Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  Gene Scully and Zachial Epstein had never returned. Their bodies were still missing, and Sister was certain they were dead. And certain also that “the man with the scarlet eye” was still somewhere in Mary’s Rest. Sister kept her leather satchel in a tighter grip than ever, but now she wondered if he’d lost interest in the ring and had shifted his attention to Swan.

  Sister and Josh had talked about what kind of creature the man with the scarlet eye might be. She didn’t know if she believed in a horned and fork-tailed Devil, but she knew well enough what Evil was. If he’d searched for them for seven years, that meant he didn’t know everything. He might be cunning, and maybe his intuition was razor-sharp, and maybe he could change his face as he pleased and burst people into flame with a touch, but he was flawed and dumb. And maybe his greatest weakness was that he thought himself so damned much smarter than human beings.

  Swan paused in her inspection, then approached one of the smaller cornstalks. Its fronds were still speckled with the dark red spots of blood her hands had shed. She took off one of her gloves and touched the thin stalk, felt the prickling sensation that began at her feet, moved up her legs to her spine, then through her arm and fingers into the plant like a low current of electricity. She’d thought of that sensation as normal ever since she was a child; but now she wondered if her entire body wasn’t, in a way, like Crybaby—she was receptive to and drew up power from the battery of the earth and could direct it through her fingers into seeds, trees and plants. Maybe it was a whole lot more, and maybe she could never really understand what it was, but she could close her eyes and see again the wonderful scenes that the glass ring had shown her, and she knew what she must devote the rest of her life to doing.

  At Swan’s suggestion, rags and old papers had been bundled around the bases of the stalks, to keep the new roots as warm as possible. The hard dirt had been broken up with shovels and holes dug every four or five feet between the rows; into these holes clean water was poured, and if you listened hard and the wind was still, you could hear the earth gasping as it drank.

  Swan went on, stopping every so often to touch one of the stalks or bend down and knead the dirt between her fingers. It felt like sparks were jumping off her hands. But she was uncomfortable having so many people around her all the time—especially the men with the rifles. It was weird having people watch you and want to touch you and give you the clothes right off their backs. She’d never felt special, and she didn’t feel special now, either. Being able to make the corn grow was just something she could do, like Glory could sew the patchwork coat and Paul could make the little printing press work again. Everybody had a talent, and Swan knew that this was hers.

  She walked on a few more feet, and then she knew someone was staring at her.

  She turned her head to look back toward Mary’s Rest, and she saw him standing across the field, his shoulder-length brown hair blowing in the wind.

  Sister followed Swan’s line of sight and saw him, too. She knew Robin Oakes had been following them all morning, but he wouldn’t come any closer. In the past three days he’d declined any offer to enter Glory’s shack; he was content to sleep by the bonfire, and Sister noted with interest that he’d cleaned all the feathers and animal bones out of his hair. Sister glanced at Swan and saw her blush before she turned quickly away. Josh was occupied with watching the woods for bobcats, and he didn’t notice the little drama. Just like a man, Sister mused. He can’t see the forest for the trees.

  “They’re doing fine,” Swan told Sister, to take her mind off Robin Oakes. Her voice was nervous and a little higher-pitched, and underneath the crust of her Job’s Mask, Sister smiled. “The fires are keeping the air warmer out here. I think the corn’s doing just fine.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Sister answered.

  Swan was satisfied. She went around to every bonfire, speaking to the volunteers, finding out if anyone needed to be replaced, if they wanted water or any of the root soup that Glory, Anna or one of the other women was always cooking up. She made sure to thank them for helping watch the field and chase the circling crows away. Of course, the crows needed to eat, too, but they’d have to find their own food somewhere else. Swan noticed a teen-age girl who had no gloves, and she gave her her own pair. Dead skin was still flaking off Swan’s palms, but otherwise her hands had healed.

