Shelter (1994) by Jayne Anne Philips Read Free Book Online Page A

took off her heavy green shorts and the blouse she hadn't bothered to button. The dirt she trod in her sneakers seemed softer, more velvet, dew had wet it. The whole world looked softened, night-furred; the depths of the woods were an odd black shot with deep green. She stood at attention, listening with her skin. Years ago, they'd let her go shirtless in the summer, like a boy. It had felt like this, catching the blinkering fireflies in bottles, but not so good. Cap was beside her, breathing as though she'd jumped onto the trail from a high place, dropped down from the limbs of the trees. She picked up Lenny's clothes and threw them to the side of the trail, then shoved. They were running, skip, stub, touch the rock sides of the slanted earth, touching with their shoes each big stone they skirted in daylight. Going down in darkness was fast, unbelievably fast, no sound but their breath,
hut hut hut
as though someone softly punched them as they dropped.
    They heard the stream before they saw it; they washed dishes and pots here, dunked their sweaty clothes, gulped handfuls of water so cold it stung. The stream tumbled down the mountain to join Mud River, widened, widened, flattened finally at the bottom of the hill, and grew slow. Just before it joined the river it flowed over its former banks, dammed by a deserted beaver dam and fallen trees. The beaver dam stood sentinel, a dike of branches and crumbling mud. Whatever washed down through the stream came to rest against it; no one walked or swam too close. There were a few cans and bottles, some of them broken, and the occasional desolate bit of clothing: a ladies' glove, a man's shoe. Then there was the river, wide as a three-lane road, and the trail alongside like an afterthought. Now Lenny could make out the swinging bridge, still and elemental in the dark. Moonlight caught one edge and glistened the shape; it hung there like a woman's necklace. Lenny wanted to start across but Cap took her arm and urged her farther up along the boundary of the woods—the opposite bank had been torn up by the workmen laying pipe. At night the scarred ground and dirt piles, the tubular mounds of iron, seemed an abandoned desecration. On this side, farther along the river, the trail split off through the woods to Turtle Hole. Here, at the border of camp property, the county people swam when camp was not in session, diving from a flat boulder that overhung the water. Girl Guides didn't swim there, which was odd, as the water was a perfect silver oval, deep in the center. Maybe there were snapping turtles, or ghosts. How would it look at night? Lenny wanted to see. The bridge moved as though trod upon, and shimmered as they left it behind.
    Threading their way along the narrow riverbank, they were scouts or spies, moving as though pursued, scrambling precisely. Cap was first, a certain shield. Lenny consciously echoed her movements, crouching, swooping, standing taller and striding; she felt like a clean white cloth, a rippling slipstream. She saw her own naked legs move reliably over the dark ground and stayed in tandem, Cap's shadow, secret even to herself, invisible. Cap would move fast and go far—Lenny imagined following, unseen, to distant times and places, places most people from Gaither would never go. An understanding struck Lenny wordlessly: Cap had arrived in Gaither only to find Lenny. That's why she was here where she didn't belong. Even now, Lenny felt crowds watching them, rows of silent presence, and she turned her head to see the glower of the trees, row upon row of staggered slender shapes. Second-growth maples, oaks, ash, the trees held upright their densely leaved bouquets. Only the knobby beginnings of branches were visible under the foliage, as though a few thin arms supported these masses of minutely stirred leaves. Lenny moved quickly and her rapidly changing perspective lent the trees a semblance of movement as subtle as the shifting of an eye. The forest was not