Leo shook his head and he caught Allie looking at him just before she went inside. Her lips were parted as if she’d just stopped talking in mid-sentence and now wasn’t interested in talking anymore. Her eyes were such a dark green they almost seeemed brown. The screen door pulled shut on its spring after her and Leo sipped his Coke.

“Tess and I fight all the time, Leo. It can be good. Like pruning a tree.” Chick poured his Coke over ice. Leo heard the bubbles and he watched a lone crow glide out over the hill towards the river. The sun glinted off the water down near the bridge and sandbag wall behind the police station.

“We’re not fighting, really.”

“Oh, fighting, I didn’t finish my point. I lay in bed for two days after getting beaten up and you’d think I’d be feeling down and I was, but only in the body. You see, I knew the gloves were over and as soon as I saw that, a whole other feeling came: wide open freedom, Leo. Options.” Chick drained the Coke from his glass in four swallows. The screen door popped open again and Mrs. Donovan came out carrying a folding TV dinner tray and a leather shaving kit. She wore a sleeveless white blouse and a dark blue skirt and no shoes. Leo stood and said hello.

“Hello.”

“Country gentleman, isn’t he?”

Chick’s wife smiled a quick cool one, and she set up the tray and shaving things. She went back inside the house and no doubt about it, Leo thought, Chick doesn’t know a thing.

“Anyway, I hate to be running off at the pump but you’re a damn good listener, Leo. And don’t forget what E. M. Forster said: ‘How the hell do I know what I think until I say it?’ or something close to that. So think of yourself as my verbal journal, comprendo? My soundboard.”

“I don’t mind. You remind me of Ryder sometimes.”

“Stillwell?”

“You know him?”

“We’ve met.”

“Yeah, you both have brains that don’t leave you alone, I guess. Ryder’s a harp man. He says he’s a feeler but he thinks about things an awful lot. Chick, I gotta talk to you about something.”

Mrs. Donovan stepped out with a red mixing bowl full of water. Her left bra strap was halfway down her shoulder. She set the bowl on the tray, then straightened up and fingered the strap back beneath the blouse. “Leo, would you mind coming inside a sec to reach a pan for me?”