Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 51 Part 52************
Rachel Harris************
Clark watched the men pulling the husks off the corn, each racing to be the first to empty his bushel. His mind wasn’t on the contestants, but far away.
Since meeting that Lois from the other dimension and feeling that instantaneous pull toward her, like a knock on the head, Clark figured he must have only
thought he had loved Lana for all those years. Now, almost a year since he last gazed upon Lana’s face, he realized that it had been wrong of him to discount his previous emotional connection. Seeing her again brought forth a flurry of memories and feelings – ten years’ worth – that couldn’t possibly all be his imagination. The good and the bad, he
had felt both for Lana, and he couldn’t brush them away as foolish hopes of a young man.
True, by the time Clark had met Lois, he had fallen out of love with Lana and felt himself trapped in a cage unable to escape. Had he only fallen for Lois because she unlocked his potential and set him free?
He glanced back to where he had last seen Lois and felt that familiar tug at his heart. No, it had been more than gratitude. There was just something about Lois that made it easier to breathe. Not to mention, she made his blood boil, sometimes in a good way… sometimes not. Like now, as he caught her talking to Lana and Hank. He groaned in aggravation. From the direction of their gaze, Lois clearly was talking to them about
him. The tension inside of him snapped, and he started marching back to his partner, wishing he had his powers so that he could whisk her away from them and into the sky.
Lois started arguing with Lana and Hank. Drat! What was his nosy partner telling those people, those strangers? She just couldn’t let it drop, could she? She just had to keep digging and digging to see what she could find out about him. He hated that he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He quickened his pace.
“Who is Walt Irig?” Lois asked, turning her back towards Clark as he approached.
Lana and Hank exchanged a look, before the latter spoke. “Walt
was Wayne Irig’s oldest son. He died on prom night. According to Sheriff Max Harris, it happened right after he raped the sheriff’s twin sister Rachel Harris.”
Clark stopped cold. He had barely recovered from bumping into Lana and now to hear of the horror that Walt Irig had done to Rachel, dear sweet Rachel. His eyes closed in pain. Anger rose in him that he could not vanquish. Walt Irig was already dead. There had been no Clark Kent in this dimension to take Rachel to the prom and to protect her from the likes of Walt. He swayed, dizzy from the mixture of anguish, fury, and remorse swirling inside of him.
“Chuck!” Lois gasped and reached out for him.
“Are you all right?” Hank asked.
Clark swallowed down the bad taste in his mouth. “Fine.”
“Jerome bumped his head last night,” Lois said, raising her hand to his face. “I knew we should’ve had you checked for concussion.”
“I’m fine, Lois, really,” he reassured her in an annoyed tone, before turning to face Hank and Lana. “What’s this about the sheriff’s sister?”
Lana looked between Clark and Lois with suspicion. “Who
are you?”
“I’m sorry. This is my husband, Jerome Lane. He’s kind of my guide for these parts. He spent some time here when he was younger,” Lois clarified, wrapping her arm around his waist.
Clark knew she was only playing the part he had assigned her, but her touch helped soothe the turmoil inside of him.
“Oh, is that why you wanted to know if I knew him,” Lana said, and smiled at Clark. It was a flirtatious smile, which she quickly pulled from her face with a glance at her husband. Clark’s stomach churned.
“I thought you called him ‘Chuck’?” Hank said, his brow furrowing.
Lois really needed to come up with a better nickname for him for when he was working undercover, Clark thought with a shake of his head. He held out his hand to Hank. “Sorry. Charles Jerome Lane.”
Hank nodded, accepting this explanation and shaking his hand. “I told the sheriff at the time, old Sheriff Tinney, that I thought Max was full of crap… excuse my French. Since they were both dead from the car accident, the coroner said it would be wrong to check Rachel’s body for such a… Are you sure you’re all right?” he said to Clark.
Clark certainly didn’t feel ‘all right’. All the bile that had been building in his stomach was threatening to rush out. “Rachel’s dead?” he managed.
