Mohawk

1

The back door to the Mohawk Grill opens on an alley it shares with the junior high. When Harry throws back the bolt from inside and lets the heavy door swing outward, Wild Bill is waiting nervously in the dark gray half-light of dawn. There is no way of telling how long he has been pacing, listening for the thunk of the bolt, but he looks squitchier than usual today. Driving his hands deeper into his pockets, Wild Bill waits while Harry inspects him curiously and wonders if Bill’s been in some kind of trouble during the night. Probably not, Harry finally decides. Bill looks disheveled, as always, his black pants creaseless, alive with light-colored alley dust, the tail of his threadbare, green-plaid, button-down shirt hanging out, but there’s nothing unusually wrong with his appearance. Harry is glad, because he’s late opening this morning and doesn’t have time to clean Wild Bill up.

When Harry finally steps aside, Bill scoots by into the diner and climbs onto the first round stool at the end of the formica counter. Harry hooks the heavy door to the outside wall so the delivery men can come in the back way and the place can air out. A few flies will wander in off the street, but will end up stuck to the No Pest Strips dangling from the ceiling. Harry throws open the large windows in the front of the diner, creating a cool draft that stands Wild Bill’s thinning hair on end. Bill is in his middle thirties, but his baby-fine hair is falling out in patches and he looks as old as Harry, who is almost fifty.

Hungry? Harry says.

Wild Bill nods and studies the grill, which is sputtering butter. Harry lifts a large bag of link sausages and tosses several dozen on the grill, covering its entire surface, then separates them with the edge of his spatula, arranging them in impressive phalanxes. It’s gonna be a while, he warns.

Wild Bill is beginning to look less anxious. The sputtering sausage calms him, and he watches hypnotized as the links spit and jump. The grease begins to puddle and inch toward the trough at the edge of the grill. Wild Bill would prevent its escape if he could because he likes the taste of sausage grease. Sometimes, when Harry remembers, he will scramble Wild Bill’s eggs in it before cleaning the surface. But Bill only gets eggs when he has money, which is seldom. Bill himself rarely has more than a few nickels, but for the last ten years, at the first of the month, an envelope has arrived at the Mohawk Grill containing a crisp ten-dollar bill and a note that says simply, For William Gaffney. Where it comes from is the only genuine mystery in Harry’s life. At first he thought the money came from the boy’s father, but that was before he met Rory Gaffney. Harry has met just about everyone who knows Wild Bill and determined by one means or another that it’s none of them. The money just appears. When it’s used up, Harry can be depended upon to stake Wild Bill to coffee and one of yesterday’s sticky buns before his customers come in, but Harry’s generosity has its limits, and he seldom gives away food that isn’t headed for the dumpster. Once, on Christmas two years before, Harry had got to feeling pretty blue about things in general, so to get rid of the depression he had cooked Wild Bill a big breakfast—juice, eggs, ham, pancakes, home fries, toast, jelly, and maple syrup—which the younger man wolfed, wide-eyed and grateful, before going out into the alley to be sick. Since then, Harry has been careful not to make the same mistake.

I want you to take out the trash this morning, Harry says, turning sausages with his spatula.

Wild Bill watches each flip like an expectant dog waiting for a mistake.

Hear me?

Wild Bill starts and looks at Harry.

I said I want you to take out the trash. You can have some toast.

Ow?

Yes, now.

Wild Bill is reluctant to leave—he likes to watch the sausage—but slides off the stool and goes to the back of the diner where Harry has stacked several bags of garbage. The flies have already discovered them and are attacking the plastic in a frenzy. Wild Bill deposits each of the bags in the dumpster and returns to his stool just as two pieces of toast pop up golden brown. Harry butters them sparingly and puts the toast on a saucer in front of Wild Bill. He almost asks if he’d got into a fight during the night, then decides not to. If Bill had, there would be the usual signs, because he isn’t much of a fighter. Usually, whoever starts the fight will give Bill a fat lip and then get embarrassed when, instead of getting mad, Wild Bill would just stand there, his arms dangling at his sides, looking as if he might cry.

You ain’t found yourself a girlfriend, have you?

Bill shakes his head, but he stops chewing his toast to look at Harry, who wonders if he might be lying, if he is capable of lying.

