Free Sweet Song by Terry Persun

dried, but his clothes remained damp, drawing in the cold from the shade. The air felt balmy. He stood for the first time since shoving the tree into the river the night before. He stamped the ground trying out his legs, then bent down and stepped out from under the hanging branches. As he moved his body warmed.
    As much as he wanted nothing to do with the river for a while, Leon headed straight for it. When he broke into the sun, the warmth helped to lighten his step. He walked upriver, searching for andfinding his sack resting in the thick branches of a small mulberry bush, sun-struck with golden light.
    He retrieved the sack and sat down a short distance from the riverbank. He untied the knot at the top and poured the contents onto his lap. There was bread and jerky and the book he kept under his cot. A knife glistened in the sun, as did the gun Big Leon had been carrying. And there was one other item. A hat. The hat he had spit into. The hat he had claimed. It was now his.
    Leon placed the damp hat onto his head. He cradled the wrinkled pages of the book in his arms and cried. After a while he pulled the hat off. He straightened the brim and brushed loose shreds of burlap from its surface, then placed it on his head once again. He took a deep breath, stuffed all but a chunk of bread back into the drying sack, and stood. The sun had nearly finished its job of drying his clothes. He bit into the bread and walked east.
    Wooded areas along the river came and went as the ground pitched slightly along it. The river was his road and his life for now. There were fish if he could find a way to catch them. There was water to drink. Even so, he kept his distance, the constant sound of its flowing always in the background. He kept his distance, too, from the wagon paths that followed the river.
    That night, the sky cleared to partly cloudy. Leon knew how to make a fire having done so in the coldest mornings in the shack. He cleared a spot, collected dried grass from the river’s edge and dried twigs from the ground. He rubbed a sharp stick between his hands, causing enough friction to light the dried grass. By the time the sky blackened and the moon rose, he had a small fire, but no food to cook.
    He reached into his sack and pulled out one of the last two pieces of jerky. He sat cross-legged before the fire enjoying its peaceful crackling. The moon peeked from between clouds, a crescent shaped messenger of God.
    Leon sighed. He felt alone. His mind wandered. He thought of Martha and smiled. He thought of Hillary and his groin shifted. He laughed out loud, the echo coming back to him from inside the woods, a quieter version of his own laugh. Leon felt lucky to be alive, and that gave him something to build upon.
    After eating, his stomach still not satisfied, Leon piled some thicker pieces of wood onto his fire, curled next to its heat, and waited for sleep to come for the second time that day. He woke once in the chilly night, crying out to Big Leon, then slept until the morning sun woke him.
    He ate the last of his bread and jerky, rocked slowly to a song he had heard once, and waited for his body to warm before he stepped into the new day.
    At the edge of the woods, fog obscured both the tops of the trees and the ground. The middle sections were blurred. River fog slipped into the field but burned off quickly in the hot sun.
    Leon headed to the river for a drink. He splashed his face with water and rubbed the cool liquid into the back of his neck before heading downstream. He stayed close to the river hoping to find calm areas where he could catch a fish to eat for supper. But after high noon passed, Leon felt too weak to plow through the underbrush along the river. He had yet to find a place where he could walk into the water, a place where fish might rest. The ker-plop of a trout or pike breaking the surface to swallow a bug was the only thing that gave him hope.
    Late in the day, after pulling away from the riverbank overrun