Mohawk

presence they swore and smoked and said mildly obscene things to passing girls. It would probably take them a month or two to figure out how it was they missed him every day, which left only the men’s room to steer clear of. And when they finally discovered his flanking maneuver, he could still join the chess club, which met after school in the library.
    When Randall emerged into the alley behind the Mohawk Grill, he came face to face with Wild Bill,who appeared headed in the wrong direction. The alley ran along the junior high until it dead-ended at a tall chainlink fence at the base of Hospital Hill. The man had apparently been absorbed in his own thoughts, because when the gym door opened, he started visibly. His longish black hair covered his ears completely, though patches of leprous white scalp showed through where hair inexplicably refused to grow. Randall had seen Wild Bill on the street many times but had never before come face to face with him. But if he was rattled, Wild Bill was more so. He stared at Randall as if he recognized in him someone who had once played a dirty trick on him. Then Wild Bill’s expression changed and, as usual, he looked just goofy. “Oughta,” he said cheerfully.
    “How are you?” said Randall, trying not to appear nervous. His grandfather had told him that the best way to deal with dogs was to show no fear. According to Mather Grouse, dogs could smell fear in people, and Wild Bill, who had a distinctly canine appearance, might have the same ability, it seemed to Randall. There were many legends concerning Wild Bill, stories that Randall had never credited when he saw the other man slouching harmlessly along Main Street, but that, now alone with him in the alley, Randall remembered. According to some eighth graders, Wild Bill was an ax-murderer escaped from Utica. Others said he had once been a perfectly normal teenager until he encountered Myrtle Littler’s ghost one night in Myrtle Park, at which point he’d gone crazy. One girl claimed to have watched Wild Bill urinate on the street and, whenever she had listeners, she described the event horrifically. Randall would’ve almost preferred that his path be blocked by eight or ten angry Cobras than one benevolently beamingWild Bill, who seemed unable to do anything but nod and grin. When the awkward face-off became unbearable, Randall croaked “I have to go now,” whereupon Wild Bill, as if he had been waiting for precisely this intelligence, danced nimbly out of the boy’s way like some some shaggy doorman who’d nodded off waiting for instructions.
    Before Randall could complete his escape, Wild Bill had stuck one hand into his own dusty black trousers and drawn out a small package, which he then thrust into Randall’s hand. Much to Randall’s relief, the back door to the Mohawk Grill opened and Harry Saunders, its cook and proprietor, appeared with a bagful of trash for the dumpster. When he saw Randall and Wild Bill, he stopped and surveyed them critically. “You get on home, Bill,” he advised.
    That must have seemed like good advice to Wild Bill, who resumed his course up the blind alley the wrong way. Once he was out of earshot, Harry turned to Randall angrily, “Just what’s wrong with you boys, would you tell me that? None of you got nothing better to do than torment that poor man. Cheating him out of what little money he’s got, getting him to trade dimes for nickels, then giving him a bloody nose when you’re tired of his company. And all because you can’t figure how else to amuse yourself—”
    “I never—” Randall began, but Harry wasn’t in a mood to listen.
    “What ever become of decency? That’s what I’d like to know.” He still held the sackful of garbage but seemed to have forgotten it. “What ever become of decency?”
    “I don’t know,” Randall admitted.
    Harry then remembered the bag and tossed it intothe dumpster, wiping his hands on his grimy apron. “Garbage!”
    On Main Street Randall turned right to head home, then stopped to see if Wild Bill would retrace his steps when he discovered there was no outlet to the alley. When he did not, Randall went all the way back to the gym door, from which point he could see the entire alley in both directions. Wild Bill had vanished. On the other side of the chainlink fence was the sheer hillface, heavily wooded all the way up the slope to the old hospital. The only place Wild Bill might conceivably have gone was in through the