Mohawk (13 page)

Anne knew Dallas had no real suspicion on that score. He was just throwing it out to be contradicted. Yet she felt herself flush, and she didn’t dare look at anyone for fear they would know.

“It’s true,” Dallas said, throwing his arm around Dan’s shoulders. “I bet she loves you as much as me.”

“There’s no accounting for personal taste,” Dan said.

The remark did not make immediate sense to Dallas, and he stared at his friend for a moment before breaking into wild laughter. “I love this guy,” he roared. “You gotta love this guy. You gotta.”

They all laughed, then, and even Dallas was relieved, though he would’ve been hard pressed to recall that
he was responsible for most of the tension in the first place. At the moment he could think only that he was a lucky fellow. His personal landscape was filled with friends and he had the prettiest girl in the place. “Come on,” he grabbed Anne by the elbow. “Let’s teach these woodchucks how to dance.”

She followed him onto the crowded dance floor where the hillbilly band was trying hard to master the subtleties of jitterbug rhythm. “Gangway,” Dallas roared, taking his girl in his arms. And then his feet began to go, wildly, as if they possessed his very life.

When they left the pavilion that night, Dan at the wheel, Dallas drunk and melancholy in the back seat with Anne, Diana staring out the passenger-side window at nothing in particular, they had all reached the same unspoken regret that summer was indeed over. It seemed to Dallas that his heart was about to explode with love for his girl and his friends and just about everyone he could think of. Everything was perfect, and he did not want things to change. The black lake was shimmering like ink, small waves lapping gently against the shore.

“I love you all,” Dallas said. “I mean it.”

“Of course you do,” Anne said.

“I do,” he insisted. “You guys are … the best.”

“True,” Di said. She had nursed her two drinks all night long. They had made her tipsy, but she was sober now. Dan drove slowly, competently, given the amount of alcohol he had consumed. Anne watched him from the back seat, trying to read his thoughts, wondering if he minded her going away. He had said little all night and hadn’t danced with her once, not the sort of conclusion to their reckless summer she had hoped for.
Something should’ve happened, she felt. Had there been some unmistakable sign between them, then going away would have been supportable. Instead, Dan seemed miles away.

“You’re beautiful,” Dallas told Di with such workmanlike sincerity that it sounded like false generosity. “I mean it. Good-looking, too. Damn good-looking. But you know what?”

Everyone wanted to know.

“I gotta stick with my girl,” he said, pulling Anne to him, ignoring her resistance to his drunken embrace. “She’s really beautiful. Really beautiful. You’re good-lookin’, Di. Don’t get me wrong. But I gotta stick with my girl.”

Anne nudged him, hard. Dallas never suspected when he was embarrassing people. Diana knew that she was far from pretty, and compliments from a melancholy drunk were sure to have the wrong effect. “You’re bombed, Dallas. Even more than usual.”

“I gotta stick with my girl,” he repeated, planting a sloppy kiss on her lips.

Anne wished Dan would say something. If someone didn’t distract Dallas, chances were that he’d continue in the present vein all the way back to Mohawk, and Anne was not sure she could endure much more of his foolish blubbering. He was too sweet to hurt, but she found herself dangerously close to telling him she thought he was a fool and that she couldn’t wait to go away. She knew that would make the both of them feel terrible, and when they came to a stretch of road that was only a few yards from the lake, she said, “Let’s go for a swim.”

Dallas perked right up. “Skinny-skipping!” he said. “Dipping, I mean.”

“I think we should go home,” Di said.

“Stop the car!” Dallas roared, grabbing Dan by the shoulders and shaking him.

“It’ll be fun,” Anne said. “Some people might even sober up.”

“Not me,” Dallas threatened. He was already trying to get his shirt over his head, confused by the fact that it was a button-front.

By the time Dan eased slowly off the road, they had overshot the small inlet by nearly a hundred yards. Dallas, still struggling with his shirt, plunged blindly into the trees on what he was convinced was a shortcut. When Dan cut the engine, they heard Dallas crashing through the brush. He grunted once and they heard a thud, followed by a splash. “I found it!” he called.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dan told Diana, the first time Anne could remember him raising his voice to her.

“This is crazy—”

“So what? Maybe we could all stand a little crazy. Maybe you could.”

“I’m sorry,” Anne began. “This is all my fault—”

Dan interrupted her. “You better catch up to Hawkeye before he drowns himself.”

