Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

“You can look now,” Wirf grinned. “I’m all done.”

Sully had been feigning interest in the college football game above the bar and wondering what the reason might be for all these recent visitations from his father. Now he looked Wirf over, shaking his head. Since there was no one close enough to overhear, he decided what the hell, he’d ask. “What’s this I hear about you being sick?”

“Who, me?” Wirf said, not very convincingly. It occurred to Sully, now that he looked Wirf over, that Birdie was right. Wirf didn’t look so hot. His skin looked yellow, something Sully probably hadn’t noticed because he so seldom saw Wirf in natural light.

“No, the pope.”

“The pope’s sick?”

“Have it your way,” Sully said. “It’s none of my business.”

“Sure it is.” Wirf grinned. “Anything happens to me and you don’t get your disability.”

Sully nodded. “Same result if you live to be a hundred, though.”

Wirf contemplated his beer. “Apparently I’m not going to live to be a hundred,” he conceded.

“Is this a medical opinion or just you guessing?”

“This is a medical opinion with which I happen to concur,” Wirf said, then added, “It’s also just between us.”

“Okay,” Sully said.

Neither of them said anything for a moment then.

“They tell me I eat too many pickled eggs,” Wirf finally continued. “The stuff they pickle the eggs with is dangerous. Eats away at your liver.”

Sully nodded. “Especially if you wash each one down with about a gallon of beer.”

“Especially,” Wirf said.

“Well,” Sully said. “You could cut back on your pickled eggs.”

Wirf shrugged, then shook his head sadly. “The time to cut down on the pickled eggs was about five years ago. Ten, maybe. They tell me that my liver is irreversibly pickled. They don’t like to say it right out, but I gather that it doesn’t make much difference anymore whether I zig or zag.”

Sully shook his head, feeling much of the same frustration he’d felt two days ago listening to Cass, who’d explained to him her lack of options with regard to her mother. Here was Wirf telling him the same thing, that he was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. Maybe Sully’s young philosophy professor at the college had been right. Maybe free will was just something you thought you had. Maybe Sully’s sitting there trying to figure out what he should do next was silly. Maybe there was no way out of this latest fix he’d gotten himself into. Maybe even the trump card he’d been saving, or imagined he was saving, wasn’t in his hand at all. Maybe his father’s house already belonged to the town of Bath or the state of New York. Maybe Carl Roebuck had bought it at auction for back taxes.

There was a certain symmetry to this possibility. Maybe Carl had used the money he refused to pay him and Rub as the down payment. Who knew? Maybe even Carl Roebuck didn’t have any choices. Maybe it just wasn’t in him to be thankful for having money and a big house and the prettiest woman in town for his very own. Maybe he was just programmed to wander around with a perpetual hard-on, oozing charm and winning lotteries. Maybe. Still, Sully felt the theory to be wrong. It made everything slack. He’d never considered life to be as tight as some people (Vera came to mind for one, Mrs. Harold for another) made it out to be, but it wasn’t that loose either.

“So what’s your plan?” he asked Wirf.

Wirf shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. To Sully’s surprise, Wirf didn’t sound all that discouraged. “Maybe I’ll just keep zigging til I can’t zig any more. I can’t even imagine zagging at this late date.”

Sully nodded. “How many more years of zigging do they figure?”

“Months,” Wirf said. “If I continue to zig. If I zag, I might get a year or two. A little more. We all end up in the Waldorf-Astoria, Sully. Zigging or zagging. I’m not that afraid. At least not yet,” he added. “In fact, I wasn’t afraid at all until we started this conversation.”

Sully stood, said he was sorry for bringing it up, which he was.

“That’s all right,” Wirf said. “I’ve been wondering when you’d say something.”

Sully suddenly felt awash in guilt for not having seen it earlier, for not paying attention, or the right kind of attention.

“Where you off to?” Wirf wanted to know.

“Home, for once,” Sully said. The idea of spending another long night at The Horse was suddenly insupportable. He’d been hoping to find someone to help him steal Carl Roebuck’s snowblower, but it was just himself and Wirf, and he didn’t see how enlisting another one-legged man would improve his chances. “See if I can plan my next move.”

“I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t be zigging with me anymore.”

Sully assured him this was not the case. “Maybe we should cut back, though,” he said. “Without giving it up entirely.”

“Hmmm.” Wirf nodded thoughtfully. “Zigging in moderation. An interesting concept. I like it as an alternative to cowardly zagging. Speaking of common sense, is this Miles Anderson going to let you work under the table?”

“I forgot to ask,” Sully said, heading for the door.

“Insist,” Wirf called to him. “Otherwise you’re in trouble.”

Given his present circumstances, the idea of future trouble struck Sully as pretty funny. At the coatrack he chortled, his knee throbbing to the beat. As he put on his overcoat, he realized that Carl Roebuck was right. Something by the front door did smell foul. Or were they both imagining the stench, each of them realizing, as they were about to step out into the world, the deep shit they were in?

This latter interpretation was one that his young philosophy professor at the community college would have favored. He liked screwball theories, the wackier the better, in fact. Sully was just the opposite, and he wrinkled his nose. Something stank, but it wasn’t destiny.

Opening the door, Sully nearly ran into his son coming in, and it took Sully a moment to realize who it was. Beyond Peter the street was white again and the snow was falling heavily in the fading late-afternoon light. For dramatic effect the street lamps kicked on.

“Son,” Sully said, offering Peter his hand. “What’s up?”

For some reason this question struck Peter as funny. “How long do you have?” he said, shaking his father’s hand with weary resignation.

“You’re just in time,” Sully told him, studying the snow. “I got a job for you.”

Miss Beryl pointed up the street in the direction of Mrs. Gruber’s house. It had begun snowing again. Mrs. Gruber, three houses up Main, had turned on her porch light and was attacking the fresh snow on her steps with a broom.

“That’s my buddy Mrs. Gruber,” Miss Beryl informed the little girl, Tina. “She ate a snail once, if you can believe it.”

The old woman and the little girl had been standing at Miss Beryl’s front window for about five minutes, ever since the Donnelly girl had gotten off the phone and said she’d better move the car just in case. “Just let Birdbrain see me out this window and she’ll stay right there till I get back. She won’t be no trouble unless you try to move her. She’ll just stand there.”

There didn’t seem to be much Miss Beryl could do but agree, though she made a mental note that all of this was what came of poking around upstairs in Sully’s flat, which she shouldn’t have done. The present situation was God’s punishment for following Clive Jr.’s advice.

When the Donnelly girl slipped out the front door, the child tried to follow, but when Miss Beryl said, “Here’s your Mommy,” Tina had returned to the window, watched her mother get into the car and drive off. She’d been standing there since, just as her mother had predicted. Miss Beryl had been afraid the little girl would start crying, but she didn’t. She just stood, watching the exact place she’d last seen her mother, apparently expecting her to materialize again in the same spot. She did, however, briefly follow Miss Beryl’s bony finger when she pointed out Mrs. Gruber.