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burned even brighter. “I got a powerful thirst.” She looked at my pants pocket, the one with the dollar in it, as if she could see it through the fabric. Her hand twitched.
    As if on its own, my hand dug down and produced the dollar. I held it out, fluttering from my shaking hand in the stillness. Her hand shot out like a cobra and snagged the bill, eyes flaring up and returning to the burning green.
    “Thank ye, thank ye. Mighty white of ye, Mark.” A low, raspy chortle emerged from the depths of her throat. She unfolded from beneath the blanket like a moth shedding a chrysalis. A worn and dirty cotton print dress flapped a few inches above her ankles and the worn brown brogans on her feet as she shuffled to the gap and disappeared.
    I blinked and felt as if I had suddenly awakened. Had I dreamed it? I reached into my pocket. The dollar was gone. I climbed the oil drum and vaulted the fence into the alley, ready to be found by M.

    I didn’t tell anyone about the Creature, but I couldn’t erase her image from my mind. I dreamed about her Saturday night. Her face of creases and splotches haunted me during the Sunday school lesson of the woman at the well. In church I formulated a plan. When the offering plate went by, I held an empty hand low over the plate and thumped the bottom with the other thumb as it passed in front of me, my money still safe in my pocket.
    At home that afternoon I hopped the back fence in pretense of visiting M, but passed his house. Downtown I walked through the tile corridor, turned into the blind alley, climbed gingerly over the fence, and dropped quietly to the ground.
    The Creature was in the box, but she didn’t acknowledge my presence. I crept closer, alert for any movement. As I approached, I heard a steady raspy sound from beneath the bedraggled blanket. Something clinked on the ground—my foot had hit a clear flask. I kicked it over and looked at the label. Gin. I looked at her a little longer, then threaded my way through the gap to the street.
    It took me awhile, but I finally found a place I could buy a sandwich and a bottle of Coke with the offering money. I returned to the box, set the food on the ground, and sat down on a wheel in the shade of the fence. After awhile I got tired of waiting and started throwing pebbles at the box. Three minutes and twenty pebbles later, I was rewarded.
    The Creature stirred, saw the food, and looked suspiciously out of the box. The purple splotch was dark against the pale skin on the left side of her face. “It’s the Mark,” she croaked. She crawled out of the box, snatched the food, and sat on the edge of a transmission housing several yards away, her feet straddling a dirty red stream of transmission fluid.
    She positioned herself so she was facing the gap in the wall, but could see me from the corner of her right eye. I watched in silence while she devoured the sandwich like a wild animal, eating some of the paper wrapping in her haste. Once the sandwich was gone, she picked up the Coke and drank the entire bottle slowly in one long draught, looking at me obliquely with leaden green eyes like the Atlantic on a cloudy day. She closed her eyes and let out a belch that reverberated through the courtyard.
    In a sudden movement she hurled the bottle against the liquor shop wall. It shattered in a shower of glass and I jerked like I’d been slapped.
    “The Mark follered me. What’s yer game?”
    “Game?”
    She turned her head slightly in my direction with a jerk, eyes narrowing and darting, sometimes in my direction, sometimes around the littered courtyard, like a bird watching a cat while looking for food. “Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.” She dropped her chin, lowering her coarse voice until it sounded like a man. “He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.”
    I looked at her blankly.
    She raised her head, voice returning to its normal level, and peppered me with questions. “Got the drop on me? Got me bang to rights?