Everybody's Fool

The Tree You Can’t Predict

STAGGERING UP the street like a drunk, his head still ringing from the skillet, Roy wasn’t expecting to catch a break, not with his fucking luck, but he’d gone only a couple blocks when he heard a horn toot — with just one ear still functioning, it sounded far away — and there was fucking Cora behind the wheel of her shit-bucket of a car, waving him over. In another minute or two there’d be cops everywhere, all looking for a skinny, tattooed longhair in a neck brace, a description that would fit Roy and Roy alone.

Cora had inherited this ride — an ancient Ford Pinto — when her grandmother croaked, and this pissed off her mother, who’d been expecting to inherit the worthless piece of shit herself. Yellow on one side, purple on the other, it was impossible to know what was original and what had been cannibalized from even-worse beaters at the junkyard. Wearing her Mets cap as usual, Cora leaned across to unlock the passenger door and called, “Hey there, Roy. You partying already?” Only when he tumbled inside did she get a good look at him, his ear half severed, one whole side of his face red and swollen. “Roy,” she gasped. “You’re hurt!”

“Goddamn it, Cora, tell me something I don’t already know,” Roy said, jerking the rearview mirror around to assess the damage. That fucking Sully. Fucking, fucking, motherfucking Sully. “Son of a bitch damn near took my whole ear off, the cocksucker.”

“Who? Who done this to you, Roy?”

“Fuck it,” he told her, “just go.” From experience both deep and broad, Roy knew how quickly things headed south in the aftermath of one of his legendary bad impulses. It was a miracle, really, that he wasn’t already cuffed and secured in the backseat of some cruiser. Even with the help of this dim-witted bitch, he’d end up in one before long.

“You want me to run you out to the hospital?”

“Fuck no,” he said. The cops would be all over the hospitals, both here and in Schuyler.

“You need somebody to sew that ear back on. It’s just dangling there.”

He swiveled the mirror back in her direction. “I noticed that, Cora.” In fact, the sight had made him a little sick to his stomach. Worse, his equilibrium was clearly fucked, even sitting down. And his own voice sounded as tinny and far away as this idiot’s, which made him wonder if the skillet ear was permanently fucked. How had such a gimpy old fuck managed to sneak up on him like that anyhow? Well, to ask the question was to answer it. His blood had been up. Not just up, but roaring-in-his-fucking-ears up. Every time he’d punched his mother-in-law — the same cunt who’d tried bribing him to leave town the day before — it had crashed like a wave on a beach. Of course he hadn’t heard Sully coming up behind him. He wouldn’t have heard an army of Sullys on horseback.

“Where do you want to go, then?” Cora said.

Good question. Part of him thought Gert’s. Just slip into one of those dark booths along the back wall and start a tab. Drink one beer after another until the fucking cops thought to stop in and haul his ass off. Let Cora pick up the tab, or Gert himself. The fuck did he care? No tabs where he was headed. The problem was the cops would dope this out right quick. And there was another, too. Gert wasn’t what you’d call squeamish, but seeing Roy’s ear he might tell him to take a hike and not come back until he looked presentable, which at his shithole meant not bleeding freely. Or he might not let them run a tab; the prick had a sixth sense about that. Besides, holing up in some bar and waiting for the fucking cops to come collect him just didn’t sit right with Roy. He ought to at least try to make a run for it, right? He was going down hard for this one, no question. He’d be away for a long time, which meant he had a moral obligation to take full advantage of his last few hours of freedom. What he needed was some kind of a plan, but Sully, the fucker, had scrambled his brain. “Take me to that CVS out by the highway,” he told Cora.

“The Rexall’s closer,” she pointed out.

Fucking woman, Roy thought, yanking the rearview back again to see if his injuries could possibly be as bad as they’d appeared thirty seconds ago — and they were. “Will you just do like you’re fuckin’ told?”

“Why you bein’ so mean to me, Roy? I’m just trying to help is all. I’ll do anything you want. Just treat me nice, okay?”

He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, Cora, okay. See how nice I’m treatin’ you? See how nice? So can we fuckin’ go now?”

He expected her to drive around the block, but instead, being a dipshit, she did a three-point turn in the middle of fucking Main Street and headed back where he’d just come from, right past Hattie’s, the very place he was trying to escape. A small crowd had gathered outside to watch the EMTs load his mother-in-law on board. A uniformed piece of shit was trying to explain to Janey why she couldn’t ride in the back with her mother, but being a total cunt she just shoved him aside and climbed in anyway. Then he spotted Sully, half a head taller than the other assholes, and the sight of him gave Roy something like an idea, though it was gone again almost before it arrived. Never mind. Roy knew that once something occurred to him it wouldn’t take long to reoccur, and right now he had more pressing concerns, like the cop car speeding toward them. He slumped down in his seat as it screeched to a rocking halt at the curb.

