My Body is a Cage and Other Stories

“After all that bullshit about holy matrimony, and her doing what she did, and you not
being in my life, it didn’t seem like it was for meanymore. Your nana showed me the wedding
pictures. You looked absolutely gorgeous, and so,so happy.”
“I was. I am.”
He turns his head to the water and they lapse intosilence once more. The man he was
when she was a teenager would have never said thosewords. The cicadas have quieted down, so
there is just the faint lapping of water against themuddy shore.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She nods. She doesn’t want to cry, so she focuseson the distant yellow flashes in the trees
on the other side of the inlet and naming each ofthem. Abraham. Isaac. Victor. Creature.
Then there is a shriek, louder than any of Montgomerycounty’s coyotes or foxes or
bears, and it is sharp and shrill and ungodly. Itcomes from the woods behind them.
They both jump, and hiss “Shit” in the scared-shitlesssouthern way that is pronounced
“shee-it”.
“That’s one loud fox,” he says.
Irene looks at him and she can tell he doesn’t thinkit’s a fox. And she is certain it’s not.
They pack up their fishing gear and with her father’srifle in hand, she leads the way back to the
camper.
They lock the camper door and eat twinkies beforebed. They’re both jittery and laughing
from the adrenaline but settle down onto the two bunks.She sends a text to Jo and as she’s
falling asleep, she thinks she hears another shriekway off in the distance. But her eyes are too
heavy to open and her father’s already snoring soshe sleeps.