ear Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, three girls drove a faded red Cherokee off I-10 onto the packed dirt entrance of Frenchman's Creek Campground.

This was the last Friday of May, 1973. Valory, fresh from graduation at Cape Fear High, was at the wheel with a vengeance -- driving into the scorching sun with sweat pooling between her breasts. Her older sister Rachel, nearly 23, sat next to her, navigating the best she could. A battered Rand McNally Campground book on her sunburned legs kept flying up and flapping unevenly with the bumps and jostles of Valory's driving. In the back seat between piles of suitcases and brown paper grocery bags, their cousin Marlena lay sleeping through the ride. Her auburn hair curled in wet waves around her face. She was 20 years old.

Moss hung thick on the trees and no sunlight filtered through to the forest floor. The campbook said Frenchman's Creek offered the best water sites and cleanest facilities, but not twenty yards off the main road the Cherokee was already running into low hung branches and skull-sized rocks. Carcasses of rotting forest animals lay along the sides of the road, their blood-dried fur writhing with maggots.

"It's gonna be hard to like this very much," Rachel said.

"Don't start," Valory answered. "We're stayin'."

She plowed on through tangles of undergrowth, trying to read the faded road signs that led to the campground office. This had been her idea: to leave North Carolina right after graduation and meet up with her runaway boyfriend, Tommy. He was playing mouth harp for Bobby "Big Man" Sadler's Blues Band in dirt road clubs through the Delta, calling himself T-Bone Hynes. Rachel and Marlena went along because they shared a suspicion that T-Bone wouldn't show and they didn't want Valory in some swamp spot all alone.

"Nobody said anything about leaving, Midget," Rachel said, using her dad's nickname for her sister. "I know the plan."

"Right," Marlena's voice came from the back seat. "Besides, we'all gotta die somewhere. And by the way, darlins': What fresh hell is this?"

They'd never laid eyes on Marlena 'til their grandmother's funeral in '63. Her father was their mother's brother with no love lost between them. They didn't see her again 'til '69 when she ran away from her father's home in Gretna, Alabama and found her way back to Fayetteville, where they were living off-post at Fort Bragg. Off and on, she hung around go-go dancing in a topless bar that catered to enlisted men. Other times she went off to drive the highways searching town after town for the mother who left her when she was barely six years old.

"Welcome back, Dewdrop," Valory said to her. "Sleep well?"

"That all depends," Marlena said. "Are any of my formerly internal organs up there with you?"

"Not that I've seen," Valory said. She took one last two-wheeled curve and a battered, tumbledown building rose up from behind a clump of overgrown bushes.

"Then at some point I may require emergency assistance," Marlena yawned. "La Revendeur Campstore" was handpainted in pine green strokes on a rotted board above a wood-framed screen door. A crippled old man sat on a bench outside, a near empty bottle of Echo Spring held loosely between his shaking knees.

Valory pulled the Jeep to a halt and they all climbed down to face him.

"You fine mam'selles here for the Cotillion?" he wheezed. Then his mouth opened in what looked to be a laugh, but without sound. His Adam's apple vibrated at the center of his skinny neck and spittle slid from the sides of his mouth. His shoulders shook.

The girls shot a glance between them and Valory stepped forward.

"We'd like a campsite," she said.

The old man looked them through, chewing his lip and squinting his right eye. He swallowed a gulp of bourbon.

"Ain't you seein' the sign off Rt.10 down to the entrance?"

"No, sir," Rachel said.

"It says, 'Close for taxes," the old man said.

"Well what the hell does that mean?" Marlena said.

"Means we got shut down. Means IRS Federals sell everything, down to the toilet rolls in our stalls." He scratched the stubbly growth on his cheek while he talked.

"But you're still here," Valory said.

"Only four days, then new owners come."

"We've been driving eight hours," Valory said. "My camp book is old. It says this is a good place."

"It surely was, once on a time." The old man looked off into the growing darkness at the inky pine branches hanging low in the heat.

"Aw, hell," he said. "Other site still got folks. But you all promise: Clear out in three days. We all here illegal."

"Okay," Valory said, reaching into her wallet and handing him out some bills.

