Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  “And you think you can pay your debts in jelly donuts?”

  “I can’t even get jelly donuts out of you half the time,” Sully pointed out, relieved that they were not apparently going to argue that seriously after all. “I’d be happy if I could.”

  “See?” Carl said. “That’s exactly what I mean. Always ragging. You rag that dumb cop outside the OTB every morning for a month, and then you’re surprised when he wants to shoot you. Everybody who knows you wants to shoot you, Sully. The only thing that saves you is the rest of us aren’t armed.”

  In the dark below they heard the camp door swing shut and low voices coming up the bank toward them. Carl quickly took one last drag of his cigarette, then ground it under his foot.

  “Zip your fly too while you’re at it,” Sully advised.

  Carl checked, found it zipped and Sully grinning at him. “That’s exactly the sort of shit I’m talking about,” he said, his voice lowered significantly.

  “Tell me something,” Sully said, sensing that with Toby’s arrival he would gain the upper hand. “Do you know what a hypocrite is?”

  “I can answer that one,” Toby said, arriving on cue. “He doesn’t.”

  “See the thanks I get?” Carl appealed to Sully. “My pregnant wife is hustled off into the woods by two shady characters, I race to her rescue, and what do I get? Heartache.”

  “One shady character,” Peter corrected.

  “Besides,” Toby said. “It wasn’t much of a rescue. You’ve been standing up here talking to Sully for ten minutes.”

  “Did that cop really pull his gun?” Carl asked Peter.

  Peter nodded.

  “You didn’t believe me, right?” Sully said.

  Carl Roebuck ignored him. “Come here, woman,” he said, suddenly dropping to his knees.

  “I will,” Toby said. “But only because I want witnesses.”

  When she was within reach, Carl drew her to him, lifted her sweater and inserted his head underneath.

  “Would you two like to be alone?” Sully said.

  “Absolutely not,” Toby said as Carl nuzzled her tummy.

  “How’s my little Rodrigo?” Carl’s muffled voice came from beneath the sweater. “Was Mommy nice to you today?”

  “Enough,” Toby said, trying to back away. “Your nose is cold.”

  But Carl had linked his arms behind her thighs and she couldn’t move. “Rodrigo, Rodrigo, it’s your papa come to visit.”

  “I’ve warned him,” Toby told them, “that I’ll abort this child before I’ll let him be christened Rodrigo Roebuck.”

  “Don’t listen, Rodrigo,” Carl begged. “Mommy’s a meany, but your daddy loves you.”

  “Daddy’s about to get a knee in the windpipe.”

  “Goodnight, my little one,” said Carl, apparently taking this threat seriously and coming out from under his wife’s sweater. “Who the hell’s going to lay this floor with you in jail?” he wanted to know.

  “Speak to my assistant,” Sully said, indicating Peter. “He was going to do it anyhow.”

  “What about your dwarf?” Carl said. “Will he help?”

  “Sure,” Sully said, though he was not confident Rub would work with Peter if Sully wasn’t there. “You could always lend a hand yourself if you got really desperate,” he suggested.

  “I’ve got a business to run,” Carl said. “I was counting on you, and you fucked up.”

  “Don’t start again,” Sully warned him. “You aren’t even going to use the camp again until June, right? This job doesn’t have to be done tomorrow.”

  “Wrong,” Carl said. “Wrong again. Wrong, still and forever fucking wrong. You’re a compass that points due south, do you know that? Do you want to know why you’re wrong this time, schmucko?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. I’ve got a buyer coming up to look at it during the holidays.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about any buyer,” Sully said.

  Carl shook his head. “You are so shameless. Now you’re telling me if you’d known we were selling the camp you wouldn’t have gone and coldcocked a cop, is that it? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Son,” Sully said, “be a good boy and take this asshole down to the lake and drown him. Put stones in his pockets.”

  “Maybe he won’t have to go to jail,” Toby suggested.

  “He assaulted a police officer, for Christ sake,” Carl said, exasperated. “Of course he’s going to jail. It’s two days before Christmas. We’ll be lucky to get him arraigned before the first of the year.”

