Nobody's Fool

returned.
    â€œBut I didn’t buy the beer,” Sully said. “And besides, you never do as I say anyhow. You won’t even go home when I tell you.”
    â€œHere, Sancho,” Peter said, tossing Rub the can of beer.
    Rub caught the can at the same instant he caught the nickname he hated, and in that instant the unfairness and terrible disappointment of lifewas in his throat and making it so full that he couldn’t imagine drinking the very beer he’d not wanted to be cheated out of just a few seconds before. Catching the can of beer cleanly with one hand, he turned and heaved it at Sully’s house, where it found a second story window, which exploded upon impact. Inside, Rasputin barked, then was still. “I quit,” Rub said, and those two words were all that he could have gotten out. If ole Toby Roebuck had been there and offered to sit on his face in return for a few words of elaboration, he’d have been unable to deliver. Not if she was naked and offering handfuls of hundred-dollar bills. The two words he’d gotten out—“I quit”—contained his soul, and having said them he turned his back on all that he’d quit and started for home, on foot.
    â€œHey,” Sully called after him, half ashamed and half astonished that his customary ragging had produced these unexpected results. “Don’t be that way.”
    Rub continued walking, a study in dejected defiance. At that moment, to Sully at least, he looked oddly like a little boy. The picture couldn’t have been more complete had he been dragging a baseball bat behind him.
    â€œRub,” Sully called. “Hey.”
    Peter crushed his empty beer can and tossed it into the El Camino’s front seat.
    â€œShit,” Sully said, finally glancing at his son and finding in Peter’s expression the disapproval he might have predicted. “Now you’re mad at me too, right?”
    â€œWhy do you have to be so mean to him?”
    In fact, Sully didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he
had
been mean. It had always been his impression that Rub enjoyed getting ragged. It had always been Sully’s position that people who hung around with him knew they were going to get ragged.
    â€œ
You
stand about two feet away from him and listen to him talk nonstop for about five hours, we’ll see if you feel mean or not,” Sully said, aware, even as he offered this justification, that it was invalid. For one thing, Peter did stand next to and work with Rub every morning while Sully was at Hattie’s. For another, Rub’s chatter had nothing to do with what had just taken place. In truth, Sully’d always found Rub’s chatter soothing, like a radio station playing the sort of music you didn’t feel obliged to listen to. “Shit,” he said again. “Give me one of those.”
    When Peter handed him one of the last two beers, Sully heaved it at the house also. Instead of finding the window he’d aimed at, Sully’s beer can hit the eave and dropped noiselessly to the frozen ground below, where it ruptured and sprayed foam into the air like a lawn sprinkler.
    Sully and Peter watched the can until it stopped. “See if I buy another six-pack of beer,” Peter said.
    They caught up to Rub at the Main Street intersection, in front of Miles Anderson’s house. Rub was aware that they were creeping along behind him—he could hear hardwood bouncing in the bed of the truck, the sound of the tires on the pavement mere inches behind him—but he refused to look back or even to hurry across the intersection. They could run over him if they wanted to. Finish him off. He wisht they would, in fact. What he feared worse than death beneath the pickup’s wheels was that Sully was going to get up real close and blow the horn.
    When Rub got to the curb, he was relieved, assuming he’d be safe on the sidewalk, but right behind him he heard the truck bump up over the curb, still inching along at the pace he himself was setting. He didn’t dare look around, afraid of what he’d find if he did and unwilling to surrender the last remnants of his dignity by exhibiting curiosity or alarm. Also, to turn and face the vehicle, it would be necessary for Rub to reveal, to both Sully and Peter, that he was crying, crying like the baby that Sully would surely accuse him of being. Either that or he’d ask Rub if he couldn’t take a joke,