Nobody's Fool (41 page)

What it suggested was finality, a vehicle beyond resuscitation. Sully leaned back, left the key in the ignition, ran his fingers through his hair. Rub stared at his knees, afraid.

This was a hell of a time to be seated next to Sully, who was not above flying into rages at inanimate objects. In such a confined space there was the danger of ricochet. Rub didn't want to be the first to speak, but the unbroken silence took a greater toll on him than on Sully, who looked to Rub like he might sit there all winter. When he couldn't stand it anymore. Rub said, "Won't it start?" Sully just looked at him. Ricochet was the least of his worries, Rub realized.

"Let's take a walk," Sully suggested, getting out.

220RICHARD R U S S 0

Rub got out too.

"Don't you want to take your keys?" he said.

"What for?"

"Somebody might steal your truck," Rub said.

"Think about it," Sully advised. Rub thought about it.

"Somebody might steal your keys."

"There's only three on the ring," Sully said.

"One's for the truck. I don't remember what the other two are for, even."

"Old Lady Peoples is spying on us again," Rub noticed, grateful for the change of subject. The curtain in the front room had twitched.

"I

wisht she'd just go ahead and die instead of spying on people."

"That's kind of mean, don't you think?" Sully said, as they headed back downtown on foot.

"She started it," Rub said.

"She was mean to me all during eighth grade.

I'm just being mean back."

"She probably just wanted you to learn something," Sully suggested.

"She wanted me to learn everything," Rub recalled angrily.

"I wisht she'd just die so I could forget her."

Jocko was at the OTB, holding up one section of wall.

"Those were some pills," Sully told him.

"I slept like a baby."

"Good," Jocko said, suspicious of something in Sully's voice.

"Only trouble was, I happened to be at the wheel of my truck at the time."

Jocko nodded.

"I warned you, if you recall. I see you're in one piece, anyhow."

"Mmmmm," Sully said.

"What was Wednesday's triple?"

"Three-one-seven," Jocko told him.

"The reason I remember is that's what I bet."

"Good for you," Sully told him.

"The rich get richer.

Do me a favor and don't spend it all. I may need a loan. "

" I just signed it over to my wife. Brought me almost up to speed, alimony wise

I'm still on the same rung of the ladder, affection wise "

" I like a woman whose love can't be bought. What was that triple again? " Sully wanted to know. " Three-one-seven. Pay attention, for Christ sake. " Sully had located the stub and stared at it to make sure he hadn't been given the winner by mistake.

"I had two thirds of it myself," he said.

"Good," Jocko congratulated him.

"How many of those pills did you take yesterday?"

"Two."

NOBODY'S FOOL 221

Jocko nodded.

"They're not aspirin."

"The first one didn't seem to have much effect."

"How about the second one?" Jocko said.

"That was a doozy," Sully admitted.

"Next time wait for the first one to kick in."

"I will." Sully bet his 1-2-3 triple and collected Rub, who'd used the dollar Sully had given him earlier to bet a daily double.

"What'd you bet?" Sully said when they were back on the street.

"I

forgot," Rub admitted.

"Naturally," Sully said.

"You bet it almost a minute ago."

"I like Carnation best of all," Rub said, and he recited the rest of the Carnation Milk jingle as flawlessly as he'd done yesterday in Sully's dream.

"Well, what do you know," Sully said, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk. He'd have bet Jocko's winnings that Rub wouldn't be able to remember yesterday's jingle.

"Old Lady Peoples always tried to get me to memorize poetry back in eighth grade," Rub told him.

"Back then I never could." The same girl was behind the counter at the donut shop, and she looked less than thrilled to see Sully and Rub. Carl Roebuck was sitting at one of the tables in back, and that thrilled Sully, who, since hearing the deathly silence of his pickup truck, had been wishing fervently that he'd taken a fistful of CCarl's money the night before when he had a chance. The woman with Carl in the booth was a blonde, and Sully thought for a minute it was Toby until he saw it wasn't.

"Can I borrow another dollar?" Rub said.

"If you'll sit here at the counter and not bother me while I'm over there," Sully said, indicating CCarl's table.

"I hate Carl," Rub reminded him. Sully handed him a dollar.

"There are women in this town I could associate with who'd be cheaper than you," he said.

"They wouldn't be your real friend," Rub reminded him seriously.

"Well, I see you've recovered," Sully said when Carl looked up and saw him approaching.

"Two hours' sleep," Carl said proudly.

"And I'm fresh as a fucking daisy." Carl did look amazingly well.

Sully had to admit.

"If you were a daisy, that'd be the kind, all right," he said. He put a hand on the shoulder of the woman sitting across from Carl, who, now that Sully looked at her, was about the plainest-looking woman he'd ever seen, her age indeterminate, her gender less obvious from the front than the rear.

"Would you give us about two minutes, dolly?" he said. The woman looked at Carl, who shrugged a yes.

"Go keep that fellow at the counter company," Sully suggested, indicating Rub, who'd ordered a big ole cream-filled donut.

"He'll recite you a poem if you ask him nice." The woman went over to the counter but settled on a stool far from Rub, perhaps because his donut had already erupted obscenely.

"You have to be the dumbest man in Bath," Sully told Carl Roebuck.

"That wouldn't be such an insult if you hadn't just walked in here with the dumbest man in Bath," Carl said.

"You never count yourself, either."

"Speaking of counting," Sully said.

"Count out what you owe me for yesterday."

"I haven't even been out to check on your work," Carl said.

"This is the wrong fucking day to start that," Sully said.

"Last night you shoved about a thousand dollars at me.

