Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

When he couldn’t stand to watch anymore, Will backed away from the door, realizing as he did so that he was standing in warm water. Grandma Vera’s tub was finally full, the water a level sheet right at the top, like glass. He turned off the faucets then, understanding as he did so the full consequences of his rash act. By trying and failing to inflict pain upon Wacker, he had succeeded only in losing the sympathy and slender protection of the adults, all of whom now sided with Wacker. Neither his father nor his mother would protect Will now. By flooding the bathroom, he’d even lost the protection of Grandma Vera, who, he suspected, had been on his side. She alone had seemed to understand that Wacker was cruel and unnatural. Now even she would be on Wacker’s side.

The way Will saw it, he had two options. One was to stay locked in Grandma Vera’s bathroom for the rest of his life, the other to make a break for it. Maybe Grandpa Sully would take him. He recalled with fondness Grandpa Sully’s fearlessness yesterday, and remembered how his grandfather had winked at him as they drove off, a wink that had conveyed an understanding.

When the bathroom door rattled and his father’s angry voice ordered him to unlock the door, Will was already half dressed and fully resolved. Thankfully, he’d piled his clothes on top of the bathroom sink, and they were dry, whereas Wacker’s were a soggy lump on the floor. His sneakers were a little wet, but he didn’t care. By standing on the commode he was able to reach the lock on the small bathroom window. The screen was loose, the air outside cold, the ground a long way down, but Will’s decision was made. He would find a new life.

The confusion reigning in his ex-wife’s house reminded Sully of the confusion of war, the principal difference being that at Vera’s it seemed no terribly dishonorable thing to slip out the back, which was what he did when the others converged on the bathroom door to cajole Will into opening it. Peter was the only one who’d noticed him go, and Sully had thought he saw his son smirk. Was it that knowing smirk or the chaos of Vera’s family that he was fleeing? he wondered, turning his key in the ignition. Whichever. When he pulled away from the curb, he stomped the gas pedal hard and the truck roared up the quiet street at unsafe speed, taking the corner as if he feared pursuit. Only when he turned onto Main and stopped at the traffic light in front of the OTB did he feel relatively safe. At The Horse, in the company of relatively sane men, he’d feel even safer, and since this could not be brought about soon enough, he considered just driving on through the long red light he was sitting beneath. His was the only moving vehicle on the whole dark deserted street, which made obedience to the traffic signal seem even more ridiculous than usual, so he revved the engine, inched forward, did a quick scan of the street and checked the rearview for cops.

What he saw in the mirror so startled him that his foot slipped off the clutch, causing the truck to lurch forward and die beneath the traffic light. There in the mirror, for just a moment, like an ancient accusation, were the frightened eyes of his son. Not Peter the adult, whom he’d left at Vera’s talking to the bathroom door, twisting the doorknob back and forth, but the boy he’d been so long ago. The plea in those eyes in the mirror had been so urgent, so real that Sully thought for a second that this must be another dream, like the sauna one, that he’d again fallen asleep in the truck. The light turned green, but Sully sat, stalled, the need to flee suddenly gone out of him. And then the eyes were there again, along with the apologetic smile of a stowaway.

“Hi, Grandpa,” Will said when Sully got out of the truck, his voice as thin with fear as a voice could be.

Sully searched for his grandson’s name, locating it finally. “You okay?” Sully said, lifting the boy out of the pickup’s bed.

He’d hidden beneath an old swatch of burlap, daring to come out from under it only when the truck stopped at the traffic light. Then when it lurched, he’d lost his balance and hit his forehead against the cab.

Will seemed not to hear his grandfather’s question. What had captured his attention was the lump magically growing on his forehead, just below the hairline. The lump didn’t hurt, at least not like the hurts his brother inflicted, but it made him feel woozy and he was impressed by the way the lump had sprung magically into being, how it was still growing. He could tell it was growing as he fingered it. “I’m not going back,” he finally told his grandfather. “Ever.”

Sully nodded. “Who are you going to live with?”

Will sighed. “You, I guess.” It seemed the only sensible thing, and he tried to conceal from his grandfather that he’d have preferred some other arrangement.

A car pulled up behind them at the traffic light, which had turned green for the second time. “Okay, get in then,” Sully suggested, picking the boy up again, placing him inside the cab. “Slide over,” he said when it became clear that the boy wouldn’t do it unless specifically instructed. Peter had been the same way, an almost comatose kid, it had seemed to Sully. If you didn’t tell him to open a door, he’d just stand in front of it. At the time it had not occurred to Sully that the reason might be fear. The fear of doing the wrong thing. It seemed obvious now.

When his grandson had made room, Sully climbed in after him, banging the door shut behind him, causing the boy to jump. How did he get to be such a bundle of nerves? Sully wondered.

“So,” Sully said. “You got back at your brother, huh?”

Will shrugged, again reminding Sully of Peter, who as a boy had been almost impossible to engage in conversation.

When the driver behind Sully made the mistake of tooting, Sully got out of the truck and stared at him until the man shrugged sheepishly, backed up and pulled around, giving Sully wide berth. “Two cars in the whole street, and you’ve got to toot at me,” Sully called as the man slid by into the intersection.

Will was studying him nervously when Sully got back in. “Dad does that too,” he observed sadly, as if he’d discovered a genetic flaw.

“Does what?”

“Gets mad at people in cars,” Will explained. “He doesn’t get out, though.”

Sully nodded. That sounded about right. His son seemed exactly this sort of man. Angry enough to yell, not angry enough to get out.

At a pretty nearly complete loss about what to do with his grandson, he said, “How about some ice cream?”

“We had dessert already,” Will said.

Sully sighed. Vera did raise good citizens. Another boy who could not tell a lie. It was discouraging. “You had ice cream?”

“Pumpkin pie.”

“With ice cream?”

“No.”

“Then you can have the ice cream now. We’ll pretend it was on top of the pie.”

Will thought about this. He’d been warned about Grandpa Sully, who was irresponsible. Still, if he was going to live with his grandfather, he was going to have to get used to such things. He sighed. “Okay.”

“Good,” Sully said, turning the key in the ignition. Thank God, in fact.

They headed out of town, Will silently fingering the lump on his forehead. Almost as interesting as the lump was the fact that his grandfather’s truck had a hole the size of a basketball in the floor beneath the passenger’s seat.

“Don’t fall through,” Sully warned when he saw his grandson peering down through the hole at the racing pavement below.

When they got to the new spur and had it pretty much to themselves, Sully said, “You want to drive?”

Will looked at him fearfully.

“Slide over,” Sully said, adding, “be careful of my bum knee.”