Swan Song

by Tracey Ward

  “Drew? You in here?”

  “Rob?”

  “It’s me.” A figure comes toward us, then stops abruptly. “Is that a gun?”

  Drew lowers the weapon and stashes it in his pocket. “No. Are we ready?”

  “When you are.” Rob bends down to look inside the car as he grabs the door handle to open it for us. “Hiya, Aid.”

  “Hi, Rob.”

  “You okay? What happened to your face?”

  “Car accident,” Drew tells him as he pulls me carefully out of the backseat. “Glass cut her pretty bad. Did a number on her shoulder too.”

  “Oh wow, I’m sorry,” Rob tells me, frowning sympathetically. “Looks like you’ve seen a doctor? If not, they have one here at the airport.”

  “No, I’m all patched up.” I try to smile, but the movement makes my face ache and I flinch. “Thanks.”

  “I’ve got some aspirin if you want it,” he offers.

  “That I’ll take you up on.”

  “It’s in the plane. I’ll get it to you before we take off.” He goes to the trunk with Drew to grab my suitcase, an excited bounce in his step. “You ever flown before?”

  “No, never.”

  “Yeah, Luce hadn’t either. She was terrified at first, but now she loves it.”

  “Did you see her this trip?”

  “Yep. Just had lunch with her.” He takes my arm and guides me out onto the runway where a small single prop plane waits for us, gleaming harshly in the sunlight. “She’s a swell girl. I’m a lucky guy.”

  “She’s pretty lucky herself.” I glance nervously over my shoulder to catch sight of Drew pulling the hangar doors closed and locking the car inside. “Does she know you’re flying us today?”

  “Nah, she wouldn’t like it. She’d think it was selfish, but I think it’s romantic. I mean, eloping is your choice, right? If that’s what you want to do instead of a big ceremony, then good on ya, I say.” He chuckles to himself, ushering me inside the narrow door to the plane. “I’m actually a little jealous. Drew will save a fortune this way. But don’t tell Lucy I said that, okay?”

  “No, of course not,” I mutter. It’s an easy promise to make. I doubt I’ll ever speak to Lucy again. Her or Rosaline.

  The thought nearly brings me to tears.

  Inside the plane is an open space no bigger than a city bus that’s packed full of crates and boxes. Large canvas mail sacks are tucked in neat lines along the walls. It’s cold inside and Rob warns me it will get colder once we take to the air.

  “Heat’s broke, sorry,” he says with a grimace. “I’ll get you an extra blanket, though. And that aspirin.”

  “It’s perfect, Rob, thank you. We’ll be fine.”

  Drew appears in the doorway and promptly drops the bags beside my suitcase to shake Rob’s hand. “It’s nice of you to do us this favor.”

  Rob smiles, shaking his hand heartily. “Of course! Any friends of Lucy’s are friends of mine. It’s really no trouble, except, well, we never talked about where you’ll be disembarking.”

  Drew matches his carefree smile, even managing sheepish shrug, and his acting abilities startle me. Indecisive, embarrassed Drew is like seeing your father in a dress – it’s creepy. “Hadn’t decided yet, really. Somewhere warmer than here was all I had in mind,” he chuckles. “Adrian, though, she has it in her head to go home and see her family’s old farmhouse in Iowa.”

  “Well, that’s perfect! Our next stop is Iowa City.” Rob turns to me, absolutely beaming. “Where in Iowa are you from?”

  “A small town just outside Iowa City,” I lie.

  He claps his hands and rubs them together vigorously. “It’s fate. Let me get you that second blanket and we’ll get under way. Take a seat anywhere that looks comfortable.”

  When we’re alone, Drew’s face returns to normal. Partially blank and intense, but now there’s a pinch of concern permanently etched in between his brows whenever he looks at me. I reach up to smooth it with my fingertip.

  It deepens. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to erase the damage I’m doing to you.”

  He gently pulls my hand down and encourages me to sit. “Don’t worry about me,” he insists, his voice hoarse.

  “When was the last time you slept?”

