Mohawk

Harry broke off. In the dark Harry couldn’t see the patches of baldnessor the gauntness, and to him Wild Bill, all huddled up against the wall, looked a little like a teenager. And that, finally, was Harry’s clue. He had never considered the possibility before, and it was staggering. He sat down next to his friend, putting a hand on a bony knee. “Ahn,” Harry repeated softly this time. “Tell me, Billy, are you in love?”

22
    Dallas lost Harry’s fifty right away. But his timing was good because Benny D’Angelo, who owned the Pontiac dealership where Dallas worked, wandered in immediately afterward. So instead of having to drop out, Dallas borrowed another fifty from the boss and settled back comfortably, convinced that his luck had changed, at least in some respects. Sober, Benny D. was a hard-headed businessman with fish hooks in his pockets; but tanked he became one of the boys. As often as not, he was one of the boys. He and Dallas had been friends since high school, and before Benny D.’s old man kicked off he had worked construction with Dallas in Albany as well as points as far flung as Poughkeepsie and Binghamton. The old man didn’t have a good thing to say about his wayward son, and everybody was surprised when he left Benny D. the dealership after swearing for years that he’d torch it first. No one was more surprised than Benny D., and his father’s gesture made a fatalist of him. “Look at us,” he was fond of observing to Dallas. “Three years ago I had shit. Now I got all I can do to piss it away. Three years ago you had shit and you still got shit. Who can figure it?”
    Dallas had to admit he couldn’t. Nor could he get a real good grip on the poker game either. He continuedto lose, but whenever he got up to leave, Benny D. shoved money at him across the green felt. For a while Dallas kept a strict accounting of what he owed, but after the first two hundred he figured what the fuck. Benny D. was winning anyway, almost as fast as Dallas was losing, so nobody was getting hurt. Benny had brought along two bottles of good scotch that had circled the table, stopping meaningfully only before Benny D. and Dallas. As the evening wore on, the alcohol had a melancholy effect on Dallas, who began to talk about his brother.
    “Who cares?” one of the other players finally said. “He’s dead and buried. Play poker.”
    “Not fair,” Dallas said.
    “Right,” Bennie D. agreed. He’d been at the scotch since midafternoon and saw the whole enchilada with startling clarity. “Not fair,” he said. “Fate.” Then he passed out, his chin on his chest, still gripping fiercely what turned out to be the winning hand.
    “Three o’clock,” said one of the other men, thoroughly disgusted. “Seven hours we been at this and I’m dead even.”
    Thereupon there was a general accounting, which revealed that everyone at the table was more or less even except for Benny D., whose considerable winnings had merely subsidized Dallas. To continue seemed pointless, and the game broke up. Benny D. was left where he sat, his broad forehead now resting comfortably on the table.
    At three in the morning Main Street was so quiet that Dallas could hear the traffic light change from red to green a block away. There was nothing sadder and lonelier in the world, he decided, especially when you were all alone when it happened. What had he doneto deserve such an experience? He remembered Anne and the fact that he hadn’t even called to say he wasn’t coming. Maybe that was it. He should’ve called, but it was too late now and besides, the traffic light had already paid him back. He never had been welcome at the Grouse home, not really. You could tell when you were really welcome, and the only place he’d ever felt it was at his brother’s. His innocent brother, who never got drunk, never played poker, never catted around, never in his life caught a dose. Dead. And now Dallas had no place in the world where he was ever really welcome.
    At the Four Corners Dallas headed north toward the cemetery, feeling sorry for the brother buried there and even sorrier for himself. By rights he should be the one in the ground, if only because nobody would miss him. Certainly not his ex-wife and probably not his son, who never said anything at all. Even the fast friendships of his youth had slipped away. If he ever saw Dan Wood, it was by accident. After he and Diana were married, he made all that money and moved into the