Swan Song (89 page)

“No man was ever prouder of a daughter than I am of you,” Josh whispered in her ear. “You’re going to do wonderful things, Swan. You’re going to set things right again, and long before you come back to Mary’s Rest… I’ll hear your name from travelers, and they’ll say they know of a girl called Swan who’s grown up to be a beautiful woman. They’ll say she has hair like fire, and that she has the power of life inside her. And that’s what you must return to the earth, Swan. That’s what you must return to the earth.”

She looked up at the black giant, and her eyes shimmered with light.

“Howdy!” the farmer in the straw hat said. He was skinny, but he already had a sunburn on his cheeks. Dirt clung to his hands. “Where you folks from?”

“The end of the world,” Josh said.

“Yeah. Well… doesn’t look like the world’s gonna end today, does it? Nope! Maybe tomorrow, but surely not today!” He took off his hat, wiped his forehead with his sleeve and squinted up at the sun. “My Lord, that’s a pretty thing! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything prettier-except my wife and kids, maybe.” He held out his hand toward Robin. “Name’s Matt Taylor.”

“Robin Oakes.” He shook the man’s sturdy hand.

“You folks look like you could use a drink of water and sit a spell. You’re welcome to come down, if you like. We ain’t got much, but we’re workin’ at it. Just tryin’ to plant some beans and okra while the sun’s shinin’.”

Swan looked past him. “What kind of trees are those?”

“What? Those dead ones? Well, sad to say, those used to be pecan trees. Used to just about break the branches down come October. And way over there”-he pointed toward another grove-“we used to have peaches in the spring and summer. ’Course, that was before everything went so bad.”

“Oh,” Swan said.

“Mr. Taylor, where’s the nearest town from here?” Josh asked.

“Well, Amberville is just over the hill about three or four miles. Ain’t much there but a few shacks and about fifty or sixty people. Got a church, though. I ought to know: I’m Reverend Taylor.”

“I see.” Josh stared into the valley at the figures in the field and the grove of trees that he knew were not dead, only waiting for a healing touch.

“What’s in the bag?” The reverend nodded toward the satchel Swan had set at her feet.

“Something… wonderful,” Josh answered. “Reverend Taylor, I’m going to ask you to do something for me. I’d like for you to take these folks down to your house, and I’d like for you to sit yourself in a chair and listen to what… to what my daughter has to tell you. Will you do that?”

“Your daughter?” He frowned, puzzled, and looked at Swan. Then he abruptly laughed and shrugged. “Well, this has sure turned out to be a crazy world. Sure,” he told Josh. “Everybody’s welcome to come and sit a spell.”

“It’ll be a spell, all right,” Josh replied. He went across the road and picked up one of the knapsacks full of food and a canteen of water.

“Hey!” Robin called. “Where’re you going?”

Josh walked toward Robin; he smiled and grasped the young man’s shoulder. “Home,” he said, and then his expression went severe and menacing: one of his glowering masks from the wrestling ring. “You watch yourself, and you take care of Swan. She’s very precious to me. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Make sure you do. I don’t want to come back this way to kick your butt to the moon.” But he’d already seen how Robin and Swan looked at each other, how they walked close together and talked quietly, as if sharing secrets, and he knew he wouldn’t have to worry. He slapped Robin on the shoulder. “You’re okay, my friend,” he said-and suddenly Robin put his arms around Josh, and they embraced each other. “You take care of yourself, Josh,” Robin said. “And don’t you ever worry about Swan. She’s precious to me, too.”

“Mister?” Reverend Taylor called. “Aren’t you going down into the valley with us?”

“No, I’m not. I’ve got a ways to go yet, and I’d better get started. I want to make a couple of miles before dark.”

The reverend paused, obviously not understanding, but he saw that the black giant did indeed intend to continue on his way. “Just a minute, then! Hold on!” He reached into the pocket of his canvas jacket, and his fingers came out with something. “Here,” he said. “Take this to carry you on your way.”

Josh looked at the little silver crucifix on a chain that Reverend Taylor was offering him.

“Take it. A wayfarer needs a friend.”

“Thank you.” He put the chain around his neck. “Thank you very much.”

“Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for when you get where you’re going.”

“I do, too.” Josh started walking away, westward along the mountain road. He’d gone about ten yards when he turned back and saw Robin and Swan standing together, watching him go. Robin had his arm around her, and she was leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Field by field!” he called.

And then he was blinded by tears, and he turned away with the beautiful image of Swan burned forever in his mind.

She watched nun until he was out of sight. Except for Robin, the others had already gone with Reverend Taylor down to his house in the valley. She gripped Robin’s hand and turned her face toward the landscape of mountains and hollows, where dead trees waited to be awakened like restless sleepers. Off in the distance she thought she heard the high, joyful song of a bird-perhaps a bird just finding her wings.

“Field by field,” Swan vowed.

The days passed.

And high up where Warwick Mountain’s peak almost touched the blue sky, tiny seeds that had been scattered by the whirlwinds and stirred to life by the fingers of a girl with hair like flame began to respond to the sunlight and send out fragile green stems.

The stems searched upward through the dirt, pushed through the surface and into the warmth, and there they bloomed into flowers-red and purple, bright yellow, snow-white, dark blue and pale lavender.

They glowed like jewels in the sunshine and marked the place where Sister lay sleeping.

Weeks passed, and the road lamed him.

His face was grayed with dust, but the knapsack was lighter on his bowed and weary back. He kept walking, one step after the next, following the road as it wound westward across the land.