Anne got out and began to feel her way toward the thrashing, splashing sounds, but when she looked back she could see that Di was still seated stubbornly in the front seat.

The moon was down and it was very dark, but by following the sounds Anne was able to locate Dallas at the water’s edge where he was struggling to get his pants off, swearing angrily as he hopped about on one leg. Anne quickly stripped down to her underclothes and slipped into the water before he was even aware
of her presence. When Diana and Dan emerged from the trees, he stood before them in nothing but his shorts and socks. “C’mon,” he said excitedly. “You’re way behind.”

When Dallas took off his shorts, Di turned away and said she was going back to the car. This struck Dallas as an insult and instead of diving in, he stood his ground in his argyles. “Wassamatter?” he said. “We’re all friends.”

“Are you coming?” Diana said to Dan.

“Wassamatter?”

“Leave her alone, Dallas,” Anne told him. “For once don’t be a jerk.”

“See?” Dallas said, surprised by her voice so close. Her presence seemed to him at that moment more significant than what she had to say. The fact that she was in the water made her an ally. “Anne’s not ashamed, and she’s better looking, too.”

“Di can do what she wants,” Dan said.

Had Dallas been a degree more sober he would’ve heard the warning in his friend’s tone, but he wasn’t. “Who cares?” he said. “She doesn’t have to pretend she’s a saint is all. Everybody knows she’s putting out.”

For an instant Anne was certain Dan was going to punch him. Dallas must’ve thought so, too, because he began to step back. The two men were only two yards apart, but the slope was steep. In the knee-deep water Dallas lost his balance and started over backward, then righted himself too much and lunged forward. Dan palmed the top of Dallas’s head like a basketball, held him still for a second, then shoved him gently into the lake. By the time Dallas came sputtering to the surface, Dan had disappeared into the trees in pursuit of his fiancée.

Dallas now realized that he was alone in the lake
with his beloved and that the departure of their friends, once he thought about it, suited him fine. He spied the mound of Anne’s clothes on a log nearby, but it was too dark to ascertain which garments were there. Here was an opportunity to make something of the summer after all. Turning around, he made out her dark silhouette a few yards away. His heart thumping wildly, he dived beneath the surface, hoping to surprise her from below, a manuever that struck him as a pleasing combination of foreplay and football. The problem was, it was even darker below the surface than above, and after several scissors kicks Dallas began to suspect he had miscalculated the distance between them. His strategy was determined, however, and he refused to surface until he felt naked flesh. For her part, Anne knew precisely what he was up to and was able to trace his progress easily since only his head remained thoroughly submerged. When he finally arrived, half oxygen starved, fully expecting to embrace the loins of his beloved, he was greeted instead by the small of her foot planted firmly in the center of his forehead. The surprise of finding himself propelled backward drove the remaining air from his straining lungs, and he sucked in brackish water before managing to surface.

The first thing he saw was Anne stroking shoreward toward the log and her clothes. Coughing and sputtering, he started in pursuit, not entirely certain he had been rebuffed. Clearly, unless someone else was with them in the lake, he had been, but he still couldn’t believe it. Dallas also couldn’t tell whether the figure retreating before him was naked, but it certainly looked naked, and he tried desperately to catch up. But where Anne seemed to knife effortlessly through the water, he pitched forward again and again as the sand gave
way beneath his socks. His lungs began to fill with water, and he discovered, when he tried to call out, that he was capable only of gurgling noises. When he finally stumbled out of the lake, he was too exhausted and nauseated to mount much of an attack. Dropping to his knees in the sand, he sputtered “I … I … I.…” The tops of Anne’s breasts glistened in the moonlight, and he felt his hopes plunge, so terrible was her beauty.

“You should be ashamed, Dallas,” she said.

He struggled to his feet. “I—”

“Look at you.”

Dallas did as he was told and was surprised to discover an erection in the very process of deflating. Mistaking her meaning, he said, “It’ll come back. Just let me touch you.”

But her permission wouldn’t have made any difference, because the gin and lake water, churning more violently than ever, began to rise even as his penis descended. Burning with despair, he formulated a more modest plan. At the very least, if he lunged forward in a crude, last-ditch assault, he might bring her to ground and bury his sorrow in her breasts before she could summon the strength to cast him aside. Surely he deserved that much.

