Nobody's Fool

watching on a small screen, though, and it didn’t get all of her hair, so I couldn’t be sure.”
    Harold ignored this. “Our boy is in the cemetery out there,” heexplained to Sully, who’d half forgotten that the Proxmires had had a son killed in Vietnam. “She don’t want to see him disturbed.”
    â€œI can understand that,” Sully admitted, sorry now that he’d joked about Mrs. Harold.
    â€œFunny time to protest,” Harold said, his eyes filling. “She wouldn’t during the war. Wouldn’t let me either.”
    â€œWe did fight ourselves, if I recall,” Sully reminded Harold, who had also served.
    Harold nodded. “We did indeed. I thought we’d never stop.”
    Neither man said anything for a moment.
    â€œDid I hear your son’s back in town?” Harold said.
    Sully nodded, feeling strange. Not many people remembered he had a son, and not many of those who did would have thought of Peter as Sully’s. Having Harold refer to him this way also reminded him of Vera’s contention that Peter was his now, that he’d won their son. “He’s helping me out for a week or two,” he explained, almost adding, until he goes back to teaching at the college. That, it occurred to him, would have been an unkind thing to say to a man whose own son lay buried a mile outside of town. It also would have been a boast. My son the professor. A boast Sully didn’t feel he had any right to.
    Harold nodded in the direction of Clive Jr., who had finally coaxed his weeping fiancée off the porch steps and was leading her over to the car, which still sat in the middle of the lawn. He had her by the elbow and was leading her like a blind woman. “When I was a kid, I had an Irish setter like her. All nerves.”
    They watched Clive put the woman in the car on the passenger side, then go around and get in behind the wheel. The car started right up, and Clive drove off the lawn and gently over the curb. “He should get that axle checked,” Harold said. “But I bet he won’t.”
    â€œHe’ll be fine,” Sully said. “Bad things don’t happen to bankers.” Though he thought about Carl Roebuck’s misgivings concerning The Ultimate Escape and wondered if Clive Jr. might be in for trouble. For Miss Beryl’s sake, he hoped not.
    â€œI don’t think I’d give any more driving lessons if I was him. That’s how his old man got killed, wasn’t it?”
    â€œSome people never learn,” he said. “Tell Esmerelda hello.”
    When the tow truck pulled away from the curb, Sully noticed that Rub was looking glum. “What’s the matter with you?”
    â€œI wisht you’d took it,” Rub said.
    â€œTook what?”
    â€œHe had a twenty-dollar bill out.”
    â€œWho?” Sully said.
    â€œThe bank guy,” Rub said. “I could’ve used that twenty dollars.”
    â€œTen, you mean.”
    â€œIt was a twenty,” Rub insisted. “I saw it.”
    â€œBut only half would have been yours, right?”
    Rub shrugged.
    â€œOr did you want the whole twenty for yourself and leave me with nothing?”
    â€œI didn’t get either half,” Rub pointed out. “Nothing was what I got.”
    â€œWell, that’s what I got too,” Sully said.
    Rub sighed. This had all the earmarks of another argument with Sully that he wasn’t going to win.
    â€œHere comes Peter,” Rub observed sadly when the El Camino came into view. “You probably would have shared it with him, and he wasn’t even there.”
    â€œHow’s work?” Wirf wanted to know that evening when Sully came into The Horse and slid onto the stool next to him. Something about the lawyer’s tone of voice suggested to Sully that this was not a casual question.
    â€œHard,” Sully told him. “Dirty. Unrewarding.” He nodded at the sweating bottle of beer in front of Wirf. Lately Wirf had been cutting back by drinking soda water until Sully joined him sometime after dinner. “I see you’re zigging already.”
    â€œI’ve been contemplating,” Wirf said. “Zigging helps me to contemplate. Would you like to know what I’ve been contemplating?”
    â€œNo,” Sully told him.
    â€œStupidity,” Wirf said.
    Sully studied him, trying to gauge Wirf’s level of intoxication, never an easy