Tigerman Read Online Free

kept his eye on the door. It was enough that he was a soldier. He didn’t want the people of Beauville to think of him reckoning each drinker, making sure he could kill them if he had to. Though of course some part of him did all those things, in the back of his mind, registered newcomers and regulars, weighed them and categorised them, so that if it ever came to it – whatever ‘it’ was – he would know whether to stand or flee, how many could he take down, what would it cost him, and how bad would it get.
    Very bad, was the answer, always. One way or another: very bad.
    The Sergeant kept his eyes on the boy – not aggressive, just interested – and the boy looked back at him in exactly the same way, reassessing, cataloguing, considering. Why? Where did this stark, sudden appraisal come from? The boy was part of the landscape, a customer. The Sergeant had a vague notion he had glimpsed him before: getting out of a coracle on the waterfront; running errands and bringing messages; sitting and reading. Why was he allowing himself to be visible, exposing himself by this close, intrusive scrutiny? The Sergeant had pegged him as smart and jittery and possibly traumatised. So. What now?
    The boy’s body was very still, a mirror of his own demonstrative calm, and the Sergeant, changing the focus of his attention without changing the position of his eyes, followed the line of one scrawny shoulder down to the hands. Then after a moment he snorted approvingly. He relaxed, and felt as much as saw the boy doing the same. For all their physical differences, in this moment they were identical: backs straight, heads slightly forward as they prepared to push themselves to their feet. And each of them was holding his phone’s battery in preparation for putting it away, in a separate pocket. A twin paranoia. A wise man does not catalogue his road home.
    The boy nodded to him. The Sergeant nodded back.
    ‘You are smart,’ the boy said.
    ‘You too.’
    The boy nodded.
    ‘You like comics?’ the Sergeant asked, then heard the echo of the question and saw his own child self shaking his head at the stupidest thing ever said by man.
    But the boy was gracious, respecting the gambit for what it was. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Which ones?’
    ‘All. Some DC, for Batman. Grant Morrison! But mostly Marvel. Warren Ellis. Also Spurrier, and Gail Simone. Bendis is full of win.’
    The Sergeant grinned. He had never heard this expression before, but he approved of it.
Full of win.
It had a digital flavour, merry and modern. More things should be full of win.
    ‘I like Green Lantern,’ he said.
    ‘Which one?’ the boy demanded.
    Oh, sod it. Now he remembered: there were so many Lanterns to choose from, and always changing, and the wrong one was like the wrong football team, the wrong church . . . ‘Hal Jordan,’ he said, dredging up the name.
    ‘That is totally Old School,’ the boy approved. ‘Jordan is bad ass.’ He separated the words:
bad ass
. The Sergeant suspected he had learned them by reading. He wondered which comics allowed that sort of language, and realised: probably all of them, these days.
    ‘You like Captain America, too?’ the boy asked.
    The Sergeant hesitated. ‘Not so much,’ he admitted. Bright colours and battlefields didn’t mix for him. Steve Rogers was an invincible man, an overman who wore what he damn well liked, and survived. It was the men around him who didn’t make it. No. The Sergeant did not like Captain America. Perhaps he had once, when he was younger.
    The boy nodded as if this was to be expected. ‘Batman?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Batman is best. Bob Kane was a god. Also Bill Finger.’ The Sergeant had only the dimmest idea who these people were.
    The boy seemed to realise that the conversation had become too technical, because he proffered the comic he had been reading. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Christian Walker is full of win.’
    The Sergeant took it, then hesitated. ‘How will I get it back to