It's Superman! A Novel

by Tom De Haven

  There is nobody to teach him what to do, how to act, how to feel about the actions that he takes. He is alone, more now than he’s ever been. He hates it whenever he reads about himself in the newspaper or goes to the movies and sees himself in The March of Time. “Unique.” “Unparalleled.” “One of a kind.” “In a class by himself.”

  Alone.

  All by himself in the world, in the solar system, in the universe …

  Lex Luthor, at least, seemed to get it.

  But nobody else does.

  Okay: Willi. But Willi is a big-shot photographer now, always busy. And when he isn’t, he’s off chasing showgirls, or drinking at the Stork Club, hobnobbing with guys like Alfred Eisenstaedt and Ernest Hemingway. Not that Clark disapproves (well, he does, but it’s none of his business), he just misses Willi’s steady company.

  And no matter how often he lets her know that he’s interested in her, not just as a girlfriend (hopeless) but as a friend, Lois Lane spurns him.

  When it comes to Lois, no matter what Clark does it’s always the wrong thing. Like the time she checked into the Rockland State Hospital for the Insane to expose its deplorable conditions. She used an alias and faked a serious mental depression. She intended to stay for thirty days, but after less than a week she had insomnia and dropped fifteen pounds; she was diagnosed with incipient dementia praecox and confined to an isolation wing, denied visitors. When Clark came to see her and was told of her “deteriorating” condition, he promptly informed the doctors of her real identity and she was released. Lois was in such a bad state she had to spend the Christmas holidays in a private sanatorium. But when she came home, shortly after New Year’s, she immediately phoned Clark and called him every name in the book of insults. He’d ruined her story, he’d humiliated her. He was jealous, that’s all, jealous—because she was the better reporter, the real reporter, and he shouldn’t even think of speaking to her ever again!

  Clark bet it would’ve been a different story if Superman had gone busting in there and flown her out.

  Sometimes Clark really hates Superman.

  But how can he hate Superman? He is Superman.

  Maybe he belongs in the Rockland State Hospital for the Insane.

  Him, but not Superman. Superman is doing just great. Growing stronger and more coordinated by the day …

  Willi isn’t around much anymore. And Lois won’t give him a tumble. And …

  And Soda Wauters? They’re good friends, Clark enjoys visiting her, seeing her perform (whenever he drops by the club, she always sings “Someone to Watch Over Me” and dedicates it to Clark, which is very sweet, but hardly the case). But she’s so much older than he is, and they aren’t really what you might call confidants. She has never explained to him the nature of her relationship with Richard Sandglass, and for his part Clark has never told her about—well, he’s never told her.

  So who does he have in his life?

  Lex Luthor.

  In the third week of December a package arrived at the Daily Planet for Superman. Clark said he’d see that he got it, and did.

  Inside was a beautifully made Superman costume.

  “Asbestos,” read the note. “As promised.”

  It wasn’t actually made of asbestos. Willi did Clark a huge favor and had the costume (Clark meant to call it a “uniform” but it always came out “costume”) examined by a DuPont chemist he knew; they’d met at juvenile court years ago and stayed in touch. The chemist wasn’t sure what the fabric was, but whatever it was, it was virtually indestructible.

  DuPont offered to buy the costume—uniform—and duplicate its synthetic fibers, but Clark said no.

  Then he checked it over for hidden microphones and transmitting bugs, slow-acting poisons and so on.

  The uniform—costume—uniform was clean as a whistle.

  It seemed nuts to accept such a gift, much less wear it every day, but it also seemed wrong not to. Before the package arrived, Clark—again with Willi’s assistance—had had two Superman costumes sewn for him by a seamstress Willi knew in midtown who did wardrobes for major Broadway productions. They cost over forty dollars apiece and each was quickly ruined. The first was shredded by state police machine-gun fire the night Clark broke into Governor Lehman’s Albany mansion to bring him proof (discovered by Lois Lane) that a woman about to be electrocuted was, in fact, innocent. He’d saved Evelyn Curry’s life, but the uniform was a total loss.