  “Are you feeling sick? Have you throw up today?”

  “No, and stop changing the subject. When was the last time?”

  “Night before last.”

  I nod, my suspicions confirmed. He stayed up all night while I was inside the CC. “You’re sleeping now.”

  He rubs his hand through his hair, sending dark strands falling down over his forehead. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Once we’re in the air I’ll catch some shut eye. You’ll be okay?”

  “What evil could find me?”

  He leans forward and kisses me gently. “That’s a question that’s kept me up at night since the day I met you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lincoln, Nebraska

  Winter, 1927

  Our daughter was born on a snowy night in November. No doctors could get to us out at the farm, and my aunt Sarah delivered her with the help of my niece, the oldest of Sarah’s eight children. That number staggered me. After the agony my petite little girl put me through, I couldn’t imagine wanting to go through it again.

  But then they put her in my arms. Her eyes were dark as coal but Sarah assured me they’d lighten. Her hair was darker than shadows and her skin had my olive complexion to it. I worried Drew would look at her and wonder whether or not she was actually his, but he smiled when he saw her and promised me that her nose was exactly like his before he’d had a few rearrangements. Then he held her tiny body in his big arms and he laughed. Just laughed, like she had told him the most amusing joke he’d ever heard in the world. He was that kind of enamored with her.

  We named her Alexia, after Drew’s mother, and the entire family took up my uncle’s last name to better blend us into the area. There were a lot of Mills around, some of them related, a lot of them not, making it easy to hide in the herd. And we needed that anonymity. No one knew what we were hiding from, but it was clear to them all.

  We were running from something.

  Eight months ago, Drew had helped me find my family, secured me with them, and gone back to New York to finalize all of his affairs. He did one last job, collected the cash along with every cent he had to his name in that town, and walked away. As far as anybody knew, he had gone down to a town somewhere in South America for a job and never come back.

  “People go missing in South America all the time,” he’d assured me. “Believe me. I should know.”

  I didn’t ask how. I knew, but I didn’t want to know.

  When Drew came back, my aunt Sarah and uncle Hardy helped him set up shop as a blacksmith, something he actually had quite a talent for. He was good with his hands and he liked the physical exertion of working with steel and other metals. He also liked the excuse to have weapons and guns around, something he become known for. He wasn’t just the man you went to when your horse needed shoeing. He was where you went when your gun needed fixing or you were looking for some ornate weaponry. Maybe your family name carved into an heirloom rifle or a son’s birthday etched into a gilded blade you’d keep and give to him when he was old enough. Drew was an expert, and no one asked why.

  My family was quick to help us find a small farmhouse not far from them. Drew bought it with cash the same day we saw it and we moved in immediately. I was nearly three months pregnant by then and starting to show. My family didn’t judge, but we knew the rest of the town might and we couldn’t afford to be odd or outstanding in any way, so a couple weeks after we were settled in our new house, we were married on the front porch. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t fancy. I wore a simple loose fitting dress that I’d never have looked twice at back in Chicago, but it was beautiful. The entire day was beautiful. We had family, a few new friends from in town, and Alexia was on the way. We
were so lucky in so many ways.

  But the past has a way of catching up to you, no matter where you go. It found us sooner than I thought possible.

  A month after we were married, there was a knock at the door late in the night. Drew made me lay down on the ground under the bed while he went to answer the door. I lay on my side, my still growing belly under my hand, and I watched him through the doorway as he slowly walked down the hall. His gun was in his hand – they were everywhere in our house – and he stood to the side of the front door when he reached it. He tapped the handle with his hand, jiggling the metal, and the door exploded in a spray of wood dust and splinters as a shotgun blast tore through it.

  I covered my head with my hands and stifled a scream. Two quick shots were fired, and the night went quiet. I lowered my shaking hands and lifted my head to look. There was Drew in his dark pants, bare feet, and no shirt standing exactly where I’d last seen him beside the door, but it was open now. I could see the body on the porch laying on its back staring up at the stars.

  “Addy,” Drew called calmly. “You okay?”

