Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Uh-oh,” Rub said. “I bet he found them blocks already.”

Sully just looked at him. “Pay attention a minute,” he said.

Rub was paying attention, all right, but not to Sully. He was watching the approaching El Camino and looking scared.

Sully reached down from the truck bed where he was standing and cuffed Rub, who was stationed in the mud below. “I don’t want you to say a word, understand? If you so much as open your mouth I’m going to brain you with one of these blocks and bury you in the woods. And I’m going to pile all those broken blocks on top of you.”

“I wisht you wouldn’t say things like that,” Rub said. “You always sound like you mean it.”

“Mean what?” Carl Roebuck said, getting out of the El Camino.

Rub started to answer and Sully cuffed him again. Rub’s mouth closed with an audible click of his teeth.

Carl surveyed the mound of remaining blocks, which had not diminished perceptibly. “I should apply for a federal grant,” he said, shaking his head. “When you hire the handicapped, you’re supposed to qualify.”

Sully sat down on the tailgate of the pickup, took off his work gloves, lit a cigarette. “You could help. That way things’d go faster. Except then you’d break a sweat and your girlfriends’d all wrinkle their noses.”

“Let’s not even talk about women,” Carl suggested. Indeed, the mere mention of the subject made him look even more morose. “You know what the C. I. in my name stands for?”

“What?” Rub said, genuinely interested.

“Coitus Interruptus,” Carl said sadly.

“What?” Rub frowned.

“That’s Latin, Rub,” Carl reassured him. “Don’t worry about it. Learn English first.”

“If you’d use your lunch hour to eat lunch this wouldn’t happen,” Sully observed. “This used to be a nice, peaceful town. Now everybody has to go home between twelve and one to make sure your car isn’t in their driveway.”

“I wish it was just between twelve and one that they checked,” Carl said. “I can take my lunch break whenever I want.”

“Go home and see Toby,” Sully suggested, wondering if Carl knew yet about the locks. “You’re married to the best-looking woman in town, you jerk.”

Carl rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” he said. “You remember who said that?”

Sully didn’t remember.

“Where do they talk Latin?” Rub wanted to know.

Nobody said anything for a moment, but Carl was grinning now. Talking to Rub seemed to have cheered him. Sully knew the feeling. It was hard to feel sorry for yourself when Rub was around.

“I’m thinking of establishing a college scholarship,” Carl told him. “You should apply.”

“I never graduated from goddamn high school,” Rub said, halfway between recollected anger and regret.

“Then what makes you think you’re eligible for a college scholarship?” Carl asked him.

This question so confused Rub that he looked to Sully for help. “Just don’t listen to him,” Sully advised.

“I can’t believe this is as far as you’ve got,” Carl said, surveying the huge pyramid of blocks that remained.

“I can’t believe anybody set them down here in the first place,” Sully remarked. “Right next to a basement that’s already built.”

Carl Roebuck, more interested in today’s lunacy than yesterday’s, did not appear to have heard this. “At this rate you’ll still be here Christmas.”

“You’ll know right where to bring my Christmas present then,” Sully said. “Don’t go to a lot of trouble. The money you owe me will be fine.”

Carl appeared not to hear this, his attention having been captured by a detail at his feet. There in the mud were the two blocks Sully had placed in front of the truck’s rear wheels three hours earlier. They looked like they were just sitting there, like a man might be able to bend over and just pick them up, except that when Carl Roebuck tried, he discovered they were frozen in place, as immovable as the blocks cemented the day before into the basement foundation a few feet away. Carl looked at Sully, who was grinning at him.

“Go ahead,” Sully invited. “Pick ’em up.”

“You’d like to see me have another heart attack, wouldn’t you?”

Sully snorted at the suggestion. “Don’t worry. It’s not your destiny to die working.”

Carl apparently agreed with this assessment, or was insufficiently motivated to argue the point, though he continued to try to budge the frozen blocks with the heel of his loafer, as he leaned back against the £1 Camino for leverage. From where they were standing, they could just see the top of the Ultimate Escape billboard across the highway and a quarter mile in toward town. “I’m going to feel a lot better when they get started on that son of a bitch,” Carl reflected.

Sully followed his gaze across Carl’s tract of housing development land, across the four-lane spur, all the way to the clown’s head. “Tell me something,” Sully said. “Who the hell’s going to buy these houses with an amusement park across the street? You should be praying they never start.”

“Sully, Sully, Sully,” Carl said. “You just don’t understand the world.”

Sully had to admit this was probably true.

“As soon as they break ground over there, they’re going to need everything on this side of the road for a parking lot. For which they will pay dearly.”

“Then why are you building houses?”

“So they will pay more dearly.”

Sully considered this. The reasoning was vintage Carl Roebuck, of course, and Sully could feel Carl’s father roll over in his grave. Kenny Roebuck had built the company on eighteen-hour days of hard, honest work, only to surrender what he’d built to a high roller, a rogue. “What happens if they don’t build the park?”

“Bite your tongue,” Carl said.

“Well,” Sully said, “I’m sure you’ll be lucky as usual.”

Carl looked as if he’d have given a good deal to be that certain. “Clive Peoples swears it’s going through,” he said with the air of a man comforted by the sound of his own voice.

“And you trust Clive Peoples?”

“He’s in deeper than anybody. He’s got investors lined up all the way to Texas,” Carl said. “What’s in trouble is the Sans Souci. That spring they drilled last summer’s going dry already. They should call that place the Sans Brains.”

Rub was frowning.

“That’s French, Rub,” Carl explained. “You can learn it right after English and Latin.” Then to Sully, “You want to sheetrock the house on Nelson tomorrow? I can have Randy drop all the shit off in the morning if you want the job.”

“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Rub said.

“Nobody’s talking to you,” Sully told him. Actually, he was of two minds about working tomorrow. If he did, he’d have an excuse not to go to Vera’s, where he wouldn’t be welcome. And he could use the money. And the holiday would go faster if he worked. On the other hand, he hated sheetrocking, and he didn’t know yet how his knee was going to react to today’s labors.

“I ain’t working on Thanksgiving, is all I’m saying,” Rub insisted.

“Nobody asked you to,” Sully reminded him. “When somebody asks you, you can say no.” He turned to Carl. “Double time?”

“In your dreams.”

“Go away and leave us alone then,” Sully said. “Sheetrock the fucker yourself.”

Carl massaged his temples. “Why do you have to hold every simple negotiation hostage? Why should I pay you double time?”

“What’s tomorrow, Rub?” Sully said.

Rub looked even more confused. In his opinion, they’d already been over this. “It’s fuckin’ Thanksgiving,” he said.