— Why’d you take me there? she said. Were you in league with the Reverend?
Dragonfly didn’t answer.
— Did you know about the Reverend’s double cross?
They flew low through a cloud of gnats, who all clamoured — yes! yes!
— Can I trust no one? swamp witch despaired.
— Hush, said dragonfly. It swung back through the gnats, and swamp witch could see the mists of her home, the Okehole Wetlands, rising from amid the stumps and rushes. Now let’s go home.
Swamp witch thought about how comfortable that would be. And with that, she realized she wasn’t scared of the tea-drinking man. She was scared of something else entirely.
Swamp witch dug her knees into dragonfly’s thorax and yanked at dragonfly’s hair to make a turn.
— Uh uh, she said. After all that, I’m not lettin’ you make any decisions. You know where we got to go.
Dragonfly hummed resentfully, and together they flew down — down toward the business section at the east end of town. There, the smoke and book waited for her, orange flickery light from its sign illuminating a patch in front like a hearth fire.
She reached to the ground by the road, and picked up two pebbles that seemed right, and stuffed them in her jeans, then in she went.
Albert Farmer sat in the front of the store, which was the nice section, all scrubbed and varnished and smelling of fresh pipe tobacco. The not-so-nice section, with the girly magazines and French ticklers and the cigars from Cuba — that was in the back, and this part was nothing but nice. Just some cigarettes and old-fashioned pipes in a display case, and a magazine rack that held nothing to trouble anyone — Times and Peoples and Archie comic books, Reader’s Digests and a lot of magazines about guns and cars and fixing up houses. Albert sat behind the counter, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and sipping at a glass of dark wine he made for himself.
“Sweetness.” He smiled in his way as swamp witch slipped through the mail slot and sat at the counter. “I thought you mightn’t come.”
“The town is under attack,” said swamp witch balefully.
“I know,” said Albert. He pinched off the end of the cigarette, and stepped around the counter. “Come here.”
He looked guilty as hell. But swamp witch stepped over across the floor anyhow. Dragonfly, traitorous insect that it was, flew in back to sniff cigar-leaf and browse pornography.
Swamp witch said: “You know anything more about that?”
Albert smiled. He had an easy smile — teeth too white to have smoked as much as he seemed to, half a dimple on one cheek only. It broke swamp witch’s heart every time she saw it. So when he just stepped up close to her and held the palm of his right hand forward, so it hovered over her left breast, she just let her broken old heart bask in his heat. Her arms fell upon his shoulders, and then crept down his arms, over the shortened sleeves of his summer shirt. O Lord, she thought as he pressed hard against her middle, wasn’t this what a Saturday night was for? Couldn’t it just be forever?
Swamp witch knew it couldn’t. One day a week was part of the bargain.
She pulled back and looked at Albert levelly.
“Why did you bring tea-drinking man here? Why did you let him in?”
Albert frowned. He started to deny it, but looked into swamp witch’s eye and knew he couldn’t.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“I remember the future,” she said. “I remember the ends of things.”
“There’s no joy in that,” said Albert Farmer.
“I know.” Swamp witch stepped away and shook the lust from her head. “It’s not like the beginnings. Those are the real joys.”
Albert nodded. He leaned back against the counter; appeared to think, but it was hard to say because the lights were low.
“Are they?” he finally said. “Beginnings, I mean. Are they the real joys? You ever think much about ours?” Swamp witch looked at him. “You don’t of course. Or else you’d never say that about beginnings. Maybe you’d have killed me by now.”
It was true that swamp witch didn’t think about beginnings but it wasn’t that she couldn’t.
“I loved you,” she said.
“You still do.”
“I still do. But we’re busting up. I know it.”
Albert’s smile faded and he nodded. “That’s how the night ends,” he said. “Will you have a glass of wine with me?”
Swamp witch shrugged, like a sullen teenager she thought, and mumbled, “Mayuswell,” and leaned her butt against the countertop so she wouldn’t be looking at him. She heard the wine gurgling from bottle to stemware, and Albert came around the front of her and gave her the glass. She looked into it, swirled it a bit.
“You knew it had to come,” he said. “From the day we made this place, you know this had to come.”
Swamp witch sighed. She did know — she did remember. But what pleasure was there, in recalling a game of skill against this — this roadside mephistopheles, during the worst afternoon of her life? That was well hidden away, that memory.
At least it was until this moment — this moment, when she once more recalled the crossroads, just to the south of town near the sycamore grove where she sat, bruised and angry and waiting for a bus or some conveyance to take her away. When she said:
I’d just like to send you to Hell.
And when not a bus but a shiny little two-seater from Naples rolled up, and he stepped out and set down the checker board and said, “Would you now sweet mama?” and she said, “Maybe not exactly,” and he said, “Well, care to play me?” and she said, “What for?” and he said, “What do you want?”
“I wanted my town back,” said swamp witch, bringing the wine glass from her lips, “just my town. And just Saturdays. Just Saturdays. And I won it.”
“Fair and square,” said Albert.
Swamp witch set down the glass. “I cared for it here,” she said. “It was mine and I cared for it.”
“Yes,” said Albert. “It was yours. And you cared for it, all right. But not forever. You knew that.”
“Not forever?” she said.
“Only,” he said, “so long as I could keep winning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, swamp witch. I was wandering, as I sometimes do, the other day — and I came upon a crossroads as I often do — and there who should I see but a sad old sack of a man. And I said to him as I must: Want to play a game?” Albert took a long pull from his wine glass. “And he said to me as he was wont to: I’d love a game this afternoon. And so we set down and played.”
“Checkers?” said swamp witch unkindly.
“A word game — a remembering game. And oh, he was good, and at the end of it—”
“You,” said swamp witch, “are a sorry excuse for your kind. You never lose a game you don’t want to. And now… You lost my town, didn’t you?”
“There are those who’ve been hankering for it for some time now.”
“Yes — but you.” She set her glass down. “You ought to know better.”
Oh, he ought to. But swamp witch saw in Albert Farmer’s eyes, the back of them where the embers sometimes smouldered, that he didn’t. Couldn’t help himself truly. He was a kind man and kind men helped others with the things they wanted. Fine if swamp witch were the other. But nothing but hurt or betrayal, if it be someone else.