Middleton, NE

The Midwest

The nondescript car stopped in front of the deserted farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Once a vast sea of grass, the Great Plains of North America had been transformed into golden fields stretching as far as the eye could see. Nebraska, almost smack dab in the center of the country, a thousand miles from any ocean. A man and a woman stepped out of the car; a tall powerfully built man in his late thirties and his beautiful shapely blonde wife. The man stretched his legs- they’d driven hundreds of miles to get here. The place where his wife had been born, over ninety years ago.

The woman walked hesitantly towards the abandoned house- memories long suppressed came flooding back. She stopped. Her husband rushed to her side to steady her. “What’s wrong, babe?” he asked, concern evident in his voice.

“It hasn’t changed since the last time I saw it over forty years ago,” Carol Marshall, known to the world as the superheroine American Mom, said to her husband Clint. She was trying to hold back her tears.

“You didn’t abandon them, babe, you were always there for your parents,” he said soothingly, rubbing her shoulders. “And you had to leave- it’d be suspicious if someone who didn’t age stuck around your brother’s family, and his kids growing up.”

“I know, but look at the state of the house!” she said, laughing nervously. She smoothed her dress down. Clint knew it was her way of clearing the cobwebs from her head, putting on a brave front. She checked the skies; no surveillance drones. Good.

“I grew up in the Roaring Twenties, you know,” Carol began. Her thoughts reached back. She’d been born here after her mother’s exposure to the alien meteorite. The meteorite that endowed her with super strength, super speed, invulnerability, and an incredible chameleonic mastery of disguise. But growing up, learning to master her powers was more a curse than a boon- it had been difficult, and without her parents’ support she might well have gone down a dark path and allowed her powers to take control of her. But Carol’s parents instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in her, a desire to help the weak and fight injustice.

“But this is Nowheresville. We didn’t have Tommy Gun parties and speak easies and all that nonsense.” Carol said. She’d only read about all the Prohibition era craziness in Chicago and other big cities at the time.

“Nope, you were busy bench-pressing combine harvesters and juggling a hundred cows,” Clint joked.

“Oh, you,” Carol chuckled. “Two hundred head of cattle, actually.”

“But it wasn’t easy growing up with my powers. I could hear things from miles away, people’s voices and I thought I was going crazy…” she said. “And when I hit puberty my hormones kicked in real bad. If it wasn’t for my parents…” she let the words trail off.

“You were always strong babe, you always did the right thing. They taught you well. And you would never do anything bad.” Clint reassured her.

“Yeah, but I still almost killed Butch, the boy I fell in…no, it was just a mad crush and Stella my best friend in a fit of jealousy. I ran away. I had to run away,” tears were streaming down her face now. Carol still remembered the look of terror on Butch and Stella’s faces as she created a huge tornado that sucked their car into the sky before dumping them onto the prairie, their screams as they fell. And what scared her was the fact that she enjoyed it. “I was a danger to the people around me, and I couldn’t come back until I learned to control myself.”

“I roamed the Canadian wilderness like a wild thing, I was part of nature. Sasquatch and bears tried to mate with me. I tamed mountain lions and bald eagles. I lifted mountains, stopped volcanoes in the Pacific, learning to master my powers.  I calmed down, I wanted to use my powers to help the world, but first I had to help my family…”

“When I got home, the Dustbowl had hit us hard. There was no water. The crops dried up. There were huge dust storms and the soil just blew away. My family, my mom, dad, brother and sister had packed up, moved east to Chicago to look for better opportunities. Before I went looking for them, I had to make sure there was something for them to come back to. So I decided to save the topsoil,” Carol explained. “I used my super strength and speed to plant wind breaks. Chose trees from Northern Canada, the type that used to grow here in the prairie tens of thousands of years ago, planted them in a belt in a wide area. Then I drilled underground for water sources to irrigate the region. It coincided with FDR’s New Deal, so you could say I helped the recovery of the Great Plains.”

“You did that, babe?” Clint said, amazed.

“You know I don’t like to take credit for big things, but I helped a bit,” she said in her usual shy, self-effacing way.

“My wonder woman!” Clint hugged his wife and kissed her on the cheek.

“When I tracked them down, my family’d landed in hot soup with remnants of Al Capone’s crew who were still fighting a massive turf war after they put Scarface away. I had to deal with those guys before I could persuade my parents to come back. They thought I’d died,” Carol was sobbing now.

“And I’d already started wearing a mask and wig of my old face to hide my transformation,” she continued sadly. “A bit of a shock for them to have their 'pa'hazi' (yellow haired) daughter disappear into the Great White North and come back looking like a full-blooded Omaha. Who knew an encounter with the cannibal spirit of the North could do that to me?” "Well, lucky I learned to shift between Freedom and my everyday form at will now..." “When folks who’d left heard what happened, they flocked back home. Conditions in the cities were no better because of the Depression, and the New Deal helped to rebuild lives destroyed by the drought. I helped.”

Clint smiled.

“With that extra money Pa made off selling our livestock to the government, he sent me East to an Ivy League university. To get a proper education, so I could be a social justice warrior like the First Lady. And Doctor Susan Laflesche- they were both my heroes. There weren’t many women in the top colleges at that time. I learned to perfect my acting and disguise skills there, too. Then the war broke out in Europe, so I decided to join the WAACs, sneaked into the White House in disguise, impressed the President and Eleanor Roosevelt. You know the rest.”

Carol stepped carefully onto the porch. She stopped to listen with her super-sharp hearing, her keen metahuman senses didn't pick up anything out of the ordinary. She gently opened the screen door that led into the house. It had been so long...

