Chapter Thirty-Six
By Saturday, the Kent farm was almost ready for its new occupants. Martha had removed what little remained of her belongings, and she and Clark had gotten the house ready for the new residents. They had swept, dusted, and scrubbed everything thoroughly, catching as many of the rodents who had moved into the house as they could, and then given the inside of the house a fresh coat of paint, Clark using his superspeed and his ability to fly to help get the tasks done more quickly.
On Saturday morning, Clark drove the truck into town and purchased six months’ worth of coal and enough chicken feed to last the winter. He wouldn’t tell his friends about the gifts, knowing that they would try to object, but instead simply stored the supplies at the farm, where they would find them and make use of them.
The horses were boarded in town and the chickens the Kents were keeping had been moved to the henhouse Clark had built in the yard of the house in Victor’s Village, expanding upon the shelter he had originally built for the mare. Pete and Lana had paid them for the remaining chickens. They had also stocked the house with a few groceries. To this, Clark and Martha had added a few more items — a few jars of pickles and preserves that Martha had put up during the summer, bags of dried mint and chamomile, a couple of loaves of bread, and a smoked groosling. The food and other supplies would be there when Clark’s friends moved in on Sunday, and the Kents had no doubt that Pete and Lana would put them to good use. Their families would also be giving them some food — enough to last until they could collect their tesserae rations and parcel in December.
There was one more thing that needed to be done, however, but Martha had put off talking about it as long as possible. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, but it needed to be taken care of.
As they finished tending the livestock on Saturday evening, Martha told her son, “Clark, there’s one more thing we need to do before turning the farm over to your friends.”
Clark leaned his pitchfork against the barn wall. Trying to think of what might not be done, he asked, “What’s that?”
“I’ve been debating whether it was necessary, but I finally decided that it needs to be done — I need you to check and see if there’s anything left of the baby your father and I buried just after we found you.”
At Clark’s puzzled look, Martha elaborated, “It’s been eighteen and a half years since your ‘sister’ was buried, and I don’t know if even bones are left, but if they are — I need you to help me remove them and rebury them elsewhere. It’s illegal to bury bodies anywhere but the cemetery, so if your friends were to dig there for some reason and find the skeleton, it could be a problem. There would be questions as to why she was buried there — maybe even a murder charge, though she was stillborn — and it would reveal that you aren’t my son by birth.”
Clark nodded in understanding. Taking the lantern from where it hung, he opened the barn door and walked with Martha in the direction of the wooded area where his parents had buried their stillborn daughter so many years before.
Once there, he held up the lantern, looking at the spot his parents had shown him when they had told him the truth about his origins, and pushed down his glasses. Concentrating, Clark used his X-ray vision to look deep into the ground.
There, under two feet of snow and six feet of earth, lay a baby’s skeleton. It was complete, the bones undecayed, though there was no sign of the blanket the Kents had wrapped the baby in before they’d buried her.
“She’s still there,” Clark told Martha, “or at least her bones are.”
“I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left,” Martha said. “Under some circumstances, even bone can rot away. Clark,” she went on, “I need your help in moving the skeleton. I don’t see any reason why your friends would dig here, but you never know.”
“I’ll go get the shovel,” Clark replied. He started to hurry away, then turned and said, “Mom, there’s some wood and nails left from building the chicken coop. I could build her a casket, if you like — it won’t take long.”
Martha hesitated, thinking. “None of her siblings had a casket. They were just wrapped in blankets before being buried. They never really had a chance to live, or for us to get to know them. We wanted all of them, but … none of them lived. They were never legally named or registered, and were buried quickly after their births — within twenty-four hours. With the last one, I wasn’t there when he was buried because I’d come so close to dying giving birth to him and wasn’t strong enough to be there.”
Clark was quiet for a moment, remembering the three quick burials of his younger stillborn brother and sisters. He hadn’t understood what was happening the first time — he’d only been three years old — but after that, he’d been old enough to comprehend what was happening and mourn the loss of a younger sibling. At the last burial, when he was thirteen, he and his father had stayed only long enough to see the blanket-wrapped body lowered into the ground before rushing home, fearing for Martha and wanting to be there if the worst should happen.
“At least they had proper graves and some sort of acknowledgment,” Clark said. “This one didn’t. I know why you couldn’t acknowledge her, but … she was sort of my twin. I never knew her, but she made it possible for you to take me in and make it look like I was yours.” He glanced at the tiny grave, but didn’t use his X-ray vision. It was enough to know that the baby’s skeleton was still there. “If I made a casket for her, it wouldn’t be as nice as the ones made by the carpenters in town, but we’d be the only ones to know about it, and … it would be easier to put her bones in a box to carry them than to try to wrap them up again, and —“
“Clark …”
“— and since she doesn’t have a place in the cemetery like the others, this would show that she was special, too, and —“
“Clark!”