  “You’re getting all upset, Carl,” Sully said, since pointing this out was about the only pleasure to be derived from the situation. In fact, he’d been going over the whole situation in his mind and had come to pretty much the same conclusion about how things would go. He had indeed fucked up, and the earlier illusion of freedom, the euphoria of the moment, had dissipated in the cruel December wind.

  “I’m going to visit you every day,” Carl promised. “I want to see you suffer.”

  “A visit from you every day would do the trick,” Sully conceded.

  “Let’s go home,” Toby Roebuck suggested. “It’s cold, and we aren’t going to find out what’s going to happen standing out here.”

  “The voice of reason at last,” said Peter, who’d been observing these proceedings with his customary distant amusement.

  “What use is reason when you’re dealing with Don Sullivan?” Carl, still combative, wanted to know. “Jesus.”

  “He’s all upset.” Sully winked at Peter.

  “You want some advice?” Carl said. “Turn yourself in. Don’t wait for them to find you. Just drive over to City Hall, go in and ask which cell.”

  “That’s your advice?”

  “That’s my advice.”

  “Okay,” Sully said. “Then I won’t do it.”

  Carl threw up his hands and turned to Peter. “Due fucking south,” he said. “Every time.”

  Midnight. The Horse. Roll call.

  Regulars present, all in a row, drunk: Wirf (completely), Peter (sleepily), Sully (aspiring).

  Regulars present, sober: Birdie, seated at the end of the bar (benevolent, watchful), Tiny, behind the bar (malevolent, watchful).

  Regulars absent, among others: Rub Squeers.

  “Don’t forget to get Rub to help you,” Sully said for about the fifth time that hour.

  “Okay,” Peter agreed. It was pointless to argue, he knew. His father’s giving all this advice, he understood, was in lieu of an apology. Do as I tell you and this will still work out fine, was another meaning. A warrant, they learned from Wirf, had indeed been issued for Sully’s arrest. They’d parked the pickup out back of The Horse in the hope that they might be able to drink a beer in peace before he was arrested, but that had been many beers ago. The sense of their living (drinking) on borrowed time had at first contributed to a festive atmosphere which had only with this most recent round (Wirf s, like most of the others) begun to wind down.

  “Try to get over to Hattie’s by six,” Sully advised. “You know how to fry an egg, don’t you?”

  “Better than you.”

  “There’s not very much to breakfast,” Sully assured him, though this was untrue. Short-order cooks were skilled jugglers and masters of timing. But Cass would keep an eye out and help him. Either that or she’d cook and let him work the register and the tables. Which reminded him of the promise he’d made to her and which he would now be unable to keep unless Wirf could spring him before New Year’s. “Tell her I’ll do that favor for her as soon as I get out,” he added.

  “Okay,” Peter repeated.

  “Let Miles Anderson go until you get the floor in at the camp.”

  “Oooo-kay.”

  “You know how to work a circular saw?”

  Peter grinned drunkenly. “Better than you.”

  Sully nodded. Smart-ass kid. “How long do you figure it’ll take you?”<
br />
  “By myself, three days, maybe four.”

  “You won’t be by yourself.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Peter said, remembering his father’s injunction: get Rub to help.

  “He’ll be fine by tomorrow,” Sully insisted. “Buy him breakfast. Loan him a dollar to bet his double.”

  “Okay,” Peter said.

  Wirf, who had been taking in this conversation, shook his head. “You make me zig, you know that?”

  Sully rotated on his stool. “I make you sick?”

  “No,” Wirf said. “You make me zig. I zig in response to the craziness of existence. If it weren’t for you, I’d live a virtuous life.”

  “You should be thankful I’m around, then,” Sully said, then turned back to his son. “You think you can figure out how to hitch that plow blade to the truck if it snows?”

  “If you can do it, I can do it.”

  “Tell Harold to rig it for you,” Sully decided on further reflection. “Tell him you’re my son.”

  “Right,” Wirf agreed. “You run into problems, drop your old man’s name. Watch all the doors fly open.”

  Sully rotated on his stool again. “I can’t believe it’s going to take you a week to get me out,” Sully said.

  “I’m a Jew. These aren’t my holidays,” he said. “Besides. How can I start getting you out when you won’t even go in?”

