Mohawk (17 page)

Though flustered by the man’s presence, Mrs. Grouse was too polite to interrupt, so he kept talking. What she found most odd about the situation was that the man was talking to her and somehow not really talking to her at all. He was looking right at her and certainly seemed to be speaking to her. But though he had his back to her husband, Mrs. Grouse felt it was Mather Grouse he was talking to, and that if she were to disappear from the face of the earth, the man might not even notice.

“No, some of the men didn’t like it, Mrs. Mather. Some said Mather Grouse thought he was too good, but I always said it was because he
was
better than those fellows, and he had a right to think so if he wanted. That’s what I always said, and that’s God’s own truth.”

Mather Grouse had not stood up, and when their visitor finally turned to face him and offer one of his paws, Mather Grouse shook it reluctantly.

“A good handshake,” Rory Gaffney said, not letting go when the other man tried to break it off. “One of the few pleasures left to old men like us.” Having turned his back on Mrs. Grouse, he appeared to have forgotten her completely, and she then felt self-conscious about being in her own living room, much of which was blocked out by the broad expanse of the man’s leather-coated back. When she announced that if no one minded she would go upstairs and help with the dishes, neither man seemed to hear.

She didn’t go directly upstairs, though. Without knowing why, she went into the bathroom and lingered there. She washed her hands in cold water and dried
them carefully, trying to understand her reluctance to leave her husband alone with this man who, now that she thought about it, hadn’t even introduced himself. Despite the beautiful leather coat and his otherwise respectable appearance, the man was somehow unclean. When she finished at the sink, she turned out the bathroom light and stood quietly beneath the darkened door frame, hoping to overhear something of the conversation taking place two rooms away. With both the kitchen and the bathroom lights off, she decided it would be safe to sneak a peek into the living room. When she did, however, she received a jolt. The angle was wrong to see her husband, but the other man, who had seated himself on the sofa where Mrs. Grouse herself usually sat, was staring across the dark expanse of dining room at the doorway so that when Mrs. Grouse’s head appeared, their eyes met in the split second before Mrs. Grouse withdrew as if from a flame. Getting caught flustered her. She was by no means an inexperienced spy, though sneaking up on Mather Grouse required no extraordinary talent. Their visitor, however, was apparently a different sort of man. He had met her only five minutes before, yet had predicted her behavior, something Mather Grouse seldom did after forty-some years of marriage.

The more she thought about it, the more Mrs. Grouse doubted the evidence of her own senses. In all probability the man had not seen her at all. With the lights out in the dining room, kitchen and bathroom, he couldn’t have seen her; he just happened to be gazing in her general direction.

Mrs. Grouse was tempted to verify this second theory by peeking in again, but she did not dare. What if she were caught a second time? Instead of risking it,
she turned and flushed the toilet to account for her presence in the bathroom and hurried out into the dark kitchen without even glancing into the living room. On the way upstairs she thought of, for some reason, the afternoon when she had been immobilized while her daughter had worked purposefully over Mather Grouse. Why she should have suddenly remembered that vexing scene was beyond her. Still, it might not be a bad idea to have her daughter go downstairs just to make sure. Though Mrs. Grouse was sure that everything was fine.

It was the boy who came down, though, all too happy to surrender the dish towel to his grandmother and curious as well about his grandfather’s guest. Randall immediately recognized the man he had seen a month earlier in the park. He had waited then, because the two men appeared so confidential, returning to the bandshell only when he saw the large man shuffling away and his grandfather slumping on the bench. This man was again leaning forward confidentially, speaking quietly. “He has no money,” the man was saying, “unless someone gave him some.”

“I have not seen him in fifteen years,” Mather Grouse said. He was not looking at the other man but seemingly at a random spot on the wall above the television.

“I thought he might’ve started up in the old way again—”

“I have not seen him in fifteen years,” Mather Grouse repeated.

At this point the large man noticed Randall standing in the doorway and straightened, at the same time waving him in, as if he, not Mather Grouse, were the master
of the house. “Grandma says not to tire yourself out,” Randall said, which was neither true nor untrue. She hadn’t said it just then, but she said it all the time and he felt sure she’d
meant
to say it.

