Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Dad,” said Peter in the front seat of the truck. “Dad.”

Sully paid him no attention. He was hunched forward over the steering wheel, concentrating on the delicate task of keeping the truck right behind Rub while at the same time avoiding obstacles. In places where hedges grew close to the sidewalk it was a very slender passage, and the truck brushed the hedges noisily on the left even as it climbed up and over the huge, spreading roots of the elms on the right. “Look at him,” Sully said, indicating Rub, who still refused to acknowledge their presence. “Have you ever seen anybody that stubborn?”

“Yes,” Peter said. “I have.”

Sully ignored this. “Look at him,” he repeated, his voice full of wonder. He tooted the horn. Rub jumped but did not turn around. “Amazing,” Sully said.

“Here’s a driveway,” Peter pointed. “Get back on the street.”

“Amazing,” Sully said again. “What would you do if you were him?”

“Jesus,” Peter said. Sully had driven past the driveway, had clearly not even considered ending this insanity.

“He can’t figure it out,” Sully marveled. “All he’s got to do is step behind one of those trees and we’re fucked.”

“Oh, I’d have to say we’re fucked anyhow,” Peter observed. “You see what’s coming up the street?”

“No, what?” Sully said, slowing down for another narrow passage. The right front wheel encountered the base of one of the street’s oldest elms, its giant roots twisted obscenely above ground. The truck strained to climb, got partway, then rolled back. “Shit,” Sully said, giving the engine a little more gas with his right foot, keeping the clutch engaged with his left, as he craned and peered past Peter. “I can’t see. Am I going to make it?”

“I don’t think so,” Peter said, though he was not checking for clearance. What had his attention was the police cruiser he’d seen coming toward them.

“I think I can,” Sully said calmly, as if the question were purely academic. He let up on the clutch and again the truck climbed and tilted. Gaining the top of the gnarled root, the truck slid quickly over, scraping its underbelly before Sully could prevent it.

The police cruiser had pulled over to the curb, and Officer Raymer got out, looking confused and angry. “Hey!” he called. “You’re on the sidewalk!”

Sully noticed the policeman for the first time and put his foot on the brake. “Roll your window down a second,” he told Peter. When Peter did as he was told, Sully leaned across him and called over to the policeman, “Fuck off!”

Then he took his foot off the brake and the truck lurched forward again, its back wheel climbing the side of the elm and banging down again, its load of hardwood clattering fearfully.

Being told to fuck off by Sully seemed to clarify Officer Raymer’s thinking, because he got back into the cruiser, did a screeching three-point turn, roared back in the direction he’d come and pulled into a driveway between Rub and the pickup. Sully saw this strategy too late to prevent it.

Had the policeman stayed in the car, he’d have been fine. But he made the mistake of getting out again and grinning triumphantly at Sully, who, when he saw this, saw too that he was not through with his stupid streak. I’m about to fuck up, he thought clearly, and his next thought was, but I don’t have to. This was followed closely by a third thought, the last of this familiar sequence, which was, but I’m going to anyway. And, as always, this third thought was oddly liberating, though Sully knew from experience that the sensation, however pleasurable, would be short-lived. He was about to harm himself. There could be no doubt of this. But at such moments of liberation, the clear knowledge that he was about to do himself in coexisted with the exhilarating, if entirely false, sense that he was about to reshape, through the force of his own will, his reality. At this moment reality was a police cruiser in his way and a grinning cop with a grudge and the upper hand, but what Sully saw in his mind’s eye was the ability to remove these. He wasn’t sure he could remove the cruiser or the cop exactly, but he was certain he could remove the cop’s grin, and that was a beginning. It was more than a beginning, in fact, for the moment he’d seen that grin, thought became secondary to some deeper instinct. If Ruth had seen him, she’d have seen what she termed “the old Sully,” and in fact he half wished that Ruth were here to witness the old Sully’s triumphant return. He also thought of his father with uncharacteristic fondness, understanding that this was the precise moment his father always drank toward, the exquisite moment when both the obstacle and the means of its removal came into clear focus. In his mind’s eye Sully could see the exact spot where the pickup’s massive bumper would encounter the side of the parked police cruiser, saw it jolt and shudder, saw the side of the car crumple and finally cave in as the pickup pushed it down the sidewalk until it slid off to one side on the terrace.

But first, it was only fair to issue a warning. Sully put the truck into park, rolled down the window and poked his head out. His voice, as always at such times, was calm. A smarter cop would have heard in it a warning, but there was no smarter cop around. “That’s not a good place to park,” Sully said. “I’d move if I were you.”

“You get on out now, Sully,” Officer Raymer said. “Fun’s over. I’m going to have to put you under—”

Sully, having rolled up the window again, didn’t hear the rest. “Wrong, asshole,” he said. “The fun’s just beginning.”

“Dad—” Peter said. He, at least, had heard the warning.

In fact, Sully had nearly forgotten his son was present. “This is the point where people usually get out of the truck,” he told Peter.

“Dad—” Peter began.

“Okay,” Sully said, shifting back into drive. “Suit yourself.”

When the policeman heard the truck go from park to drive and saw it grunt forward, his triumphant grin disappeared, just as Sully had seen it disappear in his mind’s eye. Now it was his turn to grin. “Yeah, you prick,” he said under his breath, nodding at the policeman through the windshield. “You just figured this out, didn’t you.”

“Dad—” Peter said, pushing both legs straight out in front of him, as if onto an imaginary passenger side brake. “Jesus.”

For he’d seen Officer Raymer take the revolver out of its holster and point it, two handed, in their direction. Sully saw it too, though he didn’t care. “He’ll never shoot,” he assured Peter, just a split second before the policeman fired.

A warning shot was what Officer Raymer had in mind when the truck kept coming. He fired over the cab so there could be no mistake. The explosion ripped through the quiet street, however, like thunder, reverberating so loudly that Officer Raymer was not sure whether or not he heard a distant tinkling of glass up the street. When the echoes died, he was still listening in the hope of hearing that tinkling sound again. Probably wind chimes, he told himself. Anyhow, the truck had stopped.

Inside, Sully looked over at his son, who was shielding his face with his elbow, as if against the glare of the sun. The concussion had been so loud that it had penetrated Sully’s furious trance. “Did he actually shoot?” Sully asked Peter, wanting to be sure of his facts before proceeding.

“I believe that was a gunshot, yes,” Peter said. “I vote we surrender. If I have a vote.”

“That’s goddamn irresponsible,” Sully said, glaring at the policeman. He rolled down the window again. “You stupid prick,” he called. Then, to Peter, “Do you believe that?”

“Dad—” Peter began again, but Sully had already gotten out of the truck and was limping over to the policeman, who was looking at the revolver in his hand as if he were surprised to discover it there. Or as if, now that he knew it would fire when he pulled the trigger, he’d discovered its uselessness. Holding it didn’t even slow the advance of the man coming toward him. He might as well have been holding his dick, just as Sully always accused him of doing. Never, Peter thought, had a man looked so helpless. Peter rolled down his own window and called out to his father. “Dad—”