Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

  Of course, these principles applied to himself as well as others. He’d made his share of mistakes, and there was plenty of legitimate blame that might be laid on his doorstep, but his sense of things was that other people mistook what they were. He had not been the best husband to Vera, who had legitimate gripes. But she had been uncanny in her ability to select, as the focus of her fury, something he hadn’t done. Ruth was the same way, trying to make him feel responsible for Janey. For his worst blunders, on the other hand, he’d been consistently rewarded. After burning down Kenny Roebuck’s house, he’d been thanked profusely. The result of ignoring his son was that Vera and Ralph had managed to make an educated man out of him. He was beginning to sense in all of this perversity the way his current situation would eventually shake down. Somehow, although he’d assaulted a police officer in front of witnesses, he was going to walk. He could feel it. In return for which it would generally be conceded that he was responsible for Hattie’s death.

  No, the world, in Sully’s view, did little to inspire belief in justice. The conventional Christian wisdom seemed to be that all of this world’s inequities would be rectified in the next, but Sully had his doubts. Wasn’t the perversity of the world he knew more likely a true reflection of its source? What if Big Jim Sullivan was grinning down at him from heaven, seated comfortably at the right hand of the Father? That would surprise a lot of people, though not Sully.

  “Listen. Tell The Bank I’ll get out upstairs as soon as I can. My lawyer says I could get out as soon as tomorrow, though he’s been known to be mistaken.”

  “I’ll handle Clive,” she said, then to Wirf, “Just don’t let him punch the judge.”

  “You want to ride with us?”

  “No, I’m going with Mrs. Gruber,” Miss Beryl told him.

  “Alice knew Hattie?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” she admitted. “She just hates to miss anything.”

  Outside on the porch, Sully noticed the corner of the envelope Miss Beryl had given him sticking out of the pocket of Wirf’s overcoat. “She finally signing the house over to Clive?” he asked.

  “None of your business,” Wirf said, not unexpectedly, pushing the envelope out of sight.

  “You sure are a secretive prick, you know that?”

  Wirf shrugged. “You ever hear of confidentiality?”

  “Here I’ve known you all these years and today I find out your name is Abraham.”

  “You didn’t know that?” Wirf said. “It’s on the door of my office.”

  “You have an office?”

  “Sully, Sully, Sully.”

  Wirf put his gloves on and grabbed the porch railing, which wobbled at the base where Carl Roebuck, the rat, had removed the screws. Sully made a mental note to fix it as soon as he got out of jail, lest Miss Beryl kill herself and he find himself responsible for the death of two old women.

  Organ music, vaguely religious, was being played throughout the funeral home at a volume designed, it seemed to Sully, to get just under the skin. It was slightly louder in the tiny bathroom he’d been shown to so he could change his pants and put on the socks he’d bought at the men’s store. The cramped room was about the size of a closet, containing a commode, a tiny sink, a warped mirror. Above, in one corner, was a small speaker from which the organ music leaked. When Sully sat on the commode, his knees nearly touched the door he’d closed behind him when he entered. His knee, defying logic as usual, seemed to have gotten worse in jail, and changing his pants and putting on the new socks proved a slow, awkward, painful task. He’d worked up a full sweat when the door he’d forgotten to lock opened, catching him sitting on the commode in his undershorts, one sock on, one sock off.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jocko said, going scarlet and quickly closing the door again. Then, just his voice through the door, “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that you don’t have to take your pants completely off to relieve yourself?”

  “Don’t go away,” Sully said to the door. “I want to talk to you.”

  Sully pulled on the second sock, then the suit pants that matched his jacket. The dry cleaner, one of two in Bath, was located right next door to the men’s store where he’d bought his socks, so he had talked Wirf into stopping in on the off chance. “That’s them, right there,” Sully’d pointed when the pants came by, recognizing them among the first batch of items that creaked past them on the overhead chain.

  “Unbelievable,” Wirf had muttered.

