Mohawk

the onlookers at the rear, who cheer enthusiastically. Somebody says it’s a shame the whole place doesn’t burn down; it was a piece of shit from the beginning, and the wiring contractor in particular belongs in jail. “Bullshit,” another man shouts. “Somebody set it. They got the bastards over there in the cop car.” This makes sense even to those who haven’t even seen the car, and the arson rumor itself lights up the crowd. “People coulda been killed,” calls an angry man with an open cut on his forehead. “They’ll get off,” says the woman riding his shoulders. “Some lawyer-sharpie will get ’em off.”
    Since there’s no one present to stop them, the barricades are again moved forward. The police car, which had been parked well inside, is now outside the ropesand swarmed. The young policeman, returning down the drive, mistakenly concludes that the cruiser has vanished, and hurries back to report its theft. When he fails to locate his partner, he realizes his error. The car wasn’t stolen. His partner’s just moved it, and perhaps has taken the prisoners downtown, which is what he had wanted to do in the beginning.
    “Send her down, David!” yells the fire chief, looking up at the sky. Rain clouds have rolled in, and the sliver of moon is gone.
    Several boys clamber atop the police car for a better view, and the still swelling crowd packs tightly around it. The car begins to rock, much to the delight of the boys on top. “Who is it?” yells the man with the bleeding forehead, his nose flattened against the rear passenger-side window. “Tell … us … your … names!” Somebody pulls up a brick and hands it to him, but he balks. Luckily, the man standing next to him, already the veteran of one fight tonight, has a heavily bandaged hand. “Here,” says the man with the bleeding forehead, handing him the brick. As it turns out, the bandaged hand that qualifies this one to break the glass disqualifies him from doing a good job of it. His grip on the brick is weak, and when it strikes the car window, the brick flips into the air, skitters across the roof of the car and disappears over the other side. No one over there can be made to understand the problem. A jovial group, they’re thoroughly content to rock the cruiser. And within five minutes, David sends her down. Everyone knows this signals the end of the party, and only the firefighters are happy about it. In a matter of minutes the streets adjacent to the hospital are jammed with horn-blaring cars.
    ·   ·   ·
    When there is excitement somewhere in a small town, much can happen elsewhere without attracting notice: Such is the immutable law of diversion. Only when the diversion is recognized for what it is are the more significant details—entirely overlooked at the time—recalled, and then only reluctantly, out of embarrassment. The morning after the fire at the Mohawk Medical Services Center, many remember seeing a dark figure struggling with what they had concluded was a drunken companion in his arms. But everyone had been hurrying toward the bright horizon in the southwest.
    The following morning, when that same horizon began to brighten truly, a milk truck labors up Steele Avenue hill, known a few years before as Hospital Lane. The nickname didn’t long outlive the old Nathan Littler. Now the hilltop is a seldom used parking lot, well paved but inconvenient to the Main Street businesses whose rooftops it overlooks. The driver of the milk truck is a man of local distinction. Nearly twenty years earlier, he was the driver whose truck killed Homer Wells, once his slide down the entire icy length of Hospital Hill was complete. Since that morning, the driver of the milk truck has given considerable thought to the notion of fate, and this morning, like most others, finds him with much on his mind. In fact, this morning’s run is to be his last. The Bronson Dairy is calling it quits, the victim of supermarkets, convenience stores and cardboard cartons.
    At the top of Steele Avenue, the truck shakes to a stop. In the center of the parking lot is a mound. The more the driver of the truck stares at it in the gray half-light of early morning, the more puzzled he becomes.For some things, it’s too small, and for others too large. Finally, the driver gets out and walks over to where Wild Bill Gaffney kneels, dead and cold, his arms locked in rigor mortis around his father, whose expression of mortification is later