Free Close to the Broken Hearted by Michael Hiebert Page A

program. Until now, nobody had told her that Eli Brown’s parole was coming up two and a half years early. Far as Leah knew, the girl didn’t even know the man had been moved from Talladega into the work release program in Birmingham. Apparently, old Preacher Eli was as good as gold behind bars. Nobody wanted to see him spend any more time there than he had to.
    Obviously, Sylvie Carson didn’t feel the same way about the man.
    â€œWhat are you gonna do ’bout this?” she asked Leah, although it was more like she screamed it into her phone than so much as asked a question. Leah could barely understand a word the girl was saying she was talking so loud and fast.
    â€œWhat do you mean, what am I gonna do?” Leah asked back. She tried to keep her own voice as quiet and slow as possible, hoping to calm Sylvie down, but she knew in her mind there was no calming this girl down. She’d been jumping at boogeymen hiding in corners too many years. Now, suddenly, she felt she had a real boogeyman to jump at and seeing him on the television screen made the danger more real than ever.
    â€œI mean you can’t just let him walk out free! You know what he did to little Caleb!” Leah heard Sylvie begin to wail. “He don’t deserve to ever be free. He don’t deserve to be alive. He shoulda been sentenced to die!”
    Leah stayed quiet. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Nothing she could say would placate Sylvie when she was this upset. Preacher Eli Brown had been convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, a class B felony in the state of Alabama. “He got the maximum prison time the judge could sentence him to, Sylvie,” Leah said. “The minimum was ten years. Eli got twenty. You should be happy ’bout that. Justice was served.”
    Sylvie’s voice suddenly grew eerily quiet as the sobbing stopped. It almost sounded scary from Leah’s end of the phone. “Justice was served?” Sylvie asked, now speaking slowly. “Justice was served?” Her voice slowly rose in volume. “You didn’t see your little brother get blown apart four feet in front of you at the supper table when you was five. Don’t you tell me that justice was served when the murderin’ son of a bitch who done it is about to walk out of prison a free man tomorrow.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Leah said, remaining calm. “I can’t possibly know how it feels to be you. It must be horrible. But Eli Brown has done his time. By the laws of this state, he’s no longer a criminal.”
    â€œYeah? Well, by the laws of me, he’s still a murderin’ son of a bitch who better not show his face anywhere near round here on account of I got a loaded shotgun with his name on it just waitin’ for a chance to have its trigger pulled.”
    Leah sighed. “Now don’t you go doin’ nothin’ stupid. You just go on pretendin’ things are the same as al—”
    â€œI will not pretend things are the same as anythin’,” Sylvie said. “If I have to, I will hunt that man down, but he will get what he has comin’. Because the law might not think he deserves to serve his full sentence, but I’m gonna make certain he is fully punished for the crime he committed. I don’t think the law completely understands real life. Things might look good to all them fancy lawyers, but all them fancy lawyers ain’t livin’ with pictures in their heads of their baby brother bein’ blown to bits. They’re just sittin’ round big tables makin’ chitchat and decidin’ on things they have no right decidin’ on.” She kept talking and Leah wondered if she was even going to stop to take a breath. “But I’m gonna make the decisions regardin’ what’s adequate punishment for Preacher Eli from now on because I’m someone who does live with those pictures in my mind.