Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Sully nodded. “I’d buy you a cup of coffee,” Sully offered, “but our friend here just totaled the machine.”

Officer Raymer, who had lapsed back into morose contemplation of his now empty cup, looked up at this reference to himself. “Piece of shit was already broke,” he said angrily.

“How about a soda?” Sully suggested to Will.

“Okay.”

Sully indicated the pile of coins, and Will fished for the ones he’d need.

“Great,” Peter said when his son made a wide loop around the coffee lake on the way to the soda machine. “Get him drinking soda at eleven o’clock in the morning.”

Sully hadn’t even thought about the time. “Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to get him something.”

“I know,” Peter said, with some kindness, perhaps to suggest that whatever his father had to offer was never the right thing.

“How much you want to bet they make me pay for it anyhow?” Officer Raymer said.

“Anybody see you break it?” Sully said.

“You.”

“Not me,” Sully said. “It was like that when I came in.”

Will came back with a small plastic glass half full of soda. “They don’t give you very much,” he said apologetically. He had two coins, a dime and a nickel left over, and he returned them to Sully’s pile.

“Tell this guy,” Sully indicated the policeman. “He’ll fix it. He works here.”

“Wacker gets to eat nothing but ice cream and soda for two days,” Will said, half expecting some reply. Instead, his father, grandfather and the man who worked there fixing the machines all just looked at him, making him feel strange and nervous, the way it always did when adults acknowledged his existence too directly. He stared at his soda until they quit, then took a sip, paying special attention to the way the cold felt along the back of his throat, and he thought of his little brother in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, one of whom had reached into Wacker’s throat with scissors, and he imagined his brother plotting complicated revenge against them.

Down the hall, small-town justice was done.

The apartment Wirf had located was off South Main in a neighborhood of large, shabby houses and sidewalks that were cracked and weed-infested roller coasters bordering lawns that were patchworks of brown grass and browner bare earth. There were houses on only one side of the street, and these faced the rear parking lot and Dumpsters of the IGA, whose sign now read CLOSING JAN 15. When Wirf pulled up at the curb and all four — Wirf and Sully in front, Peter and Will in back — got out, they were greeted by a chorus of barking dogs, one of which strained against a leash anchored to the railing of the porch next door. Which reminded Sully of two things — that he still needed to fix Miss Beryl’s railing and that he still owned a dog. According to Peter, Rasputin was still canine-in-residence at the house on Bowdon, sleeping in the kitchen at night, enjoying the run of the back porch during the day.

“Second floor?” Sully said, staring up at the dark vacant windows.

Wirf admitted it was.

“Good thing it doesn’t have four floors, or you’d want me to live on the fourth,” Sully said.

“Ever the ingrate,” Wirf said as they made their way up the front porch steps.

The flat had its own entrance, which had been left unlocked so they could inspect the premises. The landlord was at work. The stairs were steep and narrow, and Sully noticed Will regarding them warily. “Take Grandpa’s hand,” Sully suggested. “You still got your stopwatch?”

Will took it out of his pocket, showed his grandfather.

The apartment was a good deal smaller than Sully’s current flat, though the kitchen was bigger. There would be room for his dinette and chairs and enough room left over for him to get by without constantly banging into them. The appliances and fixtures were old, which was okay too, since he wouldn’t be using them. The living room had a fireplace complete with a charred log and two years’ worth of gray ash. The fireplace was surrounded by built-in bookcases. “What the hell am I going to do with that?” Sully said.

“God, you’re a pain in the ass,” Wirf said. “Go back to jail, why don’t you?”

Will’s eyes widened at this apparently serious suggestion.

The embarrassing truth was that Sully did not need a lot more space than he had in his cell. He needed a place to go to sleep at night. A place to shower. A commode. A closet for his clothes. His real homes were The Horse, Hattie’s, the OTB, Carl Roebuck’s office. And this flat was at the wrong end of Main Street, a lot farther from these homes than his place above Miss Beryl. Thinking of Hattie’s reminded him of another duty he had today. Hattie’s wasn’t really Hattie’s anymore, it was Ruth’s, and today was the Grand Reopening. He’d driven by that morning and saw the banner out front, then driven to the donut shop for his coffee. Sooner or later, though, he’d have to go in, find out where he stood with Ruth, whom he’d seen in the congregation at Hattie’s funeral yesterday, find out whether Hattie’s, perhaps the most comfortable place in Bath, was still a place he’d be comfortable in.

“It’s more than I need, Wirf,” he confided when Peter disappeared into one of the two bedrooms, taking Will with him. “Also more than I can afford.”

“Where are you going to find anything for less than two-fifty a month?” Wirf said. “You want to live in a trailer?”

“I’m only paying two hundred a month now,” Sully pointed out.

“That’s because your landlady’s carrying you,” Wirf said. “She could get four hundred a month for that flat, easy.”

Sully shrugged. “Okay, if you think I should take it, I’ll take it.”

Wirf threw up his hands.

“What?” Sully said. “What do you want from me?”

“Why do I bother?”

“No clue,” Sully admitted.

Wirf waved him away with both hands. They were grinning at each other now. “What’d Barton want with you?”

After the judge and Wirf and the county prosecutor and the police chief had hammered out their settlement, Judge Flatt had sent for Sully. Wirf, afraid Sully would do something stupid to queer the deal, had wanted to stay, but Flatt had sternly banished him to the corridor outside. To Sully’s astonishment, what the judge wanted to ask him about was what had really happened all those years ago when the boy had been impaled on the spiked fence. The judge, himself a young man then, had been one of those who’d gathered on the sidewalk to await the ambulance. Like Sully, he’d apparently never forgotten the scene. Sully explained that he hadn’t been there to see it happen, hadn’t witnessed any more than the other gawkers. And he thought about telling the judge what his brother had told him, that the reason the boy had been impaled was that his father had shaken the iron fence, shaken it in a paroxysm of rage until the boy fell. That was what the boy had later said happened, but it had been his word against Sully’s father’s, and anyway, the boy had been where he wasn’t supposed to be. Sully had started to tell the judge what he knew, then, without knowing why, decided not to.

“Nothing important,” Sully told Wirf now, feeling the same odd reticence. He’d never made any attempt to conceal his contempt for his father, but he’d never shared with anyone what his brother had told him that day.

“Okay, fine,” Wirf said. “Don’t confide in your own lawyer. See if I care.”

“Okay,” Sully agreed.

“Goddamn you.”

“What?” Sully said.

“You’ve hurt my feelings.”

“You just said ‘See if I care.’ ”

“I’m your lawyer. We zig together. And this is the thanks I get.” Wirf pouted. “Piss on you.”