Nobody's Fool

delinquent teenager.
    Sully told Harold that the pickup had died this morning, describing its condition for Harold, who listened hopefully. “Could just be corrosion on your battery cables,” he offered.
    â€œCould be,” Sully agreed. “But it isn’t.”
    They had strolled outside, Rub tagging along a respectful stride behind, Dwayne lurking even farther in the background. “How do you know?” Harold said.
    Sully thought about it. He didn’t know for sure, of course, but it just made fatalistic sense the truck would die today. Yesterday he’d had a job offer that was contingent upon having a truck, which meant the truck had to die. Mired as he was in a stupid streak, Sully credited the perversity ofcosmic law that governed such things. “Call it a hunch,” he told Harold.
    â€œWhy don’t you let me have a look,” Harold said. He didn’t discredit hunches exactly, but he liked to check them out just in case. “We’ll send Dwayne out and have him tow it back.”
    â€œThat’d be good,” Sully admitted, momentarily buoyed by Harold’s common sense.
    â€œYou met Dwayne?” Harold said, catching the boy, who wasn’t expecting to be introduced, with his finger in his nose. “Go get Sully’s truck and bring it here,” Harold told him. Dwayne nodded, headed for the wrecker.
    â€œDwayne?” Harold called after him. “Don’t you want to know where it is?”
    Dwayne returned.
    Sully gave him his address on Upper Main, told him the truck was parked at the curb.
    â€œWhat color is it?” Dwayne asked.
    Sully told him green. “It’ll be the one that looks like it’s not worth towing,” he added.
    Harold smiled as Dwayne retreated again. “Minute ago he was going to get a truck he didn’t know the location of. Then after you tell him right where it is, he wants a full description.”
    Rub was wiping his palms on his shirt. “He picked his nose and then shook my hand,” he said angrily.
    â€œHere’s what you should buy,” Harold said on the way past the junkyard, indicating a snowplow blade that was leaning up against the chain-link fence. “Guy that owned it made good money doing driveways.”
    â€œHow come he sold it?” Sully said.
    â€œHe didn’t,” Harold said. “His widow sold it. I picked it up at an auction.”
    â€œI don’t seem to have a truck to attach it to, is the problem,” Sully pointed out, although he was intrigued with the idea. With the town of Bath always cutting back on services and snow already in November, a plow might not be a bad idea. “I don’t think I have the strength to push it myself.”
    â€œI’ll make you a deal if you decide you want it,” Harold said and quoted Sully a price that wasn’t much more than what he’d paid for it at the auction. “Don’t wait too long.”
    â€œI’d have to rob a bank if I’m going to buy a truck and the plow rig both,” Sully said.
    â€œSome people borrow from banks,” Harold pointed out.
    â€œNot people like me,” Sully said. “Banks like you to own something of equal value they can take from you in case you run into some bad luck.”
    Harold had only two trucks at the moment. One was in pretty good shape. Sully took the other one for a test drive. It was marginally better than the truck he already owned, which was dead.
    â€œI wouldn’t charge you much for it,” Harold said when Sully returned and looked at the vehicle skeptically. “But then it’s not worth much. I bought it for parts myself. You’d be money ahead to buy the other one.”
    â€œI know it,” Sully said. “But the money I’d be ahead is money I don’t have.”
    â€œWell,” Harold said. “Who knows. Maybe I can fix the one you got.”
    At that moment they heard the wrecker returning and watched Dwayne pull into the yard towing a truck that was not Sully’s. Neither was it green.
    Harold sighed mightily. “I’ll be darned,” he said quietly. He’d almost said he’d be damned, but he caught himself at the last second.
    The house Miles Anderson had bought occupied the southwest corner of the intersection. It was the largest of the big houses on Upper Main, a three-level brick affair with two small widow’s walks on the upper story and a huge