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been feeding her at the shelter. “I thought you might need some help, that’s all,” he says. “I thought maybe I might be able to help,” and no money from the wallet, just a card, and she takes it anyway; plain white card with plain black letters that read LOVING SHEPERD CRISIS LINE, 24 HRS. A DAY, a phone number, service of the Samford Univ. Baptist Student Union, and a cross stamped in the upper left-hand corner.
    “I’m Catholic,” she says to the librarian, and he frowns, briefest frown, and then the nervous concern returns, and Dancy is handing the card back to him. “And that’s not how you spell shepherd, ” she says. “It has another h in it.” Long moment then of her holding the card out to him, roles reversed now, and at first she thinks he won’t take it, never mind the reason, but maybe he thinks he’ll catch something from her, girl germs, cooties, some terrible skin disease. He looks confused and offended and unsure, and she’s already thinking she should have just taken his damn card, yes, thank you so much, and left it lying there on the table for some other bum who gives a shit. But too late now, and he does take it back, plucks it from her fingers, but it doesn’t go back into his wallet.
    “I was only trying to help,” he says, curt, sounding more sorry for himself than her and Dancy looks back down at the National Geographic, takes her eyes off him, and so perhaps he’ll go away and leave her alone.
    “Thank you,” she says and listens to his footsteps, loafers soft against the carpet, hesitant steps back to his desk, and a few minutes later, when Dancy looks up from an article on jade, she catches him watching her, smiles, and the librarian looks hastily down at the orderly stack of papers on his desk.

    Two weeks now since the bus ride, most of a night on the bus from Waycross, Greyhound winding north on dark roads, back roads where buses still stop in the middle of the night to take on passengers, and Dancy tried to sleep most of the way. Something comforting in the smell of diesel and the constant rumblehum of tires against the road. A whole seat to herself when people got a good look at her, so she could stretch out and use the old duffel bag with her clothes and books and fifteen dollars hidden in a sock at the bottom for a pillow. Her grandfather’s duffel, Grandpa Flammarion who came back from Germany without his left leg, and she would close her eyes and listen to the engine purr like a huge kitten, purr like a clockwork lion to lull her to sleep. But the dreams always too close, the dreams and the things she was running from, running towards, fear for what she’d done and what was left to do, and finally Dancy gave up and stared out at the nightshrouded fields and woods and towns rushing past outside, squinting whenever the bus pulled into a gas station or bus stop and took on another passenger or two. She still had her sunglasses then and would slip them on against the occasional pools of sodium-arc glare, oases of light in the long dark Southern night as the bus moved north, Georgia finally exchanged for Alabama, swamps and pine barrens for black-belt prairies, and then, near dawn, the easy, rolling foothills of the Appalachians, and Dancy stared amazed at land the weight of the sky had not long ago crushed almost as flat as the sea.
    Once or twice she noticed police cars behind the bus, following or just stuck back there on narrow state or county roads, and her heart raced, sick feeling deep in her stomach that she might have come as far as she was going to, that someone had found out after all, and they would drag her back to Waycross or Savannah or maybe all the way back to Florida, stick her in a jail or somewhere worse. And Dancy scooted down in her seat, making herself small, until the highway patrol or sheriff passed them and once again there was only tomorrow and yesterday to be afraid of.
    Just past Sylacauga, and a man had sat down next to her, big yellow