FIC: "The Kindness of Strangers" (SV, gen) (1/1)
The Kindness of Strangers
by LJ
Summary: Mary has loved three Kent boys in her life.
Spoilers: “Relic”, “Lineage”, “Memoria”; vaguely post-“Vengeance”
Shippiness: More or less genfic, but references to canonical Superman ‘ships.
Kent boys have always fallen for city girls. This is one of the many things that have set them apart from others in Smallville for generations. It gives them a unique place in Smallville’s gossip circles - What did the new Mrs. Kent do wrong this time? Has she ever even boiled water on her own? How soon until she runs back to her big city? - and every generation is as poleaxed as the last when it is clear that the young lady is sticking it out - that she is, in fact, making a success of her life on the farm.
It wasn’t quite a pattern yet, when Jonathan Kent brought Martha Clark home, or at least it wasn’t acknowledged as one, but he certainly wasn’t the first young man of that family to win a Metropolitan bride.
Nor was Hyram Kent.
Mary Loeb is not even married yet - not even engaged - when the women of Smallville start calling her “Mrs. Kent” in derisive tones. The current Mrs. Kent, Hyram’s mother, tells her to simply ignore them: “They think they’re so far above us city girls,” she tells Mary, “and yet I am certain that every word of gossip is identical to the stories being passed around the ladies’ cliques in Metropolis every afternoon, save for the names.” Mary nods, though for all her being ‘that city girl’, she’s never been to any of those events.
Just because you’re from the city, doesn’t mean that you’re rich.
The Loebs do not live anywhere as bad as Suicide Slum, but compared to what the ladies of Smallville have imagined in their gossip-mongering, they might as well be. Mary’s father is no captain of enterprise, no traditional philanthropist; he does not even have the distinction of being a true academic, with degrees from universities back East and letters after his name. He is a teacher: in essence, a servant of the people. He and his wife raise four children on that salary, and send one son into the ministry and the other into the military. Their two daughters marry reasonably well.
By ‘reasonably well’, of course, is meant ‘they are unlikely to end up in places like Suicide Slum’. Mary is in Smallville; Theresa - five years older - is in West End, a suburb of Gotham.
Mary rarely sees any of her family after she moves to Smallville.
It does not take long for Mary Loeb to meet the movers and shakers of Smallville - the ladies’ auxiliary of that elite group, rather. She nurses her cousin back to health and cares for her new-born baby and almost daily there are visitors, young and old: Mrs. Lang, Mrs. Potter, Mrs. Small, Mrs. Atkinson, the daughters and daughter-in-laws of each - every family in town sends their womenfolk at one time or another, and sometimes repeatedly. Sometimes they are genuinely there to help: the Negro lady, Mrs. Ross, comes by once a week with a casserole and her middle boy to weed the little garden in the backyard. Frequently, they seem to be indulging their need for gossip - and often it is to take their measure of her. “You’re so thin,” Mrs. Potter tells her. “Is it true that city girls don’t eat?” - “You’re so tall,” Mrs. Lang tells her. “Almost like a boy.” - “You’re so pale,” Mrs. Small tells her. “In my day, girls used to rub lemon juice on their faces to be as pale as you, but it’s so unhealthy. Go pull those dandelions out of your cousin’s garden - don’t forget your hat. You wouldn’t want to sunburn.”
Mrs. Kent, she is glad to realize after a few visits, never says those sorts of things. It is true that there are many things about living in Smallville that she is unaccustomed to - when she was small, they had lived in an apartment building that would eventually be claimed by Suicide Slum, and when she was twelve they had moved to a row house closer to the rail line. The ash and soot of the daily trains made gardening in the tiny stamp-sized bit of green in the back difficult, so she had never really learned. Mostly her father went out in the back to smoke. She had taken the Home Economics course required by her high school, but she had not been the brightest pupil in the class. She is hopeless with yarn and a pair of knitting needles, slightly less hopeless with a crochet hook, terrified of sewing, but usually does not burn anything she is asked to cook. In reality, she can cook reasonably well, but everyone’s eyes on her as she did so in class made her nervous.
(And her seams weren’t that bad - it just was that whenever she took her latest sewing project home, her grandmother would insist on her ripping it out and doing it ‘the right way’. Then, the next day at school, her teacher would insist on the same. As a result, she was known as the slowest seamstress ever to grace the halls of Metropolis’s Siegel High School.)
Mrs. Kent’s presence in a room while she struggles with her cooking or stitching, however, is different. She puts Mary at ease, and while she is critical of Mary’s work, her words are never a condemnation of Mary herself. Once or twice a week, Mrs. Kent visits and under her firm tutelage, Mary learns the arts of the small-town housewife: she bakes bread, she bakes pies from scratch, she cans tomatoes as they turn red on the vine; she knits socks and crochets her cousin a bed jacket and she mends clothes. Together they dust and Mrs. Kent teaches her how to clean the wood floors of the old house her cousin’s husband has inherited; the row house in Metropolis had had cheap linoleum throughout.
Some afternoons, as they hang the fresh laundry to dry, Mrs. Kent’s son, Hyram, arrives to drive his mother home. At first, Mary thinks little of the way Mrs. Kent orders her to take a walk with him into town and the coins she slips him to buy sodas. Hyram is a pleasant enough young man - in many ways better than the boys she had taken walks with in Metropolis - but she does not see what others clearly see: Hyram Kent is courting.
She doesn’t see it at first, that is.
She is not entirely immune to gossip.
By the time the proposal comes in September, she already knows her answer.
Having seen what her cousin - and thanks to the postal service, her sister - had gone through, it does not surprise her when the doctor prescribes rest. Her child is a finicky one already, still in the womb: foods, smells, sounds, colors - everything and anything can set off the nausea or a headache - and on several memorable occasions, fainting spells. There are good moments and bad moments, one disappearing to make room for the other within a heartbeat. She thanks God that she still has her mother-in-law to help her; the work of a farmer’s wife goes far beyond her duties that summer with her cousin. Hyram’s father is not well, either: his heart, the doctors say, and because he refuses to heed their orders, he has landed himself in the hospital again.
The more salacious women of Smallville claim that it’s the fault of these city girls that the Kent boys bring home: these city girls clearly are doing something…impure to their hearts. But Mary Loeb Kent knows better - in some families all the men are tall or they have light hair or their noses have the same shape. The Kents have bad hearts. They are as God made them.
It’s one of those quiet evenings when she’s supposed to be resting, and aside from finishing the preparations for their supper, she is. Mrs. Kent - she has trouble addressing either of Hyram’s parents as anything but Mister and Missus - is at the hospital with Mr. Kent, keeping him company. As the water boils for their tea, she sits at the table with her notebook and sketches.
One of her earliest memories is of sitting beside her father as he sketches. He teaches her form and shadow and color, clean lines and blurred curves. She is the only child who listens to these lessons; her siblings draw and color as children do, but as they grow older, Father’s artistic ideals become the ravings of a poor old man. She suspects that this is the same response that his students at the high school give him when he teaches art; she has never heard an unkind word about his lessons on Shakespeare and Keats. Occasionally he sells a painting or a drawing, and during the summer he takes the 32 train to Waterfront Park twice a week and draws for the tourists. She is not as talented as he, but there is something calming in soft charcoal on coarse paper, in the firm line of a lead pencil on the smooth pages of her journal. She is not as fond of ink; she’s never quite gotten the hang of it and it always smears before she’s done. She writes grocery lists in pencil.
She starts with an image that has sat with her all afternoon: Hyram is a frequent subject of her sketches. She remembers how he looked at midday, as he came in the door already pulling off his work coat. The sun had been shining, casting odd shadows through the windows and the door. Half his face had been lit up, half of it shrouded in shadow. His hat had been tipped downwards over one eye, the eye that should have been illuminated. The sunlight had glinted off his belt buckle and his buttons.
Pencil touches paper. A straight line for Hyram’s back: he is not an overly tall man, but taller than some, and he always stands proudly. Imperfect lines form the plaid pattern of his coat and the shape of his arms as he pulls it off. A curve begins the shape of his hat -
She looks up. Normally, next to nothing stirs her from her concentration with a sketch this well-formed in her mind, but this is one of many things that pregnancy has changed. Now she hears it all, every creak and groan of this farmhouse, every raindrop and hailstone that finds its way here. Sometimes she worries that she is imagining all of it, the insanity of women in their time, but this time - right now - she is not alone. Hyram has looked up from his newspaper. He frowns in her direction. “What was that?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she admits. She’s not sure what she heard, but she knows she heard it.
“Hm,” Hyram grunts. “Those dogs at the chickens again, I’d wager. I’ll go check it out.” She watches as he catapults himself out of his chair and reaches for the rifle. There is little grace in his movements; Hyram Kent is a simple, earthy man. Grace was not a prerequisite for her hand.
She waits inside as she has done many an evening. The tea water boils and she pours it. She mashes the potatoes with fresh milk and butter; she pulls the remnants of Sunday’s roast chicken from the rack in the oven; she stirs the carrots on the stove, adding another teaspoon of brown sugar to the syrup; she slices bleached-flour bread, a rare treat, and butters each slice lightly. She squirrels away her journal and the pencil into a drawer. All the while she finds herself brushing her hair out of her face; she’d had another headache after lunch. She’d tossed and turned so violently in her nap that she’d undone her usual pinned braid and brushed her hair straight when she woke up. The even, repetitious strokes had been oddly relaxing, and when she was done it had seemed a waste of energy to plait it again. Morning and a new - hopefully headache-free - day would come soon enough. A long scrap of cloth from the remnants basket had kept her long locks off her face until now. Perhaps she would indulge in a bit of city fashion and cut her hair when the baby came; short, boyish hair would surely be more practical than her daily braid and bobby pins.
The familiar scuffing sound of boots on the porch tells her that Hyram is back, but - no, someone is with him -
A boy. He is tall and broad-shouldered, but he seems like little more than a boy in her estimation. She has never seen him before, but there is something in his uncertain expression that tugs at her heart. He thinks himself unwelcome, and if Hyram has brought him into the house, then he is anything but. He’s a handsome boy, and her artist’s eye can’t help to notice the striking color of his eyes, hidden beneath whatever pain he is suffering, and the odd, gem-shaped medallion he wears on a thin, silver chain. Whoever he is, he is not from Smallville: every able-bodied boy in town has done at least one day’s worth of work on their farm at some point during their marriage.
“Hyram?” she says softly, questioningly. She trusts him, but she is human, and the best part of humanity - her father had once told her this - is curiosity.
Her husband sets the rifle down near the door - there is still a chance of dogs at the henhouse this evening - and sets his hat aside. His coat soon follows. “Mary,” he says, “this here is Joe. Joe, this is my wife, Mary Kent.” There is a bit of a twinkle to his eyes as he says that last part; they’ve been married nearly four years already.
“Ma’am,” Joe says politely. His voice is soft, circumspect. Respectful. “I’m sorry to trouble you - ”
“Nonsense!” she tells him. “Come sit down and have something warm to drink. It’s unusually cold for June, don’t you think?” She pulls out a chair from the table and gestures for him to sit down.
“No, ma’am, I wouldn’t know,” Joe tells her hesitantly. “I - I’m not from around here.” His feet are still firmly planted by the kitchen door, but Hyram soon grabs him by the arm and encourages him in the direct of the empty chair. “Come now, son,” he tells the boy gently, “sit down and take a minute to breathe, at the very least.”
Those strange eyes flick between her and Hyram several times before the boy gives in and begins to devest himself of the leather jacket. She gives Hyram a smile - a nervous one, to be sure; who is this poor fellow, anyway? - and pours the tea. “How do you take your tea, Joe?” she asks. “Some sugar? Milk? I’m sorry we haven’t any coffee ready.”
