- - - Chapter Eleven
The three of them set down at the Kent farm with the usual grace, and Perry immediately began looking around curiously.
"Where are we?" He asked, looking for any identifying marks.
"My mother's house," Clark said. Perry's eyebrows shot into his hairline. Clark shook his head; all the secrets were coming out today. Jimmy and Perry would know everything; there really was no way to keep that from happening. He certainly wasn't going to kiss it out of their memories. Perry was opening his mouth to ask a question when Lois hurtled out the door.
"Jason!" Lois practically screamed. The little boy finally let go of his father to run to his mother's waiting arms. She was still wearing her pajamas and bathrobe, her hair was unbrushed and she was shaking. Jason didn't say anything, just clung to his mother like he had clung to his father for the entire flight. "Are you okay? Jason? Did he hurt you?" She held him back to look at him, but Jason just pulled himself close again so she turned her eyes to Clark. "What happened?"
"He'll be okay, Lois," Clark assured her. "We were up in the sunlight so he was able to recover."
"Recover from what?" She asked. Perry looked at her like she was crazy for talking to Superman in that tone of voice.
"Kryptonite poisoning," he said softly.
"Kryptonite poisoning," Lois said, her knees buckling beneath her. Clark reached out an easy hand and caught her, taking Jason back into his arms.
"Lois?" He asked, trying to steady her, but her eyes were now fixed on the bruised knuckles on his hand holding Jason.
"Clark," she said, touching his bruised knuckles before looking him in the eye again. "You don't get hurt…"
"There was kryptonite, Lois… invulnerability is the first to go."
"You mean to say that you felt that fist go through the wall?" Perry asked, coming out of his stunned silence without catching the name Lois had called him.
"I'm surprised I didn't break any bones," Clark admitted after nodding to answer Perry's question. Now that he was thinking about it, the escape seemed a little too easy. Punch through a wall, bend a gun in half… Luthor was usually trickier than that. Clark wasn't allowed to dwell on it, Lois was leaning against him, examining his bruised hand and their son for any signs of pain, and Perry was giving them a weird look. Martha burst through the front door that moment, quickly followed by Jimmy.
Martha had dressed, but she looked extremely tired. Jimmy was dressed too, and he looked not only tired but also confused beyond belief. It was apparent he'd gotten no answers out of either worrying women.
"Clark!" Martha said, running to her son. She hugged what she could of him, Lois had stepped back when she'd heard Martha come out, taking Jason with her so that the other woman could have a real hug. "What happened?" She asked, rubbing at the blood on his chest. "And don't you dare tell me this isn't yours."
"Lex Luthor had them, Mom," he started.
"We knew that," Lois interrupted, "he called." Clark's face darkened.
"Of course he did," shaking his head. "He had kryptonite, two different varieties, but we're okay. Jason's fine, I'm fine, Perry's fine… we should probably call the police and get them to his building, though. And I should get out of my pajamas so I can help them," he said, trying to come up with a plan of action.
"No!" Lois said forcefully. "There's kryptonite, there's no way you're going anywhere near Luthor or that place until the police have taken care of it!" She was back almost in his arms, staring him down.
"Lois," he started, but he knew that look. He wasn't going to win even if he was Superman.
"Besides," Martha said quietly, "I think you have some explaining to do around here."
"Yeah," Clark said, running a hand through his hair and looking at his boss and his best friend.
After the most awkward silence in human history, Clark went up to his room to put real clothes on. He opted for plain jeans, a white button-up t-shirt, and his well-worn converse all stars. He put the suit on underneath so he'd be able to get to Metropolis as soon as he could. Lois was right, though. It was safer to let Metropolis P.D. handle the situation; they'd been called and had all the information. He needed to be around to explain everything for his friends.
Clark went down the stairs and found everybody in the kitchen. His mother was cooking up a storm and it smelled delicious. Perry and Jimmy were sitting at the kitchen table watching Lois comfort a still shaking Jason on the couch. Everybody but his mother looked at him when he reached the landing.
He was holding his glasses in his hands, playing with the rims nervously. He walked over to the table and set them down, not daring to sit down himself.
