Free Shelter (1994) by Jayne Anne Philips Page A

not made this sound from death. The sound goes on, eating its own fear, released and saved, and when it stops Parson cannot remember where he is, all of space seems so empty. But it is night here and the girls move in the water, emerge pouring water from their bodies, the naked one shining, stumbling, and they run then, gain the path and are gone. Parson watches Frank, who calls once to them and follows, just to the edge of the water, then crawls out and lies down, seems to rouse himself, walks back through the woods to where Parson knows he has a tent in the clearing.
    Now the night looks blue. There is silence but for a far-off wind just grazing the woods by the river, and the rustling of those leaves is half heard. The moon will lighten the air even more in an hour, two hours, mist will settle above the water, never touching, so that the surface can still be seen and the white smoky vapor might be hung above it from invisible cords. Parson walks to where the girls stood and sees they have left the shoes. He takes them to the shack and feels them all over, looks at them in the glint of the window, then thinks of the flashlight one of the workmen gave him. He takes it from under the corner of his pallet and shines a short, wide beam of light across the shoes. White canvas sneakers with frayed shoestrings. One of them has a cloth decal of Mickey Mouse (Parson remembers the foreman cursing
goddamn mickey mouse operation)
sewn inside. The other has a gummed label on which is written: LENNY.

LENNY: BY THE RIVER
    The night looked bluer now, bruised with moonlight, and Lenny saw that mist had begun to rise from the river. A cool smoke hovered just on the surface, thick and thin in patches, and Lenny felt as though the ground itself were no more substantial than clouds on the water. Her feet touched the path but she couldn't quite tell where she was walking, she didn't care, it didn't matter. Suddenly they were gone from the river, they were high in the woods, leaving the cover of the trees to climb the steep meadow to the tent. Cap shimmied up the pole to the wood floor and Lenny followed her but they said nothing. Lenny's clothes were damp from the trail but her body still glowed and burned, and when she lay down on her cot the feeling was worse. She could turn just so under the sheet, curl up, press her fists between her legs so hard it hurt, and she must have slept, wondering how to find him, how to be with him again, with both of them, dreaming Cap had done something to her, she couldn't find her way out of Cap's hands. She woke and slept and Alma was waiting for her by the river, Alma was looking for her in the river, and the crows were in the meadow at dawn, screeching their hoarse calls. The crows were screaming too loud and he had found her and put his hands over her ears, he read her face with his mouth, kissing her, talking so urgently, making words on her skin with his tongue, his teeth, but she couldn't hear him, there was no sound, he had no voice. She slept, and Highest camp was in a dream, they all overslept until reveille sounded again and again, fast and shrill and far away.

ALMA: REVEILLE
    When reveille began the bodies moaned and turned as mosquitoes caught in giant webs above the screens were turning. Alma and Delia rolled, hit weathered floor, grabbed each other. Guttural sounds, push for the door. Tangled in nightgowns, they fell over each other in the foyer where the cabin's wings separated, bones of an arm. Wrapped in arms, sleep-ridden, they lifted the heavy latch of the barn-board door, scraped their ankles on the concrete steps, and ran grabbing hands, hissing, up the gravel trail to where the woods broke by the quadrangle. Reveille built in the blocked light, piercing, staccato, an automatic gun on gold wind.
    "Is he there? Is he there?" Alma heard Delia whisper a cadenced repetition, breathing in time and running.
    They threw themselves down. Crept to where the woods ended and lay in creepers. But