RETURN TO SWAN LAKE

a novel by Gary Canup

Chapter 12

That night Davy was up in his room at his lighted desk, assembling a plastic scale-model of the P-51 Mustang, the best fighter plane to come out of World War II, when he heard the telephone ring downstairs. He thought nothing of it, as the calls were almost always for his parents, and he applied glue to a wing tab and carefully inserted the tab into its corresponding slot in the fuselage. He held the assembly in place, watching the clock to wait the necessary time for the glue to set. He heard his mother's voice from downstairs. "Davy?"

"Yeah?" Davy called distractedly.

"Telephone."

"Aw, Mom. I'm kind of busy right now."

"It's important, Davy. It's Jan's mother."

"Oh, I don't want to talk to her," he whined.

"Come down here, young man."

Swearing boyishly, he put down the wing-fuselage assembly and wiped his hands on a paper towel. What on earth could that woman want? He would forever associate her now with squeaking bedsprings and a pathetically weeping aftermath. He went downstairs. "What does she want?" he griped.

"It's Jan — she's run away from home."

Davy took the receiver. "Hello?" he said.

"Hello, dear. This is Mrs. Summers, Janice's mother. Forgive me for disturbing you at so late an hour but I am quite upset. You see, my daughter has run away from home."

"I know," Davy said.

"You do? You mean she's there?"

"No, I mean my mom just told me about it."

"Then she isn't at your house? I had hoped she might have gone there. You see, she got up right in the middle of dinner this evening. I told her to come back at once but she left the dining room. When I finished my meal I went up to her room to have a talk with her but she wasn't in her room. I searched the entire house and that's when I discovered her bicycle missing. Well, I waited and waited for her to come home but she never did and now it's quite late and I'm very worried. It's been dark for several hours now and she shouldn't be out alone. I began to hope that she had run away to a friend's house and you and she are so close that you were the first one I thought of. So I went up to her room and found her address book containing your number and those of a few girlfriends. You say she's not at your house then?"

"No, ma'am, she didn't come here."

"Are you sure, dear? Think of God up in Heaven watching you."

"She isn't here," Davy said. "I haven't seen her since this afternoon."

"Do you know of any girlfriends' houses she may have gone to?"

"None that I can think of."

"Then what about a place she may have run off to?"

"A place?" Davy said.

"You know, a special place or hideout, something like that."

Davy fidgeted with the telephone cord. "No, I can't think of any."

"Are you sure?"

The boy thought of God up in Heaven watching him. "Can't really think of any," he lied anyway.

"Well, I have her address book here, I'll try calling a few of her girlfriends."

"Why did she run away?" Davy asked.

"Listen, dear, if she happens to turn up at your house, I would appreciate a phone call no matter what time of night it is. Will you do that for me?"

"Sure," Davy said.

"Thank you very much. Goodbye," and she hung up the phone.

Davy carefully placed the receiver in its cradle.

"Where could she have gone to?" his mother fretted.

"She probably just went to a girlfriend's house. I'm sure she'll be fine. I'm going back up to my room."

He did and closed the door. Davy leaned back against the door. Jan had run away from home — the full impact of it had just hit him. He wondered what had happened at that house this time. It must have been something pretty bad to have sent Jan pedaling off into the night. He was quite certain that she had not fled to a girlfriend's house; if she had gone to any friend's house, it would have been to his. Her mother had known this and Jan had known that her mother had known this and that was why she had fled elsewhere. There was only one other place she might have gone. Davy would have bet anything that she had fled to Swan Lake. In fact, she was probably there right now, waiting for him to join her.

He looked at the clock. It was nearly ten. He usually went to bed at ten-thirty and his parents retired at eleven. He would have to wait for his parents to go to bed. He capped the tube of airplane glue and put away all the plastic parts. At ten-twenty-five he went downstairs and told his parents goodnight as usual. Back in his room, instead of putting on his pajamas, he pulled on his jacket and cap, found his high-powered flashlight, the one with the long barrel containing four D batteries, turned out his bedroom light, and sat on the edge of his bed, waiting.

Watching the luminous dial of his clock, he felt it was taking forever for the hour hand to reach eleven. At length he heard his father come upstairs, brush his teeth and retire to the master bedroom. Mother was still downstairs, watching TV by the sound of it; he pressed his ear to the door and thought he could hear the canned laughter of an old sitcom rerun. After a while the TV went off. Mother came upstairs and entered the bathroom and closed the door. She always took much longer than Father to prepare for bed, but at last she emerged, and the slit of light underneath Davy's door disappeared. He heard the master bedroom door click shut. The clock now said ten minutes after eleven. He would give them both a half hour to fall asleep.

