49 pages • 1 hour read
Everybody's Fool
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Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Dump”
Ruth’s husband, Zack, is an inveterate hoarder who has filled their house and yard with trash. When Ruth first moved into the house, newly married and pregnant, Zack’s mother—also named Ruth—tyrannized her. Ruth nicknamed her mother-in-law “Mother Ruthless.” Even now that the old woman is dead, Ruth still feels her oppressive spirit around the house. Zack, meanwhile, is resigned to Ruth’s relationship with Sully, as long as they are not too brazen and do not attract too much attention. Ruth has recently noticed that she is banging into things more frequently, causing bruising.
Ruth is frustrated with her life and fantasizes about living in a “parallel universe” (125). As she and her husband bicker, they are interrupted by their granddaughter, Tina, who struggles at school and has had multiple eye operations. When Zack leaves to help Tina fix the fan in her room, Ruth allows herself to cry. Roy telephones asking for a lift home from the emergency room. Ruth initially assumes that he has hurt Janey or that Janey injured him while trying to defend herself.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Not Happy”
As the ongoing loss of electricity means that there is no air conditioning at home, Raymer and Jerome order beers in Gert’s Tavern. Raymer tells Jerome that he plans to retire, but Jerome counters that Raymer is merely depressed and adds that he is a good cop. Raymer shows Jerome one of the fliers he printed for his last election. Unable to decide between “We’re not happy until you’re happy” and “If you’re not happy we’re not happy,” he ended up printing cards jumbling the two, reading, “We’re not happy until you’re not happy” (139). Jerome finds the mistake hilarious. Raymer points out that, just as Becka chose him despite being apparently out of his league, the local electorate backed him despite the typos on his campaign materials.
The men start talking about Charice. Raymer immediately stresses her loyalty and her aptitude for hands-on police work. The conversation is interrupted by Charice, who tells Raymer that a cobra is loose in the vicinity, having escaped from a local illegal breeder.
Jerome, who has an extreme fear of snakes, attempts to beat a strategic retreat, only to find that his beloved Mustang has been vandalized. He appears to blame Raymer, who had previously disappeared into the restroom for a long time.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Impulse”
As Roy waits for Ruth, he is happy about his damaged car and broken arm: He anticipates suing the town for damages and selling his painkillers. During his most recent spell in jail, he befriended a seasoned criminal known as Bullwhip, who criticized Roy’s lack of impulse control. Now, to practice patience, Roy has taken to keeping a pay-back list in a notebook: Janey, Ruth, Jerome, Sully, and Beryl Peoples. Recalling his recent encounter with Sully, Roy moves him up to the top spot.
In the car, Ruth offers Roy a bribe to move out of town. They are interrupted by the spectacle of a balding, nearly naked man sprinting past them, followed by shrieks and more people running out of the Morrison Arms, an apartment building. Cora, the woman Roy is currently living with, informs him they are fleeing a snake. Roy takes advantage of the chaos to vandalize Jerome’s Mustang.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Boogie”
Boogie, the man Ruth and Roy saw running past in just his underpants, finally slows to a halt and sits down, becoming aware that his feet are terribly damaged from running on the asphalt, which is littered with broken glass. Police officer Miller confronts Boogie and is bewildered by Boogie’s defense: “They’re not my snakes” (167).
Boogie has been employed for the past few weeks by a mysterious figure going by the name of William Smith to receive regular UPS packages in a room in the Arms in exchange for minimum wage and free beer. Smith instructed him to keep the air-conditioning in the adjoining room turned right up and never to enter. When Boogie became aware that the packages arriving contained snakes, he tried to quit, but was threatened by Smith. As a final resort, Boogie called the police, but the power cut out as soon as he dialed nine. Petrified when he heard something stirring, Boogie accidentally opened the door to the room where the snakes were kept. He saw a cobra, rearing up.
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Two Rubs”
Sully has adopted a stray dog that Rub found the previous winter. The dog is small and mangy and has clearly been traumatized by previous abuse. Sully has named him after Rub; when the two Rubs are together, Sully is often amused to see them both responding to his commands. Sully hears a soft animal sound as he approaches Rub’s house, but cannot understand where it is coming from. There is initially no sign of Rub, but soon Sully finds Rub weeping on a sawn-off tree branch.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Sock Drawer”
The cobra has not been found, so the residents of the Morrison Arms have been temporarily relocated. Raymer is sleeping on the sofa bed in his office when he is awoken by Charice. As Raymer dresses, he has another dizzy spell.
Charice invites Raymer to her house for dinner. On the way there, Raymer stops off at the Arms for a change of clothes. He rummages through his room cautiously, worried he will encounter the snake. As he prepares to leave, he encounters Mr. Hynes, who has refused to take up alternative accommodations.
As Raymer and Charice drive off, he says that he is thinking of leaving the department.
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
The novel juxtaposes different kinds of physical decline by describing increasingly outlandish events making North Bath more unpleasant to live in. Some of the deterioration is gradual: For example, Ruth feels like she is being gradually submerged in the sea of trash being brought home by her husband. The problem has been developing incrementally; its persistence is the result of Zack’s inability to manage his mental illness. Other situations have a more dramatic breaking point. For instance, the rising stench from Carl Roebuck’s building site is also the result of long-term issues: Carl is a scammer who has been allowed to perpetuate his various frauds without being forced to take responsibility. However, Carl’s malfeasance also creates climactic events: a small earthquake that stems from his shoddy building practices cuts electricity to the town and brings down a wall onto Roy’s car. By contrast, the threat suddenly posed by William Smith’s exotic snakes—a deeply unusual problem that could not reasonably have been foreseen—jars the thoroughly unexotic lives of the community. The earthquake and snake infestation are biblically outsized symbols of exponential decline in North Bath. Their appearance reinforces Raymer’s vision of the world as cruelly ironic and bizarre, reinforcing his sense of the futility of his own function and responsibilities within the local community.
Ruth’s desire to escape to a different life in a parallel universe offers another take on the theme of Public and Private Lives. While Ruth imagines herself fleeing, indulging in the fantasy of selfishly breaking away from the needs of her oppressive home, endangered daughter Janey, and challenged granddaughter Tina, Ruth knows that she will never actually abandon her community-minded sense of duty. Her commitment is expressed in her pessimistic yet protective attitude toward Tina—a combination of emotions that has something in common with Sully’s attitudes toward the two Rubs. Sully oscillates between a sense of compassion and responsibility, feeling protective and nurturing toward his vulnerable friend and adopted dog, and also experiencing an impulse to resist such ties, ruthlessly shrugging away the responsibility these relationships impose.
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By Richard Russo
