Nobody's Fool

awake and got to his feet, to all appearances refreshed by his nap. And when he lurched in the direction of home, nobody tried to stop him. Sully and his brother, Patrick, had followed at what they considered a safe distance, but when they were a block from home Big Jim had sensed their presence, turned and grabbed his sons roughly by the collar and drew them up close to his ruined face, so close Sully could smell his father’s blood and vomit. “Don’t tell your mother,” he warned.
    Even after his divorce from Vera, Sully had remained convinced that he’d been a better father to Peter than Big Jim had been to him, though this, he had to admit, was not a lofty goal. It saddened him to realize he’d accomplished this intention by such a slender margin. Instead of abusing Peter, he’d ignored the boy, forgotten him for months at a stretch, a simple truth he now found difficult to credit though impossible to deny. The years had simply flown by, and Vera, with Ralph’s help, had seemed more than competent in the business of providing whatever it was their son might need. Without ever saying so, Vera had often managed to convey to Sully that they were doing fine without him, which indeed they seemed to be. Ralph, she assured him, was a natural father, even if he wasn’t
the
natural father, and Peter didn’t lack for love or anything else. They were a family, she told him in a way that suggested to Sully that if he were to intrude upon them with his presence he would be endangering that family. And so he had found the excuse he needed to stay away, grateful, truth be told, for his freedom.
    It had been Ralph, not Vera, who’d sought him out occasionally, told him he should stop by some time, see the boy, see how big he’d gotten since the last time, so big Sully’d hardly recognize him. Which was not true. Sully always recognized Peter by the odd, worried expression he had about the eyes, an expression he’d passed on to Will, who wore it, Sully thought, with more grace than Peter ever had. His few outings with his son had always been strained affairs, since Sully couldn’t imagine what to say to a kid with a perpetual frown who always watched the speedometer and reported back to his mother how fast Sully had driven. They usually went somewhere where there’d be a crowd—a movie or an amusement park—so they’d seem less alone.
    And, it was true, Sully was a menace as a parent. He never saw that it was a bad idea to feed the kid a corn dog and then take him on the Tilt-a-Whirl until the corn dog came back up and Sully was faced with thenecessity of cleaning the boy up so he could be brought home. Sooner or later on each of their outings they ended up in some grungy men’s room with Sully, wet paper towels in hand, trying to sponge the boy’s sour vomit off the front of his shirt and pants and listening to himself say, in Big Jim Sullivan’s voice, “Don’t tell your mother, okay, sport?” Then they’d get back into the car and Sully would roll down all the windows and drive like hell in the hope that the wind would dry Peter’s clothes by the time they got home.
    Sometimes Peter had fallen asleep against him on the way home, and when they arrived back at Vera’s, Sully would carry his son up the walk. The little boy’s hair always smelled sweet and clean, the way Will’s smelled now. It smelled, Sully had realized, like a good home, like cleanliness and decency and safety. Like the things Vera and Ralph had provided for Peter. And it was the reason he never went back to Vera’s until the next time Ralph came looking for him.
    At a twenty-four-hour restaurant just off the interstate ramp Sully ordered Will a dish of ice cream with a cherry on top. His own stomach was rumbling ominously, so he ordered just coffee for himself. “Extra caffeine,” he told the waitress.
    The girl who took the order was apparently too unhappy to be working on Thanksgiving to respond to humor. When the ice cream came, Sully used the pay phone at the front of the restaurant. Vera answered on the first ring.
    â€œHi,” he said. “You missing anybody?”
    â€œI knew it,” his ex-wife said. “Where are you?”
    â€œNone of your business,” he said. “And you couldn’t have known it, because I just found out myself. He hid in the back of the truck.”
    From where he was standing