Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“On Spruce,” Wirf said. “Two fifty a month.”

“One bedroom?”

“Two.”

“I don’t need two, really,” Sully said, pulling on his parka over his suit coat. The bottom of the parka came about eight inches above the bottom of the suit jacket.

“Jesus Christ,” Wirf said. “You don’t own an overcoat?”

“What would I do with an overcoat?” Sully said. “Two-fifty a month is more than I pay here,” Sully said.

“You could stay in jail,” Wirf suggested. “That’d solve your housing problem. I could spring you for weddings and funerals.”

“I make more money in there, actually,” Sully said. During his six days of incarceration he’d won over two hundred dollars playing cribbage with three different cops.

Together the two men made their slow way down Sully’s front stairs, Sully limping and groaning, Wirf stumping and puffing. “I hope all the others aren’t cripples,” Wirf said at the landing.

In point of fact, Hattie’s bearers were not an able-bodied crew. In addition to Wirf and Sully, there were Carl Roebuck, who had a quadruple bypass on his recent medical résumé; Jocko, whose knees, ruined by high school football, had twice been replaced and sometimes clicked audibly; and Otis, who got red-faced getting into and out of cars. And Peter, thank God. On short notice they couldn’t have done much better without recruiting women. Old Hattie’s casket would have been in safer hands with Ruth and Toby Roebuck and Cass and Birdie at the handles. In feet, Sully could think of only two women in town who wouldn’t have been a physical improvement. One was his landlady and the other was in the casket they were going to bear. But custom was custom, and custom, in this case, demanded six men, never mind in what condition.

Thinking of his landlady, Sully decided to look in on Miss Beryl, whom he hadn’t seen since the morning he’d discovered her covered with blood. According to Peter, who’d looked in on her a couple times, she was doing fine. “You know my landlady?” he asked Wirf.

“I’m her attorney,” Wirf said.

“No shit?”

“I need a few paying customers to offset my pro bono work.”

“Meaning me?”

“No,” Wirf said. “You’re my pro bonehead work. You I do strictly for laughs.”

Sully ignored this, knocked on Miss Beryl’s door and opened it all in the same motion, calling, “You still alive in here, old woman?”

Miss Beryl was not only alive but dressed for the funeral. She had her hat on, in fact. “I thought you were still in the hoosegow,” she said.

Sully entered, Wirf following reluctantly, unused to barging into the living quarters of elderly women without invitation.

“I’ve got a good lawyer,” Sully explained. “He can spring me for funerals.”

“Just the ones he’s responsible for,” Wirf corrected, this in reference to old Hattie’s bizarre end. Sully still wasn’t sure he believed it. He’d gotten the story separately from Peter, Wirf, and Carl Roebuck, and while their versions differed in tone according to their personalities (Peter maddeningly detached; Wirf sentimental and apologetic; Carl choking with hilarity), nevertheless the facts were consistent, and so Sully guessed they must be true, however improbable. Peter, as far as Sully could tell, hadn’t the imagination to think up such a lie, Wirf was too kind, Carl too self-absorbed.

What had happened was this. After Sully’s brainstorm to set up the old cash register at Hattie’s booth, the old woman had been content, ringing crazy, random totals every time one of her customers passed her on the way out of the diner. Some of these customers, who had ignored her for years when she sat small and blind and nearly deaf, though still malicious-looking, in her booth by the door, now found it easy to stop on their way out and argue good-naturedly about the price that sprang into the cash register’s window, into the clogged nest of previous numbers. One of these had been Otis Wilson, who may have wanted to convey to the old woman that he held no grudge against her for hitting him behind the ear with her salt shaker. On the fateful morning in question, old Hattie had gradually slumped down in her booth until she looked like she was in danger of slipping beneath the table and onto the floor. Other than her daughter, who was usually too busy, Sully was the only one who ever took the liberty of grabbing the old woman by the shoulders and righting her on his way out. Certainly Otis wouldn’t have dared touch the old woman, whom he considered lethal, though he was inclined to play to the assembled crowd by loudly refusing to pay twenty-two fifty for a cup of coffee. “Pay!” the old woman had predictably cackled, leaning forward, squirming, struggling to lever herself up straighter just as Otis hit the total key of the old register, which usually had the effect of clearing the nest of numbers in the register’s window. This time, for reasons still unexplained, the cash register’s drawer, long frozen shut, shot forward with the force of long-repressed desire, nailing the poor old woman in the middle of her forehead. She had died, without protest, on impact, sitting straight up.

Miss Beryl went over to her drop-leaf table, picked up a legal-size envelope sitting there and handed it to Wirf. “Since you’re here … you’re authorized to pursue both matters we discussed.”

Wirf took the envelope, a little reluctantly, Sully thought. “You’re sure you feel okay about this, Mrs. Peoples?”

Sully frowned at them. Another riddle. Since getting out of jail, he’d been feeling increasingly disoriented. He wouldn’t have dreamed he could fall so far behind on current events by spending a few days in the Bath jail. Had the whole town gone crazy in his absence?

“As to this house, it’s time, Abraham,” she said, not exactly answering his question. “Only a stubborn, selfish old nuisance of a woman would have put it off as long as I have.” She looked at Sully now and nodded. “While old Harriet was alive and always trying to fly the coop I knew I wasn’t the battiest old woman in town. With her gone I just might be the oddest creature around, so I decided to take care of things before I’m the one you all have to start chasing with a net.”

Wirf put the envelope into his pocket. “You understand you may not be able to undo this next month if you change your mind.”

Miss Beryl, who followed the envelope into her attorney’s pocket with a wary eye, looked like she might have changed it already. “I won’t,” she assured him. “If I’m to be seeing Clive Sr., star of my firmament”—here she indicated her late husband’s photograph on the mantle—“again in the near future, I need to put things in order. Lately he’s been chiding me.”

“Well,” Sully said. “If you’re hearing voices, it probably won’t be long.”

Miss Beryl, who usually enjoyed Sully’s mordant humor, now stared at him with the expression she reserved for those occasions when he’d been an especially bad boy. “Donald,” she said. “You and I have known each other for more years than I care to add up. Might I offer a personal observation?”

“You always do, Mrs. Peoples,” Sully said. In fact, he’d been wondering when she’d get around to chastising him for his latest round of misdeeds. Doubtless his punching a policeman and getting thrown in jail for the holidays struck Miss Beryl as conduct unbecoming a man of his years, a man with a son and a grandson and a handful, at least, of adult responsibilities he’d not succeeded in dodging. When was he going to grow up? Since Miss Beryl was the only person he allowed to lecture him, he took a deep breath and prepared to take his medicine.

“It’d give me great pleasure to overlook the matter,” she began ominously enough, fixing him with her stern gaze, “but I cannot. Try as I might to ignore your shortcomings, I feel compelled to mention that you are not wearing hose this morning and that you look positively ridiculous as a result.”