Mohawk

by Richard Russo

  “What was that on your underwear?”

  “Pig,” said Dawn through her fist.

  “I don’t believe it,” Dallas said, but his niece refused to take the bait.

  “Go back outside if you’re going to sulk,” her mother said. “And take your hand out of your mouth.”

  When Dawn didn’t obey, Loraine removed it. “Don’t want to go outside,” Dawn whined, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s my birfday.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Loraine said.

  “Come here,” Dallas clapped his hands. “Be my girl.” But instead the child ran outside and let the screen door slam behind her. In a minute the swing squeaked into motion.

  “I could make you some eggs,” Loraine offered.

  Dallas shook his head. “I’m late for work.”

  He didn’t object to the cup of coffee, though, which Loraine poured without asking him. “Then I lost them someplace between here and home. Assuming I went home.”

  “You promised you would,” Loraine said. “You were talking about stopping by the grave, but I made you promise not to.”

  Dallas frowned. “Grave. What grave?”

  “Your brother’s. Whose do you think?” She sat down opposite him and put the cream pitcher between them.

  “Why would I go there?”

  “You were in one of your maudlin moods. I really wish you’d stay away when you get like that. I feel the same way half the time myself, and I don’t need any encouragement.”

  Dallas said he was sorry, and he was, too, though in much the same way he was sorry about a rainy day or something else he had no control over. When he drank too much, he nearly always blacked out and had to depend on people to tell him what he’d been up to, and because he was often told that he became sentimental at such times, he supposed it must be true, though he couldn’t say for sure.

  “My daughter doesn’t need to be woke up in the middle of the night either,” Loraine went on. “She’s got enough on her mind. She’s been scared as hell ever since David.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “She doesn’t know. Who ever needed a reason?”

  Loraine looked a little scared herself right then, and Dallas felt ashamed of his behavior. He wished he could remember his behavior, so he could feel even worse about it. It wasn’t fair that Loraine should feel frightened, and even more unfair that little Dawn should be. When he finished his coffee, Loraine quickly cleared the cups and saucers, and he watched her at the sink, trying to think if there was something he could do for her or the little girl. He had promised his brother he would do what he could for them, but even at the time he hadn’t any idea what that might be.

  Loraine rinsed the cups in the sink and dried them carefully with a thin dish towel before putting them back in the cupboard. When she and David had married, Loraine was a very pretty girl with soft skin and lovely brown hair. People had wondered out loud how such a shy, studious boy like David had done so well, especially since in addition to being pretty Loraine had a reputation for being a little wild. Those who made book on other people’s chances gave them long odds. But David was kind and attentive, qualities that were more or less new to Loraine and that she discovered she liked. According to those who knew her best, she simply changed overnight, returning her husband’s devotion as if, without a word of discussion, he had somehow convinced her to forget about wildness in favor of himself and the life he had to offer, which was pleasant and satisfying if not always terribly exciting.

  Loraine also discovered early in their marriage that there was nothing she could do to alter his love for her, and when she first noticed that she’d put on a few pounds, that the curves of her body were straightening, she refused to be disappointed in herself. Since he didn’t appear to notice the way she was thickening, she repaid the favor by telling herself that she did not mind her young husband’s receding hairline, nor that the drain was always full of his dark hair after he showered. Only Dallas, who often visited them on Sundays, made her feel a little self-conscious about her appearance, because he was an unmerciful tease. After a while, though, he stopped ribbing her. She never knew why. At first she thought maybe David made him stop, but then a more plausible explanation occurred to her—that Dallas stopped the ribbing when what he was saying became too true to be good fun any more. She had got very big with Dawn and somehow never quite lost the shapelessness of postpregnancy. Now she thought it might be nice if Dallas would start teasing her again, but he never did. When he commented at all, it was to say that she looked well, and since she knew that wasn’t true, the compliment had the opposite effect of what was intended.

  Indeed, as he watched her at the sink, he did feel bad for Loraine. With her husband gone and more than half her life ahead of her, it seemed to him that she needed to be prettier than she was. “So,” he said when she turned around and discovered him looking at her, “how are you making out?”