Cora, if you could believe it, had actually slowed down and put on her left-turn signal. “The Rexall’s right here,” she explained. Like he’d fucking forgot where the Rexall was, or like he hadn’t just fucking told her to go to the CVS.

“No, goddamn it—”

“Stop yellin’ at me, Roy,” she said, though she turned her blinker off and pulled back into the right lane. “I’m just sayin’ all them stores carry the same shit and this one’s right here.”

“Did you happen to see that fuckin’ ambulance back there, Cora? That cop car?” he said, peering to look out the back window. “Me slidin’ down in my seat here? What’s all that fuckin’ shit tell you?”

Just that quickly the crying kicked in. “Did you do something bad, Roy? They gonna make you go back to prison?”

“Not if you shut the fuck up and drive, they won’t.”

“I gonna get in trouble for helpin’ you?”

“Fuck no, Cora.”

“ ’Cause they took my little boy on account of they said I’m unfit and I’m trying to get him back, so—”

“Just fuckin’ listen to me, girl. You ain’t gonna get in no trouble. The cops question you, just say all you did was give me a fuckin’ ride. Tell ’em you’re just a dumb cunt and didn’t know no better. Don’t worry, they’ll believe you.”

Cora began to cry silently, and neither spoke again until she pulled in to the CVS lot, where Roy once again scrunched down in his seat.

When she killed the engine and wiped her tears on her sleeve, he said, “Lemme see that hat a minute.”

“What for?” she said, handing over her Mets cap.

“Never mind what for. Maybe I’m a big fuckin’ baseball fan, okay?” Trying it on, he flinched when the sweatband came in contact with his demolished ear.

“You’re gettin’ blood all over it,” she said, wincing.

He adjusted the plastic strap. “Jesus, Cora. What do you need with such a big head, anyway? There ain’t a fuckin’ thing in it.”

She giggled, thinking this was a joke. “Just ’cause you got a little peanut head,” she said. “Just ’cause it’s full of shit.”

This, Roy thought as his hand shot out, its heel connecting flush with the side of Cora’s head, is the wrong fucking day to be talking trash. Her temple bounced back off the driver’s-side window.

“Ow, Roy,” she said, tearing up again. “That hurt. All I was doing was havin’ a little fun. Can’t you take a joke?”

He considered answering by hitting her again, then remembered he needed her help. “Look at me, Cora, and tell me I’m in the fuckin’ mood to joke with you.”

“You got me all mixed up, Roy. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Well, shut the fuck up a minute, and I’ll tell you again. Can you do that?” When, acting on his instruction, she didn’t respond, he said, “Well, can you?”

“Yes, Roy, I can. It’s what I’m doin’, okay?”

“All right, then. First thing you need to get is one of them butterfly clamps for my ear. You know the ones I’m talkin’ about? They’ll be over with the medical supplies. Band-Aids and shit. You understand?”

She said nothing. Just looked at him.

“Do you fuckin’ understand? Say you do before I fuckin’ hit you again.”

“You told me to shut up, Roy. That’s what I’m doin’.”

“You want me to hit you again?”

“I want you to be nice. If you can’t be nice, you can just walk back into town.”

Or, Roy thought, I could wring your fuckin’ neck, see if your fat ass would fit in the trunk and drive down to Albany and park this shit-bucket in the bus terminal and let people find you when you begin to stink. Which she already did, with some kind of cheap perfume or other. The thought of the Greyhound reminded him that just yesterday his bitch-in-law had offered him three grand to disappear, an offer that hadn’t impressed him at the time, which just went to show he hadn’t really been thinking straight. Because what was to stop him from taking her money and going somewheres — Atlantic City, maybe — and coming back when he was broke. Fortunately, he was beginning to think straight now, at least enough to realize he needed Cora for a while longer.

“And an orange juice, okay?” he continued, wiggling the plastic tube that contained his pain meds. “Something to wash down these little beauties.”

“Can I have one or two?”

Not a fuckin’ chance. “Of course,” he told her. “I always share, don’t I?”

When she reached for the door handle, though, he grabbed her wrist. Because suddenly he didn’t like the look on her face. “Don’t do what you’re thinkin’,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re thinkin’ about goin’ in there and tellin’ somebody to call the cops.” Because in her place, that’s what he’d be thinking.