Rory Gaffney rose, towering over Randall. “The grandson!” he said enthusiastically and extended his big hand. Randall shook briefly, withdrawing his hand before the man could get a grip. “I know your father, a good man, but you look more like your grandfather. A small Mather Grouse, if ever there was one. A fine, principled young man, I’ll wager.”

Mather Grouse had stiffened perceptibly at their handshake. “He’s a good boy.”

“Of course. A young Mather Grouse. I have a granddaughter. Do you like girls?”

“Not much,” Randall said, certain he would not like the girl in question.

“No,” the man agreed. “But the day will come. And when it does, I hope you’ll pay us a visit. It would be fine to know that my little one had young Mather for a friend.”

“His name is Randall,” Mather Grouse said.

“I will remember,” Rory Gaffney said. “And you, Mather. I know you will remember. You will let me know—”

“Yes,” said Mather Grouse, not an accomplished liar. His grandfather’s real intention was so clear to Randall that he couldn’t understand why the other man, now buttoning his coat to leave, was apparently satisfied with their arrangement. When Randall pushed the door shut behind him, Mather Grouse started to get up, then thought better of it. The inhaler was on the end table, and he used it, his grandson looking on. “You all right, Gramp?”

Mather Grouse nodded, closing his eyes.

“Want me to get Mom?”

“No!” his grandfather said emphatically. “Just look out the window and tell me where he is.”

The boy did as he was told. “Gone.”

“Look down both sides of the street.”

“He’s gone.”

Mather Grouse shook his head. “Go to the back bedroom. Leave the light off.”

“Okay. Sure,” Randall agreed, excited by the adventure of it. When he returned a few minutes later, his eyes were wide. His grandfather nodded knowingly when the boy told him that the man had not gone away. Instead, he was on his hands and knees along the side of the house, trying to peer through the small, smoky window into the pitch darkness of Mather Grouse’s cellar.

The policeman wasn’t visible when Harry locked the front door of the grill and backed into the street, the pie tin full of turkey and dressing warm and snug under his coat. His car was parked half a block up the street. He took his usual route home, checking the rearview until he was sure no one was following, then circled back and parked on Hospital Hill on the opposite side of the street from the old Nathan Littler. Except for the emergency unit, the whole building was black and the broken glass crunched beneath his feet as he puffed up the incline and around the rear of the building, all the while trying to think of some plausible explanation if he were caught sneaking into an abandoned wing of a soon-to-be-demolished building at ten o’clock on Thanksgiving night. By the time he had climbed to the third floor, he was completely winded.

Wild Bill Gaffney, comfortable in his coat, was seated against one of the inner walls beneath a sign warning pregnant women about the potential dangers of x-rays. In profile Harry looked like this might apply to him, at least until he gave birth to the pie tin and handed it to Wild Bill, who’d been eyeing his friend’s middle since the man came to a wheezing halt at the top of the stairs. Harry caught his breath while Wild Bill wolfed
the food noisily. “Slow down,” Harry said. “You’ll be sick.”

Wild Bill tried to slow down, but found he couldn’t. He had been waiting for the food too long and was too happy to see it. In fact, he was obviously happy in general.

Harry studied him critically, wishing there was something he could do to make him less happy. Wild Bill had nothing to be pleased about, at least nothing Harry could see.

Wild Bill noticed he was being studied, and grinned gravy. “Ive,” he said.

“Yeah, he’s alive. But that’s about all.”

Wild Bill shook his head emphatically. “Ahn,” he said before refocusing his attention on the pie tin.

“And what?”

Wild Bill nodded enthusiastically.

Harry shook his head. “You’re looney, you know that? All week you’ve been saying ‘and’, but you never finish the goddamn sentence. And
what?
”

Wild Bill stared stupidly until Harry, exasperated, gave up. “We got to figure a better place. They’ll level this pretty soon. And besides, it’s getting too fucking cold.”

Wild Bill thumbed gravy around the tin and did not appear overly concerned. Harry watched him, understanding, perhaps for the first time, why some people liked to abuse him. Just then, to slap him would’ve been nice. “Ahn,” Bill said.

Harry massaged his temples, trying hard not to lose his temper. “I know.
Ahn
. Always
ahn
. But just listen a minute, will you? Fuck
ahn
, and listen to me.”

