Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

At that moment the tow truck arrived, Harold Proxmire of Harold’s Automotive World at the wheel, his red-haired teenager, Dwayne, seated beside him in the cab. Since Dwayne could not always be trusted to tow the correct vehicle, Harold was apparently along to supervise.

Harold, dressed in gray and looking gray as usual, parked the tow truck on the other side of the street and climbed out wearily, shaking his head when he saw Sully. “I might have known you’d be involved in this,” he said, taking in the situation. “That a tree stump you’re sitting on, Mr. Peoples?”

Clive Jr. admitted it was, explained again how events had come to pass. In Harold Proxmire, Clive. Jr. found a more sympathetic listener than he’d had in Sully. Harold nodded soberly and when Clive Jr. was finished said, “Bad luck the stump had to be right there.”

“Good luck, you mean,” Sully said. “If it hadn’t been for the stump, she’d have kept going right into the living room, probably.”

“I told him he could leave anytime he wanted,” Clive Jr. told Harold, who had gotten down on his knees to peer under the car.

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Harold said. “We’re going to have to lift you off.”

“You could hitch up to the car and pull the stump out too,” Sully suggested. “Save us some work later.”

“Quit picking your nose and go lift that car, Dwayne,” Harold suggested.

The boy had been engaged in this surreptitious activity, and he blushed the color of his hair. He, Sully and Rub took up positions behind the car while Harold went around, opened the driver’s side door and took hold of the steering wheel.

“Where do you want me?” Clive Jr. asked Harold, noticing he’d been ignored in the matter of his own car. Now there was no room at the rear bumper where Sully and Rub and the boy were preparing to lift.

“How about over there next to her?” Sully suggested.

“I think we got her covered, Mr. Peoples,” Harold said. He counted three and they lifted. The car rolled forward with surprising ease. The only casualty was Dwayne, who, stationed in the middle between Sully and Rub, stumbled over the tree stump as they went forward, fell and bloodied his lower lip.

“There you go, Mr. Peoples,” Harold said, putting the car into park. “You’re a free man.”

Clive Jr. did not look like a free man. He looked like a man wearing an invisible yoke, pulling something he alone was aware of. “What do I owe you?” he said.

“Just for the service call, I guess. We didn’t have to hitch you up. If I was you I’d put it up on a rack someplace and let somebody have a good look. Make sure you didn’t crack that axle.”

Clive Jr. gave Harold a twenty, then turned to Sully.

“Don’t be silly, Clive,” Sully told him.

They were still standing around the newly freed car. Five men, none of whom seemed to possess the authority to adjourn the meeting. “Dwayne and I better get on back before the boss gets suspicious,” Harold finally said. “Tell your lady friend these things happen, Mr. Peoples. She should see some of the fixes I pull people out of.”

“And I’ll have that stump out of there pretty soon,” Sully said. “In case you want to start up your lessons again.”

“I don’t suppose you found a new flat yet,” Clive Jr. said.

“Not yet,” Sully grinned. “But thanks for asking.”

Sully and Rub followed Harold and the boy over to where the tow truck was parked. Harold got in the passenger side, Dwayne the driver’s. “Take this before I do something foolish with it,” Sully said, handing Harold the two hundred dollars left from Carl Roebuck’s six.

“You sure?” Harold said.

Sully said he was sure.

“You want a receipt?”

“Nope,” Sully said. “I want it to snow, is what I want.”

“Well,” Harold said. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to repossess you.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Sully said. “Esmerelda might, though.”

“She is the meanest Christian woman in the county,” Harold admitted. “Isn’t she, Dwayne?”

Dwayne apparently didn’t see much margin in responding to this query, because he just shrugged.

“Was that her I saw on the tube one night last week?” Sully thought to ask. He’d been in The Horse and glanced up at the TV just in time to catch the last second or two of a piece on a group protesting The Ultimate Escape Fun Park.

Harold sighed, nodded.

“I thought so,” Sully said. “I was watching on a small screen, though, and it didn’t get all of her hair, so I couldn’t be sure.”

Harold ignored this. “Our boy is in the cemetery out there,” he explained to Sully, who’d half forgotten that the Proxmires had had a son killed in Vietnam. “She don’t want to see him disturbed.”

“I can understand that,” Sully admitted, sorry now that he’d joked about Mrs. Harold.

“Funny time to protest,” Harold said, his eyes filling. “She wouldn’t during the war. Wouldn’t let me either.”

“We did fight ourselves, if I recall,” Sully reminded Harold, who had also served.

Harold nodded. “We did indeed. I thought we’d never stop.”

Neither man said anything for a moment.

“Did I hear your son’s back in town?” Harold said.

Sully nodded, feeling strange. Not many people remembered he had a son, and not many of those who did would have thought of Peter as Sully’s. Having Harold refer to him this way also reminded him of Vera’s contention that Peter was his now, that he’d won their son. “He’s helping me out for a week or two,” he explained, almost adding, until he goes back to teaching at the college. That, it occurred to him, would have been an unkind thing to say to a man whose own son lay buried a mile outside of town. It also would have been a boast. My son the professor. A boast Sully didn’t feel he had any right to.

Harold nodded in the direction of Clive Jr., who had finally coaxed his weeping fiancée off the porch steps and was leading her over to the car, which still sat in the middle of the lawn. He had her by the elbow and was leading her like a blind woman. “When I was a kid, I had an Irish setter like her. All nerves.”

They watched Clive put the woman in the car on the passenger side, then go around and get in behind the wheel. The car started right up, and Clive drove off the lawn and gently over the curb. “He should get that axle checked,” Harold said. “But I bet he won’t.”

“He’ll be fine,” Sully said. “Bad things don’t happen to bankers.” Though he thought about Carl Roebuck’s misgivings concerning The Ultimate Escape and wondered if Clive Jr. might be in for trouble. For Miss Beryl’s sake, he hoped not.

“I don’t think I’d give any more driving lessons if I was him. That’s how his old man got killed, wasn’t it?”

“Some people never learn,” he said. “Tell Esmerelda hello.”

When the tow truck pulled away from the curb, Sully noticed that Rub was looking glum. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I wisht you’d took it,” Rub said.

“Took what?”

“He had a twenty-dollar bill out.”

“Who?” Sully said.

“The bank guy,” Rub said. “I could’ve used that twenty dollars.”

“Ten, you mean.”

“It was a twenty,” Rub insisted. “I saw it.”

“But only half would have been yours, right?”

Rub shrugged.

“Or did you want the whole twenty for yourself and leave me with nothing?”

“I didn’t get either half,” Rub pointed out. “Nothing was what I got.”

“Well, that’s what I got too,” Sully said.

Rub sighed. This had all the earmarks of another argument with Sully that he wasn’t going to win.