Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the middle of the following afternoon, Clark had healed enough that he was able to walk into town. His extraordinary abilities were slowly starting to come back, too, although Martha still insisted upon going with him in case he needed help.
Their first stop was at the morgue, to drop off the clothes Martha had selected for Jonathan’s burial and to confirm the size of the casket needed. Neither was looking forward to it, and Clark had volunteered to take care of the tasks surrounding his father’s funeral and burial himself in order to spare his mother more grief. Martha, however, had decided to go with him, not just because she was worried about Clark, but because these were the last things she would ever be able to do for her husband.
Martha cried when she saw her husband’s body lying on a cold metal table, awaiting preparation for burial, and it was only Clark’s wish to comfort his mother that kept him from running from the building and attempting to fly away, though he wasn’t quite recovered enough to fly yet.
Stoically, Clark hugged his mother, then took the burial clothes from her — the best clothes his father had owned — and gave them to the mortician. He took the paper with the dimensions for the casket and put it in his pocket. Then, gently, he put an arm around Martha and escorted her from the room.
Once in the waiting room, Clark sat beside Martha on one of the benches, allowing her to regain control of herself before going back out. It was quiet — only two bodies were currently at the morgue, Jonathan’s and that of a small baby from a factory family, and the baby’s family had been there earlier, leaving a worn blanket to wrap the baby in.
“Mom, you don’t have to do this,” Clark said. “I can take care of everything.”
Martha shook her head. “No, Clark. I … I
need to do this. Your father and I took care of each other for twenty-three years, and now … now I only have a few last things to do for him. There’s nothing else that can be done. Besides, you’re not completely healed yet, and I’m not going to let you wander around alone until you are.”
Clark shook his head. “Mom, I’m a lot better. My back still hurts some, but not as bad as yesterday or even this morning.” He looked around, then whispered to Martha, “I’m starting to get my powers back, too. I can see through the wall where the lens is missing on my glasses — sort of, anyway. It’s faint, but I can see the outline of people on the street.”
Martha looked at her son, a bit surprised at how he described his unusual abilities. He had never referred to them as “powers” before, and she wondered when he had started to think of them that way.
Instead of asking, though, she said, “I’m not going to let you face this alone, Clark. You’ve lost three people you cared about recently, and I can see how hard it has been on you. I know you want to help me, but I think it’s better if we do this together.” With that, she stood, offering Clark her hand to help him off the bench. “We’d better go see the carpenters if we want the casket ready in time for the funeral tomorrow afternoon.”
*****
Clark stood beside his mother at the front of the group of mourners, staring numbly at the flower-covered casket in front of him. Martha wept silently, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, but Clark’s eyes were dry.
He didn’t understand why it was that he had been able to cry over his father’s death two days earlier, but now felt only a sort of dull, numb sadness, along with a lot of regret and self-recrimination. He wasn’t being stoic like he had been at the morgue the day before, or trying to be dignified — he had no tears to shed.
Martha had told him repeatedly that what had happened had not been his fault, but Clark couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
Something he had done had resulted in the flogging, and the stress of watching Clark being flogged had killed Jonathan.
Jonathan and Clark hadn’t always seen eye to eye, especially about Clark’s extraordinary abilities. Jonathan had feared the consequences of Clark’s strange abilities being discovered and had wanted him to keep them completely hidden once he learned to control them, despite their usefulness on the farm, while Clark, in spite of his confusion and worry over the strange ways in which he was changing, had also been amazed by the unusual things he could do and had wanted to keep doing them. Clark’s desire to use his newfound abilities, at least in private, and his parents’ very real fear of the consequences if the Capitol found out about him had caused numerous arguments.
In the end, they had compromised — Clark could use his extraordinary abilities around the farm as much as he wanted as long as no one else was around, and he could go out at night as long as he was discreet and it didn’t interfere with school or his chores. Later, when Clark had developed the ability to fly, his parents had resigned themselves to the fact that he could go anywhere he wanted, but had forbidden him to go anywhere near the Capitol. Clark had agreed — then let his curiosity get the better of him and flown over the Capitol anyway.
