1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  “I used to listen to the radio all the time!” the old man spoke up. He was smiling, too, as if he’d stepped into a dream. “I used to listen to the Mets on the radio in the summertime! Tomorrow we’ll hear somebody, I’ll bet you!”

  Mona clutched at her husband’s shoulder. “We didn’t go by the rules, did we? See? I told you—it’s important to have rules!” But her crying was over, and just as suddenly she started to laugh. “God’ll let us hear somebody if we follow the rules! Tomorrow! Yes, I think it might be tomorrow!”

  “Right!” Kevin agreed, hugging her close. “Tomorrow!”

  “Yeah.” Paul looked around the room; he was keeping a smile on his face, but his eyes were pain-ridden and haunted. “I kind of think it might be tomorrow, too.” His gaze met Sister’s. “Don’t you?”

  She hesitated, and then she understood. These people had nothing to live for but that radio in the footlocker. Without it, without being able to look forward to a very special time once a day, they might very well kill themselves. Keeping it on all the time would waste batteries and blunt the hope, and she saw that Paul Thorson knew they might never hear a human voice on that radio again. But, in his own way, he was being a Good Samaritan. He was keeping these people alive in more ways than by just feeding them.

  “Yes,” she finally said. “I think it might be.”

  “Good.” His smile deepened, and so did the networks of lines around his eyes. “I hope you two are poker players. I’ve got a hot deck of cards and plenty of matches. You weren’t going anywhere in a hurry, were you?”

  Sister glanced at Artie. He was standing stoop-shouldered, his eyes vacant, and she knew he was thinking of the hole where Detroit had been. She watched him for a moment, and finally he straightened up and answered in a weak but courageous voice, “No. I’m not hurrying anywhere. Not anymore.”

  “We play five-card draw around here. If I win, I get to read my poetry to you, and you have to smile and enjoy it. Either that or you can dump the crap buckets—your choice.”

  “I’ll make up my mind when I come to it,” Sister replied, and she decided that she liked Paul Thorson very much.

  “You sound like a real gambler, lady!” He clapped his hands together with mock glee. “Welcome to the club!”

  Thirty-three

  Paper and paints

  Swan had avoided it as long as she possibly could. But now, as she stepped out of the bathtub’s wonderfully warm water—leaving it murky brown with shed skin and grime—and reached for the large towel that Leona Skelton had set out for her, she had to do it. She had to.

  She looked in the mirror.

  The light came from a single lamp, its wick turned low, but it was enough. Swan stared into the oval glass over the basin, and she thought she might be seeing someone in a grotesque, hairless Halloween mask. One hand fluttered up to her lips; the awful image did the same.

  Shreds of skin were hanging from her face, peeling off like tree bark. Brown, crusty streaks lay across her forehead and the bridge of her nose, and her eyebrows—once so blond and thick—had been burned clean away. Her lips were cracked like dry earth, and her eyes seemed to be sunken down into dark holes in her skull. On her right cheek were two small black warts, and on her lips were three more of them. She’d seen those same wartlike things on Josh’s forehead, had seen the brown burns on his face and the mottled gray-white of his skin, but she’d gotten used to what Josh looked like. Seeing herself with a stubble where her hair had been and the dead white skin dangling from her face jarred loose tears of shock and horror.

  She was startled by a polite knock at the bathroom door. “Swan? You all right, child?” Leona Skelton asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she answered, but her voice was unsteady, and she knew the woman had heard.

  After a pause, Leona said, “Well, I’ve got some grub for you when you’re ready.”

  Swan thanked her and said she’d be out in a few minutes, and Leona went away. The Halloween-mask monster peered at her from the mirror.

  She had left her grimy clothes with Leona, who’d said she’d try to wash them in a pot and dry them before the fire, and so she wrapped herself up in the floppy plaid boy’s-size robe and thick white socks that Leona had left for her. The robe was part of a trunkful of clothes that had belonged to Leona’s son, Joe—who now, the woman had said proudly, lived in Kansas City with a family of his own and was the manager of a supermarket. Been meanin’ to throw that trunk out, Leona had told Swan and Josh, but somehow I just never got around to the job.

