Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“I was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, visiting my ex,” Jocko explained apologetically. “We reenacted the famous battle all week. Anyway, your exploits were not carried there.”

“Good,” Sully said, then frowned at Jocko. “How come you were looking for me?”

“I saw your crazy-ass triple ran the day before, and I wanted to make sure you knew and didn’t toss the ticket.”

Sully just stared at him.

“Sorry,” Jocko said. “I thought you knew.”

“It ran when I was in jail?”

Jocko adjusted his thick bifocals, looking genuinely worried now. “You wouldn’t strike a man with glasses?”

Sully would not have hit Jocko. Had God Himself been there (surely this was the same perverse deity he’d so long expected the existence of), however, he might have taken a swing.

“I thought you knew,” Jocko repeated.

“Do me a favor,” Sully said.

“Anything,” Jocko said. “Just don’t punch me.”

“Don’t tell me what it paid,” Sully said. “Ever. No matter how I beg you.”

“Hey,” Jocko said, stepping into the bathroom Sully had just vacated. “You got it.”

Sully heard the door lock. Some people, he reflected, were just careful. Generally, God did not toy with them.

The room where old Hattie lay in her casket was empty except for the other bearers and one or two employees of the funeral home. The old woman had outlived all of her contemporaries and was survived only by Cass. Which had made rounding up the requisite number of bearers difficult. Peter had been dragooned, and Sully, from jail, had recruited Carl Roebuck and Jocko and Wirf. Otis, who felt responsible, volunteered. Ralph, good-hearted as always, had offered too, until Vera unvolunteered him, claiming he shouldn’t be lifting after his operation. Rub had been briefly considered, then rejected out of respect for the deceased. Carl and Wirf and Otis were now huddled in the far corner of the room, speaking softly below the organ music. Cass, dressed in black, stood near the casket, conversing quietly with one of the funeral home employees. Peter leaned against the opposite wall, looking stylish in a tweed jacket, button-down oxford shirt and narrow knit tie.

Sully joined him there. “What are you doing over here by yourself?”

Peter shrugged. “Waiting for you?”

“You don’t like these other people?”

Peter shrugged again, infuriatingly.

“Do you believe in luck?” Sully asked him.

“Not really,” Peter said.

Sully nodded, suspecting as much. “You know what? I do.”

Peter smiled, also apparently suspecting as much.

“You know that triple I’ve been betting for the last two years?” Sully asked. “It ran while I was in jail.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. The day before yesterday,” Sully said, trying to recall what Jocko said.

“Really.”

“That doesn’t strike you as bad luck?” Sully said.

“Luck didn’t have much to do with you being in jail,” Peter pointed out.

“How about you?” Sully asked him. “Have you ever been unlucky?”

“Never,” Peter said, grinning. “Not once.”

“Not even in your choice of fathers?”

“Ralph’s been a terrific father.”

“Smart-ass.”

Neither man said anything more for a few moments. It was Peter who finally broke the silence. “I’ve got to go to West Virginia tomorrow, settle things there. Get the stuff from my office, whatever’s left at the apartment. I’m going to leave as soon as we’re done here.”

“Can you handle that by yourself?”

Peter surrendered his maddening half smile. “I have a friend that’s going to help.”

“If you can wait till I get out, I’ll help. Wirf says it won’t be more than another day or two.”

“I better do it now,” Peter said, without, apparently, feeling any need to explain why.

“Suit yourself,” Sully said.

“Okay.”

“How come you didn’t bring Will?”

“Grandma wouldn’t allow it,” Peter said. “It’s probably just as well.”

“I guess,” Sully conceded, though he realized he’d been hoping to see his grandson. “Is she any better?” Peter had been to see him twice in jail, and while he was his usual reticent self, he didn’t bother to deny that Vera was making life miserable for everyone. There had been more phone calls from Peter’s woman in West Virginia, and Robert Halsey’s health had taken another turn for the worse.

Peter nodded in the direction of the casket. “I think they’re going to close that,” he said.

In fact, the casket’s lid had been lowered by the time Sully managed to limp up the aisle. When the funeral home employees noticed Sully, they managed to convey that raising it again might be a violation of the rules. “Everybody’s waiting,” they said.

“She’s my mother,” Sully told them.

“No, she’s not,” one of the young men said.

“Well,” Sully conceded, “not by blood.”

“Half a minute.” The young man raised the lid. “We’ll be late at the church.”

Old Hattie stared up at him with the same expression of grim, unfocused willfulness that she’d borne in life. If anything, she looked even more determined now. Sully, still reeling from the knowledge that his triple had finally run, albeit without him aboard, contemplated whether he’d swap places with the dead woman if he were offered the opportunity. It was tempting. “She doesn’t look finished even now, does she,” Cass said at his elbow.

“She is, though,” Sully said. “I guess it wasn’t such a great idea to move the cash register after all. How’re you feeling?”

“Hypocritical,” Cass admitted. “I wished her dead a dozen times a day, Sully.”

Together they stared down at the old woman, Cass weeping quietly.

“With her alive and making everything impossible, all I could think of was all the places I could go, all the things I could do if only she’d die. Now I’m not so sure it was her.”

“Give yourself time,” Sully said for something to say. Actually, he shared her doubts. He’d imagined the world would be a better place when it was rid of Big Jim Sullivan, but it had remained pretty much the same place, with just one less person to blame things on. Though Sully had solemnly pledged to keep blaming things on him anyway. “Did I hear you sold the restaurant?”

“Shhh—” Cass whispered, nodding at her mother, who, to judge from her fierce, frozen expression, might well have been not only listening but plotting intricate retribution. “To a friend of yours, actually.”

“I heard a rumor,” Sully said. It had been more than a rumor, actually. It was Wirf who was handling the details of the sale, and he’d told Sully that Vince and Ruth would be partners, Vince putting up the money with the understanding that Ruth would buy him out when she could.

“She’ll make a go of it if anybody can. Ruth knows restaurants. And she’s a hard worker. Now she’ll be working for herself. She promised she’d keep the name, which should please the dead.”

They both looked again at Hattie, who, if she was pleased, didn’t show it.

“I hope you didn’t sell too soon,” Sully said. “What if the theme park opens and the place becomes a gold mine?”

“If the theme park opens, so will a dozen new restaurants. Besides, did you see today’s paper?”

Sully nodded. “Still, who knows?”

“We both know,” Cass said. “This town will never change.”

Sully would have been pleased to agree. Actually, what he’d been thinking was how many things had changed just during the week he’d been the guest of the county. Losing Hattie and having Cass move away would be plenty big changes for a town like Bath.