Mohawk

April, Harry. Are you gonna get this year’s calender, or just let it be 1971 again?”
    “I like 1971.”
    Dallas nods. “She’s all right, I gotta admit.”

30
    Randall Younger had to wait a long time before anyone would give him a lift. It was the hair. He was lucky at first, getting picked up on the outskirts of Buffalo by a driver heading east on the Thruway to New York. The man dropped Randall off at Fultonville, and from there it was basically no go. He thumbed for a while, strolling slowly along the highway and across the bridge at the Mohawk River, but by the time he got to Fonda it was getting dark, so he skipped dinner and climbed the fairground fence. Beneath the grandstand he would keep dry if it decided to rain. The ground was littered with refuse let fall by last Friday night’s stock-car enthusiasts, and the smell was bad, but after a while Randall got used to it. The wind made a lonely sound high up in the bleachers that jailed the night sky.
    By morning the wind had died, but it was gray and cold. Randall rose stiffly and rolled up his makeshift bedding, slinging the bundle over the chain link fence, then climbing over after it. There was a greasy spoon open in Fonda, and the muttering proprietor agreed to serve Randall coffee once the young man proved he could pay. The man didn’t offer to refill it, though, so Randall had to content himself with slender retaliation in the form of a nickel tip. His last nickel.
    Outside, the wind had sprung up again, lifting Randall’s shoulder-length hair, alerting passing motorists to the sort of person to whom they had briefly contemplated giving a lift. Always on the smallish side as a boy, he had grown during his senior year in high school and freshman year in college. He was now taller than his father, though as lanky as undertakers in the movies. With his three-day beard, he looked a good deal older than eighteen. A few motorists slowed until they got a good look at him, then found the gas pedal again. The idea that he might frighten someone amused Randall, who’d always been the least dangerous person he knew.
    Midmorning and half way to Mohawk, a decrepit VW bug pulled off onto the shoulder a hundred yards up the highway and sat there hiccoughing uncertainly. Randall didn’t hurry. An hour earlier some teenagers had stopped, waved to him, then peeled out when he jogged toward them. As far as he could see, there was only one person in the VW, a girl who at first glance looked a year or two younger than Randall. “Take your sweet time,” she said when Randall bent down to peer in the passenger-side window.
    “All right if I put my things in back?”
    “Why not?”
    Randall saw the answer to that when he pulled the front seat forward to squeeze his bedroll in. The floor was rusted through in several places, and the battery, strangely positioned where the backseat once was, tipped precariously, only a few inches above the blacktop.
    “Let me guess,” the girl said. “Mohawk, right?”
    When Randall got in next to her, she pulled back onto the highway. The car had what sounded to Randall like a death rattle. “Right.”
    Closer examination suggested that the girl was sixteen, tops, but she maneuvered the car as if she’d been driving for years. Something about the way she handled the wheel with the palm of her right hand, as if she’d get fewer points if she employed her fingers, convinced him that she was showing off. He smiled. He hadn’t showed off for anybody in a long time, and it was even longer since anybody had thought it worth their while to show off for him. Everything on the dashboard rattled happily. “Don’t worry,” the girl said. “We’ll make it.” When she stepped on the gas and tailgated, people in front of her got out of the way, perhaps fearing that anyone crazy enough to drive this wreck might also haze them right through town. “Want to know how I guessed Mohawk?”
    “There isn’t a whole lot up this way,” Randall said, not in the mood to do much talking. The closer he got to Mohawk, the more he wanted to just take it all in. The familiar landmarks: the Ford dealership, the Dairy Queen, the power company offices, all on the outskirts. Everything seemed oddly out of proportion, as if each building had inched closer to its neighbor since he’d been away.
    Unfortunately, his companion felt like talking. That so many people exacted a conversational toll was only one of the many disadvantages of hitching. At