  The second was torn to ribbons while he’d wrestled with Gargantua after the gorilla went on a rampage and mauled half a dozen circus clowns.

  The Luthor-made uniform was identical to the one Diana Dewey had made, except that it came with a wide black belt, and the red satin S appeared on a yellow, not a black, background.

  Why had Lex Luthor changed it?

  And why had he made the costume in the first place?

  As much as Clark hated to admit it, though, it was a beauty. And it fit him perfectly.

  Because of its provenance it did bother Clark to wear it, and of course he wore it all the time. When he wasn’t off nabbing bank robbers—twice so far—or chasing after fire engines to see what he could do, he had it on under his street clothes. He washed it in the sink every Wednesday and Saturday nights. It didn’t require any ironing.

  Truly a miracle fabric!

  5

  Finally the applause has ended and the cast of Our Town is leaving the stage.

  Around the performance hall, people are putting on their scarves, their coats and hats (well, the women are putting on their hats; the men, of course, will wait till they are outside).

  The house lights are up.

  “Lois, can we please go for a drink now? What are you looking at?” John Gurney puts his face close to hers and follows her gaze directly up to a box where a strapping-big woman in a gaudy yellow dress is leaning over a man who seems to have fallen asleep with his head cradled on his arms. “Somebody you know?”

  She doesn’t answer. Is something the matter? Is something wrong with Clark? Not that she really cares, but …

  He is a colleague. (And he’s turned out to be a very good reporter, not that Lois is ready to tell him that. Maybe she’ll never be.)

  “Let’s get a move on, if we’re going to have that drink. I still have to go back to the office and build that cross to crucify this miserable excuse for a—”

  “Oh, will you just take a hike?”

  With a ferocious glare, he snatches his coat and storms off, weaving up the aisle, uncivilly jostling the slowpokes, and then he’s gone.

  Good riddance.

  Lois is glad she never told her father about John Gurney.

  He would have been disappointed in her, would have told her, Oh, darling, you can do better than that.

  And she can. She knows she can.

  She’s not a cold fish, no matter what that Glamour magazine quiz score supposedly revealed.

  And she’s not coldhearted, either.

  Is something the matter with Clark?

  Without planning to, she leaves her row and is now bucking the crowd, heading down the center aisle to get a closer look at what’s going on up there in Clark’s box.

  6

  “Clark? How’s about we go out and have ourselves a hamburger sandwich? That would make this the perfect birthday. Want to?”

  But he shakes his head no. He doesn’t want to eat. He has no appetite.

  Is he having a nervous breakdown? Is this what it feels like? When you feel like it’s all just so … pointless? When you feel like you don’t want to get up and get on with anything? He shouldn’t have seen this play. But it’s not that. He’s been feeling these blues coming on for a while now, several weeks at least.

  Clark doesn’t know what to do, or how to do it. And what good is what he does, anyhow? There’s going to be another world war, it’s coming, everybody knows that—and what’s he supposed to do? He can’t stop it. And for every freighter he rescues from foundering in a nor’easter, another one go
es down with all hands on board. For every fire he puts out (like the one this evening, over on West Sixty-first Street, that caused him to duck out during intermission), there are fifty others he doesn’t know about. A hundred. A thousand. He lives here, but there’s an earthquake there, a tornado. For every skier he digs out of an avalanche …

  What’s the use?

  People are starving to death, is he feeding them?

  People are being mowed down in the Spanish countryside, beaten to death on the streets of Germany. Lynched in America.

  What’s the use?

  He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Should do.

  And the more he thinks about it the less certain he feels.

  During the most recent of F.D.R.’s fireside chats, the president expressed the wish that Superman would contact the White House, “drop by” for a visit, but Clark pointedly has ignored the request. What if Roosevelt orders him to join the army or something? He’s afraid to meet the President of the United States. Who, him? Clark Kent, the B-student from Smallville, Kansas?

  Why can’t he be smarter? He’s not stupid, but why can’t he be smarter? He says such dumb things sometimes.

