Swan's Way (21 page)

“Their heartache ain’t yours, Ginna. Leave it be. Let go of the past. You ain’t got the strength Virginia had.”

“I can’t leave it be.” Ginna was suddenly convinced that she would go back, that she had no other choice. “Tell me what happened to them.”

“Only if you promise to marry your young man and stay right here where you belong—in the here and now.”

Staring into the old woman’s eagle-sharp eyes, Ginna knew she could not he to her or fool her. “I can’t promise, Elspeth. I’m sorry.”

“Then it’s woe be to you and to your young man.” Having said her piece, Elspeth rose from the rocker and went inside, leaving Ginna alone on the veranda to ponder her warning.

For a long time, she sat in silence, thinking over all that had happened, all that had been said. Suddenly, she realized it was getting dark. If she didn’t hurry, she would miss the last bus. But she couldn’t go without saying goodbye to Neal. She went inside to find him.

Leonard Kirkwood spotted her coming down the hallway toward his office. “If you’re looking for Neal, he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

The doctor looked solemn, worried. “I don’t know, Ginna. I came in just as he finished talking to Mr. Henderson. He slammed the phone down, rushed right past me, and took off. I thought he was going to find you.”

“He didn’t come back to the veranda.” Her heart was thundering. What could Christine’s father have said to Neal to upset him so? “I have to leave or I’ll miss my bus. Don’t you have any idea where Neal might have gone?”

“I’m afraid not. I checked his room. He isn’t there. I think he just took off to the woods to clear his head. Whatever Mr. Henderson said got to him, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll check his room again, but then I really have to go. Will you explain to him why I had to leave? Tell him I’ll call him.”

“Of course I will.”

Ginna was feeling weak and dizzy. She took the elevator to the floor above. As Dr. Kirkwood had said, Neal’s room was empty. She found a sheet of stationery and wrote him a short note, telling him she was sorry she had to leave and that she loved him.

She waited a few more minutes, hoping Neal would return. She paced his room, scanning the grounds from his window. There was no sign of him. Finally, with a sigh, she headed back downstairs.

Her heart was heavy, as she walked past the pond and saw that only one lone swan swam on the mirrorlike surface.

“Neal?” she called. “Neal, where are you?”

But the rising wind took her words and threw them back at her. As she hurried into the darkening woods, fear clutched her heart. Not fear of being alone with darkness gathering, but fear that something in that call from Christine’s father had driven a wedge between her and Neal.

“Please, Neal,” she whispered, “please don’t let anything come between us, this time.”

Neal left Ginna and Dr. Kirkwood on the veranda, when he went inside to take his call. He dreaded picking up the receiver. Some warning tone seemed to sound in his brain, as if he anticipated bad news. What could Christine Henderson’s father possibly have to say to him? And why did he have to call? If all he wanted to say was “thank you for saving my daughter,” a note would have served.

“But that would have been too easy on me,” Neal murmured.

He reached for the phone, his fingers tingling with dread. “Yes?” he said.

“Hello. Neal Frazier?”

“Yes,” he repeated.

“Mr. Frazier, this is Donald Henderson, Christine’s father.”

“I know. How is she?” Neal realized in that moment that he really did care how the little girl was, even if he had tried not to think about her for the past weeks.

“She’s fine, thanks to you.” Henderson’s voice faltered and he paused for a moment. “Our family has so much to be grateful for, and we owe it all to you, Mr. Frazier.”

“Thanks, but your wife deserves all the credit.
She
saved Christine. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Christine told me that her mother all but threw her into your arms. Still, you’re the one who brought her out safely. I owe you her life. I wish there were some way I could pay you back for your bravery.”

This was getting entirely too maudlin for Neal. One more word of gratitude, and he was going to yell at the guy to shut up. He felt hot, dizzy, the same way he had felt when he was charging out of that crashed, flaming plane. If Henderson didn’t hang up, he was either going to pass out or start screaming obscenities at the man. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

Donald Henderson was talking again, but his words weren’t connecting. Neal heard himself saying, “Yeah, sure, anytime,” but he had no idea what he was agreeing to. Finally, only blessed silence came from the receiver. Neal hung up the phone and sank into Dr. Kirkwood’s chair.

“Dammit!” he muttered. “Why’d he have to call me? Why can’t everybody just leave me alone?”

For a few moments, he rested his forehead on the palm of his hand. Henderson’s words kept swimming around in his head, mingling with the sounds of people screaming and fire crackling all around. Then the echo of Donald Henderson’s voice came to him very distinctly. He said, “Christine and I would like to come to see you at Swan’s Quarter. Would that be all right?” Neal heard his own voice reply, “Yeah, sure, anytime.”

When Neal realized what he had just agreed to, he shot up out of the chair and banged out of the door, a silent scream caught in his closed throat. He didn’t want to see them. He
couldn’t
see them! Looking into that little girl’s big blue eyes would bring it all back again. And there was certainly no way he could face the husband of the woman he had allowed to die.

