Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

The problem was that from the moment that first bonehead triple ran, bad things started happening to people in his immediate circle. First, Miss Beryl had been felled by that final stroke she’d known was coming, and then a year later Wirf had succumbed to renal failure, no surprise there, either. It wasn’t like Sully felt responsible for these sad events, but he’d have gladly returned the money for the pleasure of their continued company, and so a false equivalency was established in his mind between their loss and his gain. Since then, his ex-wife had come loose from her moorings and been institutionalized, and Carl Roebuck, so long a symbol of undeserved good fortune, had lost his wife, his house and, most recently, his prostate gland. If Carl was to be believed, Tip Top Construction had about one swirl around the drain left, after which he’d be officially wiped out. The more bad things that happened to people in Sully’s inner orbit, the more karmically responsible he felt. There was never a causal linkage, of course, but that didn’t alter his sense of complicity. He couldn’t help thinking that he wasn’t meant to have money, that when his luck changed some invisible mechanism of destiny had been knocked out of alignment.

At least until he’d gone to the VA and gotten his two years, but probably one diagnosis, which had restored order with a vengeance.

As he and Rub started down the dark driveway, the dog began to emit a low growl that probably meant the neighborhood raccoon was back. Sully’d been meaning to put some skirting around the base of the trailer, knowing how much the creature liked it under there, but when it rained Rub was partial to the space as well, so he’d let it go. “You better come inside tonight,” he said, and Rub, somehow understanding this, trotted up the steps in front of him, still grumbling.

Inside, Sully turned on the kitchen light and tossed his keys onto the dinette next to the stopwatch Will had returned to him before leaving. It had belonged to Miss Beryl’s husband, the high school’s longtime football and track coach. Sully had given it to the boy when he and his father first arrived in Bath over a decade ago. Poor kid. For months he’d been listening to his parents’ bitter quarrels. Peter’s affair with an academic colleague back home had recently come to light and turned everything in the marriage toxic. Will had understood just enough about what was going on to be terrified about what came next. Having no idea what that might be, he’d become frightened of everything, including his own little brother. With the watch, Sully told him, he could time himself being brave. A minute today, a minute and a half tomorrow and so on. This would make him braver all the time, with the proof right there in the palm of his hand. For some reason it worked. For years the boy took the watch with him everywhere and slept with it on his nightstand. Sully had forgotten all about it. “So what’s this, then?” he asked his grandson, amazed, as he often was in the boy’s presence, at how big he’d grown while somehow remaining the boy he’d been.

Will had shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t really need it anymore, I guess.”

“Nothing scares you these days?”

“Girls,” he’d admitted.

“Yeah, but that’s because you’re smart.”

Another shrug, this time accompanied by a grin. “I thought maybe you could use it.”

Sully was moved by the gift, but also curious. “What do I have to be scared about?” After his visit to the VA, had his behavior betrayed something? Did his grandson have an inkling of his illness?

“I guess I just thought it was time to give it back,” Will said, with shrug number three.

When Sully depressed the watch’s stem, the second hand lurched into motion, still anxious to perform after so many years. “You think it’d work for somebody my age?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you believe it will, I guess.”

No doubt about it. He was going to miss the boy. No longer a boy, but…

Rub was growling again, low and deep in his chest, a sound that usually preceded by a matter of seconds a knock on the trailer’s door, but none came. Nor was the dog standing with his nose to the door, like he usually did when they had a visitor. Instead he was facing the far end of the trailer, his ears flat against his skull. “Hey, Dummy,” Sully said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Rub glanced up at him guiltily, as if to concede that something might be, but then went back to growling, the hair up on the back of his neck now. A lamp was burning in the living room, one Sully didn’t remember leaving on. The narrow corridor leading to the single bedroom was dark, but looking more closely he noticed a thin crease of light under the bathroom door. Sully, who had nothing any self-respecting thief would want to steal, never locked the trailer, so anyone could’ve walked in. Carl? Possibly, but Sully’d just left him twenty minutes earlier. Ruth? It’d been a hell of a while since she’d paid him an unannounced visit. Peter, returning unexpectedly from the city? No, his car would’ve been in the driveway. The owner of the strange car parked at the curb? It was possible, of course, that nobody was in there, that Sully himself had left the light on that morning. Rub seemed to think otherwise, though, and Sully doubted the little dickweed would be growling if the bathroom was empty or the occupant someone he knew.

Which gave Sully a chill. What was it Roy Purdy had said at Hattie’s? That he’d stop by some night for the apology he seemed to think he had coming? But that didn’t make much sense, either. Roy’s car had been crushed when the mill collapsed into the street, and Roy himself had been injured.

There was a heavy flashlight on the countertop. Not the best weapon, but it would have to do. Crossing the living room on tiptoe, Sully put his ear to the bathroom door. From inside came a voice he didn’t recognize. “Fuck her,” it said.

Sully straightened. Who would be muttering obscenities in his bathroom in the middle of the night? The voice sounded strange. Not exactly human. Had someone stopped by with a gift of a foul-mouthed parrot?

He turned the knob and pushed the door open.

At first Sully didn’t recognize the large man slumped forward on the toilet seat, chin on his chest, pants down around his ankles, fast asleep. “Fuck her,” he repeated, then sighed deeply, as if in profound regret.

“Fuck who?” Sully said, louder than he meant to, causing his visitor to jolt awake and blink up at him.

“Sully,” said Raymer, his voice sounding completely different now.

“You’re lucky I didn’t brain you with this,” Sully said, showing him the flashlight.

“Wow,” Raymer said, blinking up at him. “I was really out. This is kind of embarrassing.”

Earlier in the evening, Rub had told Sully about Raymer fainting into the judge’s grave, but sitting there on Sully’s commode, covered with dried mud, his eyes blackened and swollen, his hair matted, he looked like something far worse had befallen him. Such as being beaten senseless with a cudgel or dragged behind a car by his feet. “ Kind of?” Sully said.

“Okay, very.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Because the only reason he could think of for Raymer to be in his trailer was that he was searching for the stolen wheel boots.

But Raymer just cocked his head at this. “Sorry?”

“What are you doing in my bathroom at three in the morning?” he said, pointing the flashlight at him for emphasis. “And don’t say taking a shit.”

Raymer shifted his weight on the commode, causing the trailer to groan. “I stopped by to ask a favor,” he said.

“Of me?” Sully replied.