If ever there was a man in contrast to her Hyram, this Joe is it. It has nothing to do with his height, though he does tower over her husband. It has nothing to do with the color of his hair - dark, intense brown, almost the color of ink, unlike Hyram’s dark blond - or his eyes - one moment blue, the next green, and all the while light and crystalline. Joe’s skin is neither pale nor tanned, but simply was: whatever his trade might be, he certainly isn’t a farmhand. No, it is the grace in his movements that makes him so radically different from her husband, the gentle steps he takes as he gives into their request and sits down. Men aren’t meant to move like this.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” the boy says softly. “This is more than sufficient. Thank you.”
Sufficient? I suppose he really isn’t from around here, after all. She hands him his tea and their eyes meet:
There is something not human about him.
She keeps this thought to herself. Whoever Joe really is, she can see as plain as day that he needs help - at the very least, a kindly hand. “Wrap your hands around that,” she tells him, “and you’ll be warm again in no time at all. I’ll just set out another place for supper.”
It takes a moment for her words to make sense to Joe - she can see it in his face, the befuddled look, as if he is unaccustomed to things that are normal to them - but when they do, he is instantaneously nervous again. “No, ma’am, you needn’t -”
Hyram takes his seat at the head of the table as Joe speaks. “None of that, Joe,” Hyram tells him. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days as it is. Now, I know that’s probably not true, but a man who’s gone through what you’ve had to tonight might as well have not eaten. We’re simple folk and we eat simple food, but it’s hearty and it’ll do you a world of good. We’re not as rich as some, but we can certainly spare enough to share what we have with you.”
She has been setting the food on the table during this, but it does her conscience good to hear Hyram’s words. She doesn’t know what happened to the boy, or why he was on their property, but she knows that she and Hyram are of one mind about this: it is the least that they can do to share a meal with this stranger in need. As she places the plate and silverware in front of Joe, she can see that wherever it is that he comes from, men are the same: he is struggling, at the very least, not to cry. She wonders if the women there are more practical, as she is, to let out the hurt and be done with it.
The dishes on the table, Mary finally sits down. It is a good thing that she had that nap; this excitement is taking every ounce of energy she can muster. “Joe,” she says, “we usually say a prayer before we eat. Do you mind if we do?”
Joe seems surprised that she has bothered to ask, but shakes his head. Hyram gives her a goofy grin. “Knew I did good when I married a city girl,” he jokes. “Never would have occurred to me that some folks don’t.”
“We generally join hands,” she tells Joe, who still looks a little skittish, and takes his hand from across the table.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I’ve seen this custom before.”
The blessing is nothing special - conventional words of thanks likely said over dinner tables across the country - but it is their way. Hyram says the words in his usual manner, but tacks on an additional wish: “And, Lord, guide our new friend Joe as you do all wandering souls and keep him and his loved ones safe in the future. Amen.”
“Amen,” Mary says softly.
Joe does not echo them, she notes, but he does not seem offended or put-upon by Hyram’s little addition. She gives him a smile and says, “Hand me your plate and I’ll dish it up for you.” He does as asked.
The food is eaten with less conversation than she is accustomed to. She tries to coax Joe into talking, but her questions are either answered with a few words or brushed aside by Hyram; her husband knows something about this boy that he is keeping from her. She trusts him, but she does not like being left in the dark.
Still, she learns a little about their strange visitor: he has traveled greatly in the last year, a trip funded by his father. The reason for the journey is not given, but Mary can tell that Joe is not looking forward to returning home - wherever ‘home’ might be. That question is met with silence, as if Joe cannot answer but at the same time does not want to lie. It is the only question that is not answered in some way or another. She has the impression that Joe’s father has lofty expectations of his son, expectations that Joe does not think he can meet. She wonders what they could be: he is a capable young man, that much is certain, and she cannot imagine what goal might exist that he could not accomplish with the right combination of motivation and hard work.
Still, the meal entertains her, and in her condition entertainment is difficult to come by. Joe eats most everything she puts on his plate, but refuses - firmly - the offer of seconds. As Hyram has told him, they can certainly afford to give a filling meal to a young man in need, but his refusal is so polite that she does not force the issue.
As she clears the table, she offers them pie, but Joe is resolute in his refusal: “Thank you, ma’am, but I must be going. I’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” Hyram asks.
Joe is silent for a moment. “I have…friends…who will be coming here, to take me home. I mustn’t be late meeting them.”
“Well, then,” Hyram declares, “let me drive you there. It’ll be quicker than walking.”
Joe nods, though the look on his face makes Mary wonder. It’s as if he knows of a way that would be just as quick, that he’s indulging Hyram in his act of kindness. “Thank you, sir,” he finally says, “but I would not want to -”
Hyram waves his hand, as if to brush the thanks out of the air. “It’s no trouble, Joe, no trouble at all.” He busses his own plate and silverware to the sink - a surprise to Mary, who is accustomed to doing it all herself. In a soft voice, not quite a whisper, he explains things to her: “He’s the one McCallum’s been claiming went after Louise.”
“Oh, God,” Mary whispers. Mrs. Lang had told Mrs. Kent about this before they’d left for the hospital and Mr. Kent an hour before.
“Hey, now,” Hyram says and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You and I both know this boy didn’t do it. Look at him - for all he’s as strong as an ox, he’d never hurt a fly. He’s innocent.”
Hyram hasn’t been whispering, though his words have been soft and low, and she is not surprised when Joe speaks. “I did not hurt Louise,” he says, standing. “I could never hurt her. I loved Louise more than I thought was possible.”
Hyram nods. “You don’t have to convince me, Joe,” he says. “I can see it in your eyes that you’re a good man, and they say I’m a decent judge of character. Let’s get you to your friends before someone starts searching for the fellow Dexter McCallum thinks he saw in his barn, eh?” He begins to shrug on his coat.
“But…” Joe is hesitant; Mary can see the worry in his eyes. “Dexter McCallum loved Louise as much as I did; he did not kill her.”
“Who was it, then?” Hyram asks. “Were you there?”
The boy nods. “I don’t know his name, but it was not the first time he had harmed Louise McCallum.”
“Well, then,” Hyram tells him, “Dexter McCallum has nothing to worry about. I’m sure the police will sort it out soon enough.” He hands Joe one of his own jackets, a piece of blue denim that didn’t suit him too well. “Why don’t you wear this,” he says. “That bit of leather of yours is a bit flashy for Smallville.” Joe hesitates but in the end takes the coat from him and accepts Hyram’s assistance in putting it on. The color, Mary muses to herself, suits him. A young man with eyes like his should wear blue more often. “At least you won’t stand out as much if they stop you,” she says, folding the leather jacket over her arm and handing it to him.
Hyram nods. “I know all the back roads,” he assures Joe, and Mary knows it’s the truth; the Kents have lived in Smallville for generations. “We’ll take them.”
“I appreciate your help,” Joe tells him, “but I’ll find my way on my own.”
Now that she knows some part of the truth, Mary can see why he is so hesitant to accept their help, but at the same time she feels sorry for the boy. Are there no good Samaritans where Joe comes from, or anywhere he has traveled this past year? It seems impossible to her, in her heart, but her mind reminds her that the world is full of unkind people. Joe is lucky that his path has crossed with theirs. And how would this stranger find his way in the dark anyway? At night, every field looks the same, and not far from their own property the roads begin to twist and turn. It isn’t a safe place to walk.
“I am not sending you out alone,” Hyram tells him firmly. “Are you sure these friends of yours are going to show up?”
Joe nods. It seems he’ll accept Hyram’s help after all. “They’ll be there,” he says determinedly, stepping past Hyram and opening the door to leave.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Hyram tells him, “and try to clear this thing up.” It’s the least they can do, Mary tells herself. If this boy is innocent - and she knows he is - it’s their duty to help him.
Joes turns towards them and the sad, anguished look is back in his eyes. “I’ve got no reason to stay anymore,” he says softly.
And that’s it then, Mary thinks. “Be careful,” she says - it’s the only thing she can say. Hyram hugs her, his hand resting on their child. He smiles, giving her a wink, and says, “Bye, Gene.”
Oh, not that again, she thinks to herself. “His name,” she reminds Hyram, “is Jonathan.” God help them if it turns out to be a girl.
But Hyram just smiles and explains to Joe, “We’re still deciding.”
Ha, Mary thinks. Even your mother is fonder of Jonathan than Gene. But she accepts his little peck on her cheek as he moves to leave. “Come on,” he says to Joe. “Let’s go.”
Hyram passes through the door quickly enough, but Joe is hesitant. He turns back towards her. “Thank you,” he says softly.
Mary just smiles at him. “I’m sure it will all work out in the end,” she says, trying to reassure him. After a moment, he hands back his leather jacket to her. “Here,” he says. “Please keep it as a poor token of my gratitude.” His words are formal, almost ceremonial.
“Won’t you need it when you get back home?” she asks in what she hopes is a maternal tone.
He shakes his head and after a moment says, “No. No, I won’t need it there,” and slips out the door.
She waits nearly an hour for Hyram to return, alone in the house. It is an eerie feeling, especially after the evening’s excitement, and she honestly cannot remember the last time she was alone after dark. When everything is cleared, she grabs the rifle and lays it across the table. She hopes to God that she will not have need of it - it is most certainly not on the list of approved ‘restful’ activities - but she keeps it there all the same. She does the dishes and soon there is no evidence of a third sitting down to dinner with them. The remainder of the chicken finds its way into the icebox and the pots are scrubbed and dried.
She hides the leather jacket in the closet, under the winter coats. She doesn’t have the energy or the grace to make it up to the attic.
Her journal and the pencil are still in the drawer where she left them and she stares at the barely-begun sketch of Hyram. Her fingers itch to begin a new drawing, but she refuses to give in and instead finishes the picture from earlier. That, more than anything, tires her.
She doesn’t recognize the look on Hyram’s face when he returns, but she’s had a pot of water on the stove for a while now and she makes him some more tea. Slowly the color returns to his face and the chill leaves his fingers. “What happened?” she asks. “Did Joe find his friends?”
Hyram nods. “Yes. Yes, I suppose he did.” He drinks the tea.
“Well?” she asks. “What happened? I’m not even sure what to call this, the way you are right now.”
He takes a deep breath. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, Mary. But I swear to you, it’s the truth.”
She’s worried. How could she not be, with her husband talking like this? “Hyram, just tell me,” she says. “Don’t you think you’ll feel better, telling someone to share the burden of whatever it was that happened?”
He gives in. “I took him where he wanted to go - I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone where it was, so I’ll keep that promise. We had a few words - kindly, mind you, about how sorry I was that Smallville wasn’t as welcoming as one could hope, and he offered some good wishes for our baby. A kind soul, he was, through and through. So I told him that if he ever needed anything, we would do what we could, in the same thread of kindness as we took him in tonight. We said good-bye and I left, as I had promised him. But I didn’t go far; I waited in the truck a little ways down the road, not far at all, but hidden, to make sure his friends found him.”
“Since you came back alone,” she says, “I assume they did.”