  She dried her hands on the dish towel and looped it through the refrigerator door handle. “Fine. How can you look at these lavish surroundings and ask such a question?” Her sweeping gesture included not just the kitchen, but the rest of the house, the yard, the neighborhood, and probably all of Mohawk.

  “I’m serious,” Dallas said, feeling immediately the silliness of his remark, since Loraine was obviously serious too. Her attitude in this respect was inexplicable to him, partly because her surroundings were quite lavish compared to his. Admittedly, there was a threadbare quality to the house. Even when David was alive, they had been forced by necessity to make do with things until they were used up. Now what had once been simply thin was close to transparent, like the dish towel Loraine had used to dry her hands. But that was one of the things Dallas had always liked about his brother’s house. Dallas himself never wore anything out. He lost it before wear-and-tear became an issue. His clothing was never ragged, because when he went to the laundromat he always managed to leave at least one load in one of the machines. Loss was perhaps the central feature of his existence, and he had learned to accept it the way one does a scraped knuckle or skinned knee. In the long run things equaled out anyway. For every load of clothing he forgot in the washing machine, he gained another in the dryer. Tumbling towels and shirts inside one dryer often bore a striking resemblance to those in the next, and more than once Dallas had discovered, after shoving the spun-dry contents into his duffle bag and going home, that it was some other man’s wardrobe he had inherited. Provided the clothes fit, or near enough, Dallas was content and his life various.

  Only when he visited his brother’s house and saw the sameness of things, the continuity of familiar objects, did he feel keenly dissatisfied with the lack of control he exercised over his daily affairs. He had always liked Loraine’s house and was more comfortable there than just about any place he knew, except maybe the track or Greenie’s Tavern after work. He was so comfortable in his brother’s house that he disliked even the smallest changes or additions, and on those rare occasions when Loraine bought something small and bright and new for the house, he couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted with it. Fortunately, she wasn’t one of those women who liked to move furniture around. She was far too sensible to suppose that rearranging resulted in improvement.

  “You never see anything,” she told him, “but the whole place needs work. The cold seeps in everywhere during the winter. The lower cabinets are rotting where the plumbing leaks. None of the doors hang right anymore. I can’t even close the one in the bathroom. Not that it matters.”

  “I could—” Dallas began.

  “Don’t go making offers. I’m just fed up, that’s all.”

  “Don’t,” she insisted. “You’ll promise and then half an hour from now you’ll forget, and then I’ll dislike you for a while until I forget. Then in a few weeks you’ll remember and be mad at yourself until you forget again. So spare us both.”

  Dallas could tell that she was already angry with him, and he knew, of course, that what she said was true. He
doubted she was miffed about this, though. And he knew enough about women to guess that she wasn’t mad about anything as obvious as his having awakened her in the middle of the night. No, she was mad at him for something else, and she wasn’t going to tell. That much was for sure. In the three years he was married to Anne she was always miffed and never once willing to say what about. Maybe Loraine just needed to hurt somebody’s feelings, and he was handy. He hoped it was just that and nothing more. He liked Loraine. She was one of the few people who seemed to know that he had feelings to hurt. They weren’t, he had to admit, regular and predictable like other people’s feelings; they came and went in ways that Dallas himself didn’t begin to comprehend. After he left Loraine’s house, he’d probably get sidetracked and not think of her again for a long time. The little girl’s birthday would come and go. Maybe that was why he had convinced himself it was today, knowing that when it really did come he’d be someplace else. “I guess you married the right brother,” he admitted.

  “A lot of good it did me.” She had her back to him and was staring out the tiny kitchen window above the sink as if something outside had caught her attention. “Why don’t you run along to work,” she suggested. “I’ve got a lot to do and for some reason I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Dallas started to leave, then noticed that Loraine was crying. When he touched her, she broke down completely. “Christ, I miss him.”

  “I know,” Dallas said weakly, guessing that maybe something was required of him but having no idea what it might be.

