Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  “I know she’s bossy,” Ralph admitted. “And she’s not happy unless she’s trying to change people. She’s not mean, though.”

  “Vera was never mean,” Sully agreed. “Just frustrated about not getting her own way.”

  “I guess they all want their own way.”

  “So do we,” Sully pointed out.

  Ralph thought about it. “Not me,” he said finally. “I just like for people to all get along. I don’t care whose way. What difference does it make, whose way?” Ralph wanted to know. Having admitted to letting Vera have hers, he would have liked to get Sully to agree about the wisdom of his practice.

  Sully shrugged. “All day long people have been trying to get me to eat turkey. What I really feel like eating is a chicken-fried steak. Why shouldn’t I eat one?”

  Sully had chosen the example at random and unknowingly struck a nerve. Ralph was inordinately fond of fried foods and was no longer allowed to eat them. “They’re bad for you,” he pointed out weakly, aware that this particular argument wasn’t likely to succeed with Sully.

  “Suppose I want one anyhow?”

  “Why would you want something you know’s bad for you?”

  “Good question,” Sully admitted. “I always do, though.” He put his cigarette out with his shoe by way of punctuation. “By the way,” he added when they’d shaken hands. “I know a guy who might be getting rid of a snowblower cheap.”

  “How come?” Ralph wondered. After all, winter was about to descend on them in earnest.

  “Moving to Florida,” Sully lied.

  “Won’t need it there, will he?” Ralph said.

  “If you’re interested …” Sully said. “It’s practically brand-new. I’ve used it myself.”

  “I don’t know,” Ralph said, looking away. “How much does he want for it?”

  “I think I might end up with it for free,” Sully said. “You could keep it over at your place and I could borrow it.”

  Clearly this made no sense at all to Ralph. Snowblowers cost a lot of money, and it wasn’t like you couldn’t sell a used one, especially this time of year. Ralph himself was always inclined to trust Sully, but this was by no means his wife’s inclination. Vera would smell something wrong with this arrangement immediately and probably find a way to insult Sully for making the offer. “Sounds awful good,” Ralph admitted sadly, like a little boy imparting bad news to a friend—my mom won’t let me.

  “I’ll let you know how it works out,” Sully promised, then nodded in the direction of the boy. “Don’t be too surprised if he wants to drive home.”

  Ralph studied the boy, smiled. “I kinda wish I could be around to see him and his brothers grown up safe. I’d feel a lot better knowing they were okay.”

  “What makes you think you won’t be?” Sully said.

  Ralph apparently found encouragement in this question. “Maybe I will,” he shrugged, his face brightening. “Hell, maybe we both will.”

  “Hold that thought,” Sully suggested by way of good-bye, and the two men shook hands again before Sully went back inside. At the cigarette machine by the door Sully was able to watch Ralph back out cautiously and point the car back toward Bath, driving like a man who didn’t intend to die in an accident. Sully caught just a glimpse of his grandson snuggled into Ralph’s big body for safety.

  The same girl who had waited on Sully and his grandson came over when he went back into the restaurant. “More coffee?” she said. She actually smiled.

  “Okay,” Sully agreed. “And a chicken-fried steak on the side.”

  She blinked. “You want a chicken-fried steak?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “We got a special on turkey and stuffing,” she said. “All the trimmings for six ninety-five.”

  “Terrific,” Sully said. “I’ll see if I’m still hungry after my chicken-fried steak.”

  The girl’s smile disappeared. In her opinion there should have been a law against wise-asses on Thanksgiving.

  Carl Roebuck’s car was in the driveway, so Sully pulled in behind it. He looked around for the snowblower, but it wasn’t in sight. Carl himself was seated at the kitchen table staring at a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s when Sully knocked and went in.

  “You know,” Carl looked up. “When we bought this house, the realtor swore people like you weren’t even allowed in the neighborhood.”

  Sully pulled up a chair. “You must have misunderstood her,” he said. “She probably said there were no niggers allowed.”

