Nobody's Fool (52 page)

Still, Sully felt the theory to be wrong. It made everything slack.

He'd never considered life to be as tight as some people (Vera came to mind for one, Mrs. HCarld for another) made it out to be, but it wasn't that loose either.

"So what's your plan?"

he asked Wirf. Wirf shrugged.

"I don't know," he admitted. To Sully's surprise, Wirf didn't sound all that discouraged.

"Maybe I'll just keep zigging til I can't zig any more. I can't even imagine zagging at this late date."

Sully nodded.

"How many more years of zigging do they figure?"

"Months," Wirf said.

"If I continue to zig. If I zag, I might get a year or two. A little more. We all end up in the Waldorf-Astoria, Sully. Zigging or zagging. I'm not that afraid. At least not yet," he added.

"In fact, I wasn't afraid at all until we started this conversation." Sully stood, said he was sorry for bringing it up, which he was.

"That's all right," Wirf said.

"I've been wondering when you'd say something." Sully suddenly felt awash in guilt for not having seen it earlier, for not paying attention, or the right kind of attention.

"Where you off to?" Wirf wanted to know.

"Home, for once," Sully said. The idea of spending another long night at The Horse was suddenly insupportable. He'd been hoping to find someone to help him steal Carl Roebuck's snow blower but it was just himself and Wirf, and he didn't see how enlisting another one-legged man would improve his chances.

"Sec if I can plan my next move."

"I hope this doesn't mean you won't be zigging with me anymore." Sully assured him this was not the case.

"Maybe we should cut back, though," he said.

"Without giving it up entirely."

"Hmmm." Wirf nodded thoughtfully.

"Zigging in moderation. An interesting concept. I like it as an alternative to cowardly zagging. Speaking of common sense, is this Miles Anderson going to let you work under the table?"

"I forgot to ask," Sully said, heading for the door.

"Insist," Wirf called to him.

"Otherwise you're in trouble." Given his present circumstances, the idea of future trouble struck Sully as pretty funny. At the coatrack he chortled, his knee throbbing to the beat. As he put on his overcoat, he realized that Carl Roebuck was right. Something by the front door did smell foul. Or were they both imagining the stench, each of them realizing, as they were about to step out into the world, the deep shit they were in? This latter interpretation was one that his young philosophy professor at the community college would have favored. He liked screwball theories, the wackier the better, in fact. Sully was just the opposite, and he wrinkled his nose. Something stank, but it wasn't destiny.

Opening the door. Sully nearly ran into his son coming in, and it took Sully a moment to realize who it was. Beyond Peter the street was white again and the snow was falling heavily in the fading late-afternoon light.

For dramatic effect the street lamps kicked on.

"Son," Sully said, offering Peter his hand.

"What's up?" For some reason this question struck Peter as funny.

"How long do you have?" he said, shaking his father's hand with weary resignation.

"You're just in time," Sully told him, studying the snow.

"I got a job for you." Miss Beryl pointed up the street in the direction of Mrs. Gruber's house. It had begun snowing again. Mrs.

Gruber, three houses up Main, had turned on her porch light and was attacking the fresh snow on her steps with a broom.

"That's my buddy Mrs. Gruber," Miss Beryl informed the little girl, Tina.

"She ate a snail once, if you can believe it." The old woman and the little girl had been standing at Miss Beryl's front window for about five minutes, ever since the Donnelly girl had gotten off the phone and said she'd better move the car just in case.

"Just let Birdbrain see me out this window and she'll stay right there till I get back. She won't be no trouble unless you try to move her. She'll just stand there." There didn't seem to be much Miss Beryl could do but agree, though she made a mental note that all of this was what came of poking around upstairs in Sully's flat, which she shouldn't have done. The present situation was God's punishment for following Clive Jr. "s advice. When the Donnelly girl slipped out the front door, the child tried to follow, but when Miss Beryl said, "Here's your Mommy," Tina had returned to the window, watched her mother get into the car and drive off. She'd been standing there since, just as her mother had predicted. Miss Beryl had been afraid the little girl would start crying, but she didn't. She just stood, watching the exact place she'd last seen her mother, apparently expecting her to materialize again in the same spot. She did, however, briefly follow Miss Beryl's bony finger when she pointed out Mrs.