  Swan’s body was clean. The soap she’d used had smelled like lilacs, and she thought wistfully of her gardens bright with color beneath the sun. She hobbled out of the bathroom, leaving the lantern burning for Josh to see by when he took his bath. The house was chilly, and she went directly to the fireplace to warm herself again. Josh was asleep on the floor under a red blanket with his head on a pillow. Near his head was a TV tray with an empty bowl and cup on it and a couple of corn muffin crumbs. The blanket had pulled off his shoulder, and Swan bent down and tucked it up underneath his chin.

  “He told me how you two got together,” Leona said, quietly so as not to disturb Josh; he was sleeping so soundly, though, that she doubted he’d wake if a truck came through the wall. She continued into the room from the kitchen, bringing Swan a TV tray with a bowl of lukewarm vegetable soup, a cup of well water and three corn muffins. Swan took the tray and sat down in front of the fireplace. The house was quiet. Davy Skelton was asleep, and except for the occasional rush of wind around the roof there was no sound but the crackling of embers and the ticking of a windup clock on the mantel that said it was forty minutes after eight.

  Leona eased herself into a chair covered with a garish flower-patterned fabric. Her knees popped. She winced and rubbed them with a gnarled, age-spotted hand. “Old bones like to talk,” she said. She nodded toward the sleeping giant. “He says you’re a mighty brave little girl. Says once you set your mind, you don’t give up. That true?”

  Swan didn’t know what to say. She shrugged, chewing on a rock-hard corn muffin.

  “Well, that’s what he told me. And it’s good to have a tough mind. Especially in times like these.” Her gaze moved past Swan and to the window. “Everything’s changed now. All that was is gone. I know it.” Her eyes narrowed. “I can hear a dark voice in that wind,” she said. “It’s sayin’, ‘All mine… all mine.’ I don’t figure a whole lot of people are gonna be left out there, I’m sorry to say. Maybe the whole world’s just like Sullivan: blowin’ away, changin’, turnin’ into somethin’ different than what it was before.”

  “Like what?” Swan asked.

  “Who knows?” Leona shrugged. “Oh, the world’s not gonna end. That’s what I thought first off. But the world has got a tough mind, too.” She lifted a crooked finger for emphasis. “Even if all the people in all the big cities and little towns die, and all the trees and the crops turn black, and the clouds never let the sun through again, the world’ll keep turnin’. Oh, God gave this world a mighty spin, He did! And He put mighty tough minds and souls in a lot of people, too—people like you, maybe. And like your friend over there.”

  Swan thought she heard a dog barking. It was an uncertain sound, there for a few seconds and then masked by the wind. She stood up, looked out one window and then another, but couldn’t see much of anything. “Did you hear a dog bark?”

  “Huh? No, but you probably did, all right. Strays pass through town all the time, lookin’ for food. Sometimes I leave a few crumbs and a bowl of water on the porch steps.” She busied herself getting the new wood situated in the fireplace so it would catch amid the embers.

  Swan took another swallow from her cup of water and decided her teeth couldn’t take the battle with the corn muffins. She picked up a muffin and said, “Would it be okay if I took this water and the muffin out there?”

  “Sure, go ahead. Guess strays need to eat, too. Watch out the wind don’t grab you ’way, though.”
>
  Swan took the muffin and cup of water out to the porch steps. The wind was stronger than it had been during daylight, carrying waves of dust before it. Her robe flapping around her, Swan put the food and water on one of the lower steps and looked in all directions, shielding her eyes from the dust. There was no sign of a dog. She went back up to where the screen door had been and stood there for a moment, and she was about to go back inside when she thought she detected a furtive movement off to the right. She waited, beginning to shiver.

  At last a small gray shape came nearer. The little terrier stopped about ten feet from the porch and sniffed the ground with his furry snout. He smelled the air next, trying to find Swan’s scent. The wind ruffled through his short, dusty coat, and then the terrier looked up at Swan and trembled.

