You don’t listen, do you?  I say words, full-on sentences, and they go one ear and out the other, he told her. Tell you not to mess with something, and you go ahead and mess with it. You got to stick your nose in it, she looked at the floor. How long does it take? he asked the young woman.  How long till you finally catch on? she placed her small hands over brown eyes. She ran her fingers through black hair. 

What do you want from me? she asked him. I’m trying to help you out. Trying to be your partner. Your wife. I didn’t sign up for this, she mumbled. 

Till death do us part. I can arrange that. The old man went to the closet and pulled out a heavy chain, the kind you place on dogs to keep them in the backyard. He hooked it to the collar around her neck. She sat on the couch, panting, sweating. The young bride knew what was coming next.

He took out a wooden paddle with the words, The Law written on it in red. The old man used The Law quite often. If she said something, he disagreed with, out would come The Law. If she fixed a meal he didn’t like, out would come The Law. On nights when she would not make love to him, out would come The Law. He used it every chance he got. Sometimes, he’d spank her just for the fun of it. It wasn’t the spanking that entertained the old man as much as it was just watching her squirm, trying to run away from him, no-where to go. 

That fear she had was starting to turn into anger. Anger became rage. She plotted. She planned a way to leave. To escape. For her, there was only one way to do that.

In a glass case down the hall of the trailer, he kept a shotgun. It was always loaded. Other than women, the old man had a huge fear of black folks. And, as more and more blacks moved into the trailer park, his fear grew. He wanted to be ready at all times. If someone of color was walking in front of his trailer, he got the gun out. If he heard voices outside, he got the gun out. If someone knocked on the door, he got the gun out. People in the trailer park knew this about the old man. More and more, they avoided him.  They just let him be.

However, one morning, the whole community gathered around the old man’s trailer. A body in a bag was carried out on a stretcher, placed in an ambulance that drove off in silence. A woman stood in the doorway with black hair and brown eyes. She was holding onto, The Law.