Mohawk

Officer Gaffney said. “Don’t touch my brother.
My
brother.”
    Randall was quick about it.
    “This is wrong,” said Officer Gaffney. “All of it. I know wrong when I see it, and this was all wrong from the beginning. I tried to tell him. All those years and all of it wrong. Not just him. The two of us. We never did nothing our whole lives that wasn’t wrong.” He raised the revolver and aimed it at Randall. “This here will be wrong, too.”
    As the policeman spoke, Randall became aware, somewhere on the periphery of his conscious thought, that a door on the van had opened and closed again. Gaffney had sighted Randall’s middle along the gun barrel, then looked up, as if assailed by a sudden doubt. His sad expression was suddenly transformed into something more like fear, and the gun wavered. If he pulls the trigger now, Randall thought, astonished at his own objectivity, he’ll miss me.
    “I warned you. Keep him away from me. Tell him to shut up!”
    Wild Bill had stepped in front of the headlights and become an approaching silhouette.
    “Make him!” Officer Gaffney screamed.
    “Stop,” Randall shouted, but Wild Bill didn’t appear to hear or notice either of them. In the glare of headlights he stalked toward them on fire. It occurred to Randall that he could step between the gun and the man it was now fixed on, but in the time he took to decide not to the gun roared twice, then clicked several more times. As Randall drove forward, the revolver sighted him again, and he distinctly heard a click before burying his shoulder in the policeman’s soft belly. Both of them went down. As Randall got to one knee, he caught a glimpse of Wild Bill, still in silhouette, bending over his father. Then the shots had missed, Randall thought, before Officer Gaffney’s revolver, swung like a club, found his right temple.

56
    Cool. The sensation was enough to fix on. Lovely, like diving into a flooded quarry on a hot day. Maybe, Randall thought, I am underwater. If so, he made a mental note not to stay down too long or he’d … what? Something was bound to happen if he stayed down too long, but he couldn’t think.… The cool moved to the back of his neck. Drown, that was it. If he stayed down too long he’d drown. He kicked toward the surface.
    “Sit still,” the girl’s voice spoke to him from somewhere.
    “Save me,” he tried to say, but only gurgled.
    “Don’t,” she said, closer now.
    He opened his eyes, then shut them against the bright lights. “Off,” he croaked, and the girl went away. Suddenly it was dark and he opened his eyes again. He wasn’t underwater. The trailer was there and, far away among the trees, the yellow window of the Gaffney house. Something was missing, he reminded himself, something important. Rory Gaffney. Rory Gaffney was missing. No body in front of the door. One was slumped and twisted up against a tree, though. Randall couldn’t see the face, which was turned away. He didn’t have to. Somewhere, a siren whined.
    When Randall struggled onto all fours, the girl atfirst tried to prevent him from standing, then helped. To get him on his feet took a long time, and he couldn’t have remained upright without her. “You shouldn’t,” she said. “Your head … they’ll be here in a minute.” It now seemed to Randall that there were several sirens, some close, some miles away, from all different directions. He saw that the damp rag she’d been using to bathe his head was bloody. So was the policeman slumped against the tree. So was the door of the trailer and the cinder block. Randall checked again to make sure that Rory Gaffney had not reappeared. “Bill …” he started.
    The revolver lay on the ground a few feet from the policeman. So, Randall thought, he hadn’t dreamed the dead man. “Help me,” he said, not knowing what he meant, and wanting to cry because he didn’t.
    One of the many sirens had now drawn close, and bouncing headlight beams reflected halfway up the trees from the street below. When the cruiser pulled up next to the van, Randall and the girl were again blinded, and he briefly lost consciousness. He came to, still on his feet, a moment later. One young policeman was pointing a gun at Randall, and the other, who couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Randall, stood over the dead man, his arms hanging limply at his sides. “His face,” he said to his partner. “Look at the look on his face.”
    “Call it in,” said