Nobody's Fool

cabinets again, his head and neck suspended mere inches from the floor.
    â€œCareful,” Rub warned, and Sully at first thought he meant the dog before noticing that there was no floor between where they stood and thekitchen, just the lengthwise-running foundation beams and the darkness of the deep cellar below. To Sully’s surprise, he felt vaguely embarrassed to see the house he’d grown up in flayed back for inspection, like a terminally ill patient, its pipes and wires and wood exposed. Certainly the sight was not as satisfying as he’d hoped.
    Rub slid a sheet of plywood he’d apparently been using to stand on into position in front of them, stepped onto it, then danced nimbly onto a double floor beam and into the kitchen.
    â€œRight,” Sully said, stepping onto the plywood and recollecting as he did so that he’d just been encouraging his grandson to go on into a house with no floor. Also Otis’s observation that there was danger everywhere Sully was.
    Rub held out his hand. “I’ll grab you,” he said. “Get away,” Sully said. “You’ll just make me bang my knee, is all you’ll do.”
    Rub frowned, his feelings hurt yet again, but stepped back as he was told. Sully tested the double beam with his good leg, pushed off, and strode forward across the dark gap, landing on the kitchen’s linoleum. He felt his bad knee start to give under the full weight, but he caught the door frame for support and quickly shifted his weight.
    â€œYou should have just gone around,” Rub said.
    â€œIt’s just like you to give me good advice after I’ve killed myself,” Sully told him, wiping the cold sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
    When the Doberman again tried to stand, Sully noticed there was an envelope taped to the animal’s collar. Since the crowbar he’d used the day before to get into the house was still sitting on the counter, Sully picked it up and showed it to the dog. “If you bite me, I’m going to beat you to death right here in the kitchen,” he said.
    The dog seemed to understand this threat and quit growling and lay still while Sully removed the small envelope, which was addressed in Carl Roebuck’s graceful, almost feminine, hand to Don Sullivan, Jack-Off, All Trades. The note inside said simply: YOU BROKE HIM. HE’S YOURS .
    As if to confirm this, the dog strained forward as far as he could and licked Sully’s knuckles.
    When Peter and the boy arrived a minute later, having gone around back, Sully showed his son the note. Peter read it and chuckled unpleasantly. Will, who’d hesitated on the back porch, took a deep breath, engaged his stopwatch, eyed the dog warily and stepped inside.

    â€œDid you feel light-headed at the time, Mrs. Peoples?” the young doctor wanted to know. He was pumping air into the black blood pressure sleeve, which tightened relentlessly around her upper arm. The unpleasant sensation seemed a natural extension of recent events. Since that first morning before Thanksgiving when she’d looked up into the trees and concluded that this might be her year, she’d suffered the sensation of things closing in. Deciding not to travel had aggravated it, no doubt. Clive Jr. had been right about that. She should have gone as planned. On the other hand, he’d been wrong about Sully, who had proven himself this morning to be the trustworthy soul she’d always known him to be. It was not Sully who was lowering the boom, but God Himself, the sneaky booger, and this doctor was going to explain how, and so Miss Beryl prepared herself to accept reality.
    This was the second time in half an hour she’d had her blood pressure taken. The first time, the nurse had done it. During his examination of her, Miss Beryl had been studying the young doctor almost as closely as he’d been studying her, though without the benefit of intrusive, cold, probing instruments. The gene pool again, she told herself, though this was Schuyler Springs, not Bath, and she could easily be mistaken. The chances that she’d taught this particular young physician when he was in the eighth grade were only so-so, though he did look vaguely familiar, an older version of somebody—some Ur-eighth-grader, probably. One of the unfortunate side effects of teaching for forty years was that the task was so monumental, even in recollection, that it sometimes seemed you’d