 
caving and crumpling under his savage joy overpowered their own super lungs.  
Danny swirled like a twister, gathering steel around him and flinging it off all 
in one direction, against the far wall, until the entire bridge structure above 
him creaked and tottered and collapsed inward, down on top of him.  He stopped 
spinning just long enough to catch it, brace it once, then twice, the THROW it 
up into the air.

Steel scraped and scratched and clawed as the whole tower exploded up into the 
air, pulling pipes and bulkheads along with it.  Anything that got caught was 
ripped loose or bent out of shape as the massive wreck lifted into the sky, 
dragging whole sections of the steel deck along with it.  My eyes bugged out and 
I ran as fast as I could as I saw that it would clear the side of the dry-dock 
and land somewhere near me.  It all crashed with a sparking fury of distressed 
steel.  And Danny stood on the rippled deck of the boat, hands folded across his 
glistening pecs like the only Daddy that could make that destroyer mind.  

The sun was setting and even these three supermen hadn’t completely dismantled 
the ship so Salas initiated Plan B.  I think he was just hungry and wanted to 
leave.  Each man (or boy) took the pile he had created and heaved it up over the 
side of the dry-dock, all 50 feet.  Biceps bulged and delts split like mighty 
claws as male muscle hefted and propelled tons of torn metal into the air with 
extreme control and accuracy.  They stretched their proud muscles and flexed in 
preparation for their supreme task.

Each took his part of the boat and set hands and feet.  On a count of three the 
men—and boy—strained and the hundred ton beast shuddered and rose scraping up 
the side of the dry-dock like a whale’s skeleton, rising inch by impossible inch 
as arms reddened and shook and legs scrambled and backs and chests bunched and 
heaved and grew.  It got to knee height and their hands moved beneath it, 
bringing nuclear biceps into play as they curled it higher and higher, shooting 
sparks as the ship ground grooves along the concrete wall.  Clearing their 
chests each jumped under it and now ICBM delts shoved it higher and higher over 
their heads.  Still, even at nearly seven feet (Danny had to let go) they had 
over forty feet to clear, and already their massive bodies where trembling ever 
so slightly as chests sucked breath and the bulk swayed hypnotically above them.  
Danny sensed the bigger (technically) men doubting their ability to proceed as 
the destroyer hovered in the grip of six male hands, so he took command with the 
voice of power that made even Cole and Salas obey instinctively, before reason 
could remind them he was yet thirteen years old.  

“On three we throw: one two THREE!”  Each man lowered and then heaved as hard as 
he could and Danny, letting go, sprang on his titanic quads faster than even 
these men could hurl the tonnage.  He soared through the hole he had rent in the 
center of the ship, hitting a bulkhead and launching it so far out to sea I 
never even saw the splash.  A split second later he beat the ship and landed on 
the far side of the dock, grapping the plates there and sinking his fingers 
through the solid steel like clay, and pulled.  Incredibly, the ship kept moving 
upward, Danny hauling the scraping hulk over the side hand over hand by digging 
into the plates until it sailed ten feet over his head and shot flames as it 
continued along the ground.  The noise deafened me.  Chunks of concrete along 
the edge fell down into the pit.

The ship kept sliding, even the friction of its mass unable to slow the muscle-
speed that compelled it.  Danny whipped around, ran and grabbed hold of the keel 
and countered its rocket-thrusting speed with his own undeniable will. The ship 
sheared off a hundred twenty foot crane which collapsed over it.  With a 
screeching grind the ship shuddered and skipped but in the end couldn’t overcome 
the drag Danny put on it.  It ground to a stop just teetering on the edge of the 
next empty dry-dock and Danny yanked it back with one hard TUG.  I nearly lost 
it as I saw Danny tug the destroyer back with one hand while the other almost 
casually rose up and stopped the top of the crane from smashing into him.  The 
metal bent and twisted against Danny’s hand.  He wrangled the entire mass of 
destroyed steel into place as if it were an uruly bull.  It even looked from 
where I stood as if the entire ship was BENT into a slight V by Danny’s drag on 
the middle of it.

I’m not queer GODAMIT but I had a raging hardon watching him drag a fucking 
destroyer on its side across the ground with one fucking hand.  I looked into 
the hole and saw Cole and Salas spent, completely drained by the cumulative 
effect of battering a ship apart and then heaving incredible tonnages overhead.  
Each kneeled on the ground, catching breath, Cole holding a stitch in his side 
and Salas flexing a cramp in his hand.  They’d missed the entire spectacle.

