Free Mohawk by Richard Russo Page B

take short walks without the cloth mask given him by Dr. Walters. The neighbors raked leaves and burned them in large drums, the sweet smell lingering in the neighborhood long after the leaves themselves had been reduced to white cinders. Mather Grouse enjoyed the scent of autumn because it reminded him of Keats’s ode, which in turn made him feel better about life than was his custom. After summer, which exhaled suntan oil on sweaty limbs, the scent of nature incinerated was reassuring.
    About the only part of summer that Mather Grouse missed was his little garden in back of the house—dead now for another year, the vines of his tomato plants brown and brittle. Today he got down on one knee to feel the earth. Inside the house he heard Mrs. Grouse humming tunelessly. In the kitchen, by the sound of it. When the humming moved to a more remote corner of the house, he pulled out a loose board above thecellar window and removed the plastic bag he’d hidden there. Inside the airtight plastic pouch were some Camels. He took one out, slipped it into his shirt pocket and quickly zipped his windbreaker to the neck before returning the bag to its hiding place. Fortunately, Mrs. Grouse was cleaning and wouldn’t interrupt her sacred duty to take a walk with him, even though she would be suspicious and irritated when he returned.
    Getting away with something sent a dark sensation through him, as when he was a boy. As far back as Mather Grouse could remember, he had always known the difference between right and wrong, though his mother had always pleaded Mather’s defense with his father when the boy misbehaved, arguing that he was too young to grasp the significance of his misdeeds. But his father was a wise man who never suffered recriminations or self-doubts once he’d taken off his belt. Young Mather had always endured his punishments stoically, tracing the progress of the pain to its climax, then to its gradual decline until that time after the strapping when he could cheerfully pronounce it gone. He saw no good reason to resent punishment, at least at the time, for he knew in his heart that he was more often bad than punished, which was what kept life from seeming a shabby, piddling thing.
    After his father’s early death, the result of having whistled into too many empty gin bottles and having no one to strap him for it, Mather Grouse took upon himself the task of reining in his passions. His mother was far too weak and compassionate to help her son, so he donned the hair shirt pretty frequently—whenever it seemed like a good idea. He didn’t overburden himself with commandments, but merely pledged to steer clear of women and mind his own business, whichcovered just about everything that was likely to cause him serious grief. By the time he reached his middle teens, he had made of himself a sober and industrious youth, and when he left his mother’s house to take his first job, he was able to compliment himself that he had successfully held in check his innate depravity, though now and then he still enjoyed getting away with things. But at sixty-four his wife’s vigilance took up where his own left off.
    This afternoon he decided to walk through Choir Park—a good deal farther than he usually ventured, for he tired easily, but today he felt strong and it had been a long time since he’d truly tested himself. He enjoyed the symmetrical paths that wound among the hedges and pines. If he tired, he could always stop at the bandshell and rest on one of the benches. There weren’t any flowers this late in the year, but with luck he’d catch the smell of burning leaves.
    It was a gray afternoon, and when he arrived at the park, Mather Grouse was thankful for his windbreaker. He had the park to himself. There was no hurry, since Mrs. Grouse would be equally suspicious and irked regardless of the length of his absence. In the end he would still have to face her arched brow, the offended tilt of her slender jaw, the pursed