Peter Glass awoke to sounds; the summer morning sounds of people talking, a dog barking, birds, a child's laughter. He had been sleeping on his side, curled up, stiff and uncomfortable on the bench seat of his truck. He forced open his eyes, groaned slightly and sat up, straightening his legs, running long fingers down his dirty jeans. At twenty, he felt old and tired, as if the bulk of his years were already behind him. Out of the passenger window pale gray rocks were scatter across the hillside like bleached bones. To his right was a cemetery where the tombstones were all leaning at the same angle, as if blown that way by wind.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes in confusion. He hadn't remembered driving in here. It had been a night like dozens of nights before it in his running. Again he heard sounds. A squealing child's laughter, a woman's murmuring voice. He looked around him, saw no one. Was he alone here? Was this noise a part of his madness? Chasing him here, even? Would he never escape? He lay back down and stared at the ceiling of his truck's cab and thought back to the night that he had decided to run.

Leaving like he had wasn't something he planned. It was one of those things that just sort of happened. The afternoon had been overlaid with a damp, drippy fog when he had left his apartment on foot to pick up a carton of milk, a box of Cheerios, and maybe rent a video or two from the convenience store on the corner. Then it would be back to his apartment to spend that evening like he had spent every other in recent months, with the phone off the hook, the doors doubled locked, and a chair hooked under the knob like he had seen on television.

The only vehicle in the parking lot was a rusting green pickup with a Montana license plate. He thought about that, about someone getting in their truck and driving all the way up here to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from someplace in Montana. What was stopping him, he thought, from getting into his truck and driving down there? What was preventing him from even going past Montana, just getting on the highway and not stopping? Eventually he would find a place, wouldn't he, where the ghosts didn't batter his nights with dreams, where he didn't wake up shivering and afraid? As if in a dream he had calmly done just that. He went home, packed his clothing and books into two large duffle bags, threw his sleeping bag into the cab of his truck, packed up a few books, drove to the bank and withdrew all his savings, (the $1200 he was saving for school) and then without leaving anyone a note, he headed south.

He raised himself and looked out the window again. The voices had quieted, perhaps they had been a part of his dreams after all. He ran his hands over his hair and stubbly face. His stomach hurt, as it had for many days now, and it seemed more than hunger that gnawed at him that morning.

The need to relieve himself finally made him reluctantly open the door and climb out. He squinted in the bright sun and stretched. His legs still felt stiff and his left shoulder was asleep. He rubbed it absently as he stumbled toward a stand of trees behind the cemetery, feeling grimy, grubby and sick. He had worn these same clothes for days, and he couldn't remember the last time he had had a decent hot shower with a real bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo. In the old days, his other life, that would have been unthinkable. Every morning he would shave, then shower, then put on a clean shirt and pair of pants. After a glass of grapefruit juice and a bowl of raisin bran he would board the bus to West Edmonton Mall where he worked in a book store.

He gazed beyond the cemetery to an old church which stood on stone blocks, some of which were missing, a gap-toothed smile. One long window on the side facing him had been boarded over.

As he stood there hidden in the tree's leafy arms, a woman opened the back door of the church and stood in the doorway. She wore a pale skirt which fell to her ankles and her feet were bare. She was looking at his truck, he saw, but he was too far away to read her expression. A small child skittered out from behind her skirt and laughed swinging chubby arms. It was this child's laughter that had awakened him.

He made his way back to the truck, a curious embarrassment overtaking him, should that woman in the long dress see him so disheveled. At the passenger side of his pick-up, which faced away from her, he found a bottle of tepid water on the floor of the cab, filled no doubt at one of the last gas stations. He found his toothpaste and brush and managed to squeeze out a small bead of the paste onto his brush though the tube was virtually empty. After he brushed his teeth, he rubbed a handful of the water onto face and through his hair. His bath for the day. It would have to do. He drank the rest of the water in the bottle. A few days ago he had run out of food, but he knew from his mountain biking experience in his other life that water was important. He made himself drink bottles of it every day, even when it gagged him and made him sick.

