“You know, if somebody bulldozed this place flat you could get something useful out of it. Cut everything down and see forever.” Lex knocks the side of Clark’s telescope with the backs of his knuckles. “All the sordid little things, hiding in the corn.”

All there is to see from here is what the old Lang stables left behind, a muddy field studded with water-warped timbers left behind by the flooding in ‘67. They never rebuilt, and the spars of wood stand out like teeth.

Clark knows what goes on around here, but it’s not clear that Lex does, at the end of the day – maybe it’s more of a generalized impression that something has to be lurking under the small town veneer, a city-dweller’s instinctive mistrust for the agricultural rhythms of the year. His reception in town has been on the frosty side. Clark doesn’t have to wonder why.

“It’s not like that. You don’t know this place the same way I do.”

Lex waves a hand in an approximating way. “All the wisdom of your years. This place must be the cornfield hazing capital of Kansas. New and exciting birth defects. Meteor scars. Three-eyed fish. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Or maybe Lex is just altered. It wouldn’t be the first time. When he’d run Clark off the road, it hadn’t even seemed like a possibility for a high strung kid from out of town, but now Clark’s not so sure – he’s not so sure about any of it.

(If Clark hadn’t been there, a sixteen year old boy would have been dead courtesy of an Italian sports car, an out-of-state license, and a lead foot. He’s seeing clearly, more clearly than Clark would like.)

Lex’s head is practically in Clark’s lap when he leans back, dirty blond hair spilling against his red tee shirt. It should feel stranger than it does, but he’s wiry enough that there’s ample room for two on the lookout perch of splintering boards and blankets stinking of gasoline and cut grass. This place up in the loft is where Clark goes to be alone, and when Clark had shown him this place, he’d expected him to laugh. Lex had asked him if he often wanted to go where no one else could find him, and also if this was where he went to drink beer.

Lex’s dad gave him a public library for his birthday. Of course he sees things differently than a nineteen-year-old homebody with no degree and no prospects.  Lex Luthor Jr., big city playboy with a private school education, suddenly develops a precocious corporate interest in a dour Midwestern town with a second-run movie theater and a laundromat that doubles as a dog groomer’s. Clark only wanted it to mean something different than it did.

Lex’s voice is cramped by the bent angle of his head, elfin chin pressed to his chest.

“You know what I’d take out of this place? You. No, I’m serious, I’d – I’d cut you right out and let this place fall apart. There’s maybe a thousand bucolic little towns just like it and none of them are important.”