The Summer of the Swans (10 page)

Beside her, Joe scuffed his foot in the dust and sent a cascade of rocks and dirt down the bank. When the sound of it faded, he began to call, “Charlie, hey, Charlie,” again and again.

C
harlie awoke, but he lay for a moment without opening his eyes. He did not remember where he was, but he had a certain dread of seeing it.

There were great parts of his life that were lost to Charlie, blank spaces that he could never fill in. He would find himself in a strange place and not know how he had got there. Like the time Sara had been hit in the nose with a baseball at the Dairy Queen, and the blood and the sight of Sara kneeling on the ground in helpless pain had frightened him so much that he had turned and run without direction, in a frenzy, dashing headlong up the street, blind to cars and people.

By chance Mr. Weicek had seen him, put him in the car, and driven him home, and Aunt Willie had put him to bed, but later he remembered none of this. He had only awakened in bed and looked at the crumpled bit of ice cream cone still clenched in his hand and wondered about it.

His whole life had been built on a strict routine, and as long as this routine was kept up, he felt safe and well. The same foods, the same bed, the same furniture in the same place, the same seat on the school bus, the same class procedure were all important to him. But always there could be the unexpected, the dreadful surprise that would topple his carefully constructed life in an instant.

The first thing he became aware of was the twigs pressing into his face, and he put his hand under his cheek. Still he did not open his eyes. Pictures began to drift into his mind; he saw Aunt Willie’s cigar box which was filled with old jewelry and buttons and knickknacks, and he found that he could remember every item in that box—the string of white beads without a clasp, the old earrings, the tiny book with souvenir fold-out pictures of New York, the plastic decorations from cakes, the turtle made of sea shells. Every item was so real that he opened his eyes and was surprised to see, instead of the glittering contents of the box, the dull and unfamiliar forest.

He raised his head and immediately felt the aching of his body. Slowly he sat up and looked down at his hands. His fingernails were black with earth, two of them broken below the quick, and he got up slowly and sat on the log behind him and inspected his fingers more closely.

Then he sat up straight. His hands dropped to his lap. His head cocked to the side like a bird listening. Slowly he straightened until he was standing. At his side his fingers twitched at the empty air as if to grasp something. He took a step forward, still with his head to the side. He remained absolutely still.

Then he began to cry out in a hoarse excited voice, again and again, screaming now, because he had just heard someone far away calling his name.

A
t the top of the hill Sara got slowly to her feet and stood looking down at the forest. She pushed the hair back from her forehead and moistened her lips. The wind dried them as she waited.

Joe started to say something but she reached out one hand and took his arm to stop him. Scarcely daring to believe her ears, she stepped closer to the edge of the bank. Now she heard it unmistakably—the sharp repeated cry—and she knew it was Charlie.

“Charlie!” she shouted with all her might.

She paused and listened, and his cries were louder and she knew he was not far away after all, just down the slope, in the direction of the ravine.

“It’s Charlie, it’s Charlie!”

A wild joy overtook her and she jumped up and down on the bare earth and she felt that she could crush the whole hill just by jumping if she wanted.

She sat and scooted down the bank, sending earth and pebbles in a cascade before her. She landed on the soft ground, ran a few steps, lost her balance, caught hold of the first tree trunk she could find, and swung around till she stopped.

She let out another whoop of pure joy, turned and ran down the hill in great strides, the puce tennis shoes slapping the ground like rubber paddles, the wind in her face, her hands grabbing one tree trunk after another for support. She felt like a wild creature who had traveled through the forest this way for a lifetime. Nothing could stop her now.

At the edge of the ravine she paused and stood gasping for breath. Her heart was beating so fast it pounded in her ears, and her throat was dry. She leaned against a tree, resting her cheek against the rough bark.

She thought for a minute she was going to faint, a thing she had never done before, not even when she broke her nose. She hadn’t even believed people really did faint until this minute when she clung to the tree because her legs were as useless as rubber bands.

There was a ringing in her ears and another sound, a wailing siren-like cry that was painfully familiar.