“It ain’t what I’m thinkin’, Roy.”

“Like hell. Don’t lie to me. I can tell you are just by looking at you.”

She began to cry again. “It was just a passing thought, I swear.”

He was taking a chance, letting her out of the car, but it wasn’t like he had a lot of options. “You got one minute,” he said. “Don’t make me come in there after you.”

“I need some money.”

“Use your own. I’ll pay you back later.”

“You never paid me back from Tuesday.”

“What are you talking about?”

“At Gert’s.”

“You said that was your treat.”

“No, I said—”

“Will you just get the fuckin’ shit, like I told you? I’ll pay you back for that and Gert’s, too.”

“You promise?”

“And get a couple six-packs,” he added. “We’ll go out to the reservoir.”

“Really?”

“And some Pringles.”

She sighed, beaten. “Okay.”

He was asleep, or maybe passed out from the pain, before she was inside the CVS. Then she was back again. He could tell she’d been gone for more than a minute, but not much more. And she didn’t look scared like she would’ve if she ratted him out. She had two big plastic bags full of stuff that she put on the seat between them.

“Let me see that orange juice,” he said.

She handed him the large plastic bottle, its contents ice cold, just the way he liked it. He was so parched that he drank half of it straight down before remembering the painkillers. Shaking the remaining pills into his palm, he counted eight. Returning four to the vial, he swallowed the others with the remaining juice and tossed the empty container into the backseat. “What?” he said.

Cora was back in behind the wheel and staring at him. “You said I could have one.”

“You can,” he said. “When half your fuckin’ ear’s hangin’ by a thread.”

“I like how they make me feel,” she explained. “And you said.”

“You know how to get to the lake?”

She nodded.

“Then go, before the beer gets warm.”

Still she just sat there. “It come to almost twenty dollars.”

“It did fuckin’ not.”

She showed him the receipt. Seventeen bucks and change. “Okay, so what?”

“And the other afternoon at Gert’s was almost thirty.”

“That was your treat.”

“Then pay me for this, at least.”

“When we get to the lake.”

“Now, Roy.”

“The beer’s gettin’ warm, girl. You know I don’t like warm beer.”

She turned the key in the ignition. “What you don’t like is spendin’ your own damn money.”

No argument there. He’d lifted a couple twenties from Janey’s purse while she slept, so he could afford to give Cora one of them, but that was the thing about money: you never knew how much you were going to need. In Roy’s experience, the deeper the shit you found yourself in, the more it cost to dig yourself out, and at the moment he was hip deep. One thing was for true. He’d gotten his last free cup of coffee at Hattie’s. He done killed the golden goose. Well, not killed her, exactly, but good as. No more day-old pie for ole Roy. It had been worth it, though, the thrill of shutting that bigmouthed bitch the fuck up, wiping that superior look off her face. He could still feel his knuckles throbbing pleasurably. Later, he’d take his list out and draw a satisfying line through her name.

Cora was studying him sadly now. “Janey’s never gonna take you back, Roy,” she said. Like this was what they’d just been talking about. Like she hadn’t pulled this brand-new subject right out of her ass.

“What’d I say to you about that?” Roy’d told her last week at Gert’s that he didn’t want to hear Janey’s name coming out of her mouth. In fact, it was when she brought Janey up that he’d decided the beer was Cora’s treat.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Anyway, what the fuck do you know about it?”

Cora put the car in reverse and checked the rearview. “You should start being nice to me. I’m the one that likes you, not her.”

“Well, if she don’t like me, how come she fucked me?”

Cora hit the brake and looked at him, her eyes like little slits. “Fucked you when?”

“Last night.”

“You’re lyin’.”

“I’m gonna take a nap,” he told her. The painkillers were kicking in, giving things that gauzy feel. “Wake me up when we get to the lake.”

He closed his eyes and kept them closed while he counted to twenty. When he opened them again the vehicle was in motion, about to pull out of the CVS lot. Cora was crying, and that made him happy. He hadn’t been sure she’d believe him about Janey. Roy could hardly believe it himself, but clearly she did, which meant she’d try even harder now to please him. He doubted he’d have much further use for her, but you could never tell.

Drifting off, he thought again about Janey, how nice she’d fucked him. It was like she’d been in jail, too, just like him, and starved for it like he was. They’d always been good in bed, and she’d admitted as much. Okay, she hadn’t agreed to getting back together, but she hadn’t said they wouldn’t, neither, not till Mama Bitch started egging her on this morning. Anyway, she’d been his again, if only for a couple hours. Even if it was just because she was horny, like she said.

