Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Shut up, Rub,” Carl said. “Nobody’s talking to you.”

“Sully was.”

“When?” Carl said.

“Just now.”

“Just when?”

Rub looked like he might cry.

“What burns my ass, Sully,” Carl said, “is that you wouldn’t even know it was Thanksgiving. You don’t even have a family, for Christ sake. I’m offering to keep you out of trouble for twenty-four hours, and all you can think about is extortion.”

Sully briefly considered telling Carl a couple of things. That his son was in town, for instance, and that strangely enough, he did have an invitation for tomorrow, even if all parties concerned were hoping it would not be accepted. He also considered telling Carl Roebuck what he didn’t know yet — that he was the one who’d probably not have a place to go on this particular Thanksgiving, that none of the keys dangling from the ring in the El Camino’s ignition fit the doors to his house anymore.

Carl got back into the El Camino and started the engine. “Shit,” he said. “All right, time and a half. Call it a Christmas bonus.”

“Pay me what you owe and call it honesty,” Sully suggested.

Carl chose not to hear this. “Time and a half?”

“I’ll consider it,” Sully said, though he knew he’d take it, and knew Carl knew he’d take it.

“It’s a two-man job,” Carl said, nodding imperceptibly in Rub’s direction.

“I ain’t working Thanksgiving,” Rub said stubbornly, and to look at him an objective observer would have concluded that it’d be a waste of time to try to change his mind.

“He will if I ask him,” Sully assured Carl Roebuck. “Won’t you, Rub.”

“Okay,” Rub said.

Carl shook his head sadly, as if to suggest it was a constant trial, this living in an imperfect world. “I see you’re using the plywood, anyway,” he said, shifting the El Camino into gear. “Knowing you two, I’d have sworn it wouldn’t have occurred to you. I figured you’d bust up the whole first load for sure. I just came out to see if I could save the rest.”

Sully didn’t look at Rub. He didn’t have to, having too often seen Rub’s expression when he was about to wet his pants. Fortunately, Carl Roebuck wasn’t paying attention. Sully and Rub watched the El Camino turn and bang its way back out toward the blacktop, where a dark sedan was sitting. For some time Sully had been vaguely aware of the sedan’s presence, but wasn’t sure exactly how long it’d been sitting there. When the El Camino bounced onto the blacktop and headed toward town, the sedan started up and followed.

“Who do you figure was in that other car?” Rub wondered.

“Somebody’s husband, probably.”

They went back to work, silently for a while, until the pickup was all loaded and ready to go. Cold or no cold, Sully rolled down a window in the cab when Rub got in beside him. Rub was as gamy as he ever got in cold weather. “I wisht he’d give me that scholarship,” Rub said.

It was nearly seven when they finally finished. They’d done the last two loads in the dark, with just the quarter moon, darting in and out of high clouds, for light and company. For entertainment Rub continued to wish. Since five o’clock he’d wished it wasn’t dark. He wished they’d stopped for dinner, especially since they didn’t get any lunch. He wished he had one of those big ole double cheeseburgers they served at The Horse, the kind with lots of onions and a big ole slice of cheese and some lettuce and tomato, so big you had to open your mouth as far as you could just to get a bite. He wished he had some of that coleslaw they serve too, and some fries, right out of the grease, so the salt stuck real good. And he wished he’d never said yes to working on Thanksgiving. Only his final wish was really worth wishing. He wished they’d thought to return Bootsie’s car to the Woolworth’s lot before his wife got off work and had to walk home, which always made her mad enough to whack his peenie.

“Let’s stop at The Horse,” Rub said when they’d dropped off the last load of blocks and Sully’d paid him. Rub didn’t like to keep money lying around. He liked it to get up and work. To buy big ole double cheeseburgers and draft beers. He liked to spend it before his wife discovered he had it.

“Not me, Rub,” Sully said. “I’m tired and filthy and I stink almost as bad as you.”

“So?” Rub said. It was impossible to insult him with references to the way he smelled. “It’s just The Horse. Ain’t you hungry?”

“Too tired to chew, actually.” All of Sully’s earlier enthusiasm for going back to work had fallen victim to fatigue. He couldn’t imagine the optimism that had led him to believe he’d be able to do the job without Rub’s help.

“Anybody’s got enough strength to chew,” Rub said.

“Maybe later I’ll feel like it,” Sully said. “Say hi to Bootsie for me. Tell her I’m sorry she married such a dummy.”

“I wisht I didn’t have to go home and see her,” Rub admitted, getting into his wife’s Pontiac. “She’s gonna whack my peenie.”

“Bob and weave,” Sully advised. “It’s a small target.”

Sully’s flat was identical in floor plan to Miss Beryl’s below. The floor plan was the only similarity. Where the downstairs flat was crowded with Miss Beryl’s heavy oak furniture, terra-cotta pots and wicker elephants, its walls freshly papered and hung with framed prints and museum posters under glass, its tables covered with ghostly spirit boats and ornate vases, the various mementoes of her travels, Sully’s flat was wide open, pastoral. In fact, it didn’t look dramatically different from the way it had looked before he moved in with his furniture so many years ago. That morning, it had taken him just under an hour to complete the move, and the few things he brought with him only served to emphasize the flat’s high ceilings, its terrible spaciousness, the echoing sounds he made moving from room to room over the hardwood floors. He’d been forty-eight then and had lived almost his entire adult life in dark, cramped, furnished quarters, which he’d found pretty much to his liking. Ruth had been urging him for a long time to find a decent place to live, claiming that what ailed Sully was his morbid surroundings. He hadn’t argued with her, but he hadn’t moved, either. He hadn’t had any idea, then or now, what ailed him, but he suspected it wasn’t his surroundings. In fact, about the only thing that could have induced him to move was the thing that had happened. He’d left the old flat one afternoon to go buy a pack of cigarettes. The last cigarette of his last pack he left half smoked in an ashtray perched on the arm of his battered sofa.

The corner grocery was only two blocks away, so Sully had walked. He was between jobs and in no particular hurry. When he ran into a couple of guys he knew, he stopped to shoot the breeze. At the store he bought cigarettes and talked with a cop who was loitering near the register. When a fire alarm sounded, the cop left, so Sully took the opportunity to bet a daily double with Ray, the sad, fatalistic store owner who was in his last year of competition with the IGA supermarket. The OTB would open the following year, officially burying Bath’s three neighborhood groceries. “Looks like we got us some midday excitement,” Ray said when the fire engine roared by.

“We could probably stand a little,” Sully’d said absently, lighting a cigarette and trying to account for the vague, distant unease, a sense of menace almost, that he’d become aware of at the edge of his consciousness. He said good-bye to Ray and started home. The fire engine had careened around the corner onto Sully’s street and for some reason turned its siren off. People were running through the intersection, and Sully saw there was a black plume of smoke ascending into the sky above the rooftops. There were more sirens in the distance. A police car flew by.