Nobody's Fool

Sully to tell him what to remember, what to forget. “She looked like she wanted to kill me,” he said.
    â€œIt’s me she wants to kill,” Sully assured him, “not you.”
    Rub frowned. “I wisht she’d yell at you, then. I never done nothing to her. I never even seen her before.”
    â€œI know that, Rub, goddamn it,” Sully said. “I told you to forget about it. Don’t tell me you can’t forget things, because I know better.”
    â€œI don’t feel too good,” Rub said, leaning his head against the cool pane of glass.
    Instead of returning to the new apartment, Sully drove back to Rub’s, depositing him there at the curb. “Take a nap,” he said. “I’ll come back for you later.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œLater.” He saw Rub’s doubt, though. “I promise.”
    Then, against orders and his own better judgment, Sully drove back to Silver Street.
    He had no intention of actually making another appearance. Peter was right. Things had a better chance of quieting down without Sully in thepicture. His plan was just to drive by and make sure that Peter and Ralph had succeeded in getting her inside and off the street. Somehow he wasn’t sure they’d be able to. He’d always considered Vera to be mildly crazy, but this was a new madness he’d seen in her eyes, and it had frightened him. He fully expected to see police cars and a crowd when he turned the corner onto Silver.
    But there were no police cars, and all was quiet in front of his ex-wife’s house. The U-Haul still sat in the driveway, still unhitched, which meant Peter might need help getting the trailer’s hitch up onto the ball. He pulled over to the curb to consider this but did not get out. If Peter emerged in the next few minutes, Sully’d offer a hand. Otherwise, he’d head back to the flat, out of harm’s way.
    Farther up the street Sully noticed that a small crowd had gathered. Something was going on, and Sully was thankful that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him. At least he was thankful until he remembered that Robert Halsey’s house, where Vera’d grown up, had been on that block, right about where everybody was gathered. He was trying to muddle his way through what this might mean when he noticed that his grandson Will was standing shyly at the front door of Vera’s house, between the outer glass door and the inner one, which stood open behind him. When Sully waved, the boy pointed up the street.
    Sully had not been by Robert Halsey’s old property in—what?—thirty years? He almost didn’t recognize it. Once one of the most meticulous houses on the street, it was now the most neglected. Its weathered gray wood showed through to such an extent that it was impossible to tell what color it had last been painted, and its rotting porch sloped hazardously. Sully remembered its having had a side porch at one time, but somebody had apparently wrenched it away, and the back door now opened onto thin air. The place was in just slightly better condition than his own father’s house on Bowdon Street.
    When he got out of the El Camino, he was immediately recognized by a man who was a regular at Hattie’s. “What’s going on, Buster?” Sully said, trying to maintain rhetorical distance from what promised to be an ugly circumstance.
    â€œIt’s your wife, Sully,” Buster said, apparently unwilling to grant him distance, rhetorical or other.
    â€œCan’t be,” Sully said, moving past the man. “I’m not married.”
    â€œSully to the rescue!” somebody called as he climbed the slanting front porch steps with the aid of a wobbly railing. “Go, Sully,” calledsomebody else, and then a chant started up, “Go, go, go, go.” In the distance, a siren.
    Ralph stood just inside the doorway, looking plain scared. Vera stood in the center of the room, still wild-eyed, frantically tearing pages from a glossy magazine. Peter, his back to this scene, was on the telephone. “No,” he was saying. “No one’s been hurt.”
    â€œLet’s go home, Vera,” Ralph said, extending his hand to her as he’d done back in their driveway. Vera ignored him, continued tearing out pages, flinging them at a stupefied fat man seated on a ratty sofa. “She don’t have no right to tear up my
Playboys
” the man said