“You ain’t really going to quit your teaching, are you?” Ralph said. He’d been almost as surprised as Vera when Peter announced that maybe he’d just make a clean break—from Charlotte, a woman who hadn’t cared for him much until she’d discovered there was someone else; from Deirdre, the woman from the poetry reading; from college teaching, which had turned out to be the worst kind of servitude, the most unrewarding work he’d ever done; from West Virginia, which was, well, West Virginia. Besides, Peter said, Sully could use his help if he decided to stick around, and maybe they could use some help too, meaning Vera and Ralph.
“I don’t know, Pop,” Peter said now. “I’ve only got the one more semester anyway. This way I have the pleasure of quitting.”
“I guess I never did understand that whole tenure deal,” Ralph said. Peter had explained, more than once, that he’d been turned down the previous spring and given one academic year to find another position, but that didn’t make any sense to Ralph. How could you fire a man who’d done his job for five years? According to Peter, his boss (his department chairman, Peter had called him) admitted that Peter’d gotten a raw deal, that he’d been a good teacher and had high ratings or whatever you got when students liked you. But the college was going to let him go anyhow, because there’d been some way or other he hadn’t measured up and they could use that way to hire some new young professor cheaper than they could keep Peter. Vera had been furious, but Peter had told her not to be. The truth was, he said, that he wasn’t that great a teacher and he was no great scholar either, and they’d expected him to be both. That Peter would say such a thing had infuriated Vera—a woman who never granted a concession—almost as much as the tenure denial itself. And Peter’s announcement last night that he’d decided not to go back for his final semester had been proof positive that he was giving up his life, conceding defeat. She couldn’t believe he was any son of hers, she said. She couldn’t believe he was Robert Halsey’s grandson.
Peter had only smiled ruefully, said he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t measured up, in her eyes, to Robert Halsey, since no one ever had. And he told her the rest of what she’d said was off base too. He assured her he hadn’t any bridges to burn; they’d already been burned for him. He wasn’t turning away from teaching; he’d been terminated. He wasn’t even ending his marriage; Charlotte had done that. As soon as she’d returned to Morgantown, she’d withdrawn what little money they had from their savings account, rented a small U-Haul truck and returned with Wacker and little Andy to Ohio and her parents. The only thing waiting for him in West Virginia now was his landlord and the first-of-the-month bills he didn’t have the money to pay.
“I’m not giving up much by quitting now,” Peter assured his stepfather. “Once you’re denied tenure, you’re a leper. About the best I could do is teach in some Baptist college in Oklahoma. A community college in South Carolina, maybe. I’d rather not.”
Ralph shuddered at the mention of South Carolina. “At least that’d be something, wouldn’t it?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘something,’ ” Peter said.
Ralph nodded. “Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to. Your mother can’t quite understand, is all. You know how proud she is. First doctorate in the family. All your honors. Seems to her they should count for something.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint her,” Peter said. “I’m a little disappointed myself.”
“I would be too,” Ralph sighed. “You worked awful hard. I couldn’t sit and stare at books half as long as you did. Your mother’s right, though. There isn’t much opportunity around here.”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe I’ll teach a night class or two at Schuyler CC.”
Ralph nodded, trying not to encourage Peter too much. Truth be told, he liked the idea of having his stepson around. “You’d be keeping your hand in, anyhow,” he offered.
Peter was grinning now. “Dad says he knows a couple people there. That’d be a kick, wouldn’t it? If I got a job teaching college on Don Sullivan’s recommendation?”
Ralph didn’t see why that was so strange. “People like Sully,” he said. “I do myself. He’s …” Ralph tried to think what Sully was.
“Right,” Peter said. “He sure is.”
Ralph, feeling his throat constrict again with only love, looked around the garage for some object to distract him from his feelings. There in the corner of the garage was the snowblower Sully’d given him. “You know, it hasn’t snowed once since your dad give us that,” he remarked.
“That’s another thing Mom’s right about,” Peter acknowledged. “She always said if you needed something from Dad, it’d be the thing he didn’t have. And what he did have would be of no use.”
Together, Ralph and Peter regarded the snowblower, as if it contained significance worthy of such extended consideration. Outside, a car driving by backfired loudly, causing Will, stricken with fright, to squeal. “That ain’t nothin,’ ” Ralph told the boy. “There’s nothin’ to be scared of.”
“I know,” Will lied.
It was nearly ten-thirty when Sully tossed his grease-stained apron into the linen barrel, nearly half an hour later than he was supposed to finish up at Hattie’s, which had stayed busy longer than usual. The day before had been dramatic, and people wanted to see if old Hattie would still be on the warpath, hurling obscenities and salt shakers.
“What do you say, sport?” Sully called over to Will, who was bussing the last of the booths. “You ready to go see if we can get lucky?” Before joining Rub and Peter, they’d make a quick stop at the OTB.
“Okay,” Will agreed, turning away from the task that had occupied him and causing Sully to smile. To keep the boy from getting bored, Sully had taught him how to bus the tables, how to clear the dirty dishes and glasses into plastic tubs, keeping things separate and orderly. In just two days Will had gotten pretty good at it, working proudly and, for the most part, efficiently, despite his natural tendency to become transfixed, hypnotized really, by an interesting egg yolk pattern on a dirty dish or a conversation going on at the next table. Sully’d had to teach him not to stare and eavesdrop.