Some days the sun was out in full force. Some days the clouds returned and the rain fell. But the rainwater was sweet on his tongue, and the storms never lasted very long. Then the clouds would scatter again, and the sun would shine through. At midday the temperature felt like the height of summer, which he realized it must be-at least by the calendar of the world that used to be-but the nights were frosty, and he had to huddle up for warmth in a roadside barn or house, if he was lucky enough to find shelter.

But he kept going, and he kept hoping.

He’d been able to trade food for matches along the way, and when he was out in the open at night he built fires to keep the night-things at bay. One night in western Kentucky he was awakened under a starry sky, and at first he didn’t know what had jarred nun-but then he listened, and he heard it.

The sound of whistling, fading in and out, as if from a great distance.

He knew he must be losing his mind or coming down with fever-but he thought the tune was “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush; here we go ’round the mulberry bush so early in the morrrrrning…”

After that he looked for a house or barn to spend the night in.

On the road he saw signs of awakening: small green buds on a tree, a flock of birds, a patch of emerald-green grass, a violet growing from an ash heap.

Things were coming back. Very slowly. But they were coming back.

And not one day-and very few hours-passed that Josh didn’t think of Swan. Thought of her hands working the dirt, touching seeds and grain, her fingers running over the rough bark of pecan and peach trees, stirring all things to life once again.

He crossed the Mississippi River on a flatbed ferryboat captained by a white-bearded old man with skin the color of that river’s mud, and his ancient wife played the fiddle all the way across and laughed at Josh’s worn-out shoes. He stayed with them that night and had a good dinner of beans and salt pork, and in the morning when he set out he found his knapsack heavier by one pair of soft-soled sneakers that were just a little too small, but fine once the toes were sliced open.

He entered Missouri, and his pace quickened.

A violent thunderstorm stopped him for two days, and he found shelter from the deluge in a small community called, laconically, All’s Well, because there was indeed a well at the center of town. In the schoolhouse, he played poker against two teen-age boys and an elderly ex-librarian, and he wound up losing five hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars in paper clips.

The sun came out again, and Josh went on, thankful that the card sharps hadn’t taken his sneakers off his feet.

He saw green vines trailing through the gray woods on either side of the road, and then he rounded a bend and abruptly stopped.

Something was glittering, far ahead. Something was catching the light and shining. It looked like a signal of some kind.

He kept walking, trying to figure out what the sparkling was coming from. But it was still far ahead, and he couldn’t tell. The road unreeled beneath his feet, and now he didn’t even mind the blisters.

Something sparkled… sparkled… sparkled…

He stopped again and drew in his breath.

Far up the dusty road he could see a figure. Two figures. One tall, one small. Two figures, waiting. And the tall one wore a long black dress with sparkles on the front that was catching the sunlight.

“Glory!” he shouted.

And then he heard her shout his name and saw her running toward him in the dress that she’d worn every day, day in and day out, in hopes that this would be the day he came home.

And it was.

He ran toward her, too, and the dust puffed off his clothes as he picked her up and crushed her to his body, and Aaron yelled and jumped around at their feet, tugging on the black giant’s sleeve. Josh scooped Aaron up as well and held them both tightly in his arms as all of them surrendered to tears.

They went home-and there in the field beyond the houses of Mary’s Rest were apple trees, loaded down with fruit, from saplings that the Army of Excellence had missed.

The people of Mary’s Rest came out of their homes and gathered around Josh Hutchins, and by lamplight in the new church that was going up he told them everything that had happened, and when someone asked if Swan was ever coming back, Josh replied with certainty, “Yes. In time.” He hugged Glory to him. “In time.”

Time passed.

Settlements struggled out of the mud, built meeting halls and schoolhouses, churches and shacks, first with clapboard and then with bricks. The last of the armies found people ready to fight to the death for their homes, and those armies melted away like snow before the sun.

Crafts flourished, and settlements began to trade with one another, and travelers were welcome because they brought news from far away. Most towns elected mayors, sheriffs and governing councils, and the law of the gun began to wither under the power of the court.

The tales began to spread.

No one knew how they started, or from where. But her name was carried across the awakening land, and it held a power that made people sit up and listen and ask travelers what they’d heard about her, and if the stories were really true.

Because, more than anything, they wanted to believe.

They talked about her in houses and in schools, in town halls and in general stores. She’s got the power of life in her! they said. In Georgia she brought back peach orchards and apple trees! In Iowa she brought back miles upon miles of corn and wheat! In North Carolina she touched a field, and flowers sprang forth from the dirt, and now she’s heading to Kentucky! Or Kansas! Or Alabama! Or Missouri!

Watch for her! they said. Follow her, if you like, as many hundreds of others do, because the young woman called Swan has the power of life in her, and she’s waking up the earth!

And in the years to come they would talk about the blooming of the wasteland, the cultivation projects and the work being done to dig canals for flatboat barges. They would talk about the day Swan met a boatload of survivors from the destroyed land that had been called Russia, and nobody could understand their language, but she talked to them and heard them through the miraculous jeweled ring of glass that she always carried close at hand. They would talk about the rebuilding of the libraries and the great museums, and of the schools that taught first and foremost the lesson learned from the awful holocaust of the seventeenth of July: Never again.

They would talk about the two children of Swan and Robin-twins, a boy and a girl-and about the celebration when thousands flocked to the city of Mary’s Rest to see those children, who were named Joshua and Sister.

And when they would tell their own children the tale by candlelight in the warmth of their homes, on the streets where lamps burned under stars that still stirred the power to dream, they would always begin the tale with the same magic words:

“Once upon a time…”