Nobody's Fool

down during his nap.
    â€œHow are you, Mr. Mayor?” Sully said. Vera’s father had run for mayor as a Democrat forty-some years ago and suffered the fate of allDemocrats seeking elected office in Bath, only worse, suffering the worst defeat in memory. In Bath, where mayor was a part-time office and mayoral candidates tended to be the owners of automobile dealerships, the real contest was always the Republican primary. Once that was settled, the actual election was pretty much a foregone conclusion, the Democratic candidates leaning decidedly in the direction of masochism or, in Robert Halsey’s case, fatalism. He had run on an educational platform and had been rejected so overwhelmingly that no one had dared bring up the subject of education in a local campaign ever since.
    â€œWhat’s the score here?” Sully asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Robert Halsey confessed.
    â€œThey told me you were in charge here,” Sully said.
    â€œI am,” the old man admitted. “Dallas was ahead when I fell asleep.”
    â€œThey still are,” Sully said. “Twenty to fourteen in case anybody asks you.”
    â€œWhere are they?” Vera’s father wondered, looking around the room.
    â€œI think they saw me coming and ran for it,” Sully said.
    Mr. Halsey smiled. “And left me behind.”
    â€œIt’s the law of the jungle, Mr. Mayor,” Sully said. “You feeling pretty well these days?”
    â€œNot too bad,” the old man wheezed. “It’s a struggle I won’t be sad to give up.”
    â€œNot much fun anymore?”
    â€œIt’s
no
fun anymore.”
    â€œWell,” Sully said. “Just don’t let your daughter hear you say that. You may think things can’t get any worse, but they can.”
    â€œHow’s my old friend Mrs. Peoples?” Robert Halsey wondered. Miss Beryl had been one of the few ardent supporters of his doomed mayoral campaign.
    â€œJust the same,” Sully assured him. “She hasn’t changed in twenty years.”
    â€œWhat makes people unhappy, do you suppose?” Robert Halsey wondered out loud, confusing Sully, who thought at first that they were still on the subject of his landlady, then realized that the old man was thinking about his daughter, who hadn’t changed in twenty years either.
    â€œI don’t know,” Sully confessed.
    â€œIt’s either their own fault or it’s ours,” Robert Halsey said, as if he were a long way from deciding. They watched the game for a while. “It’s the trouble with getting old and sick,” he said when Sully’d just aboutconcluded their conversation was over. “There isn’t much to do but think.”
    Since there didn’t seem to be much to say in response to this, Sully didn’t offer anything, and the next time he looked over at Robert Halsey, the old man was asleep again.
    In the bathroom the boys were fighting as they undressed to prepare for their baths. When Peter opened the door to check on them, he caught Wacker, hand raised ready to do something, and Will, the older and larger boy, flinching and pulling away. Wacker looked more inconvenienced than embarrassed to be caught in an act of aggression, Will only temporarily relieved. “Cut it out, Wacker,” Peter told the younger boy. “You aren’t funny.”
    Will studied his brother to see if these instructions would take. He didn’t look too hopeful.
    â€œGet undressed. Get in the bathtub. And don’t let it overflow or Grandma will skin you,” Peter said, another ineffectual warning, he realized. In fact, he thought he detected a sly smile cross Wacker’s lips.
    â€œWhere’s Mom?” Will said, looking worried. It was usually their mother who supervised baths.
    Peter was studying the bathtub with dismay. The water had been on forever and it was only half full. The water pressure was bad almost everywhere in Bath but ridiculous in Ralph and Vera’s house, where you couldn’t even take a shower. You had to start the tub ten minutes before you planned to get in, and the temperature was almost impossible to gauge. Peter felt the water in the tub and turned on more hot on the theory that it would cool down before the boys got in. Bath. What a ridiculous name, Charlotte always maintained, for a town where you couldn’t take a decent one.
    â€œWhere’s Mom?” Will repeated.