by David Nickle
“Her being me,” said swamp witch.
“Ex-actly,” said Annabel.
“So how’d you best him?” asked swamp witch.
“Didn’t,” said Annabel. And the Reverend grinned then. “Just agreed to keep you occupied. ’Til the tea-drinkin’ angel were ready to finish you off.”
The Reverend’s hand rose up then, and fell upon the jar. His fingers covered the two air-holes in the lid. Dragonfly fluttered at that, then calmed down — no sense in wasting oxygen.
Swamp witch reached for the jar. But the Reverend found the rattler’s quickness in his elbow and snatched it away so fast dragonfly banged his head on the side and fell unconscious.
“Why, you lyin’ deceitful parson!” hollered swamp witch. With her other hand she reached for her pebbles, intending to enunciate peroxide or some other disinfectant canticle. But the pebbles were gone — of course. Annabel and perhaps her brother Tommy had leaned down from the top of stilts and pulled them from her pocket while she slept in the Reverend’s church. “You’re in league with him!”
Annabel leaned forward now, and when she spoke her Papa’s lips moved with hers: “You ought never have been, swamp witch. You ought never have come here and shut the world from this place. You say you are protecting people but you are keeping them as your human toys, like a she-devil in a corner of Hell. The angel will drive you from here, madame! Drive you clear away.”
“Take your fingers off’n my dragonfly’s air holes,” she said. She was most worried right now about her dragonfly. For blinking and recollecting conclusions, she saw that she would not be spending long now in the Reverend’s company. But her dragonfly wasn’t with her either, and that caused her to suspect that the poor creature would soon suffocate if she didn’t do something.
The Reverend, to her mild surprise, moved his finger up. Or perhaps it slid. No, she thought, looking up, he meant to. His face twitched and his lips opened.
“You should never have come,” he said. In his own voice — which swamp witch had not heard in many years now. And behind her, the breeze died and slivers of moonlight dissolved in the shadow of the tea-drinking man.
The Reverend stood up then, and Annabel cried: “A miracle!” and the Reverend took a step toward the edge of the porch, where the yellow-suited tea-drinking man stood, smile as large as his eyes were sad.
“O Angel,” Reverend said, his eyes a-jittering with upset snake venom, “I have delivered her!”
“You fool,” said swamp witch. And she stepped behind the Reverend, took hold of the jar that held her dragonfly, and said to him: “Carry me to Albert.”
That was when the tea-drinking man bellowed. At first, she thought he was angry that she was getting away — trying to sneak behind the Reverend, climb upon her still-groggy dragonfly and sneak out through a hole in the porch screen. If that were the case — well, she’d be in for it and she braced herself, holding tight on dragonfly’s back-hair.
But as she swirled up to the rafters of the porch, she saw this was not the case. The tea-drinking man was distracted not by her, but by Reverend Balchy’s sharp, venomous incisors, that had planted themselves in his yellow-wrapped forearm.
Reverend Balchy stopped hollering then, on account of his mouth being full, and Annabel took it up.
“Gotchya, you lyin’ sinner. Think you can use me? Think it? When swamp witch come to town she took away most of me — you’ll just take away the rest! Well fuck yuh! Fuck yuh!”
Dragonfly swung down, close past tea-drinking man’s nose, and swamp witch could see the anger and pain of the Reverend’s ugly mix of rattler venom and mouth bacteria slipping into his veins. There’d be twitching and screaming in a minute — at least there would be if tea-drinking man had normal blood.
Tea-drinking man didn’t seem to, though. He opened his own mouth and looked straight at Annabel:
“What,” he said, “if you spoke up for yourself? What if you walked the world your own girl, flipped — ” he grimaced “ — flipped your old Papa the bird, and just made your way on your own-some.”
Annabel looked at him. Then she looked up at swamp witch, who was heading for a rip in the screen where last summer there’d been a fist-sized wasp nest.
“I’d never be on my own-some,” Annabel said. “Not so long as she protects me.”