  “Aces.”

  “Good. I need you to come out here and look at this guy. Tell me if you recognize him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yeah. He’s dead.”

  I didn’t know the man, and Drew decided he’d been a hired hit. For me or for Drew, we’d never know.

  We buried him in the field behind the house. An unmarked grave that sat alone in the distance, visible from my kitchen window as I made breakfast the next morning. I didn’t know it then, but it wouldn’t be alone for long.

  Drew waited for his coffee and eggs sitting at the kitchen table and cleaning his gun. As he rubbed it down with an oily cloth, I caught a whiff of the cleaning solution over the smell of the eggs, and it pulled me toward him.

  “That smell,” I muttered vaguely.

  “Is it making you sick?”

  “No.” I leaned down and smelled the rag in his hand, the rag that was working over the metal and soaking his fingertips in oil. It was the scent I smelled on him, the one that had always pulled me in and made me weak. A smell I’d known wasn’t cologne, had mistaken for soap, and now I knew. Spent gunpowder, soap, and seed oils. That was his scent. The smell of a marksman.

  I wondered if the man in the field had smelled of it too.

  They’d never stop coming for us. It was never a full on assault, they had bigger fish to fry and eventually the Depression combined with the raging gang war would take its toll, dividing gangs and stealing attention. When the Capones went to jail, most of the Chicago Outfit went silent. They learned from the lessons of the Capone’s social presence and laid low, hiding the Boss’ and operating further under the radar.

  But as different as the world was becoming, there were grudges that time could not make them forget. Drew had killed a lot of men, been hired by a lot of different outfits, and the fact that he left the game with their money, blood, and secrets didn’t sit well with a lot of them. A lot of guys were rolling over for the cops from the Golden Coast all the way up into Harlem. I guess they figured it was only a matter of time before Birdy did the same.

  They didn’t know him like I did. If they did, they would never have shown up at our door.

  Drew took care of them quickly and easily, at least most of the time. There were a couple of close calls and one night, after a particularly ugly day, we argued until the sun rose about Alexia and I leaving town for good. He wanted us to walk away from him, to save ourselves from the danger that hunted us, but I reminded him it wasn’t all about him. Some of our visitors were for me, for Tommy, and where would Alexia and I be without Drew to protect us?

  My point is made crystal clear one afternoon in September of nineteen thirty-two when a familiar face appears in my kitchen window.

  I drop the plate I’m washing when I see him. It clatters to the ground, a chip breaking out of the rim and skittering across the kitchen floor; white, hard, and shining like a tooth.

  “Hal,” I whisper.

  “Been a long time, Adrian,” he tells me, his voice muffled by the pane of glass.

  I don’t ask him why he’s there. We both know why, especially when he raises a gun and points it at my face. I drop to the ground just as a shot fires, scattering glass over the counter, in the sink, and raining down on my head where I’m crouching on the floor. I immediately bolt, staying low the ground and not giving a shit about the glass cutting into my bare feet. I rush for the other side of the house where Alexia is in her crib taking her nap. The sound of the gunshot has woken her up and she’s screaming like mad, her words garbled by her sobs.

  The only one I can pick out clearly is ‘mama’.

  I make it to her room just as I hear the front door being kicked in. It slams against the wall, rebounding back at him, but his heavy footsteps tell me he’s coming. He’s close on my blood stained heels.

  “Don’t run from me!” Hal shouts after me. “You take what’s due to you!”

  I slam the door shut and immediately topple the tall dresser in front of it. As I lift Alexia from her crib, Hal makes his first attempt at opening the door. He curses and shouts when it won’t budge. Between his yelling, Alexia’s screaming, and the constant bang on the door as he tries to break it in, I’m going deaf. I’m nearly blind with panic. I need to get my little out of here, but how?

  I stand to go to the window to push it open or smash it out, whatever it takes, but then where will we go? Where can we run? It’s all open fields and flat lands out here. Nothing to stop his bullet from finding us.

