Kathy Little Bird by Nancy Freedman, Benedict Freedman Page A

his fingertips on the wounded man’s carotid and bent to listen to his chest.
    At this point police and ambulance arrived. I felt Jack’s fingers dig into my arm. “Come on,” he mouthed, and started to back me out of there.
    An officer was going through the crowd, notebook in hand, taking names and addresses. As I watched, they placed the vagrant under arrest.
    “Wait,” I said to Jack. “He didn’t do it.”
    “Shut up.” Jack increased his pressure on my arm.
    “Take your hands off me, Jack Sullivan.”
    Instead he hauled me backward toward the car.
    “All right, all right,” I said, giving up and going with him.
    On the way back to the motel I started to think of Abram. Abram would have given his name to the officer. Abram would testify for the old man who had no one to stand up for him, no one in that crowd anyway. They were pals of the guy who had done the murder—because I was pretty sure the guy on the ground was dead.
    “Why didn’t you want me to give my name to the police?” I asked Jack.
    “Honey, you
never
give your name to the police.”
    “But they’ll pin it on that poor old man who had nothing to do with it.”
    “And that’s not your concern, now is it?”
    I didn’t say anything, but again I compared him withAbram, and I knew for a hard fact that I should have stayed in Alberta and waited for Abram.
    “What are you so quiet about?” Jack asked.
    “Nothing.”
    I told Jack I had a headache and spent that night on the far side of the bed. I didn’t sleep; I kept thinking of the old man, and of Abram.
    The next day, as we drove along, my mind kept reverting to the incident—that’s what Jack called it, an incident. I called it murder.
    “What will they do to him?”
    “What?”
    “The vagrant? Will they execute him?”
    “Will you stop it with that guy? He’ll go to prison, and have three squares a day, which is more than he has now.”
    “It isn’t right,” I muttered.
    “Kathy, will you for Pete’s sake leave it lay?”
    “I always thought the guilty were punished, and the innocent went free. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
    Jack pursed up his mouth. He looked mean. I didn’t like him much anymore. I twiddled dials hunting for a country music station and began to sing along with Loretta Lynn, but my heart wasn’t in it.
    We stopped for hamburgers and an order of fries.
    “How many minutes does it take to electrocute a person?’
    “Oh for God’s sake!” He clapped money down on the table and got up.
    “I’m not finished.”
    “Put it in a doggie bag. Wrap it in a napkin. I’m out of here.”
    I continued chewing.
    “Well,” he said, leaning over me, “are you coming?”
    I continued chewing.
    “All right, let’s have it. What’s going on with you? And don’t tell me it’s that damn bum.”
    “Abram always said you do what you have to do to live with yourself.”
    “Abram? Who the devil is Abram?”
    “You know, my friend—who saw us off.”
    “What’s he got to do with it?”
    “He always said—”
    “Yeah. Okay. I know what he said. So what?”
    “So I’m going back to the police station.”
    “Now see here, Kathy—”
    “I’m going back,” I repeated.
    “Well, I’m not.”
    “That’s okay. I’ll take the bus.”
    “I’m not giving you money for the bus.”
    “You don’t need to, I’ve got my own money.”
    “You been holding out on me?”
    “They’re tips. I figured the tips were mine.”
    “Now see here, Kathy—”
    “I don’t want to hear any lectures.”
    “No lectures. I’m giving you a last chance to be reasonable. We don’t even know for sure the guy was dead.”
    “He was dead.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I could tell.”
    Jack rolled his eyes heavenward, only there was a ceiling in the way. He wrote a number on a matchbook. “That’s where I’ll be. Call me when you come to your senses.”
    I watched through the window as he got in the car, slammed the door, backed out, and—I waited to