Mohawk (37 page)

When the two policemen on the barricades are called away, a phalanx of drunks picks up the sawhorses and moves forward with them, ropes and all, stopping only
when the breeze shifts and brings them a blast of heat from the fire. Women hike their skirts and climb onto the shoulders of their men for a better view, which also gives some boys a better view.

A police car pokes slowly through the crowd, and the restraining ropes are lifted by two self-proclaimed valets who direct the driver with exaggerated, sweeping gestures. In the back seat sit a young woman with a child and a young man slumped over her lap. People peer in, hoping to identify them, but it’s dark and the riders too huddled.

“What’s with them,” somebody asks.

“None of your business,” says the driver. Then, to his partner, “Better lock up.” Once inside the ropes, the younger cop gets out and heads up the hill to find an officer who can tell him what to do.

At this point a drum of something flammable ignites in the maintainance wing, and broken glass showers out into the night, all the way to the onlookers at the rear, who cheer enthusiastically. Somebody says it’s a shame the whole place doesn’t burn down; it was a piece of shit from the beginning, and the wiring contractor in particular belongs in jail. “Bullshit,” another man shouts. “Somebody set it. They got the bastards over there in the cop car.” This makes sense even to those who haven’t even seen the car, and the arson rumor itself lights up the crowd. “People coulda been killed,” calls an angry man with an open cut on his forehead. “They’ll get off,” says the woman riding his shoulders. “Some lawyer-sharpie will get ’em off.”

Since there’s no one present to stop them, the barricades are again moved forward. The police car, which had been parked well inside, is now outside the ropes
and swarmed. The young policeman, returning down the drive, mistakenly concludes that the cruiser has vanished, and hurries back to report its theft. When he fails to locate his partner, he realizes his error. The car wasn’t stolen. His partner’s just moved it, and perhaps has taken the prisoners downtown, which is what he had wanted to do in the beginning.

“Send her down, David!” yells the fire chief, looking up at the sky. Rain clouds have rolled in, and the sliver of moon is gone.

Several boys clamber atop the police car for a better view, and the still swelling crowd packs tightly around it. The car begins to rock, much to the delight of the boys on top. “Who is it?” yells the man with the bleeding forehead, his nose flattened against the rear passenger-side window. “Tell … us … your … names!” Somebody pulls up a brick and hands it to him, but he balks. Luckily, the man standing next to him, already the veteran of one fight tonight, has a heavily bandaged hand. “Here,” says the man with the bleeding forehead, handing him the brick. As it turns out, the bandaged hand that qualifies this one to break the glass disqualifies him from doing a good job of it. His grip on the brick is weak, and when it strikes the car window, the brick flips into the air, skitters across the roof of the car and disappears over the other side. No one over there can be made to understand the problem. A jovial group, they’re thoroughly content to rock the cruiser. And within five minutes, David sends her down. Everyone knows this signals the end of the party, and only the firefighters are happy about it. In a matter of minutes the streets adjacent to the hospital are jammed with horn-blaring cars.

·   ·   ·

When there is excitement somewhere in a small town, much can happen elsewhere without attracting notice: Such is the immutable law of diversion. Only when the diversion is recognized for what it is are the more significant details—entirely overlooked at the time—recalled, and then only reluctantly, out of embarrassment. The morning after the fire at the Mohawk Medical Services Center, many remember seeing a dark figure struggling with what they had concluded was a drunken companion in his arms. But everyone had been hurrying toward the bright horizon in the southwest.

The following morning, when that same horizon began to brighten truly, a milk truck labors up Steele Avenue hill, known a few years before as Hospital Lane. The nickname didn’t long outlive the old Nathan Littler. Now the hilltop is a seldom used parking lot, well paved but inconvenient to the Main Street businesses whose rooftops it overlooks. The driver of the milk truck is a man of local distinction. Nearly twenty years earlier, he was the driver whose truck killed Homer Wells, once his slide down the entire icy length of Hospital Hill was complete. Since that morning, the driver of the milk truck has given considerable thought to the notion of fate, and this morning, like most others, finds him with much on his mind. In fact, this morning’s run is to be his last. The Bronson Dairy is calling it quits, the victim of supermarkets, convenience stores and cardboard cartons.

