Mohawk

guys. Benny D. said he would, and Benny was all right. Even Dan annoyed her by stopping to chat with one of the mortuary employees before coming over to her. The only person Anne felt sorry for was Randall, who had said next to nothing in two days, and whose eyes had remained full the whole time. He refused to inspect the casket and stood so that it wasn’t even in his peripheral vision. Anne suspected that he might be in worse shape than she was, but feared that if she tried to console him she might come unraveled herself.
    Things remained askew throughout the evening. Dan remained on the edges. He didn’t want to make things awkward with the chair, and so Anne was unable to draw strength from his proximity. In fact he scarcely looked at her. To her relief, Dallas finally left, but then turned up again half an hour later, this time scrubbed and jacketed. As ex-son-in-law, bearer-to-be, he made the receiving line even longer. Then he tried talking to his son, but this was rough sledding and he finallygave up and returned to where Dan sat, the two of them looking extremely dejected, as if by the absence of a wet bar.
    Including the receiving line and the employees of the home, there were never more than twenty people in the room at once, and of those that came, Anne knew only a handful. Neighbors and a few old acquaintances. A few others introduced themselves in ways that clarified neither who they were nor how they had known her father. Two men claimed to be high-school classmates, but she couldn’t place them and suspected they were confused. In any case, life had not been kind to them, and the slack-jawed admiration with which they regarded her made Anne wonder what their wives must be like. An ugly little man wearing a black suit and smoking a particularly foul cigar came in and stood for a moment, stared at the casket, and then abruptly left. Anne did not speculate until far into the evening that some of the shabby people who paid their respects were present simply to be out of the cold, because it was the bitterest evening of the winter and there was a nice fire in the foyer.
    Actually, Anne paid scant attention to any of it. She could feel herself sinking lower and lower, and she raised herself to half-consciousness only when a hand was offered or someone wanting to explain who he was appeared before her. A few people wanted to talk about and pay her father compliments, but she could think of nothing to say in return. Her mother told everyone that he had died “peacefully, as he lived.” Which seemed plainly untrue, as least the last part. His existence had been full of hard work and dust and noise and shameful worry over money. Anne was glad that it was his heart that finally gave up, that he had not choked to death,gasping for oxygen, because he’d already had a lifetime of choking want and restriction. A peaceful death didn’t begin to balance the scales. Mather Grouse was owed a great deal, and now he couldn’t collect.
    Mrs. Grouse, on the other hand, was a wonder. She had been no help in making the arrangements, because doing things was outside her traditional purview. But Mrs. Grouse had no equal when it came to passive, stoic suffering, unless it was her sister Milly. During all the lean years when Mather Grouse came home after Thanksgiving with his pink slip—Christmas and the long winter ahead of them and little prospect of work—Anne could never remember her mother complaining. It simply meant that they would have to make do until spring when things would probably get better again. After all, hadn’t she been storing canned goods and hoarding small sums in anticipation of this very event? Hadn’t she even bought an early Christmas present or two? As for the rest, she would simply stretch what needed stretching—clothing and food—as need be. She would’ve shrunk in horror if anyone had suggested that she herself find a part-time job, not that anyone would have. But at skipping meals herself and finding ways to make a quarter pound of fatty bacon feed three people, she was a marvel.
    Anne herself was no stranger to adversity, but she had always hated any situation that could only be endured. She was able to summon the necessary courage for a bold, confident stroke, but simply getting by left her dispirited, and it seemed that the older she got, the more frequent these situations became. The next day, as she stood with the small company beside the open grave, waiting for the clergyman to