Nobody's Fool

plateau that had had him feeling so rotten to begin with. The more he thought about it, the closer he came to feeling the kind of specific regret to which he had always been opposed.
    The good news was that the Miles Anderson deal had not gone south as he’d feared. The scary part was that he’d very nearly let it go south by being a smart-ass on the phone. Giving guys like Miles Anderson shit was something he’d been doing all his adult life, though he’d not become the richer for it even once. It was his father again, sneaking into his life, Sully suspected. When sober, Big Jim was meek and groveling, almost doglike, in the presence of the educated, the well-dressed, the well-spoken. Later, drunk, he’d vilify these absent doctors, lawyers and professional men and take out his resentment of them on whoever was handy. Sully, even as a boy, had understood that such men held great power over his father. Without knowing exactly how, Big Jim had guessed that men who dressed this way and spoke this way were capable of doing him harm if they chose, and whenever he saw such a man on the street, his eyes narrowed in suspicion and, yes, fear. A bully himself, Big Jim knew what it felt like to be bullied by money and privilege. Sully suspected his father saw such men in his mind’s eye all the time. Like the men who gave him his orders at the Sans Souci. It was probably them he imagined himself fighting with in the taverns. It was always somebody that Big Jim thought was putting on airs that he made trouble for. Somebody who made a little more money at his job or was dressed a little better. Somebody who could serve as a stand-in for the ones he really hated. And so Sully, as a younger man, had decided not to be cowed by the sort of men who made his father feel small. Giving the Miles Andersons of the world their share of shit had gotten him no further than obsequiousness had gotten his father, of course, but Sully considered his way more satisfying, and he hated to think he might have to give up such small satisfactions. But the truth was that he was in pretty deep, a lot deeper than he could ever remember being, and almost losing the work that would help him climb out would have been the species of stubborn stupidity that Ruth always claimed was uniquely Sully.
    But somehow he’d gotten away with it, which meant he wasn’t done quite yet. Tomorrow he’d be more agreeable, tell Miles Anderson he hadn’t meant to be such a prick. Even losing all this money to Carl Roebuck might not be totally bad, since Carl would now feel guilty enough to let him keep the El Camino for a few days until he could solve the problem of how to buy a new truck. If Sully could come up with a decent down payment, Harold might be convinced to let him take the truck andthe snowplow blade and make monthly payments until the balance was paid off. If it snowed like hell all winter, as it looked like it might, he might be able to pay Harold off by spring, assuming he didn’t get into any more poker games, didn’t do anything else equally deficient in judgment.
    Sometime soon, he feared, he was going to have to swallow hard and ask to borrow money from somebody. Ruth would give it to him if she had it, but she didn’t have it. Wirf probably did, and probably would give it to him, but Sully owed him far too much already. On principle he refused to borrow money from old women, which left Miss Beryl out. Carl Roebuck might give him some money if Sully could catch him drunk again, but he disliked the idea of taking money from Carl, whom he preferred to resent. He could go see Clive Jr. at the savings and loan, but Sully’s stomach curdled at the thought, and it occurred to him, now that he thought about it, that it was probably Clive Jr. who had warned Miles Anderson against him.
    Finally, there was Ruth’s solution: sell his father’s property and use the money. He wondered how much more desperate he’d have to get before that became a real possibility. Quite a bit more, he suspected.
    â€œWell,” Carl said, breaking into Sully’s reverie, “the time has come for me to see if I have a home to go home to this evening.”
    â€œI wouldn’t suggest going to visit Ruby right away,” Sully advised.
    â€œStill worked up, huh?”
    â€œI don’t know about now. She was pretty bent out of shape early this afternoon.”
    Carl looked genuinely sad to hear it.