Free Shadow Men by Jonathon King Page B

apologized for caring about her so many times. It’s a hard face to look into and not be suckered.”
    “That’s why they stay?”
    “That’s what the domestic violence folks say,” I said, but my eyes were focused out the window, across the street.
    “I’m not sure I like your vast knowledge on this subject, Freeman,” she said, but I was no longer paying attention.
    “You know these two guys across the street? The one in blue and his buddy leaning against the light pole?”
    She checked them for a full minute. They were older than the rest of the crowd, both thick in the shoulders and waist. One was taller, the other more nervous. I could see the silver in the hair of the bigger one.
    “No. Don’t think so.”
    “They’ve been there since we came in. Beer bottles in hand, but neither one has taken a drink.”
    “Did they get dropped off by a white van?” she said, and even though it bugged me, she was right about my paranoia.
    “How about you watch to see if they pull out their guns and come running across the street while I eat,” I said.
    “How about we both eat?” she said, this time with that smile of hers.
    “Deal,” I said, and put my hand flat on her thigh under the table. I kept my eyes off the street through dinner.
    “Get your hands up on the table where’s I can see them!” announced Rosa when she brought the bill, her big, dark face full of mischief. “Now don’t be bringin’ no more young ladies in here, Mr. Max,” she said as we got up to leave. I looked to see Richards’s reaction.
    “Oh, she OK, baby. Just no others, hear?”
    “Good night, Rosa,” I said, leaving her a twenty-dollar tip.
    When we stepped out onto the sidewalk Richards said, “They’re gone.” I looked across the street.
    “I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
    “Liar.”
    She made coffee when we got to her house and spiked it with a crème rum that turned it sweet and light brown. I didn’t object. She climbed into the big hammock with me and her movement set it lightly swinging.
    “You comfortable, Freeman?”
    “Very,” I said. She had turned out the porch lights, so the only light was the soft iridescent blue from the pool.
    “What am I going to do about my friend, Max?”
    I knew what was eating at her. I knew how it could.
    “Listen to her,” I said. “Suggest some counseling. You know the PBA has programs for this. Maybe she can get him to go before it gets too far. If it hasn’t already.”
    She was quiet. Thinking quiet. Running the scene through her internal eye as a good investigator does.
    “I’m not sure she’d go for that,” she said. “And I doubt seriously that he would.”
    We both sipped our coffee and watched a breeze ripple the pool water and set its light flickering.
    “And if she admits he’s been hitting her? What do you do?”
    “You gather the evidence and arrest his ass. It’s a crime,” I said, though it came out harsher than I expected.
    She sat her coffee cup on the deck and stretched out next to me, her head on my chest. The smell of her hair was in my nose, and I was afraid she was listening to the elevated race of my heartbeat.
    “Will you tell me about your father someday, Max?”
    I ran the scene through my own internal eye.
    “Yes,” I said.
    Later, when she was asleep, I lay staring up into the trees. I would use my left hand on occasion to push off the near railing and set the hammock swinging, because I did not want to close my eyes and did not want to dream.
    I could never hear my mother’s voice, no words of anger or fear or even begging to make him stop. I would lie in bed, the covers up to my neck and—forgive me, God—I would listen. The rough slam of the front door woke me. I counted the heavy steps past the staircase and down the hall to the kitchen. Eighteen. I heard the soft suction of the refrigerator opening, the clinking sound of glass against glass. A plate on the wooden table, a scrape of a chair being pulled back. Maybe he would stay