Caleb Houston. He's it. He's where it all started: the world's first superhero. When I say unkillable, I mean exactly that-- not invulnerability like any of your iconic superheroes-- just a man who refused to die.
Some doubted in the beginning. After all, the human body is a miraculous machine; it an take an incredible amount of punishment. Still, there are limits. I remember watching the news on that first day. In today's world, where people with extranormal abilities are splashed across magazine covers, hosting television shows and leaking sex tapes to the media, I feel like I should say debut, but he wasn't like that. He was like an inner-city schoolbus driver from Chicago; and that's what he was doing on the day he became superhuman.
A gang of someones (some say Bloods, some say BPS, reports vary) shot up his bus, bad. He swerved, or someone swerved into him, and the bus ended up crashing. Shortly after that, you got the news cameras. They show Caleb, a black man in a torn, grey bus driver's uniform running into the burning bus two, three, four times, coming back out with a kid under each arm. He's fat and balding, black with graying hair. He's shorter than you'd expect, but he just won't quit.
Three minuets and change into the clip, a grainy bird's-eye from a traffic copter, you see this monster Cadillac roll by, way too fast. The Caddy's window shatters as someone inside lights up one side of the burning wreck, and the kids laying on the asphalt next to it, with an automatic weapon. Caleb throws himself in front of a kid--it's a scene from a movie--and you see dark patches appear on his uniform. They just happen, like they're special effects on his shirt or something.
Caleb lies there on the ground for a few seconds. The car speeds away. Everybody's just dumbstruck. Then he moves, he gets his elbows and knees under himself and pushes his weight up. If you watched it live, you never forget that feeling; half triumph and half disbelief. I got all hopped up on adrenaline and I was two thousand miles away.
I don't know if anyone even remembers him anymore. They probably forgot about him, just like they forgot about the soldier from the 1990s that went down over Bosnia, Scott O'Grady. Man was a hero and a national celebrity for all of ten minutes; until the next headline consigned him to the purgatory of stale fame. That's the public eye in America: myopic and wandering.
Caleb Houston, The Man Who Couldn't Die, had no costume or flashy name. He lives in obscurity now, though not the self-imposed exile one might expect. I suspect he's too dignified for that. Living far away from the world, telling them not to look in your direction, that's just a toddler making a show of ignoring his parents. Caleb Houston's above all that. And I, for one, thank him for his service and his style.
It's been 10 years to the day, St. Valentine's Day, since the tragedy that prompted him to leave the scene and I'm being honest when I say he left a void that hasn't come close to being filled.
Here's to you, Caleb, however you choose to spend your time.
-Cheers,
B.H.
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