  The girl blinked when she read the date on the ticket. “Nineteen eighty-two?” she read. “You brought these in two years ago?”

  “Don’t tell me they’re not done yet, either,” Sully warned her. “I need them right now.”

  Jocko was still standing guard outside when Sully finally emerged, zipping his fly for emphasis. “I thought you were in jail,” Jocko said.

  “I was,” Sully admitted. “I’ve been given a three-hour furlough. Since I’m a bearer.”

  Jocko snorted at this. “God, I love small towns,” he said. “You even been arraigned?”

  “Tomorrow,” Sully told him.

  “Didn’t I tell you to watch out for that cop?” Jocko said.

  “I don’t know, did you?”

  Jocko made a gurgling sound in his throat. “How are you going to plead?”

  “Temporary insanity,” Sully told him. “We’re going to contend that those pills of yours made me crazy.”

  All the blood drained out of Jocko’s face.

  “Speaking of which”—Sully grinned at him—“I’m almost out again.”

  “You’re a bad man, Sully.”

  “So people say,” Sully conceded. “I don’t really believe it, though.”

  “I looked all over for you yesterday,” Jocko recollected. “I didn’t know you were in jail.”

  “Then you were the only one who didn’t,” Sully said. His assault of Officer Raymer had achieved wide notoriety even before a detailed account had appeared in the North Bath Weekly Journal, accompanied by a strong editorial that decried what the writer perceived to be a new spirit of lawlessness threatening not just their community but the very foundations of civilization. Coming, as this most recent episode had, on the very heels of the last, when a crazed deer hunter, not content to precipitate carnage in nearby forests, had come into town and begun shooting out windows along Upper Main Street. The editorial suggested that a trend was emerging and warned against the temptation to discount the earlier incident because the perpetrator resided in Schuyler Springs, a community with many undesirables, where such atrocities might be expected. No, there was in reality a series of subtle connections linking these two events if anyone cared to look for them. Indeed, there were families right in their own communities that had a documented history of violent behavior (the Sullivans, father and two sons, were not named), perhaps even, it was hinted, a genetic predisposition toward violence. The editorial ended on this ominous scientific note.

  “I was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, visiting my ex,” Jocko explained apologetically. “We reenacted the famous battle all week. Anyway, your exploits were not carried there.”

  “Good,” Sully said, then frowned at Jocko. “How come you were looking for me?”

  “I saw your crazy-ass triple ran the day before, and I wanted to make sure you knew and didn’t toss the ticket.”

  Sully just stared at him.

  “Sorry,” Jocko said. “I thought you knew.”

  “It ran when I was in jail?”

  Jocko adjusted his thick bifocals, looking genuinely worried now. “You wouldn’t strike a man with glasses?”

  Sully would not have hit Jocko. Had God Himself been there (surely this was the same perverse deity he’d so long expected the existence of), however, he might have taken a swing.

  “I thought you knew,” Jocko repeated.

  “Do me a favor,” Sully said.

  “Anything,” Jocko said. “Just don’t punch me.”

  “Don’t tell me what it paid,” Sully sai
d. “Ever. No matter how I beg you.”

  “Hey,” Jocko said, stepping into the bathroom Sully had just vacated. “You got it.”

  Sully heard the door lock. Some people, he reflected, were just careful. Generally, God did not toy with them.

  The room where old Hattie lay in her casket was empty except for the other bearers and one or two employees of the funeral home. The old woman had outlived all of her contemporaries and was survived only by Cass. Which had made rounding up the requisite number of bearers difficult. Peter had been dragooned, and Sully, from jail, had recruited Carl Roebuck and Jocko and Wirf. Otis, who felt responsible, volunteered. Ralph, good-hearted as always, had offered too, until Vera unvolunteered him, claiming he shouldn’t be lifting after his operation. Rub had been briefly considered, then rejected out of respect for the deceased. Carl and Wirf and Otis were now huddled in the far corner of the room, speaking softly below the organ music. Cass, dressed in black, stood near the casket, conversing quietly with one of the funeral home employees. Peter leaned against the opposite wall, looking stylish in a tweed jacket, button-down oxford shirt and narrow knit tie.