Hyram closes his eyes, as if trying to remember whatever it was that he saw out there. When he opens them, he reaches for her hand and takes it. “Mary, it was something I will never forget for the rest of my life. The world was so quiet out there, I knew I could hear if a car drove up to get him, so I was staring up at the stars, like I do. And suddenly one of the stars was moving - I thought it was a comet at first, but it kept coming closer and closer, faster than anything I’ve ever seen. And then it was overhead, like an airplane, but the shape of it - I’ve never seen any airplane like that. And Joe just stood there, like he was expecting it, didn’t even move when it got close and landed right in front of him. A door opened on the thing and there was this bright light, like it was all lit up inside. A man stood in that doorway - I have to believe it was a man - and called out, and his voice was just like any man here on Earth. He called out, ‘Jor-El! Jor-El!’ and sure enough, Joe answered him as he walked up to the thing. They jabbered at each other in some crazy foreign language and then Joe climbed up inside. But he stopped in that doorway and looked back out, and I bet he saw me because even though I couldn’t see his face, I could see the outline, I guess, of his head in the light and it looked like he nodded at me, just like he did the whole time he was here in this house. Then he stepped inside and the door closed. I couldn’t breathe, really. It was just like something in one of those movies, you know, only…better. It was real. A minute went by, maybe five - why, it could have been ten minutes, for all I know, sitting there in the truck - and then as quietly and smoothly as it had come down, that thing went right back up, and it just kept going and going until I lost sight of it in the stars.”
“Oh, Hyram,” she whispers. “Oh, god.”
“I swear to you, Mary, that every word was the truth. There had been something peculiar about that boy, and at first I just thought he was upset and in a strange place, but something wasn’t quite right. And then - and then I thought back to the stories you hear, about being visited by folks who aren’t quite human, like those fairies in that Shakespeare play, or those stories about being visited by angels, so God can test you or help you or what have you. But this was…Mary, I think when Joe said he wasn’t from around here, he was talking about the whole of the Earth.”
“Hyram, I…” she starts but what is there to say? “Hyram, I do believe you may be right,” she whispers. “But he looked - ”
“ - like one of us,” Hyram finishes for her. “In the movies, they always look different.”
“Maybe,” she says contemplatively, “he’s another of God’s children.”
The only time they question their decision to help Joe comes months later, after Jonathan is born and Hyram’s father is in the hospital again. Mary hears that Dexter McCallum has been found guilty and will go to jail for Louise’s murder. It’s in the Ledger, it’s even in the Daily Planet; it’s on the lips of every friend and acquaintance. “Hyram,” she whispers as they lay in bed, “isn’t there something we can do for Dexter?”
She can hear him exhale in frustration. “No,” he replies. “I don’t think there is. Anything we could say is useless without Joe here to say it himself. It would just sound like we’re trying to help a friend - we’ve always been friendly with Dexter and Louise, and both their families. As best I understand the law, there’s nothing to be done.”
“We know he’s innocent.”
“A test,” he whispers back. “They say God tests you, every day, and there’s a lesson to be taken from it. Maybe…maybe we’re to understand that even a good deed can have a bad end, in some way. That…that the world isn’t perfect.”
She sighs. “I would rather believe that it will still turn out in the end. Whoever it really was, maybe the guilt will grow heavy on him and he’ll confess.”
Hyram laughs. “We can only hope that’s true, Mary. I still believe we did the right thing, helping Joe, whoever he was.”
Sleep does not come easy that night.
The next afternoon, she finds herself aching to draw. As Jonathan naps, she gives in; the sketch of Hyram is the last completed picture in her journal, as she’s been too busy with the baby to do more. Her hand moves the pencil across the page almost without conscious effort and soon a familiar face emerges on the smooth page: Joe, with his dark hair and his strange eyes, wearing that brown leather jacket. Hyram had hidden it in the attic that very evening. The image grows: the kitchen door is behind him. Hyram stands in front of him, and she knows the moment: they’ve just stepped inside and she remembers that a moment later she had pulled out the chair and asked him to sit down.
In her own honest opinion, it’s one of her best pieces.
She will never be able to show it to anyone.
Age creeps into her like dusk over the cornfields. She remembers so easily the day when she first met Hyram, across town at her cousin’s house, and now Jonathan is grown and married. She likes Martha - she’s another city girl to add to the list in the Kent family tree, and things have changed since the days when she and Hyram were courting. It’s not quite so bad in Smallville to bring home a city girl anymore, it seems, though there are those who don’t care for Martha. That Potter girl, especially, Mary knows, but not because Martha’s another city girl stealing a Kent boy. It’s not that epic a story. No, Nell’d had her eye on Jonathan for a while, but Mary knew it would never work out.
She’s glad to see that she’s right.
Hyram lives to see his boy married, but not much more than that. It hits Jonathan hard - maybe harder than it hits her, Mary thinks. She helps him pack away some of Hyram’s things - “Some day you’ll want these,” she tells her son, coiling Hyram’s favorite belt around its buckle and setting it inside the trunk with everything else.
Jonathan carries the trunk up the stairs to the attic at her direction. She follows him up slowly; she’s not as young as she used to be. She directs him where to put it and then she opens another trunk, suddenly remembering Joe’s gift, and withdraws the leather jacket. “Put this in that trunk with your father’s things,” she tells him.
Jonathan looks at her strangely but does as asked. “Did this belong to Dad?” he asks. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“No, but it was given to us as a gift, a payment, you might say, for a kindness he performed, a very long time ago,” she tells him. “Your father never wore it, but I think it would be best kept with his things.”
Jonathan shrugs; she can tell that he doesn’t want to hear any old stories about his father. The pain is too close to the surface.
That evening, she draws Joe again.
And again.
And again.
Her boy knows well enough not to ask.
She nearly sleeps through the meteor shower on that strangely warm October day. She hasn’t been well, the last year or so. She misses Hyram and the strain of life without him is wearing on her, just as it did with his parents. His mother had lasted only a handful of years after his father’s death.
Martha, she hopes, will be a stronger woman than all those who have gone before her. But Martha has her own troubles. Mary’s only hope for herself is to live long enough to see her son a father.
It’s a clear day, for the most part: a few clouds hang in the sky, and the evening news has predicted clear weather for the week. She encourages Jonathan and Martha to go into town on their own, to run errands, to get some fresh flowers. She’ll take a nap while they’re gone. She’ll feel better when they’re back.
The thunder comes suddenly, without warning. There’s no lightning - why should there be? The sky is clear and blue. She sits up out of bed and makes her way to the window: she can see the fire rain down from the sky. “Jonathan,” she whispers. The fireballs are falling in the direction of town. “Martha.”
She stands at the window for minutes - perhaps hours, for all that time seems to slow down as the sky and the horizon are lit up in red and black, smoke everywhere, never-ending. She steps back, inch by inch, until the backs of her legs touch her bed again and she slides down, hunched over her knees like a little girl.
Her son, her only child, is in the very thick of that terror.
She’s not sure how long she sits there, quietly afraid - is it minutes or hours? - before she hears the sound of a truck pull up the driveway and the familiar stomp of Jonathan’s boots on the kitchen floor. For a moment, she cannot breathe - and then -
She can.
Carefully, she pushes herself up onto her feet. Jonathan and Martha are calling for her and the strength of their voices is all the strength she needs to make her way to the stairs. One foot in front of the other, she soon finds herself at the bottom of the stairs, embracing her son. “Mom,” he says, “are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she says. There’s no need to admit to the terror that had sat on her heart while they were gone; they’re both alive and well - and -
And there is a child in Martha’s arms.
“Martha,” she starts, “this child -”
There is an uncertain look on Martha’s face, but it disappears when she looks back at the sleeping child in her arms. “Isn’t he perfect?”
‘Perfect’ seems like a good word, to be sure, but - “Martha, Jonathan, where did he come from? Where did you find him?”
“Shuster’s field,” Jonathan tells her. The boy stirs, perhaps at the rumble of Jonathan’s voice, but he still seems to be asleep.
She sits down beside Martha on the couch. She reaches out and touches the boy, strokes his hair. He is a beautiful child, maybe three years old, all dark, unruly hair and gently sloping nose. “What on Earth was he doing in Shuster’s field, and without any clothes?” Mary finally asks. “Where are his parents, his family?”
“Ah, yeah,” says Jonathan, settling down into a chair. “About that. Um, where we found him, there was a, um, well, you see - ”
Martha cuts in determinedly. “There was a spaceship, Mary.”
There was a spaceship.
“Mom, I know you probably think we’re crazy, but - ”
She does not hear the rest of Jonathan’s words: she is too busy staring at the little boy. He stirs again and this time, his eyes open.
I know those eyes.
It has been some time since she has thought of Joe and that strange evening and poor Dexter and Louise, but those eyes are unmistakable. She has never seen another person with eyes exactly that color - until now. Until this little boy opens his eyes and stares at her, and her son and daughter-in-law tell her that there was a spaceship where they found him.
The little boy stares at her for the longest minute ever known to man, and then he reaches up and grabs a hank of her blonde hair. He seems fascinated by it, though it’s anyone’s guess why. He tugs at it, gently, and then proclaims, “Lara!”
She smiles. “Jonathan, there’s a few boxes of your old clothes in the attic,” she tells him, not even looking away from the child. “Go get them, would you? This little fellow needs something more civilized than a blanket to wear.”
As he goes up the stairs, she looks up at Martha. “He needs a name, as well,” she tells Martha. After a moment’s consideration, she adds, “Jonathan’s father was fond of ‘Gene’.”
Her daughter-in-law’s nose crinkles in polite disgust. “Oh, I really don’t think so.”
She’s forgotten what it’s like, having a child that age in the house. He’s very active, and very inquisitive; there is no cupboard, no closet, no drawer that has gone unexplored. Martha spends her every waking moment with little Clark - the name suits him, somehow - showing him their world, the farm, everything.
She watches as Jonathan hides the little ship in the storm cellar, all the while wondering if it is anything like what Hyram saw all those years ago. He had never spoken of it again, but there had been times when she knew he was thinking about it. You hear about things from time to time, people claiming they saw spaceships or that aliens had kidnapped them, but she always thinks back to Joe and tells herself that he wouldn’t do a thing like that. Surely there is some other explanation.
Surely Joe and this tiny little child aren’t the only good to ever come from outer space.
She’s babysitting her new grandchild. Clark is scribbling with the crayons she bought him; she’s hard at work on another sketch. Joe’s face has been in all her dreams these last few weeks, with good reason she supposes, but immortalizing him on paper seems to chase off the haunted feeling. She is careful with every detail and with every successive sketch she sees the similarities between that poor boy all those years ago and the child beside her.
There is a tug at her sleeve. It’s Clark, trying to show her something - his drawing. She lifts him up onto her lap, holding him tight against his squirming. He doesn’t like to sit still. “What’s this?” she asks, though she doesn’t expect an answer. He speaks, sometimes, but never in English. Sometimes she thinks he understands, but she’s never sure. He knows the names of certain objects - he knows what an apple is, what milk is, his toothbrush, the teddy bear that Abby Ross and her boys brought over - but she’s never sure if he understands any of their questions, or the stories they read to him.
Little Clark doesn’t say anything, but he points, in succession, at the three different parts of his drawing. In one corner, stick figures of two people - a man and a woman, if the length of their hair is anything to go on. The man has dark hair, the woman light hair - Clark has used a yellow crayon. They wear blue clothing, but there’s something on their chests, in yellow: if she didn’t know better, she would say it is the letter S.
In the far corner, a group of three people: a yellow-haired man, a yellow-haired woman and a red-haired woman. They stand in front of a yellow house.
In the center, a smaller figure with short, dark hair. Flying.
It takes a moment to understand what he’s drawn. “Oh, Clark,” she says softly. She shifts her grip on him - he’s getting heavy - and touches the figure of the dark-haired man. “Who is this?” she asks, though she already suspects the answer.
A normal child - granted, she has Jonathan as her standard of measurement - would be rambling on and on about the story contained in these crayoned images, but Clark simply looks at her. After a moment, he points at the figure she was asking about and says, so clearly and seriously for all his three years of age: “Jor-El.”
