RETURN TO SWAN LAKE

a novel by Gary Canup

Part One, Chapter 1

One morning early that summer they rode their bikes to the scenic rural outskirts of the suburbs. They pedaled down a lonely country road bordered with rusty barbed-wire fences overgrown with shaggy brush. Jan surged on ahead and, turning to look at him, pulling her long raven hair away from her large dark eyes, smiled at his dogged efforts to keep up.

Eventually they came upon a farm so sprawling that they spied not the remotest trace of human habitation. Naturally Jan wanted to explore it, so they dismounted and hid their bikes in the brush along the barbed-wire fence and carefully helped one another between the barbed strands and then ran hand-in-hand together through the tall grass of the sunlit meadow, their contrasting hair streaming in the breeze, their passage through the meadow flushing a multitude of grasshoppers and even a few pheasant that rose in a flustered fluttering of wings and circled way around to realight in their nesting ground after the two youngsters had passed.

They penetrated for miles, it seemed, without glimpsing a farmhouse or any other man-made structure, crossing not only meadows but also woods and fields and brooks. They entered a remote and isolated woods where they climbed a tree and, surrounded by dense summer foliage, easily imagined themselves the only two people left on earth.

Jan was chasing a rabbit through the woods when suddenly she found herself in a clearing where she was delighted to see a lovely little pond and she ran down to the bank and stood gazing at the tiny island in the center of the pond. On the island grew a dense and tangled coppice, both the coppice and the surrounding woods reflected in the surface of the pond, which rippled in a barely perceptible breeze. She called to Davy, and the boy came running. The pond, she discovered, was fed by a spring and drained by a brook that trickled off through the woods, its water therefore unsullied by the scum that collects on the surface of stagnant ponds. Wild ducks foraged in the flowering vegetation along the bank, seemingly undisturbed by the sudden intrusion of these two young humans who had stumbled quite by chance upon their lost and forgotten little sanctuary.

"Davy, we have to find some way to get to that island," she said.

"How come?" Davy said, still out of breath from his run.

"Because it's an island and islands are magical. Don't you want to get there?"

"I don't know," Davy said, looking at the island. "I guess so. But how? We can't swim there, we don't have our swimsuits."

"And the water looks too deep to wade, and even if it isn't, the bottom is likely to be mucky." She stood there nibbling her lower lip and suddenly her large dark eyes lit up and she plucked at Davy's sleeve. "Come on, I have an idea," and she ran up the bank towards the wilderness.

"Where we going, Jan?" asked Davy hurrying to keep up.

"You'll see."

They ran all the way back to the lonely country road and pulled their bikes out of the underbrush and mounted and pedaled off.

"Any idea where there's a phone around here?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Then we'll just keep riding till we find one."

Eventually they came upon a greasy rural filling station outside of which stood an old-fashioned phone booth and they dismounted and Jan sat down inside the booth and searched through the Yellow Pages. "Do you have a quarter, Davy?"

"No, I didn't bring any money."

She stood and dug into the pocket of her cutoffs and pulled out a wad of twenties.

The boy's eyes went wide. "How much is that?"

"I don't know, a few hundred, I guess. Mother won't let me have a credit card, says I'm too young. Can you believe that?" She stuffed all but one of the twenties back into her pocket. "Wait here, I'll be right back." She scampered into the station house and in a minute returned with a ten, a five, four ones and four quarters, one of which she inserted into the old rotary phone and dialed. She cleared her throat and, smiling at Davy, matured her voice: "Hello, my name is Mrs. Summers. Would you send a cab to 1149 on Route 3 please? It's a Gulf service station." She winked at Davy who grinned at her. "Yes, that's right. Thank you very much. Goodbye." She hung up and jumped to her feet. "Now, what to do with our bikes?" She noticed a grimy gas-station attendant pumping gas into a rusty old pick-up. "Hey, mister?"

He looked up at them, and they ran over to where he was working.

"Would you let us keep our bikes in your garage for a little while? I'll pay you twenty dollars now and twenty more when we pick them up."

A snaggle-toothed grin cracked the attendant's grease-smeared face. "Who dya think yar, John T. Rockefeller?"

She flashed her wad of bills, and he solemnly nodded and she handed him one of the twenties and they wheeled their bicycles into the garage. They returned to the curb and sat in the grass to wait for the cab.

"You ride cabs a lot?" Davy asked.

"All the time, especially when me and my parents lived in New York and Paris."

"I've never been in one before," Davy admitted. "You have to tip these guys, don't you?"

"No problemo," Jan said.

"So why call a cab, Jan? Why don't you just have a limousine pick us up?"

She squinted at him askance. "You making fun of me, punk?"

"What if I am? What are you going to do about it?"

"Just this!" and she jumped on him and they wrestled in the grass, Davy giggling extravagantly.

The cab pulled up and the driver gazed all around. He lowered his window. "Hey, you kids know anyone around here who called a cab?"

