by Michael Knight

Hi John sent both Bill Hoffman and his Great Dane to the hospital. Being an Irish Setter, Hi John was generally a gentle dog and got along fine with the other neighborhood pets and, Reed knew, even once had a romantic thing going with Mrs. Bishop's Springer Spaniel across the street. Reed and Hi John were jogging at night and the sky was full of distracting white stars and maybe that's why Reed didn't see the Great Dane from two houses down, the Hoffman's house, come tearing into the street, toenails clicking on the pavement. Hi John's first instinct was to run for home, to go in the opposite direction of the oncoming Dane but Reed wasn't quick enough. His own first instinct was to go completely still and hope that the danger passed. He didn't think of running, though he was only maybe thirty yards from his front door, until he felt Hi John tugging the leash in terror. And that was far too late.

The Great Dane, huge and white with a black head, was on Hi John, clamping down on his neck, his lips pulled back in an angry rictus. The darkness made things more frightening. Everything slow and jerky like watching an old silent movie, each frame distinguishable. He saw glimpses--bared teeth, fur damp with what might have been blood, maybe just saliva, twists of angry motion--all underscored with growls and whines of pain. Bill Hoffman and his wife, April, didn't come out of their yard, just stayed on the damp grass, calling their dog.

Reed had been told never to interfere in a dog fight but he couldn't bring himself to let go of the leash. He felt that if he let go Hi John would be killed. He began beating the Dane with his fists and whipping it with the end of the leash. Reed was afraid to tears for Hi John. At that moment, he believed that he could not go on living if anything happened to his dog.

"Goddammit," he shouted to Hoffman, "get out here and grab your fucking dog. Right now."

Bill Hoffman edged nervously into the street, circling the fight, his wife pushing him forward, Reed being pulled around helplessly, still shouting at Hoffman, cursing at him. He threatened to burn their house down, while Hoffman and his wife slept, if anything happened to Hi John. Hoffman got behind his dog and grabbed him, one hand on his collar, one around his throat and the dogs for a brief instant came apart. What surprised Reed most was that Hi John didn't take the opportunity to retreat. Instead, he lunged for the Dane's neck, so suddenly that Reed could not stop him, and bit instead Hoffman's hand. Reed could hear the bone coming apart. Hoffman pulled his injured hand away, his whole body recoiling, and at the same time, he lifted the Dane by the collar with the other hand, forepaws off the ground, belly exposed. Hi John, that quick, bit the other dog on the balls and the Dane made a sound of true pain, a howl like nothing Reed had ever heard.

Hi John kept them moving back toward their yard with a volley of barks and growls and strained at the leash to get back into the fight. April Hoffman walked down the street to them. She was wearing a knee length blue nightgown, made sheer and lovely by the glow of the street lamps, and her hair was down and her legs were nice. Reed was feeling strong and dizzy with adrenalin. She knelt by Hi John, who was himself again, pushing against her legs, letting her stroke his back. Her husband was screaming that they had to go to the hospital and Reed wasn't sure if he meant for himself or for his dog.

"You're a brave dog," she said to Hi John. "You wouldn't start a fight would you? It's just that awful dog of Bill's."

She looked up at Reed. He was panting and could not stop himself from smiling. He saw everything, the moon, the pale sheen of night clouds, branches silhouetted against light from windows. This woman with a smooth face and slight widow's peak. Her husband was still calling her, getting angry, crying now. She stood slowly and looked once more at Reed before walking home.

His ex-wife, Maggie, was in his living room when he came in. She lived in the house directly behind his, separated from him only by a fence, and still had her key. In this neighborhood, though, Reed rarely locked his doors. They had been divorced for just over a year. Maggie was short and thin and it had been said by their friends, that Reed and Maggie looked startlingly alike. Both blue-eyed, with the same wiry brown hair, both with identically sharp features, both small. They had more than once, in the four years they were married, been mistaken for brother and sister. The fact of their resemblance came to bother Reed after a while. He believed it to be unusual and quite possibly unhealthy and once, coming face to face with her in a dark hallway, still drowsy from sleeping, he had thought he was seeing himself, having some sort of out of body experience. Reed was so shaken up that he slept on the couch for two nights and never explained to Maggie.

