Swan Song (44 page)

Toadfrog With Golden Wings

The Last Apple Tree /

Flee the Mark of Cain /

The Good Deed Done /

Job’s Mask /

Solitary Journeyer /

A New Right Hand /

White Blossoms/

Forty-Eight - [Toadfrog With Golden

Wings]

Snow tumbled from the sullen sky, sweeping across a narrow country road in what had been, seven years before, the state of Missouri.

A piebald horse-old and swaybacked, but still strong-hearted and willing to work-pulled a small, crudely-built wagon, covered with a patched dark green canvas dome, that was a strange amalgam of Conestoga and U-Haul trailer. The wagon’s frame was made of wood, but it had iron axles and rubber tires. The canvas dome was a two-man all-weather tent that had been stretched over curved wooden ribs. On each side of the canvas, painted in white, was the legend Travelin’ Show; and, beneath that, smaller letters proclaimed Magic! Music! and Beat the Masked Mephisto!

A couple of thick boards served as a seat and footrest for the wagon’s driver, who sat draped in a heavy woolen coat that was beginning to come apart at the seams. He wore a cowboy hat, its brim heavy with ice and snow, and on his feet were battered old cowboy boots. The gloves on his hands were essential to ward off the stinging wind, and a woolen plaid scarf was wrapped around the lower part of his face; just his eyes-a shade between hazel and topaz-and a slice of rough, wrinkled skin were exposed to the elements.

The wagon moved slowly across a snow-covered landscape, past black, dense forests stripped bare of leaves. On each side of the road, an occasional barn or farmhouse had collapsed under the weight of seven years of winter, and the only signs of life were black crows that pecked fitfully at the frozen earth.

A few yards behind the wagon, a large figure in a long, billowing gray overcoat trudged along, booted feet crunching on snow. He kept his hands thrust into the pockets of his brown corduroy trousers, and his entire head was covered with a black ski mask, the eyes and mouth ringed with red. His shoulders were bent under the whiplash of wind, and his legs ached with the cold. About ten feet behind him, a terrier followed, its coat white with snow.

I smell smoke, Rusty Weathers thought, and he narrowed his eyes to peer through the white curtain before him. Then the wind shifted direction, gnawing at him from another angle, and the smell of woodsmoke-if it had really been there at all-was gone. But in another few minutes he thought they must be getting near civilization; on the right, scrawled in red paint on the broad trunk of a leafless oak tree, was BURN YOUR DEAD.

Signs like that were commonplace, usually announcing that they were coming into a settled area. There could be either a village ahead or a ghost town full of skeletons, depending on what the radiation had done.

The wind shifted again, and Rusty caught that aroma of smoke. They were going up a gentle grade, Mule laboring as best he could but in no hurry. Rusty didn’t push him. What was the use? If they could find shelter for the night, fine; if not, they’d make do somehow. Over the course of seven long years, they had learned how to improvise and use what they could find to the best advantage. The choice was simple; it was either survive or die, and many times Rusty Weathers had felt like giving up and lying down, but either Josh or Swan had kept him going with jokes or taunts-just as he had kept both of them alive over the years. They were a team that included Mule and Killer as well, and on the coldest nights when they’d had to sleep with minimal shelter, the warmth of the two animals had kept Rusty, Josh and Swan from freezing to death.

After all, Rusty thought with a faint, grim smile beneath the plaid scarf, the show must go on!

As they reached the top of the grade and started down on the winding road Rusty caught a yellow glint through the falling snow off to the right. The light was obscured by dead trees for a minute-but then there it was again, and Rusty felt sure it was the glint of a lantern or a fire. He knew calling to Josh was useless, both because of the wind and because Josh’s hearing wasn’t too good. He reined Mule in and pressed down with his boot a wooden lever that locked the front axle. Then he climbed down off the seat and went back to show Josh the light and tell him he was going to follow it.

Josh nodded. Only one eye showed through the black ski mask. The other was obscured by a gray, scablike growth of flesh.

