None other... has ever... known.
As the verse ended, Nick pushed through to the head of the row and there in the clearing was a shack, not much more than a shanty, with a rusty trash barrel to the left and an old tire swing to the right. It hung from an apple tree that was gnarled but still green with lovely life. A porch slanted out from the house, a splintery old thing held up with old, oil-clotted jacklifters. The windows were open, and the kind summer breeze blew ragged white curtains in and out of them. From the roof a peaked chimney of galvanized tin, dented and smoky, jutted at its own old, odd angle. This house sat in its clearing and the corn stretched away in all four directions as far as the eye could see; it was broken only on the north by a dirt road that dwindled away to a point on the flat horizon. It was always then that Nick knew where he was: Polk County, Nebraska, west of Omaha and a little north of Osceola. Far up that dirt road was US 30 and Columbus sitting on the north bank of the Platte.
Sitting on the porch is the oldest woman in America, a black woman with fluffy white thin hair - she is thin herself, wearing a housedress and specs. She looks thin enough for the high afternoon wind to just blow her away, tumble her into the high blue sky and carry her perhaps all the way to Julesburg, Colorado. And the instrument she is playing (perhaps that's what is holding her down, keeping her on the earth) is a "guitar," and Nick thinks in the dream: That's what a "guitar" sounds like. Nice. He feels he could just stand where he is for the rest of the day, watching the old black woman sitting on her porch held up by jacklifters in the middle of all this Nebraska corn, stand here west of Omaha and a little north of Osceola in the county of Polk, listening. Her face is seamed with a million wrinkles like the map of a state where the geography hasn't settled down - rivers and canyons along her brown leather cheeks, ridges below the knob of her chin, the sinuous raised drumlin of bone at the base of her forehead, the caves of her eyes.
She has begun to sing again, accompanying herself on the old guitar.
Jee-sus, won't you kun-bah-yere
Oh Jee-sus, won't you kun-bah-yere,
Jesus, won't you come by here?
Cause now... is the needy time
Oh now... is the needy time
Now is the -
Say, boy, who nailed you to that spot?
She puts the guitar across her lap like a baby and gestures him forward. Nick comes. He says he just wanted to listen to her sing, the singing was beautiful.
Well, singing's God's foolishness, I do it most the day now... how you making out with that black man?
He scares me. I'm afraid -
Boy, you got to be afraid. Even a tree at dusk, if you see it the right way, you got to be afraid. We're all mortal, praise God.
But how do I tell him no? How do I -
How do you breathe? How do you dream? No one knows. But you come see me. Anytime. Mother Abagail is what they call me. I'm the oldest woman in these parts, I guess, and I still make m'own biscuit. You come see me anytime, boy, and bring your friends.
But how do I get out of this?
God bless you, boy, no one ever does. You just look up to the best and come see Mother Abagail anytime you take a mind to. I be right here, I guess; don't move around much anymore. So you come see me. I be right -
-here, right here -
He came awake bit by bit until Nebraska was gone, and the smell of the corn, and Mother Abagail's seamed, dark face. The real world filtered in, not so much replacing that dream world as overlaying it until it was out of sight.
He was in Shoyo, Arkansas, his name was Nick Andros, he had never spoken nor heard the sound of a "guitar"... but he was still alive.
He sat up on the cot, swung his legs over, and looked at the scrape. The swelling had gone down some. The ache was only a throb. I'm healing, he thought with great relief. I think I'm going to be okay.
He got up from the cot and limped over to the window in his shorts. The leg was stiff, but it was the kind of stiffness you know will work out with a little exercise. He looked out at the silent town, not Shoyo anymore but the corpse of Shoyo, and knew he would have to leave today. He wouldn't be able to get far, but he would make a start.
Where to go? Well, he supposed he knew that. Dreams were just dreams, but for a start he supposed he could go northwest. Toward Nebraska.