Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“Chief?” Miller said, when he started to get out of the cruiser. “You gonna be all right?”

Raymer was touched by his concern. “I’ll be fine after I get some sleep.”

“Okay, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

“You look kind of…”

While he searched for the right word, Raymer considered the possibilities: Dispirited? Rode hard and put up wet? Chewed up and spit out? Or did Miller just mean to reiterate that, covered in ash as he was, he still resembled a Negro-type individual?

“Sad,” Miller finally said.

“Sad as in pathetic, or sad as in sorrowful?”

“Sad as in unhappy.”

“Oh.”

“Are you? Sad?”

Raymer wasn’t sure how to respond. There was a dim-witted earnestness about Miller that he found both endearing and infuriating, kind of like coming across an old photo of yourself, smiling ear to ear, happy as a pig in shit. The possibility that such happiness won’t and can’t last, that its source is genetic foolishness, hasn’t occurred to you yet, but it will.

“Because you shouldn’t be,” Miller said, an out-of-character confidence creeping into his voice.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the chief.”

For the moment that was true, though Raymer felt certain the question that had been dogging him of late — whether to resign — would soon be moot. When it became widely known that someone trafficking in lethal reptiles, handguns and drugs (yes, Justin had been right; weed, methamphetamine and prescription painkillers had indeed been found in 107’s bathroom) had been living for months in the Morrison Arms, where the chief of police also lived, that would be that.

“Look, Miller, I appreciate—”

“You’re the chief, ” Miller repeated, downright adamant now. “Everybody’s got to do what you say.” Clearly, giving orders was the end Miller desperately hoped to achieve without first understanding the means. Had Raymer himself ever wanted that? To tell people what to do?

“Nobody does what I say, actually,” Raymer assured him. Charice routinely ignored his orders if she considered them unwise. Likewise, her brother. Even old Mr. Hynes felt free to ignore his advice. When an armed white man in a position of authority couldn’t even get black people to take him seriously, well, it said something, didn’t it?

“ I do,” Miller said. Which was true. Until he learned to think, Miller had little choice but to remain a model of literal-minded obedience.

“And I appreciate it,” Raymer said, anxious to draw this conversation to a close. “Well, good night, then.”

“Chief?” said Miller, evidently just as anxious to prolong it.

“What, Miller?”

“Am I going to get fired?”

Raymer paused, unsure what he was asking: if the day would ever come when Raymer would have to terminate him, or if plans to do so were already afoot? “Why do you ask?”

“I knew it,” Miller said, dropping his head miserably. “It’s Officer Bond’s brother, isn’t it?”

“Jerome?”

“He’s coming to work for us?”

“No.”

Miller looked dubious. “Then why’s he always hanging around?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question,” Raymer admitted, recalling that afternoon’s conversation between Gus and Jerome at the mill. Was Jerome considering some sort of offer? The mayor pressing him for an answer? At the time Raymer, his head throbbing mercilessly, hadn’t given the matter much thought. Gus always had something going on. But maybe Miller was onto something. Was Raymer to be replaced — by Jerome? Had Jerome surmised that Raymer had found out about the plot against him and keyed the ’Stang in retaliation? If so, what part had Charice played in all this? Had she invited him to dinner in the hopes of figuring out what, if anything, he knew? That phone call she’d received just as he was drifting off on the back porch? Her casual tone had suggested she was talking to a girlfriend with boy trouble. (What had she said? As usual, you’re getting all worked up over nothing. ) But what if it was Jerome who’d called, wanting to know what she’d learned? That made a kind of sense, except that Charice hadn’t seemed particularly curious during dinner. She’d spent more time trying to explain her brother’s bizarre behavior than questioning Raymer about his own.

“I wonder where she went?” Miller said, what seemed to Raymer a completely out-of-left-field question.

“Who?”

“Charice. Officer Bond.”

“She went somewhere?”

“Her car wasn’t in the drive just now.”

This was true, Raymer realized. Her Civic hadn’t been there. He’d been so focused on her destroyed porch he hadn’t really taken in the car’s absence and what that might mean. A wave of relief washed over him then, because among other things it meant that when he’d been pleading with Charice to let him back in the house, she hadn’t even been there. Nor had she heard his truly lame offer to reimburse her for the lamb chops or his pitiful admission that he was a terrible cop and a worse chief of police. She must’ve left shortly after receiving that phone call. Maybe she’d come to the screen door to explain that she’d be back shortly, seen him blissfully asleep and switched off the kitchen light so as not to disturb him. Maybe she’d locked the screen door to indicate he wasn’t supposed to leave until she returned. Okay, that last part made no sense, but maybe there was still some small piece of the puzzle he was missing. The important thing was that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t pissed at him after all — although it was also true that in this same scenario she didn’t know he’d managed to ruin her landlord’s porch totally. Maybe, he thought happily, they’d conclude it had been destroyed by that lightning strike.

“Miller,” Raymer said, impressed that the man had actually noticed the missing car. “You may make a cop yet.”

“Really?”

“You should stop stalking Officer Bond, though.”

“I know,” he said. “You probably think I’m a creep.”

“No, but she would.”

He nodded sadly. “Chief?” he said. “You think she’d go out with somebody like me?”

Not really wanting to answer this question, Raymer sought clarification. “You or somebody like you?” Because Raymer himself, he had to admit, was “like” Miller: perpetually bewildered and self-conscious and full of self-loathing. So yeah, it would’ve been nice to be able to say that Charice could conceivably fall for somebody like Miller, if not Miller himself.

The breeze came up just then, lifting Raymer’s hair as it had done on Charice’s porch, and yet again he felt, or imagined he did, Becka’s proximity, her need to communicate something to him. He even had a glimmer of what it might be.

Miller was looking glum. “Would I get fired? If I asked her out and she said yes?”

“It’s against the rules for me to date her, not you. I’m her boss. Whereas you…” Raymer struggled to locate the exact language needed to describe a relationship between Charice and Miller that didn’t exist and hopefully never would.

“I’m nothing,” he said, finally putting the cruiser in gear. “I know.”

DURING THE LONG SECOND ACT of Sully’s life, he’d made it a point not only to be present for last call most nights but also to go on record as objecting to the concept as arbitrary and puritanical. These days, however, his third act well under way, though his core belief hadn’t changed, his behavior had. At seventy, in what at least his doctors believed to be terminally failing health, Sully had reluctantly come to suspect that misbehavior was a younger man’s sport. He’d played it longer than most, though, and tonight, thanks to Ruth’s heartfelt permission to stay away from Hattie’s for a while and the fact that his breathing had inexplicably improved as the day progressed, he fell gratefully and effortlessly back into the routine that had suited him so well for so long. As the thunderstorms rolled through, dimming lights and flinging rain at the walls outside, Sully reflected, and not for the first time, that there was no better place to be during violent weather than on a barstool. In any weather, for that matter.