"I heard all the commotion," Maggie said. "Is Hi John okay?"

They sat on the floor, one on either side of Hi John, and searched for wounds. A few scratches, one cut behind his ear that was particularly nasty, that Reed promised he would have looked at on the way to work in the morning. Hi John beat the floor with his tail and tried to roll over so they could scratch his stomach.

"You should have seen him," Reed said. "We kicked ass, didn't we boy?"

"Don't make him think that fighting is good," Maggie said, irritated. "He could have been hurt."

"Maggie's right, Hi John. Don't fight. But if you have to fight, show no mercy. Go for the balls. Maximum violence with all available speed." He patted Hi John's stomach and scratched him until his leg began working the air.

Reed told Maggie about the fight, in detail, about beating the other dog with his fists and about thinking that Hi John was going to be killed. He paced the rug. When he got to the part about Hi John biting Bill Hoffman and then the Dane's testicles, imitating the sound the Dane made and doing a souped-up parody of Hoffman crying for his wife like a little boy, Maggie started laughing. She rocked back on the floor, hair spreading out beneath her and stomped her feet. He was excited from the telling and threw himself down next to her and tried to kiss her. She pushed him away, still laughing and said, "Serves the bastard right." There had been, shortly after the divorce and Maggie's move around the corner, a questionable omission from the guest list of a neighborhood party.

They watched television until the blue lights of a police siren splashed against the window. Maggie had fallen asleep with her head in his lap. They walked out together and stood embarrassed while the other neighbors came out onto their lawns to see the commotion, to see who had brought the police, lights flashing threats, into this part of town. Joan Bishop lived directly across the street and was standing alone on her porch, haloed by the light coming from the open door behind her. She was an older woman, white haired, long ago widowed. When Reed waved, she stepped back into the house, quickly, and shut the door. He could see a curtain ease back, the shape of her face at the window.

The policewoman, who was thick and black and quite possibly the largest woman Reed had ever seen, explained that this was only routine, that any time someone came into the emergency room with a dog bite, it had to be looked into.

"Are they pressing charges?" Maggie said. "What sort of charges do you press in a case like this? Their dog started the fight."

The policewoman became confused when Maggie explained that, yes, she was one of the dog's owners, along with Reed, but that, no, she didn't actually see the fight or even actually live with Reed anymore but that, yes, she lived in the house directly behind his and yes, she had said they were divorced. She told too much. She said that they were no longer married but that they still cared for one another and that neither of them wanted to part with the dog. There were irreconcilable differences that they could not live with married but that they could accept divorced, as neighbors. Reed watched and listened, quietly, thankful that she didn't go into the differences. He was thinking that sometimes Maggie could be quite pretty and that this was one of those times. He liked the way her hands moved when she spoke.

"The law is that your dog has to be quarantined ten days for rabies observation," the officer said when Maggie finished. "Could I see the animal?"

Reed went inside and brought Hi John out on his leash. When Hi John saw this woman and the colored lights and all the neighbors watching, he tensed and began barking savagely. Reed tried to settle him down, tried to get a hold of his collar to show his tags and that he was up to date on his shots but Hi John wouldn't be still.

"No matter," the woman said. "Shots or no shots the dog has to be quarantined. Someone will be by in the morning to get him."

They watched her drive off, Hi John barking until the car was out of sight and the neighbors had gone back inside. Reed noticed that the Hoffman's car was still not in the driveway. Hi John settled down and everything got real quiet.

"Nice timing," Maggie said to the dog.