"No charge," he said, wiping the money away. "Bulldozers coming."

nside the store, deep in the shadow near the back wall of canned goods, the old man's middle-aged niece Veronique stood listening and watching through the rusted screen door. She had blue black hair and cheekbones like a Choctaw. Hers was a beautiful face, but attention was drawn to a puckered purple scar that ran from the left jawbone down the neck and right across the throat. Her long tanned fingers touched the scar now gently without thinking as she watched the three girls. They were all young and pretty but it was the one that climbed from the back, the one with auburn hair, her eyes clung to. Inside her chest was fluttering with what the Gris Gris women called The Motion of Knowing, and Veronique stood staring, a trance of some kind settling over her features.

Down road from the camp store buried deep in the thick trees of site 14, a canvas tent and battered old Airstream were circled by Harley Fat Boys and Custom Low-Riders. A rusted Chevy pickup with deer antlers attached to the front grill had a fully loaded gunrack on the back window, a busted up couch on the flatbed behind. From somewhere, an 8-track of Duane Allman's guitar licks sliced air that hung pungent with the taste of marijuana. Tattooed, bandana'd men sidled through the campsite, some so newly discharged they still wore military issue camouflage and dog tags. Some straddled their hogs and drank one-handed from long necked bottles. A few fed heroin habits they'd developed back in Nam, scattering syringes and spoons on the ground and nodding beneath the trees. They pissed openly onto the dusty ground leaving darkened lines and curves of urine-soaked earth. One of them called Cole Butler was a husky, dark-bearded Mississippi boy fresh from the battles of Nha Trang. He watched the red Cherokee pull by, raising Army field glasses to his face to spy on the three girls and the site they chose, studying each of them with a hungry interest as they piled out to the ground. He smiled, watching them pull their tent and supplies off the roof, with only the failing sun to light their work.

"We got neighbors," he announced to no one in particular. "And its pussy."

He especially watched the one with the straight dark hair, liking the way it hung down to her waist like the schoolgirls in their white ao dais who traveled the streets of Saigon in the morning. Her hair stirred when she walked like Buddhist silk prayer flags in the wind. She stirred his memories of the young bar girls on those same Saigon streets under the neon lights of evening. VC Whores. He thought of the madame shaking her fist at him.

"You no come here no more!" she hollered. "You too much hurt my girls."

He adjusted the focus on his field glasses to see the shape of the girl's breasts more clearly beneath the Indian print peasant shirt and felt a stiffening in his crotch as she reached to lift a box from the rack of the Cherokee, exposing a flash of tanned, tight belly.

He sucked air in through his teeth. "A mouthful o' me, momma," he said, "is surely what you need."

A smoke gray hound sidled up beside him panting slowly in the heat, a wheeze coming from his old chest. He dropped himself down in the dust pushing his head against Cole's leg.

From somewhere behind there came the sound of glass breaking, then cursing. Night was falling harder now and Cole saw the glow of cigarette tips shining orange in the darkness like tiny napalm flares.

achel had lifted her long brown hair and twisted it into a knot. Their tent was spread out on the ground before her, flat and unconquered.

"None of us know how to pitch this tent," she said. She crawled into the center and curled into a ball, tired from the scorching all-day sun and heat. "Let's just sleep on top of it, Midgy."

"These poles have everything to do with it," Valory said. "So, we'll figure it out." She was sorting them out by size and shape, trying to match them up with the diagrams on the paper insert that came in the tent box.

arlena lounged at the picnic table where the kerosene lantern glowed with a quiet hiss. The old wooden table was covered with the resin of pine trees and peppered with fallen needles and cones. She was dressed in silk pajamas and matching sandals. Her hair was rolled and clipped over jumbo curlers the size of frozen lemonade cans. She sat blowing smoke rings into the air, repolishing her fingers and toes in the lamplight.

"Are you gonna help?" Valory asked her. "At all?"

"I'm plannin'," Marlena said. "on finding some men to put this tent up."

Valory looked quickly at her cousin. "Marly, I swear," she said, "You lure some redneck gorillas over here and I'll skin you alive. Rachel, talk to her."

"Whose talking redneck?" Marlena shrugged.

"Marly," Rachel said, motioning from her bed in the center of the tent fabric. "Does this look like a place to pick up boys from Princeton?"