I promised your uncle I’d tell him if you got into trouble, Harry warns.

But Wild Bill has gone back to his toast, which he chews with exaggerated concentration, as if he fears making a mistake. There is a thud against the front door of the diner and Harry goes to unlock. The rolled up Mohawk Republican is lying in the entryway, and Harry returns with it after checking to make sure he didn’t hit the number the day before. The Republican knows its readership and prints the three-digit number in the upper left-hand corner of the front page above the headline, which today reads, in somewhat bolder type than usual, TANNERIES BLAMED FOR ABNORMAL AREA CANCER RATE. Harry skims the first short paragraph, in which a university study of Mohawk County concludes that people living in the county are three times more likely to contract cancer, leukemia, and several other serious diseases than elsewhere in the country. Persons who work in the tanneries and leather mills themselves or who reside near the Cayuga Creek, where the Morelock, Hunter and Cayuga tanneries are accused of dumping, are ten to twenty times more likely to contract one of the diseases listed on page B-6. Spokesmen for the tanneries deny that any dumping has occurred in nearly two decades and suggest that the recent findings are in all probability a statistical anomaly.

Harry leaves the paper on the counter for anybody who wants to check Friday’s late racing results. The sausages done, he scoops them off the grill and into a metal tub. He will toss them back on to warm for a minute as the orders come in. What doesn’t get eaten by breakfast customers he’ll use in sandwiches later in the day. He knows within a link or two what is needed. There are few surprises in the diner, for which he is thankful. With the long spatula he moves the puddle of grease toward the trough before lining the glistening surface with rows of bacon strips.

Hey, he says. Wild Bill’s busy thumbing toast crumbs off his saucer. You don’t ever drink out of the crick, do you?

Wild Bill shakes his head.

Harry shrugs. It was just an idea, but it would’ve explained a lot. Harry wasn’t around Mohawk when Wild Bill was a boy, but some people said he’d been normal once, more or less. The bacon begins to sizzle. Harry belches significantly and wipes his hands on the stomach of his apron. He feels the way he always does on Saturday morning after a hard night’s drinking. He has come directly to the diner without any sleep, and the sweet smell of frying meat has his stomach churning. It’s not his stomach he’s worrying about, though. He has proposed marriage to some woman during the course of the evening. When drinking, Harry is indiscriminate about women, to whom he invariably proposes. The women Harry ends up with on Friday nights usually say yes, and then he has to renege. On the plus side, they know he hasn’t any intention of marrying, so their feelings are never hurt. They say yes because it’s a long shot and their lives are full of long shots. They know Harry doesn’t need a wife and could do better if he were serious about taking one. There was a time when they could’ve done better than Harry, but that was several presidents ago. The calendar above the grill is for 1966, a year out of date. Whoever gave Harry the calendar the year before didn’t give him a new one this year. The months are the same and Harry doesn’t mind being a few days off.

Don’t get hooked up with women, he mutters.

Ow?

Any time.

Harry sees Bill eyeing yesterday’s sticky buns beneath the glass dome. He hands Bill one and dumps the rest. The bakery man will be along in a few minutes. Harry flips the bacon.

On the other side of the wall is the sound of tramping feet on the staircase, which means the all-night poker game on the second floor is breaking up. This in turn means that Harry will have some early business. When the front door opens and several men enter, Wild Bill starts to leave, but Harry puts a hand on his shoulder and he settles back on his stool. Ordinarily, Harry doesn’t want him around after his paying customers start coming in, but he knows these particular men are not squeamish. At the moment they are barely awake. After taking stools in the center of the counter, two of the red-eyed men order big breakfasts—ham steak, eggs, home fries, toast, coffee—and the other two just coffee. Harry doesn’t have to ask who won. John, the lawyer, usually wins and hangs on to his winnings until he goes to Las Vegas, usually twice a year. Then Vegas usually wins. One of the noneaters pulls out the day’s racing form. The other grabs Harry’s Mohawk Republican and folds out the sports page. What was yesterday’s number? somebody says.

Four-two-one, Harry growls.

I haven’t had a number in three years.

So what? I haven’t been laid in pretty near that long.

I can get you laid if you can get me a number, says John, who is reputed to be a ladies’ man. He’s the only one who looks relatively fresh after the long night’s work.

