Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  45

  SWAN AND JOSH HAD BEEN following the railroad tracks through a Nebraska dust storm for three days when they found the wrecked train.

  They didn’t see the train until they were almost upon it. And then there it was, railroad cars scattered everywhere, some of them riding piggyback. Most of the cars were broken to pieces except for a caboose and a couple of freight cars. Swan slid down off Mule, following Josh as he walked carefully over the debris. “Watch out for nails!” he warned her, and she nodded. Killer had been turned the color of chalk by all the dust, and he advanced before Josh, sniffing warily at the splintered planks under his paws.

  Josh stopped, shielding his eyes from the dust with one hand, and he looked up at the side of a freight car. The storm had almost scoured all the paint off, but he could still make out a faded panorama of clowns, lions and three rings under a big top. Scrolled red letters spelled out RYDELL CIRCUS, INC.

  “It’s a circus train!” he told Swan. “Probably going somewhere to set up when it got knocked off the tracks.” He motioned toward the caboose. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  For the past three nights they’d slept in barns and deserted farmhouses, and once the railroad tracks had taken them to the outskirts of a moderate-sized town—but the wind brought such a smell of decay from the town that they dared not enter it. They’d circled the town, picking up the tracks on the other side and continuing across the open plains.

  The caboose’s door was unlocked. It was gloomy within, but at least it was shelter. Josh figured both the horse and terrier could fend for themselves, and he stepped in. Swan followed, closing the door behind her.

  Josh bumped into a small desk, making little bottles and jars clink. The air was warmer the further he went, and he made out the shape of a cot to his right. His groping fingers touched warm metal—a cast-iron, freestanding stove. “Somebody’s been here,” he said. “Hasn’t been gone very long, either.” He found the grate and opened it; inside a few coals had burned down to ashes, and an ember glowed like a tiger’s eye.

  He continued to feel his way around the caboose, almost tripping over a bundle of blankets lying in a corner, and made his way back to the desk. His eyes were getting used to the dim yellow murk that came through the caboose’s filmy windows, and he discovered a half-burned candle stuck with wax to a saucer. Near it was a box of kitchen matches. He struck one and lit the candle’s wick, and the light spread.

  Swan saw what appeared to be crayons and lipsticks atop the desk. A curly red wig sat on a wigstand. In front of the desk’s folding metal chair was a wooden box, about the size of a shoebox, decorated with little intricately carved lizards. Their tiny eyes were formed of multifaceted glass, and they sparkled in the candlelight.

  Next to the cot Josh found an open bag of Gravy Train dog food and a plastic jug that sloshed when he nudged it with his foot.

  Swan stepped closer to the stove. On a wall rack were gaudy suits with spangles, oversized buttons and floppy lapels. There was a pile of newspapers, shards of timber and coals ready for the fire. She looked toward the far corner, where the bundle of blankets lay. Except there was something else over there, too ... something only half covered by the blankets. “Josh?” She pointed. “What’s that?”

  He brought the candle over. The light fell on the rigid smile of a clown’s face.

  At first Josh was startled, but then he realized what it was. “A dummy! It’s a life-sized dummy!” The thing was sitting up, with white greasepaint on its face and bright red lips; a green wig was perched on its scalp, and its eyelids were closed. Josh leaned forward and poked the dummy’s shoulder.

  His heart kicked.

  He gingerly touched the thing’s cheek and smeated on some of the greasepaint. Under it was sallow flesh.

  The corpse was cold and stiff and had been dead at least two or three days.

  Behind them, the caboose door suddenly swung open, letting in a whirlwind of dust.

  Josh spun around, stepping in front of Swan to shield her from whoever—or whatever—was coming in. He saw a figure standing there, but dust in his eyes blinded him.

  The figure hesitated. In one hand was a shovel. There was a long, tense silence, and then the man in the doorway said, “Howdy,” in a thick western drawl. “You folks been here long?” He closed the door, shutting off the storm. Josh watched him warily as the man walked across the caboose, his cowboy boots clomping on the planked floor, and leaned the shovel against a wall. Then the man untied a bandanna from around his nose and mouth. “Well? Can you two speak English, or am I gonna have to do all the talkin’?” He paused a few seconds, then answered himself in a high, mocking voice, “Yessir, we surely do speak English, but our eyeballs are ’bout to bug out of our heads, and if we flap our tongues they’ll go flyin’ out like fried eggs.” He pronounced it aigs.

