Sanctuary by Gary D. Svee Page A

more dangerous than to stay. He had tried running once last summer …
    The sun sucked energy from the earth that day. The air, heavy as a club, seared the throat and lungs. Only the flies moved, safe from the halfhearted swats of men and the listless swish of cows’ tails.
    Judd sprawled in the shade of the shack, listening to the creak of his grandmother’s chair as she rocked beside him, watching the hills simmer in the distance, breathing the foul pestilence from the dump.
    He rolled over on his belly and pushed himself to his knees. The earth spun for a moment, and he reached out to his grandmother’s chair to steady himself.
    â€œI have to go to the river,” he said, and she nodded.
    He pulled himself erect and stepped into the heat. He almost retreated; the air, thick and heavy as honey, resisted the passage of mortals.
    Judd squinted. The air was warped, the heat so intense that sun and sky and earth merged into one as Judd flowed toward the Milk, slow as the river eddies where the big catfish lie.
    His mind oozed out his ears, thoughts light and elusive as flies, and only instinct pulled him from weak shadow to weak shadow until he reached the bank of the Milk. He walked into the water, mud sucking at his feet, aiming to hold him in the sun until he dissolved and became part of the river, flowing toward its reunion with the sea.
    A shiver ran over Judd’s skin as he sat down on a submerged rock, up to his neck in the cool water. As his body cooled, thoughts began to crackle again across the synapses of his brain. It was then the boy heard the rumble of voices running upstream and against the current.
    He had seen the big tent go up the afternoon before and had watched the marchers from the Reverend Eli’s church begin their trek toward town, inviting residents to the big revival as insistently as cowboys “inviting” cattle through a gate.
    Judd lifted his feet and floated toward the sound, only his face above water, his ears tuned to the click and sigh of a river running slow on a languid afternoon. His eyes watched the sun flash like Thor’s hammer through the cottonwood branches overhanging the river.
    Judd worried that if someone saw his face floating down the river they might take him for a muskrat and kill him for his pelt. But he was invisible, and anyone waiting on the bank would see nothing but a hole in the shape of his face floating by in the river. He wondered what the people of Sanctuary would think of that. He grinned then, and cool water ran into his mouth, almost choking him.
    The great manitou was with him. The spring flood had pulled a cottonwood into the river, but it was still rooted enough in the soil of the bank to remain green-leaved and bushy. Through the green and gray and shadow that was the tree, Judd could see bits and pieces of people standing downstream on the bank. Their lips were moving, apparently in song, but Judd could not hear their voices over the gentle noises of the river.
    The river carried him into the cottonwood, and he threaded his way toward the trunk, careful not to shake any branches and reveal his presence, careful not to be swept under the tree and drowned by the current.
    Hidden by the tree’s foliage, Judd crawled out of the water and lay straddled over a half-submerged limb, peeking through a hole in the branches.
    There was a gravel bar below, and three men, one a stranger dressed in black like the Reverend Eli, had waded in waist deep. The others were standing on the bank, singing, sweat glistening on their faces as they swayed with the music.
    And then a young woman pulled away from the singers and stepped into the water. Eyes rolling, body shaking, she carried her hands in front of her as though she were blind, her movements jerky as a marionette’s.
    The Reverend reached for her, and she struggled then, as people sometimes struggle in the night as they awaken from a dream. But the three men laid hands on her and