Hank gazed at him for a minute. “Yeah, like I was saying Walt had been drinking and crashed his truck out by Prentice Stump. I don’t see how this has anything to do with the EPA investigation over at the Irig Farm though.”
“Background,” Lois said vaguely. She squeezed the arm that was around his waist. “Jerome?”
“I… think… I need to sit down,” Clark mumbled.
Did it have to be a car accident that killed her? he thought, as another wave of nausea and anguish flooded him. He must have made a face, because Lana took a step away from him.
“If you’ve got something catching, I don’t want you anywhere near Baby Lanelle,” she said, taking another step away from him.
“I’m not sick. I’m fine,” Clark repeated. “I… Rachel… and I were friends. I didn’t know that she’d...” He squeezed his eyes together and took some deep breaths, trying to clear his head. He dealt with death on a daily basis as Superman and as a reporter, but Rachel wasn’t just some faceless name. He had known her intimately.
Lois led him to some tables near the barbeque area for him to sit down.
“I’ll get you a soda,” she said, and patted his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Clark nodded slightly, and she darted off.
Rachel had supported Clark when no one else had. She had been his best friend. She had made him into a man. After that summer he and Rachel had made love, he had even considered himself half in love with her and had wanted to become more than friends. He had looked for her during Thanksgiving break, and even flown to KU a couple of times to search for her, but it was like finding one particular ant in a mound, near impossible, even for someone with his abilities. Finally, he went to the Harris house that Christmas break to find her.
Her twin brother gave him a letter from Rachel, informing Clark that she had joined the Army. Apparently, she had asked Max to hold on to the letter in case Clark stopped by; somehow, she had known Clark would have looked for her. Had she known how much their night together had meant to him and hadn’t wanted to give him any hope because she didn’t return his feelings? In the letter, Rachel reassured him that they would always be friends and apologized for not sending the letter to him at school, but that her address book had been stolen that summer with her purse. She wrote that her sudden change of vocations had been more a lack of funds issue than anything else. Her college account hadn’t been as fully endowed as she had been lead to believe.
Clark had wondered for over a month about her disappearance and how it coincided with the fact that they had made love before heading off to school. He doubted the Army would have accepted her if she had been pregnant and unmarried at the time of enlistment, unless that all had been a lie to cover up her absence. No, Rachel would have contacted him at Kansas State if some unforeseen development had arisen after that night they had spent together. Wouldn’t she have? He had reassured her that he would marry her if she had become pregnant during their experimenting. Anyway, they had used precautions. Of course, since this was
him, that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Years later, after Rachel finished her tour with the Army as an M.P. and returned to Smallville to become Sheriff Harris, she confided to then-engaged Clark that her brother had used his college money to buy a new truck after their graduation from high school. Max had then crashed the truck, and ‘borrowed’ the funds from
her college account to repair it, so their father wouldn’t find out. Apparently, it had been her own brother who had stolen her purse that summer before college. Max continued to borrow a little more money, here and there, to finance his fun that summer and a trip to Six Flags Texas with some friends. When it had come time to pay for the next semester’s tuition bill, the money wasn’t there. The options had been to either come back to Smallville and work in her dad’s store, or strike it out on her own. Rachel chose the latter.
Clark and Max had never seen eye-to-eye, especially when it came to Clark’s friendship with Rachel. This theft caused what minor goodwill Clark had left for the man, for being Rachel’s brother, to vanish completely. Clark had always wondered what would have happened between him and Rachel, if their relationship had been allowed to bloom. Would she have been interested in dating him? Would they have discovered that they were better off just friends? Would she have accepted his super status with all the enthusiasm of Lois or shut it away like Lana? How would his life have been different if Rachel hadn’t joined the Army and moved away for eight years? Would he have ever made it to the Daily Planet? Or would he be a happily married family man? Without being obsessed with Lana, would he have made the trip to Metropolis earlier, possibly in time to save his Lois from her fate?
He looked up at Hank who had followed them to the table. Clark still didn’t feel comfortable with
this Lana. “
Max is sheriff?” he asked skeptically, hoping that he had misheard.
Hank glanced around and lowered his voice. “Unfortunately.”
