Hero by Samantha Dotson

“All right kiddies!” Nate yelled at an ungodly volume as our church group, yawning, came staggering in for breakfast.

“You kids ready for your first day on the worksite?” Nate asked, grinning.

“It doesn’t really matter if we are ready or not,” Mary, a loudmouth pessimist, stated with obvious contempt and disrespect. “We have to go.”

If this statement affected Nate, he didn’t show it. “It’ll be fun. I promise,” said Nate, and then sauntered off to the staff table.

After breakfast, I climbed onto the bus with a renewed sense of optimism. Maybe Nate’s right, I thought. Maybe this will be fun. But as the bus drove up the cracked driveway, fun was the absolute last adjective I could have used to describe the project that loomed before us.

The house we were charged with repairing was, in one word, filthy. In many words, it was a small house rotting apart with each rainfall. The interior smelt of boiled cabbage and decaying wood with gently sloping floors and crooked, unaligned lenolium. The couch was lumpy and threadbare; the rugs full of holes, the trim pulling apart from the wall, and the ceiling sloping down into the living room. The bathroom was caked in mildew. Ten bottles of Lysol, Scrubbing Bubbles, Mr. Clean, and Pine Sol mixed together can’t save this hell-hole, I thought to myself.

Outdoors was no better than in. The yard was no longer visible, littered with broken toys. The paint that had not already chipped off of the house was an unattractive faded yellow. The windows no longer transparent, the shutters past repair, the garden had been completely conquered by weeds.

“Oh my God,” I heard Matt mutter under his breath as Nate ran around like a three-year-old at a birthday party.

As the week progressed on, everyone began to bite at one another; everyone, that is, except Nate.

“Hey, hey, hey hey!” Nate sang. “What’s up Mary?”

“Buzz off.”

“Oh-kay. You’re doin’ a nice job on those shutters. Keep up the great work!” Nate said before checking on Matt. “How’s it goin’ bro?”

“Nate,” Matt said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but if you don’t leave me alone I am going to nail your tongue to the roof.” Matt then reached for a shingle, but as he stretched, the shingle slid out from his grasp and off the side of the roof. “Man!” he yelled, chucking the hammer aside.

“Hey, man; don’t sweat it!” Nate said in a soothing manner. “Here, lemme go grab you a thing of water. Don’t want our chief roofer getting dehydrated!” Nate walked over to the large, five-gallon container we had brought with us. “Hey Mark! How’s the garden coming?”

Mark gave Nate a look that could have would have sent Ecuador into sub-zero weather. Then without saying a single word, spit a mouthful of water in Nate’s face.

“Uh, thanks Mark. Uh, I really could use a cooler. Um. Lemme take this back to Matt and I’ll come help you weed,” Nate said, looking slightly abashed at Mark’s total disrespect.

Ill-tempered teenagers soon stopped picking at each other and began doing the Can-Can on Nate’s back, trying to get a rise out of him, but to no avail. Nothing could sink Nate’s determination or kindness.

Friday was a much happier day for everyone. We fixed the house, and did it without any casualties! Nate walked around the house handing out sodas to grateful, though slightly ashamed of their previous behavior, kids as the owner of the house thanked many of us tearfully. Soon, after the others had begun walking toward the bus, Nate and I were the only ones still by the house. As we picked up pieces of wood and paint brushes, a young child, not more than eight ran out of the now repaired screen door holding a piece of notebook paper in his pudgy pink hand.

“Hey Nate!” the child yelled. “I drew this for you!” He came to a halt in front of Nate, huffing and trying to catch his breath. “Here.” The little boy handed Nate the picture, colored with markers that were running out of ink on paper with many smudge marks from erasing errors. “That’s you.”

I took a peek at the artwork the child had presented. It was a picture of Nate’s head with a big Superman suit drawn on his body. The look doesn’t fit him, I couldn’t help but thinking. He looks much better in khakis.

The boy gave Nate another snagged-toothed grin before scampering back inside the house. I came to a sudden realization about my companion. The child’s representation of him was more accurate than any photograph I had ever seen. It showed Nate’s true self, his soul, his essence. It showed Nate as a superhero not by how he looks, but by the way he acts. He is depicted as Superman not because he looks like him, but acts like him. Nate is living proof that to be a hero, you don’t have to be the fastest or strongest or smartest; you just need to be kind and loving and use your passion, your talents in a way to positively further humanity against a retrograde attitude.

“Was it worth it?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”