Swan Song (81 page)

He looked up at Friend in the doorway, and Macklin’s mind suddenly cleared like clouds blown away by a scorching wind.

My God, he thought. I’m… in league with…

Friend turned his head slightly. “Is anything on your mind?” he inquired.

“No. Nothing. I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

“Thinking gets people in trouble. Simon says! Isn’t that right, Brother Timothy?”

“Right!” the man chirped, and he clapped his mangled hands together.

Eighty-Six - [Prayer For the Final

Hour]

“I’m an entertainer,” the woman who sat on a pile of dirty pillows in the corner suddenly said.

It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d been shoved into the filthy trailer more than a hour before. She’d just sat there and watched them as Swan lay on one of the bare mattresses and Sister paced the room.

“Do you two like to party?”

Sister stopped pacing, stared at her incredulously for a few seconds and then continued. There were nine steps from wall to wall.

“Well”-she shrugged-“if we’re going to bunk together, we should at least know one another’s names. I’m Sheila Fontana.”

“Good for you,” Sister muttered.

Swan sat up and regarded the dark-haired woman with closer scrutiny. By the light of the trailer’s single kerosene lamp, Swan saw that Sheila Fontana was thin to the point of emaciation, her yellowish flesh drawn and sunken over her facial bones. The scalp showed at the crown of her head, and her black hair was dirty and lifeless. Around her on the floor was a scatter of empty food cans, bottles and other trash. The woman wore stained and dirty clothes under a heavy corduroy coat, but Swan had also seen that Sheila’s fingernails, though broken and gnawed down to the quick, had been meticulously polished bright red. On first entering the trailer, Swan had noticed the dresser covered with make-up jars, tubes of lipstick and the like, and now she glanced over at the mirror where the clipped photographs of young, fresh-faced models were taped up. “I used to be an entertainer, too,” Swan offered. “In the Travelin’ Show, with Josh and Rusty. Mostly I just stayed in the wagon, though. Rusty was a magician-he could make things disappear and appear again, just like that.” She snapped her fingers, lost in a memory of the past. She focused her attention on Sheila again. “What do you do?”

“A little of everything, honey.” Sheila smiled, showing gray and shrunken gums. “I’m an RL.”

“An RL? What’s that?”

“Recreation Lady. I ought to be out on the stroll right now, too. A good RL can score till she’s sore after a battle. It makes the men want to fuck.”

“Huh?”

“She means she’s a whore,” Sister explained. “Jesus, it smells in here!”

“Sorry, I’m fresh out of Air-Wick. You can spray some of that perfume around, if you want.” She motioned toward the gummy, dried-up bottles on the dresser.

“No, thank you.” Sister broke her rhythm and strode to the door; she twisted the handle, opened the door and faced the two guards who were just outside.

Both of them held rifles. One of the guards said, “Get back in there.”

“I’m just getting some fresh air. Do you mind?”

A rifle barrel was pushed against her chest. “Back inside,” the man ordered. He shoved her, and Sister slammed the door shut.

“Men are beasts,” Sheila said. “They don’t understand that a woman needs her privacy.”

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Sister’s voice quavered on the edge of panic. “If he finds it, he’s going to destroy it-and if I don’t let him find it, he’s going to start executing people!”

“Find what?” Sheila drew her knees up against her chest.

“It’s going to be dawn soon,” Sister continued. “Oh, God!” She leaned against the wall, hardly able to stand. “He’s going to find it! I can’t stop him from finding it!”

“Hey, lady!” Sheila said. “Anybody ever tell you you were crazy?”

Sister was close to falling apart, Swan knew; she was, too, but she would not let herself think about what was ahead. “How long have you been with them?” Swan asked the dark-haired woman.

Sheila smiled thinly-a horrible smile on that emaciated, life-drained face. “Forever,” she replied. “Oh, Christ, I wish I had some blow! Or pills. If I had just one Black Beauty, I’d slice that bastard into little-bitty pieces and fly high for a fucking week! You don’t have any dope on you, do you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Nobody’s got any. I guess it’s all been smoked, snorted and popped by now. Oh, shit.” She shook her head sadly, as if bemoaning the death of a lost culture. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Swan.”

