Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  Sully told him they had.

  “I missed you at The Horse last night,” Carl said. “Rub was there. He said you finished.”

  “Then why’d you ask me?”

  “ ’Cause Rub had that scared look he gets when he lies,” Carl said and stopped with the jumping jacks to study Sully.

  Sully had to smile at the idea of Rub trying not to blurt out that they had broken a load of blocks. “He’s always nervous around his betters,” Sully explained. “I’ve told him you aren’t one of them, but Rub’s a slow learner.”

  “I don’t see how you can work with somebody who smells like a pussy finger.”

  “I keep him downwind when I can.”

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to tell the little fuck he stinks?”

  “I have,” Sully said. “He thinks I’m kidding. He says if he stunk that bad Bootsie would mention it.”

  Carl shuddered. “That’s what I should do when I get horny. Think of Bootsie.”

  “I thought you wanted to fuck the ugly ones,” Sully reminded him.

  “Not that ugly,” Carl conceded.

  Sully went back into the bedroom to dress. He could hear Carl poking around the tiny kitchen.

  “You got any coffee?” he called.

  “No,” Sully said. “Hattie’s does though, just down the street.”

  Sully was seated on the edge of the bed, flexing his knee, when Carl poked his head in. “Mind if I grab a quick shower?” he said. Then, catching sight of Sully’s knee, he added, “Jesus.”

  Anymore, that’s the effect Sully’s knee had on people, which was one reason he didn’t like to let people see it. The sight of the grotesque swelling, the deep discoloration, the skin stretched so tightly that it glistened, was something Sully himself had grown accustomed to. It was the look on other people’s faces that scared him.

  He pulled on a fresh pair of work pants, stood to zip and buckle. “Yesterday was a long one,” he explained.

  Carl was still looking at the knee, as Peter had done yesterday, through the fabric.

  “I got a hell of an idea,” Sully said. “Why don’t you pay me for yesterday. My knee always feels better when I take money from you.”

  “You should have that operation,” Carl said. “If they can fix my heart, they can fix your knee.”

  “I got news for you,” Sully said. “They didn’t fix your heart. They just made it so it wouldn’t stop beating for a while. If they’d fixed it, you’d be faithful to your wife and pay your employees what you owe them.”

  “I’ve thought about paying you for last August,” Carl admitted. “But if I did that you’d have nothing to bitch about. You’re better off thinking you’ve been cheated. This way you’ve got somebody to blame. You can tell yourself if it wasn’t for C. I. Roebuck, you’d have the world by the short hairs.”

  When Carl hit the shower, Sully went downstairs and outside. It was only quarter to seven, but Miss Beryl had already leaned the shovel against the porch post. The sun was out, but the early morning air was bitter, and the sun’s reflection off the new powder contained little warmth. What did warm Sully was the sight of Carl Roebuck’s snowblower sitting snugly under the tarp in the corner of the garage where he’d left it. The motor started on the first pull.

  Sully had finished the sidewalk and half the drive by the time Carl Roebuck, freshly showered but in yesterday’s clothes, appeared on the porch.

  “Meet me at the donut shop,” he called. “I’ll pay you for yesterday.”

  Sully turned the snowblower off. “You should go home and tell Toby you love her before somebody else does. Say it like you mean it,” he suggested, suddenly feeling something like affection for his dead friend’s son. He remembered the dark sedan at the job site yesterday—that it had followed Carl back to town. Maybe he was wrong about Toby’s devotion to him. Maybe she was considering a divorce and had hired someone to follow him. Sully considered mentioning the sedan to Carl, then decided not to. “Say Happy Thanksgiving to her for me,” he said instead.

  Carl was looking at the snowblower. “I’ve got one just like that,” he said. “Identical.”

  By the time Sully finished with the driveway, he knew that his first order of business was to find Jocko and some prescription painkillers. Just as he’d predicted to Ruth, his knee, which always hummed dully, was singing full throat this morning. Naturally, the drugstore would be closed on Thanksgiving, which meant that Jocko, who lived alone and wasn’t in the book, would not be easy to locate. Actually, Jocko had given Sully his phone number half a dozen times, but Sully’d always managed to lose it.