It’s been days since she has heard him say anything, so this comes as a surprise. “Who’s this?” she asks, pointing at the next figure.
“Lara.”
“And this?”
“Clark.”
She goes through each of the figures in his drawing until they’re all named: Mommy, Daddy, Grandma. He may not say much, but clearly he’s been listening, he’s paid attention to what they’ve tried to teach him. She hugs him tight, drops kisses on his face, congratulates his drawing and his speaking until he squirms out of her grasp and runs off.
She takes a moment to stare at his picture and then takes up her pencil and begins writing. Only then does she realize that the child’s real name - the name that Joe must have given his son in their home across the stars - the child’s real name is still unknown. Two months in their home, though, and he already considers himself a Kent.
The thought makes her smile, just a little. The Kents are good at adopting strays.
Mary hasn’t been to Metropolis in years, but Martha insists that Central Place Mall always has the best decorations and the best Santa - and shouldn’t Clark have the best first Christmas they can manage? And so on a cold Monday they drive three hours, crammed into the cab of the new pickup, and little Clark on Mary’s lap when he wants to look out the side and on Martha’s when he looks out ahead. It’s only been two weeks since he presented that picture to Mary, but suddenly he’s speaking more - sometimes in that lilting foreign tongue, but more and more of his words are obviously English. His inquisitiveness knows no bounds: his favorite phrase is “What that?” and they answer as best they can.
Despite it being a weekday, the mall is packed with holiday shoppers and at first Clark is nervous and hesitant. His grip is surprisingly strong for such a small child - Mary wonders if this is the norm for his people, if Joe had been strong and fast like his son, if Hyram had seen something to that effect and had withheld it from her. Half an hour passes and Clark is fascinated by the colored lights and the animated displays - perfectly normal for a child.
For a human child, at the very least. Martha’s little angel did not come with an instruction manual.
Taking a picture on Santa’s lap is a city tradition, and it’s at Martha’s insistence that they get in line. It’s long, full of exhausted children and tired mothers, but as usual Clark’s calm and relaxed for the most part. Martha couldn’t have wished for a more easy-going child.
Clark does not often get to play with other children: Martha has any number of excuses, but Mary knows they are all based in fear. That fear has been well adopted by Clark himself: when the little girls behind them in the Santa line try to coax him into playing with them, he shrinks back.
Mary watches them, hesitant to interfere. Only in the last few days has Clark been willing to stay in the same room as Abby Ross’s boys, and the only girl he really ever sees is Lana Lang - poor child - who cries most days. He’s more comfortable with adults. But the girls are - she laughs at herself for the old-fashioned word - forward and take turns making faces at him and trying to poke at his arm. Their mothers are busy whispering at each other and fussing with the baby that one of them carries, and so the girls get away with quite a bit - as much as they can manage without pulling free of their mother’s hands on theirs.
She can see that Martha’s watching as well, discretely, and there’s an anxious look on her face. Clark never means to do anything wrong, of course, but sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.
Mary still has the bruises to prove this.
Slowly, though, it’s clear that Clark is opening up and soon he’s making faces back at them. The girls giggle and finally their mothers notice their antics. “Girls,” says the blonde mother, “don’t tease that boy.”
Clark stares at the woman who spoke for a long moment before tugging on Mary’s hand. She crouches down; she enjoys his attempts at understanding their world. “What is it, honey?” she asks.
He points at the blonde woman and says softly, “Lara hair.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she says. “She has blonde hair.”
“Blon,” he says. He knows the word - he’s said it before, on his own - but it’s clear that he still remembers his birth mother, still identifies the color with her. She hasn’t told Martha what Lara means; the girl’s suffered enough these last few years. She hasn’t shown her daughter-in-law Clark’s drawing. The smaller of the two girls has blonde hair as well, but Clark doesn’t comment on it; it’s always adult women - mommies - who draw his attention.
The other little girl - a brunette - makes another face at Clark, but he doesn’t say anything. He just tilts his head and frowns, like he often does when he doesn’t understand something. After a moment of staring at her, he reaches out with his hand, quick as lightning, and touches her cheek.
Mary remembers what Martha and Jonathan had said, about the day they found him, about the little Luthor boy - poor child. Her breath catches in her throat.
But the girl doesn’t fall asleep, as the Luthor boy had supposedly done. She wrinkles her nose and turns her head away. “Yucky boy,” she says, and it’s all Mary can do not to laugh out loud.
The line shuffles forward a few feet. They’re nearly there. Mary crouches down again. “This is Clark,” she says with her hands on his shoulders. “What’s your name, dear?”
The little brunette squints at her and frowns, as if sizing her up - to be expected, after Clark’s unexpected act - but finally speaks. “I’m Lois,” she says and then quickly counts off her fingers. “I’m this many.”
“Wow,” Mary says in that tone of voice known to parents and kindergarten teachers everywhere. She’s fairly certain the little girl has miscounted; four seems more likely than five. “You’re a big girl, then.”
The two mothers return their attention to the girls and the one with the baby laughs. “Trust that girl to talk to anyone who talks back,” the woman says. “She’s not bothering you, is she?”
Mary is ready to speak, but Martha cuts her off. “Oh, no,” she says, surprising Mary. “Not at all. Clark’s usually so shy that I’m glad he’s making a friend.”
“Let me guess,” says the blonde mother. “His first time in the city?”
Mary wonders if it’s so very obvious that they’re from the middle of nowhere in the heart of Kansas, but then she notes the boots and worn jeans that Jonathan is wearing, the flannel - though festively-colored - shirt Martha chose for Clark this morning, the old jacket (a hand-me-down from Hyram) that she herself is carrying over her arm, and simply sighs.
“Yes,” Martha says with a little smile. “He’s not used to all the people.”
The two mothers grin. “Our girls have lived here all their lives,” the brunette says. “I think they thrive on the chaos.”
A few exchanges later, the women run out of things to say to complete strangers and simply smile at each other.
There is something to be said for holiday-season Muzak.
Clark keeps frowning at the little brunette.
At first, he’s afraid of the mall Santa - the beard does not help in the least with his usual hesitancy around strangers - but they eventually coax him onto Santa’s lap and Clark gets the opportunity to whisper his Christmas wishes in Santa’s ear for the first time.
He stares at the man, unwilling to speak. It’s hard to explain what’s expected of him; there’s still so many words he doesn’t understand, and eventually Jonathan and Martha give up.
It’ll be better next year, Mary tells herself.
She can tell that the pictures will turn out well - Clark’s already trained where “Smile!” and “Say cheese!” is concerned; there will be no dearth of embarrassing baby pictures when he’s sixteen - but he’s quick to take Mommy and Grandma’s hands when it’s over. As they wait for the pictures to develop and they pay the high-school age elf behind the cash register, the little girls who were behind them in the line pose with Santa and jabber animatedly at him as expected.
Clark tugs on her hand again and so she crouches down so he can whisper his secret to her. He points at the girls, an odd expression on his face, and says, “Pretty.”
To her surprise, it’s not the blonde one, the one with Lara-hair that has captured his attention. It’s the little brunette, the one who kept on making faces at him, the one he’d touched.
She knows that look on his face. Her hands itch to sketch it, to mark in down in harsh graphite, this proof that he belongs to us and this is only one of the reasons why.
Clark Kent might only be three years old (as best as they can guess); he may have only been a Kent for two months; he may in fact be an alien from another planet - but he’s a Kent boy, all right.
And Kent boys always fall for city girls.
“Hey, Clark. Your mom said you’d be up here. Geez, and I though our attic was bad.”
“Hi, Chloe.” Clark paused in his search. “I don’t suppose you see any empty packing boxes up here, do you? Just sitting out in plain sight where I can’t find them?”
“No,” Chloe replied slowly. “Why? You guys aren’t thinking of moving or something, are you? I mean, I know it’s got to be hard, with your dad and everything -”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Clark assured her. “There’s just some things, you know, of Dad’s, around the house that Mom’s not ready to see every day. She thought if we packed them away for a while it might -”
“Be easier?” Chloe finished. “I can’t say I agree, but if it helps her, I can’t say anything against it, I guess.” She glanced around. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in your attic before. You’re lucky that this stuff survived the second meteor shower.”
“I guess. I don’t even know what most of it is. I think some of it belonged to Grandpa and Grandma Kent.”
Chloe sat down on an old-fashioned trunk and started rifling through a nearby box. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned them before.”
Clark took a seat across from her. “I don’t remember either of them, actually. Grandpa Kent died not long after Mom and Dad got married, and Grandma passed away a couple of months after I, um, was adopted. I don’t really remember anything before kindergarten at all, actually.”
“By ‘adopted’ you mean ‘fell from the sky’.”
Clark sighed. “Yes, fine, fell from the sky, whatever.”
“Sorry,” Chloe told him and then continued digging through the box. She gave a little exclamation of delight and pulled out a journal. “Ooh, a diary.”
“Sometimes you’re too curious for your own good, you know that?”
“The reporting instinct never goes away, Clark. You might want to think about giving into it again sometime soon, before you explode.” She opened up the journal. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Not a diary. It’s a sketchbook. And whoever did these sketches was pretty darned good, too.” She handed it over to Clark, held open to a certain page.
He looked at the picture and then smiled. “Grandma Kent liked to draw. Those pictures in the living room? She did those when Dad was a kid.” He flipped through the book, pausing here and there. Okay, there’s a picture I’m never letting her see, he told himself, staring at a sketch towards the back of the book, of two little girls, a blonde and a brunette, posing with a Santa Claus. He’d seen enough pictures of Chloe as a little kid to recognize the blonde, but that wasn’t what he was worried about. The taunting would know no end if she saw that the little brunette girl was labeled as ‘Lois, Clark’s first girlfriend, December 1989’. He kept flipping through the book, making his way back towards the center of it - “Whoa,” he said in surprise. Somehow, this was even more surprising than the picture of Lois and Chloe.
A folded piece of paper fell to the floor as he held the book open. Chloe bent down to grab it. “Whoa indeed,” she said, opening it up. “Check it out. Grandma Kent wasn’t the only one who liked to draw…”
“Chloe?” Clark asked, concerned. “What is it?”
“You might not remember it now, but I think you remembered plenty back then,” she told him. She handed him the picture.
He stared at the childish stick figures and the clean, old-fashioned handwriting that labeled each one of them. “This is her handwriting, but…I must have drawn this.” He looked at the lower right-hand corner. “December 1989. That’s two months after…”
He didn’t have to finish that thought; Chloe knew the one event of note from the autumn of 1989. “Yeah,” she said simply.
“I never really thought about it,” Clark told her, “but I guess Grandma Kent knew. Knew something, at least.” He looked at the journal again. “I guess she knew more than my parents did, in the beginning. Look at this.”
She took the sketchbook from him and looked at the page that Clark’s drawing had bookmarked. It was a detailed image, two men in slightly old-fashioned clothing, sitting next to each other at a table. Chloe recognized the shape of the room as the Kents’ kitchen, but that was not surprising, given the identity of the artist. The surprise was the younger man in the picture: it was a very good likeness of Clark himself.
She looked up. “How could your grandma know what you were going to look like?”
Clark shook his head. “It’s not me. It’s Jor-El. Look.” He pointed at the bit of handwriting at the bottom: ‘Clark’s father and Hyram, June 1961’.
Chloe frowned. “What?”
“I guess she figured it out after I arrived,” Clark said. “He must’ve made an impression.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Chloe. “Back up. What are you talking about?”
“I guess I haven’t told you that story yet,” Clark said. “Remember junior year, that thing about Lana’s great-uncle? The picture of the drifter in the newspaper? Jor-El was here, in Smallville, in 1961…”
END
by LJ
Summary: Mary has loved three Kent boys in her life.
