Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

He was sick for a good week, but as soon as he felt a little better, he went over to Gert’s and presented his circumstance to him as a hypothetical situation. Gert had never had much use for Roy, but he was good at problems. He listened carefully and finally said, “Report the vehicle stolen,” taking Roy by surprise. “The only people out there in the winter are cross-country skiers,” Gert explained, “and how do they know the camp’s owner didn’t leave the vehicle there. We get a midwinter thaw, you hike back in and see if the engine starts. If somebody reports it to the cops before you can get it out, you can say whoever stole the vehicle must’ve done the burglaries. They’ll know it was you, but they probably won’t be able to prove it.”

Roy thanked him for the advice, which seemed both sound and rigorous. All damn winter it snowed, and no real thaw, either, but that April he got a lift out to the reservoir and hiked back in. Sure enough, the van was right where he’d left it — except, just his luck, a motherfucking tree had fallen on it. When he told this last part, Gert just rubbed his bald head thoughtfully and said, “That’s the trouble with crime. There’s always that falling tree you don’t predict.” Roy could see his point, but he still thought Gert was selling crime short, blaming it for something that wasn’t really its fault. That tree you couldn’t foresee, well, it fell on the innocent as often as it did on the guilty. He himself was a case in point. Right now his neck wasn’t in a brace because he’d been doing something illegal, only because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shit fell. Trees. Walls. Fucking meteors. Why blame all that on crime? Still, there was no denying Gert had been right about the rest of it. Seeing who the van was registered to, the cops knew it was Roy who’d stolen all that stuff, too, but they couldn’t prove shit, and his having reported the van’s theft wrong-footed them, too. Besides, the people who owned all those camps were mostly from somewhere else, so who gave a fuck?

“I bet some of them got woodstoves,” Cora was saying, determined to believe they could survive an upstate New York winter in an uninsulated camp on a frozen lake, miles away from their nearest neighbor. “When it gets cold, you just put a log in it and sit around and play games and be all nice and warm.”

“They’d find you in the spring,” Roy assured her. “Or the half of you raccoons didn’t eat after you froze to death.”

Cora sighed mightily, clearly baffled by his reluctance to join her in such a pleasant fantasy. “Don’t you like dreamin’, Roy? About things bein’ better? I know it’s just make-believe, but so what? Don’t you like imaginin’ how nice it’d be to have things, like maybe one of these camps, or a new car to go places in?”

“Hell, girl, I’m imaginin’ shit right now. Like how happy I’d be if you’d give that jaw of yours a fuckin’ rest.” By now they’d driven around to the far side of the reservoir. He pointed up ahead. “Pull in there.”

Miracle of miracles, she did as she was told, parking alongside a camp that looked unoccupied. There were others nearby, but you could barely see them through the trees, and there wasn’t a single vehicle in sight. An invisible loon called out over the water, and the breeze whispered in the upper reaches of the pines. Cora was looking around, confused. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why we had to come all this way.”

Jesus, was she stupid.

—

“WHAT THE FUCK are these?” he said, holding up the package of clamps that was at the bottom of the second CVS bag.

They were seated on the rickety dock now, their feet dangling in the water. The cove they’d chosen was narrow and secluded. The few camps visible across the reservoir were the size of the little green houses on a Monopoly board. A motorboat appeared out in the middle of the lake and just as quickly disappeared again. Roy had already chugged one beer and opened another. Cora was still sipping her first. They’d submerged the other nine beers in the cool water under the dock.

Cora winced. “Them butterfly clips you wanted?”

Well, yeah, that’s what the fucking package said they were, but any damn fool could see they weren’t what Roy needed for his ear. “These here are paperclips, dumb ass.”

“They was out of the others,” Cora explained. “I told the man what you wanted, and he showed me where they’d be, but they was all gone.”

“So you bought these fuckin’ things?”

Cora shrugged. “I thought maybe one of the smaller ones, if you had a little bit of cloth or a paper towel?”

He just looked at her. “I ought to throw you right in the fuckin’ lake is what I ought to do.”

“I done the best I could, Roy. They didn’t have them others, okay? They probably would’ve at the Rexall, but you didn’t let me go in there.”

“I suppose they didn’t have no Pringles neither?” he said, holding up the big bag of Cheetos she’d bought.

“I like Cheetos,” she said. “Besides, it was my money, so my choice.”

“Well, I ain’t paying you back for none of this shit.”

“Fine,” she said. “Don’t eat the Cheetos, then. Go hungry. You can just sit there and feel sorry for yourself.” When he got to his feet, she said, “Where you goin’?”

“The fuck do you care?” he said. Her idea to wrap his ear in something soft before securing it with the clip was dumb, but he didn’t have a better one.

“You gonna break in, Roy?”

“Maybe it’s unlocked.”

It wasn’t, of course, but the wood was punky, and a couple good kicks sprung it clear of the frame.

“You’re gonna get us in trouble, Roy,” she called from the dock.

“I’m already in fuckin’ trouble, Cora.”

The only mirror in the whole fucking place was the cloudy one in the dark bathroom. Apparently the owners weren’t planning to use the place until later in the summer, because the electricity still hadn’t been turned on. The tiny room had just one small window, high up, and even when he pulled the curtain back he could barely see a thing.

Removing the smallest of the butterfly clips from the package, he squeezed the metal wings, opening its jaw as far as it would go, pried it open farther with his thumbs, then tested it on his good ear. Still too goddamn tight. The next-larger size looked more promising, but it was sturdier, too, and he wasn’t able to bend the frame by hand. Inserting its open mouth against the edge of the sink and putting his weight on it did the trick, though, and he felt the metal give. Unfortunately, now the gap was too wide, and it fell right off his good ear. Fucking bitch. There was a threadbare washcloth draped over the towel rack, so he tore it in half, then in half again. If he could wrap the ear first, then secure it with the clamp…After several excruciating tries, he somehow managed to wrap the ear without passing out. As soon as he touched the makeshift bandage with the clip, though, it unraveled. Fucking, fucking, fucking woman. There was only one other solution he could think of. It took him a while to talk himself into it, though. “On the count of ten,” he said out loud, taking the dangling part of his ear between his thumb and forefinger. When he got to five, though, he thought, What’s so fuckin’ special about ten?

And pulled.

—

CORA WAS STILL on the dock but standing now, clearly scared shitless, when he emerged from the camp, holding a swatch of paper towels, already soaked with blood, to what little remained of his ear. “I heard you screamin’, Roy. You okay?”

“Do I look okay, Cora?” He held out the piece of ear he’d torn off for her inspection. When she let out a yelp and took a hasty step back, he flung the thing as far as he could out into the lake, where it plopped harmlessly, floated for a second, then sank out of sight. “Where’d that beer go?”