Danny easily sprang across the wide dry-dock and pulled some cable remaining in 
one of the cranes out from its grudging spool.  His arms and lats were so pumped 
he didn’t even notice the slight resistance as the spool ground against its 
brake, showering sparks like the Fourth of July.  Dropping it down into the pit 
he told the two men to grab it.  In spite of their cramps and nausea they obeyed 
his command and he hauled them out.  Each lay down on a heap of steel and seemed 
almost to pass out.  Danny, however, had an idea.

“Concrete is just the cement mix and water, isn’t it?”  He knew damn well how 
chemistry worked.  He wanted to play a prank on the Navy now that work was over 
(and regular salvage guys could cut the ship up where it lay). “Well, I’m going 
to help them with their little fill-in project.”

“Danny, no,” I said feebly, but he fixed me with an eye that shut my mouth.  
Then he winked and laughed.  “Doofus” he said and rubbed my head.  

Danny found the shed with the concrete in it.  The padlock he dispensed of with 
a flick of his finger.  Then he dragged a lot of the bags out, ripped them open 
and dumped them down into the empty dry-dock.  

Climbing into the engineer booth, he tried to open the dry-dock gates.  The 
machinery coughed and growled, the gates shuddered a little, but they wouldn’t 
open.  I reminded him the tide was coming in, flowing against the gates and 
rising; it was half-way up already.   “No way they’re gonna open,” I said: and 
bit my tongue.  Why am I so fucking STUPID?

He didn’t even say “Oh yeah?” this time.  He just patted me on my hand like I 
was a feeble child who needed humoring.  He blew in Salas’s and Cole’s ears but 
they seemed to have fallen asleep.  Danny jumped down into the dock again and 
walked up to the gates.  He reared back to hit them as I hoped he would: that 
would awaken the adults. They could still stop this “prank.”  But he thought of 
that too.

Instead he went up and started pushing.  They towered above him, like city gates 
in some stupid Hercules movie.  Except instead of inept rickety soldiers with 
poles and one heavy oak bar, the entire fucking ocean was flowing against the 
gates.  But even the ocean wasn’t prepared for Danny when he was pumped and 
primed.  “Bring it on,” I heard him growl.

His feet planted firmly, his arms bent backward and his mounded pecs scraping 
the rusty walls, he took a deep breath and began pressing with power the immense 
generator and gear system could only dream of having.  I looked around the 
control booth and saw he hadn’t left the system on to help out even a little 
bit.  In fact, he’d reversed it, so that the gears were trying to keep it 
closed; and he’d bent the controls so there was no way I could turn it off or 
reverse it.  He wanted to destroy the entire thing.  As if the ocean’s current 
wasn’t enough for him to beat.

He kept pressing.  I knew his heart-rate still wouldn’t be above 88 but the 
needles on the pressure gauges rose to register the intensity of THEIR struggle.  
I remember that first night, seemingly so long ago, when he mocked the strength 
of the drill press and forced it back up into itself until the pistons warped 
and the gauges blew apart.  Now his strength had grown exponentially—or maybe 
he’d just found new ways of tapping into it.  And he still had all of his 
puberty ahead of him.  I shivered.

The gauges moved into the red zone as their power was bested by Danny’s kid 
power which seemed to increase faster than the machinery could keep up.  The 
high whine suddenly swooped to low throbbing tones and things around me began to 
tremble -- while he didn’t so much as twitch.  Rattles and crunching from under 
the earth:  all he did was shuffle his feet a little, flex his calves and make 
the big diamond split more severe.  The glass shook with a sudden heart-stopping 
WRENCH.

The earth-shaking wrenching sound woke Cole and Salas up and shaking their heads 
they rose and began angrily ordering Danny to stop.  He ignored them.  A thin 
sheet of water spread toward Danny’s feet: the gates were budging.  Danny saw it 
and kicked gouges into the concrete which crumbled beneath the pile-drive of 
those teen legs.  Water filled the holes but Danny’s toes dug them deeper and 
braced against them.  Heaving another deep breath, he signaled the battle was 
about to begin in earnest.  

The glass on the gauges cracked and the consoles burst into flames.  I climbed 
down, clinging to the rail as the whole structure rocked with tremors, the way 
machinery tends to do when Danny’s around.  

