Nobody's Fool (86 page)

Lord. Sully's Squeers, perhaps the funniest-looking of the lot, his face a thundercloud of resentment and grievance, grabbed the garbage can angrily from the doorway of the Rexall and started to return to the truck. He carried the heavy garbage can by its handles, balancing it against his hip so that the bottom of the can stuck out a good distance, and when he passed Clive Jr." s car, Clive heard the bottom of the can graze the side of the Continental. The young man looked up then, surprised, as if the car had that moment materialized, magically, in his path. He looked even more surprised to discover that the vehicle had an occupant. Apparently the driver of the garbage truck had also witnessed the incident, because when Clive Jr. got out and shut his own door, he heard the truck's door slam angrily and saw a fourth Squeers, the shortest of the lot, come running over. In fact, all four Squeers convened at the Continental's tail end to examine the scratch Rub had put there. The Squeers boys, standing together like that, bore an eerie resemblance to four human thumbs.

"Now you done it," said the driver, glaring at the angry scratch, a gash really, in Clive Jr. "s paint job. Rub sighed. " I wisht I'd seen you there. "

" The only car on the whole damn street, and you got to bang into it," the driver said. " Jesus Christ on a crutch! " The other two Squeers were looking at Clive Jr. expectantly. " I'm real sorry about this, Mr. Peoples," said the driver, surprising Clive, until he remembered having met the man once before, having turned him down, in fact, for a loan to purchase the very truck he was now driving.

"We'll take care of it, I promise you that."

Suddenly Clive Jr. was sorry he hadn't loaned this Squeers the money, remembering how the man had gotten all dressed up in an ill-fitting suit to ask for it.

"Well, hell," Clive Jr. said, risking a comradely profanity.

"These things just happen, I guess."

"To some people more than others," the Squeers man said, eyeing Rub.

"I sure appreciate you not getting all bent out of shape, Mr.

Peoples.

You get that fixed and send me the bill. If we could just handle the whole thing without involving the insurance people, I'd be grateful.

" "We don't have no use a-tall for them fuckin' scum suckers ventured another Squeers, the one who'd removed his hat to scratch. He was apparently buoyed by the fact that they were all getting along so well.

"I'd like to shoot 'em all, just to watch 'em die," said the only one who hadn't spoken.

"Don't you guys have nothing to do?" said the head Squeers, who apparently saw himself as the management arm of the firm.

Well, it was true, there was plenty to do, and so off they went, cuffing Rub as they left, leaving the management Squeers and Clive Jr.

alone, two struggling businessmen. Squeers knelt next to the Continental and ran his index finger along the scratch.

"We'll make this good, Mr. Peoples," he said again.

"You can trust me."

"I know I can," Clive Jr. said, feeling an odd, warning trust welling up in his chest. Also welling up, a little nausea, perhaps due to the proximity of the garbage truck.

"You just let me know the damages, and I'll be right there. You won't have to ask no second time."

"That'll be fine," Clive Jr. agreed. And so there was nothing left to do but examine the scratch one last time, as if to acknowledge its seriousness and the resultant bond of faith between them.

"How's your business going?"

Clive Jr.

decided to ask when the silence and goodwill between them became insupportable.

"Good," Squeers said, adding philosophically, "There's always trash, no matter what. People don't like to let it build up, except in New York City. I figured we wouldn't go broke, and we haven't."

"I'm glad," Clive Jr. said, sensing that the turned-down loan application was hovering there, tangible, in the brittle air between them. Both men seemed to be searching for a way to say there were no hard feelings.

"So I guess they aren't going to build that new park, huh?" Squeers observed after another long moment of silence. He seemed to be enjoying this opportunity to talk seriously with a banker, and he kept looking around the deserted street as if hoping there'd be a witness to him doing it.

"No," Clive Jr. agreed.

"I guess not."

"Well, to hell with them, then," Squeers said.

"We done without 'em before, I guess we can again."

"I guess we will," Clive agreed.

"Too bad, though," Squeers added.

"I figure it would have just about tripled the trash around here." They shook hands then, and Clive Jr.

was surprised that Squeers' hand, once removed from the work glove, looked and felt clean.

When the Squeers were gone, Clive Jr. climbed back into the Lincoln, backed out of his space beneath the new banner that had been hung yesterday before the news broke. Its message was typical Bath boosterism of the sort that Clive Jr. himself had been guilty of fostering back when he still believed that caution lights meant "You don't have to stop here." The banner's meaning, however, seemed different today than it had yesterday. What it said was: 1985: the first year of the rest of our lives. Clive Jr. headed south on Main past the doomed IGA and out of town via the new spur, where he would pick up the interstate and head north toward Schuyler Springs and luck.

This route was the long way, but at least he wouldn't have to drive past his mother's house. It was one thing to face the collapse of The Ultimate Escape, a project huge in imagination and planning and execution. It was another to realize he'd been unable to effect even so small a personal design as to get Sully, finally, out of his mother's house. True, Sully'd promised to be out by the first of the year, but then he'd gotten himself thrown in jail, which meant the first would be impossible, and Clive Jr. realized now that Sully would never be gone, not really. He'd not only wanted Sully out of his mother's house, but out of her affection, outside the circle of her protection, so that Sully could at last complete the task of destroying himself, a task begun so long ago and drawn out far too long already.

It was still beyond Clive Jr. "s understanding that Sully's destruction was taking so long. Sully, after all, was a man who ignored not only blinking yellows but strident reds. Maybe that was the point. If you were going to be reckless in this life, you needed total commitment to the principle. This early in the morning Clive Jr.

had the spur all to himself. Off to his left was the cemetery that had given rise to controversy, and beyond it the huge tract of land that was to have been The Ultimate Escape both of them graveyards now.