Reed woke bleary eyed and confused to a knock at the door. It was two men from the city come to take Hi John to quarantine. Reed met them at the porch in his bathrobe and offered them coffee, still too close to sleep to understand that this was the enemy. The men, deadly serious about their errand, refused. Reed went inside to collect the dog and and found his solidarity there, as well. Back on the porch, Reed said, "This is a travesty. If anything, you should be locking up the Hoffman's dog."

Hi John slapped their legs with his tail, happily.

One of the men looped a wire, attached to a long pole, around Hi John's neck and began to lead him to the van. They kept their distance, skirting Hi John, carefully, like bullfighters. Reed ran out into the yard. The grass was damp and newly cut and stuck to his feet. He knelt beside Hi John and hugged his neck.

"Do your time like a man, Hi John," he said. "Don't take any shit off anybody. I'll be by to visit this afternoon."

April Hoffman came by as Reed was knotting his tie for work. She looked tired and worried and was holding a plastic baggie full of bones. The house had seemed to Reed, before her appearance, terribly quiet without Hi John, though he couldn't recall specific sounds that Hi John made when he was there. Just that energy, the electric presence of another life. She sat on the couch and Reed brought her a cup of coffee. Through the windows behind her he could see Maggie's backyard. It had begun to rain, lightly, and Maggie's careful rows of vegetables, purple eggplant, red and green peppers, fragile tomatoes, looked wilted and burdened in the drizzle.

"This is the kind of rain you hear called beautiful," she said.

"Is it?" Reed said. He wasn't at all certain how he should treat her. He didn't know whether to be angry or apologetic

"I brought these for Hi John." She shook the bag, smiling. "Bill saves the T-bones. He would kill me if he knew I was here. I feel awful about last night. Joan Bishop told me that the police came for Hi John."

Joan Bishop had once complained that Hi John was making overtures towards her Springer Spaniel and that while he was making overtures--those were her exact words--he was lifting his leg on her rose bushes. Maggie wanted to know what was wrong with Hi John, why he wasn't good enough for Mrs. Bishop's dog. She said the peeing was just a manifestation of canine courtship, though Reed wasn't sure about that. Maggie called Mrs. Bishop's dog a whore. She made a case for free will. She said, just because you don't approve of our living arrangement doesn't mean you have to take it out on our dog. Reed had watched the two women arguing in the street, heard the unnatural anger rising in their voices and he couldn't help feeling sad for Hi John. This moment was probably the end of his romance and he would never understand why. Reed knew about endings and the loss of love. Joan Bishop had avoided them since.

"He'll be incarcerated for ten days," Reed said. "How is Bill? His hand okay?"

"His hand is disgusting," she said. "He had to get a cast and his fingers are all swollen like sausages."

Reed was thinking that in all the time they had lived near the Hoffman's, maybe two years, he had never been alone with this woman. He couldn't recall ever actually speaking to her but he was sure that he must have, being neighbors. And here she was now on his couch, in a white blouse open at the neck and skirt dotted with sailboats and sandals with straps, thin as paper, speaking as if they had known each other all their lives. He was strangely excited by her presence. He sat on the couch next to her and she crossed her legs so that her foot was just touching his shin. She looked at him over the rim of her cup.

"I'm really sorry about all this," he said. "It isn't your fault, really."

"If not for you," April said, "everything could have been a lot worse. Bill's hand will get better. Hi John could have been killed."

"I don't know," Reed said. "He was holding his own."

The phone rang and Reed walked into the kitchen to answer it. It was Maggie. Reed was nervous and excited both. He felt like he was up to something and it felt good. He pressed his fingers against the window pane, which was cool and clammy.

"Have they come for Hi John yet?" she said.

"This morning," he said. "I can't talk right now. April Hoffman is here apologizing. She brought some bones for Hi John."

"Make sure she doesn't sue," Maggie said, before hanging up.