If he had to do it again, he would be more careful with his vehicle. It was in Minneapolis that someone broke into his truck and stole his wallet plus all of his clothing and his good sleeping bag. All he had left were the clothes on his back and three hundred dollars he had placed in an envelope under the floor mat. He was going to use that money to start his new life. Now he needed it to buy gas. He began watching the homeless people. He would sit on a bench and watch where they slept at night, how they found their food, what words they used when they begged for money. He consoled himself that maybe it was good he lost his identification, since he was going to start a new life anyway. Maybe this was just fate. Or part of his punishment.

After that he scavenged in dumpsters behind grocery stores for limp lettuce leaves, soft oranges with patches of blue and moldy bread. He ate the mold without question; he had read someplace that they made penicillin out of mold.

Outside of a McDonalds (was it in Toledo?) he won the lottery; he found a Happy Meal consisting of three-quarters of a burger, an entire bag of fries, a small orange pop still covered with a lid, and a cookie. No doubt some whiny child had demanded it, and then some exasperated mother had trashed the whole works when the child didn't finish it. At the very bottom of the bag he had even found a little Disney character which he had propped on his dashboard. Maybe it would bring him good luck. But that was a long time ago.

"Hiya." Peter looked over. At the front of his truck was that small child, a little girl, he saw. Her faded dress, printed with big yellow sunflowers, was too big for her and hung loosely to the ground. Her hair was honey colored and baby fine and her feet were bare.

"Peekaboo," she said covering her eyes with her hands.

"Hello."

The child held something toward him in chubby fingers. "Wanna apple?" she asked.

He took it. "Thank you," he said. She ran, laughing, towards the front of the truck again. He ate it quickly. It tasted wonderfully good. Some of the juice dribbled on his chin and he wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

"Peekaboo!"

"Is that your mother?" Peter pointed at the woman who had added a large straw hat to her ensemble.

"Mama," said the child yelling loudly and running back toward the woman. The apple had settled oddly in his stomach, and he hugged his arms around him and leaned against the truck waiting for the nausea to pass. The woman caught the running child and picked her up. She was still looking at him, he saw, the child squirming in her arms. He ought to walk over there. Probably he should apologize for parking on church grounds. He started toward her.

Next to where she stood, he saw a couple of rakes, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow. Beside the cemetery was a large garden patch. Perhaps this woman was the church gardener. Maybe she was the wife of the minister. Maybe all of them-this woman, the child and the minister-lived in a little house beyond the church that wasn't visible from where he stood. He looked at her. She had long, thick hair, the color of wheat. The weave of her straw hat cast criss cross shadow lines on her face and her skin bore that ruddy look of long healthy hours working out of doors. She stood almost as tall as he. To Peter, she looked like a goddess standing there, ringed with the sun. In another place and another time he would think about her and her garden until a poem came. But there was no more poetry. Running had replaced long contemplative hours of solitude. His apartment with its locked desk which opened up to a world of poetry and journals and dozens of half-finished chapbooks was far from this place.

She spoke first. "Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry for parking there," he stammered. "I didn't realize I was on private property. I'm just passing through."

"You don't pass through here. There's no place to pass through to." She had a soft southern accent, not harsh, not drawing attention to itself, but gentle, her voice like liquid.

"Oh."

She continued, "You can't go anyplace from here. Except back. This is east, about the farthest east you can be."

He looked nervously around him. The little girl had squirmed down from her mother's arms and scampered into the cemetery.

"What is this place?" he asked. "Where am I?"

"You don't know?"

He shook his head.

"Lambs Island."

"An island?" He ran his hand through his hair, looked around him.

She gazed at him curiously. "The only way onto this island is by ferry. You would have had to come here by ferry. Do you remember doing that?"

Dim, sleep-starved memories flitted in and out of his thinking: A dark road, hands unsteady on the wheel. Gripping it. Afraid of sleep, of what new terrors it might bring. And so hungry. So tired. Driving east, always east. Hungry. Sick. Away from Alberta. He remembered, but only faintly, a car ahead of him driving down onto a ramp. He had followed keeping his eye on its tail lights. And then a clunking, the sound of water. He had driven onto a boat? Where in the world was he? He had looked out, but saw nothing in the blackness. At some point he must have driven off the ferry and then to this cemetery and this church.

The woman was peering at him more closely. "You really don't know where you are, do you?"

