The Night of The Flaming Avenger

By William McCloskey

Not too many people know that Regent Square has its own superhero. That’s because the legend originated to the north, up by Forbes, well away from the downtown square. The tale has existed until now only as oral tradition. It’s written down here for the very first time.

Our subject is a lovely young woman who is working at Ryan’s on a Sunday night in August, 2009. Her customer, a harmless older guy, says hold the stool, kiddo, he’ll be back. He’s walking down Braddock to lend $20 to a friend.

But it doesn’t happen. As he passes the tennis courts, he’s set upon by three urban jackals who hit him from behind, drive his face into the pavement and punch and kick and rob him.

It was over quickly. A woman in a silver Mercedes stopped and yelled at the punks. She called the authorities.

The first responders rolled up in -- incredibly -- a 30-foot fire truck. The older gent was bleeding like mad. Head wounds are like that. The paramedics thought his eyes had been kicked in, but it was just all the blood from lacerations across his eyebrows.

Meanwhile, across Braddock Avenue, the art gallery was offering a couple of large modern canvasses rendered in acrylic with startling blotches of black and blue and red. Life imitates art.

The cops wrote up the incident as “simple assault.” It didn’t feel especially simple to the guy as they punched and kicked the snot out of his head and wrenched his sacred Claddagh ring from his spasming right hand. It felt like attempted murder.

But they did what they had to do, and at least property values were not negatively impacted. Nor was the civic association besmirched.

The guy didn’t heal very quickly, but the neighborhood recovered almost immediately. It rained the next day. Sure, blood had been spilled, but the gentle showers washed the clotted gore off the sidewalk. It tumbled down the curb and into Nine Mile Run, then its molecules slid over the rocks at Duck Hollow, out into the Mon River and inexorably on to the Gulf of Mexico. The Claddagh ring was gone forever.

You know what they say: “Wrong place, wrong time ... These things happen ... Well, it was the Swissvale side of the street, after all, not Edgewood ...  blah, blah, blah.”

For him, the facial and skull injuries eventually healed. The bruises faded and the deep crusty scabs at elbows, knees and nose fell away. The scar that mattered was not on his head, but inside it. Two years later, he still does not walk anywhere after dark.

But on that night, while he suffered, our fledgling hero learned of the incident quickly. News travels fast across the night life.

And she was conflicted -- saddened that her customer had been hurt, disappointed that he would not be returning that night (and him a guy who could sometimes throw a good tip), frightened that she would be walking home at 3 a.m. into Wilkinsburg.

But then it happened, superpower grace descended on Regent Square. As she’s walking home after work along the spooky, humid, misty streets, a change comes over her as she crosses Guthrie. She grows enraged that fear should have gotten loose in her beloved neighborhood of fractured sidewalks and power-company-mutilated birch and linden trees. “This will not stand,” she utters, and turns predator, to hunt the scum.

Using only the tools at hand in her giant carry bag, she digs out a Bic lighter and a medium can of Pantene Ultra Hold. Blowing a stream of hairspray across the lighter’s flame, she shoots out massive, heroic bursts of flame that billow brilliant orange and blue. Those few who witnessed it in the middle of the night across East End, along Savannah and on down Biddle say it was glorious.

Another feature of the night life, we know, is that sad and even tragic stories turn funny pretty quickly. They must; how else could we continue? So the “Flaming Avenger” moniker was established during happy hour on Tuesday and the legend has had legs ever since.

She never found them, she professed. They’d long since run off home with the bloody folding money and bloody Claddagh ring before she finished her search of the streets and alleys. That’s what she said. But did they, really? Sometimes a superhero just can’t tell the whole truth; it might be too harsh. What is known, for sure, is that they never were seen again.

Today, The Flaming Avenger still is in the neighborhood. Still young and quiet and perhaps even more lovely. She’s married now and usually gets a ride home after work. But the boys at Forbes & Braddock know the story. They don’t even think about messing with her. She still carries that big bag, you see, and they know that she’s had, at least, a taste.