Mohawk

simultaneously at the same conclusion. He has seen a man die. Nothing in their lives has prepared them for this, though they have seen men die every imaginable death in the movies and on television. They stare dumbly at the window, unable to break away, unable even to look at one another. The window becomes their focus and contains them. It is one of the boys who hadn’t seen him, and therefore didn’t know where to look, who spots the man when he reappears five windows down the wing. “Hey!” the boy cries, pointing. “Hey!” they cry together, their voices absorbed by the heavy air and the now constant tremors of the hospital. When another section of roof sags, the figure is gone again, only to reappear further down the wing. Whoever it is clearly is keeping a few rooms ahead of the searching ball. From where they stand, the boys can see he is nearing the end of the wing.
    When Harry breaks through the line of wooden horseson the other side of the hospital, he is collared by Officer Gaffney, who studies him with frank astonishment, partly because he has never seen Harry any place except behind the counter of the Mohawk Grill. To the policeman his mere presence is as confusing as his wild demeanor and apparent intention of running up the walk and into the collapsing building. Grabbing Harry firmly by the shoulders, the policeman asks the question that most troubles his imagination at the moment. “Who’s watching the diner?”
    “Billy—” Harry gasps.
    Officer Gaffney nods knowingly. “We figured you had him, somehow. We figured—”
    “No!” Harry’s voice is full of exasperation. He tries to bull his way past the policeman but has left his considerable strength at the foot of Hospital Hill. Gaffney handles him easily. “In there!” Harry points.
    Officer Gaffney looks at him blankly.
    “Billy … in there—”
    The policeman looks over his shoulder at what remains of the hospital for verification and, not finding any, simply says “No.”
    “Yes!” Harry insists.
    Officer Gaffney studies the building. When what Harry has said finally sinks in, he still stands stock-still. “Well, then he’s dead. And that’s all there is to it.”
    “Stop the wrecker!” Harry calls, nearly crying now, but his frail shout is lost in the hubbub. He begins to cry in earnest, angry with his own weakness, his inability to break free of Gaffney’s grasp. He would batter him silly if he could, but the policeman is right. If Wild Bill was inside, he’s dead. He must be. Still, none of this slakes Harry’s impotent rage. “You’re a moron,Gaff!” he says, clinging to the front of his uniform,
“A God damned moron!”
    Several onlookers have been following this sideshow with interest, but suddenly they’re distracted by the shouts of people clustered on a single roof and gesticulating wildly. Everyone now cranes his neck to see what it’s all about, but the air is too thick. People all along the rooftops take up the chant, though, pointing and calling to those below; and when Officer Gaffney loosens his hold, Harry shoves past. Immediately a section of wall collapses, sucking most of what remained of the roof into the building’s open maw. As he makes his way through the rubble, other men are running, too, and one is climbing up the wrecker toward the cab. The machine’s roar is so deafening that it isn’t shut down until the operator is grabbed by the shoulder through the open window.
    Gaffney catches up to Harry about twenty yards from what once had been the hospital’s main entrance. Several others are already there, dashing toward the doorway. A few men have actually jumped down from the porch roofs across the street, and without hard hats they run skittishly among the mounds, arms above their heads as if to protect themselves from falling debris until they gain the metal canopy at the entrance, though this offers little more than symbolic protection, given the gaping rents in its sheet-metal fabric. Harry arrives near the back of the pack, but succeeds in pushing his way through to the threshhold, where he stops with the rest. All of them appear to be awaiting permission to enter. At Harry’s elbow is Officer Gaffney, a picture of frowning puzzlement.
    “That’s not Billy!” Harry says after studying thevaguely familiar boy who stands before them in the once blue-carpeted reception area, looking a little embarrassed amid a pile of mortar, brick and broken glass, utterly uninjured.