Clark wished more than anything that he had listened to his parents and stayed away from the Capitol. Things might have been very different if he had stayed away from Panem’s seat of power — but he hadn’t listened. He couldn’t go back and change things, much as he would like to, and now he had to live with the consequences of his actions.
Jonathan Kent was dead, and Clark blamed himself. If he’d followed the rules instead of flying to a place he had no business being, Snow would not have found out about him. If Snow had not found out about Clark’s powers, he would have left him alone, at least for the time being. As a victor, Clark would still have been subject to Snow’s desire to use him to maintain power and put people in his debt, but it wouldn’t have been because of his unusual abilities, and far fewer people would have been endangered.
Logically, Clark knew that Snow would probably have found out about him anyway — the poisonous berries had been a dead giveaway, as was his ability to survive a mountain lion attack with no injury. The footage of him running alongside the train, taken at a time when he didn’t yet comprehend just how different he was or how dangerous it could be for other people to know of those differences, would still have existed.
All the logic in the world couldn’t change how Clark felt, though. His extraordinary abilities had gotten him into trouble, but they had been useless — or nonexistent — when they really counted. In the last two months, Clark had lost three people he cared about — Becky, Lois, and his father — and there had been nothing he could do to save any of them. He was a failure.
In spite of their differences in opinion, Clark had always loved and respected his father. In his mind, Jonathan had always served as a towering example of what a man should be. He had taken in an abandoned child, at great personal risk to himself, and loved and raised him. When Clark had started changing in ways that no other child did, Jonathan had kept it a secret, allowing no one outside of their own little family to know, thus sparing Clark the stigma of being considered a freak and the danger of attracting the notice of the wrong people. Even when Clark had reacted with confusion and frustration to abilities that made no sense, like being able to see through solid objects and set fires with his eyes, his father had worked patiently with him, helping him to learn to control those strange abilities and reassuring Clark that he would not turn into something that bore no resemblance to a human being — though none of them had been entirely certain that that was true.
Jonathan had raised Clark to show compassion to others and to use his immense strength and unusual abilities for good — but in the end, no matter how many amazing things Clark could do, he had been helpless to save his father, just as he had been unable to save Becky or Lois. When it really counted, Clark’s amazing abilities were useless.
Clark and Martha had selected the best casket the District 9 carpenters could make, and Clark had paid well to have it built in time for the funeral. He hadn’t been able to protect his father in life, but he could at least make sure that he had the best funeral and burial possible.
Many people in District 9 could afford only the cheapest, plainest caskets for their deceased family members, and some people, like the factory family whose baby had been in the morgue, were so poor that they wrapped the dead in rags before burying them. Only those who died in the Hunger Games were assured of being buried in a casket. A spot in the cemetery was free — for health reasons, the law required all bodies to be buried — but having a casket and a good headstone were anything but assured.
After selecting the casket, Clark and Martha had gone to the home of Vena Solros, where they had selected flowers for the funeral. Clark could easily have afforded flowers from the Capitol, but he wanted nothing to do with them.
Clark glanced around, seeing the crowd that had gathered for Jonathan Kent’s funeral. He had been well-liked and well-respected; so many people had come to say their good-byes. All of the neighbors the Kents had worked with were there, as were the Rasens, who remembered how kind Jonathan and Martha had been to them when Becky had died and wanted to return that kindness to Martha and Clark now that they had lost Jonathan. Even the Peacekeepers who had been assigned to keep the crowd under control were people who had respected Jonathan, though they stayed back from the rest of the crowd — tensions between the townspeople and the Peacekeepers were still high, even with Thread gone.
Haver, Matilda, and Sid were there, too, though Matilda’s vacant expression showed that she was high on morphling. Sid leaned heavily on his crutches while trying to support Matilda, who leaned unsteadily against him.
