Free Stranger Will by Caleb J. Ross

thumps the hood of the car and yells muffled words filtered by his full beard. William slams on the brakes, instinctively reaching out in front of Shelia. He catches his excitement for a moment. “Sorry,” he says. “Goddamn homeless run this town.”
    Shelia balls the napkin in her palm and passes the sweaty, hot mess to William who tosses it out the window. Shelia’s chest grows with a deep breath and shrinks slowly. “Mrs. Rose sounds nice,” she says. Her voice comes young and smooth.
    “She is, very nice. She’s the principal at Harold Straton Elementary. Been doing it awhile. She knows a lot about children. She helps out with adoptions part-time.”
    “It’ll be nice to see her,” she says and turns away to the passenger window. The glass fogs under hot breath, something so hidden about her. Beyond the breath, fields stretch out against the still gray sky. Everything passes, but slowly.
    Mrs. Rose is feeding pigeons when they arrive at her house. Her gravel driveway seems to stretch for miles, and for its entire duration, William keeps one eye cornered to Shelia, waiting for a sudden attack, a grand finale jump from the van window. Bashing her face into gravel. A final attempt , Mrs. Rose calls it— doing whatever it takes to clear regret.
    But she just bobs to the dips in the road until stopped at Mrs. Rose’s door. When coaxed she stays stiff, defiant. He assures her that Mrs. Rose can’t wait to meet her, but Shelia doesn’t move. “Wait here, then,” he says, leaving the door open.
    “I want you to meet someone,” he yells to Mrs. Rose. Her pigeons’ screams outweigh William’s voice. “Been doing a little gardening?”
    She places a bird into its cage and dusts off her hands. She carries more dirt than usual, hands a deep brown and black under her fingernails. “I love to see things grow,” she says and wipes her hands on faded jeans. “I told the school I was sick. Truth is this problem of yours seemed a bit more important than my administrative duties.”
    William turns to the van. “She’s nervous,” he says. “Couldn’t get her out.”
    “She has every reason to be, doesn’t she?”
    They walk together to the van, feet sinking gently into the damp dirt below them. Each footprint seems a grave plot for small a creature.
    “You are going to like this girl,” he says. “She’s been a bit loopy since the hospital, but it’s wearing off.”
    “Hospital?” Mrs. Rose says.
    William reaches into the van, over Shelia’s lap, and pulls the newspaper from the center of the seat. He slams the door and tosses the paper to Mrs. Rose. She glances through a few pages, asks what it is she is looking for.
    “Page D2,” he says. “A small brief in bold. The one about the abandoned house and the body.”
    With Shelia trapped in the van and Mrs. Rose occupied by the newspaper, William takes a detour to one of Mrs. Rose’s many pigeon cages. These birds exist without a clue as to their role. He smiles and puts a finger between the thin rungs. A pigeon snaps, misses. William smacks the top of the cage hard enough to force the entire flock into a struggle for balance atop their perches. “Fucking birds,” he says to himself.
    Mrs. Rose offers a stern stare, a warning it would seem to those unaware of her and William’s unusual history, but between them, animosity is always superficial. “Bring her inside,” she says and tucks the newspaper under her arm.
    She waits at the door for Shelia, helps her inside the house, and for that small moment when Mrs. Rose and William stand alone she leans into him and says, grinning, “You’ve been shooting my birds again.” He struggles to deny the fact, but she interrupts: “Messenger pigeons aren’t free, you know. I keep a pretty strict inventory.”
    She was a tall woman when they first met in the clearing, though crooked with age, and over the months gravity seems to have strengthened. The burdens of both her growing years and her intimate