Peter had been the same way as a kid, Sully remembered. Easily abstracted, prone to daydreaming. Of course, Sully himself had been a younger man then, and he’d found his son’s introspection, his apparent inability to keep any task in focus, more than a little irritating. Just how impatient he’d been with his son he could not now remember. Pretty impatient, probably, though not violently so, like Big Jim Sullivan. And, of course, Sully’d not been around his son enough to do much damage, regardless. And Ralph’s long suit, Sully knew for a fact, was patience. He’d stayed married to Vera, after all. Than which there was no truer litmus test. And it was thanks to their combined efforts that Peter had turned out well, even if at the moment his life happened to be pretty messed up. Maybe, given Vera’s love (never mind its more bizarre manifestations) and Ralph’s steadying influence, they could even keep their grandson from having a nervous breakdown before he reached puberty. Who knew? Maybe even Sully himself might help prevent that, if he could just keep his mind about him and not scare the boy like he’d done yesterday.
“Why don’t you go ahead and take that tub over to the dishwasher?” he suggested to the boy. “Then you’d be done.”
“Okay,” Will said, picking up the big tub full of dirty dishes and glassware, his eyes wide with effort. Cass, down the counter, winced, but Sully shook his head at her—the boy would be all right. Sully grabbed the rubber trash barrel and wheeled it along behind the boy. When Will managed to hoist the tub up onto the drainboard, Cass gave him two one-dollar bills from the silent new cash register. “You’re getting to be a pretty good helper,” she said. “What am I going to do when you go back to West Virginia?”
Will blushed with pride and pleasure. “We’re staying here,” he told her. That, at least, was his understanding from the last adult conversation he’d half overheard.
Cass raised he
r eyebrows questioningly at Sully.
“News to me,” Sully admitted. “People never talk to me, of course.”
“People talk to you all the time,” Cass grinned. “You just never pay attention.”
“That so?”
“Where are you going to be the day after Christmas?”
This had the feel of a trick question, so instead of announcing that he had no idea, he thought about it. Luckily, that did some good. “Helping you,” he remembered.
“You had to think about it, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” Sully said. “I thought I was allowed to.”
Cass grew serious. “Come here,” she said, and when he took a suspicious step toward her, Cass planted a grateful kiss on his forehead. “Thanks,” she said, and they both glanced over at Hattie’s booth, though from where they were standing, only a puff of the old woman’s gray hair was visible from where she now sat behind the ancient cash register.
“God,” Cass said, glancing back at Sully. “You’re blushing. How old are you?”
“Who’s blushing?”
“You are. Look at your grandfather,” Cass encouraged Will. “Tell him he’s blushing.”
“You are, Grandpa.”
Sully was blushing, and he knew it. “Let’s you and me trade places tomorrow,” he suggested to Cass. “You stand in front of that hot grill for about four hours, and we’ll see if you blush.”
“Go on and bet your triple,” Cass told him, then, to the boy, “Don’t let Grandpa make a gambler out of you.”
“Let’s go,” Sully said, prodding his grandson into motion. “We’ve got just enough time. If we don’t get to the house by eleven, Uncle Rub’ll have kittens.”
Will made a face.
“Don’t worry,” Sully told him. “You’re not really related to Rub.”
They stopped at Hattie’s booth on their way out. “How you doing, old woman?” Sully said loudly. “You feeling better, now you got your register?”
Clearly, the old woman’s spirits were restored. “You sound like that darn Sully,” she grinned.
“That’s who I am,” Sully told her. “I’m the one who gave you the register. Can’t you remember anything?” Actually, it had been his idea. It had required Peter and Rub to lug it over to her booth.
Hattie depressed one of the cash register’s heavy bronze keys, which clanged reassuringly, forcing a small card that read .80 to jump up into the rectangular window. There were already several others of varying amounts nesting there.
“I don’t know if I can afford all that,” Sully told her. “Besides. I work here. You going to charge me to work here?”
Hattie cackled joyfully, depressed two more keys, forced two more cards to jump into the window. “Pay!” she bellowed.
“Pay,” Sully repeated, glancing over his shoulder at Cass, whose expression as she watched all of this was the saddest imaginable. “Okay, here.”
Sully handed the old woman a dollar, which she snatched.
“You see money fine, don’t you?” he said. “How come you don’t see anything else?”
The old woman was fumbling with the register, trying to get the cash drawer to open.
“That doesn’t open anymore, remember?” Sully said. “What are we doing with all the money?”
She handed the bill back to him. “Right,” Sully said. “We give the money to Cass. You ring it up, she takes the money.”
This arrangement apparently satisfied the old woman, who’d been ringing wild amounts on the register all morning. The only problem was that unless she hit the total key by accident, the numbered cards she rang stacked up in the window, forming a thick clump. Sully punched the total key, which resulted in an even louder and more satisfying clanging. “Money!” she whispered.
“I know it,” Sully said. “We’re all getting rich now. I’ll see you in the morning, old girl. Which way will we go?”
