Nobody's Fool

made Clive Jr., a nervous-looking man, even more nervous looking. Clive couldn’t get into his car and away from Carl Roebuck fast enough.
    When Carl crossed the street and headed right for the OTB, Sully got ready to slip out the back, but Carl continued right on by, heading Sully couldn’t imagine where. A heavy gambler, Carl seldom bet at the OTB, preferring bookies who didn’t siphon the state’s percentage and who tookaction all day and most of the night over the phone. Actually, Carl preferred betting sporting events to betting horses. Sully watched Carl out of sight and was about to venture back into the street when he noticed the man at his elbow was Rub.
    â€œI was just looking for you,” Sully said.
    â€œYou wasn’t looking very hard,” Rub pointed out. “I been standing right next to you for five minutes.”
    â€œYou get your turkey?”
    Rub looked blank.
    â€œI thought maybe you were shopping for a turkey here at the OTB,” Sully said.
    Still blank.
    â€œLet’s go,” Sully said. “I got us some work.”
    â€œWho for?”
    â€œCarl Roebuck.”
    â€œWasn’t that Carl you was just hiding from?”
    Sully admitted this was true, without offering explanation.
    â€œYou said you was never going to work for him again.”
    â€œYou want to work or not?”
    â€œI hate that Carl.”
    â€œYou hate his money?”
    â€œNo,” Rub admitted. “Just Carl.”
    Out in the street it felt colder, and Sully noticed that the temperature on the bank clock had fallen several degrees since morning.
    â€œThat wife of his I like, though,” Rub said after they’d walked a block. “I wisht she’d take an interest in me. I’d let her be on top.”
    Where women were concerned, Rub knew no higher compliment.
    â€œHow come women like her are never interested in guys like us?” Rub asked seriously. His innocence regarding women was comprehensive. Rub honestly saw no reason why Toby Roebuck would not be interested in any man who’d let her be on top.
    â€œI only know why they don’t like you,” Sully said. “Why they don’t like me is a mystery.”
    â€œHow come they don’t like me?”
    â€œThey just don’t.”
    Rub accepted this. “Where’s your truck?”
    â€œOut at the job,” Sully told him. Partial explanations always satisfied Rub. It would not occur to him to wonder how Sully and his truck had come to be separated. “Where’s your car?”
    â€œBootsie’s got it,” Rub said. “She always parks out back of Woolworth’s.”
    They turned down the narrow alley that led to the Woohvorth’s lot, walking single file. The morning’s snow remained untrampled there in the dark, narrow alley, and Rub walked backward so he could watch the footprints he left.
    â€œI hope she won’t be too bent out of shape when she finds the car’s gone,” Sully said. He made a mental note to return Bootsie’s car once they got the truck unstuck. That way Rub wouldn’t take a beating.
    â€œShe’s been bent out of shape for ten years,” observed Rub, who was generally brave in his wife’s absence.
    â€œHow long you been married?”
    â€œTen years.”
    Sully nodded. “See any connection?”
    â€œShit,” Rub said, turning and surveying the parking lot. “It ain’t here.”
    â€œLet’s take this one then,” Sully suggested, since they happened to be standing right next to Rub’s and Bootsie’s old Pontiac. “You don’t even recognize your own car?”
    Rub unlocked the Pontiac and got in, leaning over to unlock the passenger side door for Sully. “At least I recognize my own best friend when he’s standing right next to me,” he said, pulling out of the lot.
    It only took them about ten minutes to drive back out to the site. Sully used the time to consider how Rub ever got the idea they were best friends.
    â€œYou know what I wisht?” Rub said.
    Since he and Sully left the OTB, Rub had already wished for a new car, a raise for himself and a raise for Bootsie, who worked as a cashier at Woolworth’s and hadn’t had a raise in over a year. He’d also wished some big ole company would build a big ole plant right in Bath and make him a foreman at about fifteen dollars an hour. He’d wished it was spring