Wild Bill suddenly looked so hurt that Harry broke off. In the dark Harry couldn’t see the patches of baldness
or the gauntness, and to him Wild Bill, all huddled up against the wall, looked a little like a teenager. And that, finally, was Harry’s clue. He had never considered the possibility before, and it was staggering. He sat down next to his friend, putting a hand on a bony knee. “Ahn,” Harry repeated softly this time. “Tell me, Billy, are you in love?”

Dallas lost Harry’s fifty right away. But his timing was good because Benny D’Angelo, who owned the Pontiac dealership where Dallas worked, wandered in immediately afterward. So instead of having to drop out, Dallas borrowed another fifty from the boss and settled back comfortably, convinced that his luck had changed, at least in some respects. Sober, Benny D. was a hard-headed businessman with fish hooks in his pockets; but tanked he became one of the boys. As often as not, he was one of the boys. He and Dallas had been friends since high school, and before Benny D.’s old man kicked off he had worked construction with Dallas in Albany as well as points as far flung as Poughkeepsie and Binghamton. The old man didn’t have a good thing to say about his wayward son, and everybody was surprised when he left Benny D. the dealership after swearing for years that he’d torch it first. No one was more surprised than Benny D., and his father’s gesture made a fatalist of him. “Look at us,” he was fond of observing to Dallas. “Three years ago I had shit. Now I got all I can do to piss it away. Three years ago you had shit and you still got shit. Who can figure it?”

Dallas had to admit he couldn’t. Nor could he get a real good grip on the poker game either. He continued
to lose, but whenever he got up to leave, Benny D. shoved money at him across the green felt. For a while Dallas kept a strict accounting of what he owed, but after the first two hundred he figured what the fuck. Benny D. was winning anyway, almost as fast as Dallas was losing, so nobody was getting hurt. Benny had brought along two bottles of good scotch that had circled the table, stopping meaningfully only before Benny D. and Dallas. As the evening wore on, the alcohol had a melancholy effect on Dallas, who began to talk about his brother.

“Who cares?” one of the other players finally said. “He’s dead and buried. Play poker.”

“Not fair,” Dallas said.

“Right,” Bennie D. agreed. He’d been at the scotch since midafternoon and saw the whole enchilada with startling clarity. “Not fair,” he said. “Fate.” Then he passed out, his chin on his chest, still gripping fiercely what turned out to be the winning hand.

“Three o’clock,” said one of the other men, thoroughly disgusted. “Seven hours we been at this and I’m dead even.”

Thereupon there was a general accounting, which revealed that everyone at the table was more or less even except for Benny D., whose considerable winnings had merely subsidized Dallas. To continue seemed pointless, and the game broke up. Benny D. was left where he sat, his broad forehead now resting comfortably on the table.

At three in the morning Main Street was so quiet that Dallas could hear the traffic light change from red to green a block away. There was nothing sadder and lonelier in the world, he decided, especially when you were all alone when it happened. What had he done
to deserve such an experience? He remembered Anne and the fact that he hadn’t even called to say he wasn’t coming. Maybe that was it. He should’ve called, but it was too late now and besides, the traffic light had already paid him back. He never had been welcome at the Grouse home, not really. You could tell when you were really welcome, and the only place he’d ever felt it was at his brother’s. His innocent brother, who never got drunk, never played poker, never catted around, never in his life caught a dose. Dead. And now Dallas had no place in the world where he was ever really welcome.

At the Four Corners Dallas headed north toward the cemetery, feeling sorry for the brother buried there and even sorrier for himself. By rights he should be the one in the ground, if only because nobody would miss him. Certainly not his ex-wife and probably not his son, who never said anything at all. Even the fast friendships of his youth had slipped away. If he ever saw Dan Wood, it was by accident. After he and Diana were married, he made all that money and moved into the house up on Kings Road. And they were friends with Anne, so to hell with them, Dallas figured. Yes, Dan had it rough, a lot of people did. Maybe not as rough as himself, but pretty damn rough just the same. Even as he arrived at this conclusion, Dallas was aware that he was posturing for his own benefit, something he did only when he was drinking. In the morning he’d be at a loss to discover much wrong with his life, assuming he still had his teeth. But for some reason, these periods of melancholy were important to him, and he rode them out the way some people did migraines.