“Up!”
“Okay, up,” he sighed. “I’m tired of arguing with you.”
Officer Raymer was standing guard outside the OTB when Sully and Will pulled up in the £1 Camino, ignored a perfectly legal parking space and backed into the striped triangle clearly marked NO PARKING. The policeman sighed visibly. In the past couple weeks he’d written Sully half a dozen parking tickets even though the El Camino wasn’t his car, even though the policeman knew it belonged to Carl Roebuck, who was in tight with the chief of police and could fix any tickets that Officer Raymer wrote. By ignoring the legal parking space, Sully was taunting him. And it was only the beginning.
“Let’s have some fun,” Sully said to Will as they got out of the El Camino. Then, louder, “Say hi to that big ugly fellow in the uniform.” Will smiled weakly, said hello.
The policeman did not look at the boy or acknowledge that he’d been spoken to. Instead he glared at Sully murderously. “Don’t start in,” he warned.
“Hey,” Sully said, holding up his hands, as if in surrender. “I just want you to clarify something for me. There’s one little thing that confuses me.”
“Don’t start.”
“No, really. I just want to understand. Correct me if I get the details wrong, okay, because I wasn’t there.”
Officer Raymer turned away, looked up the street in the other direction. Two men on their way into the OTB stopped to listen.
“So,” Sully went on. “You’re asked to go see about a disturbance. You drive up, and what do you see? There’s a man standing in the middle of the driveway with a deer rifle and he’s shooting out windows on a residential street. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but … that’d be against the law, right?”
Officer Raymer turned back to study Sully, noticed that the two passersby had stopped to listen, said nothing.
“A good-looking girl comes up to the guy with the rifle, so he clubs her with the gun, breaks her jaw in about fifteen places, then kicks her once or twice for good measure. That’d be against the law, wouldn’t it?”
“He done that before I got there,” the policeman said. “I never saw him hit her.”
Some more men on the way into the OTB also stopped now.
“Okay,” Sully said agreeably. “That’s what I mean. I just want to understand how it happened. So you pull up, and the guy with the gun is standing over the girl with the broken jaw who’s lying on the ground. And he’s pointing the rifle at her and saying what he ought to do is just blow her brains out. That’d be against the law, wouldn’t it?”
“Definitely,” said one of the two men who’d stopped first.
The policeman glared at the man who’d spoken for a moment before turning his attention back to Sully. “I’m going to give you about ten seconds to get the fuck away from me, Sully.”
Sully consulted his watch. “So what do you do? You let the guy with the rifle take a little girl, get back in his truck and drive away.”
“It was a domestic dispute. A judgment call. They picked him up ten minutes later, for Christ sake.”
“A judgment call,” Sully repeated.
Officer Raymer knew his mistake now. It was allowing himself to be drawn into this discussion. “You should try being a cop for about one day, Sully,” he said weakly.
Sully was grinning, and so, slyly, were the men who’d gathered. “A judgment call,” he repeated as he turned to head into the OTB. “You take care now, Officer.”
“I hope you don’t ever catch fire and have me standing nearby with a hose,” the policeman said to Sully’s retreating form.
“That’s where you’d be, all right,” Sully said over his shoulder. “Off at a safe distance, holding your hose.”
Inside the OTB were clusters of the windbreaker men, though most of these were now wearing their post-Thanksgiving heavy outerwear, and Sully spotted Otis right away due to the white bandage behind his ear.
“Oh, God,” Otis said when he became aware of Sully standing in the doorway and grinning at him maliciously. Instead of having to deal with Sully once, midmorning, at
the OTB, now, since Sully’d started working mornings at Hattie’s, he got a double dose. Sully’d warned him against breakfasting at the donut shop, too, threatening to go down there and bring him back by force if he had to. “Have mercy and stay away from me, will you? Can’t you see I’m injured?”
Sully inspected the swelling behind Otis’s ear. “I worry about you, Otis,” Sully told him.
“Well, don’t,” Otis insisted. “Just stay away from me and I’ll be fine.”
“I worry about a man who comes out second best to a ninety-year-old blind woman and then insists on going down into alligator country without a guide.”
“You couldn’t guide me to Albany.”
Sully threw up his hands. “You want to try it on your own, be my guest. When they send your remains back home, what should we do with them?”
“He won’t go away,” Otis wept.
“Okay, I’ll have to use my own discretion,” Sully said. “There probably won’t be much to send back. All they usually find is a bloodstained shoe, maybe part of the foot still in it. Let me look at your shoes so I’ll be able to make the identification.”
“Dear God, take him.” Otis looked up at the roof of the OTB. “Open the sky and just take him.”
Sully spied Jocko leaning against the wall by the window. “If it’s you, I’ll just put it in a shoebox and put it on my mantel.”
“This man gives me nightmares every night.”
“I’m just trying to make you watchful, Otis. There’s danger everywhere.”
“There’s danger everywhere you are, is what you mean,” Otis said.
“Let’s go see this guy over here,” Sully said to Will. “Maybe he’ll be more appreciative.”
Will was squinting at yesterday’s results posted on the wall, but he followed along.