Mohawk

figure it, either. The old man had worked for everything he got. How much fun was there in watching sonny boy piss it all away? “Next time I’ll leave him alone.”
    “How’d
you
do today?” Benny D. said.
    “A winner at Santa Anita.”
    “Prick.”
    They drank a cup of coffee and left together. “There’s a game tonight.”
    Dallas shrugged. “Somebody said my kid’s in town. I thought I might go see him.”
    “That reminds me. You ever see your sister-in-law?”
    “Loraine?”
    Benny D. nodded. “I hear she’s out to The Velvet Pussycat all the while. Somebody said John was putting it to her.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Gaff had to take her home in the cruiser last weekend.”
    Dallas shook his head. The world had a way of surprising him, though most of the time he could figure things. Like today. He’d figured everything right all day long. But even on the best of days there were things nobody could count on. His kid was in town and hadlong hair, his sister-in-law was hanging out in the biggest dive in town. “Why was that?”
    “Too drunk to navigate, is what I heard. Let’s play some poker.”
    “Nah.”
    “Come on. It’s good for you when you’re low.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “We’ll split a bottle of bourbon, have a hell of a time. And next week you’ll come back to work for me. That John’s no good.”
    “He’s all right.”
    “But not like brothers. You and him never busted your balls together.”
    That much was true. Before Benny D. inherited the dealership, he and Dallas had knocked themselves out together on the road crew. They’d also chased women together, even caught a few who weren’t in the mood to run away. Both had been fresh from recent divorces, and neither one all that fastidious. After Anne, Dallas enjoyed women who called their pussies pussies. Benny D. had never known any other kind. He was all right, too, and they went way back. Dallas had damn near killed him once and Benny D. never even held a grudge.
    They took a good belt out of the bourbon bottle and climbed the dark stairs all the way to the third floor, toward the sound of gruff male laughter. “I thought your kid was in college someplace,” Benny D. said.
    “He is—or was, anyway.”
    “You gotta pay for that?”
    Dallas shook his head. “Scholarship.”
    “Good deal. He’ll turn out real smooth, like your friend John.”
    “John’ll be here,” Dallas warned.
    Benny D. laughed. “I hope to Christ he is.”

36
    Their vacation in Maine was blessed by fresh warm weather, gentle ocean breezes and the leisure to enjoy them. Price made good his promise to forget baseball. He bought the paper every day and checked the box scores, which told him who was playing and how well. But he didn’t introduce the subject into conversation, and seemed content to massage suntan oil into Anne’s shoulderblades. By the time they got back to the city it would be August, when each team was allowed to expand its roster for the stretch drive; if anything happened, it would happen then. He rose early each morning and ran on the beach, showered, went out for pastries and returned in time to watch Anne wake up. To tan deeply took her no time at all, and her dark skin contrasted beautifully on the white sheets. Most mornings they didn’t get to the pastries right away.
    “Let’s get married and have kids,” Price said the afternoon of their last day. The proposal didn’t surprise Anne as much as Price’s tone. He might just as well’ve been suggesting they stroll down the beach for a bag of clams.
    “Sure,” Anne said. “Why not. Maybe.”
    “I always know where I stand with you. I like that.”
    Anne picked up a handful of white sand and rubbedit into Price’s oiled chest, making a paste-hair mixture. “I hated being pregnant.”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “Besides, if we married you’d already have a son.”
    At first Price didn’t know what to say to that, and Anne could sense his reservations. “Men want sons of their own. I can’t explain why.”
    “Right.”
    “No, really,” he insisted. “Besides. I got gypped out of Randy’s early years. And he’s already got bad habits.”
    Price was so serious that Anne couldn’t help but smile. “What a crummy thing to say.”
    He rolled over on his side and used the corner of the towel to daub the mud from his chest. “Why do you call him Randall instead of Randy?”
    “Is that his bad habit?”
    “He throws sidearm. I can’t break