Nobody's Fool

mat down in the bed to protect it, a pretty foolish thing to Sully’s way of thinking. He liked to hear the sound his tools made when he tossed them into his truck at the end of the day. A crowbar bouncing off the bed of a pickup truck was a satisfying sound, and he refused to be cheated out of it. The first time he’d tossed a wrench onto the mat he’d heard nothing at all, leading him to believe he’d missed the bed of the truck altogether, and he’d gone around the other side to look for a wrench-shaped pattern in the snowbank. When there wasn’t one, he looked in the bed of the pickup, and there sat the wrench in the middle of the rubber mat. The next day he’d sold the mat for twenty dollars to Ruth’s son, Gregory, who needed cheering up. He’d dropped out of school after the Bath-Schuyler game, gone to work as a stockboy at the new supermarket by the interstate, bought himself a pickup truck so he could get there. He liked the pad. With the pad and an air mattress, you could get laid in the back of the truck. Theoretically.
    And so when Sully and Will left Hattie’s at midmorning and climbed into the truck, he noted with satisfaction that the vehicle was beginning to look and feel and even smell like a truck he might own, instead of one he couldn’t afford. The windows were pleasantly dirty, and he’d begun to amass a collection of styrofoam coffee cups and sections of dirty, boot-printed newspaper on the floor. Will had apparently also concluded that it was beginning to look like a truck his grandfather might own, because he climbed in cautiously, testing his footing, as if the newspaper might conceal a hole in the floorboards.
    When Sully turned the key in the ignition and started to back out from behind Hattie’s, the boy said, “My seat belt, Grandpa,” and so Sully braked and hooked the boy up.
    â€œThere,” Sully said. “Your grandmother finds out I’m driving you around without a seat belt, I’m history, aren’t I.”
    â€œMom, too,” the boy said, his face clouding over.
    â€œYou talk to her lately?” Sully ventured as he put the truck back into reverse and let off the brake.
    â€œShe called last night. They yelled at each other,” Will confessed, ashamed.
    â€œMmmm,” Sully said. “They love
you
just the same. Just ’cause they get mad at each other doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”
    The boy didn’t say anything.
    When Sully pulled out of the alley onto Main, he said, “You know what?”
    When the boy didn’t answer, Sully nudged him. “Grandpa loves you too.”
    Will frowned. “Grandpa Ralph?”
    â€œNo,” Sully said. “Grandpa Me.”
    â€œI know,” the boy said.
    The damndest thing about what Sully’d said, he realized, was that it was true. He enjoyed having his grandson around. The first morning Peter had appeared for work with Will in tow, Sully’d let it be known that it wasn’t such a great idea. “He won’t get in the way,” Peter had promised, his voice lowered.
    â€œThat’s not the point,” Sully’d responded, though it
was
the point, or a large part of the point. “What if he gets hurt?”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œSuppose you whack a nail off center and it flies through the air and catches him in the eye. Your mother will have both our asses.”
    Peter shook his head. “Well, what do you know? My father is worried something might fly through the air and hit his grandson.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said. “You don’t want me to worry about him, I won’t.”
    â€œWorry all you want,” Peter had said. “It’s a little out of character, is all I’m saying.”
    â€œI never worried about you, is that what you’re saying?”
    â€œHey,” Peter said, shrugging his shoulders significantly.
    And he was right, of course. Sully hadn’t worried about Peter once during his entire childhood. Partly because he’d had his own worries. Partly because Vera could worry enough for ten people. Partly because he just hadn’t. He’d neglected to, not feeling much need, even glad to be out of the picture, telling himself during moments of self-pity (self-knowledge?) that if he were involved in his son’s life it would probably be to fuck things up.
    That had been his attitude at the time, and in truth it had not