"That would be us!" Jan said, jumping to her feet, beautifully flushed and winded and smiling and pulling long raven tresses away from her lovely young face. Davy also got to his feet, red-faced and grinning.

The driver looked at them skeptically. "You kids got money for a cab ride?"

Jan flashed her wad.

"Hop in," he grinned.

They climbed into the back seat and shut the door.

"Where to?"

"The nearest shopping mall," she told him.

He drove away but kept glancing at them suspiciously in the rearview mirror. They were whispering secretively and giggling behind their hands.

"Did you kids rob that filling station back there? I get the feeling I'm driving for Bonnie and Clyde."

"That's who we are all right," Jan confessed. "We pulled a job on that filling station back there and then we called you to make our getaway."

Davy laughed.

"I wouldn't be surprised," the driver grinned.

Outside the main entrance to the suburban shopping mall Jan paid what they owed so far and then she and Davy emerged and she said through the front window, "Will you wait for us here, cabby? We'll be back in a short while."

"The meter is running."

"I know. We won't be long."

They sprinted into the air-conditioned mall and used the directory to locate a toy store where Jan purchased a red wagon. Next they found a sporting-goods store and went up to the clerk behind the counter.

"We'd like to purchase an inflatable rubber dinghy, please," she announced.

"Two-seater or four-seater?"

"Two-seater."

"What color? We have brown, green, and camouflage."

"What color, Davy?"

"Camouflage!" Davy said.

"Would you like our regular model or our self-inflating model?"

"Self-inflating," Jan replied.

"It's somewhat more expensive."

"No problemo," Davy said.

Jan nudged him playfully in the ribs.

The clerk came out of the stock room with a large box and loaded it into the red wagon. Jan paid and they hauled their purchase out to the curb.

"Got room in your trunk for this stuff, cabby?"

The driver got out and opened his trunk and both the wagon and the bulky box did indeed fit inside the trunk but the lid would not close over the bulky box so he had to tie down the lid with a rope that he kept in his trunk.

"You're going to earn a handsome tip for all this helpfulness, cabby."

"That's what I'm counting on," he grinned. "Where to now?"

"Back to the place where you picked us up."

Outside the rural filling station Jan said, "So what do we owe?"

When the driver told the amount, Davy winced, but Jan did not bat an eye, she counted out a little more than the fare and said: "Keep the change."

"This is a helluva generous tip," he admitted, counting the bills rather guiltily.

"You earned it. And thanks for not cheating us just because we're kids. You'd be surprised how many cab drivers in this world try to take advantage of underage fares."

The driver blushed. It wasn't as though he had not considered it, and he was pleased with himself that he was basically an honest man.

"That rope you used to tie down the trunk lid, may we purchase it from you?"

"Are you kidding? With this kind of tip, you can have it for free."

He unloaded their purchases and closed the trunk and handed the rope to Jan. "Whenever you kids want another cab ride, just ask for Otto."

"We'll do that, Otto."

He and Jan shook hands.

"So long," she said.

"Goodbye, sweetheart."

"Bye, Otto," Davy said.

"Take it easy, bub."

He got into his cab and drove away and they ran into the garage to reclaim their bikes. Jan paid the greasy attendant his additional twenty, and with something of a leer he watched her stuff the few leftover bills back into the pocket of her cutoffs. "Ah don't s'pose you'd like to git married," he grinned, showing all his rotten teeth.

"Someday, when I'm older. Thanks a lot, mister."

They wheeled their bikes out to the curb and used the rope to hitch the handle of the loaded wagon to the rear of Jan's bike. Davy had been keeping a rough tally of her expenditures and figured that she must have blithely shelled out close to four-hundred dollars. They mounted their bikes.

"Ready?" Jan said.

"Ready," Davy replied.

They pedaled off, Jan standing in order to exert the extra pedal power necessary to haul the loaded wagon. The girl kept glancing behind her.

"What's the matter, Jan?"

"I didn't like the way that gas-station guy kept looking at me and my money," she replied. "Did you see him checking out my boobs?"

"What boobs?"

"Don't be a dweeb."

But they were not followed and when they reached the outskirts of the farm they unhitched the wagon and hid their bikes in the undergrowth and Jan eased between the barbed strands and Davy handed her over the fence first the box and then the wagon. He squeezed between the barbed strands himself and with Jan pulling and Davy pushing the loaded wagon they transported their cargo through meadow and field and woods all the way back to the bank of the remote and secluded wilderness pond where they lifted the box to the ground and excitedly tore it open to reveal a squarish prehistoric egg sitting in a nest of cardboard. Jan scanned the instructions. "It says here all we need to do is pull this cord. All right, stand back."

She gave the cord a hearty yank and leaped back and the egg slowly hissed and expanded until it hatched into a beautiful two-seat camouflaged dinghy!

The two youngsters clapped their hands and then eagerly dragged their vessel into the water. Davy boarded and carefully lowered himself to the seat in the bow with his back to the island and Jan seated herself in the stern with the paddle which she used to push away from the bank and suddenly they were afloat in the gently rippling pond.

