Mission Accepted

On today's hike the girl limps along an

uncertain path, startling a deer in the brush.

It bounds away, and she glimpses only a

flash of white above a sinewy hind leg.

A falcon soars overhead, a small mouse

clutched in its talons.

So unlike the pack of turkey buzzards with

their fleshy red wattles stuck in a holding

pattern over a distant hilltop.

So unlike the familiar hummingbird in

her backyard, hovering next to the

Daphne bush, whose tiny wings flap so

fast they are almost imperceptible.

Earlier today, the girl stowed five pair of

underwear, extra socks, a swimsuit, three

pair of gym shorts, four t-shirts, a

water-proof jacket and a book of poems by

Edna St. Vincent Millay into a trunk at the

foot of a wooden cot. At lunch she pushed a

metal tray toward a woman dressed in white who

filled it with potato salad, lime Jello, a carton of

milk and a lump of doughy bread enclosing a

thick red tube of indiscriminate origin.

The girl doesn't eat meat, but since the slick

surface of the unnamed tube can only be

artificial, she takes one bite. Instantly it

tastes of regret and broken promises, so she

picks off the bread and covers it in

strawberry jam, comforted by the reminder of

grandma's summer.

Tonight there'll be a campfire, someone will

strum a guitar and after sharing songs and

singing someone else's stories, they'll form a

processional back to their cabins by the light of

handheld torches. Ghosts might dance in the

shadows, and she's grateful in the dark no one

can see her bruise.

The girl's mother is a sculptor. Out of mud and

clay she fashions dolls, some as tiny as a young

girl's thumb. These wear ribbon and lace,

transparent blouses, flowing gossamer skirts

befitting the queen of ragamuffins and thieves.

One doll is different. The same height as the

mother and with her face, it is fully articulated,

all joints move independently.  Fingers,

wrists, elbows, ankles, knees - a marionette -

dozens of separate pieces, each married to a string.

In the art gallery where this doll lives, any

visitor can climb an eleven foot ladder and cause the

doll to dance. She wears no clothes and sometimes, someone

will have her fondle her own ripe breasts or reach a

hand between thighs to touch the soft mound of a split peach.

In the distance the girl hears the sound of the

ocean. The gentle pulling of waves from the

shore, the violent crashing of waves against the

craggy rocks below Cape Lookout. The sound

grows louder, closer, and the girl fears

drowning, though she knows she is tucked into

the deep darkness of this forest and the ocean is

more than ninety miles away.

Suddenly, I turn in my sleep and am hit with the

groggy understanding that the sound is

nothing more than my husband's warm breath on my

neck, and his gentle giant's snore.