Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

“Still lookin’,” the old man snorted. “Ain’t enough for folks to worry about. Now we got rep tiles.”

“Speaking of snakes,” Sully said, “you know who Roy Purdy is?”

“ Po lice was by earlier, looking for him. Heard he had himself some trouble earlier this morning.”

“He’s got more coming if I can find him before they do.”

“Whack him a good one for me, if you think of it. He like to let fly with that word I don’t ’preciate.”

“I think I know the one you mean.”

“Learned it on his daddy’s knee, probably, like most crackers do.”

“That’s where I learned it,” Sully told him.

The old man nodded up at him. “James E. Sullivan, Esquire,” he said. “Big Jim, they called the man. I ’member him.”

“Not fondly, I’m guessing.”

“They’s worse.”

“Name five.”

“You know what you should do, Donald E. Sullivan, Esquire?”

“Tell me.”

“You should let the po lice find that boy. Let them whack him ’stead of you. You look like you the one might get whacked. Fact, you look like you been whacked already.”

“I’ll be extra careful,” Sully promised.

“Do that,” the old man said, “and you just might be okay.”

—

“JESUS CHRIST,” said Gert, looking up from his newspaper when Sully slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar. “What happened? Did the Horse burn down?”

“Not that I know of,” Sully told him, blinking, his eyes still blinded by the utter darkness. “Why?”

“When was the last time you darkened my doorway?”

“It’s been a while,” Sully admitted. Near as he could tell, he and Gert were alone in the joint, though it sounded like someone was banging around in the kitchen.

“Why is that?” Gert said. He’d set the newspaper down but made no move to rise from his own stool.

“You think it could be the service?”

“Service,” Gert said, as if this were indeed a foreign concept. “So service is what the man wants.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for heartburn.”

“Hah!” the other man said, finally sliding to his feet. “Do I have anything for heartburn.” Coming up the bar he grabbed a plastic tub of Maalox tablets large enough to contain a human head and banged it down in front of Sully. Next came a quart of Pepto-Bismol, then, finally, a fifteen-hundred bottle of generic ibuprofen. From the bar gun he shot a tall glass of water. “Knock yourself out. No charge.”

Sully chewed a couple Maalox, made a face, then washed down three ibuprofen with the water.

“No?” Gert said, holding up the Pepto.

“My mother used to drink that shit by the juice glass.”

Gert returned all three remedies whence they came.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Sully said. It was only ten in the morning, but Gert’s alcoholic clientele generally showed little regard for normal drinking hours, and his morning business was usually brisk.

“That fucking snake’s got everybody in a tizzy,” Gert said. “It was dead last night, too.”

Sully nodded. “Your whole crew was out at the Horse. Joe and the rest.”

“Spinmatics Joe,” Gert chuckled. “His mother’s calling every hour on the hour wanting to know if I’ve seen him. Seems he never made it home last night.”

“He left the Horse around ten,” Sully told him. “Must’ve gone somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Good question. There and here are the only two places I know of that’ll serve him, and after last night, it’s just here.”

“Birdie eighty-six him?”

“That was my impression, unless she’s changed her mind.”

“When was the last time you knew that to happen?”

Years earlier, Birdie and Gert had been a couple, until she gave him his walking papers. Her refusal to take him back struck him as pure inflexibility, a serious character flaw.

“How about Roy Purdy?” Sully said. “He been in this morning?”

Gert met Sully’s eye, then shook his head. “I’m sorry about Ruth.”

“You heard?”

“It’s all over the street. I wish I could say I’m surprised.”

“How about that woman he lives with? Any sign of her?”

“Cora? She was in last night looking for him. Haven’t seen her this morning.” He was studying Sully carefully now. “You look like you need to eat something besides Maalox.”

He wasn’t hungry, but Gert was probably right.

“I could probably get Dewey to scramble you a couple eggs,” he offered.

Sully rolled his eyes. “Dewey.”

Gert gave him an up-to-you shrug that conceded the validity of Sully’s misgivings. Dewey was Sully’s age, and until midday usually had the shakes so bad he could barely grasp a spatula. Back before Ruth bought Hattie’s, he’d been the regular breakfast cook there, but she’d had to let him go when customers at the counter complained they could smell him even when he was grilling onions. Here at Gert’s he wasn’t ever allowed out of the kitchen, so orders were shouted to him through a closed service window that opened only when he rested a plate of food on the ledge.

“Dewey!” Gert hollered.

“What?” came his reply.

“Scramble Sully a couple eggs! But wash your hands first! You know how particular he is!”

“Fuck him, then!”

“And bacon!” Gert added.

“No bacon!”

“Ham?”

“No ham! Linguica!”

Gert arched an eyebrow at Sully.

“Why not?”

“Well, you did just chew two Maalox for heartburn,” Gert pointed out.

At which point the front door was flung open and a shaft of bright light pierced the interior gloom. A man Sully vaguely recognized came down the long bar with the confidence of a blind person who knew the layout by heart. Taking the stool next to Gert’s, he squinted toward the other end, his eyes adjusting. “Sully?” he said incredulously. “You lost, or did the Horse burn down?”

Gert moved to the row of taps and drew a tall PBR without feeling the need to ask the man if he wanted one. “What’s the good word, Freddy?”

“They’re letting people back into the Arms,” he said, then drained half of his beer and smacked his lips in appreciation.

“They find the snake?”

“Just now,” Freddy said. “You’re gonna love this. Four of those animal guys in waders up to their asscracks going apartment to apartment. Two hours they’re in there. No snake. So they come outside and give the all clear, it’s safe to go back inside. One of these fuckwads is holding the door open, and guess what slithers out, right between his legs.”

“Yet another government agency to be proud of,” Gert chuckled.

“I gotta give the guy credit, though,” Freddy said grudgingly after draining the rest of his beer. “He put his boot right down on top of it. That took brass balls, waders or not.”

Gert drew him another beer and then returned to Sully, who said in a low voice, “Imagine you’re Roy Purdy.”

“To what fucking end would I do any such thing?”

Sully ignored this. “You’ve just violated your wife’s restraining order, not to mention the conditions of your parole, and just to make sure you’re completely fucked, you beat your mother-in-law half to death. You’re stupid, but not retarded. You gotta know this whole deal ends up with you back downstate, which means you’re on the clock. Do you run or go to ground?”

When it came to role-playing, Gert, as everyone knew, was without equal. All his life he’d been a sucker for similar conundrums. He leaned one elbow onto the bar to get comfortable. “My car got crushed yesterday, so for me running’s a problem.”