Nobody's Fool (72 page)

"But thanks for asking." Sully and Rub followed HCarld and the boy over to where the tow truck was parked.

HCarld got in the passenger side, Dwayne the driver's.

"Take this before I do something foolish with it," Sully said, handing HCarld the two hundred dollars left from Carl Roebuck's six.

"You sure?" HCarld said. Sully said he was sure.

"You want a receipt?"

"Nope," Sully said.

"I want it to snow, is what I want."

"Well," HCarld said.

"Don't worry about me. I'm not going to repossess you."

"I know you wouldn't," Sully said.

"Esmerelda might, though."

"She is the meanest Christian woman in the county," HCarld admitted.

"Isn't she, Dwayne?"

Dwayne apparently didn't sec much margin in responding to this query, because he just shrugged.

"Was that her I saw on the tube one night last week?"

Sully thought to ask. He'd been in The Horse and glanced up at the TV just in time to catch the last second or two of a piece on a group protesting The Ultimate Escape Fun Park. HCarld sighed, nodded.

"I

thought so," Sully said.

"I was watching on a small screen, though, and it didn't get all other hair, so I couldn't be sure." HCarld ignored this.

"Our boy is in the cemetery out there," he NOBODY'S FOOL 369 explained to Sully, who'd half forgotten that the Proxmires had had a son killed in Vietnam.

"She don't want to see him disturbed."

"I can understand that," Sully admitted, sorry now that he'd joked about Mrs. HCarld.

"Funny time to protest," HCarld said, his eyes filling.

"She wouldn't during the war. Wouldn't let me either."

"We did fight ourselves, if I recall," Sully reminded HCarld, who had also served.

HCarld nodded.

"We did indeed. I thought we'd never stop." Neither man said anything for a moment.

"Did I hear your son's back in town?"

HCarld said. Sully nodded, feeling strange. Not many people remembered he had a son, and not many of those who did would have thought of Peter as Sully's. Having HCarld refer to him this way also reminded him of Vera's contention that Peter was his now, that he'd won their son.

"He's helping me out for a week or two," he explained, almost adding, until he goes back to teaching at the college. That, it occurred to him, would have been an unkind thing to say to a man whose own son lay buried a mile outside of town. It also would have been a boast. My son the professor. A boast Sully didn't feel he had any right to. HCarld nodded in the direction of Clive Jr. " who had finally coaxed his weeping fiancee off the porch steps and was leading her over to the car, which still sat in the middle of the lawn. He had her by the elbow and was leading her like a blind woman. " When I was a kid, I had an Trish setter like her. All nerves. " They watched Clive put the woman in the car on the passenger side, then go around and get in behind the wheel. The car started right up, and Clive drove off the lawn and gently over the curb. " He should get that axle checked," HCarld said.

"But I bet he won't."

"He'll be fine," Sully said.

"Bad things don't happen to bankers."

Though he thought about Carl Roebuck's misgivings concerning The Ultimate Escape and wondered if Clive Jr. might be in for trouble.

For Miss Beryl's sake, he hoped not.

"I don't think I'd give any more driving lessons if I was him.

That's how his old man got killed, wasn't it? "

" Some people never learn," he said. " Tell Esmerelda hello. " When the tow truck pulled away from the curb. Sully noticed that Rub was looking glum. " What's the matter with you? "

" I wisht you'd took it," Rub said.

"Took what?"

"He had a twenty-dollar bill out."

"Who?" Sully said.

"The bank guy," Rub said.

"I could've used that twenty dollars."

"Ten, you mean."

"It was a twenty," Rub insisted.

"I saw it."

"But only half would have been yours, right?" Rub shrugged.

"Or did you want the whole twenty for yourself and leave me with nothing?"

"I didn't get either half," Rub pointed out.

"Nothing was what I got."

"Well, that's what I got too," Sully said. Rub sighed. This had all the earmarks of another argument with Sully that he wasn't going to win.

"Here comes Peter," Rub observed sadly when the El Camino came into view.

"You probably would have shared it with him, and he wasn't even there."

"How's work?" Wirf wanted to know that evening when Sully came into The Horse and slid onto the stool next to him.

Something about the lawyer's tone of voice suggested to Sully that this was not a casual question.

"Hard," Sully told him.

"Dirty.

Unrewarding. " He nodded at the sweating bottle of beer in front of Wirf.

Lately Wirf had been cutting back by drinking soda water until Sully joined him sometime after dinner. " I see you're zigging already. "

" I've been contemplating," Wirf said. " Zigging helps me to contemplate. Would you like to know what I've been contemplating? " "No," Sully told him.

"Stupidity," Wirf said. Sully studied him, trying to gauge WirTs level of intoxication, never an easy task.

"You aren't in a very good mood, Wirf. I can tell." Birdie came over, gave Sully the beer she knew he'd order.

"He wouldn't even bet on The People's Court," 1'1 she said sadly.

"I think I'll have one more.

Birdie," Wirf said, " now that the subject of all my contemplation has arrived. " When Birdie bent over to fish a bottle of beer from the cooler.

Sully made a theatrical point of standing up on the rungs of his bar stool and craning forward to look down her shirt. " What kind of bra is that? " 371 "A two-seater," she informed him. Then she set the beer in front of Wirf and made a face at the lawyer.

"On the subject of stupidity."

"I'm not stupid," Wirf said.

"Merely self-destructive."

"Where's Jeff?" Sully wondered out loud, noticing it was well past Birdie's usual time to go home.

"Tiny let him go," she said.

"How come?"

"You shouldn't steal when business is slow," Birdie said significantly before heading back down the bar to take care of Jocko, who had just come in, leaving Sully and Wirf alone in their corner.

