Nobody's Fool

orders, leaving Rub to work all by himself and take messages for everybody in town who wanted to leave one. But now when Sully and the boy finally did come back, they had to just sit there by the curb while he was inside doing his work and everybody else’s, full of longing and the morning’s unspoken wishes and messages and information. To Rub’s way of thinking, there were suddenly too many people in the world, and two of the extra unnecessary ones were Sully’s son and his grandson who, together, had sort of made Rub himself disappear. So he went out to where they sat at the curb and reasserted his existence. He went around to the driver’s side and knocked on the window.
    Inside, Sully and the boy kept talking. Actually, Sully was talking, and Rub thought he had an idea what he was saying. He was telling the little boy to pretend he didn’t see Rub, who was standing right there in plain sight. “Don’t look at him,” Sully was saying, the words barely audible outside the glass. The little boy tried not to, but he kept darting furtive glances at Rub, who understood that this was one of Sully’s games. Oneof the ones designed to make himself feel like shit. Which was exactly how he did feel already. So he rapped harder on the window.
    This time Sully noticed him, and he mouthed the words, “Hi, Rub,” as if he and the boy were a long way off, too far for a human voice to carry. Then he whispered something to the boy and they waved at him together. For Rub there were a great many mysteries, but none was more perplexing than the way his best friend would team up with any human being on earth against himself. It was almost enough to make Rub doubt that they
were
best friends.
    When Sully and the kid were through waving at him, Rub made a circular motion in the air to signify that Sully should roll down the window. That way, at least, Sully couldn’t pretend not to hear. Not that Rub expected this ploy to work, and indeed he was not surprised when Sully feigned confusion and made the same motion back at him. Slowly, silently, Rub mouthed the words “ ROLL DOWN THE WINDOW. ”
    Sully rolled it down. “What?” he said.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Rub wanted to know.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYou. The both of you,” Rub explained. “You’re just sitting there.”
    Sully shrugged. “What do you want, Rub?”
    What Rub wanted was in. In the car. In the conversation. Back in his friend’s company. In. “Can I get in?” he said. “It’s cold out here.”
    â€œIn here too,” Sully told him. “The heater doesn’t work. We’ll only be another minute. Then we’ll get out and all be cold together.” And then he rolled up the window, leaving Rub to stare at his own reflection. Even his reflection appeared to be inside the car, where it was warm, or warmer.
    Rub was contemplating all of this, including the unfairness of his own reflection being inside the car while he was kept out, when the window rolled back down again a minute later. “What’re you doing?” Sully wanted to know.
    â€œWaiting,” Rub explained.
    â€œWell, do it over there,” Sully told him. “Go sit on the porch.”
    â€œI ain’t hurting anything here,” said Rub, who knew his rights. This was a public street. “Couldn’t I just tell you one thing?”
    â€œIn a minute you can tell me everything. Go over and sit down on the porch.”
    Sully said all of this as he was rolling the window up, and it closed completely just as the sentence ended. Leaving Rub alone once again with just his own reflection for company. The young man who stared back atRub looked like somebody full of need but fresh out of options. Reluctantly, Rub did what he was told.
    Inside the car, Sully and Will watched a sullen Rub retreat up the walkway to the front porch steps, where he stubbornly took a cold seat. What they’d been talking about was fear. Will was still afraid to enter his grandfather’s house. Sully had explained to him that when he was Will’s age, he’d been afraid of things too. Will appeared to doubt this.
    He eyed the ramshackle house fearfully. It looked even scarier than it had the day before, because now there was a mountain of boards stacked on the sloping front porch, which, to Will’s way of thinking, meant that there was even less holding up the house than