Nobody's Fool

you going to do tomorrow? Say it back to me.”
    â€œMeet you at Hattie’s at six-thirty.”
    He’d be there, too, Sully knew, one of the few things he could count on. “I’ll buy your breakfast,” he promised.
    â€œGood,” Rub said. “I don’t have any money.”
    â€œI’ve got a hammer in back,” Sully suggested. “We could go in and whack her on the noggin and bury her in the woods under all those blocks you broke. They’d probably never find her.”
    â€œI wisht we could,” Rub said, getting out of the El Camino again. “She’s fat and ugly and mean.”
    When Rub closed the door, Sully started to back out, only to hear Rub rap on the door as if he’d suddenly remembered something. He opened the door again. “And stingy,” he said.
    Sully, unwilling to get involved for long, checked out The Horse through the beer sign in the front window before entering. It looked like Tiny had only two customers. Wirf, predictably, and, less predictably, Jocko. Both men rotated on their stools when Sully entered and ducked into the men’s room.
    A moment later Jocko was standing at Sully’s side, unzipping before the second of the two wall urinals, making Sully glad that he’d decided, despite his exhaustion, to stand to pee.
    â€œSomebody told me this was your lucky day,” Jocko offered, awaiting his urine while Sully dripped toward unsatisfactory conclusion.
    Sully considered this, supposed it was true, after a fashion.
    â€œIt figures your luck would turn around just as the town’s went south,” Jocko offered.
    â€œThe town’s luck went south about two hundred years ago, pretty near,” Sully observed.
    â€œTrue,” Jocko admitted, still awaiting his water. “But this’ll finish it. A good strong wind’ll blow us all away now. I bet half of Main Street will be boarded up within a year.”
    Sully shrugged, zipped up, flushed. He usually felt at ease talking to Jocko, but this was a strange conversation. Jocko’s very presence in the men’s room felt not quite right in a way Sully couldn’t exactly put his finger on. They’d peed side by side into these same urinals on other occasions. Maybe it was that Jocko wasn’t peeing, he decided.
    Since he had company, Sully washed his hands, then dried them on a paper towel.
    â€œShould be plenty of work for you if you want it,” Jocko offered mysteriously.
    â€œHow’s that?”
    â€œI know a guy right now who’d pay you a couple grand to torch his store.”
    Sully let this offer sink in a moment, studying his longtime acquaintance, who seemed less embarrassed by what he’d just proposed than by the fact that he couldn’t seem to squeeze even a drop from his dick.
    â€œWhere’d this guy get the idea I’m in the arson business?” Sully finally said.
    â€œWell,” Jocko said, giving up the pretense and zipping himself back into his pants.
    â€œNo, really,” Sully insisted.
    Jocko shrugged, met Sully’s eyes for a moment before looking away. “He must have heard it somewhere.”
    â€œMust’ve,” Sully agreed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint him.”
    â€œHe’ll get over it,” Jocko said quietly. “He’ll be sorry he misjudged you, probably.”
    â€œLet’s find a new place to drink,” Sully said, sliding onto the stool next to Wirf, who was chatting pleasantly with Tiny at the end of the bar. There was a full bottle of beer in front of the stool where Jocko had been sitting. Wirf, Sully noticed, had switched from club soda to beer.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with this one?” Wirf said. Tiny had stiffened when Sully approached. In fact, he was glowering at Sully and not bothering to conceal the fact that personally he liked his bar better when Sully wasn’t in it.
    Sully, still unsettled by his conversation with Jocko, studied Tiny before responding. “Nothing,” he said finally. “This place is perfect. It’s so friendly, is what I like best.”
    â€œHow about one of these?” Wirf said, tinking his beer bottle, their regular brand, with his glass.
    â€œAre they good?”
    â€œI like them.”
    â€œWill they make this day end peacefully?”
    â€œLet’s find out.”
    â€œLet’s.”
    Tiny went to the other end of the bar where the