At the top of Steele Avenue, the truck shakes to a stop. In the center of the parking lot is a mound. The more the driver of the truck stares at it in the gray half-light of early morning, the more puzzled he becomes.
For some things, it’s too small, and for others too large. Finally, the driver gets out and walks over to where Wild Bill Gaffney kneels, dead and cold, his arms locked in rigor mortis around his father, whose expression of mortification is later explained by many as the result of being dragged up Steele Avenue hill by a half-wit to a hospital that was demolished almost a decade before, as Wild Bill himself had good cause to remember.

Harry Saunders, up early to open the diner, hears the sirens wail up Steele Avenue and feels ill. “You better get up there,” his first customer tells him, and so he goes, slower now than on the day the Nathan Littler came down. In the middle of the parking lot Harry sees a small circle of men in work clothes, who step aside when they see him. The grotesque mystery on the macadam holds no fascination for Harry, who goes white and immediately starts back down the hill. While the other men whisper in wonder of how a man with two holes in his chest had managed to carry a two-hundred-fifty-pound man up Steele Avenue hill, and why on earth he would’ve wanted to, Harry Saunders, as he stands before his grill, bacon spitting angrily, can only imagine the wonder and confusion of his good friend when he discovered himself mistaken and alone under the night sky in Mohawk.

At the bar in Greenie’s were five men, along with another small group clustered around the shuffleboard machine. They all mumbled hellos to Dallas when he came in, but they weren’t the usual hellos and Dallas knew it. People had been acting peculiar all day, and whenever he entered a room he felt he was already the subject of conversation. Nothing malicious, of course, and he didn’t blame anybody. People just didn’t know how to behave in times like this, and he wouldn’t have either. Instead of joining the men at one end of the bar, he instinctively took the stool next to the one reserved for Untemeyer. It was a little after three-thirty, and the bookie showed up at four o’clock sharp.

Woody brought Dallas a draft. “Anything I can do?” he said.

“You can let me take four or five grand.”

“Sure enough. I’ll just take it out of petty cash.” He paused. “Rudy hit the number yesterday.”

Dallas shook his head. “Five hundred wouldn’t help, even if he still had the five hundred, and he wouldn’t be Rudy if he did.”

“I’d give it to you, if I had it.”

“I know that, Woody.”

The bartender hovered, wondering how to start. Finally he said, “I never met your kid, but I don’t believe he done that. Where they got him?”

“Up in the hospital, still. They haven’t even let his mother see him yet.”

Benny D. came in and pulled out the stool next to Dallas, waving Woody away. “You’re something,” he said to Dallas.

“What.”

“Anybody else would be chasing me, but not Dallas Younger. I gotta chase him. He not only doesn’t bother to show up for work, he can’t even call to let people know where he’ll be.”

“I’m right here.”

“Asshole,” Benny D. took out a wad of bills and stuffed them in Dallas’s pocket. “It’s two grand, in case you’re wondering. Say thanks.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re tough.”

“I mean it. Thanks.”

“I want it back someday. They set bail?”

Dallas shook his head. “Ten grand is John’s guess.”

“Jesus.”

“I got a thousand from a guy I know pretty good. Your two makes three. My ex-wife says she’s got seven hundred or so in a savings account.”

“Rudy hit the number last night.”

“So I heard.”

“Probably back in the local economy by now. The kid got a lawyer?”

“John said he’ll go see him, but I don’t know. He’s still pretty sore about his face.”

“He’s an asshole. Let me have Dominic do it.”

“I can’t pay him.”

“You can work it out later. Dominic’s all right.”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

When they finished their beer Benny D. left, passing the bookie on his way in. Untemeyer assumed his usual perch. “You picked a bad time,” he grumbled, brushing cigar ash off his sleeve.

“When’s a good one?”

“I’ve been taking a beating.”

“You’ve been taking a beating for fifty years. I don’t need to hear about it.”

“What do you need.”

“A bundle. John says bail’ll be around ten grand.”

“I hear he’s out of bookmaking.”

“He had some tough luck.”

