Soon, he felt more hands on him. Together, they pushed down harder than Grandmother could — so very soon he was nearly upright, waist-deep in the ground. His breath whistled through the tubing, cut by sobs.
He could see the other car now. It was a big American sedan, a Lincoln maybe, and as he watched the back door opened, and a third person got out.
It was Suzanne.
He tried to spit out the tube, so he could speak with her, plead with her — but as quick as he did, Uncle Evan pushed the tube back in.
Suzanne’s feet crunched on the debris as she walked over to him. He couldn’t see her face well — as she approached, she became not much more than a slender silhouette in the Lincoln’s headlights.
“Do I have to do this?” Her voice was quavering as she bent to her knees, put her hands on Michael’s shoulders. Michael thought he could see the glint of moisture on her cheeks — and was absurdly touched by it.
“It is the only way, dear,” said Grandmother. “Don’t worry — he’ll be fine. The Earth looks after its own.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought we could work it out.”
Suzanne pushed down on Michael’s shoulders, and he felt himself sinking further — the Earth tickled his collarbone, enveloped his throat and touched his chin. Suzanne had moved her hands to the crown of his skull, and now she pushed down on that. Desperate, Michael spat out the tube.
“Suzanne! Wait! Maybe we can work it out!” he gasped, as the ground came over the cleft in his chin, pressed against his lower lip. “Help me up!”
Suzanne took her hands from his head at that.
“No,” she said — although her voice was uncertain. She reached down, picked up the tube, and jammed it into his mouth. “Your Grandmother explained what happens when I help you up.” And then her tone changed, and it sounded very certain indeed. “I can’t let you use me like that.”
Then she pushed once more, and Michael was into the ground past his nose. He sucked cold, stale air through the tube. All he could see now was Suzanne’s boots, her blue-jeaned knees, and the inch or so of space between them and the flattened ground.
“That’s enough, dear,” said Grandmother, her voice sounding far away. “The Earth can do the rest.”
Suzanne’s hands lifted from Michael’s head, and he watched as her feet, her knees lifted further from the ground. He heard laughter from above — liberated, unbound from the Earth — and then that same Earth came up to fill his ears. The only sound was the beating of his heart.
The beating of his own heart, and faintly, the beating of one other.
“Grandfather,” he said, but the words were mangled through his tube and must have sounded like a bleat to anyone who lingered above. His tears made little pools on the ground in front of him. Although it was cold and hard that night, tightly packed in its own formidable grip, the Earth swallowed them greedily.
Swamp Witch and the Tea-Drinking Man
Swamp witch rode her dragonfly into town Saturday night, meaning to see old Albert Farmer one more time. Albert ran the local smoke and book, drove a gleaming red sports car from Italy, and smiled a smile to run an iceberg wet. Many suspected he might be the Devil’s kin and swamp witch allowed as that may have been so; yet whether he be Devil or Saint, swamp witch knew Albert Farmer to be the kindest man in the whole of Okehole County. Hadn’t he let her beat him at checkers that time? Didn’t he smile just right? Oh yes, swamp witch figured she’d like to keep old Albert Farmer awhile and see him this night.
That in the end she would succeed at one and fail at the other was a matter of no small upset to swamp witch; for among the burdens they carry, swamp witches are cursed with foresight, and this one could see endings clearer than anything else. Not that it ever did her much good; swamp witch could no more look long at an ending than she’d spare the blazing sun more than a glance.
As for the end of this night, she glanced on it not even an instant. For romance was nothing but scut work if you knew already the beginning, the end and all the points between. The smile on her lips was genuine as she steered past the bullfrogs, through the rushes and high over the swamp road toward the glow of the town.
By the time she was on the town’s outskirts, walking on her own two feet with the tiny reins of her dragonfly pinched between thumb and forefinger, the swamp witch had a harder time keeping her mood high. Her feet were on the ground, her senses chained and she could not ignore the wailing of a woman beset.
It came from the house which sat nearest the swamp — the Farley house — and the wailing was the work of Linda Farley, the eldest daughter who swamp witch knew was having man trouble of her own.
She had mixed feelings about Linda Farley, but for all those feelings, swamp witch could not just walk by and she knew it. There was that thing she had done with her checkers winnings. It had made things right and made things wrong, and in the end made swamp witch responsible.
“One night in a week,” swamp witch grumbled as she stepped around the swing-set and onto the back stoop. “Just Saturday. That’s all I asked for.”
Linda Farley was a girl of twenty-one. Thick-armed and -legged, but still beautiful by the standards of the town, she had been ill-treated by no less than three of its sons: lanky Jack Irving; foul-mouthed Harry Oates; Tommy Balchy, the beautiful Reverend’s son, who wrangled corner snakes for his Papa and bragged to everyone that he’d seen Jesus in a rattler’s spittle. Swamp witch was sure it would be one of those three causing the commotion. But when she came in, touched poor Linda’s shoulder where it slumped on the kitchen table, and followed her pointing finger to the sitting room, she saw it was none of those fellows.
Sitting on her Papa’s easy chair was a man swamp witch had never seen before. Wearing a lemon-coloured suit with a vest black as night rain, he was skinny as sticks and looked just past the middle of his life. He held a teacup and saucer in his hands, and looked up at swamp witch with the sadness of the ages in his eye.
“Stay put,” said swamp witch to her dragonfly, letting go of its reins. The dragonfly flew up and perched on an arm of the Farleys’ flea-market chandelier. “Who is this one?”
The man licked thin lips.
“He came this afternoon,” said Linda, sitting up and sniffling. “Came from outside. He says awful things.” She held her head in her hands. “Oh woe!”
“Awful things.” Swamp witch stepped over to the tea-drinking man. “Outside. What’s his name?”
The tea-drinking man raised his cup to his mouth. He shook his head.
“He-he won’t say.”
Swamp witch nodded slowly. “You won’t say,” she said to the tea-drinking man and he shrugged. Swamp witch scowled. People who knew enough to keep their names secret were trouble in swamp witch’s experience.
The tea-drinking man set his beverage down on the arm of the chair and began to speak.
“What if you’d left ’em?” he said. “Left ’em to themselves?”
Swamp witch glared. The tea-drinker paid her no mind, just continued:
“Why, think what they’d have done! Made up with the Russians! The Chinese! Built rockets and climbed with them to the top of the sky, and sat there a moment in spinning wheels with sandwiches floating in front of their noses and their dreams all filled up. Sat there and thought, about what they’d done, what they might do, and looked far away. Then got off their duffs and built bigger rockets, and flew ’em to the moon, and to Mars. Where’d they be?”