  “We can speak,” Josh replied. “It’s just ... you surprised us.”

  “Reckon I did. But the last time I walked out that door, Leroy was alone, so I’m a mite surprised myself.” He took off his cowboy hat and swatted it against one denim-covered thigh. Dust welled into the air. “That’s Leroy.” He motioned toward the clown in the corner. “Leroy Satterwaite. He died coupla nights ago, and he was the last of ’em. I been out diggin’ a hole for him.”

  “The last of them?” Josh prompted.

  “Yep. Last of the circus people. One of the best clowns you ever laid your eyes on. Man, he could’ve made a stone crack a grin.” He sighed and shrugged. “Well, it’s over now. He was the last of ’em— except me, I mean.”

  Josh stepped toward the man and held the candle and saucer out to illuminate his face.

  The man was thin and lanky, his scraggly, grizzled face as long and narrow as if it had been pressed in a vise. He had curly light brown hair spilling over his high forehead almost to his bushy brown eyebrows; beneath them, his eyes were large and liquid, a shade between hazel and topaz. His nose was long and thin, in keeping with the rest of him, but it was the mouth that was the centerpiece of his face: the lips were thick, rubbery folds of flesh designed to pull miraculous mugs and grins. Josh hadn’t seen such a pair of lips since he’d been served a bigmouth bass in a restaurant in Georgia. The man wore a dusty denim jacket, obviously much used and abused, a dark blue flannel shirt and jeans. His lively, expressive eyes moved from Josh to Swan, lingered a few seconds, then returned to Josh. “Name’s Rusty Weathers,” he said. “Now who in blazes are you, and how’d you get out here?”

  “My name is Josh Hutchins, and this is Swan Prescott. We haven’t had any food or water in three days. Can you help us?”

  Rusty Weathers nodded toward the plastic jug. “Help yourselves. That’s water from a creek a coupla hundred yards from the tracks. Can’t say how clean it is, but I’ve been drinkin’ it for about—” He frowned, walked over to the wall and felt for the notches he’d carved there with his penknife. He ran a finger along them. “Forty-one days, give or take.”

  Josh opened the jug, sniffed at it and took a tentative swallow. The water tasted oily, but otherwise okay. He drank again and gave the jug to Swan.

  “Only food I’ve got left is Gravy Train,” Rusty said. “Fella and his wife had a dog act. Jumped French poodles through hoops and all.” He plopped the cowboy hat on top of the red wig, pulled the folding chair to him, turned it around and sat down with his arms crossed on the backrest. “Been a time, I’ll tell ya. Train was movin’ pretty as you please one minute; the next minute the sky looked like the inside of a mine shaft, and the wind started whippin’ cars right off the tracks. We get twisters back in Oklahoma, but damned if this wasn’t the granddaddy of ’em all!” He shook his head, rattling loose the memories. “You got any cigarettes?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Damn! Man, I could just about eat a carton of smokes right now!” He narrowed his eyes, examining both Josh and Swan in silence. “You two look like you been stomped by a few dozen Brahma bulls. You hurtin?”

 
; “Not anymore,” Josh said.

  “What’s goin’ on out there? There ain’t been another train along this track in forty-one days. The dust just keeps on blowin’. What’s happenin?”

  “Nuclear war. I think the bombs fell just about everywhere. Probably hit the cities first. From what we’ve seen so far, I don’t think there’s much left.”

  “Yeah.” Rusty nodded, his eyes vacant. “I kinda figured it must be that. A few days after the wreck, me and some of the others started walkin’, tryin’ to find help. Well, the dust was a lot thicker and the wind stronger back then, and we made it about fifty feet before we had to come back. So we sat down to wait. But the storm didn’t stop, and nobody came.” He stared at a window. “Nicky Rinaldi—the lion tamer—and Stan Tembrello decided to follow the tracks. That was a month ago. Leroy was busted up inside, so I stayed here with him and Roger—all of us were clowns, see. The Three Musketeers. Oh, we put on a good show! We really made ’em laugh!” His eyes teared up suddenly, and it was a moment before he could speak again.

