Mohawk

street, and from that distanceRandall couldn’t be sure it was the police car’s. When he turned at the intersection, Randall tried to make out the car, but it was still too far back. He did, however, get a glimpse of Rory Gaffney’s pale face up against the window of the VW. He filled the small car so full that a white, fleshy arm spilled out the open driver’s side window.
    The VW stayed tight behind the van as far as the highway, where both vehicles stopped for the light. It was here, an hour earlier, that the policeman had pulled up behind the VW. Randall watched the sideview, but there were no lights behind him. On green the van turned right, the VW left toward town. Randall drove well below the limit and, when the bug’s tail-lights were red diamond points, pulled off onto the shoulder to wait. Back at the intersection, the police car slowed for the red light, then shot onto the highway in the same direction as the VW. Randall counted ten, then made a U-turn. He let several cars pass him for fear that a red light at the next intersection might stack up the VW, police car and van. When he got there, however, neither the bug nor the cruiser was in sight.
    At the entrance to Myrtle Park, Randall turned the van up the steep grade. The high beams shot off into woods at each bend in the road, and twice they lit up bright animal eyes that seemed suspended in the air. At the summit of the park, Randall left the blacktop and steered carefully down a dirt path toward a clearing that overlooked Mohawk. The low ceiling of clouds seemed very close overhead and the air was thick with electricity.
    Turning off the ignition, Randall rolled down the passenger window for some air. He took off the workgloves he’d used to load the van, but was careful not to touch anything. The only prints on the van would be Rory Gaffney’s. From where he sat, it was possible to see the lightning gather around the town from all directions. Branches raked frantically at the sides of the van and the gusting wind stirred debris underneath. The concentration of lights below meant Main Street, and with that as a fulcrum Randall could gauge pretty accurately where his grandfather’s house was. One of the thousands of lights below would be his mother’s bedroom window. She had never told him she was terrified of electrical storms, it was just one of the things he knew—just like he’d known for many years that she was in love with a man in a wheelchair, her cousin’s husband. Things like that they’d never speak of. Not long ago he had entertained the possibility of asking her about Mather Grouse. Working as one, they might fit together all the pieces: what power Rory Gaffney had wielded over his grandfather, how they’d become such enemies, how Wild Bill figured in the scheme of things. Rory Gaffney had suggested he ask her about “his poor boy,” and perhaps for that reason he hadn’t, certain that Gaffney wouldn’t have offered if she knew anything. He couldn’t imagine how he would broach the whole subject with her. Your father, my grandfather … is what I remember true? Did he really stand more erect than other men? Did he mean what he said, or just say it?
    “I would report him to the umpire,” he remembered Mather Grouse telling Price, who had smiled indulgently. Even as a boy, Randall knew his grandfather’s solution was naive, that for such a philosophy to work you’d need an umpire for every player, and the umpireswould have to be different in kind than the men they stood in judgment of. But he admired his grandfather’s way, the purity, order and generosity of it. But in the end, he reckoned that Mather Grouse had no more faith in umpires than Price. While Randall believed little of what Rory Gaffney told him, there was no doubt that Mather Grouse had known perhaps all there was to know about his tormentor, yet had done nothing. Randall hated to think the explanation was simple fear. More likely, Mather Grouse had realized the necessity of living in the world as you found it. He remembered his grandfather’s advice about Billy Gaffney, how as a boy he had been disappointed in his grandfather’s too-easy conclusion that nothing could be done for the unfortunate. How strange that had sounded, coming from a man who claimed to rely on umpires.
    Suddenly it was daylight and thunder rocked the van before darkness could settle in again. Randall consulted his watch. He shouldn’t have to wait long. The old man