—

HE AWOKE when the wheels of Cora’s shit-bucket left the pavement. Sitting up, he saw they’d just pulled in to the campground’s dirt lot. It was still only nine in the morning but hot already, and even this early there were half-a-dozen other cars there. By noon the lot would be full, the beach full of brats in water wings screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, look at me.” Or worse, “Mommy, look at that man’s ear!” Fuck that shit. The shoreline was dotted with camps, most of them unoccupied this early in the season, for as far as the eye could see. “Take that dirt road,” he told her, pointing.

“You can’t go in there,” Cora objected. “See the sign? Where it says PRIVATE?”

He could see it fine, not that he gave the tiniest little shit. “Private’s what we’re looking for,” he told her. “Someplace we can drink our beer in peace.” He’d only been asleep the fifteen minutes it took to drive here, but he was feeling better now, the pulsing pain in his ear and cheekbone more muted. He’d also awakened with the beginnings of a plan, and that always made him cautiously optimistic, even if his plans seldom panned out. No matter. He enjoyed making them anyway, thinking them through, admiring how they were going to work until something came along and fucked them all up.

Cora, he saw, had stopped crying. “It’s nice back in here,” she admitted, inching the car slowly along the rutted one-lane path. As Roy had foreseen, only every sixth or seventh camp looked occupied, with a car angled off in the trees, a motorboat bobbing at the end of a dock, wet bathing suits pinned to a clothesline strung between trees. With the windows rolled down it was cool among the tall pines, the air rich with the scent of their needles. Only once did they encounter cars coming from the opposite direction. Cora pulled over to the right as far as she could and tooted a hello at the other driver, smiling broadly as the two vehicles squeezed by each other.

“Don’t be drawin’ no attention,” Roy scolded her, though, really, when he thought about it, why the fuck not? They were in a half-purple, half-yellow car, after all. It wasn’t like they weren’t going to be noticed.

“How about right here,” Cora wanted to know when they came to a stretch where the camps were all dark and deserted looking. “We could sit out on that deck.”

“Keep goin’.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause I said so.”

They continued on, and when he looked over at her, damned if she wasn’t crying again.

“You ever wonder how come some people have all the luck?” she croaked.

To Roy that was like wondering why the sky was blue. It just was.

“How come Janey gets to look like she does and I got to look like me?”

“Try not eatin’ everything in sight,” Roy suggested.

“I don’t, Roy. And I’ve tried diets. They don’t work. I bet Janey doesn’t even have to diet.”

“I’m not gonna tell you again about not sayin’ her name.”

“But that’s what I mean, Roy. She gets to be her and be all lucky and I don’t even get to say her name. And I’m the one bein’ nice to you.”

“She was nice to me last night, and that’s for true.”

“One night.”

Roy shrugged.

“It’s not fair, is what I’m sayin’.”

“What ain’t?”

Sniffling, she wiped her eyes. “All of it,” she explained. “The way things are.”

Roy would have liked to agree with her, having come to the same conclusion on any number of other occasions, but you couldn’t go around agreeing with a bitch as dumb as this one without being dumb yourself.

“Take you,” she continued. “You only just got out of prison and now they’re gonna send you back. Other people do bad things. Politicians and them. They don’t go to jail.”

“Some do.”

“But mostly it’s us, Roy. People like you and me. We’re the ones get blamed. You know it’s true. Some rich lady? They don’t take her kid away. They take one look at me and say I’m unfit. They look at you and off you go to jail. Don’t that make you mad?”

Dumb-ass women make me mad, Roy thought. You in particular.

After a while she said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if one of these little places was ours?” He couldn’t tell if she’d shifted gears or was on the same subject. “We could live there and nobody’d bother us.”

“These places ain’t even insulated. You’d freeze your ass off, is what you’d do.”

“I bet some are.”

“They aren’t, I’m telling you. Try listenin’ when people tell you shit.”

“Yeah, but how do you know? You been in any?”

