So again, why grieve the loss of such a man?
You tell me.
But Rub couldn’t, any more than he could explain why now, so many years later, he wasted so much time indulging silly, impossible fantasies. Because Sully was right. You couldn’t turn back the clock. Which meant he and Sully would never again be best friends. “Will we?” he said.
But again Sully was silent.
Maybe, Rub thought, there were some things in this world you just needed, against all reason. Maybe his need for Sully wasn’t so very different from his mother’s need for his father, a man who never tired of disparaging her. Because she had needed him, of that Rub was certain. Not long after his father’s death, she stopped going to church and, without warning or explanation, Calendar Jesus disappeared from the kitchen wall, as if with only the two of them in the house they had no further need to mark the passing of days and months. By the time Rub was in middle school, she’d begun to wander off, and people would bring her home dazed and disoriented. Worse, she began to regard Rub, whom she’d been willing to defend with that gleaming knife, as if she couldn’t quite place him. It was the same look Sully sometimes gave him lately. Would what happened to her also happen to Sully? Was his new forgetfulness, his inability to sit still, an omen of what waited ahead? Would Sully, like Rub’s mother, become so abstracted that he’d start wandering off? If so, who would bring him home? Who would remind him who his friends were if he forgot? Would Rub himself be among them?
Hey, Dummy.
“What?”
Quit that.
It was true, Rub had begun to blubber, which Sully always hated. He’d made the mistake of looking over at the funeral gathering at exactly the wrong moment. The man in the flowing robe had made a sweeping gesture toward the gleaming casket, and in that instant the sun had reflected off its surface to blinding effect, and suddenly Rub knew for a certainty what had perplexed him only a moment before. His mother had still been relatively young when she began to lose her mind. Sully was old. He wasn’t going to wander off. He was going to die. And the worst part was that when the day came it would fall to Rub to dig his best friend’s grave.
You hear me? Quit.
“I can’t help it,” Rub blubbered.
Listen to me.
“What?”
Are you listening?
Rub nodded.
I’m not going anywhere for a while yet, okay?
“Promise?”
How about if I stick around until you’re squared away? How would that suit you?
Rub nodded. That suited him fine. Because this much he was certain of, just as his mother had been — he was never going to be squared away.
Not ever.
Karma
A BANNER WAS STRUNG across Main Street for the Memorial Day weekend. THE NEW NORTH BATH: PARTNERING FOR TOMORROW. This was the brainstorm of Gus Moynihan, the town’s new mayor, who’d been swept into power the previous year on a tidal wave of born-again optimism, more than a decade after the demise of the Ultimate Escape Fun Park, an economic catastrophe that had ushered in a golden age of self-loathing and fiscal pessimism deeply rooted in two centuries’ worth of invidious comparison with Schuyler Springs, its better-looking twin and age-old rival. Schuyler had long possessed everything to which Bath aspired — a vibrant local economy, an educated citizenry, visionary leadership, throngs of seasonal downstate visitors, an NPR affiliate radio station.
Okay, sure, there’d been some shitty luck involved. Bath’s mineral springs had mysteriously dried up over a century ago while Schuyler’s continued to percolate up enthusiastically from its shale. Schuyler also had a famous thoroughbred racetrack, an acclaimed writers’ retreat and a center for the performing arts, a high-toned liberal arts college (Bath had only a beleaguered two-year community college), as well as a dozen fancy restaurants that served exotic foods like ramps, whatever they were. On the restaurant front, all Bath could boast was its rundown roadhouse tavern, the White Horse, Hattie’s Lunch, a donut shop and a new Applebee’s out by the freeway exit. What all this amounted to, everyone agreed, was a complete economic and cultural rout. For a while the fun park had gotten people’s hopes up, but when they were dashed the collective despair was so profound that the town had even stopped stringing the buoyantly optimistic Main Street banners that had become its dubious trademark, the last of which had read: THINGS ARE LOOKING 
IN BATH. The gloom had lasted until Gus Moynihan, a retired college professor who was renovating one of the grand old Victorians on Upper Main Street, wrote a guest newspaper editorial decrying the town’s mordant defeatism and criticizing the current Republican administration’s unspoken policies, which could be summed up, he claimed, in nine words: No Spending. None. Ever. On Anything. Under Any Circumstances. Why not string one last banner across the street, he suggested: LET’S EAT DIRT.
The editorial had struck a chord and made a mayoral candidate of its author. Even his opponents had to admit that Gus and his cronies, many of them “from away,” had run a clever campaign. Let’s BE Schuyler Springs was the gist of it. Instead of competing with their obnoxious neighbor, why not take advantage of its proximity? Half the people who came to the racetrack and performing arts center in the summer had no place to stay and ended up in hotels as far away as Schenectady. Why shouldn’t they stay in Bath? Okay, the Sans Souci Hotel and Resort with its nearly three hundred rooms had run into legal difficulties fueled by local resentment when it became known that the new owners would be using downstate contractors and labor for almost everything. The old hotel’s lavish renovations had cost far more and taken much longer than expected, causing it to miss much of the summer-tourist trade that first season, and the locals had steadfastly rebelled against the prices at its fancy restaurant.
But that didn’t mean its basic concept was flawed, or so the Moynihan crowd had argued. Instead of throwing up roadblocks to entrepreneurship, the town should have offered tax breaks and other incentives. Same deal with restaurants. During the short summer season, desperate, hungry travelers even mobbed the Horse, so why not entice a young chef or two up from New York City. Find out what the hell ramps were and serve them, if that’s what people really craved. It wasn’t like Schuyler Springs had cornered the world ramps market and refused to share. Overnight, the new byword was “partnering.” Whenever possible, Bath would partner not only with odious Schuyler Springs and moneyed downstaters but also with local entrepreneurs in projects of exceptional merit.
One of these locals was Carl Roebuck, who most people were surprised to learn was an entrepreneur, having known him all their lives as a con man and an asshole. Carl’s father, Kenny, they’d liked. He’d built Tip Top Construction from nothing by working fourteen-hour days. Like so many men of his generation, he hoped his son wouldn’t have to work quite so hard. On that score he had no legitimate worries. In college Carl learned to drink and seduce women and spend his father’s money and loathe all things Carhartt, especially the brand’s connotations of hard, honest labor. Returning home, he gave no indication that he meant to work at all if he could help it.