And then swamp witch was gone from there, escaped into the keening night and thanking her stars for the Reverend’s poison-mad inconstancy. The tea-drinking man bellowed once more, and then he was a distant smear of yellow and the stars spun in swamp witch’s eye.
Was it cowardice that drove swamp witch across the rooftops of her town, then up so high she touched the very limits of her realm? Was she just scared of that tea-drinking man? What kind of protector was she for little Annabel, the Reverend, all the rest of them? Maybe when the Reverend was faking out the tea-drinking man, when he said “you should never have come,” he was right. For when she’d come hadn’t she stolen away the Reverend’s faith and the comfort of self-determination from her people and hadn’t she just kept them like she wanted them? Had she ever thought through what it would be if it come to this?
— Why’d you take me there? she said. Were you in league with the Reverend?
Dragonfly didn’t answer.
— Did you know about the Reverend’s double cross?
They flew low through a cloud of gnats, who all clamoured — yes! yes!
— Can I trust no one? swamp witch despaired.
— Hush, said dragonfly. It swung back through the gnats, and swamp witch could see the mists of her home, the Okehole Wetlands, rising from amid the stumps and rushes. Now let’s go home.
Swamp witch thought about how comfortable that would be. And with that, she realized she wasn’t scared of the tea-drinking man. She was scared of something else entirely.
Swamp witch dug her knees into dragonfly’s thorax and yanked at dragonfly’s hair to make a turn.
— Uh uh, she said. After all that, I’m not lettin’ you make any decisions. You know where we got to go.
Dragonfly hummed resentfully, and together they flew down — down toward the business section at the east end of town. There, the smoke and book waited for her, orange flickery light from its sign illuminating a patch in front like a hearth fire.
She reached to the ground by the road, and picked up two pebbles that seemed right, and stuffed them in her jeans, then in she went.
Albert Farmer sat in the front of the store, which was the nice section, all scrubbed and varnished and smelling of fresh pipe tobacco. The not-so-nice section, with the girly magazines and French ticklers and the cigars from Cuba — that was in the back, and this part was nothing but nice. Just some cigarettes and old-fashioned pipes in a display case, and a magazine rack that held nothing to trouble anyone — Times and Peoples and Archie comic books, Reader’s Digests and a lot of magazines about guns and cars and fixing up houses. Albert sat behind the counter, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and sipping at a glass of dark wine he made for himself.
“Sweetness.” He smiled in his way as swamp witch slipped through the mail slot and sat at the counter. “I thought you mightn’t come.”
“The town is under attack,” said swamp witch balefully.
“I know,” said Albert. He pinched off the end of the cigarette, and stepped around the counter. “Come here.”
He looked guilty as hell. But swamp witch stepped over across the floor anyhow. Dragonfly, traitorous insect that it was, flew in back to sniff cigar-leaf and browse pornography.
Swamp witch said: “You know anything more about that?”
Albert smiled. He had an easy smile — teeth too white to have smoked as much as he seemed to, half a dimple on one cheek only. It broke swamp witch’s heart every time she saw it. So when he just stepped up close to her and held the palm of his right hand forward, so it hovered over her left breast, she just let her broken old heart bask in his heat. Her arms fell upon his shoulders, and then crep
t down his arms, over the shortened sleeves of his summer shirt. O Lord, she thought as he pressed hard against her middle, wasn’t this what a Saturday night was for? Couldn’t it just be forever?
Swamp witch knew it couldn’t. One day a week was part of the bargain.
She pulled back and looked at Albert levelly.
“Why did you bring tea-drinking man here? Why did you let him in?”
Albert frowned. He started to deny it, but looked into swamp witch’s eye and knew he couldn’t.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“I remember the future,” she said. “I remember the ends of things.”
“There’s no joy in that,” said Albert Farmer.
“I know.” Swamp witch stepped away and shook the lust from her head. “It’s not like the beginnings. Those are the real joys.”
Albert nodded. He leaned back against the counter; appeared to think, but it was hard to say because the lights were low.
