Nobody's Fool

responded, though he sounded content to be warned. Sully could almost see Rub’s slow brain working, adjusting to this new reality that Sully had taught him—that Peter was Sully’s son, Rub his best friend. It’d take him a while to master the intricacies. Sully understood how Rub felt.
    Ralph was cocking his head and listening. “Uh-oh,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    Ralph got up and went to the window. “I was afraid of this.”
    â€œYou want me to talk to her?” Sully offered.
    Ralph gave careful thought to what he clearly considered to be a brave and generous offer, but he finally shook his head. “No, you fellows best go on. Will and I’ll be fine, won’t we, Wilier?”
    â€œOkay.” Sully got to his feet and peered out the kitchen window. “I think they’re all loaded anyhow.”
    In fact, Peter and Rub were tugging at the U-Haul, trying to get the hitch to slip back onto the ball joint on Sully’s rear bumper.
    At first Sully thought his ex-wife was going to simply walk past all of it as if nothing taking place in her driveway were real. She looked like she hadn’t the slightest intention of acknowledging her son. Her face was set in stony denial until she caught a glimpse of Rub in her peripheral vision, but she stopped dead then, turning and staring at him. She wore at that moment the expression of a woman who has just picked the cold-blooded murderer of her own parents out of a police lineup.
    â€œUh-oh,” Ralph said again. Sully had already started for the door, skipping on his good leg, the bad one refusing to bear so much weight so soon after he’d been sitting down.
    By the time he got outside, Peter had come around the U-Haul and taken ahold of his mother, who was straining against him like a dog on a leash. “Get him away!” she howled. “Get him away!”
    â€œMom,” Peter said, trying to get her attention by getting his face up close to hers so she couldn’t see past him. She’d broken one arm free and was pointing at Rub, as if there might be some confusion about whose presence she objected to.
    â€œGet that foul thing away!” she screamed, still pointing. Every time Peter grabbed ahold of her arm and forced it to her side, she yanked the other one free and pointed again. “Why is he still standing there?” she cried. “Get him away! Get him off my property!”
    Indeed, Rub was too stunned and confused by this turn of events to move. There could be no doubt who she was pointing at, but he couldn’t shake the notion that it must be somebody else. He couldn’t ever remember seeing the woman before. And to his way of thinking he’d been invited here. Perhaps not by this crazy woman herself, but by other people who apparently lived there. True, he’d been wrong before about other places where he’d assumed he’d been welcome, and there were times he’d been asked to leave. But this was different. This woman looked like she wanted to exterminate him. He hadn’t said a word to her, even, and here she wasfurious at him, pointing and screaming. A woman he’d never seen before.
    Vera never saw Sully until he too came between herself and Rub Squeers. “Vera,” he said calmly. “Quit this. Right now.”
    â€œYou’re responsible for this,” she sobbed. “
You
brought this to my home. Why must you”—here she searched for the right word—“
contaminate
everything? Why can’t you
leave us alone?
”
    â€œDad,” Peter pleaded, “go. I’ll take care of this.”
    â€œOkay,” Sully said, having witnessed enough. “You’re nuts, Vera,” he said by way of good-bye. “You always were, and now you
really
are.”
    Ralph was there now too, extending, ineffectually, his hand to his wife, who slapped it away. “Don’t touch me!” she wailed. “Don’t any of you
touch
me!”
    â€œI never done nothing to her,” Rub said when Sully yanked the El Camino away from the curb. Rub was staring back over his shoulder at the scene still unfolding in the driveway as Peter and Ralph tried to get Sully’s ex-wife to go inside. Several neighbors had come outside to watch. “I never even seen her before.”
    â€œForget it,” Sully told him. “None of that had anything to do with you.”
    Rub was glad to hear it, glad to have