Free Wilderness by Robert B. Parker Page B

with a gun this would be over now. Chris, can you teach me to shoot?”
    “Either one of us can,” Hood said.
    Newman sat silently looking at the beer can in his hands. His hands were big and muscular and brown. They were callused. He was a skillful man and could do carpentry and mason work and wiring. He had restored most of the old house they lived in.
    “Well,” Janet said. “I think you should.”
    Newman got up from the table and walked out of the kitchen, through the dining room, out of the house through the side porch.
    He stood in the dark in his driveway under the spread of the three-hundred-year-old maple that shaded their bedroom during the day. His eyes stung again with tears and his face was wet.
Different
, he thought.
In the dark your own land looks different and feels different
. He walked down the driveway and onto the main street. Smithfield was small and had a New England common with a meetinghouse. At night when there were no cars Newman could imagine being back two hundred years when his house was built and Jefferson was president and the Revolution was but recently past.
Am I right? Or is it booze. Why are there always a few beers involved when I get mad at her? Does the beer distort what I hear, or does it
break down inhibitions and allow me to say what I’m too careful to say when I’m stone sober? What did I say? Actually I didn’t say anything. What the fuck am I mad at? How could she treat me that way? How could she be so fucking insensitive?
    He walked past the small village shopping center. His face was still wet with tears. The lights were on in the shopping center, though the stores were closed. It would be embarrassing to be seen walking about crying. He prided himself on the goodness of his marriage and the loving relationship. He would admit no problems. He crossed the street, out of the light, and sat on the small curving stone wall that enclosed the old cemetery.
What fucking difference does it make? We’ll all be in the ground in forty years or so. At dinner with a body of politic worms. All there is is her
. He dropped his head and felt sorrow saturate him.
It’s her disapproval. I cannot take any hint of disapproval from her. I want too much. She has to provide the complete meaning in my life
. Moths fluttered in the arc of the streetlight.
I’ve got to separate at least a little. Like a kid going to kindergarten. It’s part of growing up. Like the girls going to college. I’ve got to make her less central
. A fluffy gray cat with a white saddle walked silently past, jumped the fence into the cemetery, and disappeared among the stones.
For crissake, I’m doing this for her and she’s bitching about it
. A ten-year-old Chevrolet Impala sedan turned the corner at the common. There were teenage children in the front and back. One of them yelled something at Newman. He couldn’t make out what it was. “How about I kill you, kid,” he murmured. “Teach you some manners.”
    Insects began to swarm about him.
Doesn’t take the
bastards long
, he thought.
The ways of the Lord are often dark but never pleasant
. He slapped at a mosquito.
What will I say to her when I go back. Or in the morning. The silence will be awful or the formal courtesy without warmth. I won’t apologize, goddamn it, I’m right. She should have been supporting me. She should have been saying, “Oh heavens, don’t get hurt, sweetheart. If anything happened to you I’d die,” that’s it. That’s what it is. She’s so fucking businesslike and practical. So controlled. Why can’t she just now and again be girly-girly for crissake
. He shook his head as the bugs settled on him. He got up from the wall and walked across the street toward the library.
Just like sex, the bastard. “Here”
—in his mind he mimicked her in a high voice—“
here, you lie still and I’ll take hold of you here, and rub you there, and—no no, don’t touch—and then I’ll do this and that and now we’re ready I’ll