Clark stopped babbling and looked at his mother.
“It’s all right. You can build a casket for her. We would have buried the others in caskets if we could have afforded them. If we’d spent the money for caskets, there wouldn’t have been enough left to feed and clothe the living, so we just wrapped them in blankets. Go ahead and get the materials for building the casket, but bring them back here before you build it. I don’t want anyone in Victor’s Village wondering what it is you’re building in the dark.”
Clark nodded. “I’ll be right back.” He took off at superspeed in the direction of Victor’s Village.
Wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, Martha sat down on a fallen log in a sheltered spot and waited for her son to return.
*****
Clark returned five minutes later, carrying the tools and supplies he would need to build the casket, as well as the shovel. Seeing Martha sitting in the shadows, he reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a finely embroidered pillowcase that he’d taken from his house. It was of better quality than any of the blankets that had been used to wrap his stillborn siblings, and the embroidery depicted birds and flowers in soft, pastel colors — things that might have appealed to a baby girl.
He handed it to Martha, holding up the lantern so she could see it. “I thought it could be used to line the casket.”
Martha examined the pillowcase. She’d seen it before when making the beds, but hadn’t used it, as it wasn’t a design that appealed either to Clark or herself. For a baby, however …
“Thank you, Clark. It’s perfect.” Her voice broke on the last word.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Clark swept away the snow and branches from the log and sat down next to Martha.
Martha wiped her eyes quickly, a bit embarrassed. “I was just thinking about … about
her, and the rest of them. It’s been five years since my last baby died, and eighteen and a half years since my little girl was buried here, but …”
“… but you still miss them. Mom, it’s okay. I know some people think you should let things like this go, but … they were still your children. People who’ve lost kids in the Games visit their graves and bring flowers if they can for years, even decades, after they died.”
“The difference, Clark, is that they had a chance to know their children. I didn’t.”
“It’s possible to love someone even if you didn’t know them for long, no matter what anybody says. You didn’t get to hold them while they were alive, but they grew inside you for nine months and you loved them then.” Clark put an arm around his mother. “I remember you hugging your stomach and singing quietly to the babies. You sounded so sad sometimes.”
“I knew there wasn’t much hope. There’s something about me that just wouldn’t let them be born alive. They’d move until shortly before the birth, and then — just stop, and there was nothing anyone could do. Maybe in the Capitol they would have had a chance, but here … here there was no chance at all.”
“I wish I’d been able to fly sooner. I could have taken you to the Capitol when you were expecting the last one —“
“In the Capitol, a search of their records would have revealed that I’m from District 9, and definitely not invited to be there. I don’t know for sure what the consequences would have been, but I doubt they would have saved my baby, and they might have hurt you and your father to punish me.”
“I was pretty hard to hurt by the time your last baby came … and hard to catch, too.”
“You also had a good heart, a conscience, and a strong need to protect us. The Capitol could have gotten to you through your father and me.”
Clark looked away, knowing that Martha was right. He didn’t like to see anyone hurt, especially not those he cared about — which was why Snow now had such power over him. His body was invulnerable and had been for years, but his heart was not.
“You almost died anyway when your last baby was born.”
Martha nodded. “Yes, and that was when Adra finally convinced me to permanently stop trying to have babies. Even though I knew there wasn’t
much hope for them, a
little bit of hope was still there. After all, my grandmother Stam had a lot of stillbirths, and then managed to have a live son — my father. When I told Adra that, though, she said I was unlikely to survive another delivery, and I’d never been able to bring a live baby into the world. I reminded her that I had you, but she knew better.” Martha looked at Clark. “Yes, Adra knows that I didn’t give birth to you. When she examined you, she found that the umbilical cord was too dry for a baby who had been born less than twenty-four hours earlier. I don’t think she knows anything else, but she knows that we adopted you.”
“What about …
her?” Clark asked, gesturing in the direction of the grave. “What does she think happened to your baby, since she knows it wasn’t me?”
“Adra never asked what we did with the baby I actually gave birth to. She knows I delivered a baby, and she knows your father and I would never deliberately harm a child — and she knows that I never had a living baby. You and I are the only ones who know about this grave, now that your father is gone, and I don’t plan to tell anyone. Keeping Adra in the dark protects her — if anyone should ask her what happened to my baby, she can honestly say she doesn’t know.” Martha shivered, feeling the chill creeping in despite her son’s arm around her. Taking a deep breath, she said, “You should get started before it gets any colder.”
Clark got up. “Sorry, Mom.” Sometimes he didn’t realize how much the cold affected normal people. He took his glasses off and quickly ran his heat vision over his mother, then gave her the coat, gloves, and scarf he wore for show. “I’ll get started.”