"And just what would pale, pathetic rich boys from New Jersey know about anything a man needs to do?" Marlena said.

"No men, Marly," Valory repeated. "Pale, pathetic, or otherwise. Get off your pajamaed ass and pitch this tent with me."

"In silk? Besides, why isn't the fabulous Mr. T-Bone Hynes here, Valory? Why isn't his beautiful old self standing here ready to help us, eager with his muscles ripplin'?"

"He'll be here," Valory said. "Depend on it."

Marlena and Rachel shot a glance at each other and didn't answer.

"I saw that," Valory said. "Don't you two think I didn't."

They were pulled into a site that overlooked the Mississippi at a point wide enough to seem deep and a little dangerous. Heavy rains had muddied and swelled the current so that it moved fast, splashing thick over the slippery rocks that jutted up through the brown water.

From somewhere off in the growing darkness came a crack of thunder and the wail of a Jimi Hendrix riff. A cacophony of male sounds: talking, laughter, belches and shouts blended with the smell and sizzle of fresh meat cooking in flames. Once in a while the shatter of broken glass or the full-throttled roar of straight pipes, revved suddenly, exploded the birds from the trees, then went silent.

Valory stood up and stretched, watching the sky. "It's gonna storm again. Marly I mean it, you get over here silk or no silk. And Rach, you get yourself up off that tent and help me hold it up. Marly, slide the poles through the pockets. Rach, keep holding. I'll hammer the stakes into the ground and we'll all tie it down."

"And then, I'll definitely need to redo my nails," Marlena sighed, rising to obey.

Old Porter had already dragged his bench back inside the store and latched the rotted screen door behind him. Enormous gypsy moths fluttered madly around the yellow porch light. Their large wings scratched up against the store window and beat against each other. Then quickly consumed by the bulb's electric heat, their bodies melted into the summer air with barely a hiss to mark their passing from this world.

Veronique worked in the apartment behind the store readying a small supper of beans and pork.. A shoebox of old photos lay on the table, a few set aside from the rest showed the same little wavy-haired girl from toddler to about five years old posed in front of Christmas trees or backyard bushes, sitting dangle-legged on a couch or smiling into the camera from a tricycle on a sidewalk.

Old Porter limped into the back nodding to his niece. Five years ago in '68, she'd shown up at his door straight from a long hospital stay in Tennessee. Her throat had been cut during riots in Memphis, the summer King was killed. She'd been beaten and raped and busted up pretty bad and asked her uncle for a place to hide herself away for a while. She was the daughter of Porter's youngest sister who'd turned whore in Alabama, somewhere up near Dennersfield. And when his niece showed up at the campground, she was still bruised and disfigured and nobody knew if she'd stay that way for good. Porter felt real bad and took her in, let her help with what she could. But now hard times were sending them both back out to the world. At least, Old Porter thought while he watched her set the table, her face had healed up real beautiful again. That was something.

She waited for him to move slowly into the room before talking. "Those girls you let stay?" she began.

He nodded. "I knowed I shouldn't."

"They sign the camp book?"

Porter squinted his eyes at her and drew back his head. "What the hell for?"

Veronique kept her face down, arranging the plates. "One of them's my daughter."

Porter sat slowly at the table staring at her. "How you tell that?" he asked. "Ain't it near on fifteen years?"

"You mark me," she said, pushing the photographs towards him. "Her name's Marlena Galloway."

t poured through the night. Inside their tent the girls moved their sleeping bags far away from the zippered flap where little blasts of wet wind still made it through. The bags of groceries lined up against one wall of the tent were getting soggy from the damp air. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked too soon afterwards, telling them that the strikes were coming down close. The roar of the Mississippi nearly at their feet threatened to flood its banks and pull them all downstream. Through this they lay awake together, staring up through the darkness, barely talking. It was nearly three a.m. when a beam of a flashlight struck the wall of the tent and they watched as it looped and lifted around in the air, as if being carried by someone having a hard time walking through the weather.

"Finally!" Valory whispered, sitting up and crawling towards the zippered flap, "T-Bone's here."

The light was right at the front now and she unzipped quickly, the other girls making room to let him inside fast without the storm following.