Actually, he had. He’d robbed close to a dozen camps on this very road one winter and would’ve hit a bunch more if he hadn’t run into bad luck. He’d parked his van on a paved driveway next to one place around nightfall, and while he was inside he came upon a bottle containing five, six fingers of top-shelf whiskey. Not enough to bring home, really, just too good to leave behind. It was mid-December, and with the power off the camp was freezing, but there was a big overstuffed chair with its own little ottoman thingy, and he had on long johns and a parka, so he put his feet up and finished the shit off, drinking it slow and right out of the bottle, feeling the heat of the amber booze spread from his chest to his extremities. He made a mental note not to fall asleep, even as he did so. He couldn’t have dozed for more than half an hour, then at some point it began sleeting, and by the time he meant to leave, the pavement was a sheet of ice. He hadn’t noticed the driveway’s gentle slope down toward the water. The van was rear-wheel drive, and when he put it in reverse the wheels just spun and spun. He wasn’t going anywhere unless he called for a tow, and he couldn’t very well do that. Another night he’d have probably just gone back inside and spent the night and tried again in the morning, but since it was supposed to snow like a bitch, his only choice was to hoof it out to the main road in the freezing rain. Good thing he did, too, because that night they got close to two feet, which meant his van full of stolen shit was going to stay right where it was for the foreseeable future.

He was sick for a good week, but as soon as he felt a little better, he went over to Gert’s and presented his circumstance to him as a hypothetical situation. Gert had never had much use for Roy, but he was good at problems. He listened carefully and finally said, “Report the vehicle stolen,” taking Roy by surprise. “The only people out there in the winter are cross-country skiers,” Gert explained, “and how do they know the camp’s owner didn’t leave the vehicle there. We get a midwinter thaw, you hike back in and see if the engine starts. If somebody reports it to the cops before you can get it out, you can say whoever stole the vehicle must’ve done the burglaries. They’ll know it was you, but they probably won’t be able to prove it.”

Roy thanked him for the advice, which seemed both sound and rigorous. All damn winter it snowed, and no real thaw, either, but that April he got a lift out to the reservoir and hiked back in. Sure enough, the van was right where he’d left it — except, just his luck, a motherfucking tree had fallen on it. When he told this last part, Gert just rubbed his bald head thoughtfully and said, “That’s the trouble with crime. There’s always that falling tree you don’t predict.” Roy could see his point, but he still thought Gert was selling crime short, blaming it for something that wasn’t really its fault. That tree you couldn’t foresee, well, it fell on the innocent as often as it did on the guilty. He himself was a case in point. Right now his neck wasn’t in a brace because he’d been doing something illegal, only because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shit fell. Trees. Walls. Fucking meteors. Why blame all that on crime? Still, there was no denying Gert had been right about the rest of it. Seeing who the van was registered to, the cops knew it was Roy who’d stolen all that stuff, too, but they couldn’t prove shit, and his having reported the van’s theft wrong-footed them, too. Besides, the people who owned all those camps were mostly from somewhere else, so who gave a fuck?

“I bet some of them got woodstoves,” Cora was saying, determined to believe they could survive an upstate New York winter in an uninsulated camp on a frozen lake, miles away from their nearest neighbor. “When it gets cold, you just put a log in it and sit around and play games and be all nice and warm.”

“They’d find you in the spring,” Roy assured her. “Or the half of you raccoons didn’t eat after you froze to death.”

Cora sighed mightily, clearly baffled by his reluctance to join her in such a pleasant fantasy. “Don’t you like dreamin’, Roy? About things bein’ better? I know it’s just make-believe, but so what? Don’t you like imaginin’ how nice it’d be to have things, like maybe one of these camps, or a new car to go places in?”

“Hell, girl, I’m imaginin’ shit right now. Like how happy I’d be if you’d give that jaw of yours a fuckin’ rest.” By now they’d driven around to the far side of the reservoir. He pointed up ahead. “Pull in there.”

Miracle of miracles, she did as she was told, parking alongside a camp that looked unoccupied. There were others nearby, but you could barely see them through the trees, and there wasn’t a single vehicle in sight. An invisible loon called out over the water, and the breeze whispered in the upper reaches of the pines. Cora was looking around, confused. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why we had to come all this way.”

Jesus, was she stupid.

—

“WHAT THE FUCK are these?” he said, holding up the package of clamps that was at the bottom of the second CVS bag.

They were seated on the rickety dock now, their feet dangling in the water. The cove they’d chosen was narrow and secluded. The few camps visible across the reservoir were the size of the little green houses on a Monopoly board. A motorboat appeared out in the middle of the lake and just as quickly disappeared again. Roy had already chugged one beer and opened another. Cora was still sipping her first. They’d submerged the other nine beers in the cool water under the dock.

Cora winced. “Them butterfly clips you wanted?”

Well, yeah, that’s what the fucking package said they were, but any damn fool could see they weren’t what Roy needed for his ear. “These here are paperclips, dumb ass.”

“They was out of the others,” Cora explained. “I told the man what you wanted, and he showed me where they’d be, but they was all gone.”