  “Of all the people in the world that God could have taken, and it wouldn’t have amounted to anything. No loss.…”

  What she said was true. Dallas knew practically everyone in Mohawk, and there weren’t many that God, if there was one, wouldn’t have been smarter to take. “Like me,” he admitted, since it was something he’d thought many times since his brother’s death.

  Loraine spun around to face him, her face desperate with rage and pain. “Yes, damn it!”

  He figured there wasn’t anything to do but leave, so after muttering something like an apology, he did. But Loraine caught up to him before he could drive away. He would’ve been gone already if he hadn’t stopped to check the floor of the car and under the seat for his teeth. “I’m sorry, Dallas,” she cried through the rolled-down passenger-side window. “God, I don’t know what made me say that.”

  “Forget it,” he told her. “Besides, it was true.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I was just mad. If I were you, I’d go see Anne and make her marry me again. You’re a nice man. You just need somebody to look after you.”

  “Or five somebodies.”

  She smiled and snuffed her nose. “David worshiped you, you know. You were the only one in the family he cared anything for, really.”

  “And vice versa.”

  She looked off down the street and neither said anything for a while. “I guess I’ve got to forget him,” Loraine said finally. Then she studied Dallas through the open window. “So do you.”

  “I have.”

  She smiled. “Then why do you come around here still expecting to see him?”

  The remark took Dallas so off guard that he didn’t know what to say. At times when he visited Loraine and Dawn, his brother’s presence was so tangible he half expected to see David materialize in the kitchen doorway wanting to know who stole the sports page.

  “How would you like to do a favor for somebody who just treated you pretty rotten?”

  “Sure, if I can.…”

  Loraine ran her hands through her hair. Once a lovely, shining brown, it had lost most of its luster. “I’m going to have to go back to work pretty soon. The insurance money’s about gone. For some reason David had it in his head that twenty grand would set us up for life.”

  “It does sound like a lot.”

  “Not when you’re paying off medical bills the insurance didn’t cover.”

  Dallas said he would keep an eye out.

  “Thanks,” she said. “And I’m real sorry about your teeth.”

  “I’ll find all five sets someday. They’re probably in a pile someplace.”

  They both laughed, and Loraine looked a little better. Dallas knew she never stayed down long. “How come your shirt says Cal?”

  “That’s what Cal always wants to know. You really think I should bother Anne again?”

  A doubt registered in Loraine’s eyes, but passed. “Sure. If not her, bother somebody else. What would your son think about it?”

  “Hard to say. I don’t think he likes to talk to me. I don’t even know him any more.”

  “He’s the same kid.”

  “I didn’t know him before either.”

  Suddenly Dawn was there with them, climbing up her mother until she could see in. Dallas leaned across and gave her a kiss.

  “When’re we going on Paris wheel?” she wanted to know.

  “The Ferris wheel?”

  “Yeah, Paris.”

  “You’d get scared.”

  “My daddy takes me all the time,” she said, glancing up at her mother—waiting, apparently, to be contradicted. “He’s taking me tomorrow.”

  “I know a little girl,” said Loraine, “who wants a spanking.”

  5

  The old Nathan Littler Hospital stands atop a steep hill at the base of Myrtle Park, overlooking the rooftops of the junior high, the Mohawk Grill and the rest of downtown Mohawk. Only one wing of the old hospital is currently in use. The rest is dark. The new hospital on the outskirts of town near the new highway has opened, but the transition from one facility to the other is incomplete. Mohawk Medical Services Center is a political hot potato, years behind schedule and many hundreds of thousands over budget. The grand opening and ribbon cutting have been delayed yet again, this time because inspectors discovered that the wiring in the emergency and intensive care units is not up to code. This is also true of the wiring in the rest of the hospital, but the other units have already moved in, and to make them move out again is unthinkable. So, despite the complications it causes, the emergency and intensive care units are still operating out of the old hospital, a hulking, four-story brick affair replete with climbing vines. The rest of the building, now vacant, looks as if it had been gutted by fire. The windows have been exploded by rock-throwing boys who climb the hill from the junior high during their lunch hour. At first there was a public outcry against the vandals, and Willis Anders ran an editorial in the Mohawk Republican urging that where the old hospital was concerned, youth might better be restrained than served. But since the old hospital is to be torn down as soon as the transfer is complete, the boys continue to knock out with impugnity the windows of the various vacated wards, giving the impression that those left inside are being pursued from room to room. Now no windows are left to break, except a few in the emergency wing, but the boys still climb the steep hill on their lunch hour, pockets heavy with rocks, and perch in the trees that border the back lot, impatient. Broken glass crackles beneath the wheels of Mohawk’s two ambulances when they snake their way around the back of the building to the hospital’s emergency entrance.