"Daddy?" Jason asked, getting out of his mother's lap to come stand by Clark's leg. Clark crouched down to his son's eye level.
"Yes?"
"Why does that bald man hate you so much?"
"He just does, Jason, I don't know why," Clark sighed, pulling his son close for a hug. "He's just a bad man and bad men sometimes do things that we can't understand."
"Are we safe here?"
"Yes," Clark said, the tone of his voice driving any uncertainty from his son's mind. "He doesn't have any idea where we went and he can't find us." Jason nodded.
"I'm tired." This time Clark nodded, picking his son up and carried him into the room that he and Lois were sharing, laying him on the bed. He heard Lois come up behind him and pull her clothes out of the closet to change.
They pair of them went down the stairs together, preparing to answer the onslaught of questions that awaited them.
Clark cleared his throat, sitting down at the table while Lois slid into the chair next to him. "How's Jason?" Martha asked, piling eggs and hashbrowns and bacon onto four plates and setting them in front of the four people at the table.
"He's okay, just tired now," Lois said, glancing at Clark for confirmation. He just nodded, pushing the food around on his plate. Martha gave him a glare that said "Don't play with your food," and he stopped, putting the fork down and leaning back in his chair.
"So you didn't go on a soul searching trip around the globe, then, huh?" Jimmy said after a moment. The others hadn't touched their food either, but Lois had managed to sip some tea. Martha joined them then, setting her own plate down and starting on the bacon. She was planning to enjoy the awkward conversation.
"No," Clark said, smiling wryly. "Not exactly… I have been around the globe numerous times, though."
"Daily," Lois added, trying to help. It didn't work; Perry and Jimmy were still just staring.
"I'm sorry I kept secrets," Clark said uncomfortably, "but if people know who I am, who my friends are… things like what happened this morning start happening a lot more often."
Jimmy shook his head, dismissing the apology as unnecessary, and Perry nodded, accepting the apology.
"This doesn't go to press, Perry," Clark said forcefully, "this secret has to be kept."
"Of course," Perry said, looking almost offended that it would be suggested. Lois, Clark, and Martha visibly relaxed.
"Well," Clark started, wanting to fidget but knowing better. "I suppose you have questions...?"
"A few," Jimmy said, managing to smile. Clark still just looked nervous. Perry was giving him a death glare, not angry, but trying to figure things out. He had seen Superman so many times, read things about him, put together his paper surrounding articles about him, and he'd read things Clark Kent wrote and watched Clark go about his daily life.
Superman was the ultimate hero and the ultimate mystery. He flew around the world, one place one minute, and another in the next. He save lives and disappeared into the sky; nobody really knew anything about him. Perry had often wondered what was behind the tight fitting blue suit and the cape, but never once had he considered Clark Kent. Clark was a klutz, to put it lightly. He knocked everything over, dipped his tie in his own coffee, stuttered constantly, and typed faster than anybody else at the Planet. On the planet, Perry realized.
The man sitting at the table across from him was different from either of the two personalities he realized Clark embodied. He wasn't wearing glasses so he didn't really look like Clark, but his hair was messy like Clark's usually was and his manner was nervous, so he wasn't Superman either. He looked very normal even though Perry knew otherwise. He looked like a guy wearing normal clothes, about to eat a normal breakfast, who also happened to be from a different planet. Clark Kent was from a different planet!
"So, if you're from a different planet," Perry started, glancing over at Martha for a second, "how is it that you have a home here?"
"Oh, um," Clark said, not expecting that question to come first. At least Perry hadn't come straight out and called him an alien. "My ship crashed when I was about three, Mom and Dad adopted me."
"We forged a lot of paperwork on that," Martha said, pouring Lois and herself more tea.
"So an alien ship crashes in your corn and the first thing you thought of was adopting him?" Jimmy asked, looking apologetically at Clark, but Clark just shook his head. He'd often wondered the same thing during his teenage years, after they had finally told him that he was an alien
"Well," Martha started; she hadn't expected to be answering any questions. "Jonathan and I had always wanted a child and even though Clark was unusual we didn't want to hand him over to authorities. We did consider it," she admitted. "He lifted our truck up while Jonathan was changing a flat. That wasn't normal. But…" she shrugged. In reality she had no idea what had made them so sure that they should keep the boy they'd found in the corn. But something had. It was very difficult to explain. "We were kind of attached by the time he started jumping off things, so…"
"Jumping off things?"