“So you bought these fuckin’ things?”

Cora shrugged. “I thought maybe one of the smaller ones, if you had a little bit of cloth or a paper towel?”

He just looked at her. “I ought to throw you right in the fuckin’ lake is what I ought to do.”

“I done the best I could, Roy. They didn’t have them others, okay? They probably would’ve at the Rexall, but you didn’t let me go in there.”

“I suppose they didn’t have no Pringles neither?” he said, holding up the big bag of Cheetos she’d bought.

“I like Cheetos,” she said. “Besides, it was my money, so my choice.”

“Well, I ain’t paying you back for none of this shit.”

“Fine,” she said. “Don’t eat the Cheetos, then. Go hungry. You can just sit there and feel sorry for yourself.” When he got to his feet, she said, “Where you goin’?”

“The fuck do you care?” he said. Her idea to wrap his ear in something soft before securing it with the clip was dumb, but he didn’t have a better one.

“You gonna break in, Roy?”

“Maybe it’s unlocked.”

It wasn’t, of course, but the wood was punky, and a couple good kicks sprung it clear of the frame.

“You’re gonna get us in trouble, Roy,” she called from the dock.

“I’m already in fuckin’ trouble, Cora.”

The only mirror in the whole fucking place was the cloudy one in the dark bathroom. Apparently the owners weren’t planning to use the place until later in the summer, because the electricity still hadn’t been turned on. The tiny room had just one small window, high up, and even when he pulled the curtain back he could barely see a thing.

Removing the smallest of the butterfly clips from the package, he squeezed the metal wings, opening its jaw as far as it would go, pried it open farther with his thumbs, then tested it on his good ear. Still too goddamn tight. The next-larger size looked more promising, but it was sturdier, too, and he wasn’t able to bend the frame by hand. Inserting its open mouth against the edge of the sink and putting his weight on it did the trick, though, and he felt the metal give. Unfortunately, now the gap was too wide, and it fell right off his good ear. Fucking bitch. There was a threadbare washcloth draped over the towel rack, so he tore it in half, then in half again. If he could wrap the ear first, then secure it with the clamp…After several excruciating tries, he somehow managed to wrap the ear without passing out. As soon as he touched the makeshift bandage with the clip, though, it unraveled. Fucking, fucking, fucking woman. There was only one other solution he could think of. It took him a while to talk himself into it, though. “On the count of ten,” he said out loud, taking the dangling part of his ear between his thumb and forefinger. When he got to five, though, he thought, What’s so fuckin’ special about ten?

And pulled.

—

CORA WAS STILL on the dock but standing now, clearly scared shitless, when he emerged from the camp, holding a swatch of paper towels, already soaked with blood, to what little remained of his ear. “I heard you screamin’, Roy. You okay?”

“Do I look okay, Cora?” He held out the piece of ear he’d torn off for her inspection. When she let out a yelp and took a hasty step back, he flung the thing as far as he could out into the lake, where it plopped harmlessly, floated for a second, then sank out of sight. “Where’d that beer go?”

She was sniffling again. “I was keepin’ it cool for you,” she said, pointing to where she’d wedged it, upright, between two rocks.

“Get it for me,” he said.

“Okay, Roy,” she said, but before she could haul her fat ass over there, a small wave, probably from some motorboat, lapped up against the shoreline and knocked the can over, the beer foaming out.

“Bring it here,” he told her.

“It spilled, Roy.”

“Bring it here, I said.”

When she did, he flung the can out into the lake, and it hit not far from where his ear had landed, bobbing there.

“Bring me another.”

She did. “I’m sorry I do things wrong, Roy,” she said, her lip quivering.

He popped the fresh beer, drank it half down, then sat on the end of the dock, looking out at the still-bobbing beer can. “Don’t just stand there looking dumb,” he told her. “Sit your ass down.”

She sat next to him, warily. “You don’t have to pay me back,” she said.

“I know I don’t.”

“I’m real sorry about your ear.”

“Me too.”

“You aren’t mad at me?”

“Hell yes, I’m mad at you,” he said, though he wasn’t, or not as mad as he’d been earlier. For some reason his rage had leaked away with all that blood. At least she’d quit mouthing him.

“I try,” she told him. “I try real hard.”