  The banging stops and I immediately hit the ground, throwing my body over Alexia. Seconds later the door explodes in gunfire. He’s shooting wildly, anything to hit me, and I’m terrified he’ll succeed. The far wall is turning to swiss cheese and suddenly a wild shot connects with the floorboard not far from my head. I choke on a sob, my body convulsing with silent tears as Alexia screams away. Her small hands cling to me, digging into my skin and making me bleed with her desperation for me to save her.

  I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t.

  The gunfire stops and the banging begins again, only this time it’s effective. The door is fragmented by the bullet holes and it’s not before Hall is able to push his upper body through the mangled mess. The dresser still blocks the lower portion of the door, but when he lifts his gun to take aim on my face – his cold eyes meeting mine with so much loathing that I can’t breathe in the face of it – I know it’s over.

  “Please, Hal,” I beg him brokenly. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  He shakes his head slowly, his face unchanging. “I ain’t here for her. I want you. I want you to pay the price for what you did to Tommy!”

  “Okay, okay. You’re right.” I sit up slowly, putting my hands in the air and moving my body in front of Alexia. She curls up behind me, her fingers knotting in the fabric of my dress. “I’ll come outside with you. I’ll go easy. Just so long as you swear to me you’ll leave her alone.”

  He looks at me long and hard, not answering or reacting in any way. Finally he shakes his head. “Ain’t no reason to take a walk. Here’s as good a place as anywhere.”

  “Hal, no!” I cry, frantically trying to push Alexia away from me.

  He fires, catching me in the shoulder and knocking me to the ground. My world explodes in liquid fire that’s all too familiar. Too reminiscent of a night a million years ago when I took another slug to try to hide from this moment, but here it is. As sure as gravity, it’s found me and is pulling me down.

  Alexia is screaming, I think I might be too, but Hal is calm and quiet. He’s a blurry shadow in my peripheral but I hear the familiar sound of metal on metal. The oddly melodic tinkle of a fish full of lead shuffling in a man’s hands. He’s reloading. He’s not finished.

  I groan as I try to sit up and get to my child, but she feels a million miles away, and maybe that’s a good thing. If he’s only here for me, then she needs to
stay away. He’ll finish me off and he’ll leave her alone and Drew will come home to find one hell of a scene in this nursery but at least his daughter will be alive. He can take her and run. Run so far and so fast. Run forever. Outrun the bullet they’ve put our names on and never look back.

  Hal spins the chamber then snaps it firmly in place with a loud click! He doesn’t speak as he lifts the large black gun to point at my face. What’s there to say? We both know what this is. We both knew this was how I would end.

  “Daddy!!!” Alexia suddenly screams, calling for help at the top of her little lungs.

  A shot fires. I wait for more fire, more lava in my blood, or the end or darkness. Something. Instead I get nothing. Only a ringing in my ears and the odd sound of silence both from Alexia and from Hal. He’s disappeared from view, and when I turn I find Alexia crawling slowly toward the window. On the other side is Drew, gun slowly lowering, his grim face coming into focus. More broken glass litters the floor in front of Alexia as she makes a beeline for her father and I cry out as I pull myself forward to grab her before she cuts herself. She fights against me, fussing and growling like a small, angry animal, but I hold her tight.

  “Get back,” Drew tells me. “I’ll break out the rest of the glass and bring you both out.”

  I do as he tells me, and once the rest of the window is gone, I throw a blanket on the ground and do my best to lift Alexia up to Drew’s waiting hands. He takes her and holds her tightly to his chest where she sobs and clings to him. Her little white nightgown is stained red with my blood and I wonder how far it’s seeped into her. How much of this will stay with her forever?

  “Drew, if you hadn’t—“

  “I know,” he interrupts, his eyes meeting mine. They’re calm but tight on the edges as he runs his large hand up and down our daughter’s small back. “I know.”

  We never discuss him leaving again. He teaches me to shoot, builds secret hiding places inside the house the way the boys had for the booze in the clubs, and we move forward with our lives for as long as we have them. We accept our fate, learn from our mistakes, and stand our ground because it’s the only way we know how to live.