Sheila repeated it. “That’s a nice name. An unusual name. I used to know a girl named Dove. She was hitching a ride up near El Cerrito, and Rudy and I pulled-” She stopped. “Listen!” she whispered urgently. “Do you hear that?”

Swan heard some men laughing nearby, and in the distance were the sounds of gunshots.

“The baby!” Sheila’s right hand went to her mouth. Her eyes were pools of darkness. “Listen! Can’t you hear the baby crying?”

Swan shook her head.

“Oh… Jesus!” Sheila was almost choked with terror. “The baby’s crying! Make it stop crying! Please!” She put her hands over her ears, and her body began to curl into a fetal shape. “Oh, God, please make it stop!”

“She’s out of her mind,” Sister said, but Swan got up from the mattress and approached the woman. “Better leave her alone,” Sister warned. “She looks pretty far gone.”

“Make it stop… make it stop… oh, Jesus, make it stop,” Sheila was raving, curled up in the corner. Her face gleamed with sweat in the lamplight, and the woman’s body odor almost repulsed Swan-but Swan stood over her and finally bent down at her side. She hesitated, then reached out to touch the other woman. Sheila’s hand found Swan’s and gripped it with painful pressure. Swan did not pull away.

“Please… make the baby stop crying,” Sheila begged.

“There’s… there’s no baby here. There’s no one here but us.”

“I hear the crying! I hear it!”

Swan didn’t know what kind of torment this woman had lived through, but she couldn’t bear to watch her suffer. She squeezed Sheila’s hand and leaned closer to her. “Yes,” she said softly, “I hear the crying, too. A baby crying. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes! Yes! Make it stop before it’s too late!”

“Too late? Too late for what?”

“Too late for it to live!” Sheila’s fingers dug into Swan’s hand. “He’ll kill it if it doesn’t stop crying!”

“I hear it,” Swan told her. “Wait, wait. The baby’s stopping now. The sound’s going away.”

“No, it’s not! I can still hear-”

“The sound’s going away,” Swan repeated, her face only a few inches from Sheila’s. “It’s getting quieter now. Quieter. I can hardly hear it at all. Someone’s taking care of the baby. It’s very quiet now. Very quiet. The crying’s gone.”

Sheila drew a sharp, sudden breath. Held it for a few seconds, and let it out in a soft, agonized moan. “Gone?” she asked.

“Yes,” Swan answered. “The baby’s stopped crying. It’s all over.”

“Is… is the baby still alive?”

That seemed very important to her. Swan nodded. “Still alive.”

Sheila’s mouth was slack, and a thin thread of saliva broke over the lower lip and trailed down into her lap. Swan started to work her hand free, but Sheila wouldn’t let her go.

“You need some help?” Sister offered, but Swan shook her head.

Sheila’s hand came up, very slowly, and the tips of her fingers touched Swan’s cheek. Swan couldn’t see the woman’s eyes-just two dark craters in the chalky flesh. “Who are you?” Sheila whispered.

“Swan. My name is Swan. Remember?”

“Swan,” Sheila repeated, her voice gentle and awed. “The baby… never stopped crying before. Never stopped crying… until it was dead. I never even knew if the baby was a boy or girl. It never stopped crying before. Oh… you’re so pretty.” Her dirty fingers moved across Swan’s face. “So pretty. Men are beasts, you know. They take pretty things… and they make them ugly.” Her voice cracked. She began to cry softly, her cheek resting against the girl’s hand. “I’m so tired of being ugly,” she whispered. “Oh… I’m so tired…”

Swan let her cry, and she stroked the woman’s head. Her fingers touched scabs and sores.

After a while, Sheila lifted her head. “Can… can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

Sheila wiped her eyes and snuffled her nose. “Will you… let me brush your hair?”

Swan stood up and helped Sheila to her feet; then she went to the dressing table and sat down before the mirror. Sheila took a tentative step after her, followed by another. She reached the dresser and picked up a brush that was clotted with hair. Then Sheila’s fingers smoothed out Swan’s mane and she began to brush it, long and slow, stroke after stroke.

“Why are you here?” Sheila asked. “What do they want with you?”