The gates were now noticeably no longer straight.  Their pitch only grew, so 
slowly you almost couldn’t see it. Only the water kept gushing.  Deep CRACKS 
shook the docks, which would be the overstrained teeth of the giant gears 
breaking off against each other as Danny crippled forever their ability to defy 
him.  Only now the ocean was five-eighths of the way up the outside and still 
swirling.  Fire licked the windows of the control room above me but my eyes were 
glued on the gates slowly being forced open against the full fucking weight and 
power and majesty of the ocean by a not-so-little boy.  

Danny heaved for breath now and seawater sprayed him through the widening gap in 
the gates.  He kept spitting to clear his face as the flood grew harder and 
thicker but finally it bothered him too much and he let go.  The gates slammed 
back into place with a force that knocked him on his ass.  That made him mad, 
and Danny mad is a force beyond nature.

Pounding new footholds into the concrete nearer the middle of one of the gates, 
he let go a yell that forced the men to awed silence.  Danny flung his arms into 
the one gate and shoved it inches open.  The tide surged three-quarters high and 
still rose against him.  Still he growled and yelled, flinging spit at the gate 
that had sprayed him with cold salt water.  “You think you can take me, pussy?  
You take THIS!”  Shove.  Water sprayed inward.  “And THIS!”  Shove.  Water 
gushed.  “And fucking THIS! YEAH!  KID MUSCLE MIGHT!”  And the gate swung open 
as if the hinges were oiled with the wind behind it.  The sea piled up as the 
gate swung against it, sending a wave BACKWARD into the harbor.  Water rose 
around him and sprayed against the piled concrete mix. He pounded deeper holes 
closer in and kept working the door open with quick muscle-thrusts that sent 
more waves back against the tide.  A small whirlpool began to form a short 
distance away from the turbulence.  By now the gate stood a quarter way open and 
Cole and Salas watched in amazement, knowing they could do nothing.  Danny was 
just a head above water and soon would be completely submerged.  A fire truck 
raced up to put out the blazing control booth but nobody paid any attention to 
them: and some of them stopped their work in wonder as one door seemed to swing 
open all on its own.  Danny could hold his breath, and work, underwater almost 
as long as a nuclear submarine. 

Now he let loose and pounded, and even underwater his fist traveled like a 
nuclear torpedo and impacted the gate.  The deep THRONGING sounded like begging 
for mercy.  Boom Boom Boom! like depth-charges his fists wailed on the door.  
The current drove it into his speeding fist, which rammed it wider than before. 
The top of the gate began to V, only suggesting the battered crease forming 
below the waterline.  By the time the gate shuddered halfway open the water had 
filled the tank and the concrete mix swirled around; Danny realized for his 
prank to work he now had to close the gate.  He told me later this tore him up 
because he really wanted to rip both those gates off their hinges.  The gate was 
wide enough that the incoming tide held it open and now, without surfacing, 
Danny had to pull it closed.  It groaned anew with this torture but submitted, 
sealing off the water inside.  The firemen dropped their hoses and gasped as 
Danny shot out of the water like a missile and landed on the side of the dock, 
shaking his body dry like a big dog.  And grinned: “Want some help with that 
fire, guys?”

* * *

It takes a lot of strength to control a fire hose gushing at full bore: but 
Danny tied one in a knot once the fire was out.  The firemen bet him “his 
allowance.”  He took the raging hose and with each hand squeezed it half-way 
shut: that made their eyes bug out, right there.  Then his arms bulged and pecs 
ripped into life as he forced the bucking hose to bend.  Men scrambled out of 
the way as the nozzle shot around in a circle and Danny called out “Sorry!” and 
squeezed it tighter, which only increased the pressure of the released water.  
Like a big balloon animal he twisted the hose into a simple granny knot and 
pulled it tight, squeezing off the water and making the hose writhe.  Then he 
put his foot on it like a slain animal and gave a Tarzan yell. 

His allowance was still $5.  He collected it from each of them.

***

So this next adventure will seem like small potatoes but it’s my duty to keep 
this record of exploits whether large or small.  Well, I made up the duty part 
on my own.  

Cole and Salas have kept him pretty much sequestered, which makes me worry about 
his developing social skills, given that he’s already such a spoiled rat’s-ass 
pain-in-the-neck A-number-one brat.  With a capital BRAT.  So I suggested we 
take a hike on one of the more traveled trails so he can at least meet some new 
people, if only to say “hi.”

We were going up this trail and I of course was carrying the pack because he 
thought I was “lagging” in my training.  So there I was huffing away and he 
skipped on ahead, playing with boulders as if they were pro wrestlers and 
cracking them into pieces over his knee or head.  He took a particularly heavy 
one and crushed it in a bear-hug against his chest until it split, then ground 
the split pieces together until THEY split.  “Stone Cold is stone cold NOW!” he 
called.

