Mohawk

trees, fearful his brother will see the car and wonder.
    Rory Gaffney looks up when his brother comes in but stays in the Lazy Boy, apparently indifferent to company. The policeman, at fifty-nine, is nearly ten years his brother’s junior, but if anything looks older. “Thought I heard a car.”
    Officer Gaffney flips on the black police band radio before sitting down. Nothing but static, and with luck he’ll get to relax an hour or so.
    “Turn that down,” his brother says.
    “I don’t want to miss anything,” the policeman says.
    “Sit in the car and you won’t.”
    Officer Gaffney gets up and turns the radio down, a little, then returns to his seat. They watch television for a while, neither man reacting to anything on the screen. “I like that show,” the policeman says when it’s over.
    Rory Gaffney says, “Well?”
    “He’s back,”
    “That’s what I heard.”
    “Harry give him a job at the grill washing dishes.”
    Rory Gaffney’s eyes grow small, but he says nothing.
    “Got this big new machine, Harry does. Showed me today.”
    “Then what’s he need with my boy?”
    “Takes somebody to stack the dishes and push the buttons. Harry figures Billy can handle that much. I bet he can, too.”
    “It ever occur to Harry maybe I could use some help around here?”
    Officer Gaffney finds himself stumped. “That girl’s husband ever come home?”
    Rory Gaffney looks at his brother until he gets up and turns off the police band. It’s time the policeman returned to work anyway. It occurs to him that the girl’s husband must be a crazy son-of-a-bitch to run off, but something stops him from saying so. He himself has never married, and lately he has begun to wish he had. Maybe he’d have been a better husband and father than the ones he ends up chauffeuring home after the bars close. He’d have treated a wife right, and the kids too. He didn’t blame his brother’s wife for taking off. There was a time when he’d also felt like it, and Rory was only his brother. Sometimes, he still felt like running away, but there was nowhere to go. “Harry’ll be good to him,” he ventures. “Harry likes him.”
    His brother switches off the set with the remote control, leaving them in the dark. “You got something on your mind, Walt?”
    “Me?” His voice in the dark sounds strange. A couple seconds of silence and he can’t stand it any more. “I just figure you should leave the boy alone, that’s all.”
    “That’s all?”
    “Yeah, that’s about it.”
    Officer Gaffney backs out and closes the door. He’s been afraid of his brother all his life. He wishes he weren’t, but after so many years, there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do about it. Inside the trailer, the girl is now wearing a robe and has a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. Though the cold has grown even sharper, Officer Gaffney, crouching outside the trailer, begins to sweat. From the direction of the house comes a sound and he backs deeper into the shadows. Heavy footsteps approach through last fall’s brittle leaves. The policeman is about to stand and facehis brother, admit his transgression and beg forgiveness, when Rory Gaffney knocks on the door. Inside the girl gathers her loose terrycloth robe tight to her chest. She leaves the bedroom, but he can still see her down the hallway and her voice is audible through the thin trailer walls. His brother’s low voice is lost in the outside air. “I’m fine,” she’s saying. “You go on home.”
    His brother says something.
    “It’s locked,” the girl says. “And that’s the way it’s staying.”
    The trailer jiggles.
    “You’re gonna wake the baby.”
    Officer Gaffney feels weak and sits down on the cold ground. For a long time he stares at nothing, and comes out of it only when the door up at the house slams shut. Again the woods are still. He gets to his feet with exaggerated caution, as quietly as he can. The girl has taken off the terricloth robe. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and he is crying quietly, wanting to tell her so. He watches the girl brush her long straight hair in front of the small dresser mirror. He would like to believe in reincarnation, would like to live all over again.
    The wind changes direction, and the policeman hears the car radio crackling angrily way down the road. Friday night in Mohawk.

38
    Summer had never been Mrs. Grouse’s favorite season. Though she never complained, the heat made her