Nobody's Fool

knew. Since Thanksgiving her hearing had failed, and you could tell the old woman no longer had the capacity to follow conversations whole. She’d catch a word or two and make do, which was why he took her through their morning “up” and “down” ritual. He suspected that she enjoyed the sound of these two words in her own mouth and that she appreciated being engaged in dialogue, even a monosyllabic one. The words exploded from the old woman’s mouth with terrific energy and satisfaction.
    â€œMake ’em pay,” she muttered as they made their way between the lunch counter and the table along the wall. Cass, who had not given them so much as a glance as they made their slow way, now looked up at the old woman homicidally.
    â€œWhat’d she say?”
    Her daughter’s voice registered with the old woman, who turned to face it. “Make ’em PAY!” she bellowed.
    Cass looked like it might be her intention to vault the lunch counter and throttle the old woman. “Ma!” she shouted back. “Listen to me now. I’m not going to put up with that all day. You hear me? Not again today. If you don’t behave, you’re going back to your room. You’ll be locked in, do you understand?”
    Hattie turned away, resumed her course. “Make ’em pay,” she muttered again.
    â€œShe’ll be all right,” Sully assured Cass, then said to Hattie, “Don’t you worry, old girl. We’ll make every one of ’em pay. We’ll make ’em pay twice. How’s that?”
    â€œPay,” Hattie agreed.
    â€œThere you go,” Sully said when he had the old woman situated in her booth. “Sit up straight, now. No slouching.”
    â€œNo slouching,” Hattie repeated. “Make ’em pay.”
    Sully grabbed an apron and joined Cass behind the counter. Cass was still glaring at her mother with what appeared to be genuine menace. Yesterday had not been good. For months the diner’s monstrous cash register, which was nearly as old as Hattie herself and had been part of the establishment since the beginning, had been acting temperamental, its cash drawer often refusing to open. Finally it had fused shut and Cass had ordered a new register from a restaurant supplier in Schuyler Springs. Yesterday, it had been installed during the lull between the breakfast and lunch crowds.
    The problem was that the old register had been full of noisy clangs and bangs, sounds that over the years had become part of old Hattie’s world, increasingly so as her cataracts got worse. The loud, discordant music of the register penetrated her deafness, evidence that commerce was taking place. The new register offered no such reassuring sounds. If you happened to be standing next to it, you might detect some insectlike whispers, but the designers of the machine had apparently considered quiet a virtue. In the absence of the usual clanging and banging, Hattie watched the shapes and shadows of her customers file into and out of the diner and apparently concluded that her daughter was giving away free food, an idea that had enraged her completely. As the lunch customers continued to file past Hattie’s booth near the door, she’d begun to screech, “Make ’em pay! Make ’em pay!” The old woman’s fury had been comic at first, but the look on her face was so ferocious and her rage so consuming that even large men gave her wide berth on their way out, as they might a small, rabid dog on a thin leash.
    Nor did her rage diminish. As the shadows of her customers continued to move past the old woman relentlessly, the door opening and closing just beyond her reach, Hattie had hurled first warnings, then obscenities. Her customers didn’t mind so much being called fart blossoms, but the sight of an old woman so possessed was unnerving, and those who’d escaped were glad to be safely out in the street. When it became clear to Hattie that neither warnings nor insults stemmed the tide of her customersout the front door, she picked up and chucked a full salt shaker, hitting Otis Wilson behind the right ear, spinning him around on his seat at the lunch counter.
    â€œChristmas,” Cass said to Sully now, her voice low and threatening. Sully didn’t usually notice such things, but he observed that Cass looked exhausted this morning, herself yet another old woman.
    â€œShe’s all right,” he said,