“Are they?” he finally said. “Beginnings, I mean. Are they the real joys? You ever think much about ours?” Swamp witch looked at him. “You don’t of course. Or else you’d never say that about beginnings. Maybe you’d have killed me by now.”
It was true that swamp witch didn’t think about beginnings but it wasn’t that she couldn’t.
“I loved you,” she said.
“You still do.”
“I still do. But we’re busting up. I know it.”
Albert’s smile faded and he nodded. “That’s how the night ends,” he said. “Will you have a glass of wine with me?”
Swamp witch shrugged, like a sullen teenager she thought, and mumbled, “Mayuswell,” and leaned her butt against the countertop so she wouldn’t be looking at him. She heard the wine gurgling from bottle to stemware, and Albert came around the front of her and gave her the glass. She looked into it, swirled it a bit.
“You knew it had to come,” he said. “From the day we made this place, you know this had to come.”
Swamp witch sighed. She did know — she did remember. But what pleasure was there, in recalling a game of skill against this — this roadside mephistopheles, during the worst afternoon of her life? That was well hidden away, that memory.
At least it was until this moment — this moment, when she once more recalled the crossroads, just to the south of town near the sycamore grove where she sat, bruised and angry and waiting for a bus or some conveyance to take her away. When she said:
I’d just like to send you to Hell.
And when not a bus but a shiny little two-seater from Naples rolled up, and he stepped out and set down the checker board and said, “Would you now sweet mama?” and she said, “Maybe not exactly,” and he said, “Well, care to play me?” and she said, “What for?” and he said, “What do you want?”
“I wanted my town back,” said swamp witch, bringing the wine glass from her lips, “just my town. And just Saturdays. Just Saturdays. And I won it.”
“Fair and square,” said Albert.
Swamp witch set down the glass. “I cared for it here,” she said. “It was mine and I cared for it.”
“Yes,” said Albert. “It was yours. And you cared for it, all right. But not forever. You knew that.”
“Not forever?” she said.
“Only,” he said, “so long as I could keep winning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, swamp witch. I was wandering, as I sometimes do, the other day — and I came upon a crossroads as I often do — and there who should I see but a sad old sack of a man. And I said to him as I must: Want to play a game?” Albert took a long pull from his wine glass. “And he said to me as he was wont to: I’d love a game this afternoon. And so we set down and played.”
“Checkers?” said swamp witch unkindly.
“A word game — a remembering game. And oh, he was good, and at the end of it — ”
“You,” said swamp witch, “are a sorry excuse for your kind. You never lose a game you don’t want to. And now . . . You lost my town, didn’t you?”
“There are those who’ve been hankering for it for some time now.”
“Yes — but you.” She set her glass down. “You ought to know better.”
Oh, he ought to. But swamp witch saw in Albert Farmer’s eyes, the back of them where the embers sometimes smouldered, that he didn’t. Couldn’t help himself truly. He was a kind man and kind men helped others with the things they wanted. Fine if swamp witch were the other. But nothing but hurt or betrayal, if it be someone else.
Now, swamp witch knew with regretful certainty that she would not only lose Albert this night — but possibly the town as well.
“Others fight him, you know,” she said, thinking of the Reverend and his poisonous bite. “Others love me better.”
“Oh, Ma — oh, swamp witch,” said Albert, correcting himself, “you think I don’t love you well enough? That is a stinger, my dear. I’ve as much love for you as is in me. Now come — ” he draped his arm over her shoulder “ — there’s little time.”
“Is there?”
“Look,” he said and pointed between the gossamer window covers to the street. There, sure enough, was the tea-drinking man — his suit was a bit mussed and the skin around his eyes was dark with snake spit, which was also why he was moving so funny, swamp witch supposed. He stood a moment in the middle of the road, tried to smooth his hair with his hand and stomped his foot like it was a hoof. Then he looked over to the smoke and book.
Was there a sense in fighting it?
Swamp witch knew better. She leaned over to Albert, and smothered the little space left between them with a kiss. He tasted of salt and wine and egg gone bad, but swamp witch didn’t mind. She let herself to it and lived in the instant — the instant prior to the end, and when she pulled away, the tea-drinking man was there at the big window, looking in with socketed eyes and a terrible, blood-rimmed grin.