Rusty climbed back onto the wagon’s seat, released the brake and gave a gentle flick to the reins. Mule started off without hesitation, and Rusty figured he’d smelled the smoke and knew shelter might be near. Another road, narrower yet and unpaved, curved to the right over snow-covered fields. The glint of light got stronger, and soon Rusty could make out a farmhouse ahead, light glowing through a window. Other outbuildings were set off beside the house, including a small barn. Rusty noted that the woods had been cut away from around the house in all directions, and hundreds of stumps stuck up through the snow. There was just one dead tree remaining, small and skinny, standing about thirty yards in front of the house. He smelled the aroma of burning wood and figured that the forest was being consumed in somebody’s fireplace. But burning wood didn’t smell the same as it had before the seventeenth of July, and radiation had seeped into the forests; the smoke had a chemical odor, like burning plastic. Rusty remembered the sweet aroma of clean logs in a fireplace, and he figured that particular scent was lost forever, just like the taste of clean water. Now all the water tasted skunky and left a film on the inside of the mouth; drinking water from melted snow-which was about all the remaining supply-brought on headaches, stomach pains and blurred vision if consumed in too large a dose. Fresh water, like from a well or a bottled supply, was as valuable now as any fine French wine in the world that used to be.

Rusty pulled Mule up in front of the house and braked the wagon. His heart was beating harder. Here comes the tricky part, he thought. Plenty of times they’d been fired on when they stopped to ask for shelter, and Rusty carried the scar of a bullet crease across his left cheek.

There was no movement from the house. Rusty reached back and partially unzipped the tent’s flap. Within, distributed around the wagon so as to keep its weight balanced, was their meager total of supplies: a few plastic jugs of water, some cans of beans, a bag of charcoal briquettes, extra clothes and blankets, their sleeping bags and the old Martin acoustic guitar Rusty was teaching himself to play. Music always drew people, gave them something to break the monotony; in one town, a grateful woman had given them a chicken when Rusty had painstakingly picked out the chords of “Moon River” for her. He’d found the guitar and a pile of songbooks in the dead town of Sterling, Colorado.

“Where are we?” the girl asked from the tent’s interior. She’d been curled up in her sleeping bag, listening to the restless whine of the wind. Her speech was garbled, but when she spoke slowly and carefully Rusty could understand it.

“We’re at a house. Maybe we can use their barn for the night.” He glanced over to the red blanket that was wrapped around three rifles. A.38 pistol and boxes of bullets lay in a shoe box within easy reach of his right hand. Like my old mama always told me, he thought, you’ve gotta fight fire with fire. He wanted to be ready for trouble, and he started to pick up the.38 to hide under his coat when he approached the door.

Swan interrupted his thoughts by saying, “You’re more likely to get shot if you take the gun.”

He hesitated, recalling that he’d been carrying a rifle when that bullet had streaked across his cheek. “Yeah, I reckon so,” he agreed. “Wish me luck.” He zipped the flap again and got down off the wagon, took a deep breath of wintry air and approached the house. Josh stood by the wagon, watching, and Killer relieved himself next to a stump.

Rusty started to knock on the door, but as he raised his fist a slit opened in the door’s center and the barrel of a rifle slid smoothly out to stare him in the face. Oh, shit, he thought, but his legs had locked and he stood helplessly.

“Who are you and what do you want?” a man’s voice asked.

Rusty lifted his hands. “Name’s Rusty Weathers. Me and my two friends out there need a place to shelter before it gets too dark. I saw your light from the road, and I see you’ve got a barn, so I was wonderin’ if-”

“Where’d you come from?”

“West of here. We passed through Howes Mill and Bixby.”

“Ain’t nothin’ left of them towns.”

“I know. Please, mister, all we want is a place to sleep. We’ve got a horse that sure could use a roof over his head.”

“Take off that kerchief and lemme see your face. Who you tryin’ to look like? Jesse James?”

Rusty did as the man told him. There was silence for a moment. “It’s awful cold out here, mister,” Rusty said. The silence stretched longer. Rusty could hear the man talking to someone else, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Then the rifle barrel was suddenly withdrawn into the house, and Rusty let his breath out in a white plume. The door was unbolted-several bolts were thrown back-and then it opened.