"Off things, onto things, falling through the barn roof…" she shook her head and glanced at Clark, getting a weird glint in her eye. "Actually, we have home movies…"
"Mom," Clark started in protest, but she was already heading for the barn.
"Home movies?" Lois asked, looking at Clark as the screen door closed behind Martha without a sound. "Is that really the smartest thing to have around?"
"No," Clark said, looking through the walls of the house and into the barn where his mother already had the cellar open. "But it was hard for my parents not to be able to have something so show for all the … weird things I could do," his friends looked confused so he elaborated. "Everybody else had home movies or photographs of their kids doing stuff that they wanted to remember, but my parents were too afraid that someone would come and take me away if they knew what I could do… Eventually they got tired of it. They made the movies so that they could watch them and not worry about somebody developing the film and noticing that the kid the picture was of had jumped forty feet in the air or something."
"And you just keep these in the barn?" Jimmy asked.
"In the cellar in the barn," Clark nodded.
"And nobody has ever found them?"
"Well, the cellar is hidden, and even if somebody noticed it, this is Kansas. Everybody has cellars."
"Still doesn't seem like the most secure place to keep Superman's childhood a secret."
"Nobody's looking for Superman's childhood," Clark pointed out.
"So who are you, really?" Jimmy asked after a few seconds of silence.
"What?" Clark asked, not sure how to answer.
"Well, Superman and Clark Kent are about as separate as you can get and then... right now you're not acting like either one."
"Oh, well, um," Clark said, finding himself stuttering. Lois laughed at him and he glared at her, summing up his thoughts before he tried speaking again. "I was raised here as Clark Kent. I was Clark Kent before I was ever Superman; Lois came up with Superman," he shrugged, and Lois nodded to assure the two men that he spoke the truth. "The Clark Kent you know is easily overlooked. I can disappear to go be Superman easier if nobody notices me, or at least not when I'm not tripping into them or asking them for napkins to save my tie from the coffee," he smiled and noticed that his friends had the ghosts of smiles on their faces as well. "I guess this is me," he shrugged. "I'm not nearly as klutzy as the Clark you know from the office, but I'm not, I don't know, all that much of a super man, I guess."
Perry and Jimmy just sat there looking at him, and Clark dug into his breakfast. His mother cooked like no other person he had ever met and it was amazing. There was a knock on the door and Clark picked up his glasses, smiling at them and pushing them up the bridge of his nose before flashing over to the door and opening it.
"Clark! Hi, where's your mom?" Ben asked, holding out the box of vegetables in his hands. "I've got more produce for her to make into bread."
"She's in the barn, I'll get her if you want to come on in," he let the older man pass into the house before walking out to the barn, letting the screen door slam behind him. "Mom?"
"What?" Martha's voice came from the cellar. "You didn't come down here to talk me out of it, did you? Because I've been waiting to share these with someone for years…"
"I'm not here to talk you out of it, Mom," he assured her. "It's just that Ben's here with more vegetables. Personally, I didn't know you could make bread out of carrots…"
"The carrots are for carrot cake, honey," she said, handing him a box of tapes and dusting her hands off on her pants. "Where is he?"
"In the house."
"Okay, well, you put those in the living room, and I'll talk to Ben. With all the people here I doubt he'll want to stay long," she smiled, patting Clark's cheek. He walked after back into the house, carrying the box awkwardly for show more than anything else.
"Thank you, Ben!" Martha was saying happily, taking the box of vegetables away from him as though nothing had happened in the past twelve hours. He could tell anyway. Lois's eyes were still a bit puffy from her earlier tears, and Perry had a few bruises, not to mention that he was still in his pajamas. Jimmy was pensive, not making eye contact with anybody and eating his breakfast like a zombie. Clark put to box down in the next room and made a show of catching his toe on the door frame when he entered the room. Ben just shook his head muttering something about how Clark had always been a bit of a klutz.