Her tone was hushed and reverent. Sister had heard it before, when other people in Mary’s Rest had talked to Swan. Before the girl could answer, Sister said, “They’re going to keep us here. They’re going to make Swan work for them.”

Sheila stopped brushing. “Work for them? Like… as an RL?”

“In a way, yes.”

She paused for a few seconds, then continued slowly brushing Swan’s hair. “Such a pretty thing,” she whispered, and Sister saw her blink heavily, as if trying to grapple with thoughts that she’d rather shut out.

Sister knew nothing about the woman, but she watched the way Sheila gently used the brush, her fingers moving dreamlike through Swan’s hair to loosen tangles. She saw how Sheila kept admiring Swan’s face in the mirror, then hesitantly lifting her gaze to her own shriveled, worn-out features-and Sister decided to take a chance. “It’s a shame,” she said quietly, “that they’re going to make her ugly.”

The brush stopped.

Sister glanced quickly at Swan, who’d begun to realize what the older woman was trying; then Sister came up to stand behind Sheila. “Not all men are beasts,” she said, “but those men are. They’re going to use Swan and make her ugly. They’re going to crush her and destroy her.”

Sheila looked at Swan in the mirror and then at herself. She stood very still.

“You can help us,” Sister said. “You can stop them from making her ugly.”

“No.” Her voice was weak and listless, like that of a weary child. “No, I… can’t. I’m nobody.”

“You can help us get out of here. Just talk to the guards. Get their attention and move them away from that door for one minute. That’s all.”

“No… no…”

Sister put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Look at her. Go ahead. Now look at yourself.” Sheila’s eyes shifted. “Look what they’ve made you into.”

“Ugly,” Sheila whispered. “Ugly. Ugly. Ugly…”

“Please help us get away.”

Sheila didn’t reply for perhaps a minute, and Sister was afraid that she’d lost her. Suddenly the other woman began brushing Swan’s hair again. “I can’t,” Sheila said. “They’d kill all of us. It wouldn’t matter to them, because they like to use their guns.”

“They won’t kill us. The colonel doesn’t want us hurt.”

“They’d hurt me. Besides, where would you go? Everything’s fucked up. There’s no place to hide.”

Sister cursed inwardly, but Sheila was right. Even if they did manage to escape the trailer, it would only be a matter of time before the soldiers caught them again. She looked at Swan in the mirror, and Swan shook her head a fraction to communicate the message that it was no use pursuing that tactic. Sister’s attention fell on the glass bottles of perfume atop the dresser. Now she had very little to lose. “Sheila,” she said, “you like pretty things, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

So far, so good. Here comes the kicker. “Would you like to see something that’s really pretty?”

Sheila looked up. “What?”

“It’s… a secret. A buried treasure. Would you like to see it?”

“I know all about buried treasure. Roland buried the stash. He killed the Fat Man, too.”

Sister disregarded her raving and stuck doggedly to the point. “Sheila,” she said in a confiding tone, “I know where the treasure’s buried. And it’s something that could help us. If you’re a wh-an RL,” she quickly amended, “the guards wouldn’t stop you from leaving. Like you said, you ought to be on the stroll right now. But you’ve never seen anything as beautiful as this treasure is, and if you went where I said and brought it back here, you’d be helping Swan. Isn’t that right, Swan?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“It would have to be our secret, though,” Sister continued, carefully watching Sheila’s slack, emotionless face. “You couldn’t let anybody know where you were going-and you couldn’t let anybody see you digging it up or bringing it back here. You’d have to hide it under your coat. Could you do that?”

“I… don’t know. I just did my nails.”

“The buried treasure can stop them from making her ugly,” Sister said, and she saw the thought register with slow power on the woman’s face. “But it’ll be our secret. Just between us roommates. Okay?” Still Sheila didn’t answer, and Sister said, “Please help us.”

Sheila stared at her reflection in the mirror. She hardly recognized the monster who peered back. The colonel didn’t need her, she realized. Had never needed her, except to use and abuse. Men are beasts, she thought, and she remembered the colonel’s map of a new America, with its sprawling gray Prison Area.

That was not a country she wanted to live in.

She put the brush down. She felt Swan watching her in the mirror, and Sheila knew she could not-must not-let them make such a beautiful thing as ugly as herself.