Mohawk

for another. With this important business to occupy their minds, most didn’t notice when a quietly well-dressed man in his sixties entered, squinting in the dark, smoke-filled interior, and took a recently vacated seat at the opposite end of the bar from Untemeyer. Apparently unwilling to shout his order, he sat for some minutes unattended. Most of Greenie’s clientele were too young to knowwho he was, or how unusual the fact of his being there. They were of another generation and couldn’t know that for over thirty years this man had gotten off work with all the others and walked past Greenie’s open door, the raucous laughter of his fellow workers spilling out into the street along with the clacking of the bowling machine and the smell of stale beer and urinal cakes. This man had never once entered. Tonight only a handful of this older man’s generation was present, and none immediately recognized Mather Grouse, their old coworker who, once he was finally served, drained half the beer before setting the glass back on the counter.
    Mather Grouse very much liked the taste of beer, though he almost never drank it. Occasionally, when he was a younger man and still working in the shops, he would pick up a six-pack of ale at the market on his way home from work, and then after dinner—there was never a spare moment before—he would drink a bottle very slowly while he watched the news. He had stopped the practice one winter when there wasn’t money for beer and never started up again, having found another use for the extra money about that time. Mrs. Grouse didn’t object to her husband drinking a beer with the news, but she disliked having to rearrange their small refrigerator to accomodate the bottles, and Mather Grouse was never permitted to put in the whole sixpack at once. The best he could hope for was two bottles in the door rack, where Mrs. Grouse would lay them flat among the condiments, convinced they would tumble out onto the floor if they were set upright, though anyone could see by examining the racks that this was a geometric impossibility. In the door the beers never got as cold as Mather Grouse liked them. Greenie’s beer was very cold, and Mather Grouse drainedthe remainder of his glass with satisfaction, then ordered another. On the way home he would stop and buy beer, and when he got there he’d make Mrs. Grouse stand all six bottles upright in the back of the refrigerator. Never before had he realized that this issue was worth a fight, but there were going to be other changes as well.
    Almost contentedly Mather Grouse surveyed Greenie’s. In his present mood, the dark, dingy bar seemed exactly the sort of place it ought to be, and for some reason the odor of stale urinal cakes was not nearly as nauseating as he had often thought when passing by on the sidewalk. It was simply the smell of humankind, and after all, it was pointless to disapprove. Greenie’s served very cold beer, that was the main point. Mather Grouse decided that from now on he would drink cold beer whenever he felt like it. At the moment he was in a rare period of ascendency as regards his wife. Normally he would’ve considered suicidal a contest of wills with that good woman. Granted, she gave ground once the battle lines were drawn, but she always had a way of gaining that ground back again, and a little more, in the long haul of days, months, years. However long it took. You could win a skirmish here or there, but then you paid.
    This evening Mather Grouse had simply informed her that he was going out for a beer, and Mrs. Grouse, who had not lived forty-odd years with him without being a shrewd judge of his moods, especially those rare ones when he would not be trifled with, registered no formal objection. But her lips drew together until they were a thin white scar. Nevertheless, Mather Grouse felt confident that on this occasion he would successfully prevent her from exacting slow retribution. If hehad never been able to prevent it before, never mind. She was a woman, and mortal. All his life he had known men who beat their wives just to get their attention. Maybe it was a little late to start beating Mrs. Grouse, but he thought there might be some middle ground between physical abuse and unmanly acquiesence. Though he wasn’t sure, there just ought to be. The first step in searching it out was to start thinking independently again. Casting about for something wild and independent to do, he noticed Untemeyer at the