At exactly 11:40 he got off his bed with his flashlight. He quietly opened his bedroom door, stepped out into the hallway and eased the door shut behind him. The hallway was bathed in an eerie glow from the streetlamp shining through the window of the guest bedroom. As he neared his parents' door the muffled snoring of his father grew louder and then softer as he crept on past and scampered down the staircase to the kitchen. The beam of his flashlight guided his way to the garage. He pressed the button that raised the garage door, wheeled his bicycle out into the driveway, then closed the garage door again. Fortunately the rather noisy garage door was situated at the opposite end of the house from the bedrooms. He hopped onto his bike and pedaled off down the driveway, glancing once over his shoulder at his parents' bedroom window, which, to his relief, remained dark and vacant.

He had never gone to Swan Lake at night before, and he hoped he could find the way. And cops — he would have to watch out for cops; they might pick up a boy his age for being out by himself so late. It seemed the entire world was asleep: there was almost no traffic in the streets, and very few planes passed overhead. The only sounds were the whir of his own rapid pedaling and the hum of electricity as he passed underneath streetlamps. The intervals between streetlamps grew wider and wider and the roads narrower and narrower the nearer he got to the country. He finally reached the outskirts of the farm and in the glow of an isolated streetlamp he dismounted and concealed his bike in the underbrush. When he combed with his flashlight that stretch of undergrowth where they usually hid their bikes, he grew alarmed that he found no trace of Jan's. Perhaps it was just harder to find in the dark. Perhaps she had hidden it farther up the road. Or perhaps he was mistaken and she had not come to Swan Lake at all. Maybe she had gone to a girlfriend's house. Or maybe she had merely decided to return home by now. Beyond the barbed-wire fence lay an inky void so forbidding that even the beam of his flashlight was willing to penetrate only so far. After he left the road, the way would be dark and uncertain and even with a flashlight he might very well get lost, and he began to have second thoughts about this whole adventure.

But if there was any possibility whatsoever that Jan might be waiting for him in their secret place, he had to plunge on. He eased himself between the barbed strands and, with his flashlight pioneering the way, set off across the dark forbidding meadow. Well-known landmarks, if visible at all beyond the limited grope of his flashlight, appeared completely different at night, sinister, deceptive, even hostile. The irregular oval of light bravely preceded him through the tall grass hopping with nocturnal insects. Thickets that shrilled at him fell eerily silent upon his approach. During one of the silences something howled in the distance. A dog? A wolf? A werewolf even? In any case some menacing creature calling attention to the pathetically vulnerable prey making its way through the meadow. A bit farther on Davy stopped breathlessly short as some startled animal fled off through the grass to a safe distance away. He fearfully aimed his flashlight in the direction the creature had fled, and spotlit two orange retinas watching him in the night. He gulped and hurried on his way, pausing now and then till reassured he was not being stalked.

Some minutes later he heard an anguished squealing, and illuminated an owl roosted in a tree. The owl was tearing apart and devouring a poor little field mouse. So he was beside a woods now. Hoping it was the same woods that hid their secret place, he entered. But the woods did not look familiar at all. Nothing did. The probe of his flashlight found nothing recognizable, and he was beginning to fear that he was hopelessly lost, that he would have to sit down against a tree and wait for dawn to light his way back to the rural road, when all of a sudden the desperate sweep of his flashlight happened to fall across a shimmering surface — that of a pond! — and he scampered down to the bank where his flashlight sought and located the tiny island! Pulled ashore on the weedy landing was their inflatable rubber dinghy!

So she had come here after all. But how would he join her? There was no way for him to cross. Studying the dinghy with his light, he noticed a rope tied to the ring on the prow, a rope he had never seen before snaking its way into the water; and he brought the light back to the bank where he stood and found the other end of the rope emerging from the water and tied to the trunk of a nearby sapling. Davy had to admire her resourcefulness. Thus she had cleverly prepared for his passage.