April was looking out the window, past beads of rainwater, toward the backyard and Maggie's house. Reed wondered if she knew what she was looking at. Her hair was swept back into a chignon and she had pulled her knees up beneath her, covering her legs with her skirt, which was cotton and loose. Her toes were peeking out from beneath it, her toenails painted creamy red. He thought he had once heard Maggie call that color coral. He wanted to ask about her marriage but thought that was a bad idea, since it would possibly raise questions about his own marriage or lack thereof and that was not something he felt comfortable talking about.

Instead he said, "This was very nice of you to come by. We don't really know each other very well do we? That's too bad. Since we're neighbors and all."

She smiled and narrowed her eyes at him and picked up her coffee cup with both hands. She wasn't exactly what he thought of as beautiful, her face a bit too long, her eyes set too far apart, but he found himself terribly excited by her. He couldn't stop picturing bedroom scenes with her. The two of them winding together, the covers knotted at the foot of the bed. April Hoffman on her back with his fingers in her mouth. He remembered, suddenly, the commandment about coveting thy neighbor's wife. He almost laughed and knew that his smile must have been crazy and obvious. The Bible didn't acknowledge that wives could also covet. In real life, he thought, women do all the seducing. They know what they want and no amount of drinks bought or lies told can change that fact. The best you can wish for is to be the person that they want you to be in that first hopeful moment.

"Come sit by me," April said.

The primary problem in Reed's marriage to Maggie had been his own eventual impotence in her presence. The first few years had been marked by a slow tapering off of desire but this hadn't really bothered Reed. He believed it to be commonplace and attributed it, partly, to the fact of their physical resemblance. They were comfortable and they were friends. It was when Maggie slept with her secretary, a young woman who Reed never found attractive, that his ability to perform with her stopped altogether. Maggie called it her fifteen minute flirtation with lesbianism. Reed didn't know what to call it. One of the worst things about her sleeping with a woman was that there had been no one to lash out at, no one to hit. The event had fueled his fantasy life for months but despite the fantasies, he could not actually bring himself up to the task of sleeping with Maggie.

Reed was too thrilled to go straight to work so he drove around the block and let himself in Maggie's front door. He called to her and she said she was in the tub and he went back and sat on the toilet across from her. When she saw the look on his face, she said, "Get the cigarettes."

Neither of them smoked but when they had been married, it had been their habit to keep a pack of cigarettes around for heart to heart talks. Reed found them in the refrigerator in the place set aside for storing butter. They smelled musty and antique, relics from their life together. It had taken almost a year to smoke the pack half empty and would probably take another year to finish it.

He lit a cigarette for Maggie and placed it between her lips while she dried her hands. Both of them took a few shallow drags, warming to the conversation, Reed now sitting on the cold tile, leaning his back against the tub. He turned and flicked his ash into the water. Maggie dropped hers on the soap dish and waited for Reed to begin what he had come to tell her.

"I had sex with April Hoffman," he said, finally, trying to be matter of fact.

"You were able to sleep with her?" Maggie said.

Reed ignored this remark, let it hang in the air like the white wisps of smoke on their breath. He felt good. Maggie lifted one leg from the water and ran a washcloth over it, past her knee, along her calf.

"Where?" she said.

Reed took the washcloth from her and helped her wash her foot and ankle. When he was finished Maggie brought the other leg up and he washed it, too, stopping to dip the cloth back in the water and ring it out. He flipped his tie over his shoulder to keep it dry.

"On the floor of the living room," he said. He was holding the cigarette in his mouth to wash her leg and his voice was funny. "And in the bedroom."

"Twice?" she said. "Wow."

"No, just the one time. The floor was uncomfortable so I carried her back to the bed," he said.

Her foot was slick with soap and slipped from his hands, splashing him. There were spots on his blue oxford from the water. He was holding his wet hands away from his body and squinting from the smoke in his eyes.

"Damn," he said.

"Sorry," she said, smiling. "Run the blow dryer over that. Clear it right up."

