Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Back at The Horse Wirf was right where Sully had left him. There was an episode of The People’s Court on the television above the bar, and Wirf and half a dozen other regulars were trying to predict how the judge would rule. This was an evening ritual. The regulars had a running contest to see who guessed the most correct decisions. Wirf was currently in fourth place behind Jeff, the night bartender, Birdie, the day bartender, who sometimes stuck around after her shift ended, and Sully, who wasn’t a big believer in justice and usually just flipped a mental coin between the defendant and the plaintiff.

“The defendant’s an asshole,” Jeff was saying. Jeff was opinionated and pretty good at predicting how things would go in the court. “The judge will never rule for him.”

Birdie shook her head. “This is a court of law,” she said. “Being an asshole is beside the point.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Wirf said. “Judges don’t like assholes any better than you do.”

Since Wirf hadn’t seen them come in, Sully nudged Peter to keep still while he snuck up behind his lawyer and kicked him hard in the calf of his prosthetic leg, so hard the leg flew off the rung of the bar stool and ricocheted off the front of the bar. “Jesus Christ!” Peter gasped, the same look of horror on his face as when he had realized his father’s intention to poison the dog at the yard. He couldn’t decide which was more bizarre, that his father would sneak up behind a man and kick him or that the kicked man registered no pain.

“Move,” Sully said, sliding onto the stool next to the man he’d just kicked. “How come you always gotta take up two stools?”

“I was saving that one for you,” Wirf said.

“Why?” Sully said. “I told you I was going home.”

“I never believe anything you say,” Wirf explained. “And I certainly don’t believe it when you say you’re going home at six-thirty on Friday night. Someday,” he added, “you’re going to forget which is my fake leg.”

Sully nodded. “I’ve already forgot,” he said. “I was just guessing. You ever met my son?”

Wirf rotated on his stool, offered his hand to Peter. “I don’t get it,” Wirf frowned. “He looks intelligent.”

“He is,” Sully said, feeling an unexpected surge of pride. He tried to remember the last time he’d introduced his son to anyone. Many years ago, he decided. “He’s a college professor.”

Peter shook Wirf’s hand. “Your old man was a college student up until a couple days ago,” Wirf said. “He must’ve been on the verge of learning something, though, because he quit.” To Sully he added, “You missed all the excitement, as usual.”

“Good,” Sully said. “I’ve had enough excitement today. What excitement?”

“Some guy shot a deer right in the middle of Main Street.”

Sully frowned, considered this. A deer in the middle of Main Street was possible. When he was growing up, deer used to graze on the grounds of Sans Souci. Even now, at first light and after a fresh snow, people on Upper Main sometimes claimed to see deer tracks across their lawns, though Sully had never seen any himself.

“Guy must have thought it was his lucky day,” Wirf went on. “Spent all day out in the woods till he froze his nuts off, finally drove home, parked his car, took his gun out of the backseat and shot a deer dead on his own front lawn. Next year he’ll probably just sit by his front window and wait where it’s warm.”

“I take it you didn’t witness this shooting yourself,” Sully said. In Bath news traveled two ways. Fast and wrong.

“Nope,” Wirf said. “I sat right here. Heard all about it, though.”

“You have any doubts about the testimony?”

“A few,” Wirf admitted. “But I’m fond of the story. And the guy who told it swore he saw the deer.”

Sully grinned at him. “He was probably drunk, like you. Some guy ran over a dog and left it there. What do you want to bet?”

“What’d I tell you!” Jeff, the bartender, bellowed. The judge had just found for the plaintiff, as he’d predicted.

Birdie threw up her hands. “That does it,” she said. “I’m going home.”

“How about making us a couple hamburgers before you go?” Sully suggested.

“The kitchen closes at seven,” Birdie said, pointing at the beer sign clock on the wall, which said seven-fifteen.

“Okay,” Sully said. “I’ll go make them myself.”

Jeff shook his head. “Tiny doesn’t want you back there. You always leave the grill a mess.”

“What do you want on them?” Birdie sighed, sliding off her stool.

“A bun’d be nice,” Sully said, “and whatever else looks good.” These were pretty much the same instructions he’d given Rub at noon for the hamburger he never got.

“How about you, handsome?” Birdie said.

“Everything,” Peter said.

Sully noted with some interest that Peter seemed used to being called handsome. As a boy he’d been easy to embarrass, but no more.

“Thanks,” Peter added.

“Now there’s a word you never learned from your father,” Birdie said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

On television the judge was explaining the principle of shared culpability, which allowed him to assign percentages of blame. The explanation wasn’t as impressive as the ones Sully’s young philosophy professor came up with in class. By the time he got finished explaining something like free will it had disappeared without a trace, disproved. Dividing up things like responsibility, as this judge was doing, wasn’t a bad trick either, but it wasn’t as clean as philosophy. A good philosopher could just make the thing in question disappear. One minute it was there, the next that son of a bitch was gone and there wasn’t anything to divide up either.

“He ruled for the defendant?” Wirf said, surprised, glaring at the TV judge with the same perplexed expression he always wore at Sully’s disability hearings.

“Same as he did last week,” Sully said. “This is a rerun, you jerk.”

Wirf nodded. “I thought it looked familiar.”

“Every time we go to Albany it’s a rerun too,” Sully pointed out. “Which is why we’re about to quit.”

Wirf had taken a five-dollar bill out of his wallet. He’d been about to hand it over to Jeff, who’d narrowly won the week’s wager. “Had you seen that one before?”

Jeff had shifty eyes, and they shifted now. “Sully’s full of shit as usual. That wasn’t no rerun.”

“I thought I remembered it too,” Wirf said.

“Then you should pay double,” Jeff pointed out. “If you guess wrong on reruns.”

Wirf must have considered this a valid point, because he shoved the five across the bar. When Jeff drew two beers, Sully took them and headed down to the other end of the bar where he and Peter could talk.

“What?” Wirf said when he noticed Sully and Peter had moved down to the vacant end of the bar. “You don’t want to talk to me?”

“Not right this minute,” Sully admitted.

“I didn’t finish telling you about the guy that shot the deer.”

“There’s more?”

“They arrested that son of a bitch,” Jeff bellowed from down the bar. He was standing on a stool, switching stations to yet another holiday football game. When somebody wanted to know how come he was arrested, Jeff explained, “You can’t discharge a firearm inside the city. It’s against the law.”

Wirf sighed. “Everybody’s a lawyer.”

“Except you,” Sully agreed.

Wirf ignored this, turning his attention back to the television. “Are they playing this game now?” he asked Jeff suspiciously. A man who wasn’t above getting his friends to bet on reruns of The People’s Court wouldn’t balk at betting on tape-delayed sporting events he already knew the outcome of.