One pressed a broken and muddy--under finger nail into the other's arm.  "See!  Stays tan." 

  I smacked her hand away before she could press on my sunburn. She put her thumbs in her tank top straps like it was her overalls.  "Still mad?" 

  Pursed lips and squinting eye. 

  The other one just stood thete.

  "Try that thing where you start with a question 'steada runnin' away." 

  "How in the world or hell does somebody run over yonder to the creek and wind up missing for four months?"

  The other one crossed her arms. 

  The cardboard door swung outward.  'i DID IT! I, OH, hello, finished a paragraph." 

  "Who"s that?" 

  "This is uh, Robert." 

  "Glaf you ask.  That was why I couldn't finish my piece." 

  Both girls plucked tall grass and stuck it in there mouths.  "We quit smoking." 

  'See, my friend here helped me get out of Knoxville and create a, what do you call it?" 

  "A Jesus bubble.  Personal space." 

  "Right, enough of that to overcome my amnesia.' 

  "You had amnesia?" 

  "Did you?" 

  "It was due to stress.  I think it happens so I won't snap.  Although," all five dogs came out of the porch area and peed everywhere, "Some claim I did snap by walking away."  The girls took the grass out of their mouths. 

  "I literally got hit in the head with a house." 

  "Lying?" 

  "I was too angry to be a therapist anymore, but not physically fit enough to stay in the services, so I," 

  "A whole house?" 

  "Like half, disintegrating, as we got the rafting company to North Carolina." 

  "Did the news ever decide if the dam broke or"

  "The news doesn't decide that or anything else." 

  "So I was convinced that I was Rhonda.  I was like who the hell is Robert?!'