The Pacifier

Few people know this, but it isn’t only your hands which tremble when you get to my age. I can still fly straight, but, when I hang in midair, I waver. I’m fairly sure no one has noticed.

I squint in the feeble breeze, taking the lay of things. Two dozen yards below me, a crowded barrio in a midsize California city. Trouble’s afoot. Milling at the far end of a downtown street are boys and young men in red bandanas, about thirty of them, known as the Norteños. Directly beneath me, glaring at the Norteños, are roughly the same number in blue bandanas; they call themselves Barrio Azteca.

My eyes aren’t what they were, but I can too readily imagine, in each boy’s face, the same emotions. Frustration. Fear. Indignation. Rage.

Superheroism is a young woman’s game. I can still do it, but I haven’t got long left. A window in a tenement below opens, and a childish face peers up, doubtless recognizing the white uniform and boots, the cape patterned to look like dove wings. “It’s her!” The young—they’re who I worry about most. Their future. I make an effort to stabilize my hovering.

Enough. Time to stop this brawl before it starts. I stretch forth my hand.

***

From the start, the others on the team never entirely accepted me. This was back in the sixties. God, was I young. And times were simpler. Your supervillains simply wanted to either rule the world or blow it up. Your evil henchmen all wore matching uniforms. Superhero teams were rarely idle.

I got a lot of grief for my superhero name. The Pacifier. Yes, I know what it sounds like.

The last time we would fight together, though I didn’t know it yet, was a day that began like any other. I was reading alone in the command center break room while most of the others were sparring in the gym. A klaxon honked, all the lamps on the big board flashed red, and footage came up on screen: Warehouse district. Couple of buxom coeds tied to a donkey-shaped piñata with a time-bomb inside. The handiwork of the Mad Muleteer again. Anybody who couldn’t fly or teleport piled into the van.

When we got there, the Muleteer had a battalion of henchmen waiting for us in the road. All wore matching jumpsuits. The rakish berets were a nice touch. Our boys faced off: Yellow Lightning twirled his nunchucks, the Glutton flexed his belly till his bandoliers snapped, the Tartan Spartan set his highland pipes crackling with energy, and all the others popped their knuckles or tentacles.

Things looked to get hairy fast. Broken bones, mashed noses, blood—sometimes people even died in these fights. I never could bear violence. Before I knew it, I was stretching forth my hand, pale blue light dancing from my fingertips.

The mass of henchmen, inflamed with bloodlust, suddenly drooped where they stood. Shoulders slumped. Sighs wooshed from lax jaws. Knees wobbled. A few plopped down splay-legged in the road. Some giggled; others hummed cheerful tunes. Everyone was pacified.

While the boys went around making orderly arrests, our leader, Sergeant Stomp, stomped into the warehouse to rescue the coeds, toting wire-cutters for the time-bomb. The Muleteer had hee-hawed off into the distance, certain to make trouble another day. Then Sarge stomped back out to where I was standing, chewing hotly on his cigar. I knew that stomp. The others were glaring at me.

The Glutton, snapping handcuffs on a henchman, couldn’t contain himself. “Why’s she still on the team, Sarge?” His belly trembled with stymied vim.

Sarge forced the words through clenched teeth. “The team sticks together.”

“Not me,” declared Yellow Lightning, fuming. “I didn’t become a superhero so I could herd sleepy mooks into paddy wagons.” He kicked one of the henchmen, who just smiled dreamily. “If Sarge won’t listen to reason, I say we quit and form our own team without her.”

Sarge’s cigar sagged between his lips. “You’d never dare.”

The Tartan Spartan piped up. “Canna ever hae a proper fight wi her about. I’m wi Yellie on this one.”

Sarge fell quiet. I didn’t need precog abilities to sense where this was heading.

***

The blue light fades from my fingers, and Barrio Azteca and the Norteños pass an introspective moment; I suppose they are having a good think about what they nearly did. Then most of the boys on the street below wander off to more innocent pursuits—basketball, PlayStation, or what have you. Some in blue bandanas fist-bump others in red. A few light marijuana cigarettes. None are reduced to the state of imbecilic relaxation I used to cause in crews like the Muleteer’s. Those were rookie blunders. I alight onto the sidewalk and pat my uniform pockets for my commlink and bifocals.

“Yo, Abuelita.” Hector is walking over, smiling warmly. The Barrio Azteca leader. A nice young man. He points. “On your head.”

I put my hand up, and there are my bifocals. How silly. Practically a cliché, but you don’t last long in my line of work without making your peace with clichés.

Luis, leader of the Norteños, joins us. “¿Qué onda? Got time for coffee?” He nods up the street.

“That would be lovely.” I shut my commlink off without checking it. Saving the world can wait for coffee.

