Nobody's Fool (7 page)

"There's the real reason I gotta go back to work. Rub's going to hell without my good example to live by." Ever since Sully had slid onto the stool at the counter Rub had been waving, trying to catch Sully's attention. Sully waved back now and called, "Hi, Rub." Rub frowned, confused, unable to figure out whether to leave the NOBODY'S FOOL33 booth or not. He'd been under the distinct impression that when Sully told him to go grab a booth, he himself had intended to join him there when he finished with the old woman. Except that now Sully was seated at the counter talking to Cass as if he'd forgotten all about Rub and the booth. To make matters worse, several people had come in and were waiting near the door for a booth to be vacated. They kept looking at Rub, all alone in his big one. Had the stool next to Sully been empty Rub would have made for it, but that stool was occupied, which meant he had to choose between sitting alone at a booth for six and not having a place to sit at all.

His deeply furrowed expression suggested that the conundrum might be causing a cranial blood clot.

"He has been even more pathetic than usual this fall," Cass had to admit.

"He was in here earlier looking for you."

"I figured."

"He ask you yet?" Sully shook his head.

"He keeps getting interrupted. In another minute or two he'll cry." Indeed, Rub looked to be on the verge of tears when Sully finally relented and waved him over.

Jumping up quickly, he came toward them at a trot, like a dog released from a difficult command.

"There's no stool," he said as soon as he arrived.

Sully swiveled on his, a complete circle.

"You know what? You're right."

The people waiting by the door made for the booth Rub had vacated. Rub sighed deeply as he watched them take possession.

"What was wrong with the booth?"

"Nothing," Sully told him.

"Not a goddamn thing. Booths are great, in fact." Rub threw up his hands. The look on his face was pure exasperation.

"Think a minute," Sully reminded him.

"What'd you just do for me over at the house?" Rub thought.

"Tied your shoe," he suddenly remembered.

"Which means?" Sully prompted. Cass set a steaming cup of coffee in front of Sully and asked Rub if he wanted any.

"Don't interrupt," Sully told her.

"He's deep in thought."

"I never minded tying your shoe," Rub said.

"I know your knee's hurt.

I didn't forget." This last was delivered so unconvincingly that Sully and Cassexchanged glances.

"You want some coffee?" Sully said.

"Okay," Rub said sadly.

"I just don't see how come you can sit in her booth and not in the one down there." His face was flushed with the effort to understand.

"And how come you can sit on a stool, but not in a booth?" Sully couldn't help grinning at him.

"I wish I could give you this knee for about fifteen minutes," he said.

"Hell, I'd take it," Rub said earnestly, shaming Sully with his customary sincerity.

"I just wisht there was someplace for me to sit here at the counter, is all. We could have both sat over there in that booth." Both Sully and Cass were grinning at him now, and after a few seconds of being grinned at. Rub had to look at the floor. He was devoted to Sully and just regretted that, with Sully, whenever there were three people, it ended up two against one, and Rub was always the one. Sully could stare and grin at you forever, too, and when he did this Rub got so self-conscious he had to look down at the floor.

"We going back to work?" he said finally, for something to say. Sully shrugged.

"You think we should?" Rub nodded enthusiastically.

"Okay," Sully said.

"As long as you're not too worried." Rub frowned.

"About what?"

"About my bad knee. The one you never forget about. I thought you might be worried I'd hurt it again." Rub wasn't at all sure how to respond to this. He could think of only two responses--no, he wasn't too worried, and yes, he was worried. Neither seemed quite right. He knew he was supposed to be worried. If true, this meant he was expected to hope they didn't go back to work, something Rub couldn't really hope, because he'd missed working with Sully a great deal this fall and hated working with his cousins collecting trash, almost as much as they hated letting him.

North Bath had recently suspended trash collection as a city service, leading to entrepreneurial daring on the part of Rub's relatives, who had for generations worked for the sanitation department. Last year they'd purchased the oldest and most broken down of the town's aging fleet of three garbage trucks, had squeers refuse removal stenciled on the door, and prepared to compete on the free market. In addition to the driver, there were always at least two Squeers boys hanging on to the back of the truck as it careened through the streets of Bath, and when the vehicle came to a halt they leapt off the truck like spiders and scurried for curbside trash cans. There were only so NOBODY'S FOOL35 many places you could safely stand on the back of a garbage truck, and the Squeers boys owned and occupied these, so that when Rub was permitted to tag along he had to latch onto the side as best he could. The turns could be treacherous, and Rub sometimes had the impression that his cousins were waiting for him to be thrown from the truck so they wouldn't have to stretch their already thin profits with an extra worker.

Being family, they couldn't deny him the work, but if Rub let himself get tossed on some sharp rum it'd be his own fault.

"I could do all the hard jobs," Rub offered.

"You might have to," Sully told him.

"I

don't mind," Rub said, which was true.

"I'll sec if I can find us something for tomorrow," Sully told him.

"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving," Rub reminded him.

"So be thankful."

"Bootsie'll shoot me if I have to work on Thanksgiving."

"She probably wil} shoot you one of these days," Sully conceded, "but it won't be for working."

"I was wondering .. ." Rub began.

"Really?"

Sully said.

"What about?" Rub had to look at the floor again.

"If you could loan me twenty dollars. Since we're going back to work." Sully finished his coffee, pushed the cup toward the back of the counter where it might attract a free refill.

