Grandma Martha always made the best cookies in the world. Every summer when I got there she always had cookies waiting for me, and she always packed one in my lunch when daddy and I would spend all day out. Sometimes I’d help him around the farm. Not that he ever really needed help, but you just don’t tell small children that. Other times we’d go to town, and everybody would talk about how much I’d grown since last summer and tell me stories about my daddy that, by age ten, I knew by heart.
Sometimes, Daddy would realize he had to do something important, and leave me with a friend for anywhere from a few seconds to all night. He told me it was because he had a very important, very secret job that he’d tell me about when I was older. I accepted it, but was often confused when my peers didn’t have daddies with special, secret jobs. Of course, now I know what he was doing, but not then.
He’d left me with Grandma and Grandpa for a few hours one day during the summer. Grandma Martha was mixing batter for cookies, and I was jumping up and down…waiting for her to get them in the oven so I could lick the bowl.
“Don’t jump like that, Artemis.” Grandma ordered in that no-nonsense Grandma voice. “You’ll go right through the floorboards.”
I stopped, but, at this age, I thought I knew better. Grandma had been telling me that for years, and in all ten summers I’d spent in Smallville it had never happened. So, of course, a few moments later I started again. Grandma Martha turned to tell me to cut it out again…and it happened.
Wood splinters scraped against my leg as I went down, another chunk of floor flew up just in the corner of my vision. I heard it smack against the floor right around when Grandma Martha knelt by me. I had started giggling when suddenly Grandpa’s voice carried from the living room. “Martha!”
“It’s alright, Jonathan!” Grandma yelled.
“Martha! Get out here now!” Grandpa sounded scared.
“Jonathan!” Grandma protested, stopping in the efforts to get me out that I hadn’t even realized she’d been making.
“Martha, it’s Clark!”
Grandma was up and gone before I could even adjust position to compensate for her hand not being there anymore. I fell about six more inches before I got my hands firmly planted on steady floor and pulled myself out as I called “Daddy?” going into a roll to pull my legs out faster.
I sprung to my feet to follow grandma, my mind racing with all sorts of terrible thoughts about what could have happened. The images that ran through my mind was the stuff of nightmares, things no ten-year-old has any right to know can happen to people. When I got there, Grandma and Grandpa were glued to the television. On the broadcast, a rescue had gone bad. There was a plane crash. I didn’t understand. Did daddy’s secret job make him go on planes? That didn’t make any sense. Then I saw a shot of Superman, crumpled to the ground, in obvious pain. I was really scared for a moment; I had thought NOTHING could hurt Superman. Though, that wasn’t what my mind settled on. It was grandpa’s shout to us from where he still sat, staring wide-eyed at the screen.
“Martha! It’s Clark!”
My thoughts ran as if syrup had been poured on my brain. Thick, sticky syrup. When I finally got through to another coherent thought, it shocked me to the point where it came out of my mouth.
“Daddy is Superman?”
I’ll never forget the look on grandma and grandpa’s faces when they turned around and looked at me.
