Read Swan Song for Free Online Page B

American flag, stretched out and immobile on a pole sunk into the surface of the moon.
    The picture froze, lingered for a few seconds, and then static filled the screen as the local station signed off.

Four - [The Point of No Return]
    11:48 P.M. Central Daylight Time
    Near Wichita, Kansas
    They were fighting again.
    The little girl squeezed her eyes shut and put the pillow over her head, but the voices came through anyway, muffled and distorted, almost inhuman.
    “I’m sick and tired of shit, woman! Get off my back!”
    “What am I supposed to do? Just smile when you go out drinkin’ and gamblin’ away money I earn? That money was supposed to go for the rent on this damned trailer and buy us some groceries, and by God you went out and threw it away, just threw it-”
    “Get off my fuckin’ back, I said! Look at you! You look like a worn-out old whore! I’m sick to death of you hangin’ around here givin’ me shit all the time!”
    “Maybe I oughta do somethin’ about that, huh? Maybe I oughta just pack and get my ass out of here!”
    “Go on, then! Get out and take that spooky kid with you!”
    “I will! Don’t you think I won’t!”
    The argument went back and forth, their voices getting louder and meaner. The little girl had to come up for air, but she kept her eyes tightly closed and filled her mind with her garden, just outside the window of her cramped bedroom. People came from all over the trailer court to see her garden and to comment on how well the flowers were growing. Mrs. Yeager, from next door, said the violets were beautiful, but she’d never known them to bloom so late and in such hot weather. The daffodils, snapdragons and bluebells were growing strong, too, but for a while the little girl had heard them dying. She’d watered them and kneaded the soil with her fingers, and she’d sat amid her garden in the morning sunlight and watched over her flowers with eyes as blue as robin’s eggs, and finally the death sounds went away. Now the garden was a healthy blaze of color, and even most of the grass around the trailer was a rich, dark green. Mrs. Yeager’s grass was brown, though she hosed it down almost every day; but the little girl had heard it die a long time ago, though she didn’t want to make Mrs. Yeager sad by saying so. Maybe it would come back when the rain fell.
    A profusion of potted plants filled the bedroom, sitting on cinder block shelves and crowded around the bed. The room held the heady aroma of life, and even a small cactus in a red ceramic pot had sprouted a white flower. The little girl liked to think of her garden and her plants when Tommy and her mother were fighting; she could see the garden in her mind, could visualize all the colors and the petals and feel the earth between her fingers, and those things helped take her away from the voices.
    “Don’t you touch me!” her mother shouted. “You bastard, don’t you dare hit me again!”
    “I’ll knock you on your ass if I want to!” There was the sound of a struggle, more cursing, followed by the noise of a slap. The little girl flinched, tears wetting her closed blond eyelashes.
    Stop fighting! she thought frantically. Please please please stop fighting!
    “Get away from me!” Something hit the wall and shattered. The child put her hands over her ears and lay rigidly in bed, about to scream.
    There was a light.
    A soft light, blinking against her eyelids.
    She opened her eyes and sat up.
    And there on the window screen across the room was a pulsing mass of light, a pale yellow glow like a thousand tiny birthday candles. The light shifted, like the swirls of an incandescent painting, and as the child stared at it, entranced, the noise of the fighting got quieter and far away. The light reflected in her wide eyes, moved over her heart-shaped face and danced in her shoulder-length blond hair. The entire room was illuminated by the glow of the light-creature that clung to the window screen.
    Fireflies, she