He took a long drag from his cigarette and jetted the smoke her direction. She flicked the water off her fingertips at him. Beneath the water her body looked wavy and nondescript. Reed stood and plugged in the blowdryer near the sink and began making savage passes with it over his shirt. He was looking at her in the mirror.

"I guess, now, they won't sue us for medical bills," Maggie said.

"What?" Reed couldn't hear her over the blowdryer.

"I guess now they won't sue."

"On the contrary," Reed shouted. "I think a suit is more inevitable now than ever. I did after all sleep with the man's wife."

He laughed and looked at his own reflection, then back at hers over his shoulder. He couldn't see her face, because of where the tub was situated, just her knees, rising like little islands from the water. He saw her hand appear briefly, drop an ash into the water between her knees and disappear again. His shirt was drying nicely.

"I wish you wouldn't sleep with her again," Maggie said

"What?" Reed said, not hearing clearly.

"Nevermind," she said.

"What?"

Maggie leaned over the edge of the tub to look at him. In the mirror, he could see her face, flushed from being in the water so long, the damp ends of her hair, her breasts pushed against the wall of the tub. Nevermind, she said, again, but still he couldn't hear her. He could see her lips moving but couldn't understand what she was trying to say.

After some threatening glances and a surreptitious twenty palmed across the counter, the attendant at the pound agreed to let Reed take Hi John outside for a little while. There was a yard in the back where they took the dogs to do their business. Hi John was being kept in a small cage that they used for solitary confinement, hard cases only. He swaggered past the other dogs in the community cage, a different sort of criminal and they watched him pass, enviously, a little afraid, the way Reed imagined petty thieves goggled at mob assassins.

Reed left his job at the Historical Preservation Society an hour early every day for his visits. Maggie took the afternoons, Reed the evenings. And the two of them, Reed and Hi John, sat at the fence, looking out, watching the streams of passing cars, Hi John's head turning slowly to follow each one. Reed brought the bones that April Hoffman had left and told his dog about their affair. About April coming over the last three mornings after her husband was gone. Telling him every detail, the way April breathed, deep and slow even at their most excited, the way her hair kept getting stuck to his lips. He liked that he could smell her on his clothes long after she was gone. The telling pleased him as much as the act itself. He asked about Maggie's visits, too, but Hi John didn't have anything to say, just listened without comment, cracking the bones with his teeth, the sound like branches snapping off in winter air.

"What do you two talk about out there?" the attendant said, mockingly, as Reed was on his way out.

"Women," Reed said.

They looked at each other, not speaking. The man opened his mouth, as if to say something, then snapped it shut and went back to the paperwork on his desk. Reed was surprised to find himself disappointed. Outside, the sun was shocking. It was as bright, Reed thought, as he had ever seen it.

A strange thing happened between Reed and Maggie when they got married. They had been living together for a year already and neither of them believed that a ceremony in a church for the sake of their parents would affect their relationship one way or another. Life would be business as usual, Maggie working for the county prosecutor's office, Reed overseeing the affairs of local Civil War battlefields for the Preservation Society. After dark, they would come home at roughly the same time, alternate nights cooking dinner, watch Letterman on the couch, make the kind of genial love they had grown used to, filled still with desire but regular and pretty and easy. Something did happen, though neither of them ever mentioned it, and it had nothing to do with the arm of the law or the eyes of God. It was as if a web, a delicate filigree, had been drawn between them and over the things that were theirs. This thing extended, lightly, over their past together and into the future, giving them shape, the way a sheet is thrown over the invisible man in movies to make him visible. Both of them felt it, though they might have described it differently, comforting and terrifying at the same time.

Maggie didn't want to talk about Reed's affair anymore, though he desperately wanted to tell her about it. He had to content himself with Hi John's quiet listening. She still came over at night or he went to her house and they talked of other things. The presentation that Reed was to make tomorrow to potential benefactors for Shiloh battlefield. The case Maggie was trying. But mostly they talked about Hi John.

