Mohawk

once spoken out of turn, but she can’t restrain herself. “Watch your language,” she says. “You don’t own the world. You—you’re a blight on it!”
    The three stand transfixed as she brushes by, stymied by her smallness and insignificance.
    “Little troll,” the larger woman says when Diana is out of earshot, and all three laugh.

46
    With less than two weeks until retirement, Officer Gaffney wondered for the first time if he’d be able to make it. Lately he’d been troubled by dreams. In the most recent, he was caught up in a shoot-out at the Mohawk Bank and Trust. He was standing in the middle of the Four Corners intersection directing traffic when the robbers rushed out of the bank. The traffic light was showing green in all directions and, when he drew his revolver, cars began speeding by, narrowly missing him and each other. The robbers took cover behind the bank’s marble lions and opened up. They had no trouble hitting Officer Gaffney, but each time he discharged his revolver, one of the passing cars intercepted the bullet, which would then ping around inside the vehicle like a penny in a tin can. The best he could do was blast the snout off one of the marble lions, which sported a shaggy mane a little like his brother’s. Being shot didn’t hurt much, but he was afraid to die and ashamed when the robbers got away. He woke up crying and was afraid to go to work, but did. The fear remained with him all day, even during his coffee break at Harry’s. He bought the bottle of whiskey on his way home.
    The policeman lived in a small upstairs flat with a view across the street of the Presbyterian church, whose belfry was always illuminated at night, the light streaming through Officer Gaffney’s window like a searching beam, keeping him awake. He could’ve drawn the shade, but he never did.
    Once the rye was half gone, sometime after midnight, Officer Gaffney went to the closet where he hung his holster on a hook and returned to the living room with his revolver. Though it was the evening of the third of July, firecrackers had been going off in the neighborhood for the last couple of evenings. A cherry bomb exploded somewhere down the street, and he heard some kids laughing. At him, probably. They all seemed to know where he lived. He went to the window and stared out into the dark night and the lighted belfry across the street, remembering his dream of the night before. The revolver was heavy and warm in his hand. He hadn’t cleaned the weapon in a while, so he let the bullets clatter onto the coffee table. Then he cleaned, oiled and reloaded, pleased with the sound each bullet made when it slid home in the chamber. Bullet fit gun. Gun fit hand. Hand? What did hand fit? Man? And what did man fit? Man had to fit something. Family? It wasn’t like he
had
to live all by himself across from the yellow light. His brother’s house was too big for one man, and when the policeman retired he might suggest to his brother.…
    Out in the street there was another loud bang. The rye slid down Officer Gaffney’s throat painlessly. He switched off the light before going to the window and raising the screen. He fired four rounds in all, four sharp explosions, the fourth followed by shattering glass and darkness. “Good,” he said. It was late, and thehouses up and down the street remained dark. His own landlady below was old and deaf. He drained all but a swallow from the bottle of rye. I have just committed a crime, he thought to himself. Assaulted a belfry. He wasn’t ashamed, and what’s more he felt safe from the law. His brother had the right idea, doing as he pleased. Simple. Never got confused. Never found himself in the middle of the intersection beneath a jammed traffic light with cars whizzing by.
    Right now his brother was probably in the girl’s trailer, unless the Younger boy had beat him to it. Officer Gaffney realized that he loved his brother and was proud of his exploits. Except for the once, he couldn’t remember Rory ever doing anything he himself didn’t approve of. He didn’t exactly like the idea of Rory and the girl, but she hardly looked at the policeman anyway. He wasn’t the type girls went for, though he’d never known exactly why. Other men like himself had succeeded, at least enough in marrying homely girls. When he was younger, he figured that being a cop would itself guarantee him some sort of girl, but the uniform hadn’t done the trick, and now he was too old to