He swallowed, shook his head.

"You're in Maine. Lambs Island is off the coast of Maine."

"I'm, uh..." He paused and looked down. Her feet were sturdy and slender, brown from the sun and soil, the toes long, the nails evenly cut. He looked at his own big feet crammed into scuffed Nikes.

He cleared his throat. "I've sort of run out of money." His voice broke. "I notice you have a large garden. If you would let me I could work in it. I'm a little...short of cash. And then I could get going again. Be on my way." "You came here for a job?" She looked at him incredulously.

He cleared his throat, swallowed, nodded. The little girl was sitting at the edge of the garden digging with her mother's trowel and talking loudly to a group of imaginary friends, ordering them about.

"You're hungry," she said. "And when you're hungry you don't need money you need food."

"You need money to buy food."

"We can give you food, but we can't give you money."

He pointed to the church. "Are you the gardener for the church?"

"I live there."

"In that building?"

"My name is Naomi," she said stepping toward him. "This is my daughter Zoe, and yes, we live here. Come inside and I'll fix you something to eat." "Your daughter gave me an apple." He could picture it in his stomach, a lump of chewed fruit flesh. He still felt slightly nauseated.

The room they entered ran the entire width of the back of the church, and was cut off from the main sanctuary by old and graying dry wall. It looked as though this may at one time have been a part of a building project-make a kitchen in the back. They probably had fundraising suppers, maybe even had one of those giant thermometers out front. But somewhere along the line the project was abandoned, and all that was left was this dented, grafitied dividing wall. In the center of the room a collapsible wooden folding table, the kind churches use for potluck suppers, was surrounded by folding metal chairs. At one end of the room was a large woodstove, and next to it a very old refrigerator which didn't look like it plugged in anywhere. Against the wall by the door were a couple of folding cots with blankets. She told him to sit at the table and she would fix him a sandwich. He watched her gather a few things from an ordinary cardboard box: a loaf of dark bread, a ripe round tomato. He watched her fingers slice the red fruit with a large knife. She wore a thin silver band on the ring finger of her left hand.

"You and your husband live here?" he asked.

She turned sharply, knife held high. "My husband's not here now." She paused. "He'll be back soon."

"Oh."

She handed him a sandwich. Between two slabs of dark bread was a tomato, thick-sliced and seasoned with a sprinkling of some kind of herb, no doubt from the garden out back. She had also cut up an apple and placed it decoratively around the edges of the plate. She placed in front of him a large plastic tumbler and a jug of water.

He ate hurriedly, washing the sandwich down with glass after glass of cold water.

Naomi watched him. "When was the last time you ate?" she asked.

"I don't remember. Couple days ago, maybe."

She sat beside him, frowning. "I shouldn't have given you all of this. Not on an empty stomach. Not all at once."

"I'll be fine."

A few moments later he was stumbling out of the back door toward the stand of trees behind the cemetery where he leaned against a willowy tree and vomited. Naomi had followed him and was wiping his forehead with a damp cloth.

"I'm sorry," he said. Peter was embarrassed, mortified that this woman had watche

Naomi was shaking her head. "I should have known that you hadn't eaten in a while. I should have been able to tell from your face. The coloring." She was stroking the back of his neck with long fingers. "A tomato was the worst thing for you."

"I'm okay."

"And then an apple before that...."

She looked at him, touched his forehead. "You are sick. You're feverish. No wonder you don't remember coming here. You need rest and good food. In small doses until you're stronger."

He stood up shakily and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. "I'm fine," he said.

"Can you walk? Do you have bedding in that truck of yours? Why don't you get what you have and come with us? Stay at our place for a while."

"Thank you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

At his truck he gathered together his meager possessions. He had found a blanket and some clothing in two plastic bags outside of a Good Will.

"Is this all you have?" she asked gathering his things.

He nodded, looked away from her.

"Well, we all make do, don't we?"

His head hurt and when she led him to one of the cots in the room, he lay down. She pressed cool fingers above his eyes.

The last thing he remembered was this goddess looking down at him with her wheat hair, frowning slightly, stroking his head. He fell asleep then, and in his dreams she held him tightly to her, warming his cold and injured soul.