Mohawk

by Richard Russo

In horror he watched the boy cross the street and climb the steps of the house. Did the boy not know that this house was forbidden, that something terrible would happen if he didn’t stay away? Wild Bill feared for the boy, because something terrible had once happened to him, though he had forgotten what it was and had been told that it would happen again if he ever remembered. Then the door to the house opened and she appeared from somewhere inside, the one he had forgotten and yet sometimes remembered, the one he’d been told was gone. She drew the boy quickly inside and the door closed again. Wild Bill waited across the street for a long time, but the door did not open again.

  It was after dark by the time he got back downtown. The Mohawk Grill was crowded as he slipped unnoticed into the back, waiting to tell Harry the news. He never got the chance, though, because as soon as Harry heard the back door creak shut, he shoved Bill into the storeroom with the big cans of tomatoes and pumpkin pie filling. One man was too excited to speak, and the other sputtered. “You’ve done it this time,” Harry said, his face bright red with fear and anger. “Nobody can fix this! Sweet Jesus, Billy, what came over you?”

  Seeing his friend so worked up only increased Wild Bill’s own sense of excitement, and he mistakenly concluded that they were excited over the same thing. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders with such force that when the larger man tried to step back he discovered he couldn’t. “Ive!” Wild Bill insisted, clutching Harry, who suddenly wished he had his spatula with him. “Ive!”

  Pulling free, Harry pushed Wild Bill onto an empty crate and grabbed his chin with one paw so he could neither speak nor move. Actually, Bill didn’t want to move, but having his cheeks pinched brought tears to his eyes, and he had not finished talking. The skin along his throat was feverish. “Yes,” Harry said. “He’s alive, but just barely. You’re in big trouble and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do to help you. Can’t you get that through your big numb skull? Can’t you understand? I can’t help you!”

  Wild Bill stared dumbly at his friend, no longer struggling, but as soon as Harry’s grip relaxed, he slipped free and shook his head vigorously. “Oh … oh.…”

  Harry slapped him in the face then, hard enough to make his eyes water again. Their expression seemed to say that just about all the truly astonishing things that could happen in the world were happening within the space of a few hours, and he hadn’t any idea where it would stop. “Don’t tell me no!” Harry said savagely, grabbing his cheeks again. “Don’t tell me no, goddamn you. You just sit there until I can figure out what to do. You hear?”

  Wild Bill fought to get free, but this time Harry was ready for him and tightened his grip until his thumb and forefinger met, only the skin and stubble on Bill’s cheeks between them. Not until he nodded that he’d stay quiet did Harry let go to return to his restless customers. He studied Bill sadly for a moment before leaving him alone in the storeroom among the high shelves stacked all the way to the ceiling with canned applesauce and kidney beans and cling peaches, burlap bags of sprouting potatoes on the floor, the darkness too complete with the door closed to read the labels.

  15

  One late August night they all headed for the lake. Everyone was on edge, partly because it had been hot and humid for a week, and because summer was nearly over. Even Dan seemed quietly out of sorts. Dallas was the worst. His car wasn’t running, and that afternoon Anne had told him she was going to do as her father wished and attend classes at Albany State in the fall. It would be a shame to waste the scholarship she had earned, she said, but Dallas refused to be comforted by the fact that she would be only an hour away. He was clever enough to guess that her leaving was indicative of something, just as he knew that things had never been less intimate between them. He was far behind his own leisurely schedule, too. A whole summer had slipped away and he still hadn’t discovered the courage to slip his hand beneath her brassiere. And here they were, practically engaged. He was cruelly ashamed of himself, and lately life had begun to seem shallow and worthless.

  At the prospect of going away, Anne herself felt an odd mixture of hopelessness and resignation. In a way she welcomed September, which would give her the opportunity to break gradually with Dallas, whose feelings she had no desire to hurt. And seeing less of Dan might be for the best too. There was always the chance that her feelings might change, though she had no confidence they would.