  The first place to check was Hattie’s because Hattie’s was only half a block away and if he didn’t find Jocko, he’d at least find coffee. And besides, Rub was supposed to meet him there. The trouble was that when Sully arrived the CLOSED sign was hanging in the window. He had a vague recollection of Cass warning him of this yesterday. The rest of Bath looked closed too, and Sully wondered if he might be better off to go home and wait for the town to wake up, even if that meant waiting until tomorrow. It wouldn’t kill Carl Roebuck if his two-bedroom ranch didn’t get sheetrocked until Friday. Except that on Friday, Carl might hire the guy who regularly did the sheetrocking and line up an even shittier job for himself and Rub. In a few weeks there’d be nothing but indoor work, up and down stairs, and precious little of that. Today might be his last chance for a while to do a job he hated in the freezing cold.

  Normally, the best place to look for Jocko was the OTB, except the OTB wouldn’t be open on Thanksgiving either. Since it wasn’t, Sully decided to stop by the Rexall where Jocko worked just in case. As he expected, the interior of the store was dark, its rows of shelves disappearing into deepening shadow as they receded from the street. The donut shop, at least, would be open.

  There, Sully found Rub sitting at the counter, and since Rub didn’t see him coming, Sully cuffed Rub’s wool hat halfway down the counter, where it landed on top of a sugar dispenser. “I thought I told you to meet me at Hattie’s,” he said, sliding onto the stool next to Rub. Except for a sullen teenage waitress and a foursome of sleepy-looking truckers in a booth, they had the place to themselves.

  Rub didn’t appear to miss his hat, nor did he make any attempt to smooth the cowlick Sully’d created. “Hattie’s was closed,” he observed. “I wisht we didn’t have to work on Thanksgiving.”

  “You don’t have to,” Sully assured him. The young woman behind the counter intuited that Sully would want coffee and that he’d want nothing else. She put a steaming cup in front of him and walked away without inquiring. On her way past the sugar dispenser she delicately removed Rub’s hat by making forceps of her thumb and forefinger.

  “If I don’t work, you’ll be mad at me,” Rub said sadly.

  “Well, that’s true,” Sully admitted.

  “And Bootsie’s still mad at me about the car,” Rub told him. “Everybody’s mad at me.”

  “See?” Sully said. “You’re better off working.”

  “I just wisht I had money for a donut.”

  “What happened to your pay from yesterday?”

  “Bootsie took it.”

  Sully got the waitress’s attention, ordered Rub a donut.

  “One of them big ole cream-filled deals,” Rub explained to her, pointing to the ones he meant. When the girl put one in front of him, he waited for her to go away and then said, “She gave me the smallest one.”

  “They’re all the same size,” the girl said, as if to no one in particular. She was standing by her post at the register. She looked at neither Rub nor Sully.

  “Are not,” Rub whispered, staring at the donut.

  “Eat the fucking thing,” Sully said.

  Rub did as he was told. When he bit the donut, cream filling bulged out the anus-shaped opening at the other end. Sully had to look away. “Carl been by?” he said.

  Rub was intent on the donut and didn’t hear. His first bite made a large opening, leaving wings on
either side of the puncture. No matter which wing he bit into now, the cream filling was going to escape.

  “I’m going to knock you right off that stool in a minute,” Sully said.

  Rub looked over at him to see if this threat was genuine. Apparently it was. “What?” he said.

  “I asked you if Carl was here.”

  “When?”

  “Before I came in, Rub.”

  “Only for a minute. He came over and told me I smelled like a pussy finger. I wisht we didn’t have to work for him on Thanksgiving.”

  Sully took out two dollars, enough to cover the coffees, Rub’s donut and the tip their sullen waitress hadn’t earned. “Did he give you any money?”

  “He said come by the office when we’re finished.”

  Than which there was no more typical Carl Roebuck maneuver.

  “Meet me at Hattie’s in ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe we can get this job done by midafternoon.”

  “Hattie’s is closed,” Rub reminded him.

  “Outside,” Sully said.

  Rub looked dubious.