Clive Jr. tried to imagine the boggy land cleared, filled and paved, a huge roller coaster and double Fen-is wheel, sky blue corkscrewing water slides in the distance. Brightly colored landscaping reminiscent of the Judy Garland Oz movie. The image had been the staple of his imagination a couple of days ago, but now the land looked defiantly swamplike. It not only looked like a swamp right this minute, it looked like the sort of swamp that would reassert its swamp nature.

He'd been assured by engineers that it could be filled and built upon, but he was no longer sure it would be wise to try. In twenty years the concrete in the huge parking lot would begin to ripple and crack, emitting foul, pent-up swamp gases.

Weeds would push up through the cracks faster than they could be poisoned.

It would be discovered that the Ferns wheels had been sinking an inch a year.

In fact, the whole park would be subsiding gradually. State inspectors would be called in, and they'd scratch their heads thoughtfully and inform county officials that this whole area had once been wetland, and deep down still was. When Clive Jr.

arrived at the small subdivision of the Farm Home subsidy housing Carl Roebuck was building on the edge of Ultimate Escape land, he pulled off onto the gravel road and studied the half-built, no-frills, three-bedroom ranch houses. Now here, he thought, was a Bath- size, small-potatoes, strictly fringe financial venture. Imaginationwise, it was one small step above Squeers Waste. A lot of area small businesses that had made plans contingent upon the existence of the theme park were going to be in serious trouble now.

He'd heard a rumor that Carl Roebuck was building these houses not with an eye toward selling them but rather to be compensated for them when he sold the land. If true, they wouldn't even pass an honest inspection. Of course, for the right price, he could get the right inspection, just as Clive had managed to get a high appraisal on the tract of swampland that was to have been The Ultimate Escape and would now be worthless again, much to the astonishment of the investors.

Clive Jr. couldn't help but smile. He had long wanted to be the most important man in Bath, a man who, like his father, everyone knew.

Well, in another week--another few days, probably--he was going to be famous. Clive Jr. sat with the engine running, visible exhaust billowing from the Continental's tailpipe. His mother had been right, as usual. There would always be bad locations.

And, also in accordance with her prediction, he'd discovered this truth by investing in this one, personally and professionally. Where had he gone wrong? In Texas and Arizona, he had learned about faith and land.

D. C. Collins, years ago, had explained it to him, taken him out to the middle of the desert where there was nothing but stone and sand and cactus and sun. That and a promotional billboard announcing Silver Lake Estates.

"See the lake?" Collins asked, pointing off at nothing.

Clive Jr. had seen no lake and said so.

"You're wrong, though," Collins had explained.

"It's there because people believe it will be there.

If enough people believe there's going to be a lake, there will be one.

It'll get built somehow. Look at this land." He offered a sweeping gesture that took in the whole desert, from the ground they were standing on all the way to California.

"What's the first thing you notice?" Before Clive Jr.

could speak, Collins answered.

"No water. Not a drop. So how come these cities keep growing? Dallas.

Phoenix. Tucson. It's because people believe there will be water.

And they're right. If people keep moving, they'll pipe water all the way from Antarctica if they have to. Trust me. You come back here in two years, and there'll be the prettiest little lake you ever saw, right out there, a fountain in the middle of it, shooting water fifty feet in the air. The only thing that can stop it from happening is if about half the people who have already invested their money get cold feet. If that happens, there won't be enough water out here to support a family of Gila monsters. We're talking faith here, Clive. Trust that billboard, because it's the future, sure as shootin', or if it isn't we're all fucked. " Clive Jr. had learned his lesson, trusted the billboard. The first thing he'd done was put up one of his own, announcing his faith in the future. It had seemed to him that Collins was right and that he himself, Clive Jr." was the man to bring the message home. Bath's problem, he saw, in light of this revelation, was a lack of faith, a timidity, a small-mindedness.

Two hundred years ago the citizens of Bath had not believed in Jedediah Halsey's Sans Souci, his grand hotel in the wilderness, with its three hundred rooms. Imagine. Scoffing at a man's faith in the future. No wonder God had allowed their springs to run dry. From where Clive )r.

sat alongside the road at the entrance to Carl Roebuck's development, he could see the demonic clown billboard in the distance on the other side of the highway. A couple of months ago he'd overheard two employees at the bank agree that the clown bore a striking resemblance to himself. No doubt they'd soon be referring to the failed project as dive's Folly. He adjusted his rearview so that he could see his own reflection, examine his own features "after the fall" to see if he could spot the resemblance. Not much, he decided. Actually, he took after his father, a fact for which he'd often given profound thanks.

And yet, it now occurred to him, imagining Clive Sr. the way he'd looked when Clive Jr. was a boy, his father had what could only be described as a pointed head, which was why he always wore a baseball cap, even in the house when Miss Beryl would let him. Clive Sr. had seemed to understand that when he took it off, with his virtuous, close-cropped hair and his large ears, he was, well, funny-looking.

Clive Jr. readjusted the rearview, regarded the gray exhaust escaping from the Continental's tailpipe and tried, as he'd been trying all morning, to stave off panic, the worst panic he could recall feeling since he was a boy fearful of a beating at the hands of a gang of neighborhood bullies. Were he sitting in a closed garage, it occurred to him, this very same behavior would be the death of him. But as it was the plumes of blue smoke dissipated harmlessly, or at least invisibly, into the wide world of air and earth and water. Had Sully been the sort of man to indulge regret, he'd have regretted not having done his laundry before going to jail. Socks seemed to be the main problem. Or rather, the complete absence of clean socks. Dirty ones were his long suit. He thought of Carl Roebuck's bureau, so full of socks and underwear, a month's supply, and felt a stab of envy.