  “I guess it’s up to me to cheer everybody up tonight,” Di remarked when they were halfway to the lake and no one had said anything. They all seemed to know she would not be equal to the task.

  The dance was not one of the regulars at the hotel. This one was being held in the rickety old pavilion on the other side of the lake, accessible only by a network of narrow dirt roads that wound among the campsites. In the still night the accents borne on the summer air were mostly from New York City. In August the whole metropolitan area seemed to empty into the Adirondacks.

  “This is going to be full of city bitches and woodchucks,” Dallas complained. He particularly disliked the latter, unworldly and unsophisticated, who found their way down the mountain on Saturday nights.

  “At least there’s a breeze,” Di said.

  Inside the pavilion, which was festooned with orange lanterns, they discovered they could only get drinks by going next door. After seating the girls, Dallas and Dan left for the bar, and by the time they got back, two good-natured hillbillies in black cowboy hats had invited themselves to the table and were entertaining Di and Anne with loud stories and enticing them to drink out of a large tin flask. Dallas tried his best to start a fight, but the two interlopers were far too amiable to be provoked and went away peacefully. It was a long shot, anyway.

  Dallas drank purposefully and his mood did not improve. Before long, it was obvious to him that Anne didn’t care for him as much as he could’ve wished. “Admit it,” he said suddenly, his reddening eyes full of anger.

  “Admit what?” Anne said.

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I don’t even like you when you get like this.”

  “Then admit it,” he insisted.

  Anne appealed to the others, but Di was looking carefully away and Dan somehow managed to give the impression that he really was someplace else. “Of course I love you,” Anne said.

  Dallas pondered his gin, as if it contained some melancholy truth. After a minute he said, “I can take it.”

  “Take what, Dallas. What can you take?”

  “That you don’t love me.”

  “I said I love you,” Anne insisted. Di said she thought it was true.

  “I know you love me,” Dallas admitted. “Except not really.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “No I’m not,” Dallas snapped, his smile full of self-pity and gin. “I bet you love Dan as much as me.”

  Anne knew Dallas had no real suspicion on that score. He was just throwing it out to be contradicted. Yet she felt herself flush, and she didn’t dare look at anyone for fear they would know.

  “It’s true,” Dallas said, throwing his arm around Dan’s shoulders. “I bet she loves you as much as me.”

  “There’s no accounting for personal taste,” Dan said.

  The remark did not make immediate sense to Dallas, and he stared at his friend for a moment before breaking into wild laughter. “I love this guy,” he roared. “You gotta love this guy. You gotta.”

  They all laughed, then, and even Dallas was relieved, though he would’ve been hard pressed to recall that he was responsible for most of the tension in the first place. At the moment he could think only that he was a lucky fellow. His personal landscape was filled with friends and he had the prettiest girl in the place. “Come on,” he grabbed Anne by the elbow. “Let’s teach these woodchucks how to dance.”

  She followed him onto the crowded dance floor where the hillbilly band was trying hard to master the subtleties of jitterbug rhythm. “Gangway,” Dallas roared, taking his girl in his arms. And then his feet began to go,
wildly, as if they possessed his very life.

  When they left the pavilion that night, Dan at the wheel, Dallas drunk and melancholy in the back seat with Anne, Diana staring out the passenger-side window at nothing in particular, they had all reached the same unspoken regret that summer was indeed over. It seemed to Dallas that his heart was about to explode with love for his girl and his friends and just about everyone he could think of. Everything was perfect, and he did not want things to change. The black lake was shimmering like ink, small waves lapping gently against the shore.

  “I love you all,” Dallas said. “I mean it.”

  “Of course you do,” Anne said.

  “I do,” he insisted. “You guys are … the best.”

  “True,” Di said. She had nursed her two drinks all night long. They had made her tipsy, but she was sober now. Dan drove slowly, competently, given the amount of alcohol he had consumed. Anne watched him from the back seat, trying to read his thoughts, wondering if he minded her going away. He had said little all night and hadn’t danced with her once, not the sort of conclusion to their reckless summer she had hoped for. Something should’ve happened, she felt. Had there been some unmistakable sign between them, then going away would have been supportable. Instead, Dan seemed miles away.