  Sully joined him there. “What are you doing over here by yourself?”

  Peter shrugged. “Waiting for you?”

  “You don’t like these other people?”

  Peter shrugged again, infuriatingly.

  “Do you believe in luck?” Sully asked him.

  “Not really,” Peter said.

  Sully nodded, suspecting as much. “You know what? I do.”

  Peter smiled, also apparently suspecting as much.

  “You know that triple I’ve been betting for the last two years?” Sully asked. “It ran while I was in jail.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. The day before yesterday,” Sully said, trying to recall what Jocko said.

  “Really.”

  “That doesn’t strike you as bad luck?” Sully said.

  “Luck didn’t have much to do with you being in jail,” Peter pointed out.

  “How about you?” Sully asked him. “Have you ever been unlucky?”

  “Never,” Peter said, grinning. “Not once.”

  “Not even in your choice of fathers?”

  “Ralph’s been a terrific father.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  Neither man said anything more for a few moments. It was Peter who finally broke the silence. “I’ve got to go to West Virginia tomorrow, settle things there. Get the stuff from my office, whatever’s left at the apartment. I’m going to leave as soon as we’re done here.”

  “Can you handle that by yourself?”

  Peter surrendered his maddening half smile. “I have a friend that’s going to help.”

  “If you can wait till I get out, I’ll help. Wirf says it won’t be more than another day or two.”

  “I better do it now,” Peter said, without, apparently, feeling any need to explain why.

  “Suit yourself,” Sully said.

  “Okay.”

  “How come you didn’t bring Will?”

  “Grandma wouldn’t allow it,” Peter said. “It’s probably just as well.”

  “I guess,” Sully conceded, though he realized he’d been hoping to see his grandson. “Is she any better?” Peter had been to see him twice in jail, and while he was his usual reticent self, he didn’t bother to deny that Vera was making life miserable for everyone. There had been more phone calls from Peter’s woman in West Virginia, and Robert Halsey’s health had taken another turn for the worse.

  Peter nodded in the direction of the casket. “I think they’re going to close that,” he said.

  In fact, the casket’s lid had been lowered by the time Sully managed to limp up the aisle. When the funeral home employees noticed Sully, they managed to convey that raising it again might be a violation of the rules. “Everybody’s waiting,” they said.

  “She’s my mother,” Sully told them.

  “No, she’s not,” one of the young men said.

  “Well,” Sully conceded, “not by blood.”

  “Half a minute.” The young man raised the lid. “We’ll be late at the church.”

  Old Hattie stared up at him with the same expression of grim, unfocused willfulness that she’d borne in life. If anything, she looked even more determined now. Sully, still reeling from the knowledge that his triple had finally run, albeit without him aboard, contemplated whether he’d swap places with the dead woman if he were offered the opportunity. It was tempting. “She doesn’t look finished even now, does she,” Cass said at his elbow.

  “She is, though,” Sully said. “I guess it wasn’t such a great idea to move the cash register after all. How’re you feeling?”

  “Hypocritical,” Cass admitted. “I wished her dead a dozen times a day, Sully.”

  Together they stared down at the old woman, Cass weeping quietly.

  “With her alive and making everything impossible, all I could think of was all the places I could go, all the things I could do if only she’d die. Now I’m not so sure it was her.”

  “Give yourself time,” Sully said for something to say. Actually, he shared her doubts. He’d imagined the world would be a better place when it was rid of Big Jim Sullivan, but it had remained pretty much the same place, with just one less person to blame things on. Though Sully had solemnly pledged to keep blaming things on him anyway. “Did I hear you sold the restaurant?”

  “Shhh—” Cass whispered, nodding at her mother, who, to judge from her fierce, frozen expression, might well have been not only listening but plotting intricate retribution. “To a friend of yours, actually.”

