So He Knows, Does He?
by Nancy V. Sont
Perry chewed his food silently, his mind elsewhere. What should he do about Superman, or Clark Kent to be more specific. Perry shook his head as he pushed his fork into a pile of mashed potatoes. Was there a reason to tell him that he knew? Or, was there a reason not to?
Alice was busy in the kitchen with a batch of cookies she was sliding from the tray onto a cooling rack. Perry glanced at her back. It wasn’t nice to keep secrets from your wife, but he’d had to protect sources for so many years that the wall of secrecy between them had become well established. This was just one more of those things she didn’t need to know; one more of those things that would only be troublesome for her to keep from telling her bridge group.
“This is a good meal, Alice,” he said, feeling a bit guilty for how silent he’d been while they ate.
“Thanks, Perry. It was good of you to get home a bit earlier tonight,” she said, turning to smile at her usually absent husband. “Have you had your blood pressure checked lately?”
Perry sighed and mumbled gruffly, “Naw, I’ll be alright till my checkup next summer.”
Alice raised her eyebrows at the man with a southern accent that she’d been married to for twenty seven years. She’d learned long ago not to nag at him. It only made her hoarse. “How have things been at the office?”
“Oh, uh, the usual. Always have some reporters determined to do less work than a lame mule. I don’t know why I ever hired some of them.”
Alice put some cookies on a plate and put them on the table as she sat down. “How’s Lois?”
“Oh, she’s fine…I guess. I teamed her up with that new hire, Clark Kent from the Smallville Post.”
“Where’s that?”
“That’s what I wanted to know! Kansas! She doesn’t like him much, but she tolerates him I suppose.”
“Now what did you go and do that for Perry? You know she works alone!”
Perry looked at Alice as he took the last bite of meatloaf from his fork. He grinned and swallowed. “She’s a bit too hard-edged sometimes. I think she could benefit from his influence.”
“She’ll chew him up and spit him back to Kansas!”
Perry chuckled and shook his head. “She tried, but I guess he’s a pretty tough chunk of meat. He sent her on a wild goose chase for Superman’s space ship…to the water treatment facility. You should have heard her when she got back! She’s been scratching mosquito bites for a week!”
“No!” Alice’s eyes widened before she broke into laughter. “He did that to her? He must have a lot of nerve.”
“He sure does. He put Jimmy up to standing up to me!”
“Well it’s about time. How could you live with yourself for making him your personal slave? Fixing your electric toothbrush? Isn’t that taking things a bit far?”
“He stood up for himself. He’s finally got some backbone. A good reporter needs backbone. You can't have a reporter out there who crumples when the first villain threatens him.”
“You’re kidding. You made him bring you coffee and donuts because you were trying to strengthen him?”
“I did it with Sam. It worked, didn’t it?”
“You mean that war correspondent you’ve got in Israel?”
“Yup. Same one. There’s no sense letting a good reporter stay behind his desk…that is, once he’s been trained for some action!”
“So how’s the new fellow, what did you say his name was? How’s he working out?”
“Clark Kent. He’s good. He’s got initiative.
*****
”Kent!” Perry demanded from his office door, his hand leaning on the wooden frame.
Clark looked up from a file of papers on his desk, wondering what his boss was so edgy about. He nodded as he stood up, pushing his chair out of the way.
Lois looked up from her desk, her dark brown hair swinging as her head turned to take in the scene playing out amidst the noisy newsroom. Clark barely noticed her as he quickly stepped toward the open office door.
“Sit down, Clark.” Perry wasn’t in a mood for small talk. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers holding each end of his pencil. “We need to talk.”
Clark looked at Perry and nodded silently as he waited to find out what this was all about.
“Clark. The second or third day you were working here, when Lois hadn’t come back from Eprad in time for the meeting, you left, saying you were going to go find her.”
Clark nodded, recalling how he’d had to make a lame excuse to get out of the room once he was noticed leaving.
