Anxious Hearts by Tucker Shaw

he sighed through the slats as he drew. “Evangeline.” He was not calling that she may hear, he was calling that somehow her soul might know that he longed for her.
    Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment and remembered Evangeline, in her breeze-blown kirtle of blue and curly braid, feeding the chickens at her father’s farm. He drew his finger through the dirt for a moment and closed his eyes again, now picturing Evangeline, staring with determination and love and anxiousness and desire into his eyes as she had the night they lay together under the orchard trees. Another blink, another vision of Evangeline, surrounded by the frothy gossamer of her wedding frock, her midnight eyes piercing like the jewels of an emperor, smiling at Gabriel, only at Gabriel, forever at Gabriel.
    “Evangeline,” he repeated through the slats. “Evangeline.” He would repeat it for eternity, even if no answer ever came. “Evangeline.”
    “Gabriel?”
    Gabriel stiffened. He wasn’t sure he’d heard it at first. In fact, he knew he hadn’t. He’d been hallucinating, that’s all. Delirious. Hungry. Thirsty. “Evangeline,” he whispered again.
    “Gabriel!”
    This time, the voice was unmistakable. It was she. His beloved.
    Gabriel thrust his fingers through the slats into the rain. “Evangeline!”
    He felt her fingers, wet and slick but warm and alive, grasp his through the slats. “My beloved,” she said. “My beloved.”
    “You are wet,” he said. “You must find shelter.”
    “I will not leave here, Gabriel,” she said. “Now that I have found you. I have visited this place every night since our wedding, calling for you.”
    “What has become of Pré-du-sel?” Gabriel pleaded. “What has become of you, my beloved? Tell me!”
    “They have kept us in our houses,” Evangeline whispered. “We have not been allowed out. A new soldier has been sent to guard our exit each day. Father has not risen from his chair since the wedding. They say tomorrow they will gather us at the harbor and then transport us to the New Colonies.”
    “You must be strong, my love,” Gabriel said, willing the fear from his voice, glad she could not see his despair. Suddenly, he was seized with a burst of energy. “You must escape!” he shouted.
    “Not without you.”
    “Listen, Evangeline. You must take your father and escape.”
    “Impossible!” she said. “He cannot walk! And I will not leave without him and you both!”
    Gabriel knew it was a waste of breath to convince her otherwise.
    “Oh, Gabriel. Have you eaten? Have you slept?”
    “I am well,” said Gabriel, in as confident a voice as he could muster. “Do not worry, angel Evangeline. I am well, and Basil is strong. We will be together again soon. It matters not where they send us, or when; we will be together.”
    “You cannot deceive me, Gabriel. I detect in your voice that you are not well.” She paused, and inhaled deeply. “But nothing, in truth, can harm us. We are one.”
    Gabriel pressed his cheek into the wooden slat, willing the feel of her cheek through the slat to his own. The warmth he imagined forced his eyes closed. “Here, Gabriel,” Evangeline said. “I have brought you meat.” She slipped two strips of leathered mutton through the slats.
    “What about you, my love? Have you eaten?”
    “I cannot,” she said. “I cannot eat for worry.”
    “Then take this,” Gabriel said, passing one strip back through the slat. “Let us eat them together, as husband and wife.”
    “My beloved,” she said, and her words caught in her throat, and Gabriel could hear Evangeline, his sweet Evangeline, begin to weep, quietly, almost carefully, and though she couldn’t see him, or perhaps because she couldn’t see him, Gabriel wept with her.

eva

    I am curled on a bed of leaves surrounded by trees, tucked under a sort of tarp I made last night from my rain poncho strung between two pines. The ground is hard, terribly uncomfortable, but at least it is dry. I