  In early December he agreed to meet with members of the press, something he vows he will never do again! They bombarded him with the most ridiculous questions. Do you shave? Do you brush your teeth? Do you think most people are frightened of you? Are you a Democrat or a Republican? What do you intend to do about the gambling problem in this city?

  The gambling problem?

  Yes! Didn’t Superman support Mayor La Guardia’s campaign against illegal gambling?

  “Of course,” said Superman.

  “Well—what part do you intend to play?”

  He hadn’t thought about it but felt he should say something, so he said, “Well … I guess … I guess I’m issuing a warning to illegal gamblers right here and now. They’d better stop.”

  “Is that right? And what’ll you do if they don’t?”

  Clark was inclined to shrug (which would’ve been bad, no doubt), but instead he answered the question (much worse): “I’ll beat them up,” he said.

  The press had a field day.

  S’MAN TO ODDSMAKERS: PACK UP OR POW!

  “Clark,” says Soda Wauters, “we should go, hon. Whyn’t you let me sneak off to the powder room and you kind of pick yourself up, okay?”

  He’s not paying attention to her.

  I don’t know what I’m doing.

  That’s what he told his father last week, back in Smallville. “And I don’t know what to do. I’m trying but it’s not working. Can I come home?”

  His father said, “No. No, son, you can’t.”

  Clark visited home at Thanksgiving, then again at Christmas. Thanksgiving was good, mostly because Mr. Kent had some color in his face and strength enough to walk around, at least get from his bed to the kitchen, and he actually ate a little white meat, a bit of cranberry sauce, and seemed to enjoy it. And they’d had time to talk. Mostly they talked about Superman, who by then was a national phenomenon; Life had even run a cover picture of him leaping over the tower of the Empire State Building. (Willi was peeved when he didn’t get the assignment; Carl Mydans got it instead.) Superman had actually been only a speck, but his (tinted) cape was captured in a highly dramatic swirl. Mr. Kent said he was proud of Clark; Clark told him that, so far, it was “kind of fun.”

  Christmas wasn’t good. Mr. Kent had taken a sharp turn for the worse, and when Alger Lee met Clark at the door upon his arrival, he warned him to get ready for a shock. And it was a shock, a terrible one.

  His father was dying.

  Clark could no longer deny it. How could he? He could hear his father’s sluggish heart, see the inflammation of the sac surrounding it, and the leakage from the mitral valve.

  But Mrs. Clemments did her best to make him comfortable, sitting with him for hours and trying to be cheerful. Clark tried being cheerful, too. It was hard. There wasn’t much opportunity to talk alone with his father during that visit, and for Clark just about the only thing at all pleasurable about the holiday was the unexpected gift from Mr. Clemments, a hand-carved box. It was the first time Mr. Clemments had displayed any friendliness. And he seemed genuinely thrilled by the Schrafft’s chocolates he got from Clark. (Alger had told Clark at Thanksgiving, “Get him candy. You can’t go wrong.”)

  When he left after Christmas to return to New York City, Clark had the terrible feeling he would never see his father alive again.

  But he did.

  A week ago last Monday, Alger phoned (the farm not only had a telephone now, but also electric light in nearly every room) and told Clark he had better get home just as soon as he possibly could. The doctor said Mr. Kent would probably not last beyond the weekend.

  Arriving at the farm early on Tuesday morning, Clark found his father wasted and terribly weak, barely conscious. He sat quietly at Mr. Kent’s bedside. He stayed there all day. Mrs. Clemments would come in and then go right out again. When Alger and Mr. Clemments returned from the day’s farmwork, they washed and changed into clean clothes and then kept the vigil with Clark.

  At last, just after nine o’clock, Mr. Kent seemed alert suddenly, weak but alert, and after beckoning Alger close, he whispered something into his ear. Then Mr. Kent touched Alger’s face. Alger went quickly from the room. Mr. Clemments stood up. He and Mr. Kent exchanged a long steady look that ended with mutual slight nods. Then Mr. Clemments went out, too.

  Clark sat down on the edge of the bed.