  “I’ve always considered you a nigger,” Carl said. “You do nigger work for nigger wages. Niggers have higher aspirations, of course.”

  Sully lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Carl’s direction by way of response. “I’d be happy if I could just get you to pay me my nigger wages. That’s my only aspiration, in fact.”

  Carl inhaled Sully’s smoke deeply. “Can I have one of those?”

  Sully tossed him the pack. Carl pushed the bottle in Sully’s direction.

  “We’ll drink right out of the bottle, like men,” Carl said. “This’ll be men’s night here at Casa Roebuck. Glasses? We don’t need no fucking glasses.” He inhaled his own cigarette deeply. “You never go to the movies, do you?”

  “Never,” Sully said.

  “You don’t even own a VCR, I bet.”

  “Not even,” Sully admitted.

  Carl shook his head. “Sully, Sully, Sully. You’re not an eighties guy.”

  “If I had a VCR, would I be happy like you?” Sully said.

  “Not as happy, probably,” Carl said. He took a swig from the bottle Sully hadn’t touched, then set it back down. He laughed suddenly and let his head loll back so he could look at the ceiling and ran his fingers through his hair. “Fuck me,” he said. He sounded absolutely exhausted.

  “Exactly which of your doctor’s instructions are you following these days,” Sully inquired.

  “All of them,” Carl said to the ceiling. “Every one.”

  “He advised you to drink and smoke and screw your brains loose?”

  “Except those,” Carl grinned drunkenly. “Those were unreasonable requests. He wouldn’t have made them in the first place had he known me.”

  “If he knew you, he wouldn’t have resuscitated you. Where’s Toby?”

  “Toby who?”

  Sully let the question hang.

  “Around someplace. She wouldn’t want to join us for men’s night.” Carl Roebuck studied him drunkenly. “God, I hope I don’t end up like you.”

  Sully nodded. “I hope you don’t either,” he said agreeably.

  Carl shook his head. “Sixty years old and still getting schoolboy crushes. By the time I’m your age, I hope to be smart.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt to hope,” Sully said. “You’re off to a slow start, though, if getting smart is your goal.”

  Carl ran his hands through his hair. “That’s my wife’s position,” he admitted. “She’s displeased with me at the moment, even though I took your advice this morning and went home. Problem was, I got laid twice on the way. Then I made the mistake of telling her about it and asking her forgiveness. I think I may have ruined her Thanksgiving.”

  “You can sleep on the couch again if you want,” Sully said. He got up, stubbed his cigarette out in the sink, washed the ashes down the drain.

  “That’s the worst couch in Bath,” Carl said. “I had nightmares on that couch.” He took out his wallet, extracted a wad of bills and tossed them in front of Sully. “Buy yourself a new fucking couch. You can’t expect houseguests to sleep on a couch that gives them nightmares.”

  Sully fanned the notes with his pinky. There looked to be roughly a thousand dollars. “I’ll come by tomorrow,” he said. “You can pay me then.”

  “Take it now,” Carl advised. “When my wife divorces me I won’t be able to pay attention. This is your chance. Take whatever the fuck you think I owe you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sully said. “I’ll get what you o
we me. I’ll get it when you’re sober, too. That way you’ll be good and pissed off.”

  Carl shook his head. “You do nigger work for nigger wages, but you got a white man’s scruples. No wonder you don’t have a VCR.”

  “Or a snowblower.”

  Carl howled, his face turning beet red with delight. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth. The only fun I had all day today was stealing back my own fucking snowblower.”

  “Well,” Sully got up. “You go ahead and keep it till it snows again. Next time screw the railing back down, at least. My landlady falls, and she’ll own C. I. Roebuck.”

  “She can have it,” he said. “If they don’t start on that fun park, I won’t be able to give it away.” Then he thought of something. “I didn’t tell that nosy fucker anything, by the way.”

  Sully stopped at the door. “Who?”

  “That guy this morning.”

  “What guy, for Christ sake?”