Anybody can get laid, another agrees.

Some of us prefer girls.

A mock fight breaks out. Wild Bill watches the men, a little alarmed at the feigned hostilities. One of the men nods a hello in his direction.

Oughta, Bill says.

Yeah, the man says, rolling his eyes at Harry. Oughta.

Oughta, the rest chime in. Oughta, Harry.

Lay off. Harry wishes now that he’d let Bill, who is grinning happily at this camaraderie, clear out when he’d wanted to. He sometimes wishes Wild Bill would just go off some place and not come back. He’s a burden at best. Still, Harry doesn’t like people making fun of him.

How long does it take to fry a couple eggs? the lawyer wants to know. They oughta be done by now.

Oughta, the others say in unison.

The man with the sports page leans back on his stool so he can see the street outside. Stay away from my car, you fat shit. Officer Gaffney is studying the three illegally parked cars at the curb. A recent ordinance prohibits parking on Main Street. If I get a ticket, I’m going temporarily insane.

I’ll take your case, John tells him.

Even you could win it, somebody says.

Harry doesn’t even bother to look. He knows Officer Gaffney and also knows that no tickets will be written until he finds out who the cars belong to. Gaffney likes to drink coffee in the diner, and he leaves Harry’s customers alone.

The door opens and he strides in, a large man, but soft-looking. Even the boys who race their bicycles down the Main Street sidewalks are unafraid. They do wheelies behind his back as he guards the traffic light at the Four Corners and are gone again before he can turn around. Only Officer Gaffney takes himself seriously. He wears his thirty-eight slung lower than regulation on his right hip. Boys, he nods, taking a stool at the opposite end of the lunch counter from Wild Bill.

Oughta, somebody says.

Wild Bill is clearly nervous again, fidgeting on his stool and never taking his eyes off the policeman. He is made uneasy by uniforms, even those worn by familiar people. Wild Bill hasn’t had much luck with uniforms.

Who owns the Merc, Officer Gaffney asks. He pours two level teaspoons of sugar into the steaming coffee Harry puts in front of him.

Murphy, says the lawyer, jabbing his eggs until they run yellow. He’ll be down in a minute if he doesn’t kill himself.

You could’ve bought him breakfast, at least, says one of the coffee-drinkers.

I offered. He said he wasn’t hungry.

I hope his kids aren’t either. Not this week, anyhow.

This month.

He isn’t the only one took a bath, says the other coffee-drinker, anxious that the absent Murphy not hog all the sympathy.

Yeah, but did you see the look on his face when he lost on that aces-over-boat?

Devouring the bleeding eggs, John chortles at the recollection. Shit, he says appreciatively.

When Wild Bill slides off his stool like a scolded dog and slinks out the back, Harry doesn’t try to stop him. The men watch him go. The man reading the sports page has now folded the paper back to the front. He must drink out of the Cayuga, he says. Everybody but Harry laughs.

What the hell is ‘oughta’ supposed to mean?

It means Howdy, Harry says.

How do you know, John asks. "You look it up in the Morons’ Dictionary?."

It means Howdy.

You can settle this, Gaff, the lawyer says without looking up from his breakfast. You’re his uncle.

Officer Gaffney goes deep purple. Though he and Wild Bill look about the same age, he is indeed the other man’s uncle. Not many people in Mohawk know Wild Bill’s last name, so he seldom has to admit to being related. Now they all know.

I do see a family resemblance, now that you mention it, somebody remarks.

"Say oughta, Gaff."

Can it! Harry thunders, so loud that everybody including the policeman jumps. Harry’s normally red face is even redder, and he brandishes his long, thin spatula like a sword. To someone wandering in off the street, Harry would look more comic than menacing, but anyone wise and within striking distance of his spatula takes him seriously.

It’s the lawyer who breaks the tension. You must have got married again last night. Always makes you pissy. I can have it annulled by noon unless it’s consummated.

Consummated? Harry?

Everybody laughs, and Harry lowers his weapon. He doesn’t mind them kidding him, but he’s still angry. He’s just a poor moron. Give him a break, can’t you?

Sure, Harry. We really oughta.