"Is everything okay here?" He asked, looking from face to face. Jimmy and Perry were both wearing identical looks of confusion, and Lois still looked nervous. Clark shrugged and plastered a dumb smile on his face. Ben turned to Perry, "I don't believe we've met… I'm Ben Hubbard, I live down the way."
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Hubbard, I'm Perry White," Perry said, not leaving his seat.
"The editor for the Planet?" Perry nodded. "What brings you to Smallville?"
Perry wanted to say "Superman," but he didn't. Instead, glancing at Clark, he said, "I've got people writing an article here, why shouldn't I be here?" Ben just shrugged.
"You sure everything's okay?" Martha nodded.
"Of course, Ben. Everything is just fine," she smiled warmly. "We'll see you later, okay- I've got to put these city slickers to work."
"Bye, then," he said, leaving reluctantly. . Martha's smile dropped off her face the moment the screen door slammed behind him. Lois emerged from her teacup, moving to refill it with coffee. Clark was staring through the ceiling, watching Jason roll over in his sleep.
Clark was about to sit down at the table again and continue with their conversation when he heard his cell ring in the other room. Sighing, he turned around and searched the room with his x-ray vision, finding the phone hidden next to the TV. "Hello?" He couldn't believe how tired he sounded.
"Clark Kent?"
"This is…"
"This is Officer Stephens, Metropolis PD."
"Oh."
"I'm calling about your son and Perry White. We need to get their statements…"
"…Can it wait till tomorrow?" Clark asked, cutting him off.
"Well…"
"Superman said he'd be back tomorrow afternoon to bring all of us back to Metropolis; is it possible to wait till then? We're all very tired."
"I suppose that would be alright," Stephens said reluctantly. "But I do need to speak to Superman as soon as possible. Is there a way you can get in touch with him?"
"I'll do my best."
"Thank you, Mr. Kent. We'll see you tomorrow afternoon at the station."
"Goodbye Officer."
"What was that?" Lois asked from the doorway.
"Metropolis P.D. They want us all in at the station tomorrow to answer questions, and they want Superman to stop by as soon as possible."
"Did they find anything?"
"I don't know, I haven't gone yet."
"Don't get annoyed with me, Clark," Lois told him narrowing her eyes.
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head and putting a warm hand on her shoulder. "I'm just really tired."
"Didn't you get enough sunlight on the flight back?"
"I don't know," he said, shrugging. "The kryptonite that Luthor had was different from the stuff he used to have…"
"What do you mean different?" Martha asked, they'd come into the kitchen now.
"Well," Clark thought back to his brief imprisonment. "He had the other half of the shard he stabbed me with in his pocket," he rubbed at the spot on his chest Luthor had most recently scarred him absentmindedly. "It was kryptonite, no doubt about that, but it didn't affect Jason at all. It broke on his skin when Luthor tried to stab him… then Kitty brought in another block of it. Jason passed out, like he did when he was near the chunk on the playground…"
"Are you saying there's two different kinds of green kryptonite?" Lois asked, and Clark nodded slowly.
"It would make sense…"
"What would make sense?" Lois prompted when he didn't continue out loud.
"Well, how did Jason react on Luthor's ship when Luthor was waving around that block of kryptonite?"
"He was afraid of it, I think," Lois shrugged. "It didn't seem to physically hurt him though…"
"Exactly," Clark said, falling silent for another moment. "I think the kryptonite that came from New Krypton is different, more powerful, than the kryptonite from Krypton. Or at least it affects us differently."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, kryptonite from Krypton, like the shard Luthor stabbed me with, didn't affect Jason, but the kryptonite you found in the alley and on the playground at Jason's school affected both of us, and a lot more severely than the other kryptonite."
"Why would it do that?"
"I have no idea," he lost himself in thought for a moment. "Maybe it's because it was mixed with the crystal from the Fortress. Maybe it affects Jason because it grew in Earth's ocean and not on Krypton. Maybe… There are a lot of maybes."
Lois sat down. It was good to know that her son couldn't be affected by a small amount of the kryptonite that was left on Earth, but it was bad news to learn that the greater amount floating around had even more severe affects on the two most important men in her life.