  “You’re the one who keeps buying beer,” Sully pointed out. “How can I give myself up with you buying another round every time I get halfway through the beer I’m drinking?”

  “That’s Zen Buddhist philosophy,” Wirf remarked. “If there were no beer there’d be no drunks. Or is it the other way around? If there were no drunks there’d be no beer. If I weren’t so drunk I could tell you.”

  Sully shook his head. “A zillion lawyers in the state of New York, and I end up with a drunk, one-legged, Buddhist Jew.”

  “Hand me one of those eggs,” Wirf said, pointing to the big jar on the bar in front of Peter.

  “No,” Sully said. “I don’t think I could stand that.”

  Peter, who had been nearly asleep, unscrewed the top, reached into the brine and withdrew an egg.

  “Toss it,” Wirf said.

  Peter flipped him the egg, which missed Wirf’s hand, continued over his shoulder and onto the floor.

  Wirf looked at his empty hand. “I’m going to need another egg.”

  Peter reached around his father with this one, placing the egg in Wirf’s hand. “Ah,” Wirf said.

  “How much do you want to bet that prick charges you for both eggs?” Sully said softly, indicating, at the other end of the bar, Tiny, who’d been watching but so far had made no move to get off his stool and adjust Wirf’s tab.

  “Oh God, here we go,” Wirf said. “You’ve never seen this, have you?” he asked Peter.

  Sully took out all the money he had and put it onto the bar. “I got forty-two dollars says he puts two eggs on your tab.”

  Wirf sighed. “Why shouldn’t he charge me for eggs?”

  “How much money have you dropped in here tonight?” Sully wanted to know.

  “Not a dime yet.”

  “What do you figure? What was your tab last night?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I do,” Sully said. “It was over forty dollars. Tonight will be more.”

  “I’ve done more zigging,” Wirf pointed out. “And had more company. This has been team zigging. Synchronized team zigging.”

  “Here he goes,” Sully whispered, nudging Peter, who was again at sleep’s door.

  Tiny had slid off his stool, come halfway up the bar to where the tabs were kept next to the register, where he casually turned one over and made a notation.

  “Hey!” Sully thundered, causing Tiny to leap.

  “Goddamn you, Sully,” the big man said guiltily. “What?”

  “Bring that down here a minute,” Sully said.

  “What?” Tiny said, looking around.

  “I want to see what you just wrote on that tab.” “It wasn’t even your tab I was writing on,” Tiny said. “So take a hike.”

  “I know it wasn’t my tab. Bring it down here. I want to see what you wrote.”

  Tiny grabbed a tab and came down the bar with it. “You know what, Sully? You’re an asshole. Your father was an asshole. Your brother was an asshole. And you’re an asshole.”

  He slapped the tab on the bar in front of Sully. “Go to jail,” he said. “Do us all a favor.”

  Sully turned the tab over, saw that it was his own, and flicked it back at the bartender. The tab caught an air current and dropped straight to the floor like a stone. “That’s not the one you wrote on,” Sully said.

  Tiny grunted, bent at the knees and picked it up and put it back on the bar. “It’s your tab, Sully. And that’s the only one you got any business looking at.”

  “I want to know what you wrote on his,” Sully said, then turned to Wirf. “Tell him you want to see your tab.”

  “But I don’t want to see my tab,” Wirf said. “Ever.”

  “Show him his tab,” Sully said.

  “Fuck off, Sully,” Tiny said, turning and heading back down the bar.

  Sully watched him go, vaguely aware that Wirf had taken out a pen and was scribbling on a cocktail napkin. “Why do you let him piss on your shoes?” Sully said.

  Wirf grinned, handed him the napkin. Sully opened it. “Why do you let him piss on your shoes?” was what it said. “Tell me you aren’t the most predictable man in Bath.”

  “Yeah, okay, so what,” Sully said. “You still haven’t answered the question.”

  “Let’s go home,” Wirf suggested. “Your kid’s asleep.”

  They turned and studied Peter, whose head lay on the bar. When he exhaled from his nose, he made ripples in the puddle of condensation on the bar.

