Free Tears Are for Angels by Paul Connolly

about the sanctity of the home. Harry, just how and when were you, of all people, unfaithful to Lucy?"
        That was too close, I thought. Way too close. I changed the subject, wincing as if he had touched upon a tender nerve.
        "One other tiling, Brax. There's an old trunk out there in the attic. Get it down and put some of my clothes in it, whatever you think I might need, and that picture of my folks and some blankets and stuff like that."
        "How about Lucy's things?"
        "That goes with the sale. All of it."
        "Do you think that will do any good? Do you think that will get her out of your mind?"
        "I don't know. I just don't want any of her stuff around."
        "By the way," he said. "The sheriff sent the pistol over to my office. Said to give it back to you when you were up again. You don't want it, do you?"
        "Yes," I said. "Put that in the trunk too."
        Brax sold the place for me and then bought the Caldwell place. He put the thousand I had decided to hold out in the bank for me, plus enough to cover my hospital bills, and fixed up the rest for the polio foundation.
        When I got out of the hospital, I went to the bank and got the money in small bills. I went to Brax and got the trunk from him and asked him if he'd drive me out to the Caldwell place.
        He got out his car and we drove uptown and I went into the hardware store and bought a rifle, some cartridges, and a tool kit. They sold building supplies, too, and I ordered some lumber and a Cadet heater and a length of stovepipe. Then I went to the dime store and bought two or three cheap dishes, some ten-cent silverware, a frying pan, and a coffeepot.
        I went back to the car and asked Brax to drive down Hertford Street, and sure enough, there were plenty of them there. I motioned Brax to stop and stuck my head out the window.
        "You, boy," I said. "You want to work a day or two?"
        The colored man shuffled closer to the car. Huge muscles rippled in his arms.
        "Doin' what, Cap'n?"
        "Building a shack."
        He considered this.
        "Fifty cents an hour?"
        "I'll give you five dollars a day till we finish."
        The broad face squeezed into thought, ponderously balancing off fifty cents an hour against five dollars a day.
        "I reck'n so, Cap'n."
        He got in the back seat and we drove out of town. About a mile out, I told Brax to slop again and I went into a filling station and bought bacon and coffee, a dozen cans of beans, some corn meal and canned milk. Then we went on again.
        We turned off the paved highway and followed a bumpy clay road about five miles. A rutted road led off to the left through scraggly brush. Brax slowed for the turn.
        "We'll get out here," I said.
        He stopped the car and the Negro and I got out and took the stuff out of the car. The hardware-store truck wouldn't be more than a mile or two behind, I figured.
        Brax sat there staring at me.
        "Thanks for everything," I said. "See you sometime."
        He pulled out a cigar, in his lawyer's way of taking plenty of time about what he had to say.
        "All this"-he held a match to the cigar-"doesn't impress me very much."
        "It's not meant to."
        "But it is. You want us-the county-to know you're hurt. You want us to feel sorry for you. You want us to say, 'Poor old Harry, living out there all alone because of what that Yankee girl did to him'."
        I laughed. The Negro moved uneasily.
        "Well, I'm not sorry for you. You're a damn fool, Harry. Why don't you use your head?"
        "Why don't you go back to town?"
        He shrugged and let in the clutch. He turned the car around in the narrow road and the Negro and I watched him head back the way we had come.
        I sat down under a tree and the Negro squatted nearby, his eyes nervous and his face carefully expressionless.
        "Got to