Mohawk

Gaffney left them like that and wandered out onto the porch. A while later, Rory Gaffney came out, blood on his hands and pants, and collapsed into the chair next to his brother. His eyes were dull. “I think I hurt my boy, Walt. That’s what I think.”
    Officer Gaffney went inside to look. The boy lay asleep on the sofa where his father had put him. At first the policeman thought he was dead. But finally he got the boy to sit and open the eye that would open, but he couldn’t keep the boy awake and finally he gave up. Rory Gaffney watched from the doorway. “You better take him to the hospital,” he said. “He’s hurt, Walt.”
    “Wait,” the policeman said, unable to imagine himself carrying the boy in, having to explain, having to point the finger at his own brother. “Wait. We don’t know. He may come around if we leave him be.”
    “I think I hurt my boy, that’s what I think.” Rory Gaffney said.
    “You don’t know.…”
    Officer Gaffney has not wanted to remember all this again, but there it is in the bottom of his coffee cup. He hates himself once again, along with the Younger boy who had stepped in when God himself had seemed to decree that Wild Bill should die and leave off tormenting. For some time now, the policeman has understoodthat when he said “Wait!” he’d made the choice of his life, though he hadn’t suspected it at the time, or even for years afterward. “No. Let’s wait,” he had said, and later, when it was clear there was no way to hide what had happened, it wasn’t Rory Gaffney who’d figured out how to, but himself. He had instructed his brother where to take the boy, what to do, how long to stay away, what to tell people when he came back—all the while thinking that what he ought to do was use the gun he’d worn strapped to his hip for so long he’d forgotten it was there. Shoot him, he’d thought. Then the boy. Then yourself.
    The trouble was, he could only hate himself.
    The kitchen door swings open and Wild Bill emerges with his empty coke glass. He is returning it to Harry, whence it came. He cannot figure that the thing to do is to put it in the rack with the other dirty glasses. Instead he puts it in the tub under the counter. “You stay in the kitchen,” Harry says. Through the swinging door Officer Gaffney is watching the kitchen. The Younger boy is slicing a head of lettuce with a gleaming knife. When the girl glides by, she kisses him on the back of the neck. He catches her before she can get away and kisses her on the lips, the knife resting along her flank. The policeman sees all this before the door settles shut, and he keeps on seeing it.

40
    “I never
heard
of such a thing,” said Milly, glowering at the patch of ground as she leaned on Mrs. Grouse’s arm. “It’s enough to make you go live in the highrise.”
    Dan had just dropped the old woman off for a visit. She’d been released from the hospital that morning, and Diana, who usually accompanied her mother on such visits, had collapsed into bed around mid-morning, and Dan had refused to let Milly wake her up. “How will I get up those steps?” she wanted to know.
    “Then stay home,” Dan advised. “But you aren’t waking her up.”
    “I guess I can manage,” the old woman said. “I always do.”
    “Right,” Dan had muttered.
    The two old women now supported each other, two sloping sides to the narrow based isosceles triangle. “How big are they,” asked Milly.
    Mrs. Grouse admitted she’d never actually seen one.
    “They’re turning the grass all yellow,” Milly observed, pointing to several leprous patches of dyinggrass where her sister had sprayed concentrated doses of Raid.
    “They come at night,” Mrs. Grouse said. “Out of the ground.”
    “You poor dear,” her sister said as they teetered their way up the porch steps.

41
    When Randall rolled over to look at the girl, the trailer rocked. She was frowning at him again, the way she did whenever they made love. Pretty often, lately. “Quit that,” he said.
    “What?” She did a pushup, and looked down at him. She was the most charmingly immodest girl he’d ever known.
    “Quit that too,” he said when she attacked his neck.
    “Why are all you men scared of hickies?”
    Randall didn’t know. “Don’t change the subject.”
    She made her serious face. “What was the subject?”
    “The subject is why you always look at me like that.”
    “I’m trying to figure out what you want with