  “The guy who came into the office right after you left.”

  Sully remembered the man in the dark sedan who’d said he had an imperfect understanding of the situation. “Little guy?” Sully said. “All dressed up?”

  “The very one.”

  “He was parked down front,” Sully told him. “I threw a snowball at him. He seemed unhappy I noticed he was there. I figured some angry husband hired him.”

  “He wanted to know if you worked for me. I told him no. Which reminds me. I might have something for you and your dwarf tomorrow,” he said. “Stop by the office.”

  “Okay,” Sully agreed. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  “Because I’m not tired.”

  “You’re exhausted. You should see yourself.”

  “I may be exhausted,” Carl conceded. “But I’m not tired.”

  Toby Roebuck was sitting quietly in the truck when Sully got in. The truck’s dome light didn’t work, and the glowing tip of her cigarette was the only testimony to her presence.

  “God, you’re a jumpy man,” she said.

  She had, in fact, startled him. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.

  She looked at him. “There must be a lot of surprises in your life, Sully.”

  This was true, and Sully didn’t deny it. Today had been a pretty surprising day, start to finish. “How come you let him back in?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I think Horace gave him a key, the dirty, double-crossing snake. Carl was there when I got back from Schuyler.”

  This reference jogged Sully’s memory. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there’s a rumor circulating about you.”

  “Really!” Toby clapped her hands in mock excitement. “How exciting! Do tell.”

  “You’ve got a boyfriend in Schuyler.”

  Toby studied him seriously for long enough to make him squirm, then broke into laughter. “Poor Sully,” she said when she was finished. “You are a hoot.”

  As was almost always the case with women, Sully suddenly felt himself to be on the fringes of the conversation. “Hey, I didn’t make it up,” he insisted. “In fact, I told the guy I didn’t believe it.”

  This set Toby Roebuck off again, though she stifled her hilarity more quickly this time. “You really are a sweet man,” she said, striving for seriousness.

  “It’s true,” Sully grinned at her. “I just wish more women realized it.”

  Inside the house, Carl had come over to the window and was peering out, scout fashion, into the drive where they sat. Sully doubted he could see anything but his own reflection. He started the truck, realizing that not hearing it might have been what had brought Carl to the window. “Maybe you shouldn’t stay here tonight,” he said. “He’s in pretty rough shape.”

  She noticed his glance and followed it. “I can’t take much more of this,” she admitted. “Look at him.”

  Carl, still shading his eyes, was right up against the window. He looked unsteady, like he might tumble through the glass.

  “Go away for a while,” he suggested. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  The suggestion brought a smile. “That’s a funny idea. You looking after anybody.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Sully, don’t go getting your feelings hurt. I know you’d mean to. After about two minutes you’d get sidetracked and forget, and you wouldn’t think of him again until about two weeks after the funeral. You’d be walking down the street and wondering why you hadn’t seen him around.”

  Carl had stepped back and gone to the foot of the stairs, his back to the window.

  “By the way, where’d he hide the snowblower?”

  “Out at the yard,” she confided. “In the shed.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll steal it back tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Careful of that mean-ass dog.”

  “I’m not worried about the dog,” Sully said. “I’m trying to figure how I’m going to scale the fence.”

  “You’re a man among men, Sully.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “It wasn’t a compliment,” she assured him.

  “You don’t have to get all dressed up to come in here,” Tiny said when Sully, clean-shaven and dressed as he’d been for his visit to Vera’s, came in and took a seat at the end of the bar. The shirt was a gift from Ruth, given to him months earlier, and this was the first time he’d worn it. He’d put it on right out of its plastic wrapping. The shirt’s creases still conformed more to its cardboard packaging than to Sully’s torso. The pinholes had still not closed, in fact.

  A college football game on the television above the bar occupied the attention of the dozen or so men who’d escaped their families late on Thanksgiving afternoon. The holiday had begun too early with the Macy’s parade, and they hadn’t been able to enjoy the afternoon football with all the holiday commotion. At The Horse they hoped to watch the second game in peace.

