When she wakes up, the sun is high above her head and her body is sticking to the boat, where she's wedged herself on the floor, between the seats. She looks down at her chest and sees red above her swimsuit. She notices all these things before she looks around her and realizes Amanda is no longer in the boat. Her neck and back are stiff as she eases her head up and looks around, and realizes they, she, they, she are/is on dry land. Out of the flood, a bank rises sharply, exposed - red dirt cut away like a (. The boat has been pulled slightly up on the shore and is tied of to the trunk of a slightly submerged tree. She climbs out slowly and painfully, her thoughts on this girl who has disappeared on her. This girl, like another, gone from her life inexplicably. She scrambles up the rise and looks out on a field of some sort, land stretching endlessly, and sob chokes back her breath and she sees the house. It's old, with white paint peeling away to reveal the belly of gray board. There is a wide porch stretching its length, and rockers where an older man sits, with Amanda on his lap. Anna begins running toward the house.

If she stops to think of it, there was a time when this started, but long before the rain and before the shoes, and before the salt. These are all just symptoms. They were happy and she was pregnant, and this flood of bad luck stayed far from her and her husband's lives. The house, such a picture of domesticity; the old man, a kind grandfather; and inside a breakfast and all the things she pictured back then, all the growing old and all the content, disipating the hunger she has felt since.  ¶ 10:17 PM |

  She's never considered herself to be the mothering type. At times kids have seemed too dramatic and expensive. At times she won't hold babies. And now her dreams are about holding Amanda like a daughter and explaining how shitty life can be to her, so she'll understand that life isn't just out to get her, it's out to get everyone. All night she chases this girl in her brain. All night real contact eludes her. How do you touch something false?  ¶ 1:14 PM |

  As night falls Anna gets tired. She looks across the languid water and the ends of cars and roofs of houses. Some people wave lazily. Helicopters criss-cross the sky, rescuing in a seemingly random pattern. Amanda sits opposite of her, quiet. She has stopped crying and sits with swollen eyes, sucking her fingernails, testing the strength of her teeth on them, watching the passing world. Anna closes her eyes and drifts reminded of sailing with her dad, the waves sparking big sharp drops on her cheeks and blinking in the face of it, her dad's arms reaching out for this rope, that piece of cloth, the unnamed articles of sailery. And the sun falling on the face in ruddy grace. Before she falls asleep, she opens her eyes and says, "Wake me if you need anything." And then she's gone, dreaming.  ¶ 8:31 PM |

  I'm going on a two week trip and will not be able to blog. Please check back around June 1st for new material.  ¶ 10:10 AM |

  When the men make their move, it is in a sudden whirl of frenzy. The big man scoops up Amanda the way you would pick up a cat. He holds her in front of him and tries to get her to look in his eyes, but she's kicking and screaming. Anna makes a run toward him and Dave catches her arm. "Wait a second, honey." His grip hurts her and she twists against it until her skin burns from the friction. But he has her arm behind her back in a second and is pushing it up and up. Amanda bites the man, who drops her, and runs toward the boat. Anna kicks down hard on Daves kneecap, feels it give and slide. They are both free and running. Amanda gets to the boat first, fumbles with the strange knot they've used to tie it to the weather vane. Anna takes a running leap over her head, lands in the boat, just before the big man does. Amanda has the knot loose. Anna screams when the big man lands and steps on one of his hands until he throws her off. He comes toward her while she is getting up and in one motion she slides to her feet and throws a hook with the palm of her hand, and shoves his nose into his brain. It wasn't for nothing that she took self defense classes. She doesn't know what dying looks like. The man is screaming on his knees and the boat begins to float down stream. Anna pushes him with all her might to get this death away from her. Pushes him and rolls him, already he may be dead, she isn't sure, over the side. Dave yells from the roof, crippled "Stupid bitch stupid bitch stupid fucking bitch." But they float away.  ¶ 12:53 PM |

  The woman's shoes appeared on her porch days before she consciously recognized them. When she finally stopped on her porch one day, a bag of groceries in hand, the keys held out to unlock the door, the screen held open with her heel, and looked down to see these glowing, shining, red things at her feet, she realized she had known the were there already. She went inside, made herself tea, came back outside with mug in hand and looked at them again. Went back inside, dropped off her purse in the closet, changed out of her work clothes, went to the car and unloaded the remainder of the groceries passing the shoes on each trip. Went back outside looked at the shoes, and back inside to unload the groceries, back out to look at the shoes. It seemed that if she kept checking to see if they were there maybe once they wouldn't be. She could return inside in peace, knowing she could forget an episode where a woman's shoes appeared on her doorstep and then disappeared again a few hours later. But they absolutely refused to budge.

When here husband came home she took him outside and they looked at the shoes together. "I know they aren't yours," she said. He had shrugged and began talking about her dalias and how large they were getting. He said they were starting to look like plates or pillows, one of the two or a combination if there were such a thing and had gone back inside, while she stayed out looking at these things.

Immediately into her heart, with the appearance of the shoes came the suspicion. After the suspicion, came the jealousy and after the jealousy, the curiosity and after that... well.. after that she just felt too tired to think about it anymore. So she ignored the shoes for months. On the morning she threw them in the street, her husband had packed a small bag for an overnight trip. He said it was for business, but when she called his work asking for him, the new secretary replied that he was on vacation, could she leave him a message on his voicemail. Anna said she would, but when her husband's voice came on the phone stating his name at the prompt, she hung up, went outside, threw the shoes in the street. The shoes had first become her husband's infidelity, and then her husband became only his infidelity. Thus, she was in actuality throwing her husband into the street (the no good lying bastard she added in her brain).  ¶ 12:11 AM |

  The men are spinning, wobbling while they walk, laughing at the water and the sky and the girls and the dog with it's red bone like a warning. She's becoming afraid of them. She's becoming afraid of Amanda who keeps looking at her, begging her for salvation. "They have a boat," said because she hopes Anna will use it. But Anna rubs her wrist knowingly. She can't really row, she can't swim. She's stuck on the roof with the little girl that reminds her of herself when she was younger. And this is quickly becoming a situation, every once in a few minutes, one man will rub against her shoulder or her hip, and she thinks of the bar she visited in New Orleans where the girls danced on the bar and the men watched them and when she saw a man grab one girl's arm and lick it. She wonders what she will do. She wonders how she will hurt them back.  ¶ 6:37 PM |