The Summer of the Swans

by Betsy Byars

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  At 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.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They 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 ca
n 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.

  “I’m inviting you. Bennie said I could bring somebody if I wanted to. He begged me to bring someone, as a matter of fact. He and Sammy and John and Pete have formed this musical group and they’re going to make everybody listen to them.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Why not? Other than the fact that you’re going to have to listen to some terrible guitar playing. Bennie Hoffman has had about one and a half lessons.”

  “Well...”

  “It’s not any big deal, just sitting in Bennie Hoffman’s back yard and watching him louse up with a two-hundred-dollar guitar and amplifier.”

  “I guess I could go.”

  “I’ll walk over and pick you up in half an hour. It won’t matter if we’re late. The last fifty songs will sound about the same as the first fifty.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When Sara came up the walk Wanda was standing on the porch. “What is going on around here, will you tell me that? Where is Charlie?”

  “We found him. He’s with Aunt Willie, wherever that is.”

  “Do you know how I heard he was lost? I heard it on the car radio when I was coming home. How do you think that made me feel—to hear from some disc jockey that my own brother was missing? I could hardly get here because there are a hundred cars full of people jamming the street down there.”

  “Well, he’s fine.”

  “So Mr. Aker told me, only I would like to see him and find out what happened.”

  “He got up during the night sometime—this is what I think happened—to go see the swans and ended up in a ravine crying his heart out.”

  Wanda stepped off the porch and looked across the street, leaning to see around the foliage by the fence. She said, “Is that them over there on the Carsons’ porch?”

  Sara looked and nodded. “Honestly, Charlie still in his pajamas, and Aunt Willie in her good green dress with a handkerchief tied around her forehead to keep her from sweating, and both of them eating watermelon. That beats all.”

  “At least he’s all right.”

  Wanda started down the walk, then paused. “You want to come?”

  “No, I’m going to a party.”

  “Whose?”

  “Bennie Hoffman’s.”

  “I didn’t think you were invited.”

  “Joe Melby’s taking me.”

  ‘Joe Melby? Your great and terrible enemy?”

  “He is not my enemy, Wanda. He is one of the nicest people I know.”

  “For three months I’ve been hearing about the evils of Joe Melby. Joe Melby, the thief; Joe Melby, the fink; Joe Melby, the—”

  “A person,” Sara said coldly, “can occasionally be mistaken.” She turned and went into the living room, saw Boysie sleeping by the door and said, “Boysie, we found Charlie.” She bent and rubbed him behind the ears. Then she went into the kitchen, made a sandwich, and was starting into the bedroom when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” she said, her mouth full of food.

  “Hello, I have a long-distance call for Miss Willamina Godfrey,” the operator said.

  “Oh, she’s across the street. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll go get her.”

  “Operator, I’ll just talk to whoever’s there,” Sara heard her father say.

  She said quickly, “No, I’ll go get her. Just wait one minute. It won’t take any time. She’s right across the street.”

  “Sara? Is this Sara?”

  “Yes, this is me.” The strange feeling came over her again. “If you wait a minute I’ll go get Aunt Willie.”

  “Sara, did you find Charlie?”

  “Yes, we found him, but I don’t mind going to get Aunt Willie. They’re over on the Carsons’ porch.”

  “Is Charlie all right?”

  “He’s fine. He’s eating watermelon right now.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Well, he went up into the woods and got lost. We found him in a ravine and he was dirt
y and tired and hungry but he’s all right.”

  “That’s good. I was going to come home tonight if he hadn’t been found.”

  “Oh.”

  “But since everything’s all right, I guess I’ll just wait until the weekend.”

  “Sure.”

  “So I’ll probably see you Saturday, then, if nothing turns up.”

  “Fine.”

  “Be sure to tell Willie I called.”

  “I will.”

  A picture came into her mind of the laughing, curly-headed man with the broken tooth in the photograph album, and she suddenly saw life as a series of huge, uneven steps, and she saw herself on the steps, standing motionless in her prison shirt, and she had just taken an enormous step up out of the shadows, and she was standing, waiting, and there were other steps in front of her, so that she could go as high as the sky, and she saw Charlie on a flight of small difficult steps, and her father down at the bottom of some steps, just sitting and not trying to go further. She saw everyone she knew on those blinding white steps and for a moment everything was clearer than it had ever been.

  “Sara?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Well, that was all I wanted, just to hear that Charlie was all right.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “And I’ll see you on Saturday if nothing happens.”

  “Sure.”

  “Good-by.”

  She sat for a minute still holding the receiver and then she set it back on the telephone and finished her sandwich. Slowly she slipped off her tennis shoes and looked down at her feet, which were dyed blue. Then she got up quickly and went to get ready for the party.