Free Night My Friend by Edward D. Hoch Page B

acting now as if I’d never been away. Or were they acting as if I’d never come back?
    Joe Falconi brought me a beer to go with the hot dog. “It’s good to see you again, boy. Come on, let’s walk down by the water.”
    We strolled away from the others, kicking at stones, watching them skip and finally splash in the sparkling pond, stirring here and there an eddy of mud in the tranquil waters. “Your kids are growing.” I said. “You and Jean just have the two?”
    “No,” he answered, a bit embarrassed. “We had another boy last year. I guess you didn’t hear.”
    “Communications weren’t too good in there. Especially when none of my old friends ever came to see me.”
    “Sam…”
    “What?” I kicked at a loose stone.
    “Sam, I don’t blame you for being a bit bitter, but you’ve got to look at it from our point of view.”
    “Sure,” I told him with a smile. “You figured I was locked up in the nut house for the rest of my natural life, so why the hell should anybody bother about me. Right? It was just as if I was dead too, along with her.”
    “Sam. You don’t know what you do to me when you talk like that. Hell, they wouldn’t even let anyone see you at first, you know that. We didn’t know how bad you were or anything about it. You know the way the newspapers treat a story like that.”
    “Sure. Frankly, I was surprised they didn’t have a gang of reporters waiting for me the other day.”
    “Look, Sam… I know the construction business isn’t your line, but if you need a job to tide you over for a while, I could probably fix you up.”
    “Thanks, Joe. About the only thing I’ve done for the past two years is make baskets. They have some weird ideas of mental therapy in those places. Maybe I’ll take you up on it.”
    From somewhere behind us we heard Jean calling to him. “I have to get back. She has quite a time with those kids.”
    I followed him part of the way, but paused a bit by one of the playing children. It was a little girl, unmistakably one of Charlie and Laura’s children. “How are you?” I asked her.
    “Fine,” she answered a bit uncertainly at the question from a stranger.
    “You don’t remember me. You were just born when I went away.” I pulled at a few willow leaves and tickled her nose with them. “What’s your name? I forgot it.”
    But before the child could answer, Laura Thames had appeared from somewhere. “Sam, please leave Katie alone.”
    “What?” I hadn’t quite understood her unexpected words.
    “I’m sorry, Sam. Really I am. But I don’t want you to get near the children.”
    “Sure.” I stood up and walked back to where the others stood too casually around the charcoal stove. Dora was drinking her tea, while Fred played with a rumpled deck of cards.
    “Sam,” Charlie Thames said, “what do you plan to do with yourself? Plan to stay around town long?”
    “Why not? It’s my home.” I was conscious of the sun a bit lower in the afternoon sky, the birds not quite as chirping as before.
    “Sure. I was just thinking that you might want to go away to some place where people didn’t know about the… trouble. You know.” Charlie was smiling. Keeping it friendly. The smiler with the knife. Chaucer. Charlie Damned Chaucer Thames.
    “Thanks for the advice, Charlie.”
    “New York or someplace. You know, big city. Hell, I was reading the other day that most of the people in Manhattan are nuts anyway.”
    “Charlie!” This from Laura, warning, rebuking. Charlie glanced at her and heeded the warning. He shut up suddenly and walked over to inspect the dying embers of the charcoal fire.
    “Guess I’d better be going,” I told them, all of them, not one in particular, because all of them thought alike. Even good old Joe with his offers of a job until I could find something better. Maybe they thought I was going to work on their wives next. Maybe they thought their children weren’t safe around a homicidal maniac—even a certified