“You know, other people use these trails, fart head,” I called.  Sometimes you 
have to speak his language to get through at all.

“Sorry!” he called out good-naturedly.  That was nice, for a change.  He came 
running back.  “Hey, there’s a cool tree growing right out of the rock.  Can I 
pull it out?  Huh?”  Suddenly he was a kid again.  Makes my head swim.

“Trees are alive, aren’t they?” I asked, trying to keep any sarcasm out of my 
voice so he’d take this as a real lesson.  “Oh, yeah,” he said, and scampered 
away.  I dragged along wondering if he’d packed cinderblocks when he came 
manicly running back.  “There’s some people in trouble up on the fire road, can 
I help ‘em out?”

“Let’s see,” I said gamely.  “If you promise to keep the full extent of your 
super powers secret, that is.”

“Cut the corn,” he said.  Mood change.  Whoopee.

We found two off-road SUV’s stuck literally off the road.  One was up to its 
belly in mud, tires half-submerged.  The other one was tilted off to the side, 
against a tree.  “Some crazy fucker’s riding a rig up here, man, and he drove us 
off the road.  Now we’re stuck.  Have you dudes got a phone?  Mine’s dead.”

“Watch your language, he’s only a kid,” I said, winking at Danny.  Danny 
wandered over to inspect.  The ground in front of the mud pit was all chewed up.  
Apparently the tilted SUV had tried to dislodge the stuck one but couldn’t quite 
hack it.  The ground was scarred down to the rock with wild gouges, testifying 
to the powerful truck’s vain efforts.  Seems it had strained and clawed at the 
ground until the tow-chain broke and sent it careening off into a tree.  Smoke 
curled up from its radiator.  Danny eyed the chain, which was still wrapped 
around the front bumper of the stuck one and sunk into the mud.

“Mind if I try?” asked Danny innocently.  One of the guys, clearly at wits end, 
laughed.  “Sure, kid, go for it.”  He kept laughing until his friend kneaded his 
shoulders to get him to stop.

Danny reached into the mud and found the end of the chain, pulling it out and 
then wiping the mud off his arm with his shirt.  He wanted them to see 
everything he was going to do.  

Wrapping the heavy chain around his forearm, he began to pull with just one arm.  
The hysterical guy mocked him.  “Look, he thinks he’s stronger’n my truck with 
just one skinny little arm.”  But the arm didn’t stay skinny, not for long.

Muscles rippled, and writhed.  A big vein stood up above his wrist and pulsed.  
Then it grew along the top of his forearm and up his bicep, which rose like a 
magma dome; more veins appeared on his bicep like lava flows.  His arm and chain 
fought thick mud for control of the truck.  His lats bulged and he pretended to 
huff and puff.  Then he stopped and wiped his brow (there was no sweat).  “Whew, 
it really is stuck.”  Then he smiled like an angel.  “Guess I better stop 
teasing it.”

He pulled again and this time it twisted between him and the truck..  The links 
wrapped around his forearm felt it bulge against them, and yet the horizontal 
stress kept them locked in place and there was nowhere they could go: so they 
kind of flattened a little.  Danny pulled harder.  A loud THWOCK sound made head 
snap to as the SUV pulled loose of the clay-mud’s suction and jump forward, only 
to settle back in.  

Danny turned his head slowly to make sure they were looking at him and not the 
truck, and looked everyone in the eye: he held his free finger up in front of 
his face, and let it drop slowly down, guiding their eyes to his taut bicep, 
that pulsed like a panting beast.  He leaned down and kissed it.  And YANKED.

THWOCK again as the truck lurched forward again.  Nobody saw the links flatten 
more as the stress got tighter and his grip mashed them into cable.  THWOCK.

“How can he be doing that?  My truck couldn’t do that!  It tore up the ground 
trying to and he's just standing there with one arm!”  One guy’s mouth was open 
so far drool flowed out.

The mud-crusted truck started to roll through the mud, which snapped in vain at 
it.  Danny gathered the links in with his fingers, still using just the one hand 
and letting the tortured tow chain hang in a growing loop like a giant ball sac.  
The SUV rolled faster and faster and Danny stayed put, pulling it to him out of 
the sucking mud. He dropped the chain and there wasn’t much left on his half. 

