Strange Highways

iron filing and she a magnet. Her purse was big, almost a satchel, and the weight of it - in addition to the package of meat - seemed to bother her, because she was shrugging the straps farther up on her shoulder and wincing in pain, as if suffering from a flare-up of arthritis.
     Although it was spring, she was dressed in black: black shoes, black stockings, black skirt, dark gray blouse, even a heavy black cardigan sweater unsuited to the mild day.
     Billy looked up and down the street, saw no one else nearby, and quickly made his move. He did his drunk trick: staggering, jostling the old biddy. But as he pulled the purse down her arm, she dropped the package of meat, seized the bag with both hands, and for a moment they were locked in an unexpectedly fierce struggle. Ancient as she was, she possessed surprising strength. He tugged at the purse, wrenched and twisted it, desperately attempted to rock her backward off her feet, but she stood her ground and held on with the tenacity of a deeply rooted tree resisting a storm wind.
     He said, "Give it up, you stupid old bitch, or I'll bust your face."
     And then a strange thing happened:
     She changed before Billy's eyes. She no longer appeared frail but steely, no longer weak but darkly energized. Her bony, arthritic hands suddenly looked like the dangerous talons of a powerful bird of prey. That singular face - pale yet jaundiced, nearly fleshless, all wrinkles and sharp pointy lines - was still ancient, but it no longer seemed quite human to Billy Neeks. And her eyes. God, her eyes. At first glance, Billy saw only the watery, myopic gaze of a doddering crone; but abruptly they were eyes of tremendous power, eyes of fire and ice, simultaneously boiling his blood and freezing his heart, eyes that saw into him and through him, not the eyes of a helpless old granny but those of a murderous beast that had the desire and ability to devour him alive.
     He gasped in fear, and he almost let go of the purse, almost ran. In a blink, however, she was transformed into a defenseless old woman again. Abruptly she capitulated. Like pop beads, the swollen knuckles of her twisted hands seemed to come apart, and her finger joints went slack. She lost her grip, releasing the purse with a small cry of despair.
     Emitting a menacing snarl that served not only to frighten the old woman but also to chase away Billy's own irrational terror, he shoved her backward into a curbside trash container, and he bolted past her with the satchel-size purse under his arm. He glanced back after several steps, half expecting to see that she had fully assumed the form of a great dark bird of prey, flying at him, eyes aflame, teeth bared, talon-hands spread and hooked to tear him to bits. But she was clutching at the trash container to keep her balance, as age-broken and helpless as she had been when he had first seen her.
     The only odd thing: She was looking after him with a smile. No mistaking it. A wide, stained-tooth smile. Almost a lunatic grin.
      Senile old fool , Billy thought. Has to be senile if she finds anything funny about having her purse snatched.
     He could not imagine why he had ever been afraid of her.
     He ran, dodging from one alleyway to another, down side streets, across a sun-splashed parking lot, along a shadowy service passage between two tenements, and onto a street far removed from the scene of his latest theft. At a stroll, he returned to his parked car and put the old woman's black purse in the trunk with the others taken elsewhere in the city. At last, a hard day's work behind him, he drove home, looking forward to counting his take, having a few icy beers, and watching some TV.
     Once, stopped at a red traffic light, Billy thought he heard something moving in the car trunk. A few hollow thumps. A brief but curious scraping. When he cocked his head and listened closer, however, he heard nothing more, and he decided that the noise had only been the pile of stolen purses shifting under their own weight.

     Billy Neeks lived in a ramshackle four-room bungalow between a vacant lot and a transmission shop, two blocks from the river. The place had belonged to his mother, and it had been clean and in good repair when she had lived there. Two years ago, Billy had convinced her to transfer ownership to him "for tax reasons," then had shipped her off to a nursing home to be tended at