  Tonight both ambulances are on duty. Saturday nights are always busy in the emergency room of the old Nathan Littler Hospital, especially around two in the morning when the bars are closing and people are forced to consider the prospect of returning home with so many of the night’s dreams unfulfilled. What follows are the usual brawls and the battered wives and husbands and girlfriends who limp up Hospital Hill—some afoot, some in wobbly old cars—to be sewn up and sent home. Some are bleeding, the majority terribly drunk, and all but the most tragic cases must wait in line for attention from the sparse, overworked staff. Among the throng awaiting attention is a couple in their late twenties. Both are huge, but the woman is slightly larger. Still, it is the man who grabs one’s immediate attention. Shoeless, he is wearing a bright orange beach towel about his middle in lieu of trousers. The towel sticks out in f
ront comically, and the large woman stares down at the protuberance maliciously. “Look at you, you dumb fuck,” she says. Her voice, though not loud, is brittle and carries marvelously even in the crowded room.

  “Look at yerself, if you can stand it.”

  “You don’t even have enough sense to feel like the dumb fuck you are,” the woman says. “Everybody’s looking at you, you dumb fuck.”

  This happens to be true, but the man wearing the beach towel is undaunted. He uses a simple four-letter word to describe his companion and it is a part of her own anatomy. Despite the name-calling, neither is truly angry. Their language alone is inflationary. They’ve been calling each other such names for so long that it’s now beyond the power of mere words to stimulate passion. At this moment they are closer to humor than anger.

  “You’d see what a dumb fuck you was if you wasn’t so proud of yerself. You just never had no hard-on get so big and last so long.”

  “I just wisht I had a woman worth it.”

  She ignores this. “I don’t see why yer so proud, anyways. It ain’t every man has a weeny the size of a wedding ring.”

  “Least I got a weddin’ ring, which is more than you’ll ever have.”

  This is clearly the best shot in the volley, and the woman reacts as if he has punched her good. “How’d you like me to slap that worthless little weeny, dumb fuck.”

  The man turns away from her. “You’re just mad ’cause I won the bet.”

  “I shoulda knowed, that little thing.…”

  Someone in the room wails loudly, and the man and woman are no longer the center of attention. People crane their necks to see who howled, but no one looks particularly guilty. When one of the emergency room doors slams open, an ambulance siren is heard—at approximately the same pitch as its human counterpart— and everyone concludes it must’ve been the ambulance siren all along.

  The ambulance driver winds the vehicle around the back of the hospital, over the trail of broken glass toward the yellow crease of light at the end of the long drive. In the rear is a fifteen-year-old who probably will not live to see the morning—after a wreck that took the rescue workers half an hour to get her out, she’s in very bad shape. Inside they will do what they can, then take her by helicopter to Albany Medical, but the driver knows the girl is too badly broken to live no matter what they do. He’s a young man himself and he doesn’t like to think of her young life ending, but there is nothing he can do about it. For all he knows, she’s already dead. Sometimes they tell him when a patient dies; other times they let him drive like hell with the corpse. As he nears the leaking yellow lights, he hits the brake hard to avoid hitting something in the road, which disappears immediately. There is a chorus of “Heys!” from the rear. When the driver docks beneath the red EMERGENCY sign, the back doors fly open and the young girl is hurried inside, which means that this time, anyway, he has been transporting a living person.