Nobody's Fool

that the two young fellows whojumped out of the ambulance were the same two who’d come to Vera’s house on Thanksgiving when they’d all thought he was dead.
    So he stayed inside for the moment in the fat man’s living room. The man still hadn’t moved from the sofa, still looked stupefied. Sully found a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket and handed it to the man. “For your magazines,” he said.
    The man studied the twenty unhappily. “She tore up the Vanna White one,” he said. “That’s a collector’s item.”
    â€œWho’s Vanna White?” Sully said.
    â€œWheel of Fortune?”
the man explained.
    Sully placed her now. It was the show that came on after
The People’s Court
at The Horse. “Sorry,” he said.
    â€œThey didn’t show that much,” the fat man conceded. “No snatch.”
    To Sully’s surprise, he felt some of Vera’s own righteous anger welling up. And he was glad she wasn’t there to hear such a word uttered in her father’s house. “I wouldn’t press charges if I were you,” he said.
    â€œOkay,” the man agreed. “We don’t want no trouble with the neighbors.”
    Sully went to the window and peeked outside. Vera was being helped into the ambulance like an invalid. The crowd was beginning to scatter. After a few minutes he went outside.
    Ralph was seated on the top step of the porch, holding on to the railing for support. When Sully sat down next to him, Ralph showed him his free hand, which was shaking uncontrollably. “I ain’t nothing but nerves anymore, Sully,” he said. “Look at that.”
    â€œWell,” Sully said, “it’s all over now.”
    â€œI don’t see why people can’t get along,” Ralph said sadly, returning to his familiar refrain. “That’s what I can’t understand.”
    Sully couldn’t help smiling.
    â€œHer father did keep this house nice,” Ralph said, examining the rotting wood of the porch floor. “I guess it breaks her heart to see it let go like this.”
    â€œI know,” Sully said, though his own experience had been different. Watching his own father’s house decay and fall apart had been deeply satisfying. He was willing to concede that neither Vera’s view nor his own was particularly healthy. “You done the right thing,” Ralph said, probably in reference to Sully’s having slapped her.
    Sully was happy to hear it, having come to the opposite conclusion himself. “You want to go out to the hospital,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”
    â€œPeter’s with her. I’d just be in the way,” Ralph said, studying his jittery hands. “I’m no good like this.”
    Sully fished in his pocket for the most recent vial of Jocko’s pills, taking out two of them. “Take one of these.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œNo clue,” Sully admitted. “Guaranteed to calm you down, though.”
    Ralph put it into his shirt pocket while Sully swallowed his dry.
    â€œHow do you do that?” Ralph said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Sully said. “I just do.”
    â€œI better get back to the house,” Ralph said, struggling to his feet with the help of the railing. “Will’s probably staring at that stopwatch you gave him and wondering if we all abandoned him.”
    In the commotion, Sully had forgotten about the boy. He thought about him alone in the house, trying not to panic. Maybe he’d already panicked. Sully felt a small measure of the boy’s fear in his own stomach and considered the implications of the fact that he’d forgotten his grandson again. It was one of the things that Vera and Ruth both held against him, his ability to lose sight of important things. “How can you do that?” they’d both asked him at various times during their relationship. “How can you just forget people?” It was a rhetorical question, he understood, and so he’d never answered. Had he been required to answer, he’d have given the same response he’d just given Ralph when he’d wondered how Sully could swallow a pill dry. He didn’t know how. He just could.
    Another fifteen minutes found Sully seated by himself at the end of the bar at The Horse, halfway through the first of what would almost certainly be many bottles of beer, waiting for