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into the trigger loop. Anna put her hands to her ears, her face into her knees. There was a crack, and a squeal of delight. Anna drove her face into the hairs on her legs; her jaws ground together. Then Greta said, "Cleanliness! Haven't you learned? Clean up this mess and I'll teach you some new ballads and you can clap with me."
    Anna lifted her face. She went with Susanne and William to the chest where the rags were kept. They wrapped up the mess and put it outside the attic door. Joseph spit on the floor to wash up the red stains. It was futile, but the effort seemed to please Greta.
    Back in the circle, Greta sang new songs to the friends; Michael threw up and cried, but Greta, for the moment, was too happy with her songs to notice. She would see it after the music was done. For the moment, however, she was the magnanimous queen in a pretty dress and the friends the willing servants of her humid court.
    Even William clapped, his enthusiasm almost masking his inability to keep a beat.
    And Anna sang her heart out. Her voice was forceful and clear. And her song rode the damp air and sailed out to the yard among the flies and the gnats and the smoke. Her melodies skipped effortlessly from one to another, and the mockingbird had met its match.

Fisherman Joe
     
    K atie Flory had gone on ahead, her Toyota's backseat crammed full with groceries, lighter fluid, matches, and target pistols. She knew where they had planned on camping, and by the time Bill Flory and friends Joshua and Melinda Asterton had finished packing the van and caught up with her, she had promised cleared tent spots, gathered wood, and a cozy campfire blazing. It was obvious to Melinda that Katie needed to do this to prove she was okay, that she was at least on the road to becoming okay.
    "Just wait 'til you see it," Katie had said. "I wasn't a Girl Scout for nothing."
    She left a full hour before the other three had found the lanterns hiding behind the Easter baskets in their garage. By the time all was secured in the van and ready to roll, it was past two o’clock.
    The camping spot was isolated, a good forty-five-minute drive from the city, back in the mountains where roads no longer qualified for paving and there could be a mile or more between houses. Most of the homes along the steep, graveled roads were small and colorless, sitting inside wire-fenced yards with cows and goats grazing nearby.
    "It's Americana," I said Melinda with a chuckle to Bill and Josh as the van groaned into another gear. "I wonder how many of these people all look mysteriously like each other." Bill glanced in the rearview mirror at Melinda in the backseat. His eyes, nervous and twitching, blinked several times before he spoke. "Quite a few, I'd bet," he said. "I've seen them come out of the mountains to the emergency room, and the resemblance to each other is amazing."
    Josh, seated in the front passenger’s seat, took a bite out of the Hostess cupcake he'd bought at the service station.
    The two couples had discovered the camping spot on a Sunday afternoon drive just weeks before. Just inside the boundary of the National Forest, it was off the road several hundred feet, down a dirt path in the dense trees. There was a creek, a canopy of sycamores and oaks, and across from the creek, a sheer cliff of rock that seemed to beg to be climbed by weekend vacationers. Large patches of humus would make great spots to pitch tents. A central dirt area could be honed into quite the place for a fire.
    "Turn here," said Josh, his mouth full of cupcake. Bill steered from the main road onto the unpaved stretch. Melinda settled against the door as the van began its climb up the foothill. Sunlight winked through the branches of the tall pines and deciduous trees. It was a beautiful afternoon, just as Melinda had hoped. They all needed a beautiful afternoon, but for Katie and Bill, it was more a necessity than a luxury. Katie was managing, it seemed. But Bill, sweet little chubby Bill, a nurse