Mohawk by Richard Russo Read Free Book Online

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