  “Well,” he said finally, “me and the others who were left started diggin’ graves. The wreck killed a lot of folks outright, and there were dead animals all over the place. Dead elephant’s lyin’ up the tracks a ways, but he’s all dried up now. Man, you couldn’t believe what that smelled like! But who in hell has got the strength to dig a grave for an elephant? We got a regular circus cemetery not too far from here.” He nodded vaguely off to the right. “Dirt’s softer, once you get away from the tracks. I’d managed to find some of my gear, and I moved in here with Leroy, Roger and a few of the others. Found my make-up case.” He touched the wooden box with its carved, creeping lizards. “Found my magic jacket, too.” A finger hooked toward the rack where the clothes hung. “I wasn’t hurt too bad. Just bruises on bruises and this.” He lifted that big upper lip to display the space where a front tooth had been knocked out. “But I was okay. Then ... everybody started dyin’.”

  He sat looking at the candle. “It was the damnedest thing,” he said. “People who were fine one day were dead the next. One night ...” His eyes glazed over like pond ice, and the memories had him again. “One night we were all sleepin’, and I woke up cold. The stove was goin’, and the caboose was warm—but I was shiverin’. And I swear to God ... I knew the shadow of Death was here, movin’ from person to person, figurin’ out who to take next. I think whatever it was passed near enough to me to freeze my bones—and then it moved on. And when daylight came, Roger was dead with his eyes open, and he’d been tellin’ jokes the day before. You know what that crazy Leroy says? He says, ‘Rusty, let’s you and me put a happy face on that sumbitch before we send him off!’ So we painted him up—but it wasn’t a disrespectful thing, oh, no!” Rusty shook his head. “We loved that old scudder. We just gave him the face he was most comfortable wearin’. Then me and Eddie Roscoe carried him out and buried him. Seems like I helped dig a hundred graves in a week’s time, until it was just me and Leroy.” He smiled faintly, looking past Swan and Josh into the corner. “Lookin’ good, old buddy! Hell, I thought I’da been the one long gone before now!”

  “There’s no one else here but you?” Swan asked.

  “Just me. I’m the last of the Rydell Circus.” He looked at Josh. “Who won?”

  “Who won what?”

  “The war. Who won the war? Us or the Russians?”

  “I don’t know. If Russia looks anything like what Swan and I’ve seen ... God help those people, too.”

  “Well, you gotta fight fire with fire,” Rusty said. “That’s somethin’ my mama used to tell me. Fight fire with fire. So maybe there’s one good thing about this: Maybe everybody shot all their bombs and missiles off, and there ain’t any more. The fires just fought it out—and the old world’s still here, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” Josh agreed. “The world’s still here. And so are we.”

  “I reckon the world’s gonna be a mite changed, though. I mean, if everywhere is like here, I believe the luxuries of life are gonna be sufferin’ some.”

  “Forget luxuries,” Josh told him. “This caboose and that stove are luxuries, friend.”

  Rusty grinned, showing the hole where his tooth had been. “Yep, I got a real palace here, don’t I?” He gazed at Swan for a few seconds, then got up, went to the rack and took from its hanger a black velvet suit jacket. He winked at her, shrugged out of his denim jacket and put on the one made of black velvet. In the breast pocket was a white handkerchief. “I’ll tell you what’s still here, too—somethin’ that’ll never change, little lady. Magic. You believe in magic, hon?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good!” He whipped the white handkerchief out and suddenly there was a bouquet of brightly colored paper flowers in his hand. He offered them to Swan. “You look like a lady who might appreciate some pretty flowers. ’Course, we’d better water ’em, too! If flowers don’t get their water, they might just swoon away!” He thrust his other hand forward, snapped his wrist in the air, and he was holding a small red plastic pitcher. He tipped it over the flowers, but instead of water, a trickle of yellow dust came out and floated to the floor. “Aw,” Rusty said, feigning disappointment. Then his eyes brightened. “Well, maybe that’s magic dust, little lady! Sure! Magic dust’ll keep flowers alive just as good as water will! What do you think?”

  Even though the corpse in the corner gave her the creeps, Swan had to smile. “Sure,” she said. “I bet it will, too.”