While they gaped in wonder and a little terror he walked over the other one and 
grasped the bumper.  Lifting it up into the air with his other hand he 
wheelbarrowed it back out of the underbrush, a thick bent branch flattening, 
then snapping as he forced the stuck truck over it.  Soon both trucks were on 
level ground.

One of the men disappeared into the woods; I noticed he had a woody, a flushed 
face and seemed terrified the others might notice.  They didn’t.  

The only one who seemed able to talk asked how they could repay us, reaching for 
his wallet.  Danny kicked the twisted, flattened chain and asked if he had 
another chain.  The guy fetched one out of the truck and gave it to him as a 
kind of trophy.  Danny ripped the stressed links off the other chain and used 
the shorter length to attach the broken truck to the muddy one by lifting it up 
and tying it off.  “No additional charge.”  He gave me the long, new chain for 
the pack.

We kept hiking up the fire road and I complained the pack was too heavy, knowing 
the ribbing it would get me.  But it was hot, man.  He didn’t crab about it, 
though: as if having a bright idea, he wrapped it around his waist like a belt.  
That’s when it came: he said, “Like your boyfriend Luke Cage.”

“I haven’t read those comics in years!” I lied.  He just turned and walked away.  
He was impossible to lie to, he saw right through you.

We came to a big open spot at the top of the fire road, where it took off again 
for a higher peak.   There he was, as if waiting for us: an idling big rig with 
a wild-eyed beefy guy covered in tattoos at the wheel.  When Danny walked into 
the clearing the guy revved his motor and before I could say or do anything he 
drove the rig right for us!

I could see from the glint in his eye that Danny couldn’t believe his luck: he’d 
wanted to get away from Cole & Salas’s oversight for awhile and suddenly here 
was a new toy, horsepower and steel and tonnage and an idiot controlling it.  
For the moment anyway.

How this guy’d gotten a huge rig with a trailer up some of those curves, or why, 
I don’t know.  But he bore down on us like madness itself.  Danny just stood 
there until he was too close while I dived into some bushes.  Then Danny sprang 
out of the way at the last minute, swirling around in a roundhouse kick that 
rocked the cab and the front of the trailer up off its wheels.  The driver 
stopped for a moment, pulled around with a maniacal grin as if he felt he was 
battling Satan, and drove for Danny again.  And Danny drove back.  

Danny leapt and jammed his shoulder into the hood’s side, peeling the metal back 
as the truck rushed past him.  Danny grabbed the folding metal and when he found 
the main beam up into the cab, jerked it and let go.  The rig and trailer 
fishtailed over the dirt, raising dust as the driver struggled to stay upright.  
He barely managed and turned a wide slow circle.  I could only imagine what sort 
of demon he thought me must be facing.

Rumbling at idle, the driver suddenly blasted the airhorn and Danny smiled and 
blasted back, his incredible lungs overpowering the blare and drowning it out. 
The driver grinned and hit the gas and on he came toward Danny again.  Danny 
made that “come on” gesture with his finger tips and nodded his head, tongue 
against his lower lip.  Bring it on, he seemed to say.  And again at the last 
second he sprang and sank both hands into the grill.

His locked knees drove his feet in ruts and blew chunks of earth into the air as 
Danny’s kid muscle body forced the speeding truck to slow the hell down.  Hands 
squeezed the metal of the grill to secure a hold.  His body contracted and 
flexed like a bow as He humbled four hundred seventy raging horses.  The rig 
skidded but HAD to slow and slow and slow some more and now CRAWL because His 
muscle controlled the screaming engine.  Danny flexed.  The wheels bucked and 
jumped over the ruts and small boulders Danny’s feet forced out of the ground 
and a couple inner tires blew out.  The cab’s huge tires spun helplessly against 
a wall of grinning teen muscle.  Dust and white smoke issued from the defeated 
rig.  The moment the driver released the clutch to regroup Danny felt the slack 
and actually picked the whole cab UP and slammed it back down.  UP and DOWN and 
UP and DOWN.  Danny shook the cab like a fifteen ton Tonka toy.   

The driver flopped around like a doll.  Tiring of such simple play Danny flung 
the rig away with a bored gesture and the cab shuddered back into the trailer 
over the plowed earth and started to tip over.  “Oh no you don’t!”  Danny cried 
and ran over to catch it, shoving it back up on its wheels.  “You’re not getting 
off this easy.  I’m just getting my joints warmed up.  C’mon you sissy, is that 
all you GOT?”  Danny kicked bumper, denting it and sending the truck straight 
back five feet.  The driver, in some sort of psychotic state, started the engine 
and pulled around to face Danny again.