"What about that kryptonite dagger the pod people had?" She asked after a moment.
"Pod people?" Clark asked, drawing a blank.
"Those Kings of the Twenty-Eighth Planet, or whatever they called themselves."
"Oh," he shrugged. "That was normal kryptonite."
'Then why did it affect Jason?"
"When was Jason close to it?"
"Jimmy brought it to the car first, where Jason was waiting," Lois said. Clark glanced at Jimmy, who was looking apologetic.
"What happened?"
"He had an asthma attack," Perry told him.
"Hm," Clark thought for a moment. "Maybe it was just a normal asthma attack. That dagger was covered in blood, after all."
"Maybe," Lois said.
"I should go back to Metropolis," Clark said after a short silence. "I'll bring some things from your house for you, Perry."
Perry just nodded, so Clark nodded back.
He flew high over the building where they'd been held captive first, looking through the walls for any signs of kryptonite. There was nothing, just a few of the smaller chips of kryptonite in the second room they'd been held in that the CSI's were carefully sorting into little baggies. No signs of Luthor, though. Figures. The police officers on the scene asked him the usual questions before assuring him they were doing all they could to track down Luthor; they weren't having much luck, though. They weren't even sure who had gotten him out of prison. The two goons he'd left behind weren't talking, figuring they'd be safer in jail.
Clark was exhausted. It was a strange feeling, one he hadn't felt since he'd last been in the hospital. He was able to ignore it while he packed a small suitcase of clothes for Perry, shoving his laptop on top and latching the case shut. He flew high above the clouds, drinking in the sunlight on his way back to Kansas. When he landed he was still tired, but better.
He was about to change back into his Clark clothes when he heard a cry for help. Sighing, he shot into the house and handed a startled Perry his suitcase, smiled at Lois and his mother, and left the house. The sonic boom that rattled the weathervane was the only evidence of his passing.
Inside, Lois flipped on the TV to try and find out where he'd gone.
"Is this how your life works?" Perry asked, watching Lois casually flip through channels until she found her fiancé on the news pulling the door off of an upturned car that was part of a five car pileup just south of Metropolis.
"Pretty much," Lois said, chuckling.
"Do you ever get jealous?" Jimmy asked, looking over her shoulder at the screen. Clark was holding a very pretty young lady close to him with one arm and pulling her sister, another pretty young woman, out of the back seat. Lois thought for a moment on that. In all rationality, she had every reason to be jealous; Clark was out there saving complete strangers when he could be here with her answering his friends' stupid questions, and those ladies were pretty.
"No," she said, turning to face the other two men. "Those two women only know that he's Superman and he just saved them. They don't know that he prefers tea over coffee on the weekends, or that he'd do just about anything for a slice of his mother's apple pie, or that he always misspells percentage…" she smiled, shrugging.
"Where's Daddy? Is he saving people again?" Jason asked, bounding down the stairs and looking like he'd slept for twelve hours and not just been held captive and traumatized.
"Yup," Lois said, moving aside so he could see the TV.
"He looks tired," Jason commented after a moment, smiling when his father flew off to another rescue somewhere.
"Jason, come and get breakfast!" Martha's voice came from the kitchen.
"Are you Gramma Martha?" Jason asked when he entered the kitchen.
"Yes, I am," she said, smiling. He looked just look his father, it was amazing. Martha hugged her grandson, something she'd never expected to be able to do.
Clark returned a few hours later to find everybody in the living room watching the videos of his childhood. Jason was laughing as he watched a ten year old Clark smile at the camera before turning and running for the edge of the corn; he was moving so fast by the time he reached the tall green stalks that they bent away from him. The ripple through the corn disappeared into the distance and then Clark appeared again, jumping high enough so that his feet cleared the tips of the stalks, still moving away. Then, just as suddenly as he'd gone, he reappeared, jumping over the last row of corn and landing a few feet in front of the camera.
"Will I be able to do that, Daddy?" Jason asked, and everybody jumped when Clark chuckled.
"Probably."
"Oh, no," Lois sighed. "I hadn't even thought about that."