"I don't think they're treating him well enough, do you?" Maggie said. "He looks like he's lost weight."

"Maybe he's gone on hunger strike," Reed said.

"Don't joke," she said. "I'm serious."

"I love it when you're serious," he said.

"Look out," she said. "Somebody's being clever. Hit the dirt."

Maggie punched his arm playfully and he pretended that it hurt. He tickled her ribs and they rolled off the couch in her attempts to escape his fingers. Maggie pulled his hair and bit his shoulders and ears but not too hard and he kept on tickling her until she was in tears. The two of them rolled around this way, bunching the rug beneath them, until Maggie's leg, in a spasm of laughter, shot out and kicked a glass off the coffee table. It shattered, sprinkling the floor with shards, and brought them to their senses.

"Look what you made me do," she said. "Idiot."

Reed said, "You started it. Moron."

"Imbecile," she said.

"Ignoramus."

"Half-wit."

Later, Maggie fell asleep, leaning back against Reed on the couch with her head on his shoulder, her face turned slightly inwards towards his. The television was on but he watched only her for a long time. In the dark, he could see the colors thrown off by the T. V., mostly blues and reds, reflected on her skin. He could feel her breath on his neck and beneath his chin. He wanted to kiss her but he didn't, just leaned forward gently, awkwardly, so that their cheeks were together, the corners of their lips just slightly touching.

April Hoffman called in the morning to tell him that she wouldn't be stopping by today. She said it just like that. I won't be stopping by today. Reed the played the moment over in his head, then went further back, like rewinding a tape, searching his memory for something he might have done wrong, something he might have said. He couldn't remember anything. Reed wasn't certain how he was supposed to feel: angry, disappointed, afraid, broken-hearted. He knew he was supposed to feel something. At the time, he was siting on a high stool in the kitchen, his feet hooked into its rungs, the phone on the wall near him. He felt along his arms, first one then the other, squeezing gently with his fingers, pressing against the bones, as if checking for fractures. At the elbow of the second arm, he stopped, satisfied, and let his mind wander to the coming evening. He smiled, thinking of telling Maggie that his affair was over and wondering how she would react to the news.

On his way to work, Reed ran into Joan Bishop. She was standing at the curb, rifling through the morning's mail, her hair tied down with a crimson scarf. The Spaniel was with her and trotted a circle around the car. He idled behind her and rolled down the passenger window.

"Good morning, Joan," he said, leaning across the seat, smiling.

She glanced at him over her shoulder and scowled. This time of year her roses were in full bloom, practically glowing on her lawn, open to the morning, each bush surrounded by a small chicken wire fence to keep the dogs away.

"Is there something wrong?" Reed said when she didn't answer.

"Don't talk to me," she said, tucking the envelopes into her purse. She stalked away, up the gently sloping driveway toward her house, swinging her arms angrily. The dog padding along in her wake.

"Mrs. Bishop, wait," Reed said, putting the car in park and getting out, "Why don't you like me? What have I ever done to you? Is this about Hi John and your rose bushes? Is this about the dogs?"

"I don't want to talk to you," she said without looking back.

Reed had been disconcerted by this meeting and believed it was the reason his presentation wasn't going as well as he had hoped. He began at Shiloh with a bad imitation of A.S. Johnston saying to his officers, "Gentleman, tonight we water our horses in the Tennessee." It was a nice beginning, he thought, accenting both the foolish optimism of the Confederates and the poignancy of Johnston's death in the battle. He drove the man and woman, who had come this morning, over the field in a golf cart, trying to conjure for them images that would be moving enough to inspire donation. The abandoned campfires, left by Union troops in the face of a surprise attack, coffee pots still warm. The small watering hole where wounded of both sides crawled for a drink, reddening the muddy water with their blood. He showed them the place where Johnston's officers cradled his head in death. The patch of ground where Beauregard's tent stood, in which he wrote to Jefferson Davis, "Grant is beaten. Will mop him up in the morning." Monuments marked each site and Reed paused a moment after he was finished to let them read. He thought if he could just get the telling right and he told these same sad stories all the time, then they would understand the need for preservation.