He just shrugged. He was seeing the whole ear business more clearly now. “Ain’t none of this your doin’,” he admitted. That’s what ole Bullwhip would say if he was here. It was Roy’s own damn fault for letting an old cripple like Sully sneak up on him. Cora might be dumb as a rock, but she wasn’t the one who hit him with a fucking skillet, and it wasn’t her fault the fucking drugstore didn’t have the right clips. They probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. What he’d needed to do was to get the fucking ear sewed back on, but that hadn’t been an option, and that wasn’t her fault, either. Okay, the Cheetos were her fault. She should’ve gotten Pringles like he fucking told her, but even there she had a point. It was her money.

They sat quietly for a while until Cora said, “Is it real nice in there?”

“In the camp?” he said, finishing his beer. He was going to have to pace himself, he realized, if he hoped to make it through the day. Both the beer and the painkillers he had left. What he meant to do later was gradually becoming clear to him. “Pretty nice, I guess. Go take a look, if you want. You see something you like, take it.”

“I’d rather just sit here with you, real quiet,” she said, putting her hand on top of his. Roy didn’t like to be touched by ugly women and normally wouldn’t have permitted this, but for some reason he did now. “I can imagine all the nice things they got. I always like things the way they are in my head, you know?”

Actually, he had no fucking idea what she was talking about, though it did call to mind his old man, who’d always maintained that wanting things was a waste of time. To him, though, it wasn’t so much that you’d be disappointed when you didn’t get what you wanted as that you would be when you did. Roy remembered the day his father made sure that message was plain as could be. They were driving home from somewhere and stopped at a diner, taking seats at the counter. The menus they were given had pictures of the food: majestic bacon-and-turkey club sandwiches, enormous meatball heroes, turkey with stuffing and mashed potatoes slathered in gravy, an open-faced steak sandwich on triangles of toast. At twelve Roy was always starved. “Can I—?” he began, but his old man had noticed where he was looking.

“No,” he said. “Order off the kids’ menu.” Because stuff there was cheaper, Roy knew. A boiled hot dog. A thin grilled-cheese sandwich that would come burned. Kiddie spaghetti.

As a rule Roy didn’t argue, because that just got him cuffed or worse. Out in public, though, he could sometimes lodge a small protest, so when the waitress came over to take their order he said, just loud enough for her to hear, “I think I’m too old for the kids’ menu.”

“How old are you?” she said, giving Roy a wink to let him know she was on his side, though his father noticed.

“Ten,” he answered before Roy could. Because that’s what it said on the menu: kids ten and under.

“He looks older,” the waitress said.

Roy saw his old man stiffen and give the woman a long, dark look. Down the counter, though, were some guys dressed in button-down shirts and ties, the kind of men his father always steered clear of, as if he suspected they were judges and one day he’d have to stand before them in court, and Roy saw him register their presence now. He’d make no scene here, Roy realized. “You gonna tell this young lady what you want,” his father said, “or make her guess?”

“What can I have?” Roy said.

The waitress was older than his father but apparently liked being referred to as “young” and had decided to be playful. “Yeah, Dad. What can he have?”

His father seemed to decide something on the spot. “Whatever he wants,” he said, loud enough for the men down the counter to hear.

“Really?” Roy said, incredulous. Never before had he been given such freedom.

“Just don’t order more than you can eat.”

The open-faced steak sandwich, as pictured, was thick and red in the center and served with a mountain of thin crispy-looking fries. “Even this?” he said, pointing at it, the most expensive item on the menu.

“Why not?” his father said, though Roy noticed his smile didn’t sit quite right on his face, as if it were masking another emotion entirely. “But you gotta eat it all. Every last bite.”

“Looks like he’s just the man for the job,” said one of the guys in ties, grinning and jovial. Roy himself shared the man’s confidence. Like he was indeed just the boy to tuck away a man-size steak.

When the food came, though, it was a different cut of meat from the one on the menu. Worse, it was cooked gray all the way through, tough as shoe leather, and the thick, crinkle-cut fries were doughy and cold. Roy immediately wished he’d ordered a cheeseburger, like his father, but he knew better than to say so, or that the steak wasn’t at all like the one in the picture. He kept hoping his father would notice the difference and complain about it, but he didn’t. When he finished his burger, he pushed the plate away, then pretended to read a section of newspaper somebody had left on the counter. Roy could tell he was watching him, though, out of the corner of his eye. “Every last bite,” his old man repeated under his breath when Roy showed signs of slowing down.

“There’s gristle.”

“That too,” he said, the forced smile gone now, the menace in his voice unmistakable. Maybe it was this that drew the waitress back down the counter. From the look on her face, she’d met men like his father before and hadn’t enjoyed it.

“Hey, good job!” she said, whisking the plate away — who’d want to eat those last few pieces of gristle? — before his father could object. “How about a hot-fudge sundae?”