But it was Cole Butler in a camouflage poncho, squatting at the entrance and shining his light into the girls' stunned faces.

"Don't mean to frighten you, ladies. Just thought you could use somebody givin' a looksee, checkin' if you all were okay."

"We're just fine," Marlena snapped.

"My boyfriend is on his way," Valory added.

Rachel covered her bare legs with the sleeping bag and hugged her pillow to her chest.

Cole glanced over at her and smiled. "I won't disturb you, then," he said. "Just thought it could be a little frightening here, with you all alone." "My boyfriend's coming," Valory said again.

Cole kept his eyes on Rachel. "Yeah," he said. "Well, goodnight."

He stood and backed away.

Valory zipped the opening closed again quickly. "Shit," she said, looking at the other two. "Shit and god-damned shit."

Outside, Cole stood awhile in the downpour, his flashlight off and stashed in a flap of his poncho. He moved carefully to a spot beneath a large oak and hesitated, glancing again at the tent. Then he reached up, grabbed a branch and swung himself silently into the tree. Like a jungle animal, he climbed swiftly through the wet branches to a place high above the girls' tent where he was able to watch whatever went on for as long as he felt the need.

he birds started an infernal racket about 5 a.m. and it was barely dawn when Valory unzipped the opening of the tent quietly and stepped outside. The rains had stopped and morning began with a silver edge of newly-washed light. She opened the back of the Jeep and removed a green metal camp stove, set it on the picnic table and went to fill a coffee pot with water from the hook-up. The river still rushed and splashed noisily. It would take several days without rain for it to slow down now.

Marlena was next to emerge, her curlers askew and her silk pajamas wrinkled like accordion pleats. She glanced over at Valory, standing at the water spout, and sat slowly at the picnic table holding her head in her hands.

"Why my God," she said. "did I ever agree to this?"

"Nobody forced you," Valory said, counting the scoops of coffee into the pot and setting it on the camp stove.

"Well, he's still not here, is he?"

Valory shrugged. "He will be."

There was silence between them as the coffee began to perk. The birds had quieted down some, and a heavy warmth had already begun to thicken the air.

"That asshole scared the shit out of me last night," Marlena said.

"I'm so sick of soldiers," Valory agreed, "I could spit."

"Try wiggling your bare tits in front of them for a living," her cousin yawned.

"The hell with your tits," Valory said. "Try being the daughter of Roy Meade."

"Oh yeah," Marlena said. "I guess you win."

Valory and Rachel's father had been in Southeast Asia since '56, long before the U.S. government admitted to having anything more than advisors in Saigon. But Roy Meade was no advisor. Roy Meade was a warrior. Valory called him "a paint your face, lurk in the mud, throat-cutting, weapon wielding, highly-trained Special Forces/MACVSOG covert operative," and not entirely without pride in her voice. The military listed him as MIA in '69, but his wife and daughters suspected that it was just an official ruse to let him go further underground, freeing him to act outside the confines of official military sanction.

The cousins drank their coffee hungrily.

"How long since we've eaten?" Valory wondered.

"Who cares? I'm doing yellow jackets," Marlena said. "But don't tell Rachel."

Valory leaned away from her cousin. "Damn it, Marly. You promised no more pills."

Marlena shrugged. "I was getting fat."

"Bullshit," Valory said. "My right leg weighs more than your whole body."

"Can we change the subject?" Marlena said. "Wouldn't you kill for a shower?"

ole had been dozing when the sound of stirring on the ground below woke him. As silent as a rock, he watched and listened. "Asshole," he heard them say.

"VC bitches," he muttered.

Then he waited, watching them gather their things for the showers. He heard them decide to let Rachel sleep. He liked knowing her name.

A little longer he waited, watching with his field glasses until he saw them disappear into the red cedar bath building.

