In an amazingly good book of short stories called “Sticky Fingers”, author J. T. Lawrence writes about a veteran police detective who’s investigating the murder of a husband seemingly by a much abused spouse who’s been beaten so severely her lips are double their normal size. One eye has been punched, totally shut and perhaps permanently lost, broken teeth, so many broken ribs the medicos haven’t been able to determine the exact number…a fractured pelvis, etc., etc.
All she’s been able to mouth in the E. R is “I killed him”–and as the cop is trying to maintain himself in the midst of such physical horror, he can’t help but wonder how many, many times this woman with “one beautiful eye” had been beaten before. How many ribs have been broken on top of how many ribs…how many times has she had one eye, or both, punched to near blindness? Continue reading Podcast: If It Looks Like a Duck, and Quacks Like One–Look and Listen Again…