“Well, Son…” Perry stood up and came around his desk, leaned against it and studied his new reporter. “I came after you…in the store room…you remember that?”
Did he ever! He’d been about to fly out the window he was opening. It was sheer luck that he’d heard Perry and seated himself before he’d taken flight. “Yes, Sir.” Clark nodded, pursing his lips slightly.
“I must say,” Perry waved at the air grandly, “I wondered what you were doing in a storage room sitting by the window when you were going to phone Lois.”
Clark could feel his muscles tightening. This might not be good.
“I let it go. You’re from Kansas. You’ve been in Borneo eating pava leaves...”
Clark couldn't bring himself to correct him.
“…so you’re a bit strange. But then, Clark, when Bureau 39’s alien hunters came crashing in here looking for Superman…” Perry paused to see Clark’s reaction to his words.
Clark had regained control and was forcing himself to relax and put on the ‘casual, country boy reporter persona’ known as Clark Kent, stress and problem free man from Smallville. Clark nodded to show he was following him.
“Well, Clark, when they wanted to run a polygraph test on you two, I figured…” he stood and walked along the front of his desk, his hand dragging on the surface as if looking for dust, “my reporters don’t have anything to hide.” He turned abruptly and looked Clark in the eye, watching his every move. “But you were in a panic, Clark.”
He must have been waiting for a response, Clark supposed. He nodded again, wondering what he should say, if anything. But Perry was continuing.
“I asked you if you knew something about Superman, but you didn’t answer.” His eyes bored into Clark.
Clark nodded again, trying to think of some reasonable excuse.
“Now, Clark, I’d have to be as blind as Elvis’ manager who didn’t know that the King was going to come to a bad end with all those drugs he was taking.” Perry walked slowly to the window. “I’ve been around a long time, son. I was in your shoes once. I had my notebook and pens and pencils. I scrambled to put two and two together until it came to four. I looked for clues. Why, I remember when my boss, Mr. Lewis, an old surly man, sent me out to investigate a murder…” His eyes focused on something in the distant past. “Well, that was a long time ago. What I’m saying is, I’ve been making sense out of confusing things for a long time. You might not believe it, Clark, but I was better than Lois. Still am. She can look right past something under her nose.” He shook his head and smiled.
“But I don’t. All those clues fill up a cup. Then with just a quick stir, they all make sense.” He slapped his hand on the desk, startling his guest. “Now, you might be able to fool all of the people some of the time; and some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all of the time. That’s me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!”
Clark straightened in his chair. “Yes, sir.” Could his boss be on to him? It certainly sounded that way. He didn’t know Perry White that well yet, but he had a good gut feeling about him. However, if he had discovered his secret, this could spell the end of his time in Metropolis.
“So, Son, what I’m trying to say is that…” he hesitated. “If you don’t want anyone to know what you do when you disappear, you’d better take care to hide it better than you’ve been doing.”
Clark swallowed. Should he nod, or fake it? Perhaps he could just play dumb. Clumsy. Farsighted. Farm boy.
“For instance,” Perry continued, “you mustn’t hover to get a better look. Keep your feet on the ground, boy! Wipe that guilty look off your face. Confidence, son, confidence. Oh, and those excuses? You need to put a bit more effort into it.” Perry paused, leaned back against the desk and put his finger tips together.
The door beside them burst open and Lois entered the room. “Perry, you gotta see this!” With that she turned and went back out to watch the TV screen on the far side of the room.
Perry and Clark stood quickly and followed her out. Clark was relieved of the distraction.
A group had gathered in the noisy newsroom. The action on the screen showed a volcano erupting. Clark swallowed, hoping to stay just long enough to hear where it was located. Just when the announcer began to rehearse the situation, Superman flew into view.
Clark’s eyes widened as he dropped his hand from his tie. He heard Perry’s mumbled exclamation, “Great shades of Elvis, is that Superman?” Their eyes met briefly, just before Perry returned to his office shaking his head.
