Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“There’s a difference, Sully,” Carl said without the slightest hint of hypocrisy.

“What difference is that, Carl?” Sully said, flicking the remains of his cigarette. “Tell me why your ragging is okay and mine isn’t, because I want to hear this.”

“Because he’s not in love with me,” Carl said.

“Get the fuck away,” Sully said, genuinely furious now, sliding off the tailgate. “He’s no more queer than you.”

“I know it,” Carl said. “But he’d blow you on the four corners at high noon if you asked him to, and you know that, Sully.”

In fact, Sully did know it, or knew the power of Rub’s devotion. It was this knowledge, in fact, that had caused him to follow Rub up the sidewalk, hoping to joke him back into their friendship, something he’d always been able to do in the past. It had not been, as Carl had suggested, a desire to humiliate him further. Still, Sully had to admit, a simple apology would have done the trick. “I’ll make it up to him,” he heard himself say weakly.

“How?” Carl wanted to know. “You’ll buy him a jelly donut, right?”

Sully had to snort at this. “Unless I’m mistaken, I’ll end up buying him about ten thousand jelly donuts before I’m done.”

“And you think you can pay your debts in jelly donuts?”

“I can’t even get jelly donuts out of you half the time,” Sully pointed out, relieved that they were not apparently going to argue that seriously after all. “I’d be happy if I could.”

“See?” Carl said. “That’s exactly what I mean. Always ragging. You rag that dumb cop outside the OTB every morning for a month, and then you’re surprised when he wants to shoot you. Everybody who knows you wants to shoot you, Sully. The only thing that saves you is the rest of us aren’t armed.”

In the dark below they heard the camp door swing shut and low voices coming up the bank toward them. Carl quickly took one last drag of his cigarette, then ground it under his foot.

“Zip your fly too while you’re at it,” Sully advised.

Carl checked, found it zipped and Sully grinning at him. “That’s exactly the sort of shit I’m talking about,” he said, his voice lowered significantly.

“Tell me something,” Sully said, sensing that with Toby’s arrival he would gain the upper hand. “Do you know what a hypocrite is?”

“I can answer that one,” Toby said, arriving on cue. “He doesn’t.”

“See the thanks I get?” Carl appealed to Sully. “My pregnant wife is hustled off into the woods by two shady characters, I race to her rescue, and what do I get? Heartache.”

“One shady character,” Peter corrected.

“Besides,” Toby said. “It wasn’t much of a rescue. You’ve been standing up here talking to Sully for ten minutes.”

“Did that cop really pull his gun?” Carl asked Peter.

Peter nodded.

“You didn’t believe me, right?” Sully said.

Carl Roebuck ignored him. “Come here, woman,” he said, suddenly dropping to his knees.

“I will,” Toby said. “But only because I want witnesses.”

When she was within reach, Carl drew her to him, lifted her sweater and inserted his head underneath.

“Would you two like to be alone?” Sully said.

“Absolutely not,” Toby said as Carl nuzzled her tummy.

“How’s my little Rodrigo?” Carl’s muffled voice came from beneath the sweater. “Was Mommy nice to you today?”

“Enough,” Toby said, trying to back away. “Your nose is cold.”

But Carl had linked his arms behind her thighs and she couldn’t move. “Rodrigo, Rodrigo, it’s your papa come to visit.”

“I’ve warned him,” Toby told them, “that I’ll abort this child before I’ll let him be christened Rodrigo Roebuck.”

“Don’t listen, Rodrigo,” Carl begged. “Mommy’s a meany, but your daddy loves you.”

“Daddy’s about to get a knee in the windpipe.”

“Goodnight, my little one,” said Carl, apparently taking this threat seriously and coming out from under his wife’s sweater. “Who the hell’s going to lay this floor with you in jail?” he wanted to know.

“Speak to my assistant,” Sully said, indicating Peter. “He was going to do it anyhow.”

“What about your dwarf?” Carl said. “Will he help?”

“Sure,” Sully said, though he was not confident Rub would work with Peter if Sully wasn’t there. “You could always lend a hand yourself if you got really desperate,” he suggested.

“I’ve got a business to run,” Carl said. “I was counting on you, and you fucked up.”

“Don’t start again,” Sully warned him. “You aren’t even going to use the camp again until June, right? This job doesn’t have to be done tomorrow.”

“Wrong,” Carl said. “Wrong again. Wrong, still and forever fucking wrong. You’re a compass that points due south, do you know that? Do you want to know why you’re wrong this time, schmucko?”

“Not really.”

“Then I’ll tell you. I’ve got a buyer coming up to look at it during the holidays.”

“This is the first I’ve heard about any buyer,” Sully said.

Carl shook his head. “You are so shameless. Now you’re telling me if you’d known we were selling the camp you wouldn’t have gone and coldcocked a cop, is that it? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Son,” Sully said, “be a good boy and take this asshole down to the lake and drown him. Put stones in his pockets.”

“Maybe he won’t have to go to jail,” Toby suggested.

“He assaulted a police officer, for Christ sake,” Carl said, exasperated. “Of course he’s going to jail. It’s two days before Christmas. We’ll be lucky to get him arraigned before the first of the year.”

“You’re getting all upset, Carl,” Sully said, since pointing this out was about the only pleasure to be derived from the situation. In fact, he’d been going over the whole situation in his mind and had come to pretty much the same conclusion about how things would go. He had indeed fucked up, and the earlier illusion of freedom, the euphoria of the moment, had dissipated in the cruel December wind.

“I’m going to visit you every day,” Carl promised. “I want to see you suffer.”

“A visit from you every day would do the trick,” Sully conceded.

“Let’s go home,” Toby Roebuck suggested. “It’s cold, and we aren’t going to find out what’s going to happen standing out here.”

“The voice of reason at last,” said Peter, who’d been observing these proceedings with his customary distant amusement.

“What use is reason when you’re dealing with Don Sullivan?” Carl, still combative, wanted to know. “Jesus.”

“He’s all upset.” Sully winked at Peter.

“You want some advice?” Carl said. “Turn yourself in. Don’t wait for them to find you. Just drive over to City Hall, go in and ask which cell.”

“That’s your advice?”

“That’s my advice.”

“Okay,” Sully said. “Then I won’t do it.”

Carl threw up his hands and turned to Peter. “Due fucking south,” he said. “Every time.”

Midnight. The Horse. Roll call.

Regulars present, all in a row, drunk: Wirf (completely), Peter (sleepily), Sully (aspiring).

Regulars present, sober: Birdie, seated at the end of the bar (benevolent, watchful), Tiny, behind the bar (malevolent, watchful).

Regulars absent, among others: Rub Squeers.

“Don’t forget to get Rub to help you,” Sully said for about the fifth time that hour.

“Okay,” Peter agreed. It was pointless to argue, he knew. His father’s giving all this advice, he understood, was in lieu of an apology. Do as I tell you and this will still work out fine, was another meaning. A warrant, they learned from Wirf, had indeed been issued for Sully’s arrest. They’d parked the pickup out back of The Horse in the hope that they might be able to drink a beer in peace before he was arrested, but that had been many beers ago. The sense of their living (drinking) on borrowed time had at first contributed to a festive atmosphere which had only with this most recent round (Wirf s, like most of the others) begun to wind down.