  She felt a deep pang of pity for the creature. There was no telling where the dog had come from; it was frightened and wouldn’t approach the food, though Swan was standing up at the top of the steps. The terrier abruptly turned and bolted into the darkness. Swan understood; it didn’t trust human beings anymore. She left the food and water and went back into the house.

  The fire was burning cheerfully. Leona stood before it, warming her hands. Under his blanket, Josh kicked and snored more loudly, then quieted down again. “Did you see the dog?” Leona asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. It wouldn’t take the food while I was standing there, though.”

  “’Spect not. Probably got his pride, don’t you think?” She turned toward Swan, a round figure outlined in orange light, and Swan had to ask a question that had occurred to her while she was basking in the tub: “I don’t mean this to sound bad, but… are you a witch?”

  Leona laughed huskily. “Ha! You say what you think, don’t you, child? Well, that’s fine! That’s too rare of a thing in this day and age!”

  Swan paused, waiting for more. When it didn’t come, Swan said, “I’d still like to know. Are you? My mama used to say that anybody who had second sight or could tell the future had to be evil, because those things come from Satan.”

  “Did she say that? Well, I don’t know if I’d call myself a witch or not. Maybe I am, at that. And I’ll be the first to tell you that not everything I see comes true. In fact, I’ve got a pretty low score for a seer. I figure life is like one of those big jigsaw puzzles you have to put together, and you can’t figure it out—you just have to go at it piece by piece, and you try to jam wrong pieces in where they don’t fit, and you get so weary you just want to hang your head and cry.” She shrugged. “I’m not sayin’ the puzzle is already put together, but maybe I have the gift of seein’ which piece fits next. Not all the time, mind you. Just sometimes, when that next piece is real important. I figure Satan would want to scatter those pieces, burn ’em up and destroy ’em. I don’t figure Old Scratch would like to see the puzzle neat and dean and pretty, do you?”

  “No,” Swan agreed. “I don’t guess so.”

  “Child, I’d like to show you something—if that’s all right with you.”

  Swan nodded.

  Leona took one of the lamps and motioned for Swan to follow. They went along the hallway, past the closed door where Davy slept, and to another door at the end of the hall. Leona opened it and led Swan into a small pine-paneled room full of bookshelves and books, with a square card table and four chairs at the room’s center. A Ouija board sat atop the table, and underneath the table was a multicolored five-pointed star, painted on the wooden floor.

  “What’s that?” Swan asked, pointing to the design as the lamplight revealed it.

  “It’s called a pentacle. It’s a magic sign, and that one’s supposed to draw in good, helpful spirits.”

  “Spirits? You mean ghosts?”

  “No, just good feelings and emotions and stuff. I’m not exactly sure; I ordered the pattern from an ad in Fate magazine, and it didn’t come with much background information.” She put the lamp on the table. “Anyway, this is my seein’ room. I bring… used to bring my customers in here, to read the crystal ball and the Ouija board for ’em. So I guess this is kinda my office, too.”

  “You mean you make money off this?”

  “Sure! Why not? It’s a decent way to make a livin’. Besides, everybody wants to know about their favorite subject—themselves!” She laughed, and her teeth sparkled silver in the lamplight. “Looky here!” She reached down beside one of the bookshelves and brought up a crooked length of wood that looked like a skinny tree branch, about three feet long, with two smaller branches jutting off at opposite angles on one end. “This is Crybaby,” Leona said. “My real moneymaker.”

  To Swan it just looked like a weird old stick. “That thing? How?”

  “Ever heard of a dowsing rod? This is the best dowsing rod you could wish for, child! Old Crybaby here’ll bend down and weep over a puddle of water a hundred feet under solid rock. I found it in a garage sale in 1968, and Crybaby’s sprung fifty wells all over this county. Sprung my own well, out back. Brought up the cleanest water you could ever hope to curl your tongue around. Oh, I love this here booger!” She gave it a smacking kiss and returned it to its resting place. Then her sparkling, impish gaze slid back to Swan. “How’d you like to have your future told?”

  “I don’t know,” she said uneasily.

  “But wouldn’t you like to? Maybe just a little bit? Oh, I mean for fun… nothin’ more.”

