Nobody's Fool

football coach, Clive Peoples Sr., who’d become homicidal when Sully strayed from his assigned duties, to Carl Roebuck, who would send him someplace and come by later and find him gone, to Rub, who would have liked to know right where Sully was every minute. In fact, so many people seemed to agree that Sully was never where he was needed that he was greatly tempted to acknowledge the truth of the observation, except that this would in turn have led to the sort of specific regret that Sully was too wise to indulge.
    â€œWell.” Sully frowned at Rub. “You want to hear the good news?”
    â€œI guess so,” Rub said a little suspiciously. Sully’s good news sometimes meant they’d been hired to dig up somebody’s ruptured septic tank.
    â€œI got us another job,” Sully told him. “Working for your favorite person, too.”
    Rub’s eyes narrowed. “Carl?”
    Sully nodded. “He’s waiting for us. Impatiently, would be my guess.”
    â€œWaiting where?”
    â€œAt the house,” Sully nodded in the direction of his father’s place.
    â€œI thought you said you didn’t want nothing to do with that place,” Rub remembered.
    It was one of the things about Rub that Sully couldn’t get used to. Occasionally, out of the blue Rub would remember something, sometimes a thing he’d been told only once, or overheard. Usually the things Rub recalled at moments like these were things Sully’d just as soon he forgot.
    â€œI guess I did say that, didn’t I,” Sully admitted. He wasn’t sure how to explain to Rub or anyone else the attraction of ripping up the floors of his father’s house, gutting the inside, furthering the house’s destruction.
    â€œYou also said we weren’t ever going to work for Carl Roebuck again,” Rub added petulantly as they sauntered down the walk. When Rub started to get into the truck, Sully stopped him. “Let’s walk,” he suggested. “You can walk a whole block, can’t you?”
    Rub shut the door again. “I figured you’d want to drive.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œÂ â€™Cause of your knee.”
    â€œIt’s good of you to remember, Rub, but I’d rather walk.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œBecause of my knee.”
    Rub thought about it. “How come when you’re mad at Peter you’re mean to me?”
    â€œWhen my knee feels half decent, I like to walk. When it hurts, I like to ride,” Sully explained. “Being mad at you takes my mind off it entirely. And I’m not mad at Peter. He’s mad at me.”
    On the way, Sully told Rub about Carl Roebuck’s plan to pull up the hardwood floors in the house on Bowdon, lay them again in the lakefront camp that he and Toby owned and seldom used.
    â€œHow come we have to tear up a floor when Carl could just buy new wood?”
    â€œHardwood is expensive.”
    â€œSo?” Rub shrugged. “Carl’s rich.”
    Rub had, Sully knew, an imperfect grasp of wealth, of what things cost. To Rub’s way of thinking, some people—Carl Roebuck, for instance—had money, which meant they could afford things that other people—Rub, for instance—could not. What people like Carl Roebuck could afford was everything Rub couldn’t. The central fact of Rub’s existence was what he couldn’t afford, and what he couldn’t afford was nearly everything. Therefore, conversely, what Carl Roebuck
could
afford must be nearly everything. The idea that people who had money might have money problems was inconceivable to Rub, who saw no reason for them to economize.
    â€œThat’s how people get rich,” Sully explained. “Instead of doing things the expensive way, they save a few bucks here and there. They hire guys like us to make their lives nice.”
    Rub’s face was a thundercloud so dark that only profound stupidity could be at its center. “And then they don’t even pay us,” he said, remembering the trench they’d dug at Carl’s house.
    The two men crossed the street in the middle of the block. Will wasright, Sully thought as he looked at his father’s house from the distance of about fifty yards. It did look like it might fall down. “Carl’ll pay us.”
    â€œHe didn’t before.”
    â€œOnce. He’ll pay us this time. He paid us for moving all those blocks you broke,