Nobody's Fool

no snow, and if this winter was another one like it, he’d be going into spring buried under the kind of debt he’d have had a hard time paying off even on two good legs. His knee didn’t seem to be any worse since going back to work, but it wasn’t any better either, and he dreaded another accident on it, knowing that would finish him for good.
    Working behind the lunch counter at Hattie’s had its advantages. Standing next to the warm grill gradually loosened his knee, which always felt its worst early in the morning. The two or three steps he had to take between the grill and the fridge was just the right amount of exercise for the first three hours of his day, between six-thirty and nine-thirty, after which he’d be limber enough to join Rub and Peter out at the Anderson house or go out on a job for Carl Roebuck if Carl happened to have one of those small, scum-sucking, nasty jobs he delighted in giving to Sully. He preferred to work for Carl when he could, because there wasn’t really enough work at the house to keep three men busy for an entire winter, even when one was a cripple, another a born sandbagger and the third a moonlighting college professor. Actually, Sully had been surprised when Peter appeared in the El Camino two weeks after returning to West Virginia. That period of time had been nearly sufficient for Sully to forget the offer of work he had extended to his son, work he’d since come to think of as his own and Rub’s. Which meant that he’d either have to let Rub go back to work for his cousins or find additional work. So he told Cass not to worry about finding a breakfast fry cook, at least for the rest of the winter. That decision was easy once he made his mind up. More difficult was coaxing work out of Carl Roebuck, who was constantly bellyaching that Tip Top Construction was slowly going under and claiming it would go under fast if Clive Peoples fucked up and let the Ultimate Escape deal go south. Sully doubted whether this was any more than bellyaching, and while he was confident of Clive Jr.’s ability to fuck anything up, he doubted it would happen in this instance, because that could just conceivably ruin Carl Roebuck, whose good fortune, Sully believed, was one of the few constants in an otherwise mutable life. It was true enough that Carl never had much at this time of year. Worse, he was a wizard at sensing Sully’s need and was not above paying him less than Sully would have accepted if his need hadn’t been so great and then telling him he was a lot more likable when he was humble, to which Sully always responded that this was one of the differences between them—that Carl was never likable.
    At six-thirty, when Cass unlocked the front door, a small cluster ofmen, Rub among them, had gathered outside and were stamping their feet in the cold, awaiting admittance into the warmth and light. Rub immediately slid onto the stool closest to where Sully was stationed at the grill, mixing eggs in a bowl with a metal whisk. This last week, since Peter’s return to Bath, had been tough on Rub. He was used to having Sully all to himself, not having to share him with Peter and the little boy. Until a month ago Rub had been blissfully ignorant of the fact that Sully had a son, much less a grandson, and he didn’t think it was quite fair for these two people to turn up now without warning and just assume they were welcome. He didn’t like having to work with Peter, who was not a good listener like Sully. Plus, when Peter talked to Rub at all, which was not often, it was in a different kind of English than Rub was used to, an English that made him feel stupid. Old Lady Peoples had warned him when he was in the eighth grade that the world rewarded people who talked well enough to make other people feel stupid, and of course it was true, so he wasn’t really that surprised. Even worse, Sully himself had started talking differently, at least to Peter. It was his son that Sully seemed to have things to say to now, not Rub, and there was also some evidence to suggest that Sully actually listened to what his son was saying in return. That Sully would listen and respond to Peter particularly annoyed Rub, who liked to think of Sully as his one true friend. After all, Rub told Sully things he never told anybody else, even Bootsie, his wife. With Sully he shared his deepest desires, which had nothing to do with Bootsie, holding nothing