Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

What worried him more than being recognized and arrested was that he was down to his last three pain pills. He counted them again just to make sure. Not enough to get him through the fucking night. He suppressed the urge to swallow all three now, knowing that would be a mistake. Given his luck he’d fall asleep there, and when Sully came home and found him he’d hit him with another skillet and slice off the other ear. No, this was fucking crunch time, and he needed to show some discipline. He did need one pill, though, right this goddamn minute, to keep from howling like a dog at the moon.

He swallowed it dry, thinking of Cora. He swore he wasn’t going to, but here he was doing it anyway. Damn, she’d gone down hard. Whoever owned that camp would need a whole new dock, and that was for true. His mistake — he saw it clearly now, like you always do when it’s too late — was trying to explain to that cow what had to happen, that he had no choice in the matter. If he hadn’t been fucked up, he’d have just hit her. Because when you came right down to it, why try to reason with any woman? Didn’t really matter whether she was smart, like his mother-in-law, or dumb, like Cora. They were all incapable of seeing things from a man’s point of view. Basically they wanted everything their own damn way. Still, he wished he hadn’t hit Cora so hard. He hadn’t meant to, or at least he didn’t remember meaning to. It did piss him off how stupid she was, how she didn’t even suspect why he was searching the shoreline for the perfect stone, not too heavy, not too light. “You need to find a flat one,” she kept insisting, having apparently concluded that he got off on skipping rocks across the water. Even when he found what he wanted and explained what it was for, that one clean blow was what he was after, how he didn’t want to punch her like he’d punched his mother-in-law over and over until she lost consciousness, no need for that, even then she just stared at him, like he was speaking a foreign language. “I don’t understand,” she whimpered. “Why do you have to hit me?”

“Because I can’t trust you, girl.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t, that’s all. Because as soon as I’m gone, you’re gonna head back along that road and ask the first assholes you run into to borrow the phone so you can call the cops. And by the time I get back to town, they’ll be waiting for me.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Roy. I swear I wouldn’t.”

He knew, though, that once he was gone she’d remember everything she’d done to help him and how he’d repaid her by making her hand over the keys to her shit-bucket and stranded her out here by herself with no food and night coming on.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Roy, I swear,” she pleaded. “I could just spend the night right here. You said yourself how nice it is in there. Then in the morning—”

“You won’t do no such thing,” he assured her. “You think you will, but five minutes after I’m gone, you’ll be yelling for help and telling everybody about how I ditched you and can you use their fucking phone. Don’t say you won’t, either, because I ain’t stupid.”

“I won’t, Roy, I promise.”

“Don’t promise, neither.”

“I am promising, Roy.” She was blubbering, just like he’d predicted, her lower lip quivering.

“No, we’re gonna do this my way,” he said, stepping toward her.

“Don’t, Roy. Haven’t I been nice to you all day? I said I was sorry about them clips. They didn’t have the ones you wanted, I swear.”

“This don’t have nothing to do with that.”

“I know I should’ve bought the Pringles like you said.” She was crying in earnest now. “Next time—”

“There ain’t no next time, girl. Get that through your head. After tonight I’m headed back downstate.” Even if Janey’s mother didn’t die of the beating he gave her, he’d be there a good long while. If she did, maybe for good. “This right here is the last you’ll see of me.”

“I could come visit you,” she pleaded. “I would, too.”

Like that would be a fucking treat. “Stand still now,” he said, but when he cocked his fist, she squealed and threw both arms up to protect herself. “You’re just makin’ it worse, Cora. Do like I say.”

“Don’t hit me, Roy. Please don’t hit me.” Her fat elbows still up in front of her face.

“This won’t hurt but a minute,” he promised. “It’ll be like going to sleep. When you wake up it’ll be like a hangover. I’ll leave you one of my painkillers. Make you right as rain.” He would do no such thing, of course. He didn’t even have enough pills for himself. “Like I said: tomorrow morning you can hitch a ride back into town, and you can tell everybody what I done. What a bad guy I am. By then it won’t matter.”

“No, Roy. Please don’t. I’m scared. What if you hurt me bad? What if I don’t wake up?”

Well, that’d be good news, he thought but didn’t say. Because really? To just go to sleep and not wake up? To be done with all of it? That wouldn’t be such a bad deal, would it? He wouldn’t mind that so much his own self, now that he thought about it. His night with Janey — God, how long ago that seemed — was the best life had to offer him, and that was in the shitter for good. Sure, there’d be satisfaction in crossing Sully’s name off his list. He was definitely looking forward to that. But then what? The minutes and hours and days and months and years stretched out forever with nothing to fill them but Bullwhip’s crazy tulip stories. Unless he’d died, in which case it’d be some other asshole who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, who had to yak all the time because words, no matter how dumb and useless, were better than silence and the thoughts that filled that up. Of course Roy supposed it was possible that he had less time than he thought. Life was full of surprises, just like Gert said. The falling tree you didn’t predict, the skillet you didn’t see coming. Whatever. There was no point in dwelling on shit beyond your control. That included most of the shit out there in this world, and that was for true as well. Make the best plan you can, then see how it all works out. That’s all Roy or anybody could do, all he was doing, not that he expected Cora to understand.

“Be still now,” he told her. “Let’s get this over with.”

But the fucking woman refused to lower her arms, until finally he said, “Okay, I guess we’ll do it your way, then.”

“Really?” she said, suspicious.

“Yeah,” he said, tossing the stone out into the lake. Only when she heard it splash did she lower her arms. God, was she stupid.

What he couldn’t get out of his mind was the look of dumb gratitude on her face. Or who knew? Maybe it was love. Or something with no name. Whatever it was, it was what he hated most and what allowed him to do what was necessary. Because of course he’d picked up two stones, not one, and the second, the heavier, perfectly round one, was still in his fist.

He felt bad, though, about hitting her so hard, about how hard she went down, ass first, reducing that dock to kindling, her fat butt in the water, her arms sticking straight up. No chance she could stand up whenever she came to. Nothing to do except shout her head off until somebody heard her. And the whole time she’d be thinking it was because of the clips and the Pringles. He’d told her it wasn’t, but that was the thing with women. You were better off saving your breath. He thought about the waitress at that diner he and his father had stopped by that time, the one who’d given him a look like his whole pitiful life was visible to her. He wondered what had happened to her. Nothing good, he hoped.