Martha’s statement about Wayne’s abduction not being a problem for the sheriff now made more sense. Clark looked at Hank, baffled. “How?”
Hank sat down, causing Lana to make an undisguised face of annoyance. “After Rachel’s death the Harrises, well, Mr. Harris and Max, made it their job to ‘clean up’ Smallville of the ‘wrong sort’. They started with anyone who was associated or friends with the Irigs. They said that it had been Mr. and Mrs. Irig’s bad influence on Walt, which had made him the bully that he was. Mr. Harris had even petitioned the courts to have Thomas taken away from them.” He shook his head.
Walt had been a bad seed; that was a given. Maybe Wayne could have been a more loving father and a less strict disciplinarian, but Barbara had been almost as loving and as sweet as he remembered his mom being. It had been wrong to ostracize the Irigs, who also were mourning the death of their son, for a crime that no one had any proof of. Clark knew Walt was capable of it, true, but that didn’t mean that he had followed through with such a crime on Rachel. God forbid, for her sake, that it had been true.
The Mr. Harris from his dimension was a big fan of appearances. As owner of the hardware store, Mr. Harris rivaled Maisie as biggest gossip in town, but unlike the diner manager, Mr. Harris hoarded his gossip and didn’t sprinkle it about like manure allowing more rumors to grow. Clark had even overheard him discussing seriously with his wife about running for mayor or town council of Smallville, but Shirley had put her foot down. He had two, (three while Clark resided with them) growing children to care for; therefore, she insisted that his business and keeping the food on the table were his priorities.
At the end of Clark’s junior year in high school, when the Irigs could no longer handle Clark as a foster child due to Mrs. Irig’s failing health, Barbara had asked Shirley Harris if Clark could stay with them. Mr. Harris only agreed, in Clark’s opinion, because he didn’t want it spread around town that he hadn’t helped out Martha and Jonathan’s orphaned son when directly asked to. Mr. Harris hadn’t helped Clark out immediately after the Kents’ death, but no one had specifically asked him to, either.
Mr. Harris had a change of heart though after Clark and Rachel became friends and had gone to a few dances together, even only as friends. The head of the Harris family thought it gave himself the appearance of approving of such behavior. He didn’t mind so much Rachel and Clark being friends, even if Max had, but dating while both lived under his roof was completely unacceptable, even though they weren’t technically dating. That was when Clark got shuffled off to the Rosses during the Christmas break of his senior year of high school.
“Mr. Harris ran and won the job away from Sheriff Tinney, who retired the summer after Walt and Rachel’s death,” Hank continued. “When Sheriff Harris had a heart attack last year, Max promoted himself up from deputy and took over his dad’s duties as if he were Prince John to Sheriff Harris’s King Richard, not that Sheriff Harris could be considered a good King Richard in any respects.”
Lois returned with a lemon-lime soda for Clark, and he took a sip.
The drink helped settled his churning stomach. He smiled at her. “Thanks.”
“I asked Max to give me a job as deputy, so Lana and I and the kids could move back to Smallville. We’ve been living in Wichita for the last five years,” Hank said, giving Lana a smile. “I couldn’t get a job in town, being Walt’s best bud and all, other than security guard at the bank.”
Ah, Mr. Lang helped out his son-in-law. That would have been a first. Not that Clark had ever wanted Mr. Lang’s assistance.
“But Max wouldn’t hire me, even though I’ve spent the last few years as a guard at the Wichita prison,” Hank said tersely. “I’m still blacklisted because I had been Walt’s best friend.” He shook his head. “As if it were my fault what happened to Rachel or Walt.”
A stocky girl with straight red hair and freckles came up to Lana and slipped her hand around her forearm.
“I’m holding the baby, Barbie. Watch it!” Lana snapped, stepping away.
“Mama, Sarah Small asked if I could go on the rides with her, and then spend the night. Can I?” the girl asked.
“It’s a school night,” Lana responded curtly.
Barbie gave her mother a ‘give me a break’ expression. “Mom, I don’t have school tomorrow because of October conferences, and Sarah doesn’t have school because of the festival. So, can I, please?”