“Why’d you let him win?” she said.
Tea-drinking man’s ankles cracked as he stepped away and pushed open the door, jangling the little bell at the top. The sickness was coming off him like a fever now. Swamp witch held onto Albert harder and slid her hands into her pocket.
“I ain’ feeli’ well,” said the tea-drinking man.
“You ain’t lookin’ well,” said swamp witch. “That venom’ll kill you.”
Tea-drinking man shook his head. “Nuh,” he said. “Nuh me.”
He reached around them, arm seeming to bend in two spots to do it, and lifted swamp witch’s wine glass. Unkindly, he hawked a big purple loogie the size of a river slug, let it ooze into the glass and down the side. It fizzed poisonously.
“This is who you gave me up for,” said swamp witch. Albert’s shoulders slumped.
“’Twas only a matter of time before they saw what happened here,” said Albert.
Swamp witch sighed. She snaked her hand underneath Albert’s arm. They stood there at the end now — seconds before it would occur, she could see it clear as headlights, clear as anything. She brought her lips to his, and said: “Goodbye,” then added, fondly: “Go to Hell.”
And with that, Albert stepped away and smiled his sweet smile, and in a whiff of volcanic flatulence, did as he was told and stepped to the back of the store.
And it was just her and the tea-drinking man.
“Why di’ — did you ever want this place?” asked the tea-drinking man. “I’s a rat hole.”
“A snake pit,” agreed swamp witch. “I agree with your sentiment some days. I wanted it because it was rightfully mine. Why’d you play Albert for it?”
“Symmetry,” said the tea-drinking man.
“That explains not a thing,” said swamp witch.
“All right.” The tea-drinking man took a ragged breath. “You took this place off — ” he looked into the air for the word and found it in the old dangling light fixture over the cash register “ — off the grid. The world ran its course, my dear — ran to dark and to ligh
t and good and evil. Why, those of us on the outside took the time we had and made things. There are towers, dear swamp witch — towers that extend to heaven and back. Great wide highways, so far across you can only see the oncoming autos as star-flecks in the mist. We’ve built rockets. Rockets! We’ve gone higher than God. And yet this place? Stayed put. All those years. Why?” He gave a drooling little sneer. “Because it’s rightfully yours?”
“That’s right,” said swamp witch. “And whatever you say, it’s better for it.”
Tea-drinking man shrugged. And although he never seemed too inflated, he seemed to deflate then. He slumped a little, in fact.
“What did you think you would accomplish?”
Swamp witch shrugged now. What did it need to accomplish? She wondered. What was the point of this accomplishment anyhow — of taking your powers and making the world into a place of your dreams? Why look ahead — when all that was there were endings and misery? Why not make a pleasant place now?
“And you fester in your swamp,” said tea-drinking man, “wallowing in the muck with your insects and rodents and frogs. I’d drain that swamp, I was you.”
Swamp witch looked at him, and as she did, she saw another ending: one in which all of Okehole County was nothing but an embodiment of tea-drinking man’s hopes and dreams — victim of his regrets.
It was an end, all right — a point too long before she buried her own children and faced her own end. Swamp witch did not like to look upon ends long, but she couldn’t look away from this one: it filled up the horizon like a great big sunset.
“You have got the sickness,” she said. “The dreaming sick. You won’t now give it to me. And you won’t give it to our town. You won’t give it to this county.”
“I already done that,” he said simply, sadly almost.
— No he hasn’t, said dragonfly, buzzing up from the back of the shop. Hop on.
The tea-drinking man tried to grab her, but he was sore and half-paralyzed now from the Reverend’s bite, and he just knocked over a box of chewing tobacco and mumbled swearwords. Swamp witch felt her middle contract and the smoke and book get big and she flung her leg over the back of dragonfly. Tea-drinking man called after her: “You shouldn’t have!” but swamp witch already had, and she wouldn’t let the itchy virus of regret get at her now.