Martha put the extra garments on, grateful for the warmth. She watched as Clark measured the boards and then sawed them to the correct length. Quickly, though not quite at superspeed, he nailed them together, making a somewhat crude but usable box with a lid. After smoothing the box and lid with sandpaper, he took the pillowcase and cut the seams, carefully lining the casket with half of it.
Setting the lid in place, Clark ran his fingers over the plain wood. Frowning, he looked up at Martha, who was still sitting on the log, watching him work.
“Mom, I know that none of them were legally named, but you must have thought about what you would call them if they lived. What would you and Dad have called this one?”
Martha shook her head. “Your father and I didn’t discuss names after the first two babies died. It almost seemed like bad luck to think of names. We decided that we’d think of a name after the birth, if the baby lived.”
“So you didn’t think about names at all?”
“I
thought about them, but I never discussed it with your dad. He’d taken the loss of those first two babies hard. He didn’t like to show how much the loss of those two little boys hurt, but I knew.”
“What name did you think of for a girl?”
“I always liked the name Tess — and it was what we would have named a daughter if one of the first two babies had been a girl.”
“What about a boy?”
Martha smiled. “Clark. My brother Clark had died in the Games the year before, and your dad knew about the family custom of naming sons Clark. I don’t think your father would have objected — he didn’t argue when I told him that I wanted to name you Clark. I got my Clark, even if wasn’t quite in the way I’d expected.”
“Mom … would you mind if I put
Tess Kent on the lid of the casket? I can’t make a headstone because someone might find it, but I could put it on the wood and no one but us would ever know.”
Martha thought about it for a moment. The babies who were buried in the cemetery all had small headstones marked with
Baby Boy Kent or
Baby Girl Kent, along with the date they were stillborn. The baby buried under the trees hadn’t had any acknowledgment at all.
“I think that would be nice, Clark. Be sure to put the date she was stillborn, too.”
Nodding, Clark took off his glasses and focused his heat vision on the wood, carefully burning the words into the lid of the casket.
Tess Kent
Beloved Daughter and Sister
Stillborn May 17, 48When he was done, Martha came over to him while he held up the lantern so she could see. She ran her fingers gently over the still warm wood.
“I never knew her,” Clark said, “and I know she wasn’t really my sister, but … I wondered about her, what she would have been like, what it would have been like to have a sister. Before you told me how you found me, I always wondered why you put flowers under the trees here on my birthday. I didn’t ask, though, because I knew I was supposed to be in bed when you and Dad slipped out, and I didn’t want to get into trouble for following you.”
“It was the only acknowledgment we could give her. We couldn’t talk to anyone about her, except each other, and we didn’t want you overhearing and telling someone. Young children aren’t very good at keeping secrets. If you hadn’t started displaying such amazing abilities, we would probably have kept it a secret forever.”
Martha picked up the casket and went back to her seat, holding it carefully. Clark picked up the shovel and cleared away the two feet of snow on top of the grave, then started digging, using his heat vision to melt the soil just enough to keep the shovel from being damaged.
In just a few minutes, the tiny skeleton was visible at the bottom of the grave. Taking the casket from Martha, Clark carefully took the fragile bones and set them in the box, arranging them as best he could.
When he was done, Martha looked inside the casket, her eyes filling with tears at the sight of what remained of her third-born child. She loved the son she had raised with all her heart, but she still mourned the babies she had lost. Quietly, she took the casket from Clark, taking the second half of the pillowcase and laying it gently over her daughter’s skeleton.
Clark filled in the hole quickly, shoveling the snow back over it and smoothing it. Then he flew up into the tree and broke off a couple of dead branches, dropping them over the spot to make it appear that any disturbance was caused by the falling branches, rather than by digging.
“Where did you want to bury her?” he asked Martha. “The yard of the house in Victor’s Village?”
Martha shook her head. “There’s too much risk of getting caught. We need to bury her in the wilderness, where she will probably never be found.”
“Did you want me to fly her out there and bury her?”
“I want you to fly both of us out there. You can help me choose a new burial place. It has to be far enough from the fence that the grave won’t be disturbed by people sneaking out in search of food.”
“There’s a place about fifty miles or so south of District 9 where there’s a creek and a lot of wildflowers in the summer. I used to jump over the fence and run down there sometimes before I started flying, especially when the moon was full. There was less chance of getting caught running around in the wilderness than in District 9 when it was so bright out, and it was pretty. Sometimes I caught fish or picked berries and greens there, too.”
“If you don’t mind her being buried in your secret place, we can take her there.”
Clark shook his head. “I haven’t been there since I started flying. There were so many other places to explore …”
Martha carefully secured the lid on the casket and cradled it in her arms. Clark picked her up, looking around quickly to make sure no one was nearby. Then he rose into the air, stopping when he was about three hundred feet off the ground, and flew south.
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