"Don't you think all this glorifies the South's participation in the war?" the man said. "We have quite a few black employees and I don't know how happy it would make them to give money to something like this. The South was, after all, fighting to perpetuate slavery."

"What we are trying to glorify here, sir," Reed said, "is bravery. On both sides. We want people to come out here and be reminded of how horrible the war was. But also, to recognize the character of the participants. We can learn quite a bit from the past."

The man nodded but Reed could tell he was still unconvinced. The cart whined up a hill toward a Union graveyard, showing through a knot of trees, and the family there, taking pictures. The little boy holding a souvenir confederate flag.

The woman said, "This isn't what I expected. I'm having a hard time seeing the big picture. I think I was expecting a football field or something."

Reed said, "That's my point. The whole thing has been trivialized by time. We need to get people out here. To sort of run the history through their fingers, if you get my meaning."

"I think someone is calling you," the man said, pointing.

Reed stopped the cart and all of them turned to look. They were parked on a cobbled path that divided a manicured lawn. To their right were rows of dilapidated cannon along a split rail fence and past those, a peach orchard, where pink and white petals blanketed the grass, pulled loose by their own creamy, lustrous weight. In the other direction, they could see a figure running through the trees, spindly white oaks, waving one arm wildly and shouting Reed's name. He must have cut over from the parking lot. They waited to let him catch up and as he got closer, Reed recognized Bill Hoffman.

"We're being charged," the woman said.

"Shit," Reed said.

"Excuse me?" the man said.

Bill Hoffman reached them, gasping, and stood a moment, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He was wearing a suit and tie and his cast jutted out from beneath his sleeve. His fingers were mottled blue.

"What are you doing here, Bill?" Reed said.

"Christ," Hoffman said. "Wait a minute. I haven't run that far since high school."

"Bill?" Reed said.

"What?" Hoffman said. "What Goddammit?"

He glanced up at Reed and their eyes met, just briefly, just long enough for Reed to notice that Hoffman's eyes were startlingly blue. Pool water blue. April must have told him everything. He doesn't know what else to do, Reed thought. He knew that feeling, desperate and weak and helpless with loss. They cut the look short at the exact same moment and both of them blushed, faces going hot, each of them having seen something private in the other's eyes.

"You don't have to go through with this," Reed said.

"You slept with my wife," Hoffman said, still breathing hard. Then to the others, pointing with his cast, "This man slept with my wife."

They were absolutely still, frozen like awkward bronze monuments.

"Look, Bill, I'm not going to do this. I won't fight you," he said.

Right then, Hoffman straightened and hit Reed in the temple with his cast. From the ground, Reed could see Hoffman, doubled over in pain, clutching his injured arm to his chest and he could see the sky behind him, pale, brushed occasionally with clouds. He had been about to say, it was an accident, we hadn't planned anything, it meant nothing, though all of those things, he knew, were just things you said at a time like that, even if they were true. He had been about to say, I know how you feel, I'm sorry. He didn't hurt as much as he would have expected, was just sort of dreamy and light. The man and woman were shouting wildly for help. Reed got to his feet, shakily, not knowing what else to do, and kicked Bill Hoffman in the groin. In the process, he lost his balance and fell on top of Hoffman and they began beating each other as best they could in such close quarters, Hoffman with his cast, pulling Reed's hair with his good hand. Reed held Hoffman in tight so he couldn't use the cast effectively and butted with his head, used his knees and elbows. They fought halfheartedly, dutifully, almost sadly, doing no less damage to each other for their lack of passion, rolling down a subtle incline, picking up fallen leaves and twigs in their hair and on their clothes, until they fell apart exhausted. The two of them lay on the grass, side by side, Hoffman's arm, the one with the cast, draped across Reed's chest, rising and falling to the rhythm of his breathing. Reed wanted to ask Hoffman if, now that he knew, he was still in love his wife but he didn't say anything. After a few minutes, Bill Hoffman pushed himself up and left without another word.

