Nobody's Fool (93 page)

"Why do I bother?"

"No clue," Sully admitted. Wirf waved him away with both hands. They were grinning at each other now.

"What'd Barton want with you?" After the judge and Wirf and the county prosecutor and the police chief had hammered out their settlement, Judge Ratt had sent for Sully. Wirf, afraid Sully would do something stupid to queer the deal, had wanted to stay, but Ratt had sternly banished him to the corridor outside. To Sully's astonishment, what the judge wanted to ask him about was what had really happened all those years ago when the boy had been impaled on the spiked fence. The judge, himself a young man then, had been one of those who'd gathered on the sidewalk to await the ambulance. Like Sully, he'd apparently never forgotten the scene. Sully explained that he hadn't been there to see it happen, hadn't witnessed any more than the other gawkers.

And he thought about telling the judge what his brother had told him, that the reason the boy had been impaled was that his father had shaken the iron fence, shaken it in a paroxysm of rage until the boy fell.

That was what the boy had later said happened, but it had been his word against Sully's father's, and anyway, the boy had been where he wasn't supposed to be. Sully had started to tell the judge what he knew, then, without knowing why, decided not to.

"Nothing important," Sully told Wirf now, feeling the same odd reticence.

He'd never made any attempt to conceal his contempt for his father, but he'd never shared with anyone what his brother had told him that day.

"Okay, fine," Wizf said.

"Don't confide in your own lawyer.

See if I care. "

" Okay," Sully agreed. " Goddamn you. "

" What? " Sully said.

"You've hurt my feelings."

"You just said "See if I care."

"

" I'm your lawyer. We zig together. And this is the thanks I get.

" Wirf pouted.

"Piss on you." Sully sat on one of the radiators and flexed his knee.

"What the hell's the matter with you today?" Wirf wanted to know.

"I

get you out of jail, and you act like somebody died." It was true. An hour or so ago, sitting alone in the drab coffee room at City Hall, before he even knew for sure that he was going to be released, that the assault charges would be dropped, he'd felt his spirits soar. There were indications that his stupid streak had run its tortured course, that luck was back on his side. He still felt this to be true. Why then the sudden sense that this shift of fortune wouldn't mean much?

That all the luck in the world might not be enough? Probably he was just feeling a little overwhelmed. Jail had been an odd, unexpected release from anxiety and expectation. If he wasn't making any progress toward resolving his various financial and personal headaches, neither was he making them worse, and nobody could justifiably expect much of him, at least until he got out again.

Now that he was a free man, he saw that he had a mountain to move.

There was the truck to pay for and Miles Anderson's house to transform.

He owed HCarld Proxmire and Wirf, and in order to pay them he was going to have to work, and in order to work he was going to have to make things up with Rub. Most of this, with effort, could be done. There was still the outside possibility of selling the Bowdon Street property, though he knew he was very near the end of the so-called redemption period. Even more disturbing was that Sully could trace his plummeting spirits to the precise moment when he looked up and saw his son and grandson standing in the doorway of the lounge area of City Hall moments after Officer Raymer's demolition of the coffee machine.

Every time he laid eyes on Peter he felt in the pit of his stomach the vague, monstrous debt a man owes, a debt more difficult to make good on than money you don't have. A grandson simply extended the debt, let you know that you still owed it, that the interest is compounded. The more he thought about what he owed Peter, the more he despaired of identifying the debt, even as the need to give his son something became more real and urgent. His having thoughtlessly bought his grandson a Coke at eleven in the morning had stayed with him, as had Peter's observation that whatever Sully had to give, you could be sure that this was not what was needed at the moment. To make matters worse, Peter seemed intent on enlarging the debt. He'd turned out to be a first-rate worker, managing to keep Sully's various irons in their various fires while Sully himself was out of commission. True, every job Peter did he managed to convey, without exactly saying so, that he was doing it under protest, but he did get things done and he did them more quickly and efficiently than Sully could have managed. Peter, Sully had to admit, was part of the reason his luck had changed. If he was able to climb out of the hole he was in, it would be largely due to his son, while Sully seemed largely incompetent to help Peter with his own myriad difficulties--a suddenly disintegrating marriage, the loss of not only his job but his profession, his hopes for a solvent future.

And by allowing Peter to help him out, he was putting himself at odds with Vera, who was counseling their son to look for a new job teaching college, steer clear of that wreck waiting to happen that was Don Sullivan. And who could blame her? More to the point. Sully wasn't sure his pride would allow Peter--the son whose existence he'd often allowed himself to forget for many months at a stretch--to be his savior. It might have been different, maybe, if he were more fond of the man his son had become. There were times when he thought he could learn to be fond of him, and other times when it seemed he already did love his son. But it wasn't the kind of constant affection he felt for Wirfand Ruth and Miss Beryl and even Rub. It wasn't even as powerful as the affection mixed with aggravation that he felt toward Carl Roebuck. Strangely, it was closer to his feeling for CCarl's wife, Toby, a feeling he couldn't articulate that resided in the pit of his stomach and made him feel foolish, warning him away--perhaps for the same reason, the deep-down knowledge that these were things he couldn't have, that would not be granted him, a beautiful young woman he had no right to expect, a son he didn't deserve. It didn't bother him much that Peter seemed unable to surrender his grudges. Grudges were understandable enough. Sully had no intention of surrendering his far more numerous grudges against his own father, and so he didn't expect Peter to forgive. What did, he expect, then?

