Nobody's Fool

cold air of reality tunneled up from the street, Sully still couldn’t think what the surprise was, but he stood there buttoning his coat and pondering his visible breath in the hallway. Things had gone pretty much the way Sully had envisioned. Naturally, they’d argue over the money Carl refused to pay, and naturally he’d tell Carl where to get off and storm out of his office. Then later Carl would come looking for him at The Horse and offer some shitty job as a peace offering, which Sully would tell him he could stuff, and then Carl would offer him something else, probably just as shitty, but Sully would accept this offer because at least he’d gotten some satisfaction out of telling Carl off, not once but twice. By the end of the week he and Rub would be back on the Tip Top payroll.
    Except that Carl had thrown him a curve by offering him work right away, which meant that Sully was not only storming out on Carl but the work he’d really come for. On the other hand, Carl hadn’t crowed. That was what Sully had dreaded most, Carl smiling smugly and saying, I told you you’d be back. Sully knew from experience that “I told you so” were the four most satisfying words in the English language. He couldn’t remember ever passing up the opportunity to say them, and he had to admit it was pretty decent of Carl not to gloat. And he was definitely right about the stairs.
    Carl Roebuck was swiveling and grinning when Sully came back in.
    â€œI’ll take the money up front,” Sully said. “Since I’m working for a man who can’t be trusted.”
    â€œHalf now, half when I’ve inspected the job,” Carl insisted, their standard arrangement. “Since I’m employing Don Sullivan.”
    Sully took the money, counted it while Carl explained the job. As he listened, it occurred to Sully that he was relieved, glad to be back working for a man he wanted to kill half the time, glad he wasn’t driving every day to the community college where he didn’t belong, glad to be taking the judge’s advice about not blaming people for the way things were, glad not to be placing his trust in lawyers and courts. He’d been afraid that a job working for Carl might be one of the real things that had disappeared while he was taking philosophy.
    â€œI should let one of my regular guys do this,” Carl was saying. “But I know you need the money, and besides, we’re friends, right?”
    â€œYou’re lucky I need the money, friend,” Sully said.
    â€œYou always need the money,” Carl pointed out. “Which is why I always have you by the balls.”
    That smile again. How could you hate the man?
    â€œDoes this mean you’re through with higher education?” Carl wondered as Sully prepared to leave.
    Sully said he supposed it did.
    â€œI wonder who won the pool,” Carl said absently.
    â€œRuby,” Sully said, without looking at Carl’s secretary on his way through the outer office.
    â€œWhat?” the girl wanted to know in her best bored-to-death voice.
    â€œDon’t take your love to town.”
    One thing was for sure: compared to some of the other guys Carl Roebuck hired, Sully himself was a genius. Apparently one of Carl’s regulars had loaded up about ten tons of concrete basement blocks on the company flatbed and dropped them off at the wrong site. Sully found them in a sloppy pyramid next to a small, two-bedroom ranch home that was already half built. The unexpected snow, together with the fact that tomorrow was a holiday, had apparently sent the guys working on the house back home. In fact, they’d probably never left their homes this morning. Carl didn’t hire union men when he could help it, but even the guys who worked for Tip Top Construction didn’t work in the snow.
    Most of the overnight snow had already melted, and the uneven ground was a quagmire of patchy brown slush. The bank sign had said forty-two degrees when Sully drove by. It felt colder now.
    There was only one sensible way to approach this, and that was to go fetch Rub, who was surefooted and didn’t mind working in slop of any description. Something was terribly wrong with Rub’s nose, Sully was certain. Rub could stand hip deep in the overflow of a ruptured septic tank as pleasantly as if he were in the middle of a field of daisies. This made him invaluable to Sully who, while not overly