“Charlie?”

Charlie’s crying, like the sound of a cricket, seemed everywhere and nowhere.

She walked along the edge of the ravine, circling the large boulders and trees. Then she looked down into the ravine where the shadows lay, and she felt as if something had turned over inside her because she saw Charlie.

He was standing in his torn pajamas, face turned upward, hands raised, shouting with all his might. His eyes were shut tight. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. His pajama jacket hung in shreds about his scratched chest.

He opened his eyes and as he saw Sara a strange expression came over his face, an expression of wonder and joy and disbelief, and Sara knew that if she lived to be a hundred no one would ever look at her quite that way again.

She paused, looked down at him, and then, sliding on the seat of her pants, went down the bank and took him in her arms.

“Oh, Charlie.”

His arms gripped her like steel.

“Oh, Charlie.”

She could feel his fingers digging into her back as he clutched her shirt. “It’s all right now, Charlie, I’m here and we’re going home.” His face was buried in her shirt and she patted his head, said again, “It’s all right now. Everything’s fine.”

She held him against her for a moment and now the hot tears were in her eyes and on her cheeks and she didn’t even notice.

“I know how you feel,” she said. “I know. One time when I had the measles and my fever was real high, I got lost on my way back from the bathroom, right in our house, and it was a terrible feeling, terrible, because I wanted to get back to my bed and I couldn’t find it, and finally Aunt Willie heard me and came and you know where I was? In the kitchen. In our kitchen and I couldn’t have been more lost if I’d been out in the middle of the wilderness.”

She patted the back of his head again and said, “Look, I even brought your bedroom slipper. Isn’t that service, huh?”

She tried to show it to him, but he was still clutching her, and she held him against her, patting him. After a moment she said again, “Look, here’s your slipper. Let’s put it on.” She knelt, put his foot into the shoe, and said, “Now, isn’t that better?”

He nodded slowly, his chest still heaving with unspent sobs.

“Can you walk home?”

He nodded. She took her shirttail and wiped his tears and smiled at him. “Come on, we’ll find a way out of here and go home.”

“Hey, over this way,” Joe called from the bank of the ravine. Sara had forgotten about him in the excitement of finding Charlie, and she looked up at him for a moment.

“Over this way, around the big tree,” Joe called. “That’s probably how he got in. The rest of the ravine is a mass of brier bushes.”

She put one arm around Charlie and led him around the tree. “Everybody in town’s looking for you, you know that?” she said. “Everybody. The police came and all the neighbors are out—there must be a hundred people looking for you. You were on the radio. It’s like you were the President of the United States or something. Everybody was saying, ‘Where’s Charlie?’ and ‘We got to find Charlie.”’

Suddenly Charlie stopped and held up his hand and Sara looked down. “What is it?”

He pointed to the silent watch.

She smiled. “Charlie, you are something, you know that? Here we are racing down the hill to tell everyone in great triumph that you are found,
found,
and we have to stop and wind your watch first.”

She looked at the watch, saw that the stem was missing, and shook her head. “It’s broken, Charlie, see, the stem’s gone. It’s broken.”

He held it out again.

“It’s
broken,
Charlie. We’ll have to take it to the jeweler and have it fixed.”

He continued to hold out his arm.

“Hey, Charlie, you want to wear my watch till you get yours fixed?” Joe asked. He slid down the bank and put his watch on Charlie’s arm. “There.”

Charlie bent his face close and listened.

“Now can we go home?” Sara asked, jamming her hands into her back pockets.

Charlie nodded.

T
hey walked through the woods for a long time, Joe in the lead, picking the best path, with Charlie and Sara following. From time to time Sara turned and hugged Charlie and he smelled of trees and dark earth and tears and she said, “Everybody’s going to be so glad to see you it’s going to be just like New Year’s Eve.”

Sara could not understand why she suddenly felt so good. It was a puzzle. The day before she had been miserable. She had wanted to fly away from everything, like the swans to a new lake, and now she didn’t want that any more.

