Mohawk

arm or let him off the pavement. Somewhat reluctantly, one of the boys stepped forward to prance around in front of Wild Bill, dancing left, then right, throwing up a small fist in the general direction of his frowning face. Bill neither dodged nor ducked, and the third jab landed and he felt his lower lip swell. When the boy swung again, Wild Bill pushed him to the pavement.
    “Get him!” somebody yelled, but nobody moved after seeing their comrade dispatched with so little effort and respect. Finally the large boy got up to do the job himself. His opponent, now free, held his twisted arm like a broken wing, but didn’t run away. This was definitely the boy he knew, Wild Bill decided, the one who made him think of the girl. As he was thinking about this he was doubled-over, punched hard in the stomach. But when the boy uppercut, his fist encountered Wild Bill’s stony forehead and his knuckles cracked audibly. Bill sat down, then stood up immediately, determined not to be hit again and embarrassed to havebeen sat down. His belly hurt. When one of the other boys, finally shamed into action and heartened by seeing their adversary felled, offered to knock Wild Bill down a second time, Wild Bill caught him by the waist and flung him through the air against Harry’s metal dumpster, where the boy’s head rang against the steel. The sound took all the fight out of the rest, even the large one. They clustered around the dumpster. Each had seen his share of fights with bloody noses and chipped teeth, but they’d never seen anyone lie motionless like the boy on the ground, and the gravity of the situation struck them dumb. They forgot completely about Wild Bill, who had also forgotten completely about them and was grinning benevolently down at the boy he’d rescued. “Jesus Christ,” muttered the large boy. “Jesus H. Christ.”
    When a delivery truck turned into the alley, the gang scattered, leaving only Wild Bill and the bloodied boy and the one motionless on the ground. The driver pulled up and got out, kneeled by the inert figure, quickly glanced up, then hurried into the diner. By the time he returned with Harry, the alley was empty save for the unconscious boy. It soon filled up, though, and the ambulance that screamed the short block and a half down Hospital Hill had to wait for the crowd of spectators to clear a path.
    Wild Bill followed the boy at a discreet distance, first up Main Street as far as the fire station, then up the hill as far as Mountain. As the boy limped homeward, the man who followed—certainly sinister-looking, his hair long and scraggly, his face unshaven—felt his anxiety grow, for the boy appeared to be leading him tothe one place in Mohawk he was most forbidden to go, and the further they went, the more he feared their destination. The tightening in Wild Bill’s stomach had nothing to do with the fact that he’d just been slugged there. He’d forgotten all about the fight. Nobody had told him to, he’d just done it.
    In horror he watched the boy cross the street and climb the steps of the house. Did the boy not know that this house was forbidden, that something terrible would happen if he didn’t stay away? Wild Bill feared for the boy, because something terrible had once happened to him, though he had forgotten what it was and had been told that it would happen again if he ever remembered. Then the door to the house opened and she appeared from somewhere inside, the one he had forgotten and yet sometimes remembered, the one he’d been told was gone. She drew the boy quickly inside and the door closed again. Wild Bill waited across the street for a long time, but the door did not open again.
    It was after dark by the time he got back downtown. The Mohawk Grill was crowded as he slipped unnoticed into the back, waiting to tell Harry the news. He never got the chance, though, because as soon as Harry heard the back door creak shut, he shoved Bill into the storeroom with the big cans of tomatoes and pumpkin pie filling. One man was too excited to speak, and the other sputtered. “You’ve done it this time,” Harry said, his face bright red with fear and anger. “Nobody can fix this! Sweet Jesus, Billy, what came over you?”
    Seeing his friend so worked up only increased Wild Bill’s own sense of excitement, and he mistakenly concludedthat they were excited over the same thing. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders with such force that when the larger man tried to step back he