Mohawk

cigarette smoke, which somehow knifed through the phlegm and arrived at the very center of his body. At times he thought it would be the most exquisite pleasure in the world to smoke an entire pack of Camels, one right after the other, for it was only when he smoked that he had the sensation of truly breathing. Intellectually he knew it was cruel deception—that each Camel reduced the number of breaths allotted him—but there was no denying the experience. Even the pure oxygen he received at the hospital didn’t penetrate the way Camels did, and he often smiled at the notion that what he needed was not to be hooked up to an oxygen tank but to an endless Camel.
    Mather Grouse became aware that he was not alone precisely when he inhaled his last drag on the cigarette. A dark-complexioned man roughly his own age stood idly by the bandshell. Mather became aware of him just as it occurred to him that the afternoon had become bitter cold and that the park bench was acting as a conduit for the cold earth at his feet. There was no way to tell how long the man had been standing there, but he had the impression it wasn’t a short while, because he’d caught no movement in his peripheral vision. Mather Grouse knew who the man would be even before he recognized him.
    Rory Gaffney nodded at him and limped over—like his brother a large, soft man, but the way he moved, almost in slow motion, made him seem more menacing. No child ever taunted him the way kids on their bikes had their favorite police officer. Rory Gaffney’s hair was tousled and his chin and cheeks perpetually gray, no matter how recently the straight razor had glidedover them, his generally scruffy appearance in contrast to the lush, milk-white, leather coat he wore. Mather Grouse, who had worked with leather all his life, had never seen a more beautiful skin. It was the kind you paid your employer for the privilege to cut. Rory Gaffney stopped at the row of benches where Mather Grouse sat and sidled down the row.
    “Mr. Grouse,” said Rory Gaffney, reaching into his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “How are you, sir?” The last word sounded anything but congenial.
    “As well as I deserve,” Mather Grouse said without turning. They might have been the only two men in a church, the low gray sky its ceiling, the bandshell its altar.
    “Deserve!” said Rory Gaffney enthusiastically. “Deserve, yes. Well, thank the good God above we’re none of us worse off than we deserve!” He jerked the pack of cigarettes, so the ones near the opening popped up part way. He lifted one clear of the pack before offering it to Mather Grouse. When he was refused, Rory Gaffney rather pointedly allowed the offer to stand by not withdrawing the pack, as if there should be no mistake.
    “You don’t see skins like this any more,” Gaffney observed, extending one arm so that Mather Grouse could inspect the leather close up. To a passerby it would’ve looked like he was offering the back of his hand to be kissed. But there was no passerby. The park was still.
    Mather Grouse admired the leather but declined to touch, even when it remained before him, as with the cigarettes. “The good stuff is a thing of the past,” he said, wishing the arm away.
    It went, finally. “Mostly,” Rory Gaffney agreedpleasantly. He lit a match on his thumbnail and the tip of his cigarette glowed red, the burning tobacco inching toward the man’s parted lips. “You never come by the shop any more.”
    “Never,” Mather Grouse admitted.
    “A clean break from the past.”
    “Yes.”
    “I understand,” Rory Gaffney said. He smoked cross-kneed, exhaling through his weedy nostrils. “It isn’t like the old days. Things change.”
    “Not most things.”
    “No. But some things. You and I, we’re old men, and that’s change.”
    Mather Grouse smiled. He still had not looked at his companion. “The world will do fine without us.”
    “Ah, but how will we do?”
    “As we deserve, I suppose.”
    Suddenly Gaffney snorted and coughed, the cigarette bobbing between his lips. But he left it where it was, though he gripped the park bench with both hands. “Deserve,” he said. “It’s always deserve with you, Mather. You always come back to it. You’re going to tell me you’re not afraid to die?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Because you have a reputation for telling the truth.”
    Mather Grouse looked out into the leaves.
    “Me? I hate the thought of dying,” the other man observed.