When the men pay up and leave, Harry and Officer Gaffney have the place to themselves. It’s early still. The policeman reads the front page of the Republican while Harry dumps a small tub of home fries onto the grill. He probably won’t see Wild Bill again until Monday morning, and that’s just as well. Harry wonders where he goes, what he does with his days and nights. By the time the policeman puts the paper down, Harry’s fries are good and brown underneath, but they look cold and unappetizing. The cars that were out front are gone, except for the Mercury.

This Murphy character a customer?

Harry says he isn’t.

Officer Gaffney pays for his coffee and goes back outside. Harry can see him bend over the Merc to write a citation on the hood. Harry turns the home fries and looks around his diner. He hasn’t many regrets about his life, nor does he want a lot that he doesn’t have. The diner is just about right. He wishes now that he had scrambled Wild Bill some eggs in the sausage grease, but that’s the only regret he can think of.

2

"I think the house will be just fine," Mrs. Grouse said when her daughter Anne turned the corner onto Oak. The older woman was still in her Sunday outfit, a belted, cream-color dress, the fabric of which she smoothed over her knees with gloved fingers. Mrs. Grouse disliked riding in automobiles and refused to do so except to attend church or visit her older sister Milly, which was, in fact, where she and her daughter were now headed.

Anne drew over to the curb. Do you want to go back and check the house again, Mother?

Whatever for, dear?

I have no idea. But if you have doubts, let’s go back … by all means. Otherwise you’ll be wondering out loud all afternoon.

Nonsense.

I agree, Anne said, pulling back onto the street.

When they had gone about a block, Mrs. Grouse said, "I locked all the doors."

Yes, Mother.

Mrs. Grouse didn’t look at her daughter. "There isn’t a thing in the world for you to be upset about. But with your father in the hospital, the house happens to be my responsibility."

Anne knew it was pointless to continue the conversation. Most things, great and small, fell under the general heading of her mother’s responsibility, and Mrs. Grouse shouldered them all bravely on her slender frame. The two women had been feuding since the attack that hospitalized Mather Grouse earlier in the week. Since then, they had alternated staying with him at the hospital, waging the same subtle war they’d been engaged in as long as Anne could remember. Not surprisingly, Mather Grouse seemed to prefer the company of his grandson Randall to either of them.

Randy has the number …, ventured Mrs. Grouse, who never in her life left a doubt unvoiced.

Yes, Mother. Please, let’s not worry everything to death.

What are you talking about? I simply said—

I know what you said. But in a few minutes you’ll be with your sister and then you’ll forget about everything. You’ll forget that the house exists. In the meantime, can’t we have some peace?

Milly was pushing eighty, nearly fifteen years older than Anne’s mother, but the two women were spiritual twins. They hadn’t been particularly close until the four sisters between them in age died. Since then, the two women began rewriting their pasts until both believed that they had spent every day of their girlhood in each other’s exclusive company, when in reality the decade and a half that separated their births had made them relative strangers. But they unburdened themselves of this constraining reality for the sake of the vivid, shared recollections that lacked even the slightest basis in fact. Old Milly took spells when she confused Mrs. Grouse with their sister Grace, dead the best part of twenty years. Fortunately, Mrs. Grouse had little trouble shifting gears, and she cheerfully assumed the dead sister’s identity lest she upset the living one. To Anne there was something a little spooky about her mother’s easy metempsychosis on such occasions, but she never said anything.

Of course the sisters shared some recent memories more firmly grounded in historical fact. It was Milly’s husband who had been responsible for Mather Grouse’s coming to Mohawk shortly after his marriage to Anne’s mother. The town had seemed alive and healthy then, though the leather business was already showing signs of decline that no one imagined would be permanent. All the tanneries and glove shops were hiring, at least seasonally, and Mather Grouse had gotten work in the same shop that employed Milly’s husband. When things began to go bad, everyone blamed the Depression and said things would boom again once the economy recovered. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Mather Grouse enlisted, confident that he would return to the same job he left.

But the war changed everything. In order to escape high import duties the more unscrupulous shopowners began to bring into the country as unfinished goods gloves that required only the fastening of a single button to become finished, and in this way the demand for the skills of Mohawk’s cutters was controlled. Never again would there be more work than men, and competition for the existing work drove wages lower. Very few of the men knew what was happening to them, and those who did were afraid to speak out.