In his haste, Neal brushed by someone in the hallway, someone who called his name. But he barely saw Dr. Kirkwood and didn’t speak to him. Only one thought drove him—he had to get out of this place, get away from everyone, get some fresh air.

Before Neal knew where he was going, he found himself outside, in back of the house. He never slowed, but kept running until he was in the woods beyond the greenhouse. He felt like a trapped animal. He had to keep going, before the hunter caught up with him. It was like in the desert, when the very sand around you could explode and send you flying in bits up to the oily, smoke-blackened sky. Panic made his heart beat rapidly, erratically. He stumbled and fell several times, but dragged himself on.

“Gotta get away. Can’t let them find me. Ginna? Ginna, where are you?” His words became more incoherent and jumbled, as the moments passed. He was living it all again—the fiery plane crash, Desert Storm, and another battle where he faced a ragtag army in dirty gray uniforms. He had to shoot them before they shot him.

He crouched down behind a large bush and peered around. A thick haze of smoke hung just below the tree branches in the forest. Holding his breath, he listened with full attention. The stillness all around him was suddenly filled with sounds: The crack of a twig beneath a horse’s hoof. The rustle of leaves. The click of metal against metal.

They’re coming
, he thought.
Closing in. And I’m cut off from my squad
.

Trying not to make a sound, he slumped lower behind the bush. It was getting dark. Maybe they wouldn’t see him. Maybe they’d pass on without ever knowing he was there.

“Fall out!” came a muffled command. “We’ll camp here for the night.”

Neal froze, hardly daring to breath. He knew that voice. He knew these men.

For what seemed like hours, he held perfectly still—watching, listening, hoping that the racket his heart was making wouldn’t give him away to the Rebels.

The soldiers dismounted and began pitching their tents. The air had turned cold. A fine mist of rain fell steadily. Neal shivered. He wondered where he had lost his oilskin cloak. His rifle was missing, as well. If they spied him and it came to a fight, his only defense would be his bare fists.

“Are we going up to the house tonight, Pa?” Again, Neal recognized the voice. It was Virginia’s brother, Rodney Swan.

“Not tonight. We wouldn’t want to startle the ladies. Why, your mother might shoot us for Yankees. And she’s a dead shot, you know. I taught her myself.”

“I could sure go for one of Polly’s homecooked meals.”

“You’ll have to wait awhile on that,” Colonel Swan replied.

The men began to settle down for the night. Neal knew who he was and where he was. What he couldn’t figure was how Swan’s Cavalry had ridden out of the past and into this twentieth century Virginia night. He tried to tell himself that this was all his imagination, that he could simply stand up and walk back to the house without drawing their notice. But he wasn’t quite convinced this was so.

He stayed put for a long time, until silence—except for isolated snoring—fell over the camp. Sure that the men—or ghosts?—were all asleep, he rose to his feet, ready to make a run for it. When his shoe caught on a root and he crashed to the ground, a sentry called, “Halt! Who goes there?”

Neal didn’t answer. He froze as he saw the Confederate soldier advancing toward him, rifle at the ready. Whirling toward the house, Neal took off at full speed. He glanced back only once. The Reb was in hot pursuit. A single shot rang out through the quiet woods. Neal saw the man’s face in a burst of flame. He threw up his arm to cover his eyes. Then pain burned through his right arm.

Neal sank to the ground, rolled into a ball, and groaned.

It was long after dark before they found Neal. Ginna had been gone for over three hours. The cold mist of rain that had begun at twilight hadn’t let up. By the time Leonard Kirkwood and old Zee spotted Neal’s huddled form deep in the woods, he was shivering with cold and shock.

“Step on it, Zee!” Kirkwood ordered. “Get back to the house and send help. Tell Big George and Hubert to bring a stretcher and blankets.”

Without wasting time on words, the gardener loped through the dark woods like a fox after a hare. Minutes later, he returned with a pair of hulking male nurses. The two men lifted Neal onto the stretcher and covered him with a blanket.

“Get him back to the house, fast,” Kirkwood said, “but go gently. He’s bleeding and in shock.”

Neal was vaguely aware of what was going on, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. His right arm throbbed and burned. He could feel the stickiness of his own blood soaking his shirt sleeve.

“Who was it, Neal?” Dr. Kirkwood asked. “Who shot you?”

“The Rebs,” Neal moaned. “Camped in the woods.”

Kirkwood and Zee exchanged puzzled glances.

“He’s out of his head, Doc,” Big George said. “Unless he means those gray ghosts that old Elspeth talks about all the time.”

That thought had crossed Leonard Kirkwood’s mind, too. But ghosts didn’t shoot real bullets—
did they?
“Just get him into the house. Easy on the stairs, boys.”

The next thing Neal became aware of was a bright light shining into his eyes. And again, he felt the throb of his wounded arm.

“Neal, it’s Dr. Kirkwood. I’m going to give you something for the pain. The bullet’s lodged in the fleshy part of your forearm. I’ve got to get it out.”

“Gimme whiskey, Doc, and a stick to bite on.” Neal’s voice sounded slurred and weak.

“He thinks he’s really back there, during the war,” Hubert said.

