Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Helping Cass out was Sully’s official reason for doing the breakfast shift, but there were other reasons, all of them money. Since borrowing a small down payment from Wirf and getting Harold Proxmire to let him make payments on the truck and borrow the snowplow blade when it snowed, it hadn’t snowed once, which meant that Sully wouldn’t be able to make his first payment next week. Harold wouldn’t be expecting it, given the fact that it hadn’t snowed, but the continued blue skies made Sully nervous. Last winter there’d been virtually no snow, and if this winter was another one like it, he’d be going into spring buried under the kind of debt he’d have had a hard time paying off even on two good legs. His knee didn’t seem to be any worse since going back to work, but it wasn’t any better either, and he dreaded another accident on it, knowing that would finish him for good.

Working behind the lunch counter at Hattie’s had its advantages. Standing next to the warm grill gradually loosened his knee, which always felt its worst early in the morning. The two or three steps he had to take between the grill and the fridge was just the right amount of exercise for the first three hours of his day, between six-thirty and nine-thirty, after which he’d be limber enough to join Rub and Peter out at the Anderson house or go out on a job for Carl Roebuck if Carl happened to have one of those small, scum-sucking, nasty jobs he delighted in giving to Sully. He preferred to work for Carl when he could, because there wasn’t really enough work at the house to keep three men busy for an entire winter, even when one was a cripple, another a born sandbagger and the third a moonlighting college professor. Actually, Sully had been surprised when Peter appeared in the El Camino two weeks after returning to West Virginia. That period of time had been nearly sufficient for Sully to forget the offer of work he had extended to his son, work he’d since come to think of as his own and Rub’s. Which meant that he’d either have to let Rub go back to work for his cousins or find additional work. So he told Cass not to worry about finding a breakfast fry cook, at least for the rest of the winter. That decision was easy once he made his mind up. More difficult was coaxing work out of Carl Roebuck, who was constantly bellyaching that Tip Top Construction was slowly going under and claiming it would go under fast if Clive Peoples fucked up and let the Ultimate Escape deal go south. Sully doubted whether this was any more than bellyaching, and while he was confident of Clive Jr.’s ability to fuck anything up, he doubted it would happen in this instance, because that could just conceivably ruin Carl Roebuck, whose good fortune, Sully believed, was one of the few constants in an otherwise mutable life. It was true enough that Carl never had much at this time of year. Worse, he was a wizard at sensing Sully’s need and was not above paying him less than Sully would have accepted if his need hadn’t been so great and then telling him he was a lot more likable when he was humble, to which Sully always responded that this was one of the differences between them — that Carl was never likable.

At six-thirty, when Cass unlocked the front door, a small cluster of men, Rub among them, had gathered outside and were stamping their feet in the cold, awaiting admittance into the warmth and light. Rub immediately slid onto the stool closest to where Sully was stationed at the grill, mixing eggs in a bowl with a metal whisk. This last week, since Peter’s return to Bath, had been tough on Rub. He was used to having Sully all to himself, not having to share him with Peter and the little boy. Until a month ago Rub had been blissfully ignorant of the fact that Sully had a son, much less a grandson, and he didn’t think it was quite fair for these two people to turn up now without warning and just assume they were welcome. He didn’t like having to work with Peter, who was not a good listener like Sully. Plus, when Peter talked to Rub at all, which was not often, it was in a different kind of English than Rub was used to, an English that made him feel stupid. Old Lady Peoples had warned him when he was in the eighth grade that the world rewarded people who talked well enough to make other people feel stupid, and of course it was true, so he wasn’t really that surprised. Even worse, Sully himself had started talking differently, at least to Peter. It was his son that Sully seemed to have things to say to now, not Rub, and there was also some evidence to suggest that Sully actually listened to what his son was saying in return. That Sully would listen and respond to Peter particularly annoyed Rub, who liked to think of Sully as his one true friend. After all, Rub told Sully things he never told anybody else, even Bootsie, his wife. With Sully he shared his deepest desires, which had nothing to do with Bootsie, holding nothing back. As soon as it occurred to Rub to desire something, he told Sully about it right away, so they could contemplate it together. To Rub’s mind, Sully’s one human flaw was that he didn’t seem to want much more than he had, which seemed unaccountable. If you were standing outside in the cold and wet, it was only natural to wish you were inside where it was warm and dry, so Rub wished it, and not just selfishly for himself, but for Sully too. That was friendship. Maybe Peter was Sully’s son, but Rub was pretty sure Peter had no such strong feelings for Sully. He wasn’t really Sully’s friend. And as Rub slid onto the stool, as close as he could get to Sully on the other side of the counter, he’d have liked to explain this whole friendship deal to him, so he’d know. Instead he said, “Could I borrow a dollar?”

Sully slipped his long spatula under a phalanx of sausage links and flipped them before turning to Rub, who immediately looked at the countertop and flushed. “No,” Sully told him.

“Okay.” Rub shrugged.

Sully sighed and shook his head. “You can borrow a couple eggs if you want.”

“You can’t borrow eggs,” Rub said. “Once you eat them, they’re gone.”

“When I give you money, it’s gone too,” Sully pointed out. “I’d rather give you eggs.”

Sully cracked two eggs onto the grill, where they sputtered in bacon grease. Since taking over the morning grill at Hattie’s he’d made several small but significant changes by executive decision. One was that eggs got fried in bacon grease. They tasted better that way, in Sully’s opinion, and the grease was already sitting there anyhow. He also gave people the kind of toast he had handy. White, whole wheat. Once it was toasted you could hardly tell the difference, and Sully liked to finish one loaf before starting another. His inflexibility at the grill was already the occasion of considerable joking from men who knew he was going to make their breakfasts his way. They ordered poached eggs over rye toast, fresh-squeezed orange juice, a croissant and orange marmalade and herbal tea, thereby ensuring that when their breakfast was set in front of them (juice from the carton, eggs scrambled, white toast with strawberry preserves, muddy coffee) it would contain not a single item they’d ordered.

Sully put the plate of eggs in front of Rub. “You know what I’m dreaming of?” he said.

Rub dug into his eggs hungrily.

“Hey,” Sully said.

Rub looked up.

“I’m talking to you.”

“What?” Rub said. It was just like Sully to ignore him until he gave him his food and then want to talk.

“What am I dreaming of?”

Rub looked at his friend’s face, as if the answer might be written there.

“I’ll give you one hint. It’s the same thing I was dreaming of yesterday and the day before that. I’ve been dreaming of this one thing for the last two weeks, and every morning I’ve dreamed it right in front of you. I’ve sung this dream out loud.”