  “Kids are cute when they’re asleep, aren’t they?” Wirf observed. Sully nudged his son, who started awake and said, “Okay.” “It’s your round,” Sully said, “and don’t pretend to be asleep either.”

  “God,” Peter moaned. “Let’s go home.”

  “Hey,” Sully called down the bar to Tiny. “Let’s settle up. Bring Wirf’s tab.”

  “Here we go again,” Wirf said.

  Tiny brought Wirf’s tab. Sully’s was already in front of him. They had not allowed Peter to buy a round. When Sully reached for Wirf’s tab, Tiny slapped a big paw on top of it. “That’s your tab,” he said, indicating Sully’s.

  “I tell you what,” Sully said to Wirf, pushing all the money he had on the bar at Wirf. “I bet you all of it that this greedy cocksucker charged you for both eggs. The one you ate and the one on the floor.”

  Wirf took the tab from Tiny, glanced at it, handed the bartender three twenties. Tiny took them and the tab and retreated to the register. “Let’s go home,” Wirf said.

  “No,” Sully said. “Well, how about it? If he didn’t charge you for both eggs, I’ll not only give you the money, I’ll eat the egg on the floor.”

  Tiny was on his way back with Wirf’s change. When he got there, he slammed Wirf’s tab down on the bar faceup in front of Sully. “Read it and weep, asshole,” he said, pointing at the last entry. “One egg I charged him for.” Then he pointed at the floor. “There’s your dinner.”

  Sully studied the tab closely to make sure nothing had been erased. Then he gathered the money and stuffed it into Wirf’s shirt pocket. “The perfect end to a perfect day,” he said.

  Wirf was shaking his head. “How come you never see anything headed your way until it runs over you?”

  “I’d have bet everything he charged you for both eggs,” Sully admitted.

  “You did bet everything,” Wirf pointed out.

  All three men slid off their stools then, and Sully went over and picked up the egg off the floor. “Hey,” he said to Tiny, who was grinning now. “I knew if I came in this place long enough I’d get something for free, you cheap prick.” Then
he ate the egg, washing it down with the last swallow of his beer.

  “Go to jail, Sully,” Tiny said. “It’s where you belong.”

  Outside, the wind had died down, leaving the night sky full of stars. The three intersections of downtown Bath were strung with holiday lights.

  “It doesn’t feel like Christmas, somehow,” Sully said.

  Wirf looked at him a little cross-eyed and, finding Sully serious, exploded into laughter. Peter was chuckling too. When Birdie came out, Wirf made him repeat what he’d said, and when Sully did, Wirf laughed so hard again that he had to sit down on the curb. “It’s for moments like these that I zig with you,” he said.

  Sully, who didn’t see anything that funny about what he’d said, turned to Birdie. “You know it’s customary to give a condemned man one last request. My truck’s out back. What do you say we go get naked and see what happens.”

  Birdie thought about it. “Okay,” she said without visible enthusiasm.

  “Don’t you have any pride at all?” Sully said, taken aback.

  “All talk,” she said. “Just as I suspected.”

  When they got Wirf onto his feet again and headed, under Birdie’s guidance, toward his car, Sully and Peter ambled up the street toward the police station. When they got to the alley alongside Woolworth’s, Sully said, “Wait here a minute,” and disappeared into the darkness, from which Peter heard him retching. After a minute Sully returned, looking pale and unsteady. “You all set on tomorrow?”

  “All set,” Peter said, holding up a thumb to show he meant it. For the last two hours, Peter’s mood had been strangely agreeable, his customary sarcasm and wry distance absent. Not at all his usual tight-assed self, in Sully’s opinion. Maybe his son just needed to drink more. Or perhaps he was still under the spell of the prettiest girl in Bath.

  They walked, slowly.

  “Tiny was right about one thing,” Sully said. “Your grandfather was some asshole.”

  “I don’t really remember him,” Peter admitted.

  “Good,” Sully told him. “I know you think I’m an asshole too, but I’m nothing compared to him. Not really.”

  “No, you’re not,” Peter agreed. “Not really.”

  “What’re you planning to tell Will?” Sully asked, since that was what he’d been thinking about all night. Of all the regrets he refused to indulge, this was the biggest.