  He started to speak but Mr. Kent, smiling gently, touched a finger to Clark’s lips.

  “I love you, son.”

  “I love you too.”

  “And don’t worry. Don’t fret. You’ll be fine. Need I remind you of trigonometry? If you got through that, Clark, you can get through anything.”

  “But I feel like a big phony.”

  “We all feel like that, son. Just go on out and do the best you can.”

  “I’m trying, but it’s not working. Can I come home?”

  “No. No, son, you can’t. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “To who?”

  “To whom,” said Mr. Kent, correcting Clark’s grammar but not answering his question.

  His funeral was lightly attended, in no small measure because of his presumed heathenism but also because he had brought three Negroes into his home. Clark spoke a few words he’d prepared. But halfway through his text what he was saying struck him as trite and borrowed, so he dispensed with the rest of it and just recited “The Broken Field,” a poem by Sara Teasdale that he recalled his mother reading once or twice to his father. “My soul is a dark ploughed field / In the cold rain …”

  He amazed himself that he didn’t forget any of the words.

  Jonathan Kent was buried in a plot next to Martha’s in the churchyard.

  That same night, Clark returned there alone and stood by the headstones under a black sky with a ribbon of cloud suspended across the cold ivory moon. He tried to think of something to tell them both with his thoughts. Finally all he could think of was goodbye. I love you, goodbye.

  7

  “Clark,” says Lois. “Clark!”

  All right, she thinks, if the silly lummox won’t answer me, to hell with him!

  “Clark!”

  What’s it any business of mine if something’s the matter with—

  “Clark!”

  When he still doesn’t rouse himself and peer down, Lois has an uncharitable impulse to raise her voice and call him “Nicely-Nicely,” which she has done half a dozen times already at the Planet, in mockery. Although she is almost positive Clark doesn’t know the reference (somehow, she can’t imagine that farm boy ever having read Damon Runyon), she is 100 percent positive he gets the point of the needle.

  Nicely-Nicely, the sickeningly sweet guy. Nicely-Nicely guys finish last. No thanks, Nicely-Nicely, I’m busy on Thursday. And Friday through Wednesday, as well. Candy? For me? Oh, Nicely-Nic
ely, you shouldn’t have! Especially since I wouldn’t take it from you if you were the last candy giver on Earth! Hey, Nicely-Nicely, is it true what I hear? Have you really seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs twelve times?

  Nicely-Nicely …

  “Clark!” says Lois. “You okay up there?”

  When she is not kidding herself (now, for example), Lois will admit she’s been a thorough b-i-t-c-h to Clark Kent, and it’s not something she much likes about herself.

  Okay, but he’s just so—nice!

  And that’s a problem?

  Yes, that is definitely a serious problem.

  It’s also a problem that he is so obviously nuts about her, a big problem.

  Take Superman: he’s all business, and except for that one time on Halloween night, she hasn’t seen as much as a trace of interest in those dark blue eyes, not a flicker. All business. Always: Miss Lane, Miss Lane, Miss Lane.

  She’s told him to call her Lois, please, but always it’s Miss Lane.

  They’ve been running into each other at least once or twice a week—at the fund-raising banquet for the Children’s Aid Society; at that disastrous press conference when he threatened to beat up gamblers if they didn’t behave; at a chemical-factory fire in Brooklyn, a hostage taking in Ozone Park, a train derailment in Yonkers. She just keeps running into him.

  And he keeps saving her life. But it’s funny about that. She can’t remember her life ever being in any real danger until he showed up.

  “Clark!” she says. “Hey, Clark, you okay?”

  Since that robot broil, he’s plucked her out of the East River after she was trussed up, tied to an anchor, and rolled off the transom of a fishing boat (smugglers); he’s caught her midplummet off Jenny Jump Mountain in New Jersey (escaped convict); he’s lunged in front of her on Seventh Avenue, scattering machine-gun bullets (fur thieves); he’s even rescued her from a four-hundred-pound gorilla that was galloping after her at the circus (Gargantua). And it’s always been, Are you all right, Miss Lane? Are you sure you’re all right?