Nobody's Fool

the apple hadn’t fallen so far from the tree. Except for rare moments, like the night he’d gone to jail and he and Peter and Wirf had spent the evening drinking at The Horse, it seemed to him that the apple had rolled all the way down the hill and into the next county, which made it hard for Sully to feel much more affection for Peter than he did for the ex-wife, who’d made him, single-handedly.
    From where Sully was seated on the radiator, he could hear Peter talking quietly to Will in one of the two bedrooms, their voices echoing in the hollowness, the words not quite audible. It was one of the things that irritated Sully most, he realized, that his son always spoke to Will in whispers, as if Sully were not to be trusted with the contents of even the most casual conversations, or as if he hadn’t earned the right to share them. Wirf was also listening to the low murmur of voices and seemed to understand some of what Sully was feeling. “Black thoughts,” he grinned. “You’re full of black thoughts today.”
    There didn’t seem to be any point in denying this, so Sully didn’t.
    â€œWell,” Peter said, when he and the boy rejoined them. “You going to take it?”
    â€œMy lawyer thinks I should,” Sully said.
    â€œWhich means he won’t,” Wirf said. “He’s never taken my advice yet.”
    â€œIf you don’t take it, I will,” Peter offered.
    Sully took this in, part of him pleased. “Good,” he said, wondering if this gesture would ease his need to give his son something. “Take it. It’d work better for you anyhow.”
    â€œOkay,” Peter agreed. “Thanks.”
    â€œI guess this means you’re going to stick around awhile,” Sully ventured.
    Peter nodded. “I picked up a couple night courses at Schuyler CC,” he said.
    â€œGood,” Sully said, impressed that his son could go out to the college and come back home with work. “It’s not such a bad place.”
    â€œThat’s what the chair of the department said. ‘Not as bad as you might imagine’ were his exact words.”
    â€œYou have to start somewhere.” Sully shrugged, hoping to cheer his son up.
    â€œI started at a university,” Peter said. “This is where I’m ending, not starting.”
    Sully decided to give up. “You got enough money for first and last months’ rent?” he wondered, trying to think how much he could contribute.
    Peter nodded, surprising him.
    â€œI could let you have a hundred or two if you need it,” Sully offered.
    â€œI don’t,” Peter said. “But thanks.”
    Sully nodded, winking at Wirf. “I’m glad somebody in my family’s got money.”
    â€œYou’ve got more than you know,” Peter said, taking out his wallet and handing Sully a parimutuel racing ticket. A 1-2-3 trifecta, to be exact. Sully checked the date. Two days previous.
    â€œYou were on this?”
    â€œNo,” Peter said. “
You
were. You don’t even remember, do you?”
    Suddenly he did. Sometime during that drunken night before he’d gone to jail, among all the other instructions he’d had for Peter—what to do first at the Miles Anderson house, how to cook eggs at Hattie’s, how to get Rub to help him lay the floor at the Roebuck camp, to look in on Miss Beryl when he thought about it, to feed Rasputin—somewhere among these myriad instructions he vaguely remembered instructing Peter to bet his triple, explaining that it would be just his luck for the son of a bitch to run while he was in jail, further evidence of the evil deity whose existence Sully had long suspected, the god who was probably listening to the whispered instructions of Sully’s own father, whose life on earth would have earned him a place in such a deity’s inner circle, a chosen advisor, confidant, secretary of war. Miraculously, through drunken inspiration, Sully had apparently thwarted divine intention.
    â€œI would have given it to you at the funeral,” Peter said, “but I didn’t know there’d been a winner until you told me, and you didn’t know which day. I forgot to bet it a couple days.”
    Before Sully could fully absorb the fact that the ticket in his hand was worth over three thousand dollars, he was assailed by a doubt. “Did I give you the money?”
    â€œWhat