  She stopped at the plank of wood that marked Rusty’s grave. She still didn’t remember anything of that night but her dream of the man with the scarlet eye. There had been no time to tell Rusty what he’d meant to her and how much she’d loved him. She remembered Rusty making red balls appear and disappear as part of the Travelin’ Show’s magic act and earning an old can of beans or fruit cocktail for his work. The earth had him now, had folded strong arms around him so that he would sleep long and undisturbed. And his magic was still alive—in her, in Josh, and in the green stalks that swayed in the wind with the promise of life yet to be.

  Swan, Josh and Sister walked back across the field, accompanied by the two armed guards. Both Swan and Sister noted that Robin Oakes had already slipped away. And Swan felt a twinge of disappointment.

  Children hopped and jumped around Swan as they continued through the alleys toward Glory’s shack. Sister’s heart pounded as she watched every alley they passed for a sudden, snakelike movement—and she thought she heard the squeak of red wagon wheels somewhere nearby, but the sound faded, and she wasn’t sure if it had been there at all.

  A tall, gaunt man with pale blue keloids burned diagonally across his face was waiting for them, standing at the foot of the steps talking to Paul Thorson. Paul’s hands were stained dark brown from the mud and dyes he and Glory were mixing, to be used as ink for the bulletin sheet. There were dozens of people in the street and around the shack who’d come to catch a glimpse of Swan, and they made a path for her as she approached the waiting man.

  Sister stepped between them, tense and ready for anything. But she caught no repulsive, dank wave of cold coming off him—just body odor. His eyes were almost the same color as the keloids. He wore a thin cloth coat, and his head was bare; tufts of black hair stuck up on a burn-scarred scalp.

  “Mr. Caidin’s been waiting to see Swan,” Paul said. “He’s all right.” Sister immediately relaxed, trusting Paul’s judgment. “I think you should listen to what he says.”

  Caidin turned his attention to Swan. “My family and I live over there.” He motioned in the direction of the burned-out church. He had a flat Midwestern accent, and his voice was shaky but articulate. “My wife and I have three boys. The oldest is sixteen, and up until this morning he had the same thing on his face that I understand you did.” He nodded toward Josh. “Like that. Those growths.”

  “The Job’s Mask,” Sister said. “What do you mean, ‘up until this morning’?”

  “Ben was running a high fever. He was so weak he could hardly move. And then ... early this morning ... it just cracked open.”

  Sister and Swan looked at each other.

  “I heard that yours did the same thing,” Caidin continued. “That’s why I’m here. I know a lot of people must be wanting to see you, but ... could you come to my place and look at Ben?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything Swan can do for your son,” Josh said. “She’s not a doctor.”

  “It’s not that. Ben’s fine. I thank God that stuff cracked open, because he could barely draw a breath. It’s just that—” He looked at Swan again. “He’s different,” Caidin said softly. “Please, come see him. It won’t take very long.”

  The need in the man’s face moved her. She nodded, and they followed him along the street, into an alley past the charred ruins of Jackson Bowen’s church and back through a maze of shacks, smaller shanties, piles of human waste and debris and even cardboard boxes that some people had fastened together to huddle in.

  They waded through a muddy, ankle-deep pool and then went up a pair of wooden steps into a shack that was even smaller and draftier than Glory
’s. It only had one room, and as insulation old newspaper and magazine pages had been nailed up all over the walls until there was no space not covered by yellowed headlines, type and pictures from a dead world.

  Caidin’s wife, her face sallow in the light of the room’s single lantern, held a sleeping infant in her thin arms. A boy about nine or ten years old, frail and frightened-looking, clutched at his mother’s legs and tried to hide when the strangers entered. The room held a couch with broken springs, an old crank-operated washing machine, and an electric stove—an antique, Josh thought—in which chips of wood, embers and trash yielded a cheerless fire and little warmth. A wooden chair sat next to a pile of mattresses on the floor, where the eldest Caidin boy lay under a coarse brown blanket.

  Swan approached the mattresses and looked down into the boy’s face. Pieces of the Job’s Mask lay like broken gray pottery around his head, and she could see the slick, jellylike stuff clinging to the inside of the fragments.

