LAST TRAIN HOME

Second, there were the very clean, well-groomed men in their suits and their near-identical close-cut haircuts who showed up within a few days. On their own or in pairs, just asking around in that sort of way that super serious people who are trying to be casual for the first time think is casual. Asking about if anything 'strange' had happened. Asking if anyone had talked about 'finding something'. Asking if anyone, or anything 'new' had shown up.

Aside from them, of course.

And despite what some people might think, patriotism and trust in government officials do not always go hand in hand. So everyone was degrees of blandly pleasant and polite to the men who were certainly not from the government and gave friendly non-answers before hurrying behind closed doors to gossip and compare notes and try to figure out exactly what they were all on about.

Third, the Kents had a baby. Martha was a skinny twig of a woman back then and certainly hadn't been anything but a skinny twig of a woman just the week before. And though the hair matched Johnathan's just dandy and the skin-tone was a perfect match for Martha, neither of them nor their kin ever had eyes of that perfect piercing blue.

It was an absolute delight of a baby, though. Martha and Johnathan were good people. However it was they'd gotten whatever it was they were calling their son, they'd manage it right. You could trust them with that sort of thing. You certainly couldn't trust some federal agency of serious be-suited men with identical haircuts and stiff awkward ways. Eventually, those men gave up finding whatever it was they were after and everyone breathed a sigh of relief and got on with their lives.

I mean, yes, the Kents were raising some sort of secret space baby, but aside from the initial flurry of community-wide confirmation of the fact, it really wasn't the sort of thing worthy of gossiping about. The McConnals had that daughter they'd brought home from Vietnam and it was mostly agreed that gossiping about that was poor manners, so why should the Kents' boy should be any different?

Then that was that, at least for a handful of years, till the Kent boy started attending school. He was a sweet kid, a kind kid. The Kents were raising up a good one, everyone could agree on that. And sure, he seemed to have an uncommonly keen ear and sharp eye, and was a hellion on the little league field, but you could chalk all that up to good genetics. And heck, everyone had been going along with the Kents' story so long it was easy to forget he weren't their actual blood. Not that that should matter much in any case.

By middle school, though, the happenings around the Kent boy were getting downright peculiar. The boy was fast, the boy was strong, the boy was tough. And not in the sort of way that made the high school coaches eagerly anticipate them entering freshman year, no. He was trying to hide it, 12 year olds aren't good at hiding normal things, let alone the fact that you tried to keep someone from getting run over by a thresher and wound up with mangled thresher blades, shredded school clothes, and an otherwise completely unharmed Kent boy looking abashed and trying to put together some excuse about a hidden rock getting in the gears or something.

But the kid was obviously mortified by the whole thing, so Dormick didn't push it. He did make a few comments to others though, and once people were looking, the Kent boy's uniqueness was plain to see.

The boy could outrace cars. He could pull tractors out of the muck all on his own. He could stand between a classmate and a thresher and the only thing that'd get wreaked was the thresher. Honestly, it would've been more than a little concerning to folk if it wasn't for the fact that the kid was just so dang nice. He was a good boy, kind, considerate. Any hint to him being, well, better was met with either embarrassed denial or fervent denial depending on how it'd been phrased. So instead of being the sort of thing that lead to muttering behind closed doors and maybe an eventual rousting of the whole family out of town, it instead just became a local secret. An open secret, but a secret.

There were still outsiders with short sharp haircuts and awkwardly stiff manner who'd come through from time to time and ask leading questions about whether there was anyone 'strange' in the community and very obviously trying to play off the assumption that they'd all be a bunch of bigoted fearful 'simple' folk.

There was no way in hell any of them were going to hand the Clark boy over to anyone like that.

It was when he was getting towards the end of high school and began talking about his plans of moving off to one of the big cities to pursue college and a career that folk begun to get worried. The cities weren't like Smallville in a lotta ways, and Clark was such a good decent boy. They worried.

It wasn't some sort of great plan. No one got together and came up with it. It was just a lot of people coming to the same decision in pretty much the same way, then others seeing what they were doing and deciding that they had the right of it and following course.

"That's a strong shake you got there." Mr. McCormick would say down at the store, feeling his bones grind against each other slightly, "You gotta watch that when you hit the city or everyone's gonna think you're one of those asshole highroller types who've always gotta be proving themselves top dog or something." Clark would apologize and start shaking more gently.

"Thanks Clark, that was right quick of you." old Ms. Narri would say when the boy arrived with her weekly groceries, running up so fast he's almost a blur until he slows down at the gate. "You should be careful with running that fast when you get to the city, though. Lotta more people out there, and none of them watching where they're going or what they're doing. We don't want you crashing into someone just cus they don't notice to get out of the way." Clark nodded with understanding and slowed himself down.

"Yer a lifesaver, kid." would say Lenny when Clark would haul a shipment of tractor parts into the shop. "Might want to avoid letting folks know you can do that up in the city, though. They'll think all those muscles left no room for your brain and instead of college, they'd have you lugging boxes at the docks till you go grey. Or spend all your time moving their fridges from apartment to apartment." Clark wasn't sure he fully believed that, but he was more careful about considering what he was about to lift and carry around.

And so on and so on. If they'd all known Clark had wanted to move out of Smallville from the beginning, they would've been coaching him all his life, but the two years of gently nudging the sweet kid on how best to pretend to be normal would have to be enough.

And, well, judging from what you can see on the TV or read in the Daily Planet (which now gets issues shipped out all the way to Smallville for the corner store because everyone loves their hometown celebrity), they must've done alright with it. They're real proud of their Clark. He's a good kid, his parents raised him right. (And while it's not right to brag, everyone does feel more than a smidge of pride at being able to help with it.)