she told sy only once, at nine years of age, while standing knee deep in the cananga river. he hung upside down from a tire swing while she spoke and sucked his lips blue on a popsicle. the juices slipped down his hand to the tips of his fingers. when i die you gotta burn the body, she told him. on a big heap of wood. and you gotta pile it all up yourself, you listenin? with your own two hands. he said nothing. she always saying strange things like that.

jenny sue first hobbled cross the washakie county line at fourteen—from where, no one knew. she walked ninety-one miles up the highway with nothing on her feet till his daddy had enough christian charity to invite the poor girl in for supper. there he, his wife and five sons learned jenny sue was a wanderer in this world and in need of much saving.

so daddy put her to work around the house, at first just picking rice and milking goats. but they soon discovered jenny could manage more than a whole herd of sons, for jenny sue could pick a full rice field in under an hour, and she churned three pounds of butter in under ten minutes. when old blue the ox fell lame, jenny sue up and ran the plow herself. she took one beam in each arm and ran the full length before lunch. when old bessie tumored, daddy lumbered out into the field with his shotgun to find jenny sue laying hands on the beast, communing with the spirit. sure enough, the next day that old cow stood straight up, waddled outside and grazed its weight in grass. in the long winter months, with the family gathered around the wood stove, jenny sue rubbed her hands together to make the wood burn longer so that a single log roared longer than twelve clumps of coal. jenny sue made the chickens’ eggs larger. she blew little bubbles into the drinking water, so it tickled when you drank it. and she rubbed herself up in the sheets so they smelled like spring lilac year round.

one time, sy lost himself in the woods coming back from the summer social. a flash flood broke out and barrelled through the county. sy took refuge up a tree, climbing to the highline, where he nestled in an owl’s hollow that creaked and wavered in the winds. and when all felt lost and dreary, from out the rain she emerged, jenny sue with her skin a blueish light and her eyes two bouncing flames. he called to her, and she rose right off the ground to find him. she covered him in a blanket and held him to her chest until the light of her skin warmed him through.

no one informed the neighbors of jenny sue’s unique abilities. the supersonic speed and strength of a demigod did her no good in washakie. the sheriff would have her at the end of a barrelled shotgun, inching her back over the county line. or the bigwigs and money would swoop down in their automobiles and demand to take her back up north to slave away in some munitions factory and thus work her all the days and hours of her life. daddy wouldn’t hear of it, and so made them all swear to keep the secret safe.

and when sy came of age, they thought it fine and fitting that the two of them should marry and jenny sue should officially become one of their own. it was on honeymoon in jackson that jenny sue first spoke of the place she came from, pointing heavenward toward the stars. she spoke of a place where everyone could do the things she did, but she’d become lost and fallen here among his people and could not find the way back. he worried out loud to her she might come to resent him and their little life together, that she’d such big dreams and places she’d rather be. how could he think to keep her there? no one ‘kept’, she snapped back, fire in her eyes and lungs. can’t keep no one. i stay because i want to, because your daddy is good to me and your mama’s warm and you are the makings of their love. so i shall cherish you all the rest of my days. and she did.

daddy died seven years later, and mama went to live with her sisters in memphis. all the children were grown and raised, and so scattered to every corner of the nation. so sy and jenny sue moved to wyoming where sy took a job as a horse wrangler. dull work, but the pay was alright. and jenny sue worked for the local gazette where she championed the causes of nellie ross, speaking out for women, child workers and miners. none of their five sons shared their mother’s special gifts (though they shared a few of their father’s). they lived a hush of a life together, some shared whisper out where no one knew their names.

and at eighty-four, old jenny sue’s heart gave out, and she died. so sy took up the task she assigned him all those years before. he took the body by train up to the banks of the cananga river and carried her through the woods till he came to the place where she once found him in a tree. and he cut that tree down himself with nothing but a common ax. and from it, he built the pyre and laid her body out.

but jenny sue did not burn and ashen so much as she fizzled and released herself as fits of steam and bursts of gas that filled the air, so that when she was finally gone (bones and all), a heavy mist hung in the air, wet and cool on sy’s skin. sy opened his arms and waded through her, the smell of spring lilac in his nose. he took deep breaths and felt her inside his lungs.

folks said sy douglas lived to be a hundred and twenty-nine, though truth be told, no one could authenticate the matter. you can read the features they wrote on him in the newspapers. sy hiked the appalachian trail at ninety, sailed to south africa on a schooner at one hundred and one, climbed mount rainier at one hundred and nineteen. beyond that, no one knew much about him. folks said he was married once, to a quiet gal who helped with the chores back on the family farm. they said she came up from who-knows-where without any shoes on her feet. that she had been a wanderer in this world and in need of much saving.