Lana glanced at Hank to see his opinion.
He stretched out his arms to the girl, and she rushed into them. “Be on your best behavior. Mind what Mr. and Mrs. Small say. Call me at Nana Pat’s if you change your mind and want to come home.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” the girl gushed, kissing his cheek.
Hank stood up and took her hand. “Let’s go discuss the details with Mrs. Small, shall we?” Barbie nodded and rushed off, pulling her daddy behind her. He gave them a brief wave before disappearing into the crowd.
Clark looked at Lana, and then at Hank, and then back at Lana. “When’s her birthday? 1985? February?” he hazarded a guess. Lana didn’t scare him anymore, now that he knew the truth.
Lana’s eyes widened as she glared at Clark. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, stranger,” she growled, turning on her heel and marching off in the same direction her husband and child went off in.
Lois’s inquisitive eyes focused on him. “What was all that about?”
Clark glanced around. Maisie was across the barbeque area from them. “Barbie is Wayne’s granddaughter,” he told her softly, taking a sip of his drink. “She’s the spitting image of Mrs. Irig at that age. I remember…” His voice faded away, unable to tell Lois that he remembered Barbara Irig showing him photos of her and her best friend, Martha Clark, as girls. “I’m guessing there was a party out at the gorge after prom. Prentice Stump is about five miles away from there, and there really isn’t anything else out that way except lots and lots of fields. The gorge was the lovers’ lane of the day. I’m sure the Harrises have shut it down by now. Lana probably told Walt that she was going to the prom with Hank, because he was quarterback; she was more likely to win prom queen with him than Walt.” He sighed, standing up. “Lana was all about the tiara in those days.”
“How do you know all of this?” Lois asked. “They don’t even know who you are.”
He held her gaze a moment. “Just because some people are invisible doesn’t mean that they’re not there,” he replied, turning in the direction of the car. “Let’s go. I’d like to talk to the Kents about this.”
“
What?” she sputtered, following him. “I thought we were looking for Mr. Irig.”
“We know where he is, Lois. Thomas wouldn’t lie about that,” he said.
Lois grabbed his arm, making him come to a complete stop. “Okay, tell me one thing. I’ve got to know. Who was Rachel to you?”
Clark’s eyes dimmed. “The first person who saw me,” he whispered, and then cleared his throat. “My best friend.” That didn’t quite capture what Rachel had meant to him. “The first girl I…” His eyes closed with a wince. “— ever loved.”
***
Clark was being secretive again, Lois grumbled to herself. True, he did tell her about his relationship with that Rachel girl,
after she pried it out of him.
As soon as they got back into the car, without a hotdog or even a caramel apple, Clark buried his face in his hand, clearly in mourning for this girl who had died ten years before. Lois hadn’t seen him so distraught since the night of her birthday, when he briefly told her about the death of his folks.
“Want to tell me how you knew about Barbie?” she asked after giving him five minutes of silence.
“Like I said before, she looks just like Walt’s mom had at that age. I saw a photo somewhere,” he replied with a shrug. “I took a guess. No great detective work.”
“How come you didn’t know about the biggest scandal to rock Smallville in decades?” she pressed.
“
You knew about it?” he replied.
“I’m not from here.”
“And
I wasn’t here when it happened,” he said painfully as if it
had happened because he wasn’t there, which was ridiculous. “Just because someone is from someplace doesn’t mean he goes back there all the time.”
“Clark, I’m just trying to understand. Everything you’re saying contradicts what I know, or thought I knew, to be true. I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Lois said.
“My life’s complicated,” Clark replied vaguely.
He had to be kidding!
“So, are you going to tell me about Lana?” she probed.
He shot her a momentary panicked expression, or at least she thought he had. By the time she turned her head to look at him though, it was gone.
“There isn’t anything to tell about me and
that woman, Lois,” he said. “I was just surprised to see someone I hadn’t seen in a long time, that’s all.”