Still, the years following the war were not bad ones, at least for the two sisters. They were veteran visitors and took turns entertaining each other to pass the long afternoons when their daughters were in school and their husbands at the shop. Serving fancy pastries on lace doilies, they gossiped harmlessly, sticky fingered, on many subjects. Who among the cutters was getting the best leather, who was likely to get laid off if the work did not last through the winter, and the like. Both women had delivered their children very late in the natural scheme of things, and mothering did not come easy to either of them. Anne and her mother cared for each other after their fashion. But they were very different, and neither mother nor daughter had spoken of loving one another since Anne was a very small girl.

Milly, since her husband’s death over a decade ago, lived with her daughter and son-in-law on Kings Road, in one of the few remaining neighborhoods in Mohawk that had not seen better days, where there was some real money. Though it was in the same end of town as the Grouse home on Mountain Avenue, the latter neighborhood was beginning to exhibit, in chipped paint and rolling, cracked sidewalks, signs of the town’s general decline. On tree-lined Kings Road the earth never shifted, and the smooth, wide sidewalks ran straight and true. The houses themselves were set far back off the street, each home with its own manicured lawn and tall, symmetrical hedges. Despite frequent visits, Anne could never remember seeing anyone in the act of mowing or clipping. The seventh, eighth, and ninth holes of the Mohawk Country Club doglegged lazily around these homes on Kings Road, a dead-end street whose residents’ lives were punctuated by worries no more serious than the occasional slice or duck-hook. When Anne pulled into the driveway and stepped out, she heard the distant crack of a fairway wood and the mild curse of a man with a monied voice.

Diana Wood, Anne’s cousin, met them at the door, her mother limping up behind. Old Milly and Mrs. Grouse greeted one another as if they had endured a separation of many months instead of two weeks. That they did not see each other daily was the fault of the young people. Di Wood looked ragged and tired, and after witnessing the too-fervent reunion of the sisters, she exchanged with Anne the look of a fellow sufferer. How’s Uncle Mather, she asked when they were out of earshot of the kitchen.

They’re talking about releasing him tomorrow.

We’ve been meaning to visit, but things are never easy to coordinate around here. Any other time Mother would already be there.

Dad doesn’t expect it. He doesn’t appreciate visitors there any more than he does at home. Besides, you look beat.

From the kitchen they were able to see into the living room where the sisters sat facing each other on the love seat, their knees actually touching. Di Wood shook her head. We’ll be dead long before they will, she said half seriously. You ought to get out while you can. You’re still young enough.

Anne smiled at the observation. I’ll be thirty-five in a few short months. Which means that unless you’ve gained ground you’ll only be forty.

Her cousin took a glazed ham out of the refrigerator and set it on the cutting board. It was very beautiful, topped with cherries and pineapple slices. The Woods always entertained Anne and her mother lavishly on Sunday afternoons. There was always a ham or roast or leg of lamb, along with several fancy salads. Since there was no way to reciprocate in kind, Anne wished her cousin wouldn’t go to the trouble. Milly was more or less housebound since fracturing her hip the previous winter. But Di claimed to derive pleasure from doing.

Look at me if you don’t think I’ve gained ground, she said cheerfully.

This much was true. Diana had never been a pretty girl, though during her early twenties, shortly after her marriage to Dan, she had possessed a fragile, vulnerable loveliness that people often remarked on after regretting the plainness of her features. Now she could easily pass for fifty and her former fragility was supplanted by a kind of solidness. She looked like a woman who had spent her whole life waiting in line.

What you and Dan need is to get out, Anne said, as much to change the subject as anything. Your mother could certainly survive a weekend. Mother and I could look in.

Diana’s electric knife curled thin, admirable slices off the ham, each falling obediently on top of the last. We were supposed to go away last weekend. We even hired a nurse. But when mother got wind of it she threw such a tantrum we didn’t dare go.

You should’ve anyway.

I know, Diana conceded. But after a while you lack the necessary will. It would’ve been just a gesture anyway. We wouldn’t have enjoyed ourselves.

In the living room Mrs. Grouse and Milly had not moved. Their knees still touching, they faced each other, their eyes widening at the exchange of trivial information. Neither heard very well, and together they were too intent on each other to suspect that they were the topic of conversation in the next room. Look at them, Di smiled. It’s as if they didn’t need another thing in the world.

