Painting a Pretty Picture
by Charlie Kirby

My mom told me once that you should find something you are good at and try to turn that into a living. Course, the hard part is finding something you're good at that will pay you enough money to live on. I mean, take my cousin, Louie, for example. Nobody was better at counting cards than him, but the Feds didn't take kindly to his talent. He's doing five to ten up the river now.

Me, I don't have any particular talent, although according to my teachers, I had a high tolerance for boredom and tendency to daydream. That was, of course, before I discovered the big fabulous world of comic books. Their pages were peopled with beautiful, kind, and well-endowed women and brave, heroic, and equally buff men. The bad guy always got caught and the good guy always won. Bam! Pow! Way to go, Batman!

My favorite was Batman, although I didn't think much of his sidekick. There was something a little unhealthy about that relationship to my way of thinking. I could understand Batman wanting to hang out with someone other than Alfred, though. That guy was yawnsville!

Anyhow, I would think about the stories long after I'd climbed into bed, sometimes just to dream about a world where the good guys won and he bad guys didn't. Other times it was to block the noise of fighting coming from downstairs. My parents fought a lot and when they started yelling, that's when I'd retreat upstairs. I couldn't say anything because a fella my age wasn't supposed to be reading comics. All I knew was that they gave me a world I preferred over my own at home.

Course, when you have a family like mine, you keep quiet about wanting justice to prevail. That can get you in deep, like Cousin Sammy. He's swimming with the fish now for being a stool pigeon. I got a job at a corner drug store and one of my jobs was putting the comics in the racks. I was able to read them when the store wasn't busy and I read them all more than once, memorizing this month's issues before the next batch arrived.

I graduated and had to leave the drug store and all my comics behind to take my place in the family business. I ended up helping in my uncle's front, a painting business. He liked sitting in the office and giving orders to his henchmen or whatever they were. I liked being out front, helping people. It was a highpoint, though, when a paint job came through. To be let alone, just me and the paint to work together and create something beautiful. I like the way the paint feels as the brush spreads it on a surface, smooth and silky. I decided that painting was my super power—some super power! I wondered what Batman would have said about that.

One afternoon, I was cleaning up a wall in one of my other uncle's, I had lots of uncles, shops. I'd already plugged all the bullet holes. Grandpa said they didn't look right for business. I was just starting to put on the paint, nice and even like. I was standing there minding my business and this little guy walked up to me and started watching. He looked about as out of his element as a gold fish would look in a bird nest. Still, he wasn't bothering me so I didn't bother him.

For a while he stood there, watching me paint.

"You like doing that, don't you, son?" His voice was really big for a man his size.

"Yup, it's sort of freeing. It lets my mind do other things." I didn't tell him that it was mostly thinking about the last issue of Batman. I didn't know how he was going to get untangled from Poison Ivy this time and Catwoman wasn't going to like that.

We chatted a bit more after that. He was easy to talk to. Not everyone bothers to talk to me; they're always busy talking at me and, believe you me, there is a difference.

Before he left, he handed me a business card. "If you ever want to come and work for my uncle, give me a call."

I figured it was good to have an ace up my sleeve—no offense, Louie—and was sure to put it in a safe place in my wallet, right behind my photo of Lana Turner.

Then my uncle got into a disagreement with the wrong guy and the next thing you know, he's dead, the family business has been taken over and the new owner didn't want any of the old employees hanging around. He brought his own relatives in and started cleaning house. Unfortunately, in this line of 'work,' most of the cleaning was done with the business end of a gun.

My father screamed a lot and beat Mom up pretty bad. He came looking for me, but I was really good at hiding. I learned from The Bat to hide in plain sight. Dad went past me twice and never saw me. I decided that was fine and took off for good.

I was about to head down to the unemployment office when I remembered that business card.

Now, I will say this about UNCLE. They may be a secret organization, but they pay well and they don't bother you. After I explained things at home, they set me up in a little apartment. I think it had been Kuryakin's; he's one of the Section Two guys. There were all sorts of special security measures in it and I found a book of Russian poetry behind the bookcase. He's just moved somewhere else and I think they just stuck me in there. It was small, but I didn't care. It was mine! And those Section Two guys, they are a whole lot like superheroes, fighting for the good of mankind. I don't know if it was because I'd moved into his old place, but I felt a connection with Kuryakin.

UNCLE got me all set up with the local maintenance guys and they got started me painting the inside of the building. UNCLE has a special paint that they liked to use, although the color wasn't very exciting. I think the official name was Battleship Gray, but they called it Waverly Grey. It was specially formulated to keep the bad guys from hearing what UNCLE was up to. I didn't really understand it myself, but they didn't hire me to think. They hired me to paint and it was a good thing, too. Some of those walls really needed a coat of paint. The best part was that it was a never-ending job. By the time I got to the bottom floor, it was time to start on the top floor again.