Lois wasn’t sure ‘that was all’ but with no proof to the contrary, she let it drop for the moment. “So, when you say this Rachel person was your first girlfriend, are you talking about kindergarten? Hand holding and a stolen kiss? That sort of thing?”
“No, Lois,” he said wryly, and then laughed. “We were older. I was going to say ‘real girlfriend’, but your description works well, too. Let’s just say Rachel was the first girl I ever kissed,
really kissed.” His smile faded. “I know you think I’m crazy missing someone who died so long ago, whom I never even thought I’d see again, I just…” He took a breath. “— didn’t expect her to be dead, that’s all.”
“But Walt Irig’s death didn’t surprise you?” she countered.
“Well, I never kissed Walt,” he threw back, and then sighed almost in defeat. “It did shock me, Lois, but I heard he had died a while back, just not the details.”
“Oh.” That made sense. She thought for a moment. “How do you visit Smallville without actually visiting Smallville?”
“I’ve just been coming straight to the Kent Farm,” he explained.
Okay, that also made sense. Why would he go and visit a community that rejected him? “We’re not going to get any help from the sheriff, are we?” Lois asked.
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Clark agreed. “Max isn’t someone who should be sheriff, or the Max Harris I knew shouldn’t be. He was a thief, and not really leadership material, the type that clearly couldn’t handle power. Put a badge and a gun in his hand…” He whistled.
Terrific. She hoped Clark could still contact Superman over long distances.
Clark dropped into silence again, before mumbling, almost to himself, “Rachel would be a good sheriff. So many opportunities lost.” After another minute, he raised his voice and looked at her. “I’m sorry I can’t be the person you need, Lois.”
She ground her teeth together. “Are you apologizing for lying to me, or are you apologizing for being the man you are?”
“A little of both, I guess,” he said with a sheepish smile.
“Good!” she snapped.
He should apologize. “You ready to tell me who you are now?”
“Clark Kent.”
“Still sticking with that, huh?”
“It’s the truth,” he reassured her, but she had no reason to believe him anymore.
When they had been at City Hall, looking into the Irig’s pesticide use, she had excused herself to use the restroom. Instead she went to check out county birth and death records. No Kents died in or around Smallville in 1976. She was about to ask about male babies born in 1966, and then remembered Clark had said that he was a foundling. There was the possibility that he didn’t have official birth certificate listed. Anyway, if he was lying about his identity, it was always possible he was born earlier or later than 1966, which then threw off the year in which his parents might or might not have died.
Lois liked Clark, she really did. She needed to know the truth to know whether or not she should trust him, whether or not he was worthy of deepening their relationship, whether or not she could chance her fragile fractured heart to another man who could very possibly shatter it again. She wasn’t ready to forgive him, and even less ready to trust him.
Clark had shown her that he could be kind, sweet, and generous to a fault. He treated her well, often thinking of her needs before his own, even to his detriment. He had soft lips, and gentle hands, and wasn’t trying to jump into bed with her to steal her story or even just for the fun of it. He had told her straight out that he was in for the long haul. All good traits. He was a hard worker, an excellent investigator, and often didn’t let her get away with stuff other people would be too scared to confront her about. She also loved that he considered her career as important, if not more important, than his. Holy moly, did Clark know how sexy that was? Just thinking about what Clark had told Perry when the cyborg story broke tempted her to pull the car over and kiss him.
But Lois didn’t. She could tell that Clark was scared about telling her the truth, but it hurt that the one truth he had told her – about the death of his folks – was appearing more and more like his biggest lie.
Unfortunately, that was the problem. Lois liked Clark, but he had flaws, major flaws. The biggie of course was that the man, whom she had once thought couldn’t lie to save his life, had apparently been lying to her since day one about everything.
Secondly, he was an emotional wreck, taking every little disaster to heart or blaming himself as if it were
his personal fault. Obviously, if his life history were true, he had had a hard time of things, but she wanted to yell ‘get a backbone already, Kent!’ and smack him in the arm.
