The Witness

charged.
    Brooks sidestepped, turned his foot just enough that Ty tripped over it and went flying into the yard.
    “Now you’ve done it. You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.”
    “I’ll kill you.” Scrambling to his feet, Ty came at Brooks, fists flying.
    “Add resisting arrest.” Brooks dodged or blocked most of the blows. “You want to give me a hand securing the prisoner, Ash?”
    “Yes, sir.” Breaking out of his openmouthed shock, Ash ran forward.
    “You keep your hands off me, you pissant cocksucker.” He swung at Ash, went wide, but connected with his shoulder.
    “That’ll be a second count of assaulting an officer. I think it’s clear we’ll be throwing drunk and disorderly into the mix.”
    Between the two of them, they got Ty down on the ground, cuffed him. As they hauled a struggling, cursing Ty up, Brooks scanned the faces on neighboring lawns.
    “I’m sending a deputy out shortly,” he said, raising his voice. “He’ll get statements from y’all. I don’t want any bullshit, you hear? You say what you saw. Anybody doesn’t, I’m charging with obstruction of justice. Don’t test me.”
    He put a hand on Ty’s head, boosted him into the back of the cruiser, then swiped the back of his hand over his bloody lip. “Deputy Hyderman, you follow me in.”
    “Yes, sir, Chief.”
    He ignored Ty’s rantings as he drove to the station, did his best to ignore his aching jaw as well. The warning look he shot Ash had the deputy keeping his mouth shut as they loaded Ty into a cell.
    “I want a lawyer. I’m suing your ass, then I’m kicking it for saying that shit.”
    “What shit?” Brooks locked the cell door.
    “That shit about I ain’t got a dick, and I can’t get it up to do Missy. You fucker.”
    “Damn, Ty, you must be drunker than you look. I haven’t seen your dick since the showers in high school PE, and I can’t say I paid it much mind then. I never said anything about it.”
    “You lying sack, you said it was the size of a—a—something small.”
    “You’re drunk, you had the music blasting. You don’t know what you heard. Deputy, did I say anything to impinge the prisoner’s manhood?”
    “I … ah. I didn’t hear anything.”
    “I’m going to have Deputy Fitzwater go out and take statements from the witnesses. Here’s what’s going to happen now, Ty, and this time you should listen good. You can get a lawyer, all right. You’ll need one. I’m filing charges for assault, for resisting, for D-and-D and for creating a goddamn public nuisance. You’re going to jail, and not just overnight. Not this time.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “Assault on a police officer? That’s a felony, Ty. You got two counts, plus the resisting. You could do five years.”
    His rage-red face went white. “Bullshit.” And the word shook.
    “You think about that. A lawyer might get that down to, oh, eighteen months in, with probation. But you’ll do real time for it, that’s a promise.”
    “You can’t send me to jail. I’ve got to make a living.”
    “What you’ve been doing the last couple years? I don’t call it living.”
    He thought of Tybal out in center field—fast on his feet, an arm like a rocket. Of Ty and Missy shining all through high school.
    And told himself what he’d done, what he would do, was for that bright, shiny couple.
    “You think about that tonight, Ty. Think about spending the next year or two, or more, down in Little Rock. Or the chance I might give you of spending that time on probation, contingent on attendance and completion of alcohol rehabilitation, anger management and marriage counseling.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ty dropped down on the bunk, putting his head in his hands. “I feel sick.”
    “You are sick. You think about it.” Brooks stepped back, secured the door to the cells.
    “You baited him.”
    “What’re you talking about, Ash?”
    “Come on, Chief, he can’t hear us out here. You baited him into the assault.”
    “Ash, I’m going to say this once. Sooner or later, it wasn’t just going to be Missy with a split lip or black eye. The neighbors, they’d get tired of calling us in. Maybe one of them would get it into his head to stop it himself. Or Missy would get tired of getting smacked and pick up one of the guns they’ve got in that house. Or he’d get tired of having her run out and hit her hard enough she couldn’t run anymore.”
    “He never broke up the place like he