Down the hill Mr. Rhodes, one of the searchers, was coming toward them and Joe called out, “Mr. Rhodes, Sara found him!”

“Is he all right?” Mr. Rhodes called back.

“Fine, he’s fine.”

“Sara found him and he’s all right. He’s all right.” The phrase passed down the hill from Dusty Rhodes, who painted cars at the garage, to Mr. Aker to someone Sara couldn’t recognize.

Then all the searchers were joining them, reaching out to pat Charlie and to say to Sara, “Oh, your aunt is going to be so happy,” or “Where
was
he?” or “Well, now we can all sleep in peace tonight.”

They came through the woods in a big noisy group and out into the late sunlight in the old pasture, Sara and Charlie in the middle, surrounded by all the searchers.

Suddenly Sara sensed a movement above her. She looked up and then grabbed Charlie’s arm.

The swans were directly overhead, flying with outstretched necks, their long wings beating the air, an awkward blind sort of flight. They were so low that she thought they might hit the trees, but at the last moment they pulled up and skimmed the air just above the treetops.

“Look, Charlie, look. Those are the swans. Remember? They’re going home.”

He looked blankly at the sky, unable to associate the heavy awkward birds with the graceful swans he had seen on the water. He squinted at the sky, then looked at Sara, puzzled.

“Charlie, those are the swans. Remember? At the lake?” she said, looking right at him. “They’re going home now. Don’t you remember? They were—”

“Hey, there’s your aunt, Charlie. There’s Aunt Willie coming.”

Sara was still pulling at Charlie’s arm, directing his attention to the sky. It seemed urgent somehow that Charlie see the swans once again. She said, “Charlie, those are—”

He looked instead across the field and he broke away from Sara and started running. She took two steps after him and then stopped. Aunt Willie in her bright green dress seemed to shine like a beacon, and he hurried toward her, an awkward figure in torn blue pajamas, shuffling through the high grass.

There was a joyous yell that was so shrill Sara thought it had come from the swans, but then she knew that it had come from Charlie, for the swans were mute.

“Here he is, Willie,” Mrs. Aker called, running behind Charlie to have some part in the reunion.

Aunt Willie was coming as fast as she could on her bad legs. “I never thought to see him again,” she was telling everyone and no one. “I thought he was up in that mine. I tell you, I never thought to see him again. Charlie, come here to your Aunt Willie.”

Charlie ran like a ball rolling downhill, bouncing with the slope of the land.

“I tell you this has been the blackest day of my life”—Aunt Willie was gasping—“and I include every day I have been on earth. Charlie, my Charlie, let me look at you. Oh, you are a sight.”

He fell into Aunt Willie’s arms. Over his head Aunt Willie said through her tears to Mrs. Aker, “May you never lose your Bobby, that’s all I got to say. May you never lose your Bobby, may none of you ever lose anybody in the woods or in the mine or anywhere.”

Sara stood in the pasture by the old gray shack and watched the swans disappear over the hill, and then she watched Charlie and Aunt Willie disappear in the crowd of people, and she felt good and loose and she thought that if she started walking down the hill at that moment, she would walk with the light movements of a puppet and never touch the ground at all.

She thought she would sit down for a moment now that everyone was gone, but when she looked around she saw Joe Melby still standing behind her. “I thought you went with the others.”

“Nope.”

“It’s been a very strange day for me.” She looked at the horizon where the swans had disappeared.

“It’s been one of my stranger days too.”

“Well, I’d better go home.”

Joe walked a few steps with her, cleared his throat, and then said, “Do you want to go to Bennie Hoffman’s party with me?”

She thought she hadn’t heard him right for a moment, or if she had, that it was a mistake, like the boy who shouted, “Hey, beautiful,” at Rosey Camdon.

“What?”

“I asked if you wanted to go with me to the party.”

“I wasn’t invited.” She made herself think of the swans. By this time they could probably see the lake at the university and were about to settle down on the water with a great beating of wings and ruffling of feathers. She could almost see the long perfect glide that would bring them to the water.