  “You’re beautiful,” Dallas told Di with such workmanlike sincerity that it sounded like false generosity. “I mean it. Good-looking, too. Damn good-looking. But you know what?”

  Everyone wanted to know.

  “I gotta stick with my girl,” he said, pulling Anne to him, ignoring her resistance to his drunken embrace. “She’s really beautiful. Really beautiful. You’re good-lookin’, Di. Don’t get me wrong. But I gotta stick with my girl.”

  Anne nudged him, hard. Dallas never suspected when he was embarrassing people. Diana knew that she was far from pretty, and compliments from a melancholy drunk were sure to have the wrong effect. “You’re bombed, Dallas. Even more than usual.”

  “I gotta stick with my girl,” he repeated, planting a sloppy kiss on her lips.

  Anne wished Dan would say something. If someone didn’t distract Dallas, chances were that he’d continue in the present vein all the way back to Mohawk, and Anne was not sure she could endure much more of his foolish blubbering. He was too sweet to hurt, but she found herself dangerously close to telling him she thought he was a fool and that she couldn’t wait to go away. She knew that would make the both of them feel terrible, and when they came to a stretch of road that was only a few yards from the lake, she said, “Let’s go for a swim.”

  Dallas perked right up. “Skinny-skipping!” he said. “Dipping, I mean.”

  “I think we should go home,” Di said.

  “Stop the car!” Dallas roared, grabbing Dan by the shoulders and shaking him.

  “It’ll be fun,” Anne said. “Some people might even sober up.”

  “Not me,” Dallas threatened. He was already trying to get his shirt over his head, confused by the fact that it was a button-front.

  By the time Dan eased slowly off the road, they had overshot the small inlet by nearly a hundred yards. Dallas, still struggling with his shirt, plunged blindly into the trees on what he was convinced was a shortcut. When Dan cut the engine, they heard Dallas crashing through the brush. He grunted once and they heard a thud, followed by a splash. “I found it!” he called.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Dan told Diana, the first time Anne could remember him raising his voice to her.

  “This is crazy—”

  “So what? Maybe we could all stand a little crazy. Maybe you could.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anne began. “This is all my fault—”

  Dan interrupted her. “You better catch up to Hawkeye before he drowns himself.”

  Anne got out and began to feel her way toward the thrashing, splashing sounds, but when she looked back she could see that Di was still seated stubbornly in the front seat.

  The moon was down and it was very dark, but by following the sounds Anne was able to locate Dallas at the water’s edge where he was struggling to get his pants off, swearing angrily as he hopped about on one leg. Anne quickly stripped down to her underclothes and slipped into the water before he was even aware of her presence. When Diana and Dan emerged from the trees, he stood before them in nothing but his shorts and socks. “C’mon,” he said excitedly. “You’re way behind.”

  When Dallas took off his shorts, Di turned away and said she was going back to the car. This struck Dallas as an insult and instead of diving in, he stood his ground in his argyles. “Wassamatter?” he said. “We’re all friends.”

  “Are you coming?” Diana said to Dan.

  “Wassamatter?”

  “Leave her alone, Dallas,” Anne told him. “For once don’t be a jerk.”

  “See?” Dallas said, surprised by her voice so close. Her presence seemed to him at that moment more significant than what she had to say. The fact that she was in the water made her an ally. “Anne’s not ashamed, and she’s better looking, too.”

  “Di can do what she wants,” Dan said.

  Had Dallas been a degree more sober he would’ve heard the warning in his friend’s tone, but he wasn’t. “Who cares?” he said. “She doesn’t have to pretend she’s a saint is all. Everybody knows she’s putting out.”

