Mohawk

“There’s no place better than where we are right now. I have some good years left, and I don’t see why anything should spoil them.”
    This sounded to Mather Grouse like a question. “You’ve always been lucky.”
    “Right!” the other man agreed. “Luckier than I deserve, you may think, but that’s life. I’d bet my luck will hold.”
    “Yes,” Mather Grouse said, though without pleasure.
    The other man seemed satisfied. “You should visit the shop. I still work a little, teach the young ones.”
    Mather Grouse shifted on the park bench. For many minutes he had become aware of a tightening in his chest that had now become a fist, and he was suddenly short of breath. It did not surprise him, though he had felt so well and strong a half hour before. The spells came and went without warning.
    “Not that they want to learn the important things, these young ones,” Rory Gaffney said. “For them there’s nothing in life except today. Me, I live for the future.”
    That remark seemed so incomprehensible to Mather Grouse that for the first time he looked squarely at the other man, forgetting for a moment the problem of whether or not he could draw another breath. “And what do you see in your future?” he said.
    “Everything,” Gaffney answered.
    “Everything?”
    “Yes, everything. Do you understand?”
    “No.”
    “Then let me explain. The other afternoon I picked up a hitchhiker. She was maybe fifteen. She pulled her shirt right up to show me.” Rory Gaffney pulled an imaginary shirt up to his neck to demonstrate, holding his elbows straight out, and he left them there when Mather Grouse looked away. “Cutest little things you ever saw. You don’t believe me?”
    Mather Grouse bent forward to breathe.
    “God’s own truth.”
    They sat a while in silence. Gaffney showed no apparent interest in finishing his story, but presently said, “Most men our age live in the past. I say forget the past. Make like it never happened. Regret in the ground.”
    Mather Grouse said nothing.
    “My wife left me, you remember. I regretted for a while. Then I said the hell with it. Regret in the ground.”
    Rory Gaffney ran his hands through his hair, then stretched. “You’re smart to stay away from the shops,” he said, apparently forgetting his previous advice on the subject. “You aren’t a man to dwell on what’s done and can’t be undone.”
    “No.”
    “And I’ll bet the good Mrs. Grouse is the same.”
    “She knows nothing of the past.”
    A gust of wind came up, standing Gaffney’s thinning hair on end and revealing a larger extent of baldness than perhaps he would have wished. He smoothed the hair back into place, not bothering to transfer the cigarette to the other hand. A glowing red spark detached itself and settled onto the man’s scalp, but if Gaffney felt it, he showed no sign. Instead, he rose and buttoned the milk-white coat. “You should wear something heavier, Mather. The long winter’s coming. You should comfort yourself. A fine coat like this one would look well on you. You deserve one.”
    He turned up his collar and looked around the empty park. Mather Grouse did not get up. He wasn’t sure he could; the fist in his chest hard and unrelenting.
    Gaffney lit another cigarette. “Your daughter and grandson live with you?”
    “Yes … upstairs.”
    “I have a granddaughter. Did I ever tell you?”
    “… no …”
    Rory Gaffney nodded. “Yes. Twelve years old. Take care of yourself, Mather. You don’t look well.”
    Then he was gone, and Mather Grouse was left alone on the park bench in the gray afternoon. Someone had raked brown, brittle leaves from the flowerbeds into a pile near a large drum, but most of the leaves had scattered and drifted. Mather Grouse watched some leaves dance in a funnel that swirled vigorously, then abruptly died. Home was a very long way away, and he could not imagine where he would find the strength. He thought of his father and wondered for the first time if the man had drunk himself to death on purpose.
    On the ground at his feet lay the butt of Rory Gaffney’s first cigarette, flat and broken and covered with dry earth. He bent to pick it up and felt himself slump and the gray sky came into view. He watched the swiftly moving clouds until his grandson Randall appeared, his face ringed with the faraway branches of dead trees. When the boy handed him the inhaler he had left behind, Mather Grouse took it reluctantly, for his body had