By William C. Shelton

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The winter after the Impossible Restaurant incident, a family of four moved in across the street from us. Paul was so big that a neighbor started calling him “the mountain that moves.” He worked in a scrap yard and had the physical strength to load engine blocks onto a truck bed by hand.

Emma had lost a leg to advanced diabetes. She spent most of her time in bed or blunted from drugs. Without much adult supervision, the boys ran wild, terrorizing neighborhood kids.

Probably because of his size and demeanor, I took Paul’s habitual silence to be menacing. I kept my distance.

Robert, who lived in our house, accused me of being ‚Äúelitist.‚Äù I thought that was odd, since Robert’s father was an ambassador, and my father never made more than $12,000 a year in his life.

Emma died in late spring. Paul was distraught. He started going out drinking on Saturday nights with two rolls of quarters in his coat pocket, seeking opportunities to start fights.

He advertised for someone who would keep house in return for room and board. Given the shabbiness of his house and our neighborhood, I thought that he was being unduly optimistic. Maybe I was being elitist.

In fact, Christy, a diminutive single mom on welfare, lived in the modest apartment building next to our house. Her daughter was about five years old. She accepted Paul’s offer and moved in. Inevitably, it seems, Paul and Christy became lovers. Paul stopped going out to drink and fight.

Spring became summer. Late one August afternoon; I was entering our house after work, and I heard a crash. When I returned to earth (I have what psychologists call an ‚Äúexaggerated startle response‚Äù), I turned around to see a variety of possessions and women’s clothing strewn across Paul’s yard. It appeared that a sewing machine’s abrupt encounter with the sidewalk had been responsible for the crash. Paul nodded to me from his porch and went back inside.

I entered my house and found Robert peering out the window from between the Venetian blinds. I asked him what was going on. He said that an old friend of Christy’s had come by to take her for a ride in his new, used Corvette convertible. Paul had taken it badly. He’d walked down to the corner and bought a fifth of Old Grandad.

I asked Robert what he was going to do about it. He didn’t answer.

I got angry. ‚ÄúCome on Robert, I’m the ‘elitist,’ and you’re Paul’s ‘pal.’ What he’s doing is bad for him, bad for Christy and the kids‚Ķbad for everyone.‚Äù Robert sheepishly acknowledged that he wouldn’t risk getting his ass kicked when Paul was ‚Äúin this state.‚Äù

We heard another crash, and my stomach tightened with the familiar sense of obligation to act, and the inhibition against doing so. I fumed for 10 or 15 minutes, thinking about the times that I had clumsily intervened in past woman-beating situations, and what I had done wrong.

Another crash launched me out the front door. As I walked across the street, I was so scared that it would have taken a sledgehammer to insert a toothpick up my ass.

Paul met me on the porch. I looked into his eyes, saw a world of pain, and said, “It looks to me like you could use a friend about now.

“You want a drink?” he answered.

“Yes, I believe that I could use one.”

We ended up talking all night. It seems that Paul had been a P.O.W. during the Korean War. He never wore cuffs around his wrists or a wristwatch because they triggered flashbacks to having his hands bound. He had cold-sweat nightmares that would awaken him and leave him agitated for the rest of the night. Drinking was a way to calm down at those times.

“It was hard for Emma,” he said, “but she understood it.” Silent tears began to flow.

I was quiet for a while. I said, ‚ÄúYou know Christy didn’t do any of those things to you, and if she had any idea about how to make it better, she probably would.‚Äù

‚ÄúI know,‚Äù he answered. Then he began to weep. I put my hand on his shoulder. When he didn’t pull away, I put my arm around him, avoiding his wrists.

When the sun came up, we went outside. Together, we hauled in the things that he had thrown into the yard.

I think that it’s always difficult and scary to intervene in a domestic violence situation. It is for me, anyway. And it’s hard to know how to do it effectively-so that the violence isn’t just bottled up, to come bursting out when the intervention is over.

But I think that it’s an obligation for any adult who believes that we should live in a world where women and children don’t have to be hyper-vigilant for fear that simply being themselves will bring down blows. And you get better at it with practice.