  The boy, his face white and his blue eyes still bright from fever, tried to sit up, but he was too weak. He pushed thick, dark hair back from his forehead. “You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked. “The girl who started the corn growing?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s really great. You can use corn a lot of different ways.”

  “I guess so.” Swan examined the boy’s features; his skin was smooth and flawless, almost luminescent in the lantern’s light. He had a strong, square jawline and a thin-bridged nose that was slightly sharp at the end. Overall, he was a handsome boy, and Swan knew he would grow up to be a handsome man, if he survived. She couldn’t understand what Caidin had wanted her to see.

  “Sure!” This time the boy did sit up, his eyes glittering and excited. “You can fry it and boil it, make muffins and cakes, even squeeze oil out of it. You can make whiskey from it, too. I know all about it, because I did a science project on corn back at my elementary school in Iowa. I won first prize at the state fair.” He paused, and then he touched the left side of his face with a trembling hand. “What’s happened to me?”

  She looked over at Caidin, who motioned for her, Josh and Sister to follow him outside.

  As Swan started to turn away from the mattresses a headline on a newspaper plastered to the wall caught her eye: ARMS TALKS CRASH AS ‘STAR WARS’ GETS A-OK. There was a photograph of important-looking men in suits and ties, smiling and lifting their hands in some kind of victory celebration. She didn’t know what it was all about, because none of those men were familiar to her. They looked like very satisfied men, and their clothes looked clean and new, and their hair was perfectly in place. All of them were clean-shaven, and Swan wondered if any of them had ever squatted down over a bucket to use the bathroom.

  Then she went out to join the others.

  “Your son’s a fine-looking boy,” Sister was telling Caidin. “You ought to be glad.”

  “I am glad. I’m thankful to God that stuffs off his face. But that’s not the point.”

  “Okay. What is?”

  “That’s not my son’s face. At least ... that’s not what he used to look like before he got that damned stuff on him.”

  “Swan’s face was burned when the bombs hit,” Josh said. “She doesn’t look like she did then, either.”

  “My son wasn’t disfigured on the seventeenth of July,” Caidin replied calmly. “He was hardly hurt at all. He’s always been a good, fine boy, and his mother and I love him very much, but ... Ben was born with birth defects. He had a red birthmark that covered the entire left side of his face. The doctors called it a port-wine stain. And his jaw was malformed. We had a specialist operate on him in Cedar Rapids, but the problem was so severe that ... there wasn’t much to hope for. Still, Ben’s always had guts. He wanted to go to a regular school and be treated like anybody else, no better and no worse.” He looked at Swan. “The color of his hair and eyes are the same as they always were. The shape of his face is the same. But the birthmark’s gone, and his jaw isn’t deformed anymore, and ...” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “And what?” Sister prompted.

  He hesitated, trying to find the words, and then he lifted his gaze to hers. “I used to tell him that real beauty is deeper than skin. I used to tell him that real beauty is what’s inside, in the heart and soul.” A tear trickled down Caidin’s right cheek. “Now Ben ... looks like I always knew he did, deep down inside. I think that now ... the face of his soul is showing through.” His own visage was stretched between laughing and crying. “Is that a crazy thing to think?”

  “No,” Sister answered. “I think it’s a wonderful thing. He’s a handsome boy.”

  “Always was,” Caidin said, and this time he let himself smile.

  The man returned to his family, and the others walked back through the muddy maze to the road. They were quiet, each occupied by private thoughts: Josh and Sister reflecting on Caidin’s story, wondering if and when their own Job’s Masks might reach the point where they began to crack—and what might be revealed underneath; and Swan remembering something that Leona Skelton had told her a long time ago: “Everybody’s got two faces, child—the outside face and the inside face. A face under the face, y’see. It’s your true face, and if it was flipped to the outside, you’d show the world what kind of person you are.”

  “Flipped to the outside?” Swan recalled asking. “How?”

