Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

You liked it better back when my luck was rotten, is that what you’re saying? When I had to put in twelve-hour days on a bum knee that swelled up like a grapefruit? That suited you better?

The other thing Rub would’ve changed about Sully was his knack for making Rub feel guilty about stuff. Like it was his fault Sully’d fallen off that ladder and busted his knee. Like Rub was to blame that his trifecta never won once for thirty years straight.

“No, I just wisht…” But he allowed the thought to trail off. Belatedly and with great reluctance, Rub was coming to understand that life could trick you into wishing for the very worst thing and then grant that wish. Sully was a prime example. Back when they were working for Carl Roebuck, Sully was forever wishing his rotten luck would change, and Rub, who never doubted his friend’s wisdom, had just gone along and wished for it, too, apparently adding some needed torque. When Sully finally won that trifecta, Rub, slow to sense the hitch, simply thought, Good. They wouldn’t have to work for Carl anymore. And had it stopped there, things would’ve been fine.

Things don’t stop, though, do they? They keep going. Be careful what you wish for.

“You started it,” Rub replied to this unfair injunction. “I only wished what you did.”

And how’d that work out?

Not well, he had to admit. Incredibly, that first trifecta was just the beginning. What Sully had always accused Carl of — being lucky enough to shit in a swinging bucket — was suddenly true of himself, as well. It took several additional strokes of good fortune, but eventually an awful, unthinkable truth came into focus: Sully not only didn’t have to work for Carl Roebuck anymore, he didn’t have to work at all.

Nor was this the only thing Rub hadn’t seen coming. That Sully could prosper without Rub prospering alongside him was another possibility he’d never really considered. Why would he? Every Friday afternoon for a good decade, he and Sully hunted Carl down — he had a knack for disappearing when he owed you money — to collect their pay. And right there, on the spot, Sully gave Rub his cut. Good weeks, they both did well; bad ones, poorly. It was like they were in a potato-sack race at a picnic, awkward and clumsy but inseparable, their financial destinies interlocked. When Sully’s landlady died and left him her house, Rub half expected to come in for a share, but that didn’t happen. And later, when the city paid Sully all that money for his old man’s property on Bowdon Street, Sully hadn’t offered him part of that windfall, either. Apparently they weren’t for-richer-, for-poorer-type partners after all.

Hey, Dummy. Who got you the job here at Hilldale?

Rub shrugged, chastened. “You did,” he admitted reluctantly.

All right, then. How about a little gratitude?

Rub sighed, his eyes filling with tears. He knew he should be more grateful. The cemetery job wasn’t nearly as nasty and backbreaking as working for Carl had been, and it was steady, too. But—

You just don’t like paying your taxes.

Coming from Sully (sort of), who had worked off the books his entire life, this criticism was particularly hard to swallow. Yet there was some truth in his charge. Rub did resent the strictures of legitimate employment. Working for the city meant Rub not only had to pay federal and state taxes but also local ones, as well as Social Security and who knew what else. Worse, the government, unaware of his existence for so long, now wanted to know where he’d been all those years, and what was he supposed to tell them? It wasn’t bad enough he had to fork over money that otherwise might have been devoted to cheeseburgers, but the amount of the theft was recorded right there on the stub of his paycheck. Why couldn’t they just let him believe he was taking home the money he’d earned? Why did they have to remind him of exactly how much they’d taken without his permission each and every week? Still, Rub felt compelled to object to Sully’s characterization. “It’s not the taxes,” he said.

What then?

“I miss—”

What?

Rub swallowed hard.

What, Dummy?

“Y-y-you,” Rub managed to choke out, the very thing he could never say when Sully was actually around.

What do you mean, me?

Unable to explain, Rub looked away. Down the hill, the man in the white robe was still talking. For how long now? Rub glanced at his watch, feeling his spirits plummet even further. Back when he and Sully were partners, he’d never needed to wear a watch. Sully was always right there to tell him what time it was and when they could knock off. On this new job, quitting time was five every afternoon except Friday, and he was supposed to know when that was so he could lock his tools in the shed. He’d been entrusted with several keys he didn’t want, but there was no Sully to hand them to.

See?

“What?”

You’re better off. Now you know what time it is without having to ask.

Sully was forever making this claim — that Rub was somehow better off without him — as if he expected him to agree one day, which he never would. “I liked it better when you knew.”

Hey, Dummy. Look at me.

But Rub couldn’t. How could he bear to look where his friend used to stand and no longer did? Or be told he was better off by the person whose absence made him so miserable?

Fine. Be that way.

He still remembered his awful first day on the new job, how lonely it had been, how slowly the hours had passed. When it was finally over, after locking the shed like he’d been taught—

With your own keys…

— he’d gone down to the cemetery’s main gate to wait for Sully to pick him up so they could head to the Horse, like always. After forty-five minutes and no Sully, he’d hitched into town to look for him. Jocko was locking up the Rexall. “Hey, man,” he said, when he noticed a forlorn-looking Rub loitering at the curb, “you look like you lost your best friend,” intending the observation as a figure of speech, though for Rub it was anything but.

“You know where he is?” he asked.

Jocko consulted his watch. “Six-thirty? Well, if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s right where he always is this time of day. In fact, I bet I could guess which stool.”

Rub was about to tell Jocko he was wrong, that Sully couldn’t be out at the Horse for the simple reason that, if he was, then Rub would be there, too, which he wasn’t. After all, they hadn’t discussed Sully not picking him up. He’d just assumed he would, because otherwise how could their regular evenings proceed? But suddenly he saw he was wrong. Again. He’d been wrong about everything else, and now he was wrong about this. He’d concluded it was only the days that were going to be different now that Sully didn’t have to work anymore, but it was even worse than that. Much worse. If he meant to join Sully at the Horse in the evening, he’d have to get himself there. And when he arrived, Sully would already be seated at the bar, showered and smelling of aftershave, like on the weekends. Before, nobody’d minded when they both showed up looking and smelling like men who worked for a living, but they would mind if Rub alone showed up in that state.

Standing there on the curb, Rub understood the full extent of his abandonment, which went beyond hours and days and weeks and also beyond physical proximity. Back when he and Sully had worked together, when they stood side by side, forty-plus hours a week, what Rub had enjoyed most was sharing his deepest, most intimate reflections about life and what would make it better on a minute-to-minute, real-time basis. Could he bear that loss? Possibly. But only if he believed Sully missed their friendship, too, even if maybe a little less. But what if Sully didn’t miss him at all? No sooner did this possibility occur to him than he was visited by an even-darker thought. What if Sully had gotten him the cemetery job to be rid of him?