***

For the six decades since the team gave me the bum’s rush, I’ve operated solo. What it comes down to is the vocation—the call you feel to make a difference. So I stayed the course. At first, I got police departments to loop me in on emergency calls, and I stuck to petty crime, staying off the supervillain beat to avoid stepping on Sarge’s toes. After a few years, I felt confident enough to hire a staff. Angela researched trends in violence. Phil did logistics and canvassed for donations. And there I was, with my own concern going.

The seventies saw the decline of the supervillain. The big names ended up dead or behind bars, or else catapulted into the fourth dimension. My early turn toward mundane crimes turned out to be a smart move: as more superheroes tried to break in, they found operators like me already established. I wasn’t just fielding gang fights. We’d get domestic disputes. Arguments over parking spaces. Drunken quarrels after football games. These things can snowball like you wouldn’t believe. I’d get a forwarded all-points-bulletin from Phil, and, before anybody knew it, there were deep breaths and muttered apologies on all sides. Sometimes people thanked me, sometimes not.

I stopped a riot in Louisville once. Just floated over it and cooled everyone’s head. I’m proud of that one. Phil got a call from the White House, something about arranging for a medal. But then I began calming audiences at campaign rallies. The way these demagogues whipped people up—I couldn’t stand it. Must have pacified the wrong party; the White House stopped taking Phil’s calls.

I decided it was time for us to go wider. Angela identified flashpoints across the world for me. Grenada. The Falklands. Lebanon. Angola. I calmed entire battlefields of antagonists. I like to think I saved thousands of lives, including civilians and bystanders, though often as not the armies simply refought the battles soon after. And not everyone appreciated my intervening in matters of national security. The things some in the media said—well, I won’t repeat them.

The work took a toll. I got dizzy spells. Exhaustion, said my doctor. The team went through changes, too. Angela had her baby and had to be let go. Phil got the AIDS bug so many of his poor friends were coming down with. I scaled back, hiring just one fellow to replace them.

The years slipped by.

A girl wants a quiet place to go back to, and the little town of Olympia had taken my fancy. I confined myself to the west coast: regular flights up and down Washington, Oregon and California, calming anger, reducing rage, defusing fury. If I felt up for it, I’d fly as far as San Diego, but often as not I only had the stamina to hit the Bay Area before turning north. You do what you can. The Pacifier was only one woman.

But then—I began to notice.

***

“Something I got to tell you,” says Luis. Hector has removed his blue bandana and is stirring creamer into his coffee, eyes on his placemat; I get the sense he knows what Luis is going to say.

I fold my hands on the tabletop. “Of course, dear.”

“We, uh.” Luis clears his throat. “You know we owe you a lot. The whole barrio.”

Hector nods, gaze still downward. Now I’m sure I know what they want to say.

They’ve noticed it. In years gone by, tensions in this neighborhood used to flare into violence every couple of months. Just last year, I was getting alerts every third week. Now, it feels like every ten days.

“There’s this thing about alcohol,” says Luis. He hesitates, not like he is searching for words, but rather recollecting prepared remarks. “When I was a little ese, one beer could fuck me up.” Hector snorts, a single low laugh. Luis glares, but continues. “But when you drink more and more, like, you know. You get to where…”

I complete the sentence. “You need more of it. To achieve the same effect.”

Hector raises his eyes to mine. His voice is low and reedy. “Abuelita, used to be, you came around, we were cool for a long time. Nobody got pissed off at nothing for weeks. But now.”

Luis tilts his head toward Hector. “The way it is now, I bet you I’m straight ready to murder this cabrón by tomorrow.”

I’m sure he will be. This is what the years have shown me. This is what haunts me now. Once people grow accustomed to my calming influence, they become gradually less capable of controlling their rage on their own. They’re at the mercy of their own fury without me—their pacifying angel. Their sole shield against their own worser impulses.

“I suppose to you poor dears I’ve always looked old,” I say. They see the gray; I don’t dye it anymore. “But I was your age once. Things felt simpler then.” I take a dainty sip of coffee. The cup trembles. “Once I’m gone, well, I don’t know how things will manage themselves. If there’s a solution, I haven’t the foggiest what it might be.”

Then Luis surprises me. “Maybe you better just stop.”

Hector nods.

I look sharply at Luis, wondering what on earth he means to say.

“Thing is,” he continues, “until the day comes when I do murder this cabrón, nothing’s ever gonna be settled.”

Settled? I realize my cup has stopped halfway down to the tabletop. I feel—I can’t say what. Not just bewilderment. Not just hurt. Something else too.

“Yeah.” Hector sips his coffee. “Shit, it ain’t like I wanna be friends with this fairy.”

Luis snorts. “Fuck, no.”

Author’s Biography

Dale Stromberg grew up not far from Sacramento before moving to Tokyo, where he had a brief music career. Now he lives near Kuala Lumpur and makes ends meet as an editor and translator. His book Melancholic Parables will be published November 2022. https://dalestromberg.jimdofree.com/