Clark sunk onto the couch next to Lois and she could practically feel waves of exhaustion waving off of him. She turned to look at him, tell him to go to bed, something, but the look on his face told her that it would be a waste of time. He wanted a few minutes of normality, even if it meant watching his younger self jumping off the silos.
"Daddy, when did you learn how to fly?" Jason asked. He was tired of watching Clark lift heavy things and move really fast. That stuff wasn't nearly as cool as flying.
"I was fourteen when I first flew," Clark said, thinking back to the time he'd fallen through the barn roof and hovered instead of impacting the ground.
"That wasn't flying," Martha said, narrowing her eyebrows at Clark and going to find the proper tape. "That was falling with style."
"At least you didn't have to worry about my knees anymore," Clark said with a smile.
"I was more worried about the silos and the roof than your knees, honey," Martha said, changing the tape. Lois and Jason looked eager to see the next tape, but Perry and Jimmy just looked weirded-out.
The beginning of the next tape was filled with the same things as the previous tape had been full of; Clark running through the corn, faster each time they saw him, jumping higher and higher until he easily cleared the farmhouse and barn. He had the same thick framed glasses that he wore now, only Martha had told them that he needed them then. His eyes had had trouble adjusting to the yellow sun, apparently. Martha suddenly got quiet, watching the tape expectantly.
Clark was jumping around in the distance, coming closer as he jumped off the ground and landed on a silo, and then jumped onto the roof of the house and, without pausing, onto the barn roof. Then he fell through the barn roof. "Clark!" Martha's voice came through the TV. They had already seen that he was invulnerable, but it was a mother's place to worry, especially after seeing her son fall through the barn roof. The camera was shaking, but still level with the ground, as though Martha were running towards the barn with the camera still held properly in her hands.
The younger Martha stopped outside the barn door and threw it open to find her son floating about four feet off the ground, his arms spread wide, and his glasses lying on the hay below him. "Clark?" Martha asked on the tape, the camera dropping to the floor, but still managing to keep Clark's front in frame. Two horses, not Betsy and Thor but very similar in coloring, were looking on in their stalls nearby, completely uninterested in the fact that the boy was flying, and the hole in the roof let in early afternoon light. Martha approached him, and waved a hand underneath him, checking for invisible supports. Finding none, she proceeded to push his shoulder. Clark hovered backwards, a panicked look crossing his face. He adjusted his body and he hovered differently. Gaining more confidence with each passing moment in the air, Clark adjusted again and then, grinning mischievously at his mother, twitched and shot up through the hole he'd fallen through.
"Clark!" Martha was yelling. "Come back down here this instant! You'll fall and break your neck! Clark Joseph Kent!"
There was a crashing noise from off camera, and Martha went running out of the barn while the horses' ears twitched irritably at the disturbance.
The Martha in the rocking chair next to the couch was smiling at the memory, looking at her son sitting on the couch with his fiancé pulled close and their son on her lap. He'd come a long way from those early days of flight. The tape ran for awhile and Martha's voice sounded in the background, talking to a panicking Clark who really didn't want to fly again for as long as he lived, trying to calm him down.
There was a brief moment of static on the screen before the camera was in use again. Some time seemed to have passed; Clark looked older, probably about seventeen. He was driving fence posts into the ground with his bare hands, not even pre-digging holes for the posts to fit into. He was just walking to and from the truck bed where the posts were waiting, grabbing on, pushing it into the ground, and moving on to the next. Jonathan Kent was standing near the front of the truck, just watching and shaking his head with a smile on his face.
By the end of the tape, Clark was fast asleep on the couch behind Lois. Perry and Jimmy were still bubbling over with questions, but Martha made them leave the room silently to let her boy sleep. He'd done so much in the past twenty-four hours, including being exposed to kryptonite. He deserved his rest.
- - -
Clark woke to an empty living room two hours later. He peered through the walls and found Martha in the kitchen making lunch with Lois. They were talking softly and trying not to wake him. Jason was out in the yard playing with Shelby while Perry and Jimmy looked on. Jimmy had his camera out and had taken a few pictures of boy and dog, but he wasn't really focused on it. He was showing the Chief what he'd gotten in the past two weeks, and Perry seemed pleased.
