Nobody's Fool

mistake of tooting, Sully got out of the truck and stared at him until the man shrugged sheepishly, backed up and pulled around, giving Sully wide berth. “Two cars in the whole street, and you’ve got to toot at me,” Sully called as the man slid by into the intersection.
    Will was studying him nervously when Sully got back in. “Dad does that too,” he observed sadly, as if he’d discovered a genetic flaw.
    â€œDoes what?”
    â€œGets mad at people in cars,” Will explained. “He doesn’t get out, though.”
    Sully nodded. That sounded about right. His son seemed exactly this sort of man. Angry enough to yell, not angry enough to get out.
    At a pretty nearly complete loss about what to do with his grandson, he said, “How about some ice cream?”
    â€œWe had dessert already,” Will said.
    Sully sighed. Vera did raise good citizens. Another boy who could not tell a lie. It was discouraging. “You had ice cream?”
    â€œPumpkin pie.”
    â€œWith ice cream?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen you can have the ice cream now. We’ll pretend it was on top of the pie.”
    Will thought about this. He’d been warned about Grandpa Sully, who was irresponsible. Still, if he was going to live with his grandfather, he was going to have to get used to such things. He sighed. “Okay.”
    â€œGood,” Sully said, turning the key in the ignition. Thank God, in fact.
    They headed out of town, Will silently fingering the lump on his forehead. Almost as interesting as the lump was the fact that his grandfather’s truck had a hole the size of a basketball in the floor beneath the passenger’s seat.
    â€œDon’t fall through,” Sully warned when he saw his grandson peering down through the hole at the racing pavement below.
    When they got to the new spur and had it pretty much to themselves, Sully said, “You want to drive?”
    Will looked at him fearfully.
    â€œSlide over,” Sully said, adding, “be careful of my bum knee.”
    Will settled carefully onto Sully’s right leg, allowing his own small legs to dangle in the direction of the gas pedal and brake, careful not to let them bump his grandfather’s left knee. Together they held the steering wheel.
    â€œIt’s jiggling,” Will observed, clearly unsure whether this vibration was natural.
    â€œTrucks do,” Sully explained. “Especially broken-down old trucks like Grandpa’s.”
    â€œIt’s a nice truck,” Will said, his voice vibrating from holding the wheel.
    â€œI’m glad you like it,” Sully said, taken aback by the little boy’s compliment, and without planning to, he kissed his grandson on the top of his head. “Now you’ve driven a car. I bet you didn’t know you could,” he said, adding, “don’t tell your mother.”
    Some phrases were truly magical in their ability to dredge up the past from the bottom of life’s lake, and for Sully, like all errant fathers, “Don’t tell your mother” was such a phrase. He hadn’t used it in about thirty years. But the words were right there, anxious to be spoken again after so long, a holy incantation. It was the phrase he’d been born to speak, having learned the words from his own father, who, if they hadn’t already existed, would have had to invent them. “We’ll stop in here for just a minute,” Big Jim had been fond of saying outside his favorite tavern, and Sully and his brother, Patrick, would wait a beat or two until his father pulled the heavy door toward them and pushed them gently into the cool darkness, warning as he did so, “Don’t tell your mother.” Inside, Sully and his brother were always bribed with nickels to play shuffleboard and pinball while Big Jim located a spot at the bar and ordered the first of many boilermakers, paid for with money he withheld from Sully’s mother, whom he kept on a strict allowance, money Big Jim now kept in a careless pile on the bar to ensure his welcome. Sometimes, when Sully got tired of pinball (he had to stand on a wooden stool and even then couldn’t reach the buttons comfortably) or ran out of nickels and joined his father at the bar, he’d stare at the pile of bills, aware that this was the same money his mother talked about so bitterly when his father wasn’t around, money she’d have spent on food and