Spoilers: “Relic”, “Lineage”, “Memoria”; vaguely post-“Vengeance”
Shippiness: More or less genfic, but references to canonical Superman ‘ships.
Kent boys have always fallen for city girls. This is one of the many things that have set them apart from others in Smallville for generations. It gives them a unique place in Smallville’s gossip circles - What did the new Mrs. Kent do wrong this time? Has she ever even boiled water on her own? How soon until she runs back to her big city? - and every generation is as poleaxed as the last when it is clear that the young lady is sticking it out - that she is, in fact, making a success of her life on the farm.
It wasn’t quite a pattern yet, when Jonathan Kent brought Martha Clark home, or at least it wasn’t acknowledged as one, but he certainly wasn’t the first young man of that family to win a Metropolitan bride.
Nor was Hyram Kent.
Mary Loeb is not even married yet - not even engaged - when the women of Smallville start calling her “Mrs. Kent” in derisive tones. The current Mrs. Kent, Hyram’s mother, tells her to simply ignore them: “They think they’re so far above us city girls,” she tells Mary, “and yet I am certain that every word of gossip is identical to the stories being passed around the ladies’ cliques in Metropolis every afternoon, save for the names.” Mary nods, though for all her being ‘that city girl’, she’s never been to any of those events.
Just because you’re from the city, doesn’t mean that you’re rich.
The Loebs do not live anywhere as bad as Suicide Slum, but compared to what the ladies of Smallville have imagined in their gossip-mongering, they might as well be. Mary’s father is no captain of enterprise, no traditional philanthropist; he does not even have the distinction of being a true academic, with degrees from universities back East and letters after his name. He is a teacher: in essence, a servant of the people. He and his wife raise four children on that salary, and send one son into the ministry and the other into the military. Their two daughters marry reasonably well.
By ‘reasonably well’, of course, is meant ‘they are unlikely to end up in places like Suicide Slum’. Mary is in Smallville; Theresa - five years older - is in West End, a suburb of Gotham.
Mary rarely sees any of her family after she moves to Smallville.
It does not take long for Mary Loeb to meet the movers and shakers of Smallville - the ladies’ auxiliary of that elite group, rather. She nurses her cousin back to health and cares for her new-born baby and almost daily there are visitors, young and old: Mrs. Lang, Mrs. Potter, Mrs. Small, Mrs. Atkinson, the daughters and daughter-in-laws of each - every family in town sends their womenfolk at one time or another, and sometimes repeatedly. Sometimes they are genuinely there to help: the Negro lady, Mrs. Ross, comes by once a week with a casserole and her middle boy to weed the little garden in the backyard. Frequently, they seem to be indulging their need for gossip - and often it is to take their measure of her. “You’re so thin,” Mrs. Potter tells her. “Is it true that city girls don’t eat?” - “You’re so tall,” Mrs. Lang tells her. “Almost like a boy.” - “You’re so pale,” Mrs. Small tells her. “In my day, girls used to rub lemon juice on their faces to be as pale as you, but it’s so unhealthy. Go pull those dandelions out of your cousin’s garden - don’t forget your hat. You wouldn’t want to sunburn.”
Mrs. Kent, she is glad to realize after a few visits, never says those sorts of things. It is true that there are many things about living in Smallville that she is unaccustomed to - when she was small, they had lived in an apartment building that would eventually be claimed by Suicide Slum, and when she was twelve they had moved to a row house closer to the rail line. The ash and soot of the daily trains made gardening in the tiny stamp-sized bit of green in the back difficult, so she had never really learned. Mostly her father went out in the back to smoke. She had taken the Home Economics course required by her high school, but she had not been the brightest pupil in the class. She is hopeless with yarn and a pair of knitting needles, slightly less hopeless with a crochet hook, terrified of sewing, but usually does not burn anything she is asked to cook. In reality, she can cook reasonably well, but everyone’s eyes on her as she did so in class made her nervous.
(And her seams weren’t that bad - it just was that whenever she took her latest sewing project home, her grandmother would insist on her ripping it out and doing it ‘the right way’. Then, the next day at school, her teacher would insist on the same. As a result, she was known as the slowest seamstress ever to grace the halls of Metropolis’s Siegel High School.)
Mrs. Kent’s presence in a room while she struggles with her cooking or stitching, however, is different. She puts Mary at ease, and while she is critical of Mary’s work, her words are never a condemnation of Mary herself. Once or twice a week, Mrs. Kent visits and under her firm tutelage, Mary learns the arts of the small-town housewife: she bakes bread, she bakes pies from scratch, she cans tomatoes as they turn red on the vine; she knits socks and crochets her cousin a bed jacket and she mends clothes. Together they dust and Mrs. Kent teaches her how to clean the wood floors of the old house her cousin’s husband has inherited; the row house in Metropolis had had cheap linoleum throughout.
Some afternoons, as they hang the fresh laundry to dry, Mrs. Kent’s son, Hyram, arrives to drive his mother home. At first, Mary thinks little of the way Mrs. Kent orders her to take a walk with him into town and the coins she slips him to buy sodas. Hyram is a pleasant enough young man - in many ways better than the boys she had taken walks with in Metropolis - but she does not see what others clearly see: Hyram Kent is courting.
She doesn’t see it at first, that is.
She is not entirely immune to gossip.
By the time the proposal comes in September, she already knows her answer.
Having seen what her cousin - and thanks to the postal service, her sister - had gone through, it does not surprise her when the doctor prescribes rest. Her child is a finicky one already, still in the womb: foods, smells, sounds, colors - everything and anything can set off the nausea or a headache - and on several memorable occasions, fainting spells. There are good moments and bad moments, one disappearing to make room for the other within a heartbeat. She thanks God that she still has her mother-in-law to help her; the work of a farmer’s wife goes far beyond her duties that summer with her cousin. Hyram’s father is not well, either: his heart, the doctors say, and because he refuses to heed their orders, he has landed himself in the hospital again.
The more salacious women of Smallville claim that it’s the fault of these city girls that the Kent boys bring home: these city girls clearly are doing something…impure to their hearts. But Mary Loeb Kent knows better - in some families all the men are tall or they have light hair or their noses have the same shape. The Kents have bad hearts. They are as God made them.
It’s one of those quiet evenings when she’s supposed to be resting, and aside from finishing the preparations for their supper, she is. Mrs. Kent - she has trouble addressing either of Hyram’s parents as anything but Mister and Missus - is at the hospital with Mr. Kent, keeping him company. As the water boils for their tea, she sits at the table with her notebook and sketches.
One of her earliest memories is of sitting beside her father as he sketches. He teaches her form and shadow and color, clean lines and blurred curves. She is the only child who listens to these lessons; her siblings draw and color as children do, but as they grow older, Father’s artistic ideals become the ravings of a poor old man. She suspects that this is the same response that his students at the high school give him when he teaches art; she has never heard an unkind word about his lessons on Shakespeare and Keats. Occasionally he sells a painting or a drawing, and during the summer he takes the 32 train to Waterfront Park twice a week and draws for the tourists. She is not as talented as he, but there is something calming in soft charcoal on coarse paper, in the firm line of a lead pencil on the smooth pages of her journal. She is not as fond of ink; she’s never quite gotten the hang of it and it always smears before she’s done. She writes grocery lists in pencil.
She starts with an image that has sat with her all afternoon: Hyram is a frequent subject of her sketches. She remembers how he looked at midday, as he came in the door already pulling off his work coat. The sun had been shining, casting odd shadows through the windows and the door. Half his face had been lit up, half of it shrouded in shadow. His hat had been tipped downwards over one eye, the eye that should have been illuminated. The sunlight had glinted off his belt buckle and his buttons.
Pencil touches paper. A straight line for Hyram’s back: he is not an overly tall man, but taller than some, and he always stands proudly. Imperfect lines form the plaid pattern of his coat and the shape of his arms as he pulls it off. A curve begins the shape of his hat -
She looks up. Normally, next to nothing stirs her from her concentration with a sketch this well-formed in her mind, but this is one of many things that pregnancy has changed. Now she hears it all, every creak and groan of this farmhouse, every raindrop and hailstone that finds its way here. Sometimes she worries that she is imagining all of it, the insanity of women in their time, but this time - right now - she is not alone. Hyram has looked up from his newspaper. He frowns in her direction. “What was that?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she admits. She’s not sure what she heard, but she knows she heard it.
“Hm,” Hyram grunts. “Those dogs at the chickens again, I’d wager. I’ll go check it out.” She watches as he catapults himself out of his chair and reaches for the rifle. There is little grace in his movements; Hyram Kent is a simple, earthy man. Grace was not a prerequisite for her hand.
She waits inside as she has done many an evening. The tea water boils and she pours it. She mashes the potatoes with fresh milk and butter; she pulls the remnants of Sunday’s roast chicken from the rack in the oven; she stirs the carrots on the stove, adding another teaspoon of brown sugar to the syrup; she slices bleached-flour bread, a rare treat, and butters each slice lightly. She squirrels away her journal and the pencil into a drawer. All the while she finds herself brushing her hair out of her face; she’d had another headache after lunch. She’d tossed and turned so violently in her nap that she’d undone her usual pinned braid and brushed her hair straight when she woke up. The even, repetitious strokes had been oddly relaxing, and when she was done it had seemed a waste of energy to plait it again. Morning and a new - hopefully headache-free - day would come soon enough. A long scrap of cloth from the remnants basket had kept her long locks off her face until now. Perhaps she would indulge in a bit of city fashion and cut her hair when the baby came; short, boyish hair would surely be more practical than her daily braid and bobby pins.
The familiar scuffing sound of boots on the porch tells her that Hyram is back, but - no, someone is with him -
A boy. He is tall and broad-shouldered, but he seems like little more than a boy in her estimation. She has never seen him before, but there is something in his uncertain expression that tugs at her heart. He thinks himself unwelcome, and if Hyram has brought him into the house, then he is anything but. He’s a handsome boy, and her artist’s eye can’t help to notice the striking color of his eyes, hidden beneath whatever pain he is suffering, and the odd, gem-shaped medallion he wears on a thin, silver chain. Whoever he is, he is not from Smallville: every able-bodied boy in town has done at least one day’s worth of work on their farm at some point during their marriage.
“Hyram?” she says softly, questioningly. She trusts him, but she is human, and the best part of humanity - her father had once told her this - is curiosity.
Her husband sets the rifle down near the door - there is still a chance of dogs at the henhouse this evening - and sets his hat aside. His coat soon follows. “Mary,” he says, “this here is Joe. Joe, this is my wife, Mary Kent.” There is a bit of a twinkle to his eyes as he says that last part; they’ve been married nearly four years already.
“Ma’am,” Joe says politely. His voice is soft, circumspect. Respectful. “I’m sorry to trouble you - ”
“Nonsense!” she tells him. “Come sit down and have something warm to drink. It’s unusually cold for June, don’t you think?” She pulls out a chair from the table and gestures for him to sit down.
“No, ma’am, I wouldn’t know,” Joe tells her hesitantly. “I - I’m not from around here.” His feet are still firmly planted by the kitchen door, but Hyram soon grabs him by the arm and encourages him in the direct of the empty chair. “Come now, son,” he tells the boy gently, “sit down and take a minute to breathe, at the very least.”
Those strange eyes flick between her and Hyram several times before the boy gives in and begins to devest himself of the leather jacket. She gives Hyram a smile - a nervous one, to be sure; who is this poor fellow, anyway? - and pours the tea. “How do you take your tea, Joe?” she asks. “Some sugar? Milk? I’m sorry we haven’t any coffee ready.”