  “I always like to look spiffy when I know you’re tending bar,” Sully said. Tiny appeared to be in a better mood, and Sully knew they would not renew last night’s quarrel until later in the evening. For the next few hours both would pretend they were not going to renew it at all, a notion they would surrender only when the quarrel was actually under way. “Where’s your best customer?”

  Tiny consulted his watch. “Should be along any minute,” he said. “You’re popular today. I been open all of an hour and already you’ve had a phone call and a delivery.” Tiny produced a foil-covered plate from underneath the bar. “Smells like turkey.”

  Sully peered beneath the foil. Turkey, stuffing, squash, cranberry sauce. Still warm. He examined both sides of the foil. “No return address.”

  “Your ex,” Tiny said. “What’s-his-face brought it. The mailman.”

  “Ralph?”

  “He said you missed dinner.”

  “I just finished eating, actually. Who phoned?” he asked, expecting it to be Ruth, who wouldn’t leave her name, of course.

  “Somebody about a job.” Tiny had scribbled a note, which he handed to Sully. The note contained a phone number and a man’s name: Miles Anderson.

  Sully frowned. “Who the fuck is Miles Anderson?”

  “Never heard of him,” Tiny admitted. “Said he just bought a house here in town. Needs some work done on it. Another asshole yuppie, probably.”

  “The woods are full of them, all right,” Sully admitted. “At least they’ve got money.”

  “That’s what makes them yuppies,” Tiny said. “Otherwise they’d just be assholes.”

  “I wish I could stay busy just working for people I admire,” Sully said.

  He was on his second beer and still chatting amiably with Tiny when Wirf slid stiff-legged onto the stool next to him. “Nice to see all my loved ones are on speaking terms again,” he observed. “What’s that?” he said, pointing at the foil-covered dish at Sully’s elbow. “It smells like food.”

  “No dinner, huh?” Sully said.

  “I had dinner with you,” Wirf reminded
him. “Remember?”

  “That was yesterday,” Sully pointed out.

  “Oh.” Wirf grinned. “You meant today?”

  “Stick this in the microwave, will you?” Sully said, pushing the plate in Tiny’s direction.

  Tiny did as he was told, a shade unhappily, it seemed to Sully.

  “He’ll be bellyaching about that before the night’s over,” Sully predicted.

  “He’d rather sell me half a dozen pickled eggs over the course of the evening,” Wirf said. “And who can blame him?”

  “I’ll be able to after another beer or two.”

  The microwave chirped and Tiny returned with the plate of turkey and stuffing, steaming now. Several men watching the football game placed orders for the same.

  “See the trouble you cause?” Tiny said.

  Wirf dove into the food hungrily.

  “I don’t think I can watch this,” Sully said, wondering how a man could get a degree in law without picking up some rudimentary table manners. Wirf forked with his left, knifed with his right, put neither utensil down until they were no longer of practical use.

  Sully went across the room and dialed the number on the slip of paper Tiny had given him.

  “Adirondack.”

  “What?”

  “Adirondack Motel.”

  “You got a Miles Anderson staying there?”

  “Why don’t I check.”

  “Why don’t you.”

  After a moment: “Miles Anderson.”

  “This is Don Sullivan.”

  “Who?”

  “Okay, good-bye.”

  “Oh … right … Mr. Sullivan. Sorry. Listen. I just purchased a house here in town. On Upper Main. You know where that is?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Sully said.

  “Ah.” Miles Anderson hesitated. “That’s a joke, I’ll bet.”

  “I live on Upper Main,” Sully confessed.

  “You do?” Incredulity.

  “Which house did you buy?”

  “The one across the street from the Sans Merci.”

  “Souci.”

  “Right,” Miles Anderson said. “I knew it was without something. I must have been thinking of Keats.”

  “Must have been,” Sully said. “That’s a big house, Mr. Anderson.” He’d located the house, the largest on Upper Main, in his mind.