Mohawk

wouldn’t expect him back until morning and was probably in bed already. Randall would, however, wait for the storm to pass. If it awakened the old man and he looked outside to see the van in the drive, it was all over. The other sticky point was the phone tip; Randall would have to drop a dime somewhere. If the girl was asleep when he got back, he’d call from the trailer. Otherwise, a public phone. But she probably would be asleep, and her phone was in the front room. This wasn’t a great plan, maybe, but it was simple.
    When the rain broke, it hit the truck like a shower of stones, streaming down the windshield in a thick sheet. Randall tried the wipers, but they were useless.The town had disappeared below, swallowed whole by the storm.
    He couldn’t tell just how long he’d slept, though it couldn’t have been much more than half an hour. The rain was still coming down, but not so angrily, and the windshield wipers were suddenly adequate to the task. But Mohawk still was nowhere in sight.

52
    The rain had been falling for quite some time before Anne heard it. As far as she was concerned, it could rain for forty days and forty nights. The streets could become rivers, and the rivers could rise and rise. The creaking of her father’s house in the gusting rain gave the impression that it might already be floating away, arklike. To hell with two-by-two this time, Anne thought. This time He means business.
    The flashlight lay where she dropped it, and eventually she picked it up. To remain aloft in the raging storm was foolish and self-indulgent. She got to her feet and ran her fingers through her hair, which since she had rested her head against the sloping roof was wet. Shining the flashlight along the beams, she discovered that a large portion of the ceiling was glistening. The water ran in tiny rivulets, a pool was forming beneath the metal fusebox.
    Once downstairs, Anne dried her hair with a towel and watched the wallpaper grow dark high up in the corners near the already-wrinkled ceiling. This, then, was how the quarrel with her mother would end. Even Mrs. Grouse, so adept at sidestepping reality, would be forced to come to terms. Before long her own wallpaper would darken and wrinkle, and in time she’dunderstand. In time. That was the key. To rationalize reality took time.
    In the end, Mrs. Grouse would construct a myth. In the dead of winter, during the Great Ice Storm, a limb from the Grand Oak had fallen, damaging the perfect roof. An act of God even Mather Grouse could not have provided against. The best thing for Anne to do would be to sow the seeds of this myth tonight, then stand aside and watch for signs of growth from a safe distance. So far as she knew, her mother had the money. She always had saved nickels and dimes, and now, living on her husband’s slender pension, she still was probably saving them. Well, the rainy day had come.
    Back in bed, Anne reset her clock. The yellow patch of light had reappeared on the house next door, which meant that her mother had not yet fallen back asleep. Morning would be soon enough to broach the subject of the roof, bring her mother upstairs and quietly summarize the evidence, the facts of the matter. It was still raining, but the thunder rumbled a good way off.
    She didn’t hate him, of course. But neither could she adore him any longer. She realized now that in her own way she too had canonized Mather Grouse. She and her mother simply worshiped different images. To Mrs. Grouse he had been provider, man of duty, man of honor, man of quiet reverence. To Anne he was the explorer, man of letters, inventor and more, all in the disguise of the humble leather-cutter. In his gentle ridicule of the clergyman’s Sunday sermons she had seen a real blasphemer, undaunted by the traditional Christian bribes for obeisance. When times were tough and he was without work, she had always imagined that her father was being punished for something courageous—trying to organize his fellow workers, perhaps,or refusing to compromise the standards of his craft. In the end, Mather Grouse had been neither her mother’s meek, dutiful conformist nor her own Prometheus. He was just a man who had put on the best roof he could afford, and now it needed replacing. He had been afraid, and she had seen the fear in his eyes the afternoon she breathed life back into him. Probably she had always been aware of his fear, rage, anguish and disappointment, though she hadn’t allowed him