Perry and Jimmy both jumped when the screen door slammed behind Clark and he joined them sitting on the porch steps. Perry had been laughing at the pictures Clark had taken of Jimmy on the horse, but the laughter died in his throat.
"Have a nice nap?" Jimmy asked after an awkward moment.
"Yeah," Clark said, trying to sound normal. "I haven't been that tired since… well… since right before that whole New Krypton thing, actually," and normalcy flew out the window. It was still weird to talk about his life as Superman with Lois, and he'd had several months to get used to talking with her about it, but now he was talking about New Krypton with Jimmy and Perry…
Perry cleared his throat in response to Clark's comment, and Jimmy didn't make eye contact. Clark ignored the tension in the air and watched his son play with the dog. The afternoon sun was shining brightly, not a cloud in the sky, and he was feeling all the better for it. Smiling, he saw that the sunlight seemed to be having the same effect on Jason. He just looked better than he had recently. The boy drew back his arm to throw the ball again and sent it flying; Jimmy and Perry drew in startled breaths. The ball would probably land a few farms away; not nearly as far as Clark had thrown upon his return, but much farther than expected of a normal boy throwing a ball for a dog.
Jason's jaw dropped, and he turned to look at his father on the steps. Clark was smiling, which brought a weak smile to Jason's lips, but he still looked nervous. Clark chuckled, "It's okay, Jason. I used to do that all the time. We've got plenty more old baseballs for Shelby somewhere."
Jason looked a little better, managing a more real smile. Clark stood and walked to the barn, quickly finding the old ball he was looking for and bringing it out to his son. "Don't throw it as hard as you can," he instructed. "Pick a spot for it to land and throw it there."
"Okay, Daddy," Jason said uncertainly, taking the ball and turning it over in his hands a few times. Clark joined Perry and Jimmy on the steps and waited for Jason to throw the ball again. Hesitant at first, Jason was eventually throwing the ball and controlling the distance it went pretty well. Clark smiled; his son had picked up on control a lot faster than he had.
Both Clark and Jason's heads tilted at the same moment, hearing the same thing. Jason looked confused, but Clark just sighed. "What's that sound, Daddy?"
"There's a bomb threat at the Sydney Opera House," he said, raising an eyebrow. He hadn't expected Jason to be able to hear it.
"Does that mean you have to go?"
"Yeah, that means I have to go," Clark smiled, hugging his son before changing into his Superman suit in a blue blur and taking off.
Jason sat on the porch, his head tilted to the side as though he was listening to the goings-on in Australia while Shelby pushed the ball towards his feet, annoyed that the boy wasn't playing anymore. Perry and Jimmy just stared at the boy. It was a lot to take in in so short a time.
"Boys, time for lunch!" Martha's voice came from inside, and Jason stuffed his fingers in his ears.
"Everything is so loud," he said, wincing. With his fingers in his ears, everything had gone quiet, though. He took them out for a moment and was assaulted by the sounds around them again. He could hear everybody's heartbeat, their breathing, the dog's annoying panting, and then there were the sounds from the world around them- the horses in their stalls, the bugs, the winds rustling in the corn. But that wasn't all he could hear. He could hear his father's voice in Australia, resolving the situation at the Opera, and he could hear his father's heartbeat and breathing too. It was weird because he couldn't hear the bad man with the bomb Velcroed to his chest's heartbeat or breathing, just Superman's. There was a plane flying over Kansas City that he could hear too, just flying, its engines roaring to keep it moving. He put his fingers back in his ears. Once again the blessed silence surrounded him. He could hear the air moving in and out of his lungs as he breathed, and his heart beating, but they were calming noises. They were his, not everybody else's. Slowly, he took his fingers out of his ears, still listening to his own heartbeat. Eventually, the loudness around him dulled down; he could still hear everything, or snatches of everything, but his heartbeat was louder, but not too loud. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. His mom and grandma were staring at him worriedly, and Uncle Perry and Jimmy looked worried too, and a little scared. He just smiled at them. "What's for lunch, Gramma?"
"Did the sounds go away, honey?" Lois asked.
"No," Jason shrugged. "But they're quieter now. My heart is louder, but it's not too loud…. What's for lunch? I'm hungry!"