Sully knew all this was worth getting angry about, and sometimes he did get mad when he thought about it, but there in court he merely felt intimidated, and he was glad to be represented by a lawyer, even one as bad as Wirf, who looked almost as lost and out of place in court as Sully himself. Probably, it occurred to Sully, this was why you paid an attorney to represent you. If it weren’t for Wirf, the judge would talk down to you personally and not to Wirf, whose single professional skill seemed to be his ability to eat shit and not mind. Wirf didn’t even dress like the lawyers for the insurance company, nor did he appear to notice the way the other lawyers regarded him. Sully felt bad for him, because he and Wirf went way back, but he knew it was better for Wirf to eat shit than for Sully to eat it, because Sully would eat only so much before he’d decide it was somebody else’s turn, whereas Wirf seemed to understand that it was always his turn. Since they were friends, Wirf was representing Sully on contingency. If they ended up winning any of the half-dozen concurrent litigations Wirf had filed on Sully’s behalf, they would share the booty. Lately, though, it had become obvious to Sully that they weren’t going to collect a dime, and he’d begun to feel guilty about letting Wirf file appeal after appeal. To win, you’d have to throw every one of the bastards out the window, and there were more lawyers and judges than windows.
When the pickup was three-quarters loaded and listing even more dangerously, Sully roped off the load and surveyed it dubiously. There was no reason the blocks on the right side of the truck should be heavier than the ones on the left, but they must have been, because the truck was tilting right. As Sully stood there, ankle deep in muck, he realized that he was faced with an honest-to-God decision. He could, against his better judgment, take the unbalanced load out onto the highway and hope for the best, or he could unload it partway, make the first load a small one, drop it off and go find Rub to help him finish.
Free will. An issue much discussed in his philosophy class, and one of the first things to disappear. His professor, a very young man it seemed to Sully, had surprised him by taking the position that there was no such thing as choice, that free will was merely an illusion. Sully had been one of the few older students in the large class and had never said much, but he wished he had the professor here now so he could explain why this wasn’t really a choice. He’d probably go about it by disproving the truck. To Sully it looked for all the world like a choice. His. Fuck it, he decided.
Climbing into the cab, Sully turned the ignition, ground the truck into gear, released the brake, paused and stepped on the accelerator. He might have stopped when he heard and felt the tires spinning in the mud, but he didn’t, even though he knew what that meant. Instead, he gunned the engine, put the accelerator to the floor, months of submerged fury suddenly at the surface, the high-pitched unrelenting scream of the truck’s engine almost his own, the truck’s rear wheels shooting mud all the way up the side of Carl Roebuck’s half-built house. Then, without moving either forward or back, the truck began to shake so violently that Sully was barely able to keep his hands on the wheel until the engine finally hiccuped twice, shuddered and died. Just as well, too. The rear wheels’ lug nuts were already below ground. Stupid, he thought. Just an hour ago he’d been wondering if a second stupid streak in the same year was a possibility, and now here he was right in the middle of one before he’d even had a chance to contemplate the odds. Sully got out and surveyed the situation. The wind had picked up, and whistling through the pines nearby it sounded like laughter.
Mrs. Gruber, who had been disappointed by the snail, phoned midmorning, wondering if Miss Beryl’s mail had been delivered and if she’d looked over the circular that announced the grand opening of the new supermarket out by the interstate exit. Miss Beryl, as Mrs. Gruber feared, had tossed the circular into the trash without so much as a glance.
“They have some wonderful bargains,” said Mrs. Gruber, who hated to miss a grand opening of anything. She had pored over the circular with mounting excitement and regret, the latter caused by the fact that she did not drive and that the supermarket was five miles away. The circular had been six full pages, and each page was in full color, picturing deep red cuts of beef, Kelly green vegetables. Even the most mundane items, like toilet paper and laundry detergent, looked exotic and thrilling. And all at incredible savings. Mrs. Gruber wanted to go to the supermarket and find out for herself if the circular truly represented the wonders of the new store. She knew it was against the law for advertisers to say things that weren’t true, so she was hopeful. Wasn’t it just like Miss Beryl to toss the circular, she thought, genuinely irked by her friend’s perverse refusal to be excited by anything exciting. “Go find it,” she urged Miss Beryl. “Take a look at it.”
“It’s in the trash,” Miss Beryl told her. “Under my wet tea bag.”
“You won’t believe the bargains,” Mrs. Gruber said, quoting almost directly from the circular itself.
Miss Beryl glanced out the front room window, hoping the snow might be pretext for refusal. She did need to go to the store today, though the North Bath IGA would do her fine. It was close, and she didn’t mind that there weren’t any bargains. It was Miss Beryl’s view that anything involving crowds of jostling bargain seekers wouldn’t be a bargain. But most of the snow had melted, and the street was actually dry in a few spots.
“It’ll be good to get out,” Mrs. Gruber said. “Let’s go. Let’s sally forth,” she said, purposely using one of her friend’s favorite phrases.
“I’ll pick you up in half an hour,” Miss Beryl told her.
“I’ll be outside,” Mrs. Gruber said. To her mind, being on the porch and saving her friend the necessity of pulling into the driveway was a way of paying Miss Beryl back for agreeing to go to the new supermarket.
“Stay inside,” Miss Beryl said. “I’ll toot.”
“I don’t mind,” Mrs. Gruber insisted. “I’ll be on the porch.”
“Half an hour,” Miss Beryl said.
“Goody,” Mrs. Gruber said, hanging up.
Miss Beryl had half a page remaining in the chapter of her Trollope, so she finished it, then stood up. From the side windows of her front room she could see up and down Main Street, and when she set her book down and looked up Main in the direction of Mrs. Gruber’s house she could see that Mrs. Gruber was already standing on her porch and peering down the street at Miss Beryl’s house, fully expecting, no doubt, Miss Beryl’s car to be backing out of the drive. All of two minutes had elapsed since they’d hung up.
Miss Beryl rose and sighed. She was just about to fetch her overcoat when a big, noisy car she’d never seen before pulled up at the curb outside her front window and a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties got out and checked something written on a slip of paper. She was wearing a sweater and no overcoat, and Miss Beryl could not help but notice, even at that distance, that the young woman had an absolutely huge bosom.