Thirdly, he loved her. Okay, technically, that
wasn’t a flaw, per se, but it did make him a suspicious character. How could someone love so unconditionally? He had forgiven her for stuff that she would never have forgiven him for. Her brow furrowed. Actually, that sounded more negative before she thought about it in those terms. There must be some kind of ulterior motive involved. Whatever it was though, she couldn’t figure it out. It didn’t make sense. No matter how much she hit Clark over the head, he kept coming back for more. She wanted him to yell ‘enough!’ just once and walk away.
Lois’s heart wrenched in pain at that thought. Okay, she wanted him to do that but only in figurative sense, not literally.
Clark’s fourth major flaw was that he was too much of a gentleman. He treated her too well, often thinking of her needs before his own, even if her needs were against her very wishes. She loved that he teased her, but HELL a woman wanted to have the stuffing kissed out of her every once and a great while, and for Lois, it had been a
very great while indeed. She knew it went against every feminist bone in her body, but the romantic in her just wanted him to throw her on the bed and kiss her until she begged him for more. Was that too much to ask for? Really?
Maybe it was just her problem. Maybe Lois had this deep seeded desire for bad boys. That would explain a lot. It would explain Paul and Claude and… She sighed. No, it wouldn’t. Paul was a jerk, and an idiot, but not necessarily ‘bad’. It would explain Claude, only she wasn’t attracted to Claude after she learned he was scum. She had wanted to stretch his entrails around the Daily Planet globe. Nor would it explain why Ralph only brought out feelings of revulsion in her. If she were truly attracted to bad boys, wouldn’t she be attracted to a lower life form like Ralph? Her stomach churned. Nope, not in this lifetime or the next.
Her bad boy theory also wouldn’t explain why she had fallen in love with Superman. He was as good and pure as they come. True, he had broken her heart, but that wasn’t his fault. He had told her from day one that they couldn’t have a relationship; it was only her stubborn pig-headedness that wouldn’t believe him. Maybe she was attracted to only good guys. Or maybe, possibly, there could have been the slightest bit attraction to how Superman looked in that skintight suit of his. No, because even without the suit…
oh, Lane, don’t go there, she told herself. She bit her bottom lip.
What would that mean about her feelings for Lex Luthor or lack thereof? If she was attracted to bad boys, what did her total lack of sexual interest in Lex mean? That he was good, as she had always thought? Or that he was bad, as Clark had always said, because she was only attracted to good men. Sure, Lois found Lex nice and charming, but she couldn’t picture herself and him on the cover of any bodice ripping romance novel.
But with Clark… oh, yeah. The steam was definitely there. He made her want to take her logical self and throw it out the window. She wanted to bang her head against the steering wheel in frustration. She wasn’t going to do it though. She wasn’t going to allow herself to fall for another man who could hurt her.
Lois glanced over at Clark. He was staring at her, and she gulped. Had she given out the vibe that she still wanted him? Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but out her window at the fields they were passing. He murmured, “Shuster’s field.” His eyes closed once again in pain.
She was beginning to doubt her mobster theory from earlier though. It didn’t sound like organized crime was a big issue around Smallville. So, she wondered again what it was he had done or witnessed to make him go into hiding.
Lois wanted to trust Clark, but she didn’t know what to believe anymore. He wanted her to have faith him before he trusted her with the truth, but how could she believe a man who was lying to her? How could she trust that his “truth” was actually true? Would she ever be able to believe a word he said about himself? He had somehow earned Superman’s trust, so he must be trustworthy, but she was beginning to feel that Superman’s word wasn’t enough for her anymore. She needed more proof.
*******************
The Real Clark Kent*******************
All this waiting was driving Lois crazy. When she tried turning into the Irig driveway to go check out the EPA clean-up site again on the way back to the Kents, Clark recommended that it would be more subtle to walk over from the Kents, so those people at the Irigs wouldn’t hear them coming. It was a good idea, and she should have thought of it.
After lunch, she went and changed out of her professional reporter suit and into the jeans, t-shirt, and her more comfortable walking shoes from the night before. Upon returning downstairs, she could hear Clark talking with the Kents about what happened with the Harrises after Rachel’s death.
