’ ‘Why not? You said you were through with me, you were ready to move on.’ ‘I was wrong. Terribly wrong! I knew it the second you walked out o... the door. It was like half of me left. Then when I heard you volunteered for active duty I wanted to die. I called every Marine Base in the country and couldn’t find you. No one would tell me anything. Then your mother called to see how I was doing. I cried with her for a long time. I even went and spent the night with her. She said you had called her. ’ Through the tears Sorrel blurted out, ‘Clara isn’t my sister! She’s his sister! She was as mean to me as he was, but she loved my children. She’d say I wasn’t fit to have children, that she should have them. He agreed. He didn’t run off. He’s still there. If I go back he’ll kill me.’ Fletcher had been confused, unbelieving, now he was stone cold sober, ‘You ran away to escape a slimy wife beating bastard, a monster. A man, that’s an oxymoron, and man who would beat his wife and let his. I told her to stay in the coffee shop for a couple of minutes while I arranged for someone to cover for me and I would see what I could do to help her. I left her there and went to my office to find that I could only get off for a few hours. I had a meeting at 5 o’clock that I could not skip. I went back to the coffee shop and explained the problem. ‘I have a friend who is in charge of security up the bus station. I called him and he said he could get your stuff out of the locker if I would. The trash man comes early, often before dawn. It is a noisy and aggressive process - emptying the bins. The trash man makes no effort to soften his intrusion into our early morning quietude, so my wife and I usually go on and get up.We've had a long and contentious relationship with the trash man. It's been the same guy for as long as we've lived here. He is a grump and the more we strived to get into his good graces, the more he seemed to dislike us. It's been thoroughly disheartening because.