Nobody's Fool

Elizabeth.
    â€œBig fat girl? Worked at the dime store?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œShe was arrested this morning.”
    â€œGood God,” Sully said. “What for?”
    â€œTheft. She had half the dime store out at their house.”
    Sully nodded. “She did have a habit of taking a little something home with her every day.”
    â€œTurns out they been watching her do it for about a month.”
    â€œI hope they have bigger jail cells than the one I was in. Bootsie wouldn’t be able to turn around in that one,” Sully said, then showed Jocko his ticket. “By the way. Turns out I was on this after all.”
    Buoyed by the security of his windfall, Sully decided now might be the best time to stop into the diner. It was after one o’clock, and the small lunch crowd would be gone.
    Indeed, when he arrived the diner was empty except for Cass, who was sponging down the lunch counter and, to Sully’s surprise, Roof, who’d been gone for a month. Ruth was not in evidence, and the combination of her absence and Roofs unexplained presence was disorienting. It was as if Sully’d stepped back in time, and he checked Hattie’s booth to make sure she wasn’t there, that he hadn’t dreamed the events of the last several days. That he’d dreamed the last month of his life seemed a distinct possibility, given the fact that the dream ended with his winning a triple. But Roof was there, all right, wordlessly scrubbing the grill two-handed with the charcoal brick, and Sully selected a stool nearby, in case he needed an ally.
    â€œYou’re back, Rufus,” he ventured.
    Roof did not turn around. Nor did he ever. When the diner was busy and the door opened, everyone up and down the lunch counter leaned forward or backward to see who it was, except Roof, who preferred to face his work than the cause of it. “Town this size need a colored man,” he observed.
    â€œWe realized that when you left,” Sully said, grinning at Cass, who’d watched him come in with knowing amusement and had as yet made no move in his direction. “Can I get a cup of coffee, or are you on strike?”
    â€œI should be on strike where you’re concerned,” she told him, grabbing the pot. “Anybody ever tell you that funerals aren’t the place for practical jokes?”
    Yesterday, halfway through the service, Otis had discovered the rubber alligator in his pocket and let out a bleat that had caused everyone in the church but Hattie to jump.
    â€œHe was supposed to find it when he got home,” Sully admitted.
    There was enough thick coffee in the bottom of the pot to give Sully about three quarters of a cup. “There,” Cass told him. “That’s all you get, and more than you deserve.”
    â€œDon’t make another pot,” Sully told her.
    â€œI won’t,” she assured him. “Starting next week, other people make the coffee.”
    â€œSpeaking of other people …”
    â€œShe’s out back, taking a delivery,” Cass explained. “We had a bet. She said you wouldn’t have the nerve to come in today. Nerve is my word, not hers.”
    â€œI wish people would quit wagering on my behavior,” Sully admitted, recalling that someone (who?) had won a pool when he dropped out of the college.
    â€œYou make things up with Rub yet?” Cass said.
    â€œI’m on my way over there as soon as I leave here,” Sully told her.
    â€œGood,” Cass said. “You two were a popular quinella.”
    They were grinning at each other now, two old friends. “You going to stay around awhile, or what?”
    She shook her head. “The movers come Monday. Wirf’s going to mail me a check when the sale goes through.”
    â€œMail it where?”
    â€œBoulder, Colorado.”
    â€œWhy, for Christ sake?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Sully shrugged. “All right, be that way.”
    â€œI will.”
    Her certainty made Sully nervous.
    â€œRoof came back, didn’t you, Rufus,” Sully observed. “You didn’t like North Carolina?”
    Finished, Roof tossed his brick aside. “Full of lazy kids,” he said with surprising vehemence. “My grandkids. They think you stupid if you work. Make damn near as much not working. Do a little scammin’ on the side. They say, what the matter with yo’ brain? Workin’ like a nigger. I told