  “Don’t try to figure this out, Rub,” Sully told him. “Just do it.”

  “You don’t have to get mad,” Rub said. “You get mad as easy as Bootsie.”

  “We keep the same company,” Sully said.

  Sully left. From outside the donut shop he could see Rub poised over the donut, and for some reason Sully stopped, curious to see how Rub would resolve the problem. Instead of biting either wing of the donut, Rub inserted his open mouth into the hole his first bite had created. Naturally, this was a perfect fit. When Rub sucked, the cream bubble forced out through the anal aperture was drawn back into the donut. This was an oddly cheering solution, and Sully wondered briefly if people underestimated Rub. Briefly.

  When there was only one person in the world you really wanted to see, what were the odds you’d run into him outside a closed OTB in North Bath at 7:30 on Thanksgiving morning? Better than you might imagine, it occurred to Sully, because on the way over to Carl Roebuck’s office he spotted Jocko’s silver Marquis parked in the empty lot, Jocko at the wheel, reading the newspaper. When Sully sneaked up and banged on the window about two inches from Jocko’s ear, he jumped about a foot, pleasing Sully, a man for whom sneaking up on people and scaring the shit out of them had always been a profoundly satisfying activity. Jocko too seemed pretty well satisfied when he recognized Sully, who was often his own explanation, grinning in at him. Jocko flipped him off, then used the same middle finger to direct Sully around to the other side of the Marquis. Sully got in gingerly, left the door open and his leg mostly outside. “Howdy, Chester,” Jocko said, studying Sully over his glasses. Jocko was dressed conservatively as always. Light blue shirt, fat tie, sans-a-belt slacks. In his late thirties, his hair was short, graying at the temples, and he was about fifty pounds overweight. There was nothing about his appearance to suggest his radical, long-haired student days, during which, he’d admitted to Sully, he also majored in pharmaceuticals.

  “You plan to sit here until they open tomorrow?” Sully asked.

  “Churches and OTBs should never close,” Jocko said. “There should be a law.”

  “There is,” Sully reminded him. “It closes OTBs on Christmas and Thanksgiving. I know of a couple churches that are open if you’re interested.”

  Jocko waved this suggestion away. “I try to stay away from long shots.”

  “Can’t be much worse than betting trifectas.”

  “I don’t bet them either,” Jocko said. “Triples are for lost, desperate souls like you.” His face brightened suddenly. “I like the idea, though. Special trifecta wagers on Christmas and Easter. I can see the promotion. Trinity wagers. Christianity finally pays off.”

  “That solves Christmas and Easter. It still leaves Thanksgiving.”

  “No problem,” Jocko shrugged. “Most people think Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday. This is a mighty confused nation we live in.”

  They were grinning at each other now.

  “I was hoping I’d run into you …” Sully said.

  Jocko folded his newspaper, tossed it into the backseat. “Step into my office,” he suggested, leaning past Sully to open the glove box. “And close that goddamn door before we both freeze, will you?”

  “I’m not sure this knee will bend so early in the morning,” Sully said.

  “Try,” Jocko suggested as he rummaged in the glove compartment.

  Sully winced, finally got his whole leg inside and closed the door. “You must have the shortest legs of any grown man in town.”

  Jocko’s glove compartment resembled a small pharmacy, or candy store, full of small, bright plastic bottles. Jocko yanked out several of these, held them up to the light, said “Nah” and tossed them back. After a minute he found a tube that met his approval. “Here,” he said, handing it to Sully. “Eat these.” His standard line.

  There was no label on the tube, but Sully accepted it gratefully.

  “Don’t operate any heavy machinery,” Jocko advised.

  “Just a hammer today,” Sully promised. “I’ll probably pound my thumb all morning.”

  “Go ahead. You won’t feel it,” Jocko said. “Somebody told me you’d gone back to work. I figured that was so dumb it had to be true.”

  “Just for a while, probably,” Sully said. “I’d like to get a little ahead for the winter. Then I’ll go slow for a while. Maybe I’ll feel better in the spring.”

  Jocko looked at him over the rims of his glasses. “Arthritis doesn’t get better,” he said. “It gets worse. Every time.”

