Free The Wrong Man by Matthew Louis

white and bruised and the contrast with her puffy upper body made me think of Tweedle Dum. “OH MY GOD! STOP IT, PLEASE!” she bellowed. Her hair looked like moldy straw; it was lopsided, mashed upward on one side from her pillow. There was mascara smeared around eyes the same shape and shade of blue as Owen’s.
    “Lady!” I said, still crouching, still poised to bang the knuckles into Ramón’s face. “Shut the fuck up! You know what kind of fucking scum you’ve got living with you? Huh?”
    The little girl goggled at me. She had suctioned herself against her mother’s side.
    “Oh my gaaaaawd!” the woman squeaked this time, at a low volume, sounding as if she had just learned of a dear one’s death. She was staring at the massive amount of blood now pooling on the worn hardwood beneath Ramón’s head. The blood was pink at the edge of the puddle, mixing with white and I grunted. A half gallon of milk had been in the grocery bag and had split open when Ramón fell on it. His mother looked as if she thought the white was somehow leaking from her son, indicating some unnatural, doubtlessly fatal injury. She raised both her hands to me and simpered, “I don’t know what happened, okay? But let him up, okay? We can talk about this!”
    I released Ramón’s shirtfront and straightened, lifting the brass knuckles, brandishing them in front of me. “I’ll tell you what happened, lady. Someone raped my girlfriend. Owen —your son—raped her—”
    “No—”
    “SHUT THE FUCK UP! Yes he did. And maybe this little faggot was in on it! And if he was I’m gonna fuckin’ KILL him!”
    “Sam!”
    I looked down at Ramón, now propped on an elbow in his blood and milk. He had his hand flattened over the gashed side of his face, covering one eye. The other eye was wide, the iris blazing at me, floating in the white like a greened penny.
    “Listen, dude, you’re fucking up.” The eye blinked. He sounded calm. Confident. “I’m telling you the truth, bro. I don’t know what happened with Owen. I don’t know if he did what you say. All I know is I wasn’t there. I swear to god. But listen, you know Owen. You shouldn’t have pulled this fucking shit. You’re dead now.”
    I lifted my right foot from behind Ramón and took a step backward. “ Fuck Owen,” I said, and punched the wall next do the doorjamb for emphasis. The brass knuckles dented the plaster, but I cut my own knuckles open in the process and it ratcheted up my anger again. “You just wait and see what happens to Owen.” I shook the knuckles, my index finger peeled off and pointing. I looked down. “And you better hope I never learn you had anything to do with it, Ramón, you little bitch!”
    The mother was staring at me, stroking her daughter’s hair, panting like she’d just stopped jogging. But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t want to interrupt my withdrawal from her house.
    “I’m sorry about scaring the little girl,” I said.
    I departed with the door standing open behind me, dropped down the steps and crossed the sunny street in the indifferent neighborhood, sliding the brass knuckles off my hand.
    I went back home to sit and watch the door. To wait for Owen to come, as he surely would.

    But he never showed up.

8
     

    I started getting ready at four-thirty and picked Jill up from her mother’s at six. As soon as she saw me she broke down, touching my battered face, unable to speak for her weeping. I found myself becoming sheepish, putting on an act, and then found myself lying very smoothly. I was upset so I got drunk and got stupid, I said. Mouthed off to a bunch of guys in a bar and got stomped on a little. It was nothing, nothing. Let’s try to enjoy ourselves tonight, I said. She didn’t have the emotional resources just now to explore the possibility that what I said wasn’t true and she finally nodded, took my arm, and we left.
    The restaurant was called Maurice’s; a dim, determinedly classy French place. I have