"That was one of the original Ten Commandments, you'll recall," Wirf said.

"Thou Shalt Not Steal When Business Is Slow. It came right after Thou Shalt Stay in School. Which was preceded by Thou Shalt Not Get Caught Working When Thou Art Collecting Disability from the State."

"Look," Sully said.

"I have no idea what bug crawled up your ass tonight, but I happen to be in a good mood for once. I don't know how long it'll be before the next one rolls around, so I'm not going to let you ruin this one, if that's all right with you." Wirf suddenly looked sober and determined.

"I bet I can ruin it for you."

"I bet you can't," Sully said, sliding off his stool and taking his beer with him. Since he arrived at the other end of the bar at the same moment as Jocko's drink, and since Jocko's last vial of mystery pills had been a great improvement over the ones that had put him to sleep and given Carl Roebuck's Doberman a stroke. Sully paid for it.

"Don't tell me one-two-three ran today," Jocko said, peering over the tops of his thick glasses, "because I know it didn't."

"I just wanted to say thanks," Sully said, his voice low.

"Those little blue jobs are the best yet." Jocko nodded.

"I thought you might like them. They're new. I wouldn't necessarily mix them with alcohol."

"I wouldn't either," Sully agreed, taking a swig of beer.

"I take mine in the morning with my prune juice."

"I've got something for that, too," Jocko said. Birdie was there again, this time with a note for Sully, written in Wirfs hand on a bar napkin. It said: "And then there's:

Thou Shalt Not Be Videotaped Loading Concrete Blocks Onto a Truck When Thou Art Suing for Total Disability." Wirf was grinning at him. Sully could see that much all the way from the opposite end of the bar.

"I

doubt it's the pills, actually," Jocko explained.

"They say arthritis is better when you exercise.

Which is not to say I recommend your working on that knee. "

" I'm not hurting quite as much, for some reason," Sully said, wadding up Wirfs note into a ball and tossing it.

The guy in the dark sedan, no doubt. Sully thought. The one he'd thought might be an investigator hired to document Carl Roebuck's myriad infidelities. Wirf was scribbling on another napkin.

"Is our legal friend composing briefs?" Jocko wondered.

"I'd be surprised if he was even wearing briefs," Sully said. Birdie brought the new note.

"For Verily I Say unto Thee. If Thou An Caught Working Whilst on Disability, Thou Art Truly and Forever Fucked in the Eyes of the State." Sully wadded this one up too and strolled back down the bar.

"Videotaped?"

"Verily."

"Hmmm," Sully said, running his fingers through his hair.

"So that's who that guy was. I figured he was somebody's husband planning to assassinate Carl Roebuck. I thought he had binoculars."

"A video camera."

"No shit."

"Verily."

"So what can they do?"

"I don't know," Wirf admitted.

"Depends on how nasty they want to get. They could sue to recover the partial disability payments. And the education benefit."

"Will they?"

"Probably not.

I'd make them enter the tape into evidence, and my guess is a tape showing you at work would do us as much good as them. They'd be going to a lot of trouble for nothing. See, we got one of the original Ten Commandments on our side. "

" Only one? "

" Thou Canst Not Get Blood from a Turnip. " Sully shrugged. " Then what are we worried about? " Wirf was grinning at him now, as Sully slid back onto the bar stool.

"Sully, Sully, Sully," he said, and together they settled pleasantly into what remained of the evening.

SSnow. A snow not quite like any Miss Beryl could ever remember, and she watched it fall through the open blinds other front room hypnotically. She'd awakened feeling woozy, as if she'd gotten out of bed too quickly, except that she'd gotten up slowly and then stood by the side other bed wondering if she might need to sit back down. Flu, she thought, demit. Miss Beryl hadn't had the flu in a long time, almost a decade, and so her recollection of how you were supposed to feel was vague. What she did feel, in addition to the wooziness, was an odd sensation of distance from her extremities, her feet and fingers miles away, as if they belonged to someone else, and to account for this, the word "flu" entered her consciousness whole, like a loaf of something fresh from the oven, warm and full of leavening explanation.

Flu. It explained her offishness of the past few days, even, perhaps, her persistent feelings of guilt about Sully. Miss Beryl was of the opinion that guilt grew like a culture in the atmosphere of illness and that an attack of guilt often augured the approach of a virus. This particular virus was probably a gift from the dreadful Joyce woman.

Miss Beryl decided. Not that the Joyce woman had exhibited flu symptoms exactly. Rather, she had simply impressed Miss Beryl as someone who had a lot ailing her. (Miss Beryl had heard about yesterday's episode with the car from Mrs. Gruber, who'd let Clive Jr.

use her phone to call the tow truck in return for a full account. And that account confirmed Miss Beryl's initial opinion, that the Joyce woman was a menace. ) It certainly wouldn't surprise her to learn that Clive Jr. "s fiancee was a carrier of flu viruses. Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed--guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible. Since retiring.

Miss Beryl had far fewer occasions to indulge either guilt or depression.

Except for reminding herself that she should feel more affection for Clive Jr." she had little to feel guilty about, and except for Friday afternoons when the North Bath Weekly Journal was published, she seldom felt depressed.

So the portals to illness remained, for the most part, shut tight. No, Miss Beryl decided, it was the dreadful Joyce woman, wrecker of cars, destroyer of chairs, whose mouth was always open spewing noxious opinions and who knew what else into the atmosphere, who was the culprit. Miss Beryl felt a little better to have settled the issue to her own satisfaction. But not much. The source other wooziness established. Miss Beryl decided that the best way to proceed was to treat the virus the way you'd treat the person it came from.