Nobody's Fool

seconds that Peter was stalled atop the fence, Sully had imagined not only that his son would be impaled but his own attempt to explain to Vera what had happened to their son, the son she had tried to protect by steering him clear of his father, the son he’d tried to protect by helping her do it, only to be his destroyer in the end. This was what he had caught a whiff of at the door of the White Horse Tavern.
    â€œYou got any idea what this place is?” he asked Peter now.
    Peter examined the structure in the faint glow of the distant street lamp. “Should I?”
    Sully shrugged. “I guess not. I thought maybe your mother might have pointed it out to you. It belonged to your grandfather. It’s the house I grew up in.”
    The significance of this, if indeed there were any, seemed lost on Peter, who kept looking at the scratch on his palm, a gesture that caused Sully to realize how different, as father and son, they were, how much Sully had surrendered by allowing Peter to be raised by his mother. He couldn’t very well start lecturing the boy now. There was every reason to believe that the first thirty-five years of Peter’s life had been the formative ones. Still, it was tempting to tell him to quit looking at the scratch. It hadn’t changedor gotten worse since the last time he’d examined it. The thing to do with wounds was ignore them, like your hole cards in a game of stud poker, which also never changed, no matter how many times you looked at them. Like Sully’s knee, which he allowed himself to examine once, first thing in the morning, and which he then ignored the rest of the day. Like all the mistakes a man made in his life, which could be worried and picked at like scabs but were better left alone. It would have been good to say all this to his son, but age thirty-five was an awkward time to begin parental advice.
    â€œI don’t suppose you could make any use of this property?” Sully suggested.
    Peter looked at his father, then at the sagging house, then back at his father. Sully knew what his son must be thinking. It was hard to see where the worth might be. Intellectually he knew Ruth was right, that the land the house was sitting on was probably worth something, especially the way it abutted the property of the Sans Souci, but looking at the graying, weathered structure, you had a hard time imagining anybody being interested enough for money to change hands.
    â€œSure,” Peter said. “We could use it as a summer home.”
    â€œI know,” Sully admitted. “It doesn’t look like it’s worth much, but I apparently own it, and I’d just as soon somebody else did.”
    Peter was still looking at the house. “I don’t blame you,” he said.
    Sully didn’t want to be angry with Peter, but he could feel his exasperation growing. What he especially hated was being reduced to using someone else’s logic, which was what he knew he’d have to do now. He’d have to say what Ruth would say if she were here. “You’re looking at the wrong thing,” he told his son without much conviction. “If you owned it, the first thing you’d probably want to do is knock the house down, sell it for scrap. It’s the ground that might be worth a few thousand. You’d pay the back taxes, sell it, put the profit in your pocket.”
    â€œYou could do the same thing,” Peter pointed out, not unreasonably.
    Sully decided not to go into the real reason, his refusal to have anything to do with Big Jim Sullivan, alive or dead, which had never convinced anybody yet and wouldn’t convince Peter either. In fact, it occurred to Sully that Peter could well have made just such an oath at some point in his own life. Perhaps it was still in force. “I might, if I had the back taxes, but I don’t.”
    â€œWell,” Peter said. “Neither do I. In fact, I’m not sure I can afford to rent a car in Albany tomorrow. If they don’t take my credit card, I’m going to have to ask you for a loan.”
    Sully thought about this, about where he might be able to get themoney. “I thought you were doing okay,” he frowned. “You’re a college professor, right?”
    Peter chuckled unpleasantly, as if to suggest unworldliness in his father. “You have any idea what an assistant professor makes, Dad?”
    In truth, Sully did not. “As high up as you are,