The battered rig smoked and the idle held a coarse chuckle that wasn’t healthy.  
It had stood up to everything this boy had dished out and still gunned for more.  
I admired the machine, and pitied the idiot driving it to its doom.  With a 
grind of gears I felt in my teeth, the 18-wheeler burst into life and jammed at 
Danny again.  But this was soooo unimaginative that Danny yawned and simply held 
his fist out at arm’s length.  The distance closed and just as the mashed grill 
was half a foot away Danny cocked his arm with lightning speed and RAMMED it 
into the engine.  Metal drove back into metal as all that tonnage and speed 
failed to defeat Danny’s fist.  Rods blew out through the sides and pistons 
shattered.  The rig jolted backward, all its power no match for what Danny’s arm 
unleashed upon it.  Danny DID step back a few times.  But the truck actually 
seemed to pick up speed as it jack-knifed back into itself and skidded toward 
the cliff edge.

The driver was knocked out against the blood-smeared, starred windshield as the 
tractor’s wheels bent underneath it.  The cliff face crumbled and the cab 
plummeted down the cliff face, dragging the trailer behind it.  I screamed 
“Danny, NO!” 

He whipped off the chain-belt and flung it around the rear axle of the trailer 
as it plunged.  As the chain paid out, speed and weight and gravity formed a 
gathering force that shattered against the contracting power of Danny’s bicep.  
The entire rig jumped back as if on a bungee cable, fell down again and slammed 
against the cliff face.  I ran over and could see one of the cab doors fall open 
and the terrified man crouching against the cracked glass of the windshield, 
staring at death a hundred feet below him as the entire rig twisted slowly.  
Suspended by a chain already crushed in the grip of one hand at the end of one 
arm of a thirteen year old with a LOT of issues.

“Listen up!” Danny commanded, and the man inside whimpered.  “If I save you, 
then you become my slave forever, got it?”  The man whimpered again.  “GOT IT?” 
Danny thundered across the chasm, the echo magnificent.  Rockslides rumbled on 
the far walls from the power of his lungs.  “YES MASTER!” the man screamed, 
scrambling as the glass cracked beneath him.  

“Then hold on and witness my power to save.”  And Danny lifted his arm, dragging 
the rig up the side of the cliff with it.  His other hand reached down and his 
lats spread out to pull the weight higher, and higher, until the rear of the 
trailer was within his grasp.  But he couldn’t risk losing the strained 
coupling, so he grabbed onto the undercarriage and kept pulling the trailer 
straight up into the air.  

The SUV dudes had followed us and stood in awe as they watched the rig rise 
vertically higher and higher into the air, Danny’s hands with slow agony 
grasping the underside and pulling it up.  I remember some Arnold movie where a 
guy by one leg, with one arm, over the side of a cliff, and think ‘there’s no 
way.’  Now Danny did it with a rig that continued to rise straight up until he 
could grab the underside of the cab and tilt the whole thing over his head.  

The dudes fell onto their knees and the one with the woody kneaded his crotch 
openly, rubbing it until grew wet and he shivered and slathered over himself.  

Danny tilted the entire vehicle and shook it until the driver fell out.  He 
tried to hold on but Danny shook it harder until he landed flat on his ass.  
“Come here!”  

The man crawled on his belly through the dust into the shadow of his thirty-ton 
truck swaying in the arms of a kid high above him.  He reached out to touch the 
boy’s leg, felt the heat and strength emanating in waves, and cringed back.  
Suddenly I felt sorry for the guy, not for what Danny was doing but for the 
torture he must live with, to drive him to this end.  Danny too pitied the 
madness in his eyes and simply said “You need to be in a hospital.”  The man 
protested that he was the master’s slave and Danny rolled his eyes, regretting 
THAT whole thing.  “I order you to serve me by going to a nuthouse and staying 
there.”

Then Danny launched the rig straight up into the air.  It sailed twenty feet … 
and kept going, higher and higher, as if blasters were thrusting it away from 
the earth.  Gravity finally won (a shallow victory, since Danny probably wasn’t 
even trying) and the whole thing crashed back down, the metal crushing into 
itself, the cab shattering into pieces upon impact.  As we walked past the 
awestruck dudes, Danny snickered at the one guy lying with his eyes rolled in 
his head and his pants soaked with a huge load.  And that after the one he must 
have splooged in the woods.  “Get a life,” Danny called over his shoulder.  “And 
take the sumbitch with you.”

THE END