Now, swamp witch knew with regretful certainty that she would not only lose Albert this night — but possibly the town as well.
“Others fight him, you know,” she said, thinking of the Reverend and his poisonous bite. “Others love me better.”
“Oh, Ma — oh, swamp witch,” said Albert, correcting himself, “you think I don’t love you well enough? That is a stinger, my dear. I’ve as much love for you as is in me. Now come—” he draped his arm over her shoulder “—there’s little time.”
“Is there?”
“Look,” he said and pointed between the gossamer window covers to the street. There, sure enough, was the tea-drinking man — his suit was a bit mussed and the skin around his eyes was dark with snake spit, which was also why he was moving so funny, swamp witch supposed. He stood a moment in the middle of the road, tried to smooth his hair with his hand and stomped his foot like it was a hoof. Then he looked over to the smoke and book.
Was there a sense in fighting it?
Swamp witch knew better. She leaned over to Albert, and smothered the little space left between them with a kiss. He tasted of salt and wine and egg gone bad, but swamp witch didn’t mind. She let herself to it and lived in the instant — the instant prior to the end, and when she pulled away, the tea-drinking man was there at the big window, looking in with socketed eyes and a terrible, blood-rimmed grin.
“Why’d you let him win?” she said.
Tea-drinking man’s ankles cracked as he stepped away and pushed open the door, jangling the little bell at the top. The sickness was coming off him like a fever now. Swamp witch held onto Albert harder and slid her hands into her pocket.
“I ain’ feeli’ well,” said the tea-drinking man.
“You ain’t lookin’ well,” said swamp witch. “That venom’ll kill you.”
Tea-drinking man shook his head. “Nuh,” he said. “Nuh me.”
He reached around them, arm seeming to bend in two spots to do it, and lifted swamp witch’s wine glass. Unkindly, he hawked a big purple loogie the size of a river slug, let it ooze into the glass and down the side. It fizzed poisonously.
“This is who you gave me up for,” said swamp witch. Albert’s shoulders slumped.
“’Twas only a matter of time before they saw what happened here,” said Albert.
Swamp witch sighed. She snaked her hand underneath Albert’s arm. They stood there at the end now — seconds before it would occur, she could see it clear as headlights, clear as anything. She brought her lips to his, and said: “Goodbye,” then added, fondly: “Go to Hell.”
And with that, Albert stepped away and smiled his sweet smile, and in a whiff of volcanic flatulence, did as he was told and stepped to the back of the store.
And it was just her and the tea-drinking man.
“Why di’ — did you ever want this place?” asked the tea-drinking man. “I’s a rat hole.”
“A snake pit,” agreed swamp witch. “I agree with your sentiment some days. I wanted it because it was rightfully mine. Why’d you play Albert for it?”
“Symmetry,” said the tea-drinking man.
“That explains not a thing,” said swamp witch.
“All right.” The tea-drinking man took a ragged breath. “You took this place off—” he looked into the air for the word and found it in the old dangling light fixture over the cash register “—off the grid. The world ran its course, my dear — ran to dark and to light and good and evil. Why, those of us on the outside took the time we had and made things. There are towers, dear swamp witch — towers that extend to heaven and back. Great wide highways, so far across you can only see the oncoming autos as star-flecks in the mist. We’ve built rockets. Rockets! We’ve gone higher than God. And yet this place? Stayed put. All those years. Why?” He gave a drooling little sneer. “Because it’s rightfully yours?”
“That’s right,” said swamp witch. “And whatever you say, it’s better for it.”
Tea-drinking man shrugged. And although he never seemed too inflated, he seemed to deflate then. He slumped a little, in fact.
“What did you think you would accomplish?”
Swamp witch shrugged now. What did it need to accomplish? She wondered. What was the point of this accomplishment anyhow — of taking your powers and making the world into a place of your dreams? Why look ahead — when all that was there were endings and misery? Why not make a pleasant place now?
“And you fester in your swamp,” said tea-drinking man, “wallowing in the muck with your insects and rodents and frogs. I’d drain that swamp, I was you.”
Swamp witch looked at him, and as she did, she saw another ending: one in which all of Okehole County was nothing but an embodiment of tea-drinking man’s hopes and dreams — victim of his regrets.
It was an end, all right — a point too long before she buried her own children and faced her own end. Swamp witch did not like to look upon ends long, but she couldn’t look away from this one: it filled up the horizon like a great big sunset.
“You have got the sickness,” she said. “The dreaming sick. You won’t now give it to me. And you won’t give it to our town. You won’t give it to this county.”
“I already done that,” he said simply, sadly almost.
— No he hasn’t, said dragonfly, buzzing up from the back of the shop. Hop on.
The tea-drinking man tried to grab her, but he was sore and half-paralyzed now from the Reverend’s bite, and he just knocked over a box of chewing tobacco and mumbled swearwords. Swamp witch felt her middle contract and the smoke and book get big and she flung her leg over the back of dragonfly. Tea-drinking man called after her: “You shouldn’t have!” but swamp witch already had, and she wouldn’t let the itchy virus of regret get at her now.
Swamp witch soared. She climbed again to the very top of her domain — the place where the dome of stars turned solid and fruit-drunk swallows’d stun themselves dead. Dragonfly set up there, buzzing beneath the sallow light of Sirius, and swamp witch leaned over to him and asked him what he’d meant by that.
And dragonfly whispered his answer with his wings, buzzing against the hard shell of the world so they echoed down to earth. Swamp witch peered down there — at her town, her people, who from this place seemed even tinier than she was now. She smiled and squinted: could almost make them out. There was little Linda Farley, her eyes dried up and a big old garden hoe in her hands; Jack Irving, with a red plastic gas can, riding shotgun in Harry Oates’ pickup; Bess Overland with a flensing knife and Tommy Balchy, beautiful young Tommy, with a big old two-by-four that’d had a nail driven through it. He was leading the senior class from the Okehole County High School, and a bunch of straggling ninth-graders, down Brevener Street, toward the front of old Albert Farmer’s smoke and book.
Swamp witch smiled a little, with sudden nostalgia. The last time she’d seen her folk like that had been before she’d met Albert — just before, when she’d been invited to leave her home town — on pain of death pretty well. She saw that so clearly, she knew, because it was so similar to her recollection of what was about to happen.
Tea-drinking man was going to pick up the telephone in Albert Farmer’s shop, dial a long-distance operator who hadn’t heard from Okehole County in Lord knew how long, and tell the others that he’d done it. “Symme’ry,” he’d say, then repeat slowly, “sym-met-tree. Is restored. We got it.”
And at the other end, a voice that ululated like wind chimes would laugh and thank him and tell him that his cheque was in the mail, the board of directors was pleased, there was a new office with a window waiting for him, see you later and stop by the club when you get back. And tea-drinking man would with shaking hand hang up the phone, and step outside to survey his new town.