Finally, with trained stealth, he slid from the tree and moved silently across the site to the tent. A swift and quiet entry and he stood before Rachel, where she lay sleeping. In the growing heat she had kicked her legs free of the sleeping bag and slept in a t-shirt and panties. Cole stared at her long tanned legs and tight ass, the breasts that lifted with her breath. He knelt now, straddling her, his hands already holding her shoulders and his weight about to crush itself into her. That was when she woke, her eyes opening to stare directly into his bearded face. He grabbed her quickly by the throat before she could make a sound and yanked her panties down with the other hand. She thrashed beneath him as much as she could but he was already pushing his way into her body. Her legs were pinned beneath his bulk -- she couldn't kick at him, she couldn't move at all except to twist her chest and shoulders, going nowhere, then trying to bite his arm, her teeth sinking into his flesh, tearing at it ferociously, his hand still nearly crushing her throat, his thrusts already growing faster, tearing her insides.

Suddenly a blast and he was down, fallen heavily onto her, flopping like a whale. Another blast and by now Rachel had moved her head from beneath his and knew it was Valory moving towards them, putting the gun to the back of his skull and blasting again. His eyes looked into Rachel's with one last look of astonishment. His head shattered, blood and flesh and bone flying everywhere, blood on their bodies, blood all over the tent. Blood pooling from his head and flowing, seeping into the sleeping bag, making a river that poured itself wherever it could go. Rachel tried to breathe but couldn't, and then she could and she was screaming. This time it was Valory's hand on her mouth, pushing at her bloody face.

"Shhhh, DON'T," she said.

"Help me, oh my God," Rachel gagged, trying to free herself from the corpse, and it wouldn't move.

"Wait," Valory said, grabbing a beefy shoulder and shoving, pushing from one side so that the mass slid across the slick film of its own blood and landed in a heap against the tent wall. The penis was still dark and partially engorged. Rachel scrambled away, beginning to vomit.

"Oh my god," she said, her body heaving, vomit mixing with the blood on the tent floor. "He's killed."

"So?" Valory said.

"He's dead, Valory. He's really dead."

"He was rapin' you, Rachel," Valory said, kneeling down to her sister's side.

"It would have been over soon," Rachel said. "It would have been okay."

"Are you insane?" Valory said. "I shot the bastard. He's dead. I'd like to shoot him some more."

Rachel vomited again as Valory held her shoulders. Then she let her sister guide her out of the tent to the bank of the rushing river. Valory cupped the muddy water in her hands and tried to wash the blood from Rachel's legs and face and hair.

"The gun," Rachel said. "Where ...?"

"Dad's," Valory said. "The one from mom's night table."

It was a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber handgun. She'd come back for her knapsack she said, and saw Cole on her sister. She'd grabbed the gun and shot, aiming as best she could. Now as she washed the thick stickiness off her sister's body, she searched for signs that a bullet might have grazed Rachel herself.

"Is this all his blood?" she asked.

"I think so. I can't tell. I don't know what to do, Midgy, what are we going to do?"

"Clear out," Valory said. "We'll go get Marlena and haul ass out of here."

"And leave him in there?"

"You got any better ideas?"

"I don't know what to do. I can't think at all."

"Then let me handle this, and do what I say," Valory said.

She led Rachel by the shoulders, helping to steady her as they headed up to the camp store and baths. She had been careful to zip the tent, doing her best to keep the contents from attracting the attention of animals who might smell the blood.

eronique heard the gun blasts as she was hanging laundry behind the store.

"Idiots," she muttered. "God-damned brain addled dickheads."

They'd been camped there for weeks, shooting through the forest every day, littering their site with liquor bottles and syringes, littering the campground with small dead animals and birds. She hadn't wanted them there. But Porter felt sorry, knowing they'd been discharged from a military hell, come home to where they were hated and reviled.

"They got no future in America," he said to his niece. "They don't belong nowhere. What's the harm in a few days?"

"There's no way to answer that question," she said. "These guys could be capable of anything."

"Let 'em run wild for a while," Porter said. "I heard tell when a dog's been beat real bad, that's what you do: let 'im run. Brings him back to hisself. Then he can be retrained."

"Well, I trust dogs a lot more than I trust men," his niece answered.

And Porter didn't try arguing her down on that.

She turned from hanging the second basket of wet clothes in time to see the two girls come around the side of the bath house. One was stumbling, nearly naked, and blood-soaked. The other was guiding her, bloody herself, but clearly in more command of the situation. Marlena was not with them. Without thinking, Veronique ran towards them, her heart pounding in her throat.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Where's the other girl?"