"I worry about you. Rub," he said.

"You know that?" Rub looked up hopefully.

"Because if you think I've got twenty dollars to loan you right now, you haven't been paying attention." Down at the floor again. Sometimes Sully was just like Miss Beryl, who'd also specialized in making Rub stare at the floor.

He hadn't had the courage to look up more than half a dozen times in the whole of eighth grade. He could still see the geometric pattern of the classroom floor in his mind's eye.

"I been paying attention," he said in the same voice he always used with Miss Beryl when she cornered him about his homework.

"It's just that tomorrow's Thanksgiving and" Sully held up his hand.

"Stop a minute. Before we get to tomorrow, let's talk about yesterday. You remember yesterday?"

"Sure," Rub said, though it sounded a little like one of Sully's trick questions.

"Where was I yesterday?"

O

Rub's spirits plunged. He remembered yesterday.

"Albany."

"How come I was in Albany?"

"For your disability."

"And what did they tell me?"

Rub fell silent.

"Come on. Rub. This was only yesterday, and I told you at The Horse as soon as I got back."

"I know they turned you down.

Sully. Hell, I remember. "

" So what do you do first thing this morning? "

" How come you can't just say no? " Rub said, summoning the courage to look up. The conversation had attracted exactly the sort of interest Rub had hoped to avoid over in the far booth, and everybody at the counter seemed interested in watching him squirm. " I wasn't the one busted up your knee.

" Sully took out his wallet, handed Rub a ten-dollar bill. " I know you didn't," Sully said, gently now. " I just can't help worrying about you. "

" Bootsie told i " to buy a turkey is all," he explained.

Cass came by then and refilled Sully's cup, topped Rub's off.

"I

don't think you heard her right. She probably said you were a.

turkey." Rub put the ten into his pocket. Everybody in the place was grinning at him, enjoying how hard it was for him to get ten dollars out of his best friend. He recognized in one or two of the faces the same people who, as eighth-graders, had always enjoyed the fact that he couldn't produce his homework for Old Lady Peoples.

"You're all in cahoots against me," he grinned sheepishly, relieved that at last the ordeal was over and he could leave.

"It's less work to go out and cam money than it is to borrow it in here."

"Did they even look at your knee yesterday?" Cass wanted to know. In the five minutes since Rub had left, the diner had emptied out. Sully was the only customer seated at the counter now, which allowed him to flex his knee.

It was hard to tell, but the swelling seemed to have gone down a little.

Mornings were the worst, until he got going. He didn't really blame Rub for not understanding why he could neither sit nor stand for very long, or how if he happened to be seated the knee throbbed until he stood up, giving him only a few moments' peace before throbbing again until he sat down, back and forth, every few minutes until he loosened up and the knee settled into ambient soreness, like background music, for the rest of the day, sending only the occasional current of scalding pain, a rim shot off the snare drum, down to his foot and up into his groin, time to rock and roll.

"They don't look at knees," Sully told her, finishing his second cup of coffee and waving off another free refill.

"They look at reports. X rays. Knees they don't bother with."

In fact. Sully had suggested showing the judge his knee, just approaching the bench, dropping his pants and showing the judge his red, ripe softball of a knee. But Wirf, his one-legged sot of a lawyer, had convinced him this tactic wouldn't work. Judges, pretty much across the board, Wirf said, took a dim view of guys dropping their pants in the courtroom, regardless of the purpose.

"Besides," Wirf explained, "what the knee looks like is irrelevant.

They got stuff that'd make even my prosthesis swell up like a balloon.

One little injection and they could make you look like gangrene had set in, then twenty-four hours later the swelling goes down again.

Insurance companies aren't big believers in swelling. "

" Hell," Sully said.

" They can keep me overnight. Keep me all week. If the swelling goes down, the drinks arc on me. "

" Nobody wants you overnight, including the court," Wirf assured him. " And these guys can all afford to buy their own drinks.

Let me handle this. When it's our rum, don't say a fuckin' word. " So Sully had kept his mouth shut, and after they waited all morning, the hearing had taken no more than five minutes.

"I don't want to see this claim again," the judge told Wirf.

"Your client's got partial disability, and the cost of his retraining is covered. That's all he's entitled to. How many times are we going to go through this?"

"In our view, the condition of my client's knee is deteriorating" -Wirf began.

"We know your view, Mr. Wirfly," the judge said, holding up his hand like a traffic cop.

"How's school going, Mr. Sullivan?"

"Great," Sully said.

"Terrific, in fact. The classes I needed were full, so I'm taking philosophy. The hundred bucks I spent on textbooks in September I haven't been reimbursed for yet. They don't like to pay for my pain pills either."

The judge took all this in and processed it quickly.

"Register early next term," he advised.

"Don't blame other people for the way things are. Keep that up and you'll end up a lawyer like Mr. Wirfly here.

Then where will you be?" Where indeed? Sully had wondered. In truth, he wouldn't trade places with Wirf.

"So, arc you going to keep after them?" Cass wanted to know. Sully stood up, tested his knee with some weight, rocked on it.

"Wirf wants to."

"What do you want?" Sully thought about it.

"A night's sleep'd be good."

When he started for the door, Cass motioned him back with a secretive index finger and they moved farther down the counter.

"Why don't you come to work here at the restaurant?" she said, her voice lowered.

"I

don't think so," Sully said.

"Thanks, though."

"Why not?" she insisted.