  And Leona had smiled. “Well, God hasn’t figured a way to do that yet. But He will....”

  “The face of his soul is showing through,” Mr. Caidin had said.

  “But He will....”

  “... face of his soul ...”

  “But He will....”

  “Truck’s comin’ in!”

  “Truck’s comin’!”

  Approaching along the road was a pickup truck, its sides and hood pitted with rust. It was coming at a crawl, and around it surged a tide of people, hollering and laughing. Josh imagined it had been a long time since most of them had seen a car or truck that still actually ran. He put his hand on Swan’s shoulder, and Sister stood behind them on the roadside as the truck rumbled toward them.

  “Here she is, mister!” a boy shouted, scrambling up onto the front fender and hood. “She’s right here!”

  The truck came to a stop, trailing a wake of people. Its engine sputtered, popped and backfired, but the vehicle might have been a shiny new Cadillac from the way folks were rubbing the rust-eaten metal. The driver, a florid-faced man wearing a red baseball cap and clenching the stub of a real cigar between his teeth, looked warily out his window at the excited crowd, as if he wasn’t quite sure what kind of madhouse he’d driven into.

  “Swan’s right here, mister!” the boy on the hood said, pointing at her. He was talking to the man on the passenger side.

  The passenger’s door opened, and a man with curly white hair and a long, untrimmed beard leaned out, craning his neck to see who the boy was pointing to. His dark brown eyes, set in a tough, wrinkled old face, searched the crowd. “Where?” he asked. “I don’t see her!”

  But Josh knew who the man had come to find. He raised his arm and said, “Swan’s over here, Sly.”

  Sylvester Moody recognized the huge wrestler from the Travelin’ Show—and realized with a start exactly why he’d worn that black ski mask. His gaze moved to the girl who stood beside Josh, and for a moment he could not speak. “Sweet dancin’ Jesus!” he finally exclaimed, as he stepped out of the truck.

  He hesitated, still not sure it was her, glanced at Josh and saw him nod. “Your face,” Sly said. “It’s all ... healed up!”

  “It happened a few nights ago,” Swan told him. “And I think other people are starting to heal up, too.”

  If the wind had been blowing any harder, he might have keeled flat over. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Oh, Lord ... you’re beautiful!” He turned toward the truck, and his voice quavered: “Bill! This here’s the girl! This is Swan!” Bill McHenry, Sly’s nearest neighbor and owner of the tr
uck, cautiously opened his door and got out.

  “We had a hell of a time on that road!” Sly complained. “One more bump and my ass would’ve busted! Lucky we brought along extra go-juice, or we’da been walkin’ the last twenty miles!” He glanced around for someone else. “Where’s the cowboy?”

  “We buried Rusty a few days ago,” Josh said. “He’s in a field not too far from here.”

  “Oh.” Sly frowned. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m awful sorry. He seemed like a decent fella.”

  “He was.” Josh tilted his head, peering at the truck. “What are you doing here?”

  “I knew you folks were goin’ to Mary’s Rest. That’s where you said you were headed when you left my place. I decided to come visit.”

  “Why? It’s at least fifty miles of bad road between here and your house!”

  “Don’t my achin’ ass know it! God A’mighty, I’d like to sit on a nice soft pillow.” He rubbed his sore rump.

  “It’s no pleasure trip, that’s for sure,” Josh agreed. “But you knew that before you started. You didn’t say why you came all that way.”

  “No.” His eyes sparkled. “I don’t reckon I did.” He gazed at the shacks of Mary’s Rest. “Lord, is this a town or a toilet? What’s that awful smell?”

  “You stay around long enough, you’ll get used to it.”

  “Well, I’m just here for one day. One day’s all I need to pay my debt.”

  “Debt? What debt?”

  “What I owe Swan, and you for bringin’ Swan to my door. Throw it back, Bill!”

  And Bill McHenry, who’d gone around to the rear of the truck, pulled back a canvas tarpaulin that covered the truck’s bed.

  It was piled full of small red apples, perhaps two hundred or more of them.