The only time I got to use colors was in the Canteen. They let me paint one whole wall any way I wanted. I didn't use any gray paint, either. I did a big scene from a comic book I read with lots of bad guys getting their butts kicked. It was just coincidence that they looked a lot like my relatives.

There are three of us in all, but we didn't paint in the same place at the same time. That suited me just fine. I liked having my time to myself without some co-worker yammering about this or that. Just me, the paint, and Batman—that's how I like it.

Sometimes I'd see Kuryakin around the building. He always looked so intent upon something. I'd never been that focused upon anything in my life. Yes he always smiled at me and nodded. He knew I'd moved into his old place when I returned the book to him. It had been a going away present from his grandmother and one of his only ties with his motherland. It made me wonder if that's how it felt to do good. I could see why superheroes liked it so much.

I was down in the lower part of the building, getting ready to start my day. I had my five gallon bucket of Battleship Gray, my brushes and rollers, drop cloth, tape. In short, I had everything that I needed for a good day's work. At the last minute, I put my ventilator on. The paint fumes are pretty bad until they dry. I didn't think my eyes would ever stop running the first couple of weeks, but it's amazing what you can get used to. Now I can't even smell the fumes anymore.

The lower levels of the building are beneath the ground and that's where UNCLE keeps people that they need to keep tabs on. Sometimes they are important people who need to be protected. Other times, they are enemy agents that UNCLE wants to talk to.

I was in one of the conference rooms and had just gotten stuff set up when I heard this big commotion outside. Then I heard gunshots. Believe me, in my family, you learn about guns before you learn how to pee standing up. It was gunfire all right and it was headed right for me.

There were two options available to me. One was to hide and the other was to figure it didn't concern me and keep painting. The second one seemed a bit manly so I chose it. I was pouring some paint into a smaller bucket when the door to the conference room slid open and this guy came running in. He was dragging someone by the neck. With a start, I realized it was Kuryakin.

I stayed still—Batman taught me that trick—and the guy never saw me. He raced around the table, and I could tell Kuryakin was just sort of doing his best to not be strangled.

Solo, Kuryakin's partner, appeared in the door and the bad guy held his gun to Kuryakin's head.

"Back off, Solo, or I'll blast his brains out through his ear."

Kuryakin was trying to pry the guy's arm from his throat and that's when he saw me. I looked him straight in the eye and then dropped my head forward. He blinked, then nodded. I only hoped he understood what I was telling him.

"Hey, Crap for Brains!" I yelled and the guy jumped, startled. At that moment, Kuryakin went limp and slid from the man's grasp. The bad guy spun in my direction, aiming the gun right at my belly. At that same moment, I thought, Gee, what would Batman do? He always used what was around him to his advantage. That's what made him a great superhero in my book. He didn't have any super powers, like Superman or the Fantastic Four. And I remembered my super power. Without thinking twice about it, I tossed the bucket of paint into the guy's face.

Kuryakin rolled quickly out of his reach and Solo, backed up by a few other agents, came running in. He checked Kuryakin first, who waved him away, and then went over to the bad guy. At least I hoped he was a bad guy. Otherwise, I'd made a really bad mistake.

The guy was rolling around on the floor and screaming. He clawed his face, which is only made things worse for him. Like I said, this Battleship Gray stuff was pretty caustic stuff. Solo looked over at me, and I sort of smiled and gestured to the paint-splattered table.

"Sorry about the mess."

Solo started laughing and walked over to me, putting his gun back into its holster. Some Section Three guys arrived and they sort of hovered, waiting for instructions.

"You, ah, better get him down to Medical and get that paint cleaned off him." Then Solo looked back at me. "Thank you, Mr. Kent. I think it's fair to say you saved Illya's life."

"More like your hide," Kuryakin interrupted, holding out a hand to shake mine. "Mr. Waverly would not have been pleased if this little bird flew away." Kuryakin then sort of made sense of it all. "What possessed you to throw paint on him?"

I thought about explaining about this paint and how mean it is. I thought about telling him about utilizing the things at hands in a panic situation. But what I said was, "A little bat told me to do it."

"A... A bat?" Solo looked really confused, but then Kuryakin noticed the tee shirt I was wearing under my work jumpsuit. And he patted Solo on the shoulder.

"I'll explain it to you on the way to Mr. Waverly's office."

Things changed a little bit after that. I got a promotion and a raise, but I declined the new job. I liked painting the walls inside UNCLE HQ. It was a little like my own personal Batcave. Outside, I'm a nobody, but in here I'm Paint Man. A man has to be able to recognize his own special talent. Paint is mine. Paint is my super power. And Kuryakin isn't a bad guy to have as a sidekick. At least he doesn't run around in hot pants and say "Gee Whiz, Batman... I mean, Paint Man."