Gruber.

"She chewed on it for about half an hour and then spit it into her napkin," Miss Beryl told the child.

"She's a real corker about keeping her front steps clean.

If it keeps snowing, she'll probably sweep them two or three more times tonight before she goes to bed, and then she'll do it again in the morning.

" Without trying. Miss Beryl had listened to most of the Donnelly girl's telephone conversation. She'd tried to take the old phone she'd insulted out into the hall, but the cord wasn't long enough, so she'd set it down in the doorway and stretched the cord out as far as it would go so she could sit on the stairs that led up to Sully's flat.

She wasn't able to manage all that and still close the door, so Miss Beryl overheard most of the one-sided conversation.

Apparently, things had not gone well right from the start. Miss Beryl gathered that the young woman was calling her father to ascertain whether it was safe for her and the little girl to come out of hiding.

Instead, it was her husband, a man named Roy, who had answered the phone.

"Put Daddy on the phone, Roy," Miss Beryl heard the young woman say.

"Because I don't want to talk to you, is why. If I'd wanted to talk to you, I'd have called you." Silence, a minute, from the hall.

"Well, I'm tickled you got your buck, Roy," the young woman said when it was her turn again.

"I hope you'll be content with it, 'cause there's no way I'm coming home. You can cart him back home and eat the son of a bitch all by yourself. I got a job all lined up and an apartment too.. .. Don't tell me you'll find me, Roy. Get you out of Schuyler and turn you around once and you couldn't find south. You couldn't find Albany with a map, much less me in it. I'm amazed you found Bath without me to tell you where to turn. You only been here a couple dozen times.. .. Don't threaten me, Roy, you're all done threatening me. You're just going to have to find yourself another dumb teenage girl to bully, is all. Be a whole lot easier than you trying to find me once I'm gone.. .. Yeah, well, you let me worry about Tina, okay? And don't tell me you're going to change.

You don't change your underwear but once a week, and you haven't changed your mind once since we been married. Change is a subject you should steer clear of.... eah, well. Daddy doesn't even know where the hell I am, which means he can't tell you. And you aren't either smart or tough enough to get it out of Mom.. .. Yeah, well, don't go threatening, Roy.

Remember what the judge told you. Next person you go and beat the shit out of and you go to jail.. .. Yeah, well, go ahead and risk it, then. I wouldn't mind seeing you in jail. Anyhow, I'm going to hang up on you now.

This is the longest conversation we've had in about a year. The part I like best is I can end it without getting punched.. .. Just go on home, Roy.

Go home and eat your deer. Start at the end with the asshole and just keep going.. .. No, you don't know where I am, either. If you did, you'd be over here making everybody's life misery.

You don't have no idea where I am, and you can just file that with all the other things you don't know. There's probably room for one more.

Bye, Roy.. .. Yeah, yeah, yeah.. I'll look forward to it, okay? Go on back to Schuyler, Roy. Go on back and eat your deer. " Hang up the phone. Miss Beryl thought, but the conversation went on in this manner for another five minutes, escalating without moving, and when it did finally end and the young woman came back in and set the phone back on the end table, Miss Beryl had the strong impression that it was her husband who had finally hung up. " I better go move the car," she said, her facial expression a curious mix of annoyance and misgiving.

" He's just dumb enough to find me by pure luck. When I get back, me and Birdbrain'll go upstairs and wait. You don't want to get in the middle of this. " Outside Miss Beryl's front window the street lamps made halos of the falling snow. Up the street Mrs. Gruber had finished her sweeping and was vigorously banging her broom against her porch pillar to get the snow off. She broke two or three brooms this way each winter and complained bitterly about how brooms weren't built to last. Miss Beryl heard the low, throaty throb of a car engine coming up the street from the other direction. It belonged to a huge, rusted-out old Cadillac the color of dirty snow.