A number of Jonathan’s blood relations, who Clark didn’t know well because they lived in one of the outlying areas and usually came to town only for the Reaping, had come to the funeral. Martha had used the phone in Clark’s house to call the Peacekeepers in their area the morning after she brought Clark back to Victor’s Village. The Peacekeepers had passed on the message that Jonathan had died and was soon to be buried, giving his relatives time to make it to the funeral. Many times, people who lived far away from their relatives weren’t informed of deaths, illnesses, or other important things until long after the fact — indeed, when Jonathan’s father had passed away suddenly in the middle of the harvest season fifteen years earlier, he hadn’t heard about it until three weeks later, by which time the funeral was over and the man was long buried in the area cemetery. Very few people owned a telephone, and using one of the phones provided by the Capitol and controlled by the Peacekeepers or the staff at the Justice Building was expensive and almost always monitored. It was cheaper to send a letter, but with no regular postal service in the district, delivery had to wait until a freight train went to the area the letter was going to — or until someone traveled that way — and then it was anybody’s guess how long it would take until either the recipient found out about the letter and picked it up or someone brought it to them.
Clark recognized all of his father’s relatives — aunts, uncles, cousins, and the children of his older cousins — but wasn’t especially close to any of them. Nevertheless, he had made arrangements for them to stay in his house, though it would be crowded, even with the size of a Victor’s Village house. He had even given up his own bed — with his extraordinary abilities back, he didn’t want to risk floating in his sleep in front of any of them, and had no intention of sleeping while they were there.
He had become aware that his ability to fly was back late the night before, when he had crashed to the floor clear across the room from his bed during a nightmare. Despite his powers being back, his back was still somewhat sore — his injuries had been severe enough that even his ability to heal quickly hadn’t been enough to mend his injured back in such a short period of time — and when he had landed on his back, the pain and the confusion from the vivid nightmare had been enough to make him panic and set the bedding on fire with his heat vision.
Martha had heard the crash and rushed to his room to see if he was all right. She had found him staring in consternation at the charred blankets and comforter, whispering his mantra to himself and trying to clear the smoke away. Clark had insisted that he was fine, though he hadn’t objected when Martha had brought some fresh bedding and helped him remake his bed, nor had he complained when she brought in a chair and sat beside him until he fell asleep again.
In the morning, Clark had accompanied his mother to the farm to take care of the animals, then gone to the dump in search of glass. Having obtained a few small pieces of leaded glass, he had repaired his glasses, making sure that he couldn’t inadvertently set anything on fire or look through solid objects.
His newly-repaired glasses were something Clark was grateful for as he focused on the casket and the flowers covering it. He didn’t want to take a chance on looking inside and seeing his father’s body — it had been hard enough to see it the day before. Nor did he want to see the open grave that the casket would soon be lowered into — the thought of the cold, dark grave was almost enough to break through the feeling of numbness, and right now, he didn’t want to feel anything.
Clark was also glad that the glasses prevented him from easily using his heat vision as he focused, not for the first time, on three flowers displayed prominently atop the casket. He didn’t know when they’d been put there — according to Martha, they hadn’t been in the cartload of flowers that Vena had delivered to the cemetery that morning.
Clark hadn’t helped carry the casket from the morgue truck to the platform over the grave, much as he would have liked to, because to do so would have revealed that his back was almost completely healed, and that would have brought questions. Five of his father’s friends and relatives, plus Martha, had acted as pallbearers, and then Martha had arranged the flowers atop the casket.
In the brief time between Martha arranging the flowers atop the casket and the beginning of the funeral, a few other mourners had also brought flowers or arrangements made from straw and the empty seed heads of the grains they grew. Clark didn’t object to these — they were heartfelt gifts in honor of a friend.
It was the three sickly-sweet smelling roses in a delicate crystal vase that made Clark want to rush forward to destroy them, to crush them or set them on fire with his heat vision. More than once, he had to close his eyes to cut off the beams of heat reflecting off his glasses. The flowers, one pure white, one blood red, and one black, seemed to mock him.
Clark didn’t know who had left the roses. There was no sign that Snow himself had been there, and there were no Capitol officials at the funeral, but it was entirely possible that someone had been ordered to leave them there, perhaps a Peacekeeper or even the mayor. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t know — as on edge as Clark had been since returning from the Games, he didn’t trust himself not to attack the person who had left the flowers on the casket, even if the person had no choice or didn’t know what message the flowers were sending.
Clark knew exactly what the roses meant. Snow was still monitoring him, still tracking him — and he was aware that Clark and Martha had destroyed the roses he had left in the house in Victor’s Village. That morning, after repairing his glasses, Clark had swept the house for bugs again, finding and destroying several — including one in the living room. Snow was aware that the “gift” he had left had been burned, and he was almost certainly aware of something else now, too — that Clark had heat vision. Neither Martha nor Clark had been discreet when talking about his abilities the night he had returned to his house.
