Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“Thank heaven you’re still here,” Miss Beryl said. “Hattie’s escaped again.”

“Uh-oh,” Sully said, not terribly alarmed. This would make the fourth time the old woman had flown the coop this year. She never got more than a block or two. He flexed his knee, just to see if it would. “You remember what we did with the net?”

“Hurry,” Miss Beryl insisted. “She’s in the middle of the street.”

“Hurrying isn’t what I do best, at least first thing in the morning,” Sully reminded her, putting some weight on the knee, which belted out a hearty hello. “Isn’t that The Bank’s car I saw outside?”

Miss Beryl’s own coat was hanging just inside the door. When she started to put it on, Sully saw that his landlady was genuinely distressed.

“Stay put. I’ll get her,” he assured Miss Beryl, zipping his overcoat and locating his gloves.

“Hurry,” Miss Beryl said again.

“I am hurrying. It just looks like slow motion.”

“Should I call the daughter?”

Sully was half out the door. “No,” he said. “I’ll just take her back. I was headed there for coffee anyhow, since I can see you don’t have mine ready again.”

“Hurry!”

“Tell The Bank I’ll be by to see him later. Tell him he’s in trouble again,” Sully said, and closed the door before Miss Beryl could tell him to hurry again. He consulted his watch. Not quite seven o’clock. Way too early for this shit.

Hattie was only vaguely aware that she was in the middle of the deserted street. Her vision was dim at the edges of her milky cataracts, and anyway she was looking down at her slippered feet and watching them go. The sight impressed her, suggesting, wrongly, rapid flight. She’d made her break a full fifteen minutes ago and in that time had traveled a block and a half. The wind billowed her thin housecoat behind her like a sail. She was unaware of the cold or the fact that the slush had begun to seep through her slippers. She was bound for freedom.

Sully, who didn’t feel like chasing anybody first thing in the morning, was grateful to be chasing Hattie, perhaps the one person in Bath he could catch before his knee loosened up. Since Miss Beryl had spied her coming up the middle of the street, Hattie’d traversed another twenty feet and was now directly in front of the house. Her stride, Sully calculated, was about six inches, but her feet churned dutifully, and she darted furtive glances over each shoulder to check for pursuit. She did not notice when Sully fell into step alongside of her.

“Hello, old girl,” he said.

Hattie let out a little cry and ran faster, as if on an exercise treadmill.

“You running away from home?”

“Who are you?” the old woman wanted to know. “You sound like that darn Sully.”

“Right on the first guess,” Sully told her. A car turned onto Main and headed toward them. Sully got the driver’s attention, directed him around them.

“No driving on the sidewalk,” Hattie yelled when she heard the car go by, close.

“Where you headed?” Sully said.

“To live with my sister in Albany,” Hattie answered truthfully, because this was indeed her plan, the most obvious flaw of which was the fact that her sister had been dead for twenty years. Also, Albany lay in the other direction.

“How about I give you a lift,” Sully suggested. “We’ll get there a lot faster.”

“Let’s.”

Sully steered the old woman back toward Miss Beryl’s driveway, where they arrived a few minutes later. Clive Jr. had come out onto the porch and was watching. Before he could say anything, Sully held up a finger to his lips, then pointed at Clive Jr.’s car, which was nearest. Clive nodded, went back inside for his keys. Sully got the old woman into the backseat on the passenger side, then went around and slipped in beside her. Clive Jr. got in and started the engine.

“Who’s driving?” Hattie said, squinting in the direction of the front seat.

“Me,” Sully assured her.

Hattie located his voice beside her. “Who’s up there?”

“Me,” Sully insisted. “Who’d you think?”

“My feet are cold,” Hattie said, noticing for the first time. She began to cry.

Sully took her slippers off. Her feet were wet and ice cold. One of Clive Jr.’s sweaters was in the backseat, so Sully used this to dry and massage the old woman’s bony toes.

“Who’s driving?” Hattie said.

“Me,” Sully said. “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re almost there, too.”

Sully had Clive Jr. pull in behind the diner and motioned for him to stay put while he went to fetch Cass. Miss Beryl’s son wasn’t happy to be left alone in the car with Hattie, partly because his continued nonexistence would be harder to prove with Sully gone.

“I gotta get some gas, old girl,” Sully explained before he left them. “You wait here.”

“Here,” Hattie repeated, wriggling her toes in the warmth of Clive Jr.’s cashmere sweater.

Inside, Cass was taking the orders of two men Sully didn’t know who were seated at the counter. Sully waited for them to finish. “What kind of mood are you in?” Sully said when she put his usual coffee in front of him.

“Rotten,” Cass said. “Like always.”

“Good,” he said. “I’d hate to ruin your day.”

“Impossible,” Cass told him, then frowned suspiciously, as if she knew it were all too possible. Instinctively, she glanced toward the rear of the diner and the attached apartment where she and her mother lived. “God, what?” she said, stepping back quickly.

“She’s fine.” Sully held up a cautioning hand. “Clive Peoples has her out back in his car.”

“I’ll wring her neck,” Cass said, her panic turning quickly to anger, and she bolted from behind the counter. “So help me.”

Sully decided not to follow. Old Hattie was going to be furious, and he didn’t like to watch. The last time he’d brought her back, she’d called him a fart blossom and tried to kick him. Of the four times the old woman had tried to escape her daughter’s care, she’d been returned three of them by Sully. Luckily she never remembered his past treacheries. Only her distant memories were vivid and distinct. More recent perfidy she forgot almost immediately.

Sully went behind the counter and put on an apron, nodding at Roof, the cook. “Looks like you and me, Rufus,” he said.

Roof flipped two eggs onto a platter with his long spatula by way of reply. The platter already contained hash browns and toast triangles at the edges. Two more smooth movements and three more platters were complete, and all four checks came down from the circular spindle. “Ding dong,” he said. “Order up.”

“You’re not even going to let me drink my coffee, are you,” Sully said, grabbing a platter in each hand. Cass could balance them up and down her arm, but Sully didn’t think he’d try. Roof was even-tempered until you dropped his eggs.

Working behind the counter, Sully forgot all about Clive Jr., who remained in the car with Hattie until her daughter came flying out the back to fetch her. Then he gave Cass a hand as far as the door, for which Clive Jr. was rewarded by a torrent of abuse from the old woman, who thought he was Sully and who called him, among other things, a fart blossom. Then he went back to the car and waited, glancing at his watch every thirty seconds or so with increasing irritation. He didn’t mind being pressed into service, but it was just like Sully to disappear, to leave him sitting next to the foul-smelling Dumpster in the alley behind Hattie’s Lunch. Also, he’d discovered the use to which his cashmere sweater had been put.

Now that he had the leisure to consider it, he was also miffed at his mother, who had instinctively summoned Sully when she saw the old woman in distress, as if Clive Jr. himself were not to be trusted with so delicate a task. Secretly, he doubted he would have performed as well as Sully. He had little experience in trying to talk ninety-year-old runaways into returning home, and he probably would have messed everything up. In his mind’s eye he could see himself struggling with the old woman in the middle of the street like a mugger or purse snatcher, being clawed and cursed at until he finally gave up. What annoyed him was that his mother apparently had imagined a similar outcome and had turned to Sully, a man who would know what to do.