  “I heard a rumor,” Sully said. It had been more than a rumor, actually. It was Wirf who was handling the details of the sale, and he’d told Sully that Vince and Ruth would be partners, Vince putting up the money with the understanding that Ruth would buy him out when she could.

  “She’ll make a go of it if anybody can. Ruth knows restaurants. And she’s a hard worker. Now she’ll be working for herself. She promised she’d keep the name, which should please the dead.”

  They both looked again at Hattie, who, if she was pleased, didn’t show it.

  “I hope you didn’t sell too soon,” Sully said. “What if the theme park opens and the place becomes a gold mine?”

  “If the theme park opens, so will a dozen new restaurants. Besides, did you see today’s paper?”

  Sully nodded. “Still, who knows?”

  “We both know,” Cass said. “This town will never change.”

  Sully would have been pleased to agree. Actually, what he’d been thinking was how many things had changed just during the week he’d been the guest of the county. Losing Hattie and having Cass move away would be plenty big changes for a town like Bath.

  “Peter do a good job for you?” Sully decided to ask.

  “He was fine,” Cass said, without, it seemed to Sully, much enthusiasm.

  Sully was oddly grateful on both counts. He’d wanted Peter to do a good job for Cass’s sake, but he was beginning to wonder if Peter’s joking claim that he could do anything better than Sully might be true. He and Cass both stole a glance at Peter, who’d taken a seat now on one of the folding chairs near the back of the room and appeared to be going through his wallet, probably seeing if he had enough money to make it to West Virginia and back. Sully made a mental note to offer him his poker winnings.

  “He did that job like he’s doing this one,” Cass commented.

  “He’s tough that way,” Sully conceded. “Too much education, probably. Either that or too much of his mother.”

  “Or there’s a zucchini up his tailpipe,” Cass offered, surprising Sully. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might actively dislike Peter, and he wondered why she would.

  “I’m glad he’s here this morning,” Sully admitted, again reflecting that his son was the only able-bodied man among the bearers. But for him, the others might go down like so many bowling pins on the
icy sidewalk.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Cass said. “I was grateful to have an experienced short-order cook.”

  Sully frowned. Another surprise. “I didn’t know he had any experience.”

  “Hell, yes,” Cass said. “He can make an egg, even if he can’t make conversation.”

  Sully nodded. “It’s surprising how many things he can do.” Apparently he’d laid the hardwood floor at Carl’s camp all by himself.

  Cass offered him a knowing grin. “I didn’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t be a proud papa.” Somewhere along the line she’d stopped crying, though her cheeks were dry-streaked now. “He just doesn’t have his old man’s ability to make people feel better, that’s all.”

  Sully decided to take this compliment in the spirit it was offered, though he doubted making people feel good was much of a talent. More tellingly, he understood that the mechanism behind making people feel good was providing them with an object lesson that things could be worse. That was the principal benefit in having Rub around, for instance.

  Cass caught the attention of one of the anxious funeral home employees and indicated that they could come close the casket again, and together she and Sully turned away. They heard Carl Roebuck say to Wirf and the others, “Okay, girls, we’re on,” and Peter rose from his chair in the rear of the room. “I can see why all the women go for him, I guess,” Cass admitted. “He’s handsome enough.”

  All what women? Sully wondered. “Just like his father,” Sully offered.

  “Right,” Cass agreed. “Only handsome, like I said.”

  Sully joined the other men at the casket.

  “Is the professor going to help, or what?” Carl Roebuck wondered. Actually, Peter was making his way leisurely toward them. When he arrived, he took the place left for him at the head of Hattie’s casket. “Let’s put the one-legged lawyer and Sullivan Senior in the middle so we don’t lose them,” Carl Roebuck suggested.

  Otis was the only one who didn’t crack a smile at this. In fact, as he was staring at old Hattie’s closed casket his lip began to quiver and he began to squeak.