Nobody's Fool

“You’re on the sidewalk!”
    Sully noticed the policeman for the first time and put his foot on the brake. “Roll your window down a second,” he told Peter. When Peter did as he was told, Sully leaned across him and called over to the policeman, “Fuck off!”
    Then he took his foot off the brake and the truck lurched forward again, its back wheel climbing the side of the elm and banging down again, its load of hardwood clattering fearfully.
    Being told to fuck off by Sully seemed to clarify Officer Raymer’s thinking, because he got back into the cruiser, did a screeching three-point turn, roared back in the direction he’d come and pulled into a driveway between Rub and the pickup. Sully saw this strategy too late to prevent it.
    Had the policeman stayed in the car, he’d have been fine. But he made the mistake of getting out again and grinning triumphantly at Sully, who, when he saw this, saw too that he was not through with his stupid streak. I’m about to fuck up, he thought clearly, and his next thought was, but I don’t have to. This was followed closely by a third thought, the last of this familiar sequence, which was, but I’m going to anyway. And, as always, this third thought was oddly liberating, though Sully knew from experience that the sensation, however pleasurable, would be short-lived. He was about to harm himself. There could be no doubt of this. But at such moments of liberation, the clear knowledge that he was about to do himself in coexisted with the exhilarating, if entirely false, sense that he was about to reshape, through the force of his own will, his reality. At this moment reality was a police cruiser in his way and a grinning cop with a grudge and the upper hand, but what Sully saw in his mind’s eye was the ability to remove these. He wasn’t sure he could remove the cruiser or the cop exactly, but he was certain he could remove the cop’s grin, and that was a beginning. It was more than a beginning, in fact, for the moment he’d seen that grin, thought became secondary to some deeper instinct. If Ruth had seen him, she’d have seen what she termed “the old Sully,” and in fact he half wished that Ruth were here to witness the old Sully’s triumphant return. He also thought of his father with uncharacteristic fondness, understanding that this was the precise moment his father always drank toward, the exquisite moment when both the obstacle and the means of its removalcame into clear focus. In his mind’s eye Sully could see the exact spot where the pickup’s massive bumper would encounter the side of the parked police cruiser, saw it jolt and shudder, saw the side of the car crumple and finally cave in as the pickup pushed it down the sidewalk until it slid off to one side on the terrace.
    But first, it was only fair to issue a warning. Sully put the truck into park, rolled down the window and poked his head out. His voice, as always at such times, was calm. A smarter cop would have heard in it a warning, but there was no smarter cop around. “That’s not a good place to park,” Sully said. “I’d move if I were you.”
    â€œYou get on out now, Sully,” Officer Raymer said. “Fun’s over. I’m going to have to put you under—”
    Sully, having rolled up the window again, didn’t hear the rest. “Wrong, asshole,” he said. “The fun’s just beginning.”
    â€œDad—” Peter said. He, at least, had heard the warning.
    In fact, Sully had nearly forgotten his son was present. “This is the point where people usually get out of the truck,” he told Peter.
    â€œDad—” Peter began.
    â€œOkay,” Sully said, shifting back into drive. “Suit yourself.”
    When the policeman heard the truck go from park to drive and saw it grunt forward, his triumphant grin disappeared, just as Sully had seen it disappear in his mind’s eye. Now it was his turn to grin. “Yeah, you prick,” he said under his breath, nodding at the policeman through the windshield. “You just figured this out, didn’t you.”
    â€œDad—” Peter said, pushing both legs straight out in front of him, as if onto an imaginary passenger side brake. “Jesus.”
    For he’d seen Officer Raymer take the revolver out of its holster and point it, two handed, in their direction. Sully saw it too,