If ever there was a man in contrast to her Hyram, this Joe is it. It has nothing to do with his height, though he does tower over her husband. It has nothing to do with the color of his hair - dark, intense brown, almost the color of ink, unlike Hyram’s dark blond - or his eyes - one moment blue, the next green, and all the while light and crystalline. Joe’s skin is neither pale nor tanned, but simply was: whatever his trade might be, he certainly isn’t a farmhand. No, it is the grace in his movements that makes him so radically different from her husband, the gentle steps he takes as he gives into their request and sits down. Men aren’t meant to move like this.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” the boy says softly. “This is more than sufficient. Thank you.”
Sufficient? I suppose he really isn’t from around here, after all. She hands him his tea and their eyes meet:
There is something not human about him.
She keeps this thought to herself. Whoever Joe really is, she can see as plain as day that he needs help - at the very least, a kindly hand. “Wrap your hands around that,” she tells him, “and you’ll be warm again in no time at all. I’ll just set out another place for supper.”
It takes a moment for her words to make sense to Joe - she can see it in his face, the befuddled look, as if he is unaccustomed to things that are normal to them - but when they do, he is instantaneously nervous again. “No, ma’am, you needn’t -”
Hyram takes his seat at the head of the table as Joe speaks. “None of that, Joe,” Hyram tells him. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days as it is. Now, I know that’s probably not true, but a man who’s gone through what you’ve had to tonight might as well have not eaten. We’re simple folk and we eat simple food, but it’s hearty and it’ll do you a world of good. We’re not as rich as some, but we can certainly spare enough to share what we have with you.”
She has been setting the food on the table during this, but it does her conscience good to hear Hyram’s words. She doesn’t know what happened to the boy, or why he was on their property, but she knows that she and Hyram are of one mind about this: it is the least that they can do to share a meal with this stranger in need. As she places the plate and silverware in front of Joe, she can see that wherever it is that he comes from, men are the same: he is struggling, at the very least, not to cry. She wonders if the women there are more practical, as she is, to let out the hurt and be done with it.
The dishes on the table, Mary finally sits down. It is a good thing that she had that nap; this excitement is taking every ounce of energy she can muster. “Joe,” she says, “we usually say a prayer before we eat. Do you mind if we do?”
Joe seems surprised that she has bothered to ask, but shakes his head. Hyram gives her a goofy grin. “Knew I did good when I married a city girl,” he jokes. “Never would have occurred to me that some folks don’t.”
“We generally join hands,” she tells Joe, who still looks a little skittish, and takes his hand from across the table.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I’ve seen this custom before.”
The blessing is nothing special - conventional words of thanks likely said over dinner tables across the country - but it is their way. Hyram says the words in his usual manner, but tacks on an additional wish: “And, Lord, guide our new friend Joe as you do all wandering souls and keep him and his loved ones safe in the future. Amen.”
“Amen,” Mary says softly.
Joe does not echo them, she notes, but he does not seem offended or put-upon by Hyram’s little addition. She gives him a smile and says, “Hand me your plate and I’ll dish it up for you.” He does as asked.
The food is eaten with less conversation than she is accustomed to. She tries to coax Joe into talking, but her questions are either answered with a few words or brushed aside by Hyram; her husband knows something about this boy that he is keeping from her. She trusts him, but she does not like being left in the dark.
Still, she learns a little about their strange visitor: he has traveled greatly in the last year, a trip funded by his father. The reason for the journey is not given, but Mary can tell that Joe is not looking forward to returning home - wherever ‘home’ might be. That question is met with silence, as if Joe cannot answer but at the same time does not want to lie. It is the only question that is not answered in some way or another. She has the impression that Joe’s father has lofty expectations of his son, expectations that Joe does not think he can meet. She wonders what they could be: he is a capable young man, that much is certain, and she cannot imagine what goal might exist that he could not accomplish with the right combination of motivation and hard work.
Still, the meal entertains her, and in her condition entertainment is difficult to come by. Joe eats most everything she puts on his plate, but refuses - firmly - the offer of seconds. As Hyram has told him, they can certainly afford to give a filling meal to a young man in need, but his refusal is so polite that she does not force the issue.
As she clears the table, she offers them pie, but Joe is resolute in his refusal: “Thank you, ma’am, but I must be going. I’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” Hyram asks.
Joe is silent for a moment. “I have…friends…who will be coming here, to take me home. I mustn’t be late meeting them.”
“Well, then,” Hyram declares, “let me drive you there. It’ll be quicker than walking.”
Joe nods, though the look on his face makes Mary wonder. It’s as if he knows of a way that would be just as quick, that he’s indulging Hyram in his act of kindness. “Thank you, sir,” he finally says, “but I would not want to -”
Hyram waves his hand, as if to brush the thanks out of the air. “It’s no trouble, Joe, no trouble at all.” He busses his own plate and silverware to the sink - a surprise to Mary, who is accustomed to doing it all herself. In a soft voice, not quite a whisper, he explains things to her: “He’s the one McCallum’s been claiming went after Louise.”
“Oh, God,” Mary whispers. Mrs. Lang had told Mrs. Kent about this before they’d left for the hospital and Mr. Kent an hour before.
“Hey, now,” Hyram says and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You and I both know this boy didn’t do it. Look at him - for all he’s as strong as an ox, he’d never hurt a fly. He’s innocent.”
Hyram hasn’t been whispering, though his words have been soft and low, and she is not surprised when Joe speaks. “I did not hurt Louise,” he says, standing. “I could never hurt her. I loved Louise more than I thought was possible.”
Hyram nods. “You don’t have to convince me, Joe,” he says. “I can see it in your eyes that you’re a good man, and they say I’m a decent judge of character. Let’s get you to your friends before someone starts searching for the fellow Dexter McCallum thinks he saw in his barn, eh?” He begins to shrug on his coat.
“But…” Joe is hesitant; Mary can see the worry in his eyes. “Dexter McCallum loved Louise as much as I did; he did not kill her.”
“Who was it, then?” Hyram asks. “Were you there?”
The boy nods. “I don’t know his name, but it was not the first time he had harmed Louise McCallum.”
“Well, then,” Hyram tells him, “Dexter McCallum has nothing to worry about. I’m sure the police will sort it out soon enough.” He hands Joe one of his own jackets, a piece of blue denim that didn’t suit him too well. “Why don’t you wear this,” he says. “That bit of leather of yours is a bit flashy for Smallville.” Joe hesitates but in the end takes the coat from him and accepts Hyram’s assistance in putting it on. The color, Mary muses to herself, suits him. A young man with eyes like his should wear blue more often. “At least you won’t stand out as much if they stop you,” she says, folding the leather jacket over her arm and handing it to him.
Hyram nods. “I know all the back roads,” he assures Joe, and Mary knows it’s the truth; the Kents have lived in Smallville for generations. “We’ll take them.”
“I appreciate your help,” Joe tells him, “but I’ll find my way on my own.”
Now that she knows some part of the truth, Mary can see why he is so hesitant to accept their help, but at the same time she feels sorry for the boy. Are there no good Samaritans where Joe comes from, or anywhere he has traveled this past year? It seems impossible to her, in her heart, but her mind reminds her that the world is full of unkind people. Joe is lucky that his path has crossed with theirs. And how would this stranger find his way in the dark anyway? At night, every field looks the same, and not far from their own property the roads begin to twist and turn. It isn’t a safe place to walk.
“I am not sending you out alone,” Hyram tells him firmly. “Are you sure these friends of yours are going to show up?”
Joe nods. It seems he’ll accept Hyram’s help after all. “They’ll be there,” he says determinedly, stepping past Hyram and opening the door to leave.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Hyram tells him, “and try to clear this thing up.” It’s the least they can do, Mary tells herself. If this boy is innocent - and she knows he is - it’s their duty to help him.
Joes turns towards them and the sad, anguished look is back in his eyes. “I’ve got no reason to stay anymore,” he says softly.
And that’s it then, Mary thinks. “Be careful,” she says - it’s the only thing she can say. Hyram hugs her, his hand resting on their child. He smiles, giving her a wink, and says, “Bye, Gene.”
Oh, not that again, she thinks to herself. “His name,” she reminds Hyram, “is Jonathan.” God help them if it turns out to be a girl.
But Hyram just smiles and explains to Joe, “We’re still deciding.”
Ha, Mary thinks. Even your mother is fonder of Jonathan than Gene. But she accepts his little peck on her cheek as he moves to leave. “Come on,” he says to Joe. “Let’s go.”
Hyram passes through the door quickly enough, but Joe is hesitant. He turns back towards her. “Thank you,” he says softly.
Mary just smiles at him. “I’m sure it will all work out in the end,” she says, trying to reassure him. After a moment, he hands back his leather jacket to her. “Here,” he says. “Please keep it as a poor token of my gratitude.” His words are formal, almost ceremonial.
“Won’t you need it when you get back home?” she asks in what she hopes is a maternal tone.
He shakes his head and after a moment says, “No. No, I won’t need it there,” and slips out the door.
She waits nearly an hour for Hyram to return, alone in the house. It is an eerie feeling, especially after the evening’s excitement, and she honestly cannot remember the last time she was alone after dark. When everything is cleared, she grabs the rifle and lays it across the table. She hopes to God that she will not have need of it - it is most certainly not on the list of approved ‘restful’ activities - but she keeps it there all the same. She does the dishes and soon there is no evidence of a third sitting down to dinner with them. The remainder of the chicken finds its way into the icebox and the pots are scrubbed and dried.
She hides the leather jacket in the closet, under the winter coats. She doesn’t have the energy or the grace to make it up to the attic.
Her journal and the pencil are still in the drawer where she left them and she stares at the barely-begun sketch of Hyram. Her fingers itch to begin a new drawing, but she refuses to give in and instead finishes the picture from earlier. That, more than anything, tires her.
She doesn’t recognize the look on Hyram’s face when he returns, but she’s had a pot of water on the stove for a while now and she makes him some more tea. Slowly the color returns to his face and the chill leaves his fingers. “What happened?” she asks. “Did Joe find his friends?”
Hyram nods. “Yes. Yes, I suppose he did.” He drinks the tea.
“Well?” she asks. “What happened? I’m not even sure what to call this, the way you are right now.”
He takes a deep breath. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, Mary. But I swear to you, it’s the truth.”
She’s worried. How could she not be, with her husband talking like this? “Hyram, just tell me,” she says. “Don’t you think you’ll feel better, telling someone to share the burden of whatever it was that happened?”
He gives in. “I took him where he wanted to go - I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone where it was, so I’ll keep that promise. We had a few words - kindly, mind you, about how sorry I was that Smallville wasn’t as welcoming as one could hope, and he offered some good wishes for our baby. A kind soul, he was, through and through. So I told him that if he ever needed anything, we would do what we could, in the same thread of kindness as we took him in tonight. We said good-bye and I left, as I had promised him. But I didn’t go far; I waited in the truck a little ways down the road, not far at all, but hidden, to make sure his friends found him.”
“Since you came back alone,” she says, “I assume they did.”