The colors of the roses meant something, too — the white rose stood for President Snow, who always wore a flower of that color in his lapel. The red and black ones stood for blood and death, a reminder to Clark of what would happen if he stepped out of line.
Other people had noticed the roses, too. Clark had overheard their comments about them, some intrigued by the strange flowers, others repelled by the unnatural smell. No one but Clark and Martha knew exactly what they meant, though Clark’s fellow victors knew that they had been sent by President Snow — no one else could have sent them.
Clark closed his eyes again when he felt the sensation of heat. He couldn’t burn them here — he would set the entire casket on fire if he did. No matter how angry he was, he had to control his temper. In fact, he had no intention of coming back later to burn them, either — he didn’t want to give Snow the satisfaction. No matter what Panem’s president had planned for him, Clark wanted to keep some control of his own life, and reacting with rage to Snow’s message was playing straight into his hands.
Sensing Clark’s tension, Martha touched his arm, whispering so that only Clark’s superhearing could pick up her words. “Don’t look at them, honey. The only reason those roses are there is to upset you. Look at everything else — lots of people brought flowers and straw arrangements because they cared about your father. Think about them — not about President Snow.”
Clark nodded slightly, acknowledging that he’d heard her. Martha, too, was upset by the roses, but she was better at hiding it. With difficulty, he looked away from the roses, looking around at the people who had come to say good-bye to Jonathan Kent and offer their support to his wife and son.
Pete and Lana stood nearby, trying to offer comfort to Clark and Martha, and even Rachel stood close, having put aside her anger at Clark in light of the tragedy that had struck the Kents. Clark had greeted his friends quietly when they came to offer their support, but mostly he avoided looking at them, keeping his gaze fixed on the casket in front of him.
A number of Martha’s relatives were also at the funeral. Her mother — the only one of Clark’s grandparents still living — stood behind them, as well as her two surviving brothers, her sister, and their families. The Stams lived about five miles on the other side of town from where Victor’s Village was located, or about ten miles from where Clark had grown up. He knew them better than he did the Kents, and had gone to school with his Stam cousins, but still hadn’t spent as much time with them as he had the neighbors closest to his parents’ farm.
As Clark glanced around, he saw some people looking back at him, their expressions sympathetic, pitying, or curious, and looked back at the casket. Word had spread quickly that he had been flogged, so many people were curious about why it had happened. Most floggings took place in the town square, while crowds of people, sympathetic or not, gathered around to watch. Punishing a person in such a public place added the sting of humiliation to the physical pain, but even if a flogging or other punishment took place in a more private location, it was usually known about by everyone within a short time. Clark had heard people talking about him, speculating on what he might have done and why he had been flogged at the Kent farm instead of in the town square.
Clark had a good idea as to why Snow had chosen to do that — Panem’s president wanted to keep Clark’s abilities a secret, and it would have been too easy for someone in the crowd to notice if the flogging hadn’t gone as planned. If Clark had not been injured by the whip, word would have spread quickly and uncontrollably in public, while in private threats could have been made and executions conducted in order to protect the secret.
People stopped talking when Clark came near, but he heard them anyway. His unusual abilities were completely back, and he could hear every word people whispered about him. He didn’t speak to anyone about what had happened, no matter how curious or sympathetic they might be. He still wasn’t sure himself why he had been punished, and he had other things on his mind anyway.
Clark closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the faint, lingering discomfort in his back, a reminder of what had happened that awful morning. It, too, would fade soon, as would the scarred appearance of his back, but the scars inside would take much longer to heal.
When Clark opened his eyes, he focused once again on the muttation roses. He knew that his mother was right, that the roses were there to upset him, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything else for long. He couldn’t burn them, but neither did he want to see the obscene flowers sitting atop his father’s casket.
Glancing around to make sure no one was concentrating on him, Clark lifted his hands, cupping them around his mouth to hide what he was about to do. There was a gusty breeze this afternoon, which would suffice to cover his actions.
Quickly, Clark sent a puff of super breath towards the roses. The vase toppled off the casket, shattering when it hit the ground. Several people jumped, startled.