"You know how to work this thing?" Davy fretted, glancing around nervously.

"Not really but my dad used to take me rowing when I was little and I used to watch him so I should be able to work it. Island, here we come!"

She clumsily paddled a few strokes to starboard and then a few strokes to port, giggling over her ineptitude. Davy gripped the sides of the boat uneasily. The ducks paid no attention to their crossing and merely continued to forage in the vegetation along the fringes of the pond. He nervously peered over his shoulder at the island which, with its dark and tangled coppice, loomed before them like an unassailable castle, seeming to screech at them with the shrilling of insects. On their approach some animal, probably a bullfrog, plopped into the water, and the shrilling abruptly and eerily ceased.

The dinghy nudged ashore on the island. They climbed out and dragged it onto a kind of weedy landing and for a while just stood there gazing out over the pond at the surrounding dark-green density of wilderness. Such was their isolation and solitude that it was really very easy to imagine themselves the last two people on earth.

Finally Jan turned to the coppice — naturally she wanted to explore it, but Davy hesitated: there might be spiders and snakes lurking within; besides, the coppice appeared impenetrable, thickly tangled with small trees and large bushes and briars and vines. Jan carefully searched for a point of entry and found what appeared to be one leading from the weedy landing — a sort of overgrown tunnelway through which they would have to crawl, but again Davy hesitated: there might be a pack of wild dogs or bears in there. But Jan told him he was being silly and dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl through the overgrown tunnelway so that Davy had little choice but to follow.

Soon they broke through to a sort of inner chamber, about six feet high and ten feet in diameter, open only to the sky and only there in patches, and they sat on the carpet of moss and gazed around in awe. The chamber, indeed, might once have been a den for a pack of wild animals, way back when the coppice had still been a part of the wilderness and before the surrounding hollow had filled with water to become a pond impassable to beasts. Here was a hideaway miles and miles from any human habitation, lost in the heart of wildness, completely hidden away from the meddlesome world of parents and adults, and it was clear that Jan was utterly enchanted with the place.

Back outside on the weedy landing they sat beside their rubber dinghy, Jan with her knees up and her slender arms wrapped around her shins and her chin resting dreamily upon her knees, her large dark eyes fixed on the water as though hypnotized by its rippling surface.

"This is our place, Davy," she told him in a dreamy abstracted tone. "Our secret place. Nobody knows about this place but us and nobody knows how to get here but us. This is the only place left in the world where we are free to be children, where we are free to do whatever we like, without parents and adults telling us what to do." She too had a tendency to see the island, with its dense and tangled coppice, as a castle, as a final bastion of childhood protected by its broad moat and fortified by its very remoteness and seclusion against the encroachments of the adult world, and she fancifully dubbed their secret place "Swan Lake."

Davy lifted his head and smiled at her. "Swan Lake? Jan, this isn't a swan lake. It's a duck pond."

She looked at him and placed an urgent hand upon his arm. "No, Davy, you mustn't see it that way." She gazed out over the rippling surface. "Those aren't ducks out there, they're beautiful swans. And this isn't a pond, it's a gorgeous enchanted lake, and we're the ones who discovered it, and we're the only ones who can be happy here."

She stared, dreamy-eyed once more, at the water with her chin resting on her knees as if entranced, as if lost to everything but her romantic girlish fantasies. They would both soon be turning thirteen and she seemed to be more fully aware than he that their childhood was slipping away from them, and that once it happened, they would never manage to be quite so innocently happy ever again.

Davy, squinting at the setting sun, which had become like a big orange egg nesting in the upper branches of the wilderness, barely visible through the trees, with glorious shafts of it penetrating the foliage and staining the ripples of the pond a brilliant crimson, agreed then that it wasn't at all difficult to see the place as enchanted. Nonetheless, he said: "We better be going back, Jan. It's getting late."

The girl looked around at the darkening shadows and sighed. Reluctantly she got to her feet. They boarded the dinghy, and Jan paddled sedately through the crimson ripples back to the wilderness bank. They hid their dinghy in the foliage and concealed it with boughs. Then they crushed the cardboard box into the wagon and set out.

They took turns pulling one another in the wagon. When they reached the crest of a slope they both climbed in and rode bumpily down the hill. In this way they reached the lonely country road and their hidden bikes just as dusk was falling and the thickets were coming alive with the nocturne of insects.

It was nearly dark by the time they returned to modern suburbia. Jan disposed of the cardboard box in a roadside dumpster. She spotted a group of small boys playing soccer under a streetlight and watched them fondly for a while. Then she went over and asked them if they would like to have the wagon.

"Gee, thanks, lady!" they said and ran off with the wagon clattering behind them.

Jan stared after them with a pensive smile. "They took it with no questions asked," she mused. "I wish I could be that trusting."

"Kids," Davy said, shaking his head.