Mohawk

discovered he couldn’t. “Ive!” Wild Bill insisted, clutching Harry, who suddenly wished he had his spatula with him. “Ive!”
    Pulling free, Harry pushed Wild Bill onto an empty crate and grabbed his chin with one paw so he could neither speak nor move. Actually, Bill didn’t want to move, but having his cheeks pinched brought tears to his eyes, and he had not finished talking. The skin along his throat was feverish. “Yes,” Harry said. “He’s alive, but just barely. You’re in big trouble and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do to help you. Can’t you get that through your big numb skull? Can’t you understand? I can’t help you!”
    Wild Bill stared dumbly at his friend, no longer struggling, but as soon as Harry’s grip relaxed, he slipped free and shook his head vigorously. “Oh … oh.…”
    Harry slapped him in the face then, hard enough to make his eyes water again. Their expression seemed to say that just about all the truly astonishing things that could happen in the world were happening within the space of a few hours, and he hadn’t any idea where it would stop. “Don’t tell me no!” Harry said savagely, grabbing his cheeks again. “Don’t tell me no, goddamn you. You just sit there until I can figure out what to do. You hear?”
    Wild Bill fought to get free, but this time Harry was ready for him and tightened his grip until his thumb and forefinger met, only the skin and stubble on Bill’s cheeks between them. Not until he nodded that he’d stay quiet did Harry let go to return to his restless customers. He studied Bill sadly for a moment beforeleaving him alone in the storeroom among the high shelves stacked all the way to the ceiling with canned applesauce and kidney beans and cling peaches, burlap bags of sprouting potatoes on the floor, the darkness too complete with the door closed to read the labels.

15
    One late August night they all headed for the lake. Everyone was on edge, partly because it had been hot and humid for a week, and because summer was nearly over. Even Dan seemed quietly out of sorts. Dallas was the worst. His car wasn’t running, and that afternoon Anne had told him she was going to do as her father wished and attend classes at Albany State in the fall. It would be a shame to waste the scholarship she had earned, she said, but Dallas refused to be comforted by the fact that she would be only an hour away. He was clever enough to guess that her leaving was indicative of something, just as he knew that things had never been less intimate between them. He was far behind his own leisurely schedule, too. A whole summer had slipped away and he still hadn’t discovered the courage to slip his hand beneath her brassiere. And here they were, practically engaged. He was cruelly ashamed of himself, and lately life had begun to seem shallow and worthless.
    At the prospect of going away, Anne herself felt an odd mixture of hopelessness and resignation. In a way she welcomed September, which would give her the opportunity to break gradually with Dallas, whose feelings she had no desire to hurt. And seeing less of Danmight be for the best too. There was always the chance that her feelings might change, though she had no confidence they would.
    “I guess it’s up to me to cheer everybody up tonight,” Di remarked when they were halfway to the lake and no one had said anything. They all seemed to know she would not be equal to the task.
    The dance was not one of the regulars at the hotel. This one was being held in the rickety old pavilion on the other side of the lake, accessible only by a network of narrow dirt roads that wound among the campsites. In the still night the accents borne on the summer air were mostly from New York City. In August the whole metropolitan area seemed to empty into the Adirondacks.
    “This is going to be full of city bitches and woodchucks,” Dallas complained. He particularly disliked the latter, unworldly and unsophisticated, who found their way down the mountain on Saturday nights.
    “At least there’s a breeze,” Di said.
    Inside the pavilion, which was festooned with orange lanterns, they discovered they could only get drinks by going next door. After seating the girls, Dallas and Dan left for the bar, and by the time they got back, two good-natured hillbillies in black cowboy hats had invited themselves to the table and were entertaining Di and Anne with loud stories and enticing them to drink out of a large tin