“Punch him back,” Sully’s son suggested, pulling the Gremlin back onto the road. He had not turned around in the seat or offered to shake hands or given any sign that he was happy to see Sully. But then that’s the way it had been between them since Peter had gone off to college — what? fifteen? twenty years ago? Probably Peter considered such treatment payback, simple karmic justice, and if true, Sully did not object. When the boy was growing up, Sully had never willfully ignored him, certainly wouldn’t have passed him on life’s highway if the boy had needed a lift. It was just that his mother had seen to it that the boy never needed a lift. She and Ralph, the man she’d married a year or so after divorcing Sully, had done such a good job raising Peter that the boy never needed anything, and Sully knew Ralph was doing a better job as a father than he himself could have managed. By staying out of his son’s life, he was doing the boy a favor, or that had been his reasoning. Not an unwise decision, it seemed to Sully even now. True, Peter had grown up laconic and without much apparent ambition of his own, but he had Vera’s considerable ambitions on his behalf to draw from, tempered by his stepfather’s easy good nature, and somehow Peter had made himself a college professor of something or other, Sully couldn’t remember what.
“Clobber him, in fact,” Peter said without much conviction. “People hit you, hit ’em back.”
“This from a former conscientious objector,” Charlotte snorted, as if her husband’s remark were final proof, were any needed, of his fundamental hypocrisy. Sully, who seldom registered such things, couldn’t help noticing the tension in the front seat and wonder as to its cause. Had one of them not wanted to stop and give him a lift? If so, it probably would have been Charlotte, not Peter, who insisted on stopping. He seldom saw his daughter-in-law, but he’d always been fond of her. She was a big, awkward girl with an open face who didn’t as a rule mind being kidded, and kidding was one of the relatively few things Sully had to offer, that and the unspoken camaraderie that had naturally evolved as a result of Vera’s disapproval of both of them. Vera had never made much of an attempt to disguise her opinion that Peter had not married well, that Charlotte was not the kind of woman who was likely to advance his career. They had lived together before marrying, and Vera hadn’t approved of that either. That they’d married only when Charlotte became pregnant with Will proved, to Vera’s way of thinking, that her son had been trapped. Charlotte had explained all this to Sully once, and he’d felt bad for her. What little he knew about his son’s life he got from Charlotte’s chatty Christmas cards.
“What are you doing out here?” Peter wanted to know. He adjusted his rearview mirror so he could see Sully in the backseat.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Sully said, not anxious to explain.
“We’ve been summoned to Thanksgiving dinner,” Charlotte said. “And of course we dare not offend royalty.”
This was clearly a reference to Vera, who would run things if allowed to. In the end she had failed to run Sully, but not for lack of effort. Her second husband she’d chosen more carefully. “I don’t think I’ve seen Vera since the last time you were here,” Sully said, taking a neutral position on the subject of Vera. “How long ago was that?” he wondered, realizing as he gave this question voice that it was not a simple one. Often when his son and family visited Vera and Ralph they snuck into and out of town without seeing him.
“How can you live in a town the size of Bath and not see everybody all the time?” Charlotte wondered.
“Well, dolly, Vera and I don’t travel in the same circles,” Sully explained. “In fact, Vera doesn’t travel in circles at all. She goes pretty much straight forward.”
“Does she ever,” Charlotte agreed unpleasantly.
“Somebody had to,” Peter offered.
Sully glanced at the rearview mirror, but Peter’s eyes were straight ahead on the road. Out the passenger side window, Sully noticed that they’d just passed the cemetery where Big Jim Sullivan lay buried, and Sully resisted the urge to give his father the finger, a gesture he would then have had to explain to his grandsons. He wondered if, when Peter saw him alongside the road, there’d been a moment when the boy considered rolling down the window, tooting, and flipping Sully the bird. Speaking of karma.
“I’d let you hold your grandson,” Charlotte said, “except he’s busy pooping at the moment.” Andy was on her shoulder, staring at Sully over the back of the seat. The child’s face was intense, but focused on a vacant spot between the end of his nose and his grandfather. A gaze full of rectal purpose.
“Thanks,” Sully said. “I’d hate like hell to get it all over my good clothes.”
This remark startled Will, who stopped fingering his nose and looked over at Sully, clearly wondering if these could be his grandfather’s good clothes. His eyes widened with fear and sympathy.
“Hello, Mordecai,” Sully said to Wacker, who had not stopped staring at him even for a second, though he did not seem to share his older brother’s fear that these might be Sully’s good clothes.
“My name’s not Mordecai!” the boy said angrily. “It’s Wacker!”
“How come they call you Wacker?” Sully said, winking across Wacker at Will.
Wacker’s face brightened instantly, and before Sully could prevent it, the little boy located a long hardback Dr. Seuss and brought it down with a crash on Sully’s knee, resulting in an explosion of sincere expletives that Sully hadn’t had the least intention of using in the company of his son’s family. Will, who had bravely held back the tears occasioned by Wacker’s attack on himself, now burst into tears of genuine terror and sympathy.
As soon as Sully could catch his breath, he told his son to pull over, which Peter did reluctantly, into the parking lot of the IGA supermarket. Once out of the Gremlin, Sully headed straight across the lot toward the abandoned photo shack some hundred yards away. For some reason, the faster he limped, the less the knee hurt. In about fifty yards, Peter caught up to him.
“Jesus, Dad,” he said, his face a study in annoyance, pretty much devoid of concern, it seemed to Sully, who was surprised to discover that a little concern from his son might have been a comfort. “What’d the little bastard do?”
Sully slowed, the waves of pain and nausea subsiding a little. He took a deep breath and said, “Wow.”
“He’s just a kid, for heaven’s sake,” Peter said. Apparently this was intended to be a comment on Wacker’s strength, his inability to inflict significant pain. What he wanted to know was why his father, lifelong tough guy, was carrying on like this.
Since it was the simplest way to explain, Sully pulled up his pant leg to show him. When he saw his father’s knee, Peter’s eyes went so round with fear that he looked like Will. “Wacker did that?” he said, incredulous. “With Dr. Seuss?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Sully told him, satisfied with his son’s reaction. “I fell off a ladder. A year ago.”
Peter looked greatly relieved to learn this. “Jesus,” he repeated. “You should see a doctor.”
Sully snorted. “I’ve seen about twenty so far.”
When he lowered his pant leg, Peter still stared at the spot, as if he could see the grotesque, purple swelling right through the fabric. They turned back toward the Gremlin. “What do they say?” Peter wanted to know.
“Twenty different things,” Sully said, though this was not precisely true. “They wanted to give me a new knee, back when it happened. I should have let them, too.”