Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Whatever battle she’d lost, Sully could tell she had no intention of losing the fight she was about to pick with him. She looked ready to make short work of him and anyone foolish enough to take his side. The only person in the diner who might remotely have been Sully’s ally was Rub, who occupied the stool on Sully’s other side and who was so scared when he saw Ruth coming that he was unable to find his voice to warn Sully. In fact, he couldn’t have been more frightened if he’d just been informed that Carl Roebuck had found all those blocks they’d dumped behind the demonic clown, or even if Bootsie had come to whack his peenie.

And indeed Ruth had made short work of Sully, who’d boldly played the only card in his hand, having mistakenly concluded that it was trump. “I wasn’t even there, Ruth,” he said.

She’d let this statement hang there until the words themselves began to form, like skywriting, in the air between them. “I know you weren’t, Sully,” she told him, lowering her gruff voice like she always did when she was about to deliver a direct hit. “But then when was the last time you were there for anybody who needed you?”

Ruth always had a flair for exit lines. Sully watched her go without getting up from his stool, without calling to her, watched her through the diner’s front window as she got into the car where Zack, to Sully’s further astonishment, had been waiting for her. Then the diner was filled with mad cackling. For a moment he wondered if what he was hearing was interior, his own confusion made audible, but it turned out to be old Hattie behind him in her booth, the old woman reacting to dimly perceived tension with raucous hilarity. It had taken Cass the rest of the morning to calm her mother down.

“I never did fool Ruth,” Sully told Toby Roebuck now. “She just happened to like me regardless.”

“That’s the way everybody likes you, Sully.”

“Well, it’s better than being disliked, I guess,” Sully said.

Toby Roebuck didn’t respond right away, which left the proceedings pretty empty. Had Sully been asked at that moment to name one thing he particularly disliked about women, even women he was most fond of, he’d have said it was the way they could get significantly quiet, as if to afford a man the opportunity to consider what he’d just said.

“I ran into her yesterday, actually,” Toby said finally.

“Who?”

“Who?” she repeated. “Ruth, who. Who were we just talking about?”

“Oh, her,” Sully said, forcing a grin.

“She had a tiny little girl with her.”

This was probably a question, but Sully decided not to go into it. Janey had still not been released from the hospital. Sully himself had only a sketchy knowledge of what had transpired during the last two weeks. Vince had come into The Horse late one night after closing Jerry’s Pizza and filled him in. According to Vince, Ruth had taken her two weeks’ vacation from her day job at the IGA, as well as from her waitressing at the restaurant (for which Vince held Sully responsible) so she could look after Tina while Janey remained at the hospital. This loss of income from his wife’s two jobs had forced Zack to contemplate finding a steady job himself. Janey’s husband, Roy, having failed to make bond, was still in jail awaiting trial. Everyone seemed to agree that that was the best place for him, especially since he’d threatened, as soon as he got out, to get even with Sully for hiding his wife and kid.

“So,” Toby Roebuck said.

“So,” Sully agreed. To what, he had no idea.

“So, just like that, you and Ruth are finished.”

“It’s true I’m available, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Sully, Sully, Sully.”

“That’s what your husband always says,” Sully told her. Then, seeing a welcome opportunity to change the subject, “You didn’t answer my question, though. Are you just filling in, or can I sneak up here and find you any time?”

“For a while, it looks like,” she said. “He’s out at the yard, in case you were wondering. He’s a new man, he says. A man of many resolutions. You should ask him all about them. They’re over an hour old, though, so he may not remember.”

Sully nodded, getting to his feet. “I can’t wait to hear all about it. If I miss him, tell him I was here.” To Will: “What do you say, sport? You ready to go?”

Will, who had not uttered a word since his mumbled hello, got to his feet and preceded his grandfather into the hall.

“You’re sure he’s related to you?” Toby said.

“I know,” Sully said. Then, since the boy was out of earshot, he said, “I don’t want to say anything, but Ruby always wore see-through blouses. Of course, it’s up to you …”

Sully wasn’t sure what he expected the result of this teasing to be. Maybe that she’d pitch something at him in mock outrage. And so he was closing the door, even as he spoke, and the door was almost closed by the time he finished. Almost. Which meant that he almost didn’t see when Toby Roebuck flashed him from where she sat behind the desk, her sweatshirt pulled up and then back down for a millisecond. Unsure he’d seen what he’d seen, he remained rooted to the spot in the hall outside the door. Exactly how long he stood there, he wasn’t sure. A beat? Two beats? Three?

It was Will’s voice coming from the head of the stairs that reestablished a time/space context. “What’s the matter, Grandpa?” the boy said, his face a mask of urgent worry.

From inside, a peal of hilarity. “Yeah, Grandpa,” Toby Roebuck called. “What’s the matter?”

The night Sully and Peter had stolen the snowblower from Carl Roebuck’s equipment yard there had been, unknown to them, a casualty, indeed a near fatality. Rasputin, Carl’s Doberman, had suffered a stroke. Sully and Peter had seen the dog crumple, but they’d assumed it had simply gone to sleep on its feet and dropped. This was not the case. The dog’s training, to attack savagely any unauthorized nocturnal visitors to the yard, had come into deep psychological conflict with drug-induced goodwill and drowsiness. Unable to resolve the urge to kill with the urge to sleep, Rasputin’s circuitry had simply shut down.

Since that night the dog had regained only a small measure of its physical capabilities. He had a lopsided appearance now, one side of his body, corresponding to the opposite side of his brain, pretty much nonfunctional, his former ferocity vanished. As if the dog had learned the value of a good night’s sleep, he now slept most of the time and even when awake wandered along the perimeter of the fence aimlessly, drooling out of one side of his mouth, as if in search of his lost aggression. Visitors he’d previously made nervous with deep-throated growls he now nuzzled affectionately with his long snout, then licked their fingers. All except Sully.

It is possible a dog will not forget his poisoner. When Sully pulled up and parked by the fence, Rasputin, who had been lying asleep in his favorite spot — the one where he’d collapsed the night Sully’s hamburger changed his life — woke up, growled deep in his throat and tried to stand, an activity that always drew a crowd. Carl Roebuck and two of his men, just emerging from the Tip Top Construction trailer, stopped to watch this excellent entertainment. Once Rasputin was on his feet he could limp along well enough, but getting up from the cold ground after a long nap required, on the average, half a dozen attempts. The problem seemed to be that the animal’s good side, which responded as it always had, was impatient with the defective side, which refused to function at high speed, causing the dog to circle itself, like a boat with only one oar in the water, until finally the animal collapsed and had to start over again. Only when the dog was sufficiently exhausted for the functioning side of his body to go slowly enough to meet the requirements of the stroke-damaged side could he stand. By then he was ready for another nap.