Reed drove to Maggie's house and let himself in the back door with the key she kept beneath an empty red clay flower pot. He lay down on the couch in the living room and waited for her to come home. With his eyes closed, he took stock of his injuries. He must have somehow bitten his tongue, because it was swollen and felt heavy in his mouth, and by pressing it against the insides of his cheeks, he discovered a loose tooth. His face burned, as if someone had held him by the hair and dragged it back and forth across thick carpet. There was a throbbing, slow and even and only a little painful, in his temple. He could picture the bruise, a vivid discoloration, spreading back into his hairline, like a tattoo. Reed hadn't minded the horrified stares that strangers in other cars had given him on his way home. He believed, as surely as he had ever believed anything, that he deserved them. He thought of Joan Bishop, living alone in that house since her husband died. Of the morning she had called him and Maggie into her yard to tell them what Hi John had done. The roses drooping heavily on their stems, that day, the petals browning at the edges. They're so fragile, she had said, they can't bear even the slightest mistreatment. He had seen Joan Bishop in the rain, another time, tying trash bags over the little wire cages to keep the flowers from being drowned.

Maggie came in slowly, wary at having found her door unlocked and dropped her keys when she saw Reed lying in the evening shadows on her couch. He smiled crookedly at her surprise, his lips cracked and tight with dried blood.

"Oh my God," she said. "What happened to you? Were you in an accident?"

She crossed the room to him and pushed back his hair to examine his bruise. Reed moved her hands away. She was left poised, her hands inches from him, fingers curved to the shape of his head.

"Bill Hoffman and I got into a fight," he said.

"What?" she said. "That's insane. You're grown men."

"That doesn't make it any less the truth," he said.

"Let me guess," she said, holding his chin, despite his efforts to prevent her, and turning his face slowly back and forth, examining him. "Bill won. It serves you right. You look like you were thrown from a moving car."

Maggie put two fingers inside a rip in his shirt that he hadn't noticed before and touched his chest. Her fingers were cold and she left them there until they warmed a little on his skin. She plucked a bit of leaf from his hair. He turned on a lamp beside them and they squinted at each other in the new light. She was kneeling next to the couch, rocked back on her heels. He liked the way she was looking at him. Maggie stood and kicked off her shoes and padded into the kitchen.

"If he won," Reed said to the swinging door, "it was a Pyrrhic victory."

He could hear the sink running, drawers opening and closing.

"Hi John gets out tomorrow," he said. "I've been sitting here thinking we might go together to pick him up. He would like that."

"That sounds nice," she said over the rush of running water.

Maggie returned with two washcloths, one wrapping ice and another soaked in warm water. She made him slide over and sat on the edge of the couch next to him. She pressed the ice to his temple and lifted his hand to it, so he would hold it there. With the other cloth, she brushed his face, wiping his forehead first and working gently down along the bridge of his nose. The washcloth stung where it touched his wounds but in a strangely pleasant way, the way muscles ache after a long, satisfying exercise.

"I want you to tell me everything," Maggie said.

He didn't say anything for a long time, just lay still and let her press the washcloth to his cheeks, run it over his lips. She was turned to him in such a way that one side of her face was lit completely by the lamplight, the other side drawn in shadow. She pushed his eyelids gently closed with her fingertips. Water streamed down his cheeks and he thought it must have looked like he was crying.

Michael Knight is a Henry Hoyns Fellow in the MFA program at the University of Virginia. His work has previously appeared in Snake Nation and other places.