She was on the sidewalk, calling into doorways. "Come out! I know you're here! Come out!"

Shouting, she walked past a drug store and a bakery. "You hiding in there? Come out!"

She started to run. "Please don't hide! I know you're in there! Come out!" Then she screamed again.

She ran down the street screaming, she pounded on doors and windows, she screamed until the echoes ran together and the square was filled with one incessant long scream.

She was still screaming when Markel caught up to her. He hit her on the jaw, once, and she sagged limp against him. With the echoes of her screams all around him he carried her to the statue and put her down on the base.

She lay quiet, the wind moving her hair that was yellow as the wheat fields. Looking down at her, Markel remembered all the yellow-haired girls who had walked in the sun, all the proud girls in the proud cities. He put his hand on her hair, wondering why he had ever thought she was ugly. Now she was almost slim and almost beautiful. He remembered how she had felt, close against him in the car that day in the rain, and how she had cried in the nights. Suddenly he knelt and kissed her dry lips.

Dust blew past him and behind him glass fell in a trumpet blast of wind. It occurred to him then that perhaps no dream was better than the touch of yellow hair in the sun or the kiss of dry lips. And in that moment C. Herbert Markel the Third became a part of all humanity, because for the first time he knew pity, regret, and the beginnings of love.

"Hello, square man," said a voice behind him.

Slowly, like a drunken man, Markel got up and turned. Two yards away stood Rocky, his hunting knife held low in his right hand. Incredulously, Markel stared at Rocky's head. It was about half as large as it had been previously. Approximately the size of a cantaloupe, it sat incongruously on Rocky's thick neck. "Good God," said Markel.

Rocky said, "Rocky never dies." He tossed the knife in the air, caught it deftly by its point. "It grew back, square man."

Markel saw that this unquestionably was Rocky: the same black clothes, ragged now and dirty, the same narrowed eyes in the sullen but now doll-sized face. Casually, Rocky said, "I woke up feeling a little beat, and first thing I see is my old head, laying where you left it. Man, this bugs me 

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