The sisters stood still, watching her bolt in their direction. This was the first they'd seen of this woman, and she ran like a cheetah across the open lot, reaching their side in seconds.

"The third," she said, breathless. "Where is she?"

"In the showers," Valory said, frowning. "Who are you?"

Veronique looked into their faces and knew who they were. These were Eleanor's girls, her daughter's cousins.

"We killed someone," Rachel said to her.

"I killed him," Valory corrected. "She was being raped at the time."

Veronique listened to their story. Then she laid out a plan: get Marlena, stay together, clean themselves up. Bundle their bloody clothes and meet her back at the camp store. Don't separate. She got them to the door of the bath house, then she walked down the dirt road, heading to site #14.

One of the soldiers was sprawled on a picnic table, whether asleep or drugged she couldn't tell. Two others sat on the couch in the flatbed cleaning their rifles and drinking beer. A few dogs roamed the site, digging at the ground or stretching out their bodies in the shade.

"Where's the rest of you?" she asked, coming up on them from the side.

"Hey, its the Lady of the Forest," the blond one said. "What can we do for you, Pretty Lady? You want more money?"

"We never took money from any of you," she said. "I'm here because there were Feds here last night, looking around."

"Shit," said the one whose head was shaved.

"They were flashing some pictures," she said, "saying how there was heroin out here."

"Fuck," said the blond.

"That bearded one ... what's his name?"

"You mean Cole? What about him?"

"Came by the store first thing this morning," she said, looking right in their faces. "I mentioned this to him, and he took off. Stole my outboard and headed upriver."

"That son of a bitch."

"I think you all need to clear out right away. I don't want trouble here." She turned to leave, and glanced back at them. "Find the others and get yourselves gone fast. That's what I came to say."

ld Porter lay in bed. Used to be that dawn never found him under the sheets. But these days there didn't seem to be much reason to move in any direction. His window was opened wide and the early light was shining onto the bedspread that lay pushed to the bottom of his bed. He looked at his gnarled old legs; they'd lost most their muscle and were nothing more than sagging skin and ancient bone. He leaned his elbows into the mattress and hauled himself up to sitting, leaning his head against the wood of the backboard and watching Veronique carry the first basket of laundry to the line. She was clipping a sheet tight and straight when he heard the first shot ring the air. He closed his eyes, knowing that his niece had been right about those boys. They were more hopeless than ruined animals. Hate was too deep inside them now. He felt the second shot in his heart and throat and heard the horrible blast of the third. It tired him out and he rolled back onto his side, fearing the kind of world he was going to be living in outside the campground borders. He thought of his little sister, Veronique's mother, dead now, long dead. His other brothers and sisters, gone too. What good is family, he wondered, if it ends up being nothing more than a hole inside of you nothing can fill? What good is any of it, he wondered. When it's all over and ended, what good has any of it been?

In the bath house Marlena listened, ferociously plucking her eyebrows as her cousins detailed what had happened. While they showered she walked to the campsite, promising to bring them a change of clothes from the suitcases in the car. Moving towards the tent she could already smell the flesh inside as it began to stink in the heat. She stood briefly staring at the tent door, then turned away.

Fiercely and quickly she moved around the campsite, repacking everything outside the tent back into the Cherokee. She climbed into the driver's seat and drove the car a few hundred yards away, leaving the engine idling. Then she ran back to the tent, a gallon tin of kerosene swinging in her clenched fist. Without hesitation she emptied the contents around the edge of the tent. She splashed it across the fabric of the roof, down the sides, into the screen flaps to wet what lay inside. When she tossed the match flames roared to life, already spreading. In the time it took her to run back to the waiting car and throw it into gear, the fire was already tearing upward through the air.

"Are you NUTS?" Valory screamed at her.

"What is the matter with you?" Rachel asked, unbelieving.

"Just get dressed and shut up," Marlena said, throwing their clothes at them. "We've got to get the hell out of here now."

"We can't get out of here, Marly," Rachel said. "What about the old man and the woman?"

"What woman?" Marlena asked.

Valory had already run through the entrance, heading for the camp store.

eronique had returned from site 14 and was telling her uncle the details of the killing.

"I cleared the others out," she said. "This way, we can clean it up. No interference."