Possibly, he just wished Peter were a little more like himself. True, he was a hard worker, and. Sully had to admit, a more talented worker as well, slower to become impatient, quicker to understand, more steady of temperament. What negated so many of these qualities was his son's apparent expectation that hard work would be rewarded, a childish attitude that Vera had instilled in him. Because he'd worked hard in school and made good grades, he expected a good job and good pay and security. Because he'd been a competent teacher, he apparently expected promotions and respect. When these hadn't followed, he'd felt self-pity, another of his mother's gifts.

Moral outrage arid self-pity had always been Vera's strong suits. As contemptuous as Sully felt toward his own father, at least the two had always conceded, though the concession was unspoken, that Sully was Big Jim's son, that the apple hadn't fallen so very far from the tree. The old man understood and accepted his son's contempt, realizing too its measure of self-loathing. During the last twenty years of Big Jim's life. Sully hadn't even seen him more than half a dozen times, but on each of those occasions something had taken place between them that Sully couldn't deny. He'd catch the old man looking at him as if to say, "I know you, buddy boy, know you better than you know your own self." And Sully would always have to look away from the smirk that followed, away from the truth it contained. Maybe that's what Sully wanted from Peter, a firmer sense that the boy was his son, that the apple hadn't fallen so far from the tree. Except for rare moments, like the night he'd gone to jail and he and Peter and Wirfhad spent the evening drinking at The Horse, it seemed to him that the apple had rolled all the way down the hill and into the next county, which made it hard for Sully to feel much more affection for Peter than he did for the ex-wife, who'd made him, singlehandedly From where Sully was seated on the radiator, he could hear Peter talking quietly to Will in one of the two bedrooms, their voices echoing in the hollowness, the words not quite audible. It was one of the things that irritated Sully most, he realized, that his son always spoke to Will in whispers, as if Sully were not to be trusted with the contents of even the most casual conversations, or as if he hadn't earned the right to share them.

Wirf was also listening to the low murmur of voices and seemed to understand some of what Sully was feeling.

"Black thoughts," he grinned.

"You're full of black thoughts today." There didn't seem to be any point in denying this, so Sully didn't.

"Well," Peter said, when he and the boy rejoined them.

"You going to take it?"

"My lawyer thinks I should," Sully said.

"Which means he won't," Wirf said.

"He's never taken my advice yet."

"If you don't take it, I will," Peter offered. Sully took this in, part of him pleased.

"Good," he said, wondering if this gesture would ease his need to give his son something.

"Take it. It'd work better for you anyhow."

"Okay," Peter agreed.

"Thanks."

"I guess this means you're going to stick around awhile," Sully ventured. Peter nodded.

"I picked up a couple night courses at Schuylcr CC," he said.

"Good," Sully said, impressed that his son could go out to the college and come back home with work.

"It's not such a bad place."

"That's what the chair of the department said. " Not as bad as you might imagine' were his exact words. "

" You have to Start somewhere.

" Sully shrugged, hoping to cheer his son up. " I started at a university," Peter said.

"This is where I'm ending, not starting." Sully decided to give up.

"You got enough money for first and last months' rent?" he wondered, trying to think how much he could contribute. Peter nodded, surprising him.

"I could let you have a hundred or two if you need it," Sully offered.

"I don't," Peter said.

"But thanks." Sully nodded, winking at Wirf.

"I'm glad somebody in my family's got money."

"You've got more than you know," Peter said, taking out his wallet and handing Sully a parimutuel racing ticket. A 1-2-3 trifecta, to be exact.

Sully checked the date. Two days previous.

"You were on this?"

"No," Peter said.

"To were. You don't even remember, do you?"

Suddenly he did. Sometime during that drunken night before he'd gone to jail, among all the other instructions he'd had for Peter--what to do first at the Miles Anderson house, how to cook eggs at Hattie's, how to get Rub to help him lay the floor at the Roebuck camp, to look in on Miss Beryl when he thought about it, to feed Rasputin--somewhere among these myriad instructions he vaguely remembered instructing Peter to bet his triple, explaining that it would be just his luck for the son of a bitch to run while he was in jail, further evidence of the evil deity whose existence Sully had long suspected, the god who was probably listening to the whispered instructions of Sully's own father, whose life on earth would have earned him a place in such a deity's inner circle, a chosen advisor, confidant, secretary of war.

Miraculously, through drunken inspiration, Sully had apparently thwarted divine intention.

"I would have given it to you at the funeral," Peter said, "but I didn't know there'd been a winner until you told me, and you didn't know which day. I forgot to bet it a couple days." Before Sully could fully absorb the fact that the ticket in his hand was worth over three thousand dollars, he was assailed by a doubt.

"Did I give you the money?"

"What money?"

"To bet the triple."

"Who knows?" Peter said.

"Who cares?" Sully could tell he hadn't given his son the money.

"Because if you bet your money, then what you won is yours. That's the way it works."

"I wouldn't even have gone into the OTB except on your instructions," Peter pointed out.

"That's not the issue."

"This'll be rich," Wirf broke in.

"I always love it when your father explains the moral significance of things.

Follow the logic and win a prize. "

" How did you get into this conversation? " Sully wondered. " I don't know," Wirf admitted. " I think I'll go downstairs and stand in the cold. "

" Good," Sully said.

"Go." Father, son and grandson listened to him lumber down the stairs.

Sully studied his son and felt even more powerfully than before that he couldn't let Peter be his deliverer. "listen, you take this," he said.

"You got Will, and you got Wacker's doctor bills now. You're going to need it."

"Not as bad as you," Peter said.

"I don't owe anybody." Sully considered these words. For most of his life he'd been able to say the same thing.