Nobody's Fool

out until Will was grown up and moved away. He’d make his parents promise not to tell Wacker where he lived. This was important, because when Wacker finally got out of that locked room he was going to be mad.
    Will told Sully all of this. Once he started, it all came out, and the new fantasy life seemed even more real for having been voiced. If his grandfather saw any flaw in the plan, he didn’t say so. Grandpa Sully just listened, for which Will was grateful. In his entire life no adult had ever just listened to him without offering all sorts of objections, all sorts of reasons why things weren’t the way Will thought they were or thought they could be. As Will talked, uninterrupted, he gathered confidence and momentum. He described the house he and his father would live in, as well as the terrible punishments Wacker would have to endure once the jig was up. His grandfather’s stunned silence was just the sort of validation he’d been hoping for. He’d never been happier. Ice cream had never tasted better. Usually, Will didn’t care for the taste of food. Fear made it rise, sour, in his throat. But this ice cream tasted so good he licked the dish.
    â€œYou could come visit whenever you want,” he told Sully, as if Wacker might be the reason his grandfather had, until now, stayed away.
    â€œI will, too,” Sully assured him, consulting his watch. The boy hadbeen talking for half an hour, which made them overdue back at the house. “We better head back, don’t you think?”
    Will’s face fell. “I’d rather live with you.”
    â€œIf you lived with me, then I couldn’t come visit,” Sully pointed out. “Besides, if I stole you away from Mommy and Daddy, they’d put me in jail. Grandma Vera would see to it.”
    Will knew this was true. He didn’t want to head back, but he didn’t want Grandpa Sully to go to jail, either. Somehow, just talking with Grandpa Sully had made him feel braver. He wasn’t quite so afraid of Wacker anymore. True, Wacker would get back at him for the toilet seat, but when it happened, Will would just think of all those years his brother would have to spend locked in his room.
    At the register, Sully paid for the coffee and his grandson’s ice cream. In the nearest booth somebody was eating a chicken-fried steak, which looked and smelled good. Sully’s stomach had settled a little and he remembered he hadn’t eaten all day. On the way out of the restaurant he considered calling Vera and telling them they were on their way, then decided not to. In ten minutes they’d be there in person.
    And they would have been, too, if there’d been any gas in Sully’s truck. There’d been over a quarter of a tank this morning, but most of that had idled away at the curb outside his ex-wife’s house, and now the truck was bone dry, which Sully would have seen if he’d thought to look at the gas gauge on the way to the restaurant.
    Fortunately, this time it was Ralph who answered the phone when Sully called, and fifteen minutes later when the Buick pulled into the restaurant parking lot, it was Ralph at the wheel. “Grandpa to the rescue,” he chortled when Will ran to him. Ralph flushed then, realizing. “I kinda think of myself as their grandpa,” he admitted to Sully.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Sully said. “It’s the way I think of you, too.”
    â€œYou better get in the car,” Ralph told the boy. “You don’t have no coat on.”
    This was true, though Sully hadn’t noticed it. Will scrambled into the front seat and behind the wheel of Ralph’s Buick. Ralph handed Sully the five-gallon gas can he was carrying. “How’d he get the bump on his head?” he asked somewhat conspiratorially, as if he knew he’d be required to explain when he got home.
    Sully explained guiltily. Vera had always maintained that he was a dangerous man, and he knew what she’d say when the boy came homedamaged. Ralph, on the other hand, seemed to understand that these things could happen.
    â€œHell,” he said. “We didn’t even know he was gone there for a while. Then we thought he’d run clean away. I was glad to hear he was with you.”
    â€œVera wasn’t.”
    â€œWell, you know her.”
    â€œYes, I do. She’s still convinced nobody loves her, I gather.”
    â€œShe’s having a