He laid his flashlight on the ground so that it shone on his work. It also illuminated the far bank where the ducks slept in a cluster with their heads beneath their wings, one of them, perhaps Tchaikovsky, awakening in the light and glancing about with a low disgruntled quacking. After untying the rope from the trunk of the sapling, he began to haul it towards him, feeling the drag of the dinghy as it left the island and approached him over the dark water, the soggy water-flinging rope quickly wetting his hands and sprinkling his clothing. Finally the dinghy nosed into the light and he flung the pile of soggy rope into the bow and turned around and boarded the dinghy and sitting in the stern took up the paddle and began to paddle in the direction of the island.

A few minutes later he was climbing out and hauling the dinghy up onto the weedy landing. His flashlight located the vague entrance to the coppice and on hands and knees he crawled through the overgrown tunnelway that seemed to fight him at every turn until his head poked into the black interior of the chamber.

A dark reclining figure sat up with a gasp.

"Don't be scared. It's only me."

"Davy? Oh, Davy, I knew you'd come!" She flung her arms around him and peppered his face with tearful kisses. Then she slapped him chidingly on the shoulder. "What took you so long?"

"I had to wait for my parents to go to bed, and then to sleep, and then I guess I kind of got lost. Are you all right, Jan?"

"I am now — here, with you."

"How are you doing?"

She squinted in the beam of light that searched her sleep-softened face. "Suffering from blindness, at the moment."

"Oh, sorry. So what happened, Jan? How come you ran away?"

"I can't tell you, Davy."

"Why not?"

"I just can't."

He beamed his light around the interior of the coppice. "It sure is spooky here at night," he observed.

"Good, though. I feel safe here."

"Did I wake you just then?"

"I guess I was sort of dozing. How did you know I'd be here?"

"Your mother called and told us you had run away, and I just assumed that you had come here."

"I knew she'd call you, that's why I couldn't go to your house. Besides, this is a better hideout. She'll never find me here." Jan plucked a few blades of grass out of the mossy ground. "So what did she say when she called?"

"Your mom? She just told me you ran away and she hoped you had gone to my house. She was very worried about you."

"Good. Let her worry."

"What happened, Jan? I mean really. Why did you run away?"

She continued to pluck at isolated blades of grass, her chin quivering in the feeble light, and her voice made it sound as though she were once more on the brink of tears. "I found out something, Davy. I found out she's been fucking other men. She didn't even try to deny it. She said she was doing it for me. I asked her if Daddy knew and all she did was laugh. She said, 'Do you think your father remains faithful to me during his long trips from home?'" Jan buried her face in her hands and wept.

Davy did not know what to say. All he could think to do was to pat her shoulder comfortingly. But she quickly recovered and wiped her eyes. "She expects me to do the same sort of things that she does but I won't, not ever. I'm never going back there as long as I live. I'm staying right here for the rest of my life."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Cool."

He continued to beam the light around the interior of the coppice. "Do you believe in werewolves?"

"Not particularly. Why?"

"Because I think I may have passed one in the meadow on the way over here."

"An actual werewolf?"

"It was sort of watching me with these evil red eyes."

"Probably just a dog."

"Probably. Hey, that was pretty smart what you did with the rope. Where did you get it, anyway?"

When she made no reply, he glanced down and saw that she had stretched out on the moss, the side of her head pillowed on her folded hands.

"Sleepy?"

"Exhausted. You?"

"Kind of," he admitted. "It must be after midnight by now."

He looked at her. Her eyes were closed and her lips slightly parted. She appeared to be already asleep.

"Well, good night, Jan," he said, quietly.

"G'night," she replied.

The boy lay down beside her on the moss.

"Are you staying with me then?"

"Of course," he decided.

"I love you, Davy."

He looked at her with surprise. It was almost as if she had muttered it in her sleep. When he turned off the flashlight, the darkness was complete. Soon she was breathing slumberously beside him. He lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes fixed on the small patch of sky that was visible through the foliage. A few stars glittered like diamonds pinned to black velvet. He gently touched those places on his face where she had kissed and fancied them still warm and moist. Like her, he felt safe and protected here. The pond was like a moat that defended them against the creatures of the wilderness. Nothing could get them here, nothing could harm them. Snakes, maybe, but he had never seen any here. He listened to the wild sounds of the night: the croaking of frogs, the singing of crickets, the hooting of owls, all sounding very close and intimate. Jan muttered something in her sleep. He wondered how he would react to the discovery that his parents had been unfaithful to each other. Would the revelation send him running off into the night? Probably not. But then he could never know for sure until it actually happened to him. He wanted to figure it all out, but his brain was too fatigued. Slowly his eyelids fluttered and closed, and in no time at all he too was sleeping profoundly in the night.