Buck, I've been feeling like my head's splitting open on-and-off since Tuesday, and now I'm getting other symptoms too. Please distract me with embarrassing stories about Steve? i love those.
when steve was twelve, he broke his arm. surprisingly, it wasnât in a fightâhe was carrying a twenty-pound bag of potatoes up the stairs for his ma and he tripped. went down the whole flight, potatoes bouncing everywhere. after heâd recovered a bit from the tumble, he sat up, looked at old mrs. mackinnonâ who was just coming out of her apartmentâand said âsorry for the mess.â and then he looked down and noticed that his forearm was bent in the middle. and then he started crying. so his ma ran him to the hospital and they set his arm and put it in a cast. and thus began the first era of the Unstoppable Steve. (the second era was after erskine made a limited edition Jumbo Steve, and the third was Steve: Reheated.) see, if youâve ever had a plaster cast, you know that those things are shockingly sturdy. steve went from being a sixty pound asthmatic with rage issues to being a sixty pound asthmatic with rage issues and a right hook like a piledriver. at first, his arm was too tender for him to do much, but after it started healing up, and he started getting in fights again, he figured out that his right arm was better than a baseball bat when it came to hitting stuff. that plaster cast started white, but it didnât take long for it to get brownish with dirt and bloodstains. he still got his ass kicked, but it took a bit more work, and the other guys actually looked like theyâd been in a fight. anyway, steve was half in love with that cast. Â sometimes i thought he never wanted to take if off, and if it hadnât messed with his drawing, i think heâdâve worn it for about a year. but about a week before it was supposed to be taken off anyway, stevie got in a fight with gerry, the shoemakerâs kid from up the block. gerry was a mean sonofagun. he was thirteen, and heâd hit puberty early, so he had a solid eight inches on wee stevie. and he was as dumb as a box of bricks.he hated steve. steve was tiny, sure, but he was sharp as a tack and well-liked. there wasnât an old lady within miles that didnât love stevie, so he was always getting penny candy for running errands for them. gerry had a habit of cornering stevie in alleyways and beating on him until candy fell out. steve had a habit of not letting him do it without a fight.gerry cornered stevie and started shoving at him. steve shoved back. gerry shoved harder. stevie stumbled, and gerry threw a punch. stevie took it full in the face, and then swung back, full-force, with that sledgehammer cast of his. gerry dodged. steve plowed his cast into the old brick alley wall. the brick shattered. stevieâs cast broke. so did two of stevieâs fingers.steve started screaming. Â gerry ran. now, understandâit was old, old brick, but all gerry saw was little crazy stevie rogers punch a hole in a brick wall and then start shrieking like a berserker. rat-brain gerry wasnât bright, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one, so he ran like the hulk himself had just showed up in that alley. smartest thing he couldâve done, really, because iâd just shown up and if heâd kept after stevie, iâdâve handed him his ass. as it was, i pried stevieâs cast off and walked him back to the hospital. the doctors said his arm was plenty healed and didnât need a new cast, and splinted up his fingers. steve didnât like the splints nearly as much as heâd liked the cast. they made absolutely terrible weapons.