A gaunt, hard-looking man-about sixty or so, with curly white hair and the untrimmed white beard of a hermit-stood before him, the rifle held at his side but still ready. The man’s face was so tough and wrinkled it resembled carved stone, and his dark brown eyes moved from Rusty to the wagon. “What’s that say on the side there? Travelin’ Show? What in the name of Judas is that?”

“Just what it says. We’re… we’re entertainers.”

An elderly, white-haired woman in blue slacks and a heavy white sweater peered warily over the man’s shoulder. “Entertainers,” the man repeated, and he frowned as if he’d smelled something bad. His gaze came back to Rusty. “You entertainers got any food?”

“We’ve got some canned food. Beans and stuff.”

“We’ve got a pot of coffee and a little bit of salt pork. Put your wagon in the barn and bring your beans.” Then he closed the door in Rusty’s face.

When Rusty had driven the wagon into the barn, he and Josh untied Mule’s traces so the horse could get to a small pile of straw and some dried corncobs. Josh poured water into a pail for Mule and found a discarded Mason jar for Killer to drink water from. The barn was well constructed and kept the wind out, so neither animal would be in danger of freezing when the light went out and the real cold descended.

“What do you think?” Josh asked Rusty quietly. “Can she go in?”

“I don’t know. They seem okay, but a mite jittery.”

“She can use the heat, if they’ve got a fire going.” Josh blew into his hands and bent over to massage his aching knees. “We can make them understand it’s not contagious.”

“We don’t know it’s not.”

“You haven’t caught it, have you? If it was contagious, you’d have caught it long before now, don’t you think?”

Rusty nodded. “Yeah. But how are we gonna make them believe that?”

The rear flap of the wagon’s canvas dome was suddenly unzipped from the inside. Swan’s mangled voice said from within, “I’ll stay here. There’s no need for me to scare anybody.”

“They’ve got a fire in there,” Josh told her, walking toward the rear of the wagon. Swan was standing up, crouched over and silhouetted by the dim lamplight. “I think it’s all right if you go in.”

“No, it’s not. You can bring my food to me out here. It’s better that way.”

Josh looked up at her. She had a blanket around her shoulders and shrouding her head. In seven years, she had shot up to about five feet nine, gangly and long-limbed. It broke his heart that he knew she was right. If the people in that house were jittery, it was for the best that she stay here. “Okay,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ll bring you out some food.” Then he turned away from the wagon before he had to scream.

“Pass me down a few cans of those beans, will you?” Rusty asked her. She picked up Crybaby and tapped the cans with it, then moved over to pick up a couple. She put them into Rusty’s hands.

“Rusty, if they can spare some books, I sure would be grateful,” she said. “Anything’ll do.”

He nodded, amazed that she could still read.

“We won’t be long,” Josh promised, and he followed Rusty out of the barn.

When they had gone, Swan lowered the wooden tailgate and put a little stepladder down to the ground. Probing with the dowsing rod, she descended the ladder and walked to the barn door, her head and face still shrouded by the blanket. Killer walked along at her booted feet, tail wagging furiously, and barked for attention. His bark was not as sprightly as it had been seven years earlier, and age had taken the bounce out of the terrier’s step.

Swan paused, laid Crybaby aside and picked Killer up. Then she cracked the barn door open and cocked her head way over to the left, peering out through the falling snow. The farmhouse looked so warm, so inviting-but she knew it was best that she stay where she was. In the silence, her breathing sounded like an asthmatic rasp.

Through the snow, she could make out that single remaining tree by the spill of light from the front window. Why just one tree? she wondered. Why did he cut the rest of them down and leave that one standing alone?

Killer strained up and licked into the darkness where her face was. She stood looking at that single tree for a minute longer, and then she closed the barn door, picked up Crybaby and probed her way over to Mule to rub his shoulders.

In the farmhouse, a fire blazed in a stone hearth. Over the flames, a cast-iron pot of salt pork was bubbling in a vegetable broth. Both the stern-faced elderly man and his more timid wife flinched noticeably when Josh Hutchins followed Rusty through the front door. It was his size more than the mask that startled them, for, though he’d lost a lot of flabby weight in the last few years, he’d gained muscle and was still a formidable sight. Josh’s hands were streaked with white pigment, and the elderly man stared uncomfortably at them until Josh stuck them in his pockets.