Hyram closes his eyes, as if trying to remember whatever it was that he saw out there. When he opens them, he reaches for her hand and takes it. “Mary, it was something I will never forget for the rest of my life. The world was so quiet out there, I knew I could hear if a car drove up to get him, so I was staring up at the stars, like I do. And suddenly one of the stars was moving - I thought it was a comet at first, but it kept coming closer and closer, faster than anything I’ve ever seen. And then it was overhead, like an airplane, but the shape of it - I’ve never seen any airplane like that. And Joe just stood there, like he was expecting it, didn’t even move when it got close and landed right in front of him. A door opened on the thing and there was this bright light, like it was all lit up inside. A man stood in that doorway - I have to believe it was a man - and called out, and his voice was just like any man here on Earth. He called out, ‘Jor-El! Jor-El!’ and sure enough, Joe answered him as he walked up to the thing. They jabbered at each other in some crazy foreign language and then Joe climbed up inside. But he stopped in that doorway and looked back out, and I bet he saw me because even though I couldn’t see his face, I could see the outline, I guess, of his head in the light and it looked like he nodded at me, just like he did the whole time he was here in this house. Then he stepped inside and the door closed. I couldn’t breathe, really. It was just like something in one of those movies, you know, only…better. It was real. A minute went by, maybe five - why, it could have been ten minutes, for all I know, sitting there in the truck - and then as quietly and smoothly as it had come down, that thing went right back up, and it just kept going and going until I lost sight of it in the stars.”
“Oh, Hyram,” she whispers. “Oh, god.”
“I swear to you, Mary, that every word was the truth. There had been something peculiar about that boy, and at first I just thought he was upset and in a strange place, but something wasn’t quite right. And then - and then I thought back to the stories you hear, about being visited by folks who aren’t quite human, like those fairies in that Shakespeare play, or those stories about being visited by angels, so God can test you or help you or what have you. But this was…Mary, I think when Joe said he wasn’t from around here, he was talking about the whole of the Earth.”
“Hyram, I…” she starts but what is there to say? “Hyram, I do believe you may be right,” she whispers. “But he looked - ”
“ - like one of us,” Hyram finishes for her. “In the movies, they always look different.”
“Maybe,” she says contemplatively, “he’s another of God’s children.”
The only time they question their decision to help Joe comes months later, after Jonathan is born and Hyram’s father is in the hospital again. Mary hears that Dexter McCallum has been found guilty and will go to jail for Louise’s murder. It’s in the Ledger, it’s even in the Daily Planet; it’s on the lips of every friend and acquaintance. “Hyram,” she whispers as they lay in bed, “isn’t there something we can do for Dexter?”
She can hear him exhale in frustration. “No,” he replies. “I don’t think there is. Anything we could say is useless without Joe here to say it himself. It would just sound like we’re trying to help a friend - we’ve always been friendly with Dexter and Louise, and both their families. As best I understand the law, there’s nothing to be done.”
“We know he’s innocent.”
“A test,” he whispers back. “They say God tests you, every day, and there’s a lesson to be taken from it. Maybe…maybe we’re to understand that even a good deed can have a bad end, in some way. That…that the world isn’t perfect.”
She sighs. “I would rather believe that it will still turn out in the end. Whoever it really was, maybe the guilt will grow heavy on him and he’ll confess.”
Hyram laughs. “We can only hope that’s true, Mary. I still believe we did the right thing, helping Joe, whoever he was.”
Sleep does not come easy that night.
The next afternoon, she finds herself aching to draw. As Jonathan naps, she gives in; the sketch of Hyram is the last completed picture in her journal, as she’s been too busy with the baby to do more. Her hand moves the pencil across the page almost without conscious effort and soon a familiar face emerges on the smooth page: Joe, with his dark hair and his strange eyes, wearing that brown leather jacket. Hyram had hidden it in the attic that very evening. The image grows: the kitchen door is behind him. Hyram stands in front of him, and she knows the moment: they’ve just stepped inside and she remembers that a moment later she had pulled out the chair and asked him to sit down.
In her own honest opinion, it’s one of her best pieces.
She will never be able to show it to anyone.
Age creeps into her like dusk over the cornfields. She remembers so easily the day when she first met Hyram, across town at her cousin’s house, and now Jonathan is grown and married. She likes Martha - she’s another city girl to add to the list in the Kent family tree, and things have changed since the days when she and Hyram were courting. It’s not quite so bad in Smallville to bring home a city girl anymore, it seems, though there are those who don’t care for Martha. That Potter girl, especially, Mary knows, but not because Martha’s another city girl stealing a Kent boy. It’s not that epic a story. No, Nell’d had her eye on Jonathan for a while, but Mary knew it would never work out.
She’s glad to see that she’s right.
Hyram lives to see his boy married, but not much more than that. It hits Jonathan hard - maybe harder than it hits her, Mary thinks. She helps him pack away some of Hyram’s things - “Some day you’ll want these,” she tells her son, coiling Hyram’s favorite belt around its buckle and setting it inside the trunk with everything else.
Jonathan carries the trunk up the stairs to the attic at her direction. She follows him up slowly; she’s not as young as she used to be. She directs him where to put it and then she opens another trunk, suddenly remembering Joe’s gift, and withdraws the leather jacket. “Put this in that trunk with your father’s things,” she tells him.
Jonathan looks at her strangely but does as asked. “Did this belong to Dad?” he asks. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“No, but it was given to us as a gift, a payment, you might say, for a kindness he performed, a very long time ago,” she tells him. “Your father never wore it, but I think it would be best kept with his things.”
Jonathan shrugs; she can tell that he doesn’t want to hear any old stories about his father. The pain is too close to the surface.
That evening, she draws Joe again.
And again.
And again.
Her boy knows well enough not to ask.
She nearly sleeps through the meteor shower on that strangely warm October day. She hasn’t been well, the last year or so. She misses Hyram and the strain of life without him is wearing on her, just as it did with his parents. His mother had lasted only a handful of years after his father’s death.
Martha, she hopes, will be a stronger woman than all those who have gone before her. But Martha has her own troubles. Mary’s only hope for herself is to live long enough to see her son a father.
It’s a clear day, for the most part: a few clouds hang in the sky, and the evening news has predicted clear weather for the week. She encourages Jonathan and Martha to go into town on their own, to run errands, to get some fresh flowers. She’ll take a nap while they’re gone. She’ll feel better when they’re back.
The thunder comes suddenly, without warning. There’s no lightning - why should there be? The sky is clear and blue. She sits up out of bed and makes her way to the window: she can see the fire rain down from the sky. “Jonathan,” she whispers. The fireballs are falling in the direction of town. “Martha.”
She stands at the window for minutes - perhaps hours, for all that time seems to slow down as the sky and the horizon are lit up in red and black, smoke everywhere, never-ending. She steps back, inch by inch, until the backs of her legs touch her bed again and she slides down, hunched over her knees like a little girl.
Her son, her only child, is in the very thick of that terror.
She’s not sure how long she sits there, quietly afraid - is it minutes or hours? - before she hears the sound of a truck pull up the driveway and the familiar stomp of Jonathan’s boots on the kitchen floor. For a moment, she cannot breathe - and then -
She can.
Carefully, she pushes herself up onto her feet. Jonathan and Martha are calling for her and the strength of their voices is all the strength she needs to make her way to the stairs. One foot in front of the other, she soon finds herself at the bottom of the stairs, embracing her son. “Mom,” he says, “are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she says. There’s no need to admit to the terror that had sat on her heart while they were gone; they’re both alive and well - and -
And there is a child in Martha’s arms.
“Martha,” she starts, “this child -”
There is an uncertain look on Martha’s face, but it disappears when she looks back at the sleeping child in her arms. “Isn’t he perfect?”
‘Perfect’ seems like a good word, to be sure, but - “Martha, Jonathan, where did he come from? Where did you find him?”
“Shuster’s field,” Jonathan tells her. The boy stirs, perhaps at the rumble of Jonathan’s voice, but he still seems to be asleep.
She sits down beside Martha on the couch. She reaches out and touches the boy, strokes his hair. He is a beautiful child, maybe three years old, all dark, unruly hair and gently sloping nose. “What on Earth was he doing in Shuster’s field, and without any clothes?” Mary finally asks. “Where are his parents, his family?”
“Ah, yeah,” says Jonathan, settling down into a chair. “About that. Um, where we found him, there was a, um, well, you see - ”
Martha cuts in determinedly. “There was a spaceship, Mary.”
There was a spaceship.
“Mom, I know you probably think we’re crazy, but - ”
She does not hear the rest of Jonathan’s words: she is too busy staring at the little boy. He stirs again and this time, his eyes open.
I know those eyes.
It has been some time since she has thought of Joe and that strange evening and poor Dexter and Louise, but those eyes are unmistakable. She has never seen another person with eyes exactly that color - until now. Until this little boy opens his eyes and stares at her, and her son and daughter-in-law tell her that there was a spaceship where they found him.
The little boy stares at her for the longest minute ever known to man, and then he reaches up and grabs a hank of her blonde hair. He seems fascinated by it, though it’s anyone’s guess why. He tugs at it, gently, and then proclaims, “Lara!”
She smiles. “Jonathan, there’s a few boxes of your old clothes in the attic,” she tells him, not even looking away from the child. “Go get them, would you? This little fellow needs something more civilized than a blanket to wear.”
As he goes up the stairs, she looks up at Martha. “He needs a name, as well,” she tells Martha. After a moment’s consideration, she adds, “Jonathan’s father was fond of ‘Gene’.”
Her daughter-in-law’s nose crinkles in polite disgust. “Oh, I really don’t think so.”
She’s forgotten what it’s like, having a child that age in the house. He’s very active, and very inquisitive; there is no cupboard, no closet, no drawer that has gone unexplored. Martha spends her every waking moment with little Clark - the name suits him, somehow - showing him their world, the farm, everything.
She watches as Jonathan hides the little ship in the storm cellar, all the while wondering if it is anything like what Hyram saw all those years ago. He had never spoken of it again, but there had been times when she knew he was thinking about it. You hear about things from time to time, people claiming they saw spaceships or that aliens had kidnapped them, but she always thinks back to Joe and tells herself that he wouldn’t do a thing like that. Surely there is some other explanation.
Surely Joe and this tiny little child aren’t the only good to ever come from outer space.
She’s babysitting her new grandchild. Clark is scribbling with the crayons she bought him; she’s hard at work on another sketch. Joe’s face has been in all her dreams these last few weeks, with good reason she supposes, but immortalizing him on paper seems to chase off the haunted feeling. She is careful with every detail and with every successive sketch she sees the similarities between that poor boy all those years ago and the child beside her.
There is a tug at her sleeve. It’s Clark, trying to show her something - his drawing. She lifts him up onto her lap, holding him tight against his squirming. He doesn’t like to sit still. “What’s this?” she asks, though she doesn’t expect an answer. He speaks, sometimes, but never in English. Sometimes she thinks he understands, but she’s never sure. He knows the names of certain objects - he knows what an apple is, what milk is, his toothbrush, the teddy bear that Abby Ross and her boys brought over - but she’s never sure if he understands any of their questions, or the stories they read to him.
Little Clark doesn’t say anything, but he points, in succession, at the three different parts of his drawing. In one corner, stick figures of two people - a man and a woman, if the length of their hair is anything to go on. The man has dark hair, the woman light hair - Clark has used a yellow crayon. They wear blue clothing, but there’s something on their chests, in yellow: if she didn’t know better, she would say it is the letter S.
In the far corner, a group of three people: a yellow-haired man, a yellow-haired woman and a red-haired woman. They stand in front of a yellow house.
In the center, a smaller figure with short, dark hair. Flying.
It takes a moment to understand what he’s drawn. “Oh, Clark,” she says softly. She shifts her grip on him - he’s getting heavy - and touches the figure of the dark-haired man. “Who is this?” she asks, though she already suspects the answer.
A normal child - granted, she has Jonathan as her standard of measurement - would be rambling on and on about the story contained in these crayoned images, but Clark simply looks at her. After a moment, he points at the figure she was asking about and says, so clearly and seriously for all his three years of age: “Jor-El.”