Told me to take what I wanted. " Carl nodded, recalling it. " What a day that'd been," he sang. " What a rare mood I was in. " Sully nodded impatiently. " Well, fork it over if you want to be around for your next mood swing. " Carl counted out the money he owed Sully for the sheet rocking pushed it across the formica tabletop. " What? " he said when Sully put the money in his pocket. " You aren't going to bust my balls about the other? "

" I don't want to think about it," Sully told him. " My truck died this morning, and if I start thinking about all the money you owe me I might kill you before you kill yourself. "

" Who will you blame for your sad pitiful state of affairs when I'm gone? " Carl wondered. Sully got up.

"I'll still blame you," he said.

Neither man spoke for a second. Sully didn't think he'd ever seen a sadder-looking man than Carl Roebuck at that moment.

"How about letting me take the El Camino for a day or two," Sully said.

"Why not?

It's about shot anyhow," Carl said, fishing in his pocket for the keys.

"Somebody said you were working at Hattie's," he added.

Sully shook his head, amazed as always about the speed with which inconsequential news traveled in Bath.

"I better go see if HCarld's got another beater to sell me. And I'm supposed to meet a guy named Miles Anderson who wants me to renovate some house on Main for him."

"You should have some business cards printed up," Carl suggested.

"Don Sullivan: Jack-Off. All Trades."

"Thanks for the car." Sully jiggled the keys.

"I was under the impression you were going to do a job for me today," Carl said.

"I'll see if I can work you in this afternoon when I'm done jacking off," Sully said, sliding out of the booth again.

"Send that girl back over on your way out," Carl told him.

"She was just offering to give me a header under the table." Rub was wiping cream off his face with a paper napkin when Sully returned.

"That girl kept looking at me," he said, indicating the woman who'd been sitting in CCarl's booth and who now returned to it.

"Now CCarl's got her," he added unhappily. Proxmire Motors was located a mile out of town, just off the blacktop, sandwiched in between HCarld's Junkyard and HCarld's Auto Parts, all three establishments owned and operated by HCarld Proxmire. A tow truck with proxmire wrecking stenciled on the doors also sat in the yard. The sign out front, atop a bent pole, said hCarld's automotive world. HCarld's had five full-time employees--HCarld Proxmire; HCarld's wife, Gloria; his chief and only mechanic, a sour-dispositioned man HCarld had instructed never, under any circumstances, to speak to the public; a tiny, elderly man who wandered up and down the aisles of the auto parts store, squinting up into the dark upper reaches of the metal shelving stacked with remaindered auto parts; and a teenager, usually a dropout from the high school, whom the Proxmires took under their wing. HCarld and Mrs.

Proxmire were both Christians, and they hired only troubled Christian teens to fill the teenager slot in their employment scheme. HCarld always tried to find a boy who'd been to jail or reform school at least once, somebody no one else would hire. He paid this boy minimum wage, and Mrs. HCarld tutored him in Christian precepts for free from her seat at the cash register. HCarld usually hired three of these boys a year. Four months was their average tenure, after which some were lured away by Mammon, in the form of a quarter-an-hour raise. Others just cleaned out the till and bolted. The last had left Mrs. HCarld a note in the big bill slot of the cash register that said: "Jesus was a stupid fuck. And so are you." HCarld's current teenager, Dwayne, was lanky and red-haired and sullen, and so far he hadn't stolen anything from HCarld's Automotive World, though he was beginning to wilt under the weight of daily moral instruction. Mrs. HCarld's lectures about honesty, her constant reminders to be on the alert for Satan in his many guises, worried him some.

Dwayne was never tempted to steal anything from HCarld, whom he was fond of and grateful to, or even from Mrs. HCarld, whom he could tolerate in small doses, and he wondered what was wrong with him that Satan should pay him so little attention.

What annoyed him even more than the fact that Satan ignored him was the fact that HCarld's customers did too. Every one of them wanted to deal with HCarld only, and Dwayne's principal duty was to locate his boss, who divided himself among the lot, the garage, the junkyard and the parts store, supervising the operation of all of these at once, abandoning one to wait on an impatient customer in the other. When the C. I. Roebuck El Camino pulled in, therefore, Dwayne did not expect to be accorded much respect, and he wasn't disappointed when Sully got out and said, "Where's HCarld?" Dwayne had lost track. Weekday mornings there were so few customers at HCarld's that Dwayne spent most of his time daydreaming and trying to steer clear of Mrs. HCarld, who that day happened to be in an Old Testament mood. HCarld Proxmire himself was tall and lean and sallow-skinned and always clad in gray, and on a day as gray as this one he moved about the lot like a phantom on quiet, thick-soled shoes.

"Somewheres," Dwayne said with a sweeping gesture that included all three businesses. While her husband might be anywhere, Mrs. HCarld, a tiny, round woman with a beehive hairdo that appeared to nearly double her height, could always be found at the cash register, and so this was where Sully sought her out. Mrs. HCarld was the immediate source of her husband's Christianity, which had burrowed deep into his bones, an inner presence to counterbalance Mrs. HCarld's brand of devotion, which was right out there in the open. In between sales she read scripture on her stool at the cash register, surrounded by Disney souvenirs. Disney World was Mrs. HCarld's favorite place, and every year in February she dragged her husband to Orlando and rode every ride in the Magic Kingdom, where everything was clean and sunny and the lines moved. There was probably dirty, smelly, greasy machinery somewhere that ran the whole Kingdom, but the Disney people knew enough to keep it out of sight.

Underground, probably. There was supposed to be a tour you could take where they'd NOBODY'S FOOL 22S show you how everything ran, but it was the one thing in Disney World Mrs. HCarld wasn't interested in. It'd spoil the magic, was the way she looked at it. She wouldn't let HCarld go see it either for fear he'd explain everything to her, which would be even worse.