“He’s suffering from loss of blood. But he’s going to be all right, as soon as I get this bullet out.”

The shot put Neal under. Silence reigned in the room, while the doctor probed his flesh for the bullet. “There! Got it!” Kirkwood said, triumphantly. He held the piece of metal up to the light for a closer look.

“Jesus-H-Christ!” Big George exclaimed. “It’s a goddamn Civil War Minie ball!”

“It can’t be.”

“If you’d dug as many war relics in the fields around here as I have, Doc, you’d know as sure as I do. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. It
was
them Rebel ghosts that shot him!”

Dr. Kirkwood refused to discuss such an outrageous notion. “Sew him up and bandage the wound,” he ordered. “I’ll be in my office when you finish.”

Leaving Neal in the capable hands of Big George, Kirkwood left, taking the bullet with him. He meant to disprove this ghost theory immediately by checking a reference book in his office. He thumbed through several pages, before he found what he was looking for. He compared the bullet to the picture. Once he did, he poured himself a stiff Scotch, while still staring at the page of illustrations. A sound at the door made him look up.

“How’s he doing, Big George?”

“Resting. Hubert stayed with him.”

“He’ll be fine. Weak and sore for a few days, but the wound isn’t life threatening.”

Big George moved over to the desk and looked at the open book. He tapped the picture of the Minie ball with one thick finger. “I told you, Doc. That’s what it is, all right. But I never knew anybody shot by one before. I didn’t even know ghosts could fire a rifle.”

Kirkwood narrowed his eyes as he looked up at the other man. “There’s a perfectly logical explanation for this.”

“Yeah? What, Doc?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Come on. We’re going back out to those woods and have a look around.”

Big George raised his beefy hands in front of him. “Sorry, boss, not me. There ain’t no man I’m scared of, but I don’t mess with no ghosts.”

“All right. You sit with Mr. Frazier. I’ll go alone.”

And he did, only to find exactly what he had expected—
nothing
. Just a rainsoaked forest and trampled ground, where he and the others had been. Wet and cold, desperately wanting another Scotch, Kirkwood headed back to the house, shaking his head.

He looked in on Neal. His patient was sleeping soundly. Only the twitch of his eyelids hinted that he was dreaming.

“You can go on to bed,” Kirkwood told Big George.

“I’ll sit a spell with him. He’s been muttering off and on, kind of restless like.”

“Suit yourself. I’m turning in. Call me if there’s any change.”

Neal was restless, for sure. He kept seeing the sentry’s familiar face at the instant the trigger had been pulled. Neal could still feel the pain of the bullet’s impact. He knew someone had come to his aid—the Rebels themselves, he assumed. So now he must be their prisoner.

“Virginia,” he moaned. “Where are you, Virginia?”

Big George rose and went over to check the bandage. It looked secure and clean. The bleeding must have stopped. A good sign. He settled back down, dozing off and on, waking each time his patient called out for Virginia.

Ginna got home, just as the misty rain turned heavy. All the way to Winchester on the bus, she had experienced the same nagging dread that had come to her in the woods. Something was wrong. Very wrong!
But what?

She unlocked the door and hurried in. The place felt damp and chilly. She decided to build a fire before she called Neal. The minute she switched on the light in the front room, a feeling of déjà vu overwhelmed her. She glanced about, holding her breath, willing the odd sensation away. But there was no denying it; the reason was all too clear.

Her old house suddenly looked more than familiar. It wasn’t just home; it was a place she knew from Virginia’s life. The parsonage, with its big fireplace and mantel, its rough-hewn beams, its plank floors. Why, of all the places she could have chosen to rent, had she picked this one? The obvious answer sent a shiver threw her. Virginia had willed it so. She had been drawn back to the very setting of the lovers’ near-marriage and Virginia’s parting from her lover.

Suddenly, Ginna felt an overwhelming urge to talk to Neal. She hurried to the phone and dialed the number at Swan’s Quarter. It rang and rang, until finally Leonard Kirkwood answered.

“Doctor, it’s Ginna. I need to talk to Neal right now.”

“He’s sleeping, Ginna.”

“Wake him up. This is really important.”

Kirkwood hesitated before he answered her urgent plea. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ginna. I had to give him a sedative.”

“Why?”

“Well—” Again he seemed to be stalling, groping for an answer that would satisfy Ginna. “It was that call from Mr. Henderson. It disturbed him. Apparently, it was too soon for him to be reminded of the crash.”

“That couldn’t be the problem. We’ve talked about the plane crash plenty of times. He seems to have gotten over the shock of it. He’s never gotten upset talking about it.”

“This time he did,” Dr. Kirkwood answered firmly. “I told you before you left that he ran past me out of my office. He just took off out into the woods.”

“So, you sedated him after he came back?”

Another long pause. “He didn’t come back, Ginna. We had to go out and find him. When we did, he was in shock.”

“My God! What could have happened?”

“I’m not sure. But he’s sleeping now and seems to be fine.”

Ginna realized, by the hesitation in his voice, that Dr. Kirkwood wasn’t telling her everything. “Has he had a total relapse?”