It’s been days since she has heard him say anything, so this comes as a surprise. “Who’s this?” she asks, pointing at the next figure.
“Lara.”
“And this?”
“Clark.”
She goes through each of the figures in his drawing until they’re all named: Mommy, Daddy, Grandma. He may not say much, but clearly he’s been listening, he’s paid attention to what they’ve tried to teach him. She hugs him tight, drops kisses on his face, congratulates his drawing and his speaking until he squirms out of her grasp and runs off.
She takes a moment to stare at his picture and then takes up her pencil and begins writing. Only then does she realize that the child’s real name - the name that Joe must have given his son in their home across the stars - the child’s real name is still unknown. Two months in their home, though, and he already considers himself a Kent.
The thought makes her smile, just a little. The Kents are good at adopting strays.
Mary hasn’t been to Metropolis in years, but Martha insists that Central Place Mall always has the best decorations and the best Santa - and shouldn’t Clark have the best first Christmas they can manage? And so on a cold Monday they drive three hours, crammed into the cab of the new pickup, and little Clark on Mary’s lap when he wants to look out the side and on Martha’s when he looks out ahead. It’s only been two weeks since he presented that picture to Mary, but suddenly he’s speaking more - sometimes in that lilting foreign tongue, but more and more of his words are obviously English. His inquisitiveness knows no bounds: his favorite phrase is “What that?” and they answer as best they can.
Despite it being a weekday, the mall is packed with holiday shoppers and at first Clark is nervous and hesitant. His grip is surprisingly strong for such a small child - Mary wonders if this is the norm for his people, if Joe had been strong and fast like his son, if Hyram had seen something to that effect and had withheld it from her. Half an hour passes and Clark is fascinated by the colored lights and the animated displays - perfectly normal for a child.
For a human child, at the very least. Martha’s little angel did not come with an instruction manual.
Taking a picture on Santa’s lap is a city tradition, and it’s at Martha’s insistence that they get in line. It’s long, full of exhausted children and tired mothers, but as usual Clark’s calm and relaxed for the most part. Martha couldn’t have wished for a more easy-going child.
Clark does not often get to play with other children: Martha has any number of excuses, but Mary knows they are all based in fear. That fear has been well adopted by Clark himself: when the little girls behind them in the Santa line try to coax him into playing with them, he shrinks back.
Mary watches them, hesitant to interfere. Only in the last few days has Clark been willing to stay in the same room as Abby Ross’s boys, and the only girl he really ever sees is Lana Lang - poor child - who cries most days. He’s more comfortable with adults. But the girls are - she laughs at herself for the old-fashioned word - forward and take turns making faces at him and trying to poke at his arm. Their mothers are busy whispering at each other and fussing with the baby that one of them carries, and so the girls get away with quite a bit - as much as they can manage without pulling free of their mother’s hands on theirs.
She can see that Martha’s watching as well, discretely, and there’s an anxious look on her face. Clark never means to do anything wrong, of course, but sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.
Mary still has the bruises to prove this.
Slowly, though, it’s clear that Clark is opening up and soon he’s making faces back at them. The girls giggle and finally their mothers notice their antics. “Girls,” says the blonde mother, “don’t tease that boy.”
Clark stares at the woman who spoke for a long moment before tugging on Mary’s hand. She crouches down; she enjoys his attempts at understanding their world. “What is it, honey?” she asks.
He points at the blonde woman and says softly, “Lara hair.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she says. “She has blonde hair.”
“Blon,” he says. He knows the word - he’s said it before, on his own - but it’s clear that he still remembers his birth mother, still identifies the color with her. She hasn’t told Martha what Lara means; the girl’s suffered enough these last few years. She hasn’t shown her daughter-in-law Clark’s drawing. The smaller of the two girls has blonde hair as well, but Clark doesn’t comment on it; it’s always adult women - mommies - who draw his attention.
The other little girl - a brunette - makes another face at Clark, but he doesn’t say anything. He just tilts his head and frowns, like he often does when he doesn’t understand something. After a moment of staring at her, he reaches out with his hand, quick as lightning, and touches her cheek.
Mary remembers what Martha and Jonathan had said, about the day they found him, about the little Luthor boy - poor child. Her breath catches in her throat.
But the girl doesn’t fall asleep, as the Luthor boy had supposedly done. She wrinkles her nose and turns her head away. “Yucky boy,” she says, and it’s all Mary can do not to laugh out loud.
The line shuffles forward a few feet. They’re nearly there. Mary crouches down again. “This is Clark,” she says with her hands on his shoulders. “What’s your name, dear?”
The little brunette squints at her and frowns, as if sizing her up - to be expected, after Clark’s unexpected act - but finally speaks. “I’m Lois,” she says and then quickly counts off her fingers. “I’m this many.”
“Wow,” Mary says in that tone of voice known to parents and kindergarten teachers everywhere. She’s fairly certain the little girl has miscounted; four seems more likely than five. “You’re a big girl, then.”
The two mothers return their attention to the girls and the one with the baby laughs. “Trust that girl to talk to anyone who talks back,” the woman says. “She’s not bothering you, is she?”
Mary is ready to speak, but Martha cuts her off. “Oh, no,” she says, surprising Mary. “Not at all. Clark’s usually so shy that I’m glad he’s making a friend.”
“Let me guess,” says the blonde mother. “His first time in the city?”
Mary wonders if it’s so very obvious that they’re from the middle of nowhere in the heart of Kansas, but then she notes the boots and worn jeans that Jonathan is wearing, the flannel - though festively-colored - shirt Martha chose for Clark this morning, the old jacket (a hand-me-down from Hyram) that she herself is carrying over her arm, and simply sighs.
“Yes,” Martha says with a little smile. “He’s not used to all the people.”
The two mothers grin. “Our girls have lived here all their lives,” the brunette says. “I think they thrive on the chaos.”
A few exchanges later, the women run out of things to say to complete strangers and simply smile at each other.
There is something to be said for holiday-season Muzak.
Clark keeps frowning at the little brunette.
At first, he’s afraid of the mall Santa - the beard does not help in the least with his usual hesitancy around strangers - but they eventually coax him onto Santa’s lap and Clark gets the opportunity to whisper his Christmas wishes in Santa’s ear for the first time.
He stares at the man, unwilling to speak. It’s hard to explain what’s expected of him; there’s still so many words he doesn’t understand, and eventually Jonathan and Martha give up.
It’ll be better next year, Mary tells herself.
She can tell that the pictures will turn out well - Clark’s already trained where “Smile!” and “Say cheese!” is concerned; there will be no dearth of embarrassing baby pictures when he’s sixteen - but he’s quick to take Mommy and Grandma’s hands when it’s over. As they wait for the pictures to develop and they pay the high-school age elf behind the cash register, the little girls who were behind them in the line pose with Santa and jabber animatedly at him as expected.
Clark tugs on her hand again and so she crouches down so he can whisper his secret to her. He points at the girls, an odd expression on his face, and says, “Pretty.”
To her surprise, it’s not the blonde one, the one with Lara-hair that has captured his attention. It’s the little brunette, the one who kept on making faces at him, the one he’d touched.
She knows that look on his face. Her hands itch to sketch it, to mark in down in harsh graphite, this proof that he belongs to us and this is only one of the reasons why.
Clark Kent might only be three years old (as best as they can guess); he may have only been a Kent for two months; he may in fact be an alien from another planet - but he’s a Kent boy, all right.
And Kent boys always fall for city girls.
“Hey, Clark. Your mom said you’d be up here. Geez, and I though our attic was bad.”
“Hi, Chloe.” Clark paused in his search. “I don’t suppose you see any empty packing boxes up here, do you? Just sitting out in plain sight where I can’t find them?”
“No,” Chloe replied slowly. “Why? You guys aren’t thinking of moving or something, are you? I mean, I know it’s got to be hard, with your dad and everything -”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Clark assured her. “There’s just some things, you know, of Dad’s, around the house that Mom’s not ready to see every day. She thought if we packed them away for a while it might -”
“Be easier?” Chloe finished. “I can’t say I agree, but if it helps her, I can’t say anything against it, I guess.” She glanced around. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in your attic before. You’re lucky that this stuff survived the second meteor shower.”
“I guess. I don’t even know what most of it is. I think some of it belonged to Grandpa and Grandma Kent.”
Chloe sat down on an old-fashioned trunk and started rifling through a nearby box. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned them before.”
Clark took a seat across from her. “I don’t remember either of them, actually. Grandpa Kent died not long after Mom and Dad got married, and Grandma passed away a couple of months after I, um, was adopted. I don’t really remember anything before kindergarten at all, actually.”
“By ‘adopted’ you mean ‘fell from the sky’.”
Clark sighed. “Yes, fine, fell from the sky, whatever.”
“Sorry,” Chloe told him and then continued digging through the box. She gave a little exclamation of delight and pulled out a journal. “Ooh, a diary.”
“Sometimes you’re too curious for your own good, you know that?”
“The reporting instinct never goes away, Clark. You might want to think about giving into it again sometime soon, before you explode.” She opened up the journal. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Not a diary. It’s a sketchbook. And whoever did these sketches was pretty darned good, too.” She handed it over to Clark, held open to a certain page.
He looked at the picture and then smiled. “Grandma Kent liked to draw. Those pictures in the living room? She did those when Dad was a kid.” He flipped through the book, pausing here and there. Okay, there’s a picture I’m never letting her see, he told himself, staring at a sketch towards the back of the book, of two little girls, a blonde and a brunette, posing with a Santa Claus. He’d seen enough pictures of Chloe as a little kid to recognize the blonde, but that wasn’t what he was worried about. The taunting would know no end if she saw that the little brunette girl was labeled as ‘Lois, Clark’s first girlfriend, December 1989’. He kept flipping through the book, making his way back towards the center of it - “Whoa,” he said in surprise. Somehow, this was even more surprising than the picture of Lois and Chloe.
A folded piece of paper fell to the floor as he held the book open. Chloe bent down to grab it. “Whoa indeed,” she said, opening it up. “Check it out. Grandma Kent wasn’t the only one who liked to draw…”
“Chloe?” Clark asked, concerned. “What is it?”
“You might not remember it now, but I think you remembered plenty back then,” she told him. She handed him the picture.
He stared at the childish stick figures and the clean, old-fashioned handwriting that labeled each one of them. “This is her handwriting, but…I must have drawn this.” He looked at the lower right-hand corner. “December 1989. That’s two months after…”
He didn’t have to finish that thought; Chloe knew the one event of note from the autumn of 1989. “Yeah,” she said simply.
“I never really thought about it,” Clark told her, “but I guess Grandma Kent knew. Knew something, at least.” He looked at the journal again. “I guess she knew more than my parents did, in the beginning. Look at this.”
She took the sketchbook from him and looked at the page that Clark’s drawing had bookmarked. It was a detailed image, two men in slightly old-fashioned clothing, sitting next to each other at a table. Chloe recognized the shape of the room as the Kents’ kitchen, but that was not surprising, given the identity of the artist. The surprise was the younger man in the picture: it was a very good likeness of Clark himself.
She looked up. “How could your grandma know what you were going to look like?”
Clark shook his head. “It’s not me. It’s Jor-El. Look.” He pointed at the bit of handwriting at the bottom: ‘Clark’s father and Hyram, June 1961’.
Chloe frowned. “What?”
“I guess she figured it out after I arrived,” Clark said. “He must’ve made an impression.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Chloe. “Back up. What are you talking about?”
“I guess I haven’t told you that story yet,” Clark said. “Remember junior year, that thing about Lana’s great-uncle? The picture of the drifter in the newspaper? Jor-El was here, in Smallville, in 1961…”
END