Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

Tangled in his pants and heavy with beer, Boogie tumbled to his knees. The bedroom was dark, illuminated only by the light spilling in from the front room. But he was able to see more than he wanted to. He could make out the outlines of the stacked cages, the slow uncoiling of the dark ropes they contained. And of course the cage that had fallen, its door sprung.

He didn’t see the cobra, though, until it stood up.

RUB SQUEERS AND HIS WIFE, Bootsie, lived in a ramshackle farmhouse on a lonely stretch of two-lane county blacktop west of town where the rents were cheap. When the wind was right, as it was this evening, you could smell the nearby landfill. It was nearly dark by the time Sully pulled into their drive and parked behind their dented, two-tone Subaru. “Stay,” he told Rub’s namesake, who stood panting beside him in the front seat. The dog sighed mightily but obediently flopped down onto the seat, his chin on his front paws. Having spent much of the day in Miss Beryl’s cellar he was anxious to be let loose, Sully could tell, but there was a patch of woods out back of the Squeerses’ house where, this close to the dump, he was liable to encounter a skunk. Half an hour from now, with any luck, Sully hoped to be settling onto his favorite barstool at the Horse, not home giving the stupid little shit a tomato-juice bath.

The winter before, Rub had found the poor half-starved creature limping along the icy roadside and brought him home, thinking to keep him. Unfortunately, Bootsie, who easily topped three hundred pounds, was offended by anything skinny, so no dice. A clairvoyant, at least where her husband was concerned, she saw all too clearly that the wretched animal’s care and feeding would devolve to her, so she informed Rub that in her house there was a one-mangy-cur limit, leaving him to ponder that philosophy’s arbitrariness, grapple with its metaphorical implications and finally do the arithmetic. So that’s how Sully, whose strong suit wasn’t caring for things, had reluctantly taken the extra cur in. The name on his tag was REGGIE, but Sully removed the tag, renamed him and settled in to enjoy the resulting confusion. When both Rubs were around, he liked to issue commands to see if either would obey. When the dog barked, Sully would say, “Quiet, Dummy,” causing both dog and man to regard him expectantly, neither sure who was being spoken to, neither wanting to guess wrong, the look on their faces identical. When the human Rub made the mistake of answering, Sully would say, “I wasn’t talking to you.”

The canine Rub was relatively young in years but old in experience, most of it, Sully suspected, awful. Consequently, this Rub’s youth, energy and congenital optimism were in constant conflict with his memories, which dictated extreme caution and, if that wasn’t sufficient, flight. After six months of Sully’s benign neglect, he still started violently at sudden loud noises, and if his new master forgot and raised his voice, he’d empty his bladder on the spot. The dog seemed to love him, though, and when Rub wasn’t peeing on things, Sully was able to return his dumb affection. Until recently he’d let Rub tag along wherever he was going, including Hattie’s, but the animal had recently picked up a genital parasite somewhere and had taken to chewing on his dick. Unsurprisingly, the sight of his bloody, masticated little pud put people off their feed. When he was on the premises, you couldn’t give away link sausages.

Even with the sun down, it was too hot to leave Rub in the truck with the windows up, so he leaned across and rolled down the one on the passenger side. “Stay,” he repeated. “You hear me?” Because Rub was eyeing this potential escape route with almost human longing. “If I come outside and you’re not in this truck, I’ll leave you here for the coyotes.” Which also frequented the dump.

Rub sighed again, even more mightily this time. Sully could read the thought bubble over his head: If you don’t want me to jump out, why open the window?

“Don’t pee in here, either.”

Climbing out of the truck, Sully thought he heard a low mewling nearby, but when he paused to listen, he couldn’t hear anything. Had an animal been struck by a car and crawled off into the trees or under the house to die? He stood there, waiting for it to start up again, though the only sound borne in on the hot breeze was that of interstate traffic. Halfway up the porch steps he heard scrabbling and turned to see his dog standing on the seat now, front paws on the open window frame, in launch position. “Rub!” Sully called. “I swear to God, if you’re not in that truck when I come back out, I’m gonna grab that shovel out of the back and beat you with it.” Apparently Rub took this threat seriously, because he whimpered and disappeared back inside the cab. Probably pissing all over the seat, Sully thought ruefully. He hadn’t meant to shout.

From somewhere — closer now? — the same mewling resumed. Had the wind shifted? Or was the sound coming from under the porch? Sully considered going back down the steps and peering underneath, but the thought of shining eyes peering back at him out of the darkness wasn’t terribly appealing, so when the sound stopped again, he figured to hell with it.

He’d been hoping, as he always did when he dropped by the Squeerses’ house, that he’d find Rub there alone, but the Subaru in the drive, its engine still ticking, meant Bootsie, whose car it was, had arrived home from work shortly before, and indeed it was she, clutching a fistful of junk mail, who answered his knock. She was still in her uniform, her thinning brown hair still clutched in the hairnet she wore to serve food in the hospital cafeteria.

“You,” she said, seeing who it was.

“Yup,” Sully agreed. “Sorry to disappoint.”

But she’d already turned away, leaving him to come inside and close the screen door behind him. “I keep hoping it’ll be Harrison Ford, but it never is.”

“Next time I’ll bring my whip. Where’s Dummy?”

“I thought he was with you. Didn’t I just hear you threaten to beat him with a shovel?”

“Nah, that was the dog,” he said, which seemed to satisfy her. “I haven’t seen your husband. I waited for him at Hattie’s, but he never turned up.”

“I thought you two were taking down that branch today,” she said, tossing the junk mail into a wicker basket the size of a bassinette that must have contained about a month’s worth. Everything in the Squeerses’ house overflowed, the sink with dirty dishes, the garbage can with smelly trash, the living room sofa with the romance novels Bootsie borrowed by the gross from the library. According to Rub, she read at least one a night.

“You’re right, we were,” Sully confessed. Last night, just before leaving the Horse, they’d agreed to meet here at noon. Sully was to bring his ladder. He’d even thrown it in the back of the truck when he got home, but by morning he’d forgotten his promise. Even noticing it there that morning had failed to jog his memory. Much as he hated to admit it, such lapses were becoming routine. Had Rub spent the whole afternoon waiting for him? Where was he now?

Bootsie, head cocked, was regarding him dubiously over the rim of her reading glasses. He’d paused in the dining room to lean on a chair. “What’s with that?” she wanted to know.

“With what?”

“You’re breathing like you just ran a marathon.”

Not quite, but close. Four little porch steps. Heart thumping in his chest like a sledgehammer. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Are you like this all the time now?”

“Nah, it comes and goes. Tomorrow I’ll wake up fine.” He hoped.

“You still smoking?”