“Sure,” his father said before Roy could say he was too full. “And make sure he gets a cherry on top.” He rose, then, and sauntered back to the restrooms.

The sundae was huge. Roy managed to choke down a couple bites, including the cherry, though through all the sweetness he could still taste the sour meat, and soon realized he was finished. There was simply no more room in his stomach. When his father came back and saw the waste, there’d be trouble. Maybe not here in the restaurant, but later, in the car, or maybe at home, the belt. What was keeping him? Roy wondered. He leaned back on his stool, expecting to see him come out of the lavatory, but he didn’t.

The waitress working the counter now had her head together with the one who was waiting on the booths, and Roy thought he heard the phrase “out the back.” The big man in the filthy apron who ran the grill was called over, and after Roy’s waitress said something, he went into the men’s room, emerging a moment later and shaking his head at her. She then came over to where Roy sat staring at the sundae he couldn’t eat another spoonful of and wondering if he’d be able to hold back the hot tears he felt forming.

“I shoulda known,” she said, and when he made no reply, just swallowed hard, trying to keep the food down, she showed him the check, the amount circled at the bottom. “What am I supposed to do with this?” He knew what his father would’ve told her she could do with it, but he was only twelve, and it’d be several years before he’d be brave enough to offer any such suggestion. “They’re gonna dock my pay for this,” she told him. Everyone at the counter was watching them now, as well as the people in nearby booths. “Come on, Darla,” one of the tie-wearing men objected, “it ain’t the kid’s fault,” and apparently she felt the truth of this because she seemed to soften a little. “You live around here?” she asked.

He said he did.

“Can you get home on your own?” When he nodded, she said, “Well, then, git.”

Out in the parking lot, in the space where they’d parked, now empty, Roy vomited up everything, the cherry recognizable in the mess, and immediately felt better. The good news was that the diner was right on Route 9, which meant he could either walk or hitchhike the four miles home. He decided to walk, because it’d take longer and maybe his father would think that was punishment enough. Pushing himself down the busy road, he toyed with the idea of being angry at his father for playing such a low trick on him but decided in the end that it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Besides, it was the waitress he was really mad at, her “I shoulda known” that he wasn’t able to forgive, as if the mere sight of him and his father was warning enough. That and the look she gave him when the man down the counter had taken his side. Like she could see his whole pitiful life stretched out before her, causing him to ball his hands into fists.

Still, it had been a valuable lesson. His father was right: wanting things that weren’t worth wanting or wishing things were different was a waste of time. Women like Cora — all women, probably — could never understand that, even when the evidence was staring them right in the face. Cora had some dumb-ass idea of Roy in her mind that she preferred to Roy himself. No doubt that asshole treated her nice. Told her she was pretty when she could see for herself that she wasn’t. Told her she was a good mom when she probably left the fucking kid alone in his playpen with a full diaper and crying his fucking little eyes out. Dream Roy didn’t stick her with the check. He even shared his meds. Whereas the real Roy? The one sitting with her on the dock? Well, that Roy saw things for true. He knew the steak in the picture wasn’t real, any more than Dream Roy was real. Just as he knew that later this afternoon, after the beer was gone, only one of them would be getting back into Cora’s shit-bucket car.

Though he’d only been twelve, he congratulated himself on not blaming his old man. He hadn’t gone more than half a mile when he heard a horn toot and his father pulled up alongside the curb, motioning for him to get in. “So,” he said, “you learn anything back there?”

Roy nodded.

“All right, then,” his father said. Pulling back into traffic, he seemed satisfied with how everything had worked out. He wasn’t angry anymore, Roy could tell, which meant no belt when they got home.

“She was pretty mad,” Roy said, “that waitress.”

“Maybe next time she’ll mind her own damn business,” his father said. “Think twice before she opens that big, fat mouth of hers.”

They were silent for a while until Roy said, “Everybody stared at me.” In fact, he could still feel their eyes on him as he slid off his stool and moved to the front door and out into the parking lot.

“I bet they did,” his father said. “But here you are. You didn’t die.”

Which was true. There he’d been, and here he still was.

“Pass them Cheetos,” he told Cora. Actually, he kind of liked Cheetos, except they made your fingers all orange.

The bag, he noticed, when she handed it to him, was half empty. She’d gone to town on it when he was in the camp pulling his fucking ear off. He thought about saying something about that, curious to see if he could make her cry one more time, but in the end — again — he decided not to. Instead, he ate a handful of Cheetos. “These aren’t too bad,” he admitted.

She smiled at him, orange lipped.