Old Porter was standing at the screen door still in his pajamas, his back to her as she talked. He was watching the black curls of smoke fill the air a few hundred yards down road. Tentacles of flame were beginning to rise higher.

"I don't see cleanin' it up to be an easy thing from where I stand," he said.

His niece walked to the door and stood staring over Porter's shoulder.

"Marlena," she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

They let it burn. It wasn't possible to do anything else. A fire department come too soon would have put out the fire and found the body. It was clear once Veronique explained it to them all that the burning, once it had been started, had to be allowed to run its course. To be sure that the remains would be nothing but a pile of unrecognizable rubble, she said, they'd have to wait it out.

"She always does this," Valory said, motioning to her cousin. "She burned her own house down when she was five."

"I'm sure that was an accident," Veronique said quietly.

"Thank you," Marlena said. "It was." She had been staring into this woman's face ever since they had entered the camp store. She studied the puckered scar that ran down her throat; she watched her lips; she noted the curve of the eyebrows and the way that one arched higher than the other.

"We're not going to just sit here and let this whole campground burn down, are we?" Rachel asked.

"It'll stop at the river, if the wind's right," Porter said.

He looked around him at the place where he'd spent most of his life. The sawdust floor, the slant of morning light, shelves stocked with camp supplies, first aid kits, canned goods. He looked at his niece, so unflinching and capable in a moment like this. And these girls, two of them solid as young mountains, the third a tangled wilderness. Each of them, he felt certain, already dedicated to their own brand of trouble. Family, he thought, the word springing through his mind and crouching there, squat in the middle of all other ideas, liable to jump in any direction.

At one point during their waiting, the old black deskphone near the register began to ring. Porter picked it up suspiciously, and listened.

He looked at the girls. "Anybody here want to talk to a guy called T-Bone?"

Valory put her hands on the edge of the counter and pushed herself out on a slant. Then she stopped and looked long through the screen door at the burning landscape. She cut her glance back to Porter and shook her head.

"Just tell him we're gone," she said. "And don't explain anything."

iremen from the Breaux Bridge station picked through the charred grounds half-heartedly. It was a holiday weekend after all and they wanted to be home with their families, having their own good times.

"Just discharged," Veronique told them, shrugging. "Half-crazed, most of them."

"Long gone, too, I expect," Porter added, shaking his head.

The three girls had been bundled back into the Cherokee and sent north before the fire trucks came.

"Just keep going 'til you get there," Veronique said. "And don't ever look back to this time with anybody but each other."

She made them promise. "Secrets are what hold people together," she said "whether we like it or not."

Through the hours of the ride home, a weighted quiet settled on them all.

"Nothing will ever feel the same again," Rachel said.

"It will," Valory said. "Once this is the sameness we mean."

Marlena had nothing to say. It wasn't until the jeep had crossed the state line into Georgia that she reached again to feel the contents of her pocket. While Veronique settled them into the car, Porter had slipped something into her hand.

"It ain't my place to do more," he whispered.

She'd wait 'til she was alone to look again. For now she'd feel it, imagine it with the tips of her fingers: the fading colors, the younger Veronique -- in her arms the little girl Marlena knew to be herself. In her mother's young face, in that innocence, Marlena tried to imagine a different fate for them all. Ronnie, Marlena's father called her.

"Ronnie," her father must have said.

And she smiled in his direction, their child in her arms. But what could it mean? In the face of the younger Veronique, Marlena saw no thought of leaving, just as in today's Veronique, she saw no thought of return.

Marlena's fingers lingered on the surface of the photograph. The jeep traveled on, Valory driving them now towards home. It would stay within her forever: this Veronique who stood silently and watched Marlena go. The younger Veronique hugging her baby close and smiling in hope -- hope, which is stronger than love -- smiling towards the camera as if it were the future, as if there was nothing more to see.

"Maybe it will all be okay," Rachel said, interrupting her cousin's thoughts. "Do you think that could be true?"

No one made reply. They were too tired, each in their own way. All too changed to believe anything would be easy ever again. Still, they knew enough to let this prayer of hope circle close above them like a hawk that hunts at dawn, with its hunger and determination, surely, to follow them all the way home.