Anne would have liked to share her cousin’s sympathy and generosity, but it wasn’t easy. She found little to pity in strength, and old Milly, though physically feeble, was capable by sheer force of will to have things pretty much her own way. Anne’s mother shared the family trait of passive aggression and determination. When Anne studied her mother she felt certain that the American wilderness had not been subdued by courageous men, but by their indomitable, sturdy wives—tamed by an attitude, a certain slant of the jaw, expressed only in the female, a quality she herself sadly lacked.

Di arranged the sliced ham on a large platter garnished about the edges with generous sprigs of fresh parsley. They’re lucky when you think about it, she said. Everybody should have at least one other person in the world who is all her own. Someone she doesn’t have to share.

Now it seemed to Anne that the same old thing was between them again, the way it often seemed to be, though Anne was never quite sure it was real. Just when she began to feel an almost painful intimacy with her cousin, she would become aware of its presence, as if each was able to read the other’s thoughts and unwilling to indulge intimacy too far. I wish you’d let me do something. To help.

Di looked around the kitchen as if for a task and, though there must have been many, came up empty. Why don’t you go say hi to Dan. He heard the car pull up, and he’ll think you’re ignoring him.

Do you really suppose men suffer such insecurities?

Di smiled sadly, and Anne felt the same twinge of intimacy again. They claim to.

I thought maybe it was just us.

3

Dan Wood was on the far side of the pool skimming leaves when he heard the sliding patio door and looked up. It did not look to Anne like he was making much progress. The wind was up and the brittle autumn leaves seemed attracted to the placid surface of the water. Even with the long-handled skimmer, the middle of the pool was well beyond Dan’s reach from the wheelchair, and the multicolored leaves lay there several layers thick, like a bright counterpane on a rippling waterbed. Judging from the look on your face, Dan said, smiling, you’re about to tell me that I’m losing this particular battle with nature.

Why do you bother?

The goddamn filter will croak, he said. It was a matter of intimacy between them that Dan swore. Diana did not appreciate profanity, and such language confirmed for old Milly the many doubts about her son-in-law that she had freely voiced during the last twenty-or-so years, the majority of them under his roof. Dan’s oaths were always quiet and reverent, though, and he never swore when he was genuinely angry, at which times he became peculiarly restrained.

He offered no objection when Anne relieved him of the skimmer and began working on the carpet in the center of the pool, which she herself was barely able to reach by leaning. For a while he would be content to watch her work. If I had my way, I’d just fill the bastard with cement and be done with it. Who needs the aggravation?

Di never uses the pool?

Occasionally, he said, as if this concession did not exactly invalidate his point. I should’ve drained it in September. I must’ve been thinking about Indian summer. Wheeling over to do the deep end, he extracted a plastic lawn bag from a box sitting on the diving board. The two of them going at it in there?

Nose to nose.

They’ll be good for the afternoon. How’s Mather?

Anxious to be released.

Legend has it you acted heroically.

Anne banged some clinging leaves off the skimmer and onto the deck. Talk to my mother if you’d like a balancing view.

She had come home from work and found her father half dead. Though it was the second week in October, it was so hot the tar glistened on the roads the way it did in July and August. Mather Grouse had collapsed over his chair, the one he leaned forward onto when he needed to catch his breath, and then slumped to the floor where he lay precariously balanced against the wall, one leg beneath him, the other straight out as if in a cast. He was shirtless in the heat, the skin along his shoulders pale and translucent. When Anne came in, he was staring at nothing in particular, his eyes wide with fear, an expression his daughter had never seen in them before and that made him look like someone she didn’t know. His inhaler lay a few inches from where his hand twitched, and he pulled at the air in short, quick gasps, the oxygen stopping far short of his straining lungs. He might as well have been under water.

Mrs. Grouse had been there in the living room, too, standing stiff with fright, several feet from where her husband lay. When Anne came in, she merely nodded toward Mather Grouse. The only thing that needed saying she said several times. "The ambulance is on its way. Everything’s going to be just fine … just fine. The ambulance.…"

Kneeling beside her father, Anne tried to get his attention. Mather Grouse’s eyes refused to focus behind their fluttering lids, and his chest leapt under the force of