He was cheated, though, just the same. At first his legs refused to function, then they carried him in the direction opposite from the one he intended, off into the trees where he dropped to his knees again and began to retch.

Anne did not follow and, instead, found her clothes and shook herself dry as best she could after wringing out her long hair. Rather than put on her dry clothes over them, she removed her wet bra and panties and, after wringing them out, used them like a sponge to
blot herself semidry. The night air was lovely and cool on her skin, and she felt the exhilaration of her nakedness, such an utterly abandoned and delicious and hopeless feeling that she wanted to cry, by herself, for a very long time. She had not heard Dan return; he stood watching her from the exact spot where Dallas had knelt a few minutes before. Somewhere out on the lake a night bird called. That was the only sound.

For several days after his beating, Randall Younger looked fairly impressive—one eye swollen shut, his cheek a purple fruit above the fracture, his lips and nose lacerated. His mother was terrified when she saw him, and he made matters worse by refusing to explain what had happened other than confirming the obvious—that he’d been in a fight. She was so frightened and angry that she threatened to transfer him to Sacred Heart, the Catholic junior high. There was no reason to fly off the deep end, he said, and that made her madder still.

Actually, as far as Randall was concerned, things hadn’t worked out badly. Stories about what had transpired had widely circulated by the time he returned to school on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and when the other kids saw the way he looked, he recognized their admiration. Even better, the teachers made no objection to his wearing sunglasses indoors, a privilege never before extended. But strangest of all was the immediate camaraderie extended him by the very boys who had thrashed him so mercilessly. He met several of them in the halls that first day in school, and they all grinned knowingly, as if to suggest that in their book he was all right. They had shared something and
were from that day forward blood brothers. They would do to anyone who bothered him precisely what they had done to him.

No doubt a significant portion of their newfound respect was due to the fact that Randall had stubbornly refused to implicate anyone. When the principal called him in, he denied having been in a fight at all, explaining he was playing basketball and had inadvertently run into the bleachers. Though the principal didn’t believe this explanation, he was greatly relieved by it. He hated trouble, and it seemed that every time he took disciplinary action against a student, someone took disciplinary action against him. His tires were flattened, or an obscene suggestion was written on the hood of his car with shaving cream. Besides, at the moment the principal had real problems. Apparently a genuine maniac was on the loose. He had assaulted one of the boys on school property, injuring him badly, and the boy’s parents, two huge, pear-shaped people who smelled of perspiration and, unaccountably, lemon juice, were threatening a suit. So he accepted Randall’s improbable account.

Randall saw no reason not to be cheerful. Miraculously, he still had all his teeth, and his injuries had begun healing already. And it was difficult to hold much of a grudge against Boyer Burnhoffer, his tormentor, because he’d warned Randall for months that he was going to do it, and Randall himself had been prideful to assume that he could escape forever. Besides, the beating squared things all around, because he was no longer considered in arrears, the beating representing a kind of receipt for payment in full. Indeed Burnhoffer personally approved of this arrangement. Of late he’d been in more trouble than usual and knew that
one more episode would land him back in reform school. He was resigned to returning one day but wasn’t looking forward to it or to the necessity of killing the person responsible for sending him there when he got out.

Randall wasn’t worried about being murdered by Boyer Burnhoffer, but the current misunderstanding about his rescuer did prey on the boy’s mind. Fortunately, the now notorious Wild Bill Gaffney had somehow vanished. No one in Mohawk had seen him for days and wild rumors had begun circulating. Among the adolescents of Nathan Littler Junior High, he had long been legendary, largely due to his mutant appearance and vocal peculiarities. But special notice was now taken by their parents, who had self-consciously looked the other way whenever they encountered Wild Bill on the street. Since the assault their daughters had told them about Wild Bill’s huge member, alternately compared to a rope and a garden hose, which someone had seen him use to water the side of the dumpster in the alley outside the Mohawk Grill. How many times the good people of Mohawk had passed him without suspecting how dangerous he was, never considering that he might be more than a simple retard. It was frightening. Several junior-high boys to whom Bill had made gifts of condoms now remembered and confessed, pulling them and their disintegrating plastic wrappers out of the secret compartments in their wallets where they had long awaited the right circumstances. The citizens of Mohawk could not have hunted more enthusiastically if they’d been on the trail of Jack the Ripper.