Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

Then Carl Roebuck emerged onto the sidewalk, his chinos dry again and his chipper spirits restored. Apparently with the hair dryer going and the bathroom door closed, the concussion that had captured the town’s attention had escaped his own. He nudged Sully and lowered his voice confidentially. “Guess what I was thinking about the whole time I was in there blow-drying my dick,” he said, only then fully registering the commotion in the street. “Hell, what’s going on?”

Sully was surprised to discover he had a working hypothesis. He pointed at the yellow-brown cloud that was now expanding and drifting slowly in their direction like some dust storm in an old western. “I got a question for you, Dummy,” he said. “What’s over there?”

But the blood had already drained from Carl’s face. Sully could tell he sure wasn’t thinking about sex anymore.

“Y OU FAINTED into the grave ?”

Charice’s voice crackled with a mixture of radio static and disbelief. Sympathy would come later, Raymer knew, probably when she saw him. Saw the damage. Which in the warped mirror on the wall opposite where he sat, bare-assed, draped in a flimsy paper johnny, was pretty damn impressive. His broken nose was swollen hideously, and both eyes were slits.

He’d been told a doctor would be in to see him shortly, but that was nearly half an hour ago, and the examination room’s air-conditioning was in brutal contrast to the sweltering heat outside. His head throbbed dully, but apart from that he didn’t feel too bad, and certainly not as bad as he looked. The light-headed, elsewhere feeling he’d suffered prior to losing consciousness out at Hilldale was gone, as was the dizziness. He was tempted to just get dressed and leave, but instead of hanging up his sweaty uniform, he’d made the mistake of draping it over the AC unit. Putting it back on would be like donning a frigid, wet onesie. He shivered at the thought.

“ Into the grave,” Charice repeated, apparently willing to concede the truth of what he was telling her but still unable to wrap her mind around what had happened. “Like…on top of the casket ?”

“No,” he explained, “His Honor was still aboveground.”

“Why are you in the emergency room?”

“It was my face that broke the fall. But never mind that. Tell me again what happened out at the mill.” Because Charice wasn’t the only one having trouble processing recent events. “The whole building actually—”

“So you, like, slumped forward and rolled into the grave?”

“I fainted, Charice. Okay? You know that matting they edge graves with? They say I tripped over that, but I don’t really remember. Ask Gus. He saw the whole thing.”

And would be thrilled to recount the whole shitshow. According to the mayor, Raymer’s knees hadn’t buckled or anything. Rather, he’d gone down like a tree. “One minute you were standing there and the next it was— timber! You went into that hole like it was dug to your exact specifications. You were just gone. You know like when you try to stuff a cat in a bag? How there’s always a leg sticking out?”

Raymer had just blinked at him. Why would he have ever put a cat in a bag? Was Gus confessing to having drowned kittens at some point? Why did he imagine this was an experience other people would be familiar with?

“It wasn’t like that at all,” Gus insisted. “You went in clean and neat. There was just the one sound you made when you hit bottom and then the plume of dust. I don’t think I ever saw anything like it, and I was in Korea.”

Korea, where he’d spent the last seven months of the conflict, was Gus’s particular touchstone. It was one of the few times he’d been out of upstate New York for an extended period, and his experience on that misbegotten peninsula, even more than his graduate work in government, was the reason he believed himself qualified to be mayor of North Bath. Was it over there he’d done his cat stuffing?

“Charice,” he told her sternly. “I want to hear about the mill, all right? Because I don’t understand how that could happen. How does a whole building just…fall down?”

“Not the whole building,” she said, “just the north wall. The one facing Limerock Street.”

“The other walls are still standing? How can that be?”

“I’m just telling you what I was told.”

“By who?”

“Miller’s on the scene.”

“Miller.”

“Jerome’s there, too.”

“Jerome.”

“You’re repeating everything I say.”

“Your brother Jerome.” He worked for the Schuyler Springs PD and served as a liaison officer between the department and the college and the mayor’s office, doing exactly what Raymer wasn’t sure, except that he was required to be on television a lot, either attempting to explain the inexplicable or obfuscate the perfectly clear.

“It’s his day off, so he stopped by the station. He’s got this joke he wants to tell you. When the call came in about the mill, he figured we could use a hand.”

Raymer sighed. “Why’s he acting like this?” Because lately, Jerome had become increasingly solicitous about Raymer’s welfare, always stopping by the station on some pretense, telling him jokes and calling him buddy.

“He’s worried about you.”

“Why?”

“ I’m worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Chief,” she said, as if the answer to this question was so obvious it needn’t be voiced. His head was hurting worse now. Probably because of the fall, but possibly not. His head often hurt when he talked to Charice. “I mean, imagine, okay?”

“Please,” he begged. Charice was forever asking him to imagine this or that, usually something extremely unpleasant. Like trying to put a cat in a bag, or some other Korean-type activity. “Please don’t.”

“Imagine you’re in a great big room with ten thousand other guys.”

“Actually, I’m in a small room, all by myself.”

“And the guy in charge says, ‘Okay, show of hands. Who’s passed out at a funeral—’ ”

“Stop, please.”

She ignored him, of course. Charice believed, for some reason, that a vivid imagination was the true path to understanding. “ Passed out,” she repeated, “right into an open grave.”

“Desist,” he told her. “This is a direct order I’m giving here.”

“Yours would be the only hand in the air,” Charice noted. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Charice.”

“Make it a hundred thousand guys, if you want. A million. It’s still just you with his hand up, Chief.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t have my hand up either,” Raymer said, reluctantly giving in to her scenario. “Why would I admit something like that in front of ten thousand other guys?”

“Imagine if you lied, you’d be electrocuted.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Imagine you work for me and you have to do what I say. Tell Jerome I don’t want to hear another stupid joke. Also, remind him he has no jurisdiction in Bath.”

“I’ll tell him, but you know Jerome.”

“I do. Also his sister. Two peas in a pod.” The metaphor was particularly apt in their case, as they were twins. “Have Miller come pick me up at the hospital.”

“He’s busy at the scene. Where’s your own car?”

“Out at the cemetery. Gus wouldn’t let me drive.”

“I’ll call Jerome then. He won’t mind.”

“Don’t,” he told her. “Do not call Jerome. I swear to God if he comes out here I’ll shoot him on sight.”

“Then you’ll have exactly zero friends. All you got now is him and me, and I won’t be your friend no more if you shoot my brother, ’cause that would be unnatural.”