  Rusty waved his slim hand in the air before Swan’s face. She suddenly saw a red ball appear between the first and second fingers, and then another ball seemingly grew between his thumb and forefinger. He took one ball in each hand and began tossing them up in the air from hand to hand.

  “Think we’re missin’ somethin’, don’t you?” he asked her, and when the balls were in mid-air he reached with his right hand toward Swan’s ear. She heard a soft pop and his hand withdrew with a third red ball. He juggled the three of them back and forth. “There you go. Knew I’d find that thing somewhere!”

  She felt her ear. “How’d you do that?”

  “Magic,” he explained. He plopped one ball in his mouth, then the second and third. His empty hand caressed the air, and Swan saw Rusty’s throat gulp as he swallowed the balls. “Mighty tasty,” he said. “Want to try ’em?” He offered his palm to her; in it were the three red balls.

  “I saw you eat them!” Swan exclaimed.

  “Yep, I did. These are three more. That’s what I’ve been livin’ on, see. Gravy Train and magic balls.” His smile faltered, began to fade. His eyes flickered over toward the corpse, and he put the three balls in his pocket. “Well,” he said, “I reckon that’s enough magic for one day.”

  “You’re pretty good,” Josh said. “So you’re a clown, a magician and a juggler. What else do you do?”

  “Oh, I used to ride broncos in the rodeos.” He took off the velvet jacket and hung it up like putting an old friend to bed. “Used to be a rodeo clown. Used to short-order cook in a carnival. Worked on a cattle ranch once. Jack of all trades and master of none, I reckon. But I’ve always loved magic. Hungarian magician name of Fabrioso took me under his wing when I was sixteen and taught me the craft, back when I was shillin’ with the carny. Said I had hands that could either pick pockets or pull dreams out of the air.” Rusty’s eyes danced with light. “That Fabrioso was somethin’ else, I’ll tell ya! He talked to the spirits—and they sure ’nuff answered him and did what he said, too!”

  “Is this magic, too?” Swan touched the wooden box covered with lizards.

  “That was Fabrioso’s box of tricks. I keep my makeup and stuff in it now. Fabrioso got it from a magician in Istanbul. Know where that is? Turkey. And that magician got it from one in China, so I reckon it kinda has a history.”

  “Like Crybaby does,” Swan said, and she held up the dowsing rod.

  “Crybaby? That’s what you call that dowser?”

  “A woman—” Josh hesita
ted. The loss of Leona Skelton was still too raw. “A very special woman gave that to Swan.”

  “Did Fabrioso give you the magic jacket?” Swan asked.

  “Naw. I bought that in a magic store in Oklahoma City. But he gave me the box, and one other thing.” He unlatched and opened the carved box. Inside were jars, crayons and rags smeared with a thousand colors. He dug down toward the bottom. “Fabrioso said this came with the box in a set, so it was right that it went where the box did. Here it is.” He withdrew his hand.

  In it was a simple oval mirror, framed in black with a scuffed black handle. There was only one ornamentation: Where the handle was attached to the mirror were two small black masklike faces peering in opposite directions. The glass was a smoky color, streaked and stained.

  “Fabrioso used this to put on his stage makeup.” There was a note of awe in Rusty’s voice. “He said it showed a truer picture than any mirror he’d ever looked into. I don’t use it, though—the glass has gone too dull.” He held it out to Swan, and she took it by the handle. The thing was as light as a buttermilk biscuit.

  “Fabrioso was ninety when he died, and he told me he got the mirror when he was seventeen. I’ll bet it’s two hundred years old if it’s a day.”

  “Wow!” Something that old was beyond Swan’s comprehension. She peered into the glass but could see her face there only dimly, as if through a curtain of mist. Even so, the burn marks still jarred her, and there was so much dust on her face she thought she resembled a clown herself. She was never going to get used to not having hair, either. She looked closer. On her forehead were two more of those strange dark wartlike things she’d noticed at Leona’s; had those always been there, or had they just come up?

  “I guess Fabrioso was kinda vain,” Rusty admitted. “I used to catch him lookin’ in that mirror all the time—except he was usually holdin’ it at arm’s length, like this.” He stuck his own hand in front of his face as if his palm were a looking glass.