Untemeyer nodded. “I figured he would. A man shouldn’t have more than one racket. I can spot you a couple grand if it’ll help.”

“It would.”

Untemeyer wrote out a check and, from habit, a small slip.

Dallas’s pocket was getting thick, its bulge reassuring. “How the hell old are you anyway,” he asked.

“Never mind. I’m not going to die before you pay up, so you can forget about that.”

“Really. I’d just like to know.”

“I’ll piss on your grave anyhow, so what’s the difference?” Greenie’s was filling up. “Go away. You’re bad for business, and I need a good day for once.”

Dallas threw a dollar bill on the bar. “I can take up a collection if you want,” the bartender offered.

“He already did,” Untemeyer growled. “Your ex-wife still live around here?”

“She’s almost as broke as me,” Dallas said.

“The old lady still alive?”

“Her mother? As far as I know.”

Untemeyer shivered.

The corridors of the Mohawk Medical Services Center smelled smoky, though all the windows were open and fans had been set up to circulate the air. Like many summer storms, the one that had struck the night before had granted only temporary respite. Again it was muggy and wet, and when the sun broke through everything steamed. Anne Grouse had the waiting room all to herself. There were magazines to read, but instead she watched the sun drop out of sight behind Myrtle Park. Then the street lamps came on, barely discernible in the gloaming.

No one—doctor, nurse, staff—had said anything to her for hours. She had spoken to Dan on the telephone, and of course he offered to come out, but she told him not to, then regretted it immediately. She almost wished Dallas was here to share the responsibility of waiting. He’d been by the house earlier and she’d foolishly given him her savings account for Randall’s bail. She didn’t mind the money, obviously, but in a weak moment had violated one of the few rules she lived by, which was never to give money to Dallas. In a way, that Dallas was off someplace trying to be useful was just as well. His company was never soothing, though it wasn’t all his fault. He wanted to be taken seriously,
the one thing she’d never been able to do. Briefly she felt sorry for the people he was borrowing from. If he didn’t get the full amount, he’d probably drop the whole bundle on a sure thing at Saratoga. In the end she’d have to ask her mother to put a second mortgage on the house, and of course Mrs. Grouse would do it. The old woman could inspire random violence moment to moment, but for the big things could be counted on, provided that sacrifice and not intervention was called for. Anne smiled to herself. There was, after all, something to be said for sacrifice.

Mrs. Grouse had been shaky after her assault on the worms, and Anne had sat with her until she finally slept, but when she came down early in the morning, before the call about Randall, her mother had already eaten breakfast and was housecleaning. She’d even been outside to clean up the lawn. She never allowed the ship of state to list for long. Now it was back on an even keel, and Anne knew that any references to the previous night would be greeted with blank stares. That night no longer existed. When Dallas called with the news, Anne said nothing to her mother.

When the evening shift came on at the hospital, one doctor made the mistake of venturing into the waiting room. “I want you to tell me about my son,” Anne told him. The doctor was young and clearly intimidated by so attractive a woman fifteen years his senior. “Let me find out what I can,” he said. “They’ll talk to me. I think.”

Fifteen minutes later he was back, but in the interim had gathered himself and applied the mask of his profession. “He’s resting well. You’d better go home and get some rest yourself.”

“I’d like to sit with him a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s the police, isn’t it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you are.”

At nine, she gave up. In the lobby she saw Diana Wood at the admissions desk. Anne almost didn’t recognize her, she was so stooped, so gnarled. There was no girl left in her, and her expression was even more vacant than Anne felt. When she looked up and saw Anne at her elbow, she flushed.

“You didn’t have to come,” Anne said.

“I’m ashamed,” she said. “I’m not here about Randall.”

“Not again.”

“She’s curious about the fire, I think. Has to know what’s going on.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t waste the feeling,” her friend advised. “Most people assume they have an unlimited supply of emotions. They don’t.”

“Do you have time for coffee?”

“I better not. I always end up paying double for tardiness.”

“Please, have a cup with me. You can blame the desk.”

Diana shook her head. “Go see Dan. He’d love the company, and he’s better at it.” Before Anne could object, her cousin added, “Dallas stopped by around noon.”