Not really interested in local Kansan politics, she couldn’t stand around any longer and decided it was time to check in with Perry. That, at least, she could count as being productive. She told Clark that she was going outside to make the call. He nodded to her and smiled, but he still seemed shaken up from their visit to the Smallville Corn Festival.
Once outside, Lois realized she didn’t know what to tell Perry. Should she inform him about Clark and his aliases? Or should she wait until Clark told her what was really going on? Maybe it was really a private matter, and she’d stir up a hornet’s nest if she told Perry. Clark had reassured her, nearly to the point of being emphatic about it, that he
was Clark Kent. The fact that this Clark Kent seemed not have a past was puzzling, and more than a bit disturbing, but hopefully easily explained when, and if, Clark ever felt reassured enough to tell her.
She started down the farm’s access road that weaved behind the barn and towards the fields as she thought. Walking always helped her think, that and Double Fudge Crunch bars. Lois pulled one out of her pocket with her cell phone. She slipped her water bottle into the pocket of her light jacket.
By the time she had decided to keep Clark’s secret, whatever it might be, private for now and just tell Perry about the lack of information they had discovered in town, and how they were heading over to the Irig Farm again that afternoon, her cell phone had only one bar. Typical.
Lois looked around and saw a slight hill in the distance. Perhaps if she got higher up she’d have a better signal. As she approached the hill, she discovered it was not more than a rise. She looked down at her phone, two bars; that was better than nothing.
“Perry? It’s Lois. I don’t know about this story. These EPA guys seem a little too competent to be legit. Clark’s going through some personal crisis, so it’s making it difficult for him to focus on the story,” she said into her phone.
What she heard in response sounded more like crinkled paper than Perry. “ –king up, Lois.”
She started up the rise, in hopes of finding better reception. “I’ve only got two bars here, Chief. Maybe at the top of this hill, I’ll have more luck. I’ll call you back.”
“—ll hold, darlin’. Got a meeting… half an…” Perry replied.
“Is this any better?” she asked, nearing the top of the hill.
“A bit, honey. Whatcha got for me?” her boss asked.
The sun was in her eyes and Lois rotated around to look back towards the Kents’ farmhouse. She couldn’t see it. Had she gotten herself turned around? She stepped back and spotting a tree, headed for the shade. “Yeah, Clark discovered an old friend of his had died…”
On the other side of the tree, her two and a smidgen bars went back to one. Damn! She moved further onto the rise and into the bright sun. She tripped over some rocks, hidden in the tall grass, but was able to keep herself from falling.
“
Who died?” Perry asked over the line, clearly still not hearing her properly.
Lois looked down at the rocks and noticed that they were more symmetrical and flat than regular rocks. Bending down and looking closer, she discovered they were gravestones. She saw that there had once been a small fence surrounding them but it had fallen into disrepair near the tree, which was why she hadn’t seen it. In the tall grass the graveyard had been well hidden from the casual observer.
“A friend of Clark’s,” Lois repeated softly. Her eyes were attracted to the old stones. A small mound of earth with small threads of pink and large dusty azure flowers drew her attention. It looked better maintained than the others and even had some dried daisy shaped gold flowers lying on it as if recenty brought by a loved one. Who would still bring flowers to an old abandoned cemetery?
“What’s that honey? You’re breaking up. It sounded like you said that Clark was dead,” Perry’s voice faded into static.
“No, Perry,” Lois corrected before an icy chill crept down her spine. “Oh, God, no!” She knelt down at the mound, trying to read the name etched into the rock and already knowing somehow what it would say. Unable to see the letters in the bright sun, but able to feel them with her fingers, she pulled out her water bottle and splashed water onto it, hoping to make the markings more discernible.
Clark Kent – 5-17-66.Like an anvil landing on her chest, Lois gasped at the sudden pain that developed there. It felt as if were
her Clark who lay buried there instead of someone else. “Clark is dead!” she sobbed, dropping the phone and burying her face into her hands.
***End of Part 52 *** Part 53 Does this trickle of information clarify matters or make you more confused?
Comments
