“I can handle that.” I looked up and then down the alley. “Which way is the mission?”

Earl pointed to his right. “That way.”

“Well, let’s go.”

“Don’t bother. It’s done closed for the evening.”

I wanted to shake a straight answer out of Earl. “Where then?”

“The gas station up the block.” Earl turned around and groped for the bag of barbecue and the bottle. He slipped them under the tarp covering his shopping cart.

“Is the gas station open?” I asked.

“Nope.” Earl pulled the cart away from the wall and guided it up the alley. He pushed the cart in a shambling gait. His heels flattened the backs of a pair of dirty white cross-trainers.

“Then where are you going?”

“The gas station. The folks who own it won’t let you wash there when it’s open.” Earl said this like every idiot in Kansas City knew it as a fact.

I walked behind Earl.

He mumbled over his shoulder. “Don’t get too close and for God’s sake, stay downwind.”

I put a couple of extra steps between us.

We turned on Holmes Street and continued to the next road. Traffic emptied from the interstate and whooshed past us into a spaghetti maze of on-ramps, off-ramps, and intersections.

Earl pushed his cart off the sidewalk. The wheels clattered onto the pavement. As if blind-gee, after all, he was-he trundled across the street. A Lincoln Continental with green lights in the wheel wells and a bass stereo loud enough to drown out an exploding volcano rounded the corner and, not bothering to slow down, zoomed around Earl.

He kept shuffling, rammed his cart against the opposite curb, and levered it onto the sidewalk.

At the end of the next block, Earl veered into the lot of a dark and deserted Gas-U-Mart. Electric wires jutted from the posts where the security lamps would have been. Scarred and chipped plywood sheets covered the vending machines. Behind the mart, a Dodge Caravan rested on flat tires beside a Dumpster and barrels filled with oily water.

Earl pushed his cart until it collided with the wall. It was an inside corner, where the building made an L by the rear entrance. A heavy chain and two hasps, all fastened with padlocks the size of fists, secured the door.

“Now what?” I asked.

Earl folded back the tarp on his cart. He wrestled with a stuffed nylon duffel bag and pulled it free. He hefted the bag and tossed it to land by my feet. “You can’t believe the nice things folks throw out. Find you something that fits.”

I bent over and unzipped the bag. Clothes and shoes popped out like meat from a split sausage casing. I sorted through the first garments: a turquoise prom dress, some kind of blue dress pants with silver stripes, a yellow blazer, and assorted sweats. I picked out a Lilith Fair T-shirt, black sweatpants with cargo pockets, and a pair of sneakers a size too big. Lucky for me, there was a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses in a pocket of the sweats.

“Got any underwear or socks?”

“That’s one thing nobody tosses out. Least anything you’d want to wear.” Earl cradled a box of broken electric appliances that he set on the ground. Someday he might need a waffle iron with a frayed power cord.

Earl pulled a length of garden hose from his cart. He waved to the ground around the door. “There’s a spigot around there someplace.”

I saw it. “There’s no faucet handle.”

Earl rummaged in his cart through yet another box. He fished out a pair of locking pliers.

Earl reached for the wall and stepped close until his shin knocked against the spigot. He grunted and sank to one knee. He screwed the brass coupling of the hose over the spigot.

Sludge caked my skin and hair. “What about soap? Shampoo?”

Earl cocked a thumb to the cart.

I found tubes and bottles of body wash, shampoo, and conditioner stacked next to spray cans of Raid and Velveeta cheese.

Earl locked the pliers over the stub of the valve stem. As he twisted the valve open, the spigot squeaked. Water rumbled through the hose, and its length snaked across the grass.

Earl grasped the end of the hose. He braced one hand against the wall and levered himself upright. “Should be a grate in the corner that you can stand on.”

I unbuttoned my shirt. “Any chance someone can come by? I’d hate to be busted for public indecency.”

Earl chuckled. “Cops come by all the time. But would I care? It won’t be me buck-naked.”

I carried the body wash, shampoo, and a bundle of clothes across the weeds and broken glass to the corner. I stepped on the grate and set the items on the ledge of a boarded-up window. As I stripped, I tossed my dirty clothes into a pile on the grass.

Earl squirted the hose. He missed.

“I’m over here, Earl.”

“Sing something and I’ll find you.”

I hummed “Chances Are.”

The cold spray jolted me. I lathered up and scrubbed at the funk with a rag. I wiped dry with a couple of T-shirts and slipped into the clean clothes. The sweatpants bunched around my ankles and I rolled them up to my shins. I collected things from my old clothes and pushed them into the pockets of the sweatpants.

Earl turned off the water and unscrewed the hose. He grunted the entire time. He dropped the pliers into their box and coiled the hose in his shopping cart.

Being clean refreshed me almost as much as fanging a virgin and drinking her unsullied blood-the Godiva chocolate of hemoglobin.

“Say, Earl.”

He stopped for a moment.

“Thanks.”

He packed his boxes. “I didn’t do it for thanks. I did it for the hundred dollars.”

“I haven’t forgotten. How’d you wind up like this?”

“You asking how is it I’m a homeless bum?” Earl reached into the cart and grasped the bottle in the bag. “Bad luck and bad decisions.” He uncapped the bottle and sipped from it. “Doesn’t help that I stay a little off balance.”

I pulled out my money. “I don’t have any more twenties. How about a hundred?”

“That all you got, then I better get creative about breaking it.” He held out the bottle. It smelled of Night Train wine.

“No thanks. Do you need anything else?”

“My life starting at age fourteen,” Earl deadpanned. “Don’t suppose you can do that?”

“Sorry.”

“Didn’t think so.” He took another sip. “Since you’re being so generous, then four hundred bucks outta do it. I’ve got a daughter in Cincinnati I’d like to visit.”

I counted the bills. “Here’s four. That’s five hundred and twenty you’ve gotten from me.” I touched Earl’s hand and he turned it palm-up to clasp the money.

“Earl, you never asked me my name.”

“Figured a guy who crawled out of the sewer and didn’t ask for the police wasn’t interested in spreading his identity around.” Earl brought the money close to his eye and scrutinized every bill. “How about I call you Cash Machine?”

“Fair enough.” I put the sunglasses on. “Time to go. Thanks again, Earl. Say hello to your daughter.”

“My daughter?” Earl’s eyebrows worked up and down. “Oh right. My daughter.” He folded the bills into his front trouser pocket and groped for the handle of the shopping cart. “Yeah, we’ll see you later, Cash Machine. Try staying out of the sewers. Might not find another Earl to help you.”

I turned about and started north. A few blocks later I walked up to a mini-mart and approached a man gassing a Ford F-150 pickup. His back was to me as he watched the gas pump.

“Excuse me,” I asked. “You wouldn’t happen to be going east?”

He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a dismissive glare. “Can’t help you, buddy.”

I removed the sunglasses. “Guess again. You and I are going on a road trip.”