  For an instant Anne was certain Dan was going to punch him. Dallas must’ve thought so, too, because he began to step back. The two men were only two yards apart, but the slope was steep. In the knee-deep water Dallas lost his balance and started over backward, then righted himself too much and lunged forward. Dan palmed the top of Dallas’s head like a basketball, held him still for a second, then shoved him gently into the lake. By the time Dallas came sputtering to the surface, Dan had disappeared into the trees in pursuit of his fiancée.

  Dallas now realized that he was alone in the lake with his beloved and that the departure of their friends, once he thought about it, suited him fine. He spied the mound of Anne’s clothes on a log nearby, but it was too dark to ascertain which garments were there. Here was an opportunity to make something of the summer after all. Turning around, he made out her dark silhouette a few yards away. His heart thumping wildly, he dived beneath the surface, hoping to surprise her from below, a manuever that struck him as a pleasing combination of foreplay and football. The problem was, it was even darker below the surface than above, and after several scissors kicks Dallas began to suspect he had miscalculated the distance between them. His strategy was determined, however, and he refused to surface until he felt naked flesh. For her part, Anne knew precisely what he was up to and was able to trace his progress easily since only his head remained thoroughly submerged. When he finally arrived, half oxygen starved, fully expecting to embrace the loins of his beloved, he was greeted instead by the small of her foot planted firmly in the center of his forehead. The surprise of finding himself propelled backward drove the remaining air from his straining lungs, and he sucked in brackish water before managing to surface.

  The first thing he saw was Anne stroking shoreward toward the log and her clothes. Coughing and sputtering, he started in pursuit, not entirely certain he had been rebuffed. Clearly, unless someone else was with them in the lake, he had been, but he still couldn’t believe it. Dallas also couldn’t tell whether the figure retreating before him was naked, but it certainly looked naked, and he tried desperately to catch up. But where Anne seemed to knife effortlessly through the water, he pitched forward again and again as the sand gave way beneath his socks. His lungs began to fill with water, and he discovered, when he tried to call out, that he was capable only of gurgling noises. When he finally stumbled out of the lake, he was too exhausted and nauseated to mount much of an attack. Dropping to his knees in the sand, he sputtered “I … I … I.…” The tops of Anne’s breasts glistened in the moonlight, and he felt his hopes plunge, so terrible was her beauty.

  “You should be ashamed, Dallas,” she said.

 
He struggled to his feet. “I—”

  “Look at you.”

  Dallas did as he was told and was surprised to discover an erection in the very process of deflating. Mistaking her meaning, he said, “It’ll come back. Just let me touch you.”

  But her permission wouldn’t have made any difference, because the gin and lake water, churning more violently than ever, began to rise even as his penis descended. Burning with despair, he formulated a more modest plan. At the very least, if he lunged forward in a crude, last-ditch assault, he might bring her to ground and bury his sorrow in her breasts before she could summon the strength to cast him aside. Surely he deserved that much.

  He was cheated, though, just the same. At first his legs refused to function, then they carried him in the direction opposite from the one he intended, off into the trees where he dropped to his knees again and began to retch.

  Anne did not follow and, instead, found her clothes and shook herself dry as best she could after wringing out her long hair. Rather than put on her dry clothes over them, she removed her wet bra and panties and, after wringing them out, used them like a sponge to blot herself semidry. The night air was lovely and cool on her skin, and she felt the exhilaration of her nakedness, such an utterly abandoned and delicious and hopeless feeling that she wanted to cry, by herself, for a very long time. She had not heard Dan return; he stood watching her from the exact spot where Dallas had knelt a few minutes before. Somewhere out on the lake a night bird called. That was the only sound.

  16

  For several days after his beating, Randall Younger looked fairly impressive—one eye swollen shut, his cheek a purple fruit above the fracture, his lips and nose lacerated. His mother was terrified when she saw him, and he made matters worse by refusing to explain what had happened other than confirming the obvious—that he’d been in a fight. She was so frightened and angry that she threatened to transfer him to Sacred Heart, the Catholic junior high. There was no reason to fly off the deep end, he said, and that made her madder still.