Nobody's Fool

his father’s views, though she often made gentle fun of them. “It has nothing to do with patriotism,” she told her husband, who looked a little frightened by her vehemence. “That boy is already at war. He’s just like his brother was. He’s looking for a car to hit head on.”
    Clive Jr., young though he was at the time, had known his mother was wrong. Not in her analysis of Sully’s motives, which, he supposed, might be true. What she was mistaken about was Sully’s ability to wreck himself in a collision. It was the guys in the oncoming vehicle who were not long for this world, in Clive Jr.’s view. Sully might even manage to kill everybody else, but it would be his own personal destiny to be thrown clear of one head-on collision after another, always the worse for the experience but never dead of it.
    And his prediction had come true. It was not Sully who had died going ninety miles an hour but rather Clive Sr., going all of twenty.
    Still, Sully wasn’t immortal, Clive Jr. knew. He was just a man. A dinosaur of a man, marking time patiently toward extinction. Quite possibly he was dead already and was just too dumb to know it. Clive Jr. would have liked to explain this to Sully, and he imagined an exchange he hadn’t quite the courage to make real. “You know how the dinosaurs figured out they were extinct?” he’d have liked to ask. And Sully would have to admit he didn’t have a clue. “They never did,” Clive Jr. would tell him. “They just were.”
    By the time Cass returned with Hattie on her arm and deposited the old woman, bathed and warmly dressed, in her booth, Sully’s generous impulse had about run its course. He was a man capable of sporadic generousimpulses, which he enjoyed while they lasted without regretting their absence once they played themselves out.
    â€œNext time let her go,” Cass said when she joined Sully behind the counter. Sully had already taken off his apron.
    â€œWhat gets into her?” he said, sliding onto the stool that had been occupied until recently by Clive Peoples.
    â€œShe was still mad from yesterday,” Cass told him, her voice low and confidential. “She wanted me to open on Thanksgiving so she could sit in her booth. I told her she could go out and sit in it if she wanted to, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t. Sat right there for three hours and then came back and told me I was ruining the business.”
    â€œShe does seem happy in that booth,” Sully admitted. The old woman was smiling broadly now, her misguided flight forgotten.
    â€œNo ‘seem’ about it. If I kept the place open twenty-four hours a day and let her sit there the whole time, she’d be the happiest woman alive.”
    â€œSo let her sit,” Sully suggested. “What’s it hurt?”
    â€œRight.” Cass glared at him. “Why should I have a life?”
    Sully shrugged. “Then put her in a nursing home. Who’s going to blame you?”
    â€œEveryone, including you,” Cass said with conviction. “Including me.” She looked past Sully at her mother. “They’d strap her in a wheelchair and forget all about her, Sully,” she said, her voice even quieter now.
    Sully was spared from having to comment by the arrival of Rub, who trotted up outside, put his face to the window and peered in with a worried expression.
    â€œSomebody told me you were working here now,” he said, as if the rumor were too terrible to contemplate.
    â€œWho, me?” Sully said.
    Cass brought Rub a coffee.
    â€œI never should have believed it,” he said seriously.
    â€œWhy not?” Sully wondered, always curious about Rub’s logic.
    â€œBecause it wasn’t true,” Rub explained.
    â€œThere you go.” Cass nodded at Sully, as if in perfect comprehension.
    â€œCould I borrow a dollar?” Rub said.
    Sully gave him a dollar. Rub put it into his pocket.
    Sully stared at him, shook his head.
    â€œWhat?” Rub said.
    â€œNothing,” Sully told him.
    â€œThen how come you’re looking at me?”
    Sully didn’t answer.
    â€œYou’re both looking at me,” Rub observed, since Cass was also watching the two of them with her usual quiet astonishment.
    â€œYou’re a good-looking man, Rub,” Sully told him. “Handsome.”
    Rub looked at Cass, hoping for a clue as to how to take