What would a child be doing thirty feet off the ground in a tree outside her bedroom window? Sully objected. Rub had wondered the same thing but knew better than to ask. It probably wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to prune the offending limb, but these days Rub didn’t see as much of Sully as he used to, and he hoped to parlay it into the entire afternoon, assuming Sully remembered in the first place.
“You know w-what else I wisht?” Rub said.
What?
“I wisht things would go back to like they were.” This was a pipe dream, of course. Rub knew it was pointless to wish any such thing, but he couldn’t help himself.
That’s not how it works, Dummy. Things don’t go backwards just because you want them to. If they did, we’d all be getting younger.
Which was true, naturally. Like it or not, Sully’s luck had changed. He didn’t have to work anymore, and it had been work, or economic necessity, more than friendship that had made them inseparable for so long. Rub could wish and want and even desperately need until the cows came home, but it didn’t matter. Anyway, don’t be an idiot. You got a good job right here. Why would you want to go back to working for Carl Roebuck?
He didn’t, not really. Carl had always saved the coldest, wettest, foulest, most dangerous jobs for him and Sully. He’d paid them under the table, too, so they couldn’t really complain. Bad as the work was, though, Rub had loved every minute of it. Standing for long hours knee deep in sewage, so cold he couldn’t feel his fingers, he’d been happy because Sully was right there with him, showing him how things were supposed to go, how to endure and even, at times, prevail. There’d been comfort in the fact that whatever happened to Rub was also happening to Sully. It was like they were on a journey, and his friend knew the best route. If Rub himself was cold and hungry and discouraged and lost, so what? Sully was there to tell him what to do, to listen to his many misgivings, his dreams about how much better everything would be if life was different and cheeseburgers were free.
You liked it better back when my luck was rotten, is that what you’re saying? When I had to put in twelve-hour days on a bum knee that swelled up like a grapefruit? That suited you better?
The other thing Rub would’ve changed about Sully was his knack for making Rub feel guilty about stuff. Like it was his fault Sully’d fallen off that ladder and busted his knee. Like Rub was to blame that his trifecta never won once for thirty years straight.
“No, I just wisht…” But he allowed the thought to trail off. Belatedly and with great reluctance, Rub was coming to understand that life could trick you into wishing for the very worst thing and then grant that wish. Sully was a prime example. Back when they were working for Carl Roebuck, Sully was forever wishing his rotten luck would change, and Rub, who never doubted his friend’s wisdom, had just gone along and wished for it, too, apparently adding some needed torque. When Sully finally won that trifecta, Rub, slow to sense the hitch, simply thought, Good. They wouldn’t have to work for Carl anymore. And had it stopped there, things would’ve been fine.
Things don’t stop, though, do they? They keep going. Be careful what you wish for.
“You started it,” Rub replied to this unfair injunction. “I only wished what you did.”
And how’d that work out?
Not well, he had to admit. Incredibly, that first trifecta was just the beginning. What Sully had always accused Carl of — being lucky enough to shit in a swinging bucket — was suddenly true of himself, as well. It took several additional strokes of good fortune, but eventually an awful, unthinkable truth came into focus: Sully not only didn’t have to work for Carl Roebuck anymore, he didn’t have to work at all.
Nor was this the only thing Rub hadn’t seen coming. That Sully could prosper without Rub prospering alongside him was another possibility he’d never really considered. Why would he? Every Friday afternoon for a good decade, he and Sully hunted Carl down — he had a knack for disappearing when he owed you money — to collect their pay. And right there, on the spot, Sully gave Rub his cut. Good weeks, they both did well; bad ones, poorly. It was like they were in a potato-sack race at a picnic, awkward and clumsy but inseparable, their financial destinies interlocked. When Sully’s landlady died and left him her house, Rub half expected to come in for a share, but that didn’t happen. And later, when the city paid Sully all that money for his old man’s property on Bowdon Street, Sully hadn’t offered him part of that windfall, either. Apparently they weren’t for-richer-, for-poorer-type partners after all.
Hey, Dummy. Who got you the job here at Hilldale?
Rub shrugged, chastened. “You did,” he admitted reluctantly.
All right, then. How about a little gratitude?
Rub sighed, his eyes filling with tears. He knew he should be more grateful. The cemetery job wasn’t nearly as nasty and backbreaking as working for Carl had been, and it was steady, too. But—
You just don’t like paying your taxes.
Coming from Sully (sort of), who had worked off the books his entire life, this criticism was particularly hard to swallow. Yet there was some truth in his charge. Rub did resent the strictures of legitimate employment. Working for the city meant Rub not only had to pay federal and state taxes but also local ones, as well as Social Security and who knew what else. Worse, the government, unaware of his existence for so long, now wanted to know where he’d been all those years, and what was he supposed to tell them? It wasn’t bad enough he had to fork over money that otherwise might have been devoted to cheeseburgers, but the amount of the theft was recorded right there on the stub of his paycheck. Why couldn’t they just let him believe he was taking home the money he’d earned? Why did they have to remind him of exactly how much they’d taken without his permission each and every week? Still, Rub felt compelled to object to Sully’s characterization. “It’s not the taxes,” he said.
What then?
“I miss—”
What?
Rub swallowed hard.
What, Dummy?
“Y-y-you,” Rub managed to choke out, the very thing he could never say when Sully was actually around.
What do you mean, me?
Unable to explain, Rub looked away. Down the hill, the man in the white robe was still talking. For how long now? Rub glanced at his watch, feeling his spirits plummet even further. Back when he and Sully were partners, he’d never needed to wear a watch. Sully was always right there to tell him what time it was and when they could knock off. On this new job, quitting time was five every afternoon except Friday, and he was supposed to know when that was so he could lock his tools in the shed. He’d been entrusted with several keys he didn’t want, but there was no Sully to hand them to.