Miss Beryl simply could not believe what was riding on the car's hood.

She was unable to convince herself, in fact, until the big car lurched over to the curb directly beneath the street lamp, coming to a rocking rest in the spot where the Donnelly girl's car had been until she moved it. The deer was secured by ropes that snaked under the car's hood and through the grille and front windows in a pattern that could only have been improvised on the spot. The animal's head swayed on its slender neck, tongue lolling out, its entire body sliding dangerously. A large man wearing an orange plaid jacket and cap with earflaps got out of the car then, and when he slammed the door the deer slid further among the straining web of rope.

The man seemed to be surveying not Miss Beryl's house but that of her next-door neighbor. " Daddy," the little girl said, her voice, so unexpected, startling Miss Beryl, who had momentarily forgotten she was there despite the fact that she had both hands on the child's shoulders. When she tried to draw the little girl back from the window, she discovered, as the young woman had predicted, that Tina would not budge. Since that was the case, Miss Beryl drew the sheer that she pulled back each morning to let light into her front room, and she turned off the nearby floor lamp as well.

Through the sheer's gauzy material, she and the child were still able to make out the man's movements, saw him open the Cadillac's rear door and take out a rifle. When he slammed this door also, the deer slid again, its antlers forming a tripod on the snowy curb. The man with the rifle came around the car then, looked at the animal, shook his head, turned back to the house, shouldered the rifle and fired. The explosion of the gun was immediately mixed with the sound of shattering glass. Miss Beryl did not wait for a second shot.

Before that came, she had dialed the phone for the police. Her conversation with the officer at the desk was punctuated by further explosions as the Donnelly girl's husband systematically shot out every window on the second floor of both the front and side of Miss Beryl's neighbor's house, shouting, indistinctly, in between volleys, for his wife to get her ass outside and not make him go up after her.

"I'll be damned," said the policeman on the telephone.

"That does sound like somebody shooting. You sure it's not the television?" By the time Miss Beryl got back to the window, the man had stopped shooting, and Miss Beryl saw why. The Donnelly girl was standing there with him beneath the street lamp, apparently furious and unafraid. He wasn't holding the rifle at his shoulder anymore, but rather across his body with both hands, one on the stock, the other on the barrel. He appeared to be listening intently to his wife and trying to comprehend, among other things, that he was shooting out the windows of the wrong house. He must also have been listening to his wife's low opinion of him. In the distance Miss Beryl heard a siren. The patrol car pulled up just as the man with the rifle had apparently heard enough. Miss Beryl saw the butt of the rifle come up and the Donnelly girl's head snap back. As she crumpled to the sidewalk. Miss Beryl cried out and reached down to cover the little girl's eyes, only to discover that the child was no longer there. In fact, when Miss Beryl turned to look, she discovered that the little girl was no longer in the room. Both the door to Miss Beryl's flat and the outer door stood open. Their first stop was the IGA, where Sully bought the smallest package of ground beef he could find.

"How about buns?" Peter said, abstractedly, picking up a package. It was one of the things Sully liked least about his son, the fact that he seldom seemed to focus. No matter where he was, he was half somewhere else. Right at the moment he had an excuse, though. Yesterday, when Ralph went to pick Will up at the restaurant where Sully had taken him for ice cream, and while Vera and Peter were returning Robert Halsey to the VA home in Schuyler, Charlotte had packed Wacker and Andy into the Gremlin, along with their clothes and toys, and left. She had warned Peter of her intention to leave, even offered him the opportunity to come with her. He could go pick up Will, and when they returned, they'd be off. They could return to Morgantown, at least, as a family. But Peter had refused, telling her to calm down, they'd discuss everything when he and Vera returned from Schuyler Springs. Charlotte had warned him again that there'd be nobody to discuss anything with, but he had not taken this threat seriously. He knew that she was furious and that she had reason to be.