  “Two more years and I can take early retirement,” Sully said. “After that, fuck ’em.”

  This came out sounding like the bravado it was. Sully knew that the only reason Jocko didn’t argue was kindness. They both knew his knee wasn’t going to give him two more years of hard labor.

  “What’s the line on the game Saturday?” Sully wondered. He was both genuinely interested and anxious to change the subject.

  “You can get Bath and twenty points is what I’m hearing.”

  Sully raised his eyebrows. “That’s tempting.” like Vince, Sully had lost on Bath against Schuyler Springs every year for the last dozen. And like Vince, he always got points, just never enough of them.

  “I know what you mean,” Jocko commiserated. “I’d love to see the kids win one. Your paramour’s kid is a pretty good little guard. He doesn’t get much help, though.”

  Sully ignored the fact that Jocko, like so many people in town, knew of his relationship with Ruth. “A win would be a lot to ask,” Sully admitted. Recent Bath-Schuyler Springs contests had become so lopsided that Schuyler was threatening to drop the smaller school from its schedule on humanitarian grounds. The preservation of “the game” was a hot political issue, and the man who’d won the most recent Bath mayoral election had made the continuation of the game his only campaign promise. “I’d personally be thrilled if they beat the spread. Who’s giving twenty, by the way?” Bath would probably lose by more than twenty, but so far twenty was the most Sully’d heard anybody giving.

  “You know Jerry’s brother Vince?” Jocko said.

  “You mean Vince’s brother Jerry?”

  “The one that has the Schuyler restaurant,” Jocko clarified.

  “Right. Jerry.”

  “How can you tell them apart?”

  “Apparently Jerry will give you Bath and twenty points. That’s one way,” Sully said. “Listen, what do I owe you here?”

  “Nada. They’re samples. Let me know if they make you sick,” Jocko suggested when Sully opened the door and began the slow process of getting out. When this was finally accomplished and Sully’d limped back around to the driver’s side, Jocko was shaking his head. “You know what you should do?” he said.

  “No, what?” Sully said.

  “You should go back into the arson business.”

  Sully pretended to consider this. “It’s a thought,” h
e said, since Jocko was probably joking. Ever since he’d burned down Kenny Roebuck’s house, people kidded him about being an arsonist. Some of them, he’d learned over the years, really thought he was, thanks to Kenny’s publicly treating the fire as good fortune.

  “Hell,” Jocko snorted, “if that theme park ever falls through, you’d have clients up and down Main Street. I might hire you myself.”

  “Keep the faith,” Sully suggested. “They’ll run again tomorrow.”

  Carl’s red Camaro was parked out front of the third-floor office and so was the El Camino, which meant that Carl was probably inside. Still, that was three flights up, so Sully made a snowball, went out into the middle of the empty street and tossed it at the row of windows that said TIP TOP CONSTRUCTION: C. I. ROEBUCK. The sound the snowball made on the windowpane was louder than Sully expected, and Carl’s face quickly appeared at the window behind the snowball’s powdery smudge. Also his shoulders, which were inexplicably bare. There was movement behind him too, a white, frightened face darting away. Carl raised the window. “I ever tell you what the C.I. in my name is for?”

  “Yesterday,” Sully grinned up at him. A curtain in the next-door window that represented the outer office drew stealthily back. “Hi, Ruby,” Sully waved. “Happy Thanksgiving.” The curtain fell back into place.

  “What the hell do you want, Sully?” Carl said. “You’re supposed to be sheetrocking.”

  And you’re supposed to be home, Sully considered reminding him. Instead he said, “I missed you at the donut shop. You probably don’t remember saying you’d meet me there because that was where you were going to pay me.”

  “And when I’m not there that means you come here and give me a heart attack by throwing snowballs at my office window.”

  “It’s a good thing I did, too,” Sully said. “It’d be just like you to let me walk up three flights of stairs and then not answer the door.”

  “Why don’t I follow you out to the site in half an hour?” Carl said. On his face was a pleading, man-to-man, I’m-in-the-middle-of-something-here, have-a-fucking-heart sort of expression.