“I helped Pa secure some government contracts selling beef to the Army. All above board, so don’t give me that look.”

Clint shrugged, “I didn’t say a thing, babe.”

“I know, but you were thinking it, hun.” She knew what her husband was thinking, and he knew her thoughts. Their bond was strong, the bond between two individuals who loved each other more than life itself...

They walked deeper into the house. Carol flicked dust off the covers on the furniture, instinctively sweeping the house to make sure there were no hidden surveillance devices. Or any nasty surprises.

“So…how did you keep in touch with your parents after the War?” Clint asked, watching his wife move stealthily through the house. He marveled at her ability to switch from slightly ditzy Suzanne Somers MILF to superninja in an instant. He watched her intently- if she signalled danger then it was time for her to go into action, and for him to run for cover. All clear. He went on, “The Army couldn’t have been happy when you dropped off the grid.”

“I’d handed in my papers. They’re just sore because they lost an important asset. Who cares, they had nukes and I didn't belong to them anyway. But they lied to me, and they dropped an atomic bomb on a city of several hundred thousand for no good reason, and I was right there when it happened,” she said bitterly.

“To answer your question, hun,” Carol said, teasingly lifting up her dress to reveal her delicious curvaceous star-spangled body hidden under her civilian clothes. It was all Clint could do to restrain himself from taking her there and then. “Tunnels. Tunnels under the farm running for miles in every direction,” she explained. “Only Pa, Ma and I knew where all of them were, where they led. I also helped Pa build a hardened bunker under the house when War broke out; it doubled as a storm shelter. The tunnels helped me get in and out of the house unnoticed. I know, I know, there was no way the Germans would ever reach Nebraska, but my grandparents are German, and THEY reached Nebraska.”

"This way, hun," Carol motioned for her husband to follow her.

“Ma and Pa would’ve liked you,” Carol said as she led her husband up the stairs to the bedrooms.

“I would’ve liked to meet them,” Clint agreed.

“I never came back as ‘Carol Briggs’, but I tried to be there for them. The G-Men would drop in from time to time to question Ma and Pa about my whereabouts, but they never found me here. They watched the house, but they never saw me. I was the husky farm hand doing work on the farm, fixing stuff. A travelling salesman. I was my sister coming home for a visit from the West Coast. I just wish I didn’t have to use such subterfuge to visit and spend time with them…”

“I could only be myself with my family in the safety of the house. But Ma and Pa couldn’t let the world know that their daughter had come home. I know how desperately Pa wanted to shout out to the world,’ See, that’s my little girl, the superheroine Freedom!’ But it was our little secret…”

Carol went on, “Even when I travelled the country like Bruce Banner in the ‘Incredible Hulk’ TV series, learning new skills and fighting against supervillains, I still tried to come home. But I wasn’t there when they…when they went away; I was fighting some interdimensional threat or the other. I just wish I could have said goodbye. I miss them so much…” Carol stopped and started crying again. She buried her face in her husband’s shoulder. They held each other for several minutes.

“They’re proud of you. You never betrayed their memory, you never let them down. You saved the world so many times, and you’re still out there fighting for all of us.” Clint held her close.

Carol nodded, wiping her tears away. Her husband knew just how to comfort and reassure her.

“But I never kept in touch with Jake’s kids, or Susan’s either. How could I explain to them that their aunt, their grand aunt was a near immortal superhero? I couldn’t expose them to danger. But I kept watch over them, made sure they were alright. Still do. They just left the house like this, starting a better life somewhere else. But I made sure the house stayed in the family.”

Her siblings resented Carol’s disappearing act and the intrusion of the government into their lives. All because of her. Her brother’s words still rang in her ears after her parents’ funeral, ”It’s just like you Carol. Running away. Go, I don’t ever want to see you near our family again. Go on and run, it’s the only thing you’re good at.” Still, she tried to keep an eye out on Jake and Susan’s families, Ma and Pa would’ve wanted that…

“With a little elbow grease, some spit and polish, this’d make a great home away from home for us, you know,” Clint said looking around. Construction and DIY was his specialty, and he wanted Carol to be happy. Rebuilding her family home seemed a good place to start. "Bunker and Batman-style tunnels. Wide open spaces for them to train.The kids'll love it!" Still solid after over a century. ‘They sure don’t build ‘em like this anymore’, Clint thought. 

“Sean’d just transform this place into a mansion, and Katie might accidentally burn it to the ground!” Carol grimaced. “So much for keeping a low profile.”

“Ha, and I thought you trusted them to use their powers responsibly!” Clint chuckled, pulling off the dust covers and setting himself down on the edge of a bed in a cozy little room. Dolls and memorabilia lined a drawer next to the bed; there were faded photographs and several large posters of Freedom adorning the wall. They were in her room. Carol stood hesitantly in the doorway, as if afraid to enter. So many memories…

As she slowly walked in, her voice quivered; Carol seemed to be on the verge of tears. Clint quickly stood up and hugged his wife, enveloping her in his strong embrace. "Shhh, honey, it's alright..." he said reassuringly. He lead her to the bed and they sat down. Without hesitation Carol curled up on the familiar bed and Clint slipped in beside her to comfort his wife. They held each other like this for a long time as Carol finally let herself go, tears flowing down her face.

Clint kissed his wife, whispering “Welcome home, Carol.”

………………

This story was written and illustrated by me. It takes place either before or after her current storylines in Angel Falls. There's no such place? Smallville, KS doesn't exist either.

Carol Anne Marshall, nee Briggs, a.k.a. Freedom/American Mom and Clint Marshall belong to me.

The Incredible Hulk © Marvel Comics. Batman is © DC Comics.