“Stop that, Clark!” Martha whispered. “I know you don’t like those roses, but you don’t want to give away your secret.”
Clark crossed his arms, keeping his face neutral. He doubted anyone but his mother suspected that he was responsible for the broken vase — most people would blame the wind, if they thought about it at all.
One of Jonathan's brothers, Harry, had been reading from a well-worn Bible — in accordance with District 9 custom, a family member would select Bible verses that they felt were relevant to the deceased person and read them aloud. There were no official ministers, but a family member — or a friend, if no family remained — would usually read something that they felt suited the person who had died. It was one of the few religious observances that took place in the district — while religion was neither officially encouraged nor discouraged, gatherings that might result in rebellious talk or actions, including religious gatherings, were heavily discouraged, with a significant Peacekeeper presence designed to deter people from speaking too freely or staying too long.
When the vase crashed to the ground, Harry, who had just finished speaking, looked up, startled. Closing the Bible, he looked at the rest of the assembled crowd and asked, "Does anyone have any remembrances they would like to share?"
Martha stepped forward, carefully avoiding the broken glass and flowers as she took Harry’s place. Taking a deep breath, she looked out at the many people who had come to say good-bye to her husband.
“Jonathan was … my husband and the love of my life,” she began. “He was one of the best men I’ve ever known. We were young when we met at the Reaping in 40 — I was fifteen and he was sixteen. Even though we lived a hundred miles apart, he came to visit me every couple of months — even in the winter. I know his parents were less than thrilled with how long their son was away, not to mention their best horse …” There were several knowing chuckles from the crowd. “… but they put up with it because they knew how he felt about me. We were married in 43, not long after my last Reaping. We lived near his family at first, but when he realized how much I missed my family, especially when I was expecting my first baby, he applied for some land nearer to town. The Capitol granted his request early in the spring of 44, and he surprised me with our new home.
“We were still some distance from my family, but close enough that we could see them fairly often — which was a godsend when we lost our first baby, and then our second. Jonathan stuck with me, even when most of our babies were stillborn.” Involuntarily, Martha’s eyes strayed in the direction of the five tiny graves of their stillborn children. She thought briefly of the one buried on the farm, whose place in her empty arms had been taken by a baby boy found in a rocket. Looking back at the crowd, she went on, “Some men would have divorced me, but he stayed with me and loved me anyway, and he loved the one child we did have. When our son was Reaped, Jonathan was like a rock for me, even though he was scared himself.”
Clark dropped his head at Martha’s words. Fear for Clark’s life during the Games had caused Jonathan’s first heart attack, weakening his heart enough that the second heart attack had killed him. No matter how much Martha insisted that Clark had not caused his father’s death, he still felt responsible.
Martha saw her son look down, his right hand moving to touch the black band tied around his upper left arm. Seeing his distress, she hurried to finish speaking.
“Jonathan and I were married for twenty-three years, and my only regret is that it wasn’t longer. Rest in peace, Jonathan. I love you, and I always will.” Bowing her head, Martha put her right hand over her heart in the District 9 sign of respect.
Martha went to stand beside Clark, but to her surprise, he stepped forward to take her place. “You don’t have to do this, honey,” she murmured.
Clark looked at her for a moment. “Yes, I do, Mom. He was my father.”
Her lower lip trembling, Martha nodded in understanding. “I know. Be careful what you say.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t endanger anyone.”
Clark stepped forward, turning to face the crowd. “Dad was … Dad was the greatest. We didn’t always agree on things, but … he stood by me anyway, no matter what. I couldn’t have asked for a better father. When I was Reaped, he gave me advice on what to do to come home safe, and I did. Something happened in the arena — I don’t know what — that angered the Capitol, and the consequences of my actions brought about my father’s death. Not directly, of course — no one laid a hand on him — but just the same, what I did brought him to where he is now.” Clark looked at the casket, the final home of the man who had done so much for him. “I’m sorry, Dad. You’ll never know how sorry I am, and … I’ll never forget you.”
Clark looked back out at the people in the crowd, many of whom gaped at him in shock. He glanced up at the sky, wishing that he could just fly away, then went back to stand beside his mother.
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