Mohawk

that morning that life was pretty much the way he thought it should be. His car was waxed and shiny, and the skywas robin’s-egg blue. The night before he had won nearly two hundred dollars at craps, and on the way to the track he gave Anne a complete rundown. She only half listened to his enthusiastic rendering, but she, too, was excited. Today was opening day at the flats, which meant that the horse people from up and down the east coast would be present. She’d heard reports of the pageantry, and was proud that Dallas wanted to show it to her at firsthand.
    They arrived over an hour before the gates opened and, though Dallas was all for going directly to the track, when they drove past a grand old hotel with lush flowers all the way up the sloping terrace and people dressed all in white, breakfasting on the long, canopied porch, Anne made him stop. She immediately wished she hadn’t. The parking lot was full of large new automobiles calculated to diminish Dallas’s pride in his reconstructed Chevy. On the hotel porch the whiteness of the tablecloths and the new paint and the expensive summer clothing threw off a glare, and Anne could see that Dallas was none too comfortable even before the neatly jacketed waiter received them cooly.
    Dallas, whose social graces did not include reticence, remarked audibly that in his opinion there were nicer spots right in Mohawk, and lots of them. The thin film of automobile grease that no amount of washing ever completely removed was suddenly very apparent to Anne, who wondered if all the summer people had noted this as well. In conversation over the linen, he waved his silver fork like a baton to music only he could hear.
    At the track Dallas insisted on the clubhouse where the people around them were interchangeable with the ones on the hotel porch. The women wore jewels andtheir escorts seldom spoke above a whisper. Dallas, full of his expertise as a handicapper, freely offered tips to men who returned his friendly overtures with bored smiles and unfeigned indifference to his advice, which, had anyone taken it, would have proved disastrous. He lost everything he had won the previous night and then some. After which he announced that it was clear the jockeys had fixed all the races for the day, and the rest of the suckers could stick around to get fleeced if they wanted to, but he’d had enough.
    On the drive home Dallas was morose, his recent exuberance and self-confidence dashed. He did throw his arm around Anne’s shoulder when it was offered, but she could tell that the day’s events weighed heavily on him. The car wasn’t running as well as it should, it seemed to him, not even as well as it had that morning. He’d have to tear it apart tomorrow. When they drove past a sign that announced Mohawk County, Dallas was unable to suppress a sigh of relief. Even Anne, to whom Main Street now looked for the first time unrelentingly shabby, was happy, for both their sakes, to be home.

12
    Sunday mornings, when his wife goes to church, Mather Grouse often sleeps sitting up in his favorite armchair. The house is quiet then, and he has faith that he will not die on a Sunday. Sometimes he will turn on a television evangelist. It doesn’t matter greatly which one because Mather Grouse never turns up the volume far enough to hear distinctly what is being said. What he likes is the rhythm and, if it’s the right sort of sermon, he will not only sleep but actually breathe with the cadence. Often his “religious slumbers,” as he terms them, are the most peaceful time of his week.
    Mather Grouse does not sleep much at night any more. Breathing is difficult when he lies down, and he often has nightmares in which his lungs don’t take in sufficient oxygen. Each night he spends many hours perched on the edge of the bed, thinking about smoking cigarettes and how nice it would be to be able to recline and breathe at the same time.
    But come Sunday morning his old chair is perfect. Its arms have been worn threadbare by his elbows, but he will not let Mrs. Grouse put a slipcover over it unless company is coming, which—when he has anything to say about it—is seldom. He believes that sick old men should be left alone, except when they don’t want tobe, and he has managed over the years to be left alone. This morning Mrs. Grouse and Anne and Randall will visit the Woods after church. He has been left a plate of something in the refrigerator for when he is hungry, but he cannot