Mohawk

settles back on his stool. Ordinarily, Harry doesn’t want him around after his paying customers start coming in, but he knows these particular men are not squeamish. At the moment they are barely awake. After taking stools in the center of the counter, two of the red-eyed men order big breakfasts—ham steak, eggs, home fries, toast, coffee—and the other two just coffee. Harry doesn’t have to ask who won. John, the lawyer, usually wins and hangs on to his winnings until he goes to Las Vegas, usually twice a year. Then Vegas usually wins. One of the noneaters pulls out the day’s racing form. The other grabs Harry’s
Mohawk Republican
and folds out the sports page. “What was yesterday’s number?” somebody says.
    “Four-two-one,” Harry growls.
    “I haven’t had a number in three years.”
    “So what? I haven’t been laid in pretty near that long.”
    “I can get you laid if you can get me a number,” says John, who is reputed to be a ladies’ man. He’s the only one who looks relatively fresh after the long night’s work.
    “Anybody can get laid,” another agrees.
    “Some of us prefer girls.”
    A mock fight breaks out. Wild Bill watches the men, a little alarmed at the feigned hostilities. One of the men nods a hello in his direction.
    “Oughta,” Bill says.
    “Yeah,” the man says, rolling his eyes at Harry. “Oughta.”
    “Oughta,” the rest chime in. “Oughta, Harry.”
    “Lay off.” Harry wishes now that he’d let Bill, who is grinning happily at this camaraderie, clear out when he’d wanted to. He sometimes wishes Wild Bill would just go off some place and not come back. He’s a burden at best. Still, Harry doesn’t like people making fun of him.
    “How long does it take to fry a couple eggs?” the lawyer wants to know. “They oughta be done by now.”
    “Oughta,” the others say in unison.
    The man with the sports page leans back on his stool so he can see the street outside. “Stay away from my car, you fat shit.” Officer Gaffney is studying the three illegally parked cars at the curb. A recent ordinance prohibits parking on Main Street. “If I get a ticket, I’m going temporarily insane.”
    “I’ll take your case,” John tells him.
    “Even you could win it,” somebody says.
    Harry doesn’t even bother to look. He knows Officer Gaffney and also knows that no tickets will be written until he finds out who the cars belong to. Gaffney likes to drink coffee in the diner, and he leaves Harry’s customers alone.
    The door opens and he strides in, a large man, but soft-looking. Even the boys who race their bicycles down the Main Street sidewalks are unafraid. They do wheelies behind his back as he guards the traffic light at the Four Corners and are gone again before he can turn around. Only Officer Gaffney takes himself seriously. He wears his thirty-eight slung lower than regulation on his right hip. “Boys,” he nods, taking a stool at the opposite end of the lunch counter from Wild Bill.
    “Oughta,” somebody says.
    Wild Bill is clearly nervous again, fidgeting on his stool and never taking his eyes off the policeman. He is made uneasy by uniforms, even those worn by familiar people. Wild Bill hasn’t had much luck with uniforms.
    “Who owns the Merc,” Officer Gaffney asks. He pours two level teaspoons of sugar into the steaming coffee Harry puts in front of him.
    “Murphy,” says the lawyer, jabbing his eggs until they run yellow. “He’ll be down in a minute if he doesn’t kill himself.”
    “You could’ve bought him breakfast, at least,” says one of the coffee-drinkers.
    “I offered. He said he wasn’t hungry.”
    “I hope his kids aren’t either. Not this week, anyhow.”
    “This month.”
    “He isn’t the only one took a bath,” says the othercoffee-drinker, anxious that the absent Murphy not hog all the sympathy.
    “Yeah, but did you see the look on his face when he lost on that aces-over-boat?”
    Devouring the bleeding eggs, John chortles at the recollection. “Shit,” he says appreciatively.
    When Wild Bill slides off his stool like a scolded dog and slinks out the back, Harry doesn’t try to stop him. The men watch him go. The man reading the sports page has now folded the paper back to the front. “He must drink out of the Cayuga,” he says. Everybody but Harry laughs.
    “What the hell is ‘oughta’ supposed to mean?”
    “It means Howdy,” Harry says.
    “How do you know,” John asks. “You look it up in