The swallow was fully alert by the time they reached the woman. It was twittering and chattering, and competing for the front window view, and it was winning. Max was spending most of his time in the back seat now, and worse, he seemed to be accepting it as his lot in life.
They heard the woman before they saw her. The sound of her harmonica stopped them and caused them to turn around and circle back until they came to the lake.
Juliet stopped the jeep, opened the door, and waited as Max jumped out and ran off into the woods. She called the bird, hoping that it would fly to her, but it stayed there on the dashboard and watched her, as if wondering exactly what it was that it was supposed to do. Juliet stood there for a few minutes, holding the door, and then she reached in and picked it up gently and carried it toward the sound of the notes.
The woman was sitting beside the lake, blowing on her harmonica. She was a big woman, taller even than Juliet, and powerfully built. Juliet liked the way she looked. She seemed strong, as if she could take on the world and win, as if she had taken on the world and won, many, many times. As Juliet walked toward her, she felt small for the first time in a very long time.
Max barked, and the old woman stopped playing and turned. “Welcome,” she said. “I’m talking to my new friend.” She pointed toward a swan that was circling around on the river in front of her. It was a wonderful, majestic, pure-white creature with a black bill and a yellow spot at the base of the bill.
The swan whistled then and it’s call was as rich and regal as the bird itself. It straightened it’s long white neck and cried out to Juliet. “Woo-ho, woo-woo, woo-ho,” it said in high-pitched cooing notes, and the woman laughed.
“I love that swan,” she said. “It is the only bird I’ve ever known that speaks in a perfect key of G. She drew in on the G–note of her harmonica and the swan answered with a mellow whistle.
“We’re a team,” the woman said.
“You must be Sophie.”
The woman nodded and smiled, and gave Juliet a small salute. Then she petted Max and said, “Who’s this?”
“His name’s Max,” Juliet said. “We’re looking for you.”
Sophie’s eyes widened in amazement. “You are?” she said. “Well that’s fine. But I wonder why?”
“Because of the swans,” Juliet said.
“Oh, the dead swans, I suppose. I guess you read about them in the paper. Well, they were wrong.”
“You mean there weren’t any dead swans?”
Sophie shrugged. “Only one, a trumpeter swan,” she said. “It just came down out of the sky one day, as if the trip south had been too much and acted real sleepy, and then it just died. The other one lived. As a matter of fact, that’s it out there in the middle of the lake. It’s a whistling swan, like me. We don’t get too many of them any more. They’ve found a new route to their winter playground, I guess. Some property developers probably replaced their old southern habitat with a bunch of profitable new condos. So anyway, they’re going another way.”
Juliet opened her palm and the swallow perched on it, taking in the surroundings for the first time.
“Well, well, a swallow,” Sophie said.
Juliet smiled and held her hand out so that Sophie could meet the tiny bird.
Sophie blew a high-pitched note on her harmonica gently, and the bird stepped foreward a bit.
“Everyone and everything has a story,” Sophie said, as she studied the band on the swallow’s leg. “And this little creature seems to have the same story as my swans.”
“Same band?” Juliet asked.
“Same band,” Sophie said. “Where did you find this one?”
“In Montana,” Juliet said. “It was just too sleepy to make it any further. Somebody injected it with something, but it’s all right now.”
“Luckier than my trumpeter.” Sophie leaned closer to the bird and looked him over.
“Was the whistling swan sleepy too?” Juliet asked.
“Quite the opposite. It was so hyper that I couldn’t get it to sleep for days. It was moving twice as fast as any creature has ever moved before. I figured that somebody must have fed it alot of coffee somewhere up north, because it took it days to quiet down.”
Juliet thought about that for awhile, and then she said “And did it have a band on his leg, too?”
“Yes,” Sophie said. “From Alberta, like that one.”
“Did the band have a number?”
“It appears,” said Sophie, “that my friend the swan there is number 36, whatever that means.”
“Did you find any other birds with bands?”
“No,” Sophie said. “But I did hear that a Canada goose came down up in Montana, near Billings I think, and it had the same band.”
Sophie raised her harmonica to her lips and blew the scale. “But I only saw two, and it was very odd. The swans were both from the same place, and they were both acting strangely, but in quite opposite ways.”
The swan moved closer. It seemed to be looking at the swallow, and after a minute the swallow noticed him, too. They stayed like that for a few minutes, staring silently at each other, and then Max noticed the swan and he raced toward the water and started to bark. The swan glided away, but in a few minutes it was back, and this time when Max barked it refused to give way. He just floated there by the bank, glancing lovingly back and forth between Sophie and the swallow.
“He adores me,” Sophie said. “I saved his life. He will follow me anywhere now.”
“They say you forgot where you buried the swan.”
Sophie laughed. “I know,” she said. “They always say things like that about old people. If a young person doesn’t remember something, well then, that’s normal. If an old person doesn’t remember the exact same thing, it’s the sign of something or other. But they’re right. I don’t remember where I buried the swan. Why should I remember? Who cares? Who’s going to visit the grave of a dead swan? What difference does it make? It’s the living one that interests me.”
“Do you think the living one was acting like it could have been drugged?” Juliet asked.
Sophie looked at her then. She looked at her hard, as if she was seeing her for the first time, and she said, “That’s interesting. That’s very interesting. Yes, in fact both of them could have been drugged. One was too tired, and one was too awake. Are you a reporter?”
“No, I work with a veterinarian.”
Sophie smiled and nodded. “I see,” she said.
“You do?”
“You’ll be a great vet. I can tell by your questions. The questions are what matter, you know. The questions are much more important than the answers.”
“Well, I have another question. Did the dead swan act like it had been drugged with a tranquilizer of some kind?”
“It would have had to be very powerful. But yes, it could have. Why? How do you know that?”
Juliet shrugged and watched the swan. It seemed calm enough now, as it sat there watching Sophie. A tranquilizer of some kind could have slowed the swallow too, but this bird had been given something else, something that speeded it up. Probably an amphetamine of some sort.
Sophie stood then and raised her harmonica to her lips and began to play. As she played, the swan on the lake began to whistle, and then the swallow hopped on Juliet’s palm and flapped its wings and rose a bit into the air, just a bit, and then came down again and closed its wings and lowered its head.
“Stop it!” Juliet cried.
Sophie stopped playing and looked at her. “Why?” she asked. “Don’t you like it?”
“No, no. It’s fine. It’s just that for a minute there I didn’t want it to fly like that. I was afraid that your music would make it go away.”
Sophie put the harmonica into her pocket and moved closer to Juliet. “It might,” she said. “But that’s as it should be, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Juliet said. And then she stood quickly and started toward the jeep. When she had gone a few feet she stopped and turned, and held out her palm again. The swallow stayed there as if frozen, and then fluttered its wings again and again, until it had worked up its courage. It flew then, flew toward Sophie, moving past her, soaring now, soaring like a glider, reaching higher, struggling, then changing its mind, banking, dropping, dropping, until it found the swan. The swallow circled, came down, settled on the swan’s back, and rested there. The swan swam gently around and around, making those mellow G-note sounds. The swallow twittered and chattered back, and then it rose again and fluttered in the air and flew back to Juliet’s outstretched hand.
“It’s making a decision,” Sophie said, and she laughed that wonderful warm laugh and said good-bye, and watched as Max led Juliet and the swallow back to the jeep.