  Swan shrugged, still unconvinced.

  “You interest me, child,” Leona told her. “After what Josh said about you, and what the both of you went through… I’d like to take a peek at that big ol’ jigsaw puzzle. Wouldn’t you?”

  Swan wondered if Josh had told her about PawPaw’s commandment, and about the grass growing where she’d been sleeping. Surely not, she thought. They didn’t know Leona Skelton well enough to be revealing secret things! Or, Swan wondered, if the woman was a witch—good or bad—maybe she somehow already knew, or at least guessed that something was strange from Josh’s story. “How would you do it?” Swan asked. “With one of those crystal balls? Or that board over there on the table?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Those things have their uses, but… I’d do it with these.” And she took a carved wooden box from a place on one of the shelves and stepped over toward the table where the light was stronger. She put the Ouija board aside, set the box down and opened it; the inside was lined with purple velvet, and from it Leona Skelton withdrew a deck of cards. She turned the deck face up and with one hand skimmed the cards out so Swan could see—and Swan caught her breath.

  On the cards were strange and wonderful pictures—swords, sticks, goblets and pentacles like the one painted on the floor, the objects in assorted numbers on each card and presented against enigmatic drawings that Swan couldn’t fathom—three swords piercing a heart, or eight sticks flying through a blue sky. But on some of the other cards were drawings of people: an old man in gray robes, his head bowed and a staff in one hand, in the other a six-pointed glowing star in a lantern; two naked figures, a man and woman, curled around each other to form a single person; a knight with red, flaming armor on a horse that breathed fire, the hooves striking sparks as it surged forward. And more and more magical figures—but what set them to life were the colors impressed into the cards: emerald green, the red of a thousand fires, glittering gold and gleaming silver, royal blue and midnight black, pearly white and the yellow of a midsummer sun. Bathed in those colors, the figures seemed to move and breathe, to perform whatever range of action they were involved in. Swan had never seen such cards before, and her eyes couldn’t get enough of them.

  “They’re called tarot cards,” Leona said. “This deck dates from the 1920s, and each color was daubed in by somebody’s hand. Ain’t they somethin’?”

  “Yes,” Swan breathed. “Oh… yes.”

  “Sit down right there, child”—Leona touched one of the chairs—“and let’s see what we can see. All right?”

  Swan wavered, still uncertain, but she was entranced by the be
autiful, mysterious figures on those magic cards. She looked up into Leona Skelton’s face, and then she slid into the chair as if it had been made for her.

  Leona took the chair across from her and moved the lamp toward her right. “We’re going to do something called the Grand Cross. That’s a fancy way to arrange the cards so they’ll tell a story. It might not be a clear story; it might not be an easy story, but the cards’ll lock together, one upon the next, kinda like that jigsaw puzzle we were talkin’ about. You ready?”

  Swan nodded, her heart beginning to thump. The wind hooted and wailed outside, and for an instant Swan thought she did hear a dark voice in it.

  Leona smiled and rummaged through the cards, looking for a particular one. She found it and held it up for Swan to see. “This one’ll stand for you, and the other cards’ll build a story around it.” She placed the card down on the table in front of Swan; it was trimmed in gold and red and bore the picture of a youth in a long gold cape and a cap with a red feather, holding a stick before him with green vines curled around it. “That’s the Page of Rods—a child, with a long way yet to go.” She pushed the rest of the deck toward Swan. “Can you shuffle those?”

  Swan didn’t know how to shuffle cards, and she shook her head.

  “Well, just scramble ’em, then. Scramble ’em real good, around and around, and while you’re doin’ that you think real hard about where you’ve been, and who you are, and where you’re wantin’ to go.”

  Swan did as she asked, and the cards slipped around in all directions, their faces pressed to the table and just their golden backs showing. She concentrated on the things that Leona had mentioned, thought as hard as she could, though the noise of the wind kept trying to distract her, and finally Leona said, “That’s good, child. Now put ’em together into a deck again, face down, in any order you please. Then cut the deck into three piles and put ’em on your left.”