Mohawk

worry about it. He was content to watch the girl at Harry’s and, now and then, in the trailer.
    He liked it when she was alone, but now Younger had moved in. He’d cause trouble yet, always had been trouble. Just the other night Officer Gaffney had warned his brother again, but as usual Rory paid no attention. “Younger!” he almost spit the name. “Do you think I’d trouble myself over a Younger? The boy’s a Grouse. The last of ’em. I can feel his grandfather in the ground.”
    “If he’s a Grouse, the more reason to leave him alone,” Officer Gaffney said. “Besides, I can take care of him for you. Let me run him in.”
    His brother reacted to the suggestion as he might to foul air. “You,” he sneered.
    The fact that his own brother despised him seemed to Officer Gaffney the most insupportable thing of all. He lay in bed and thought about this for a long time, and then about the girl, and before long he began to sob. He didn’t know what time it was when he fell asleep.
    When he awoke, it was light. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that someone had been in the room just a moment before. Everything looked as it had the previous night, which was one of the things that made him certain. Everything was too exactly the same, as if someone had moved and then replaced each item carefully. Even the whiskey bottle had been positioned precisely on its own moist brown ring. Two flies perched on the bottle rim until he waved them away and drained the last swallow. In the living room he saw the open window, and then he was sure.
    On the way to Harry’s, he stopped at the liquor store and bought another bottle. He cracked the seal before going into the diner. The regulars were all there, and everybody looked at him when he walked in. That was all right with him. He said nothing to them, nothing to Harry or The Bulldog, or even to the girl. When Harry set the eggs in front of him, Officer Gaffney stared at them for a long time before pushing the plate away. When the door swung open, he could see Wild Bill intently stacking dishes in the Hobart and Randall Younger, wearing one of The Bulldog’s bright hair nets, cutting parsley snips and lemon wedges. When he approached the register to pay for his uneaten breakfast, everyone was still staring. “Gaff?” somebody said.
    Outside, the sun was already blazing. Officer Gaffney drove up toward Myrtle Park, but failed to negotiate the sharp turn at the entrance. A young policeman found the abandoned car in the ditch later that afternoon. Off and on all day, there were reports of loud explosions in the park. But it was Independence Day, and there were loud explosions everywhere.

47
    In mid-July, two days after Anne Grouse was replaced by a new personnel director at the store, there was a terrible electrical storm. She had reason to anticipate both events.
    No Mohawk summer she could remember had ever passed without at least one duly of the sort that had terrorized her childhood—beginning in the west, the thunder low and rolling on the perimeter of her sleep, altering her dreams to accommodate what her mind was marginally conscious of. Such storms were always windy and dry at first, rattling the screens fiercely, blowing tree branches up against them like scratching fingers. She always woke up and waited for her father to come close the windows, for when the storm broke, driving rain would soak the curtains and sills. She wanted him to stay with her until the thunder and lightning subsided, but he was always busy making his rounds of the house. After a light kiss on the forehead he was gone, leaving the room black and then, when the lightning flashed, bright. There was always one thunderclap that rocked the house to its foundations. In the dark, her hands covering her eyes, she awaited the storm’s direct hit, always preceded by the lightning’s hiss overhead, then the terrible crack that she imagined musthave originated at the center of her brain. No one had ever known, because she had never told, just how terrified she was of electrical storms.
    Dallas, who never understood anything, hadn’t understood that either, and had clownishly imitated what was going on outside their bedroom window, hissing and poking her in the ribs with his index finger. At least he did until the night she hit him in the face with her open hand, hard enough to knock him out of bed, erection and all. These same storms made Dallas horny.
    Anne wasn’t particularly surprised