Dobie parked his Chevette inside the garage. His car sat tilted, like both tires on the driver’s side were flat, but they weren’t. He pushed the button on the plastic remote clipped to his visor. While the overhead door descended, his hand closed over the key in the ignition switch, but he didn’t turn it. He only held his hand there, watching himself in the rear view mirror as the darkness of the door displaced the sunshine behind him on its way down. The narrow mirror reflected one corner of his face. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and puffy cheeks.
The steering wheel pressed against the flab of his stomach. With the flip of a chrome lever, the driver’s seat fell against the back seat, throwing him into a semi-horizontal position. The car’s climate control was set to ‘vent’ and the fan was on ‘high.’ The reclining position allowed him to breathe easier.
Almost immediately the air smelled of the engine’s exhaust. The fumes caused numbness on his tongue and a sting in his throat. He wiped slow at the sweat on his face and rubbed at the moisture that collected in the corner of his eyes, then let his hand stay there, pinching the bridge of his nose. With each breath his nostrils flared wide. The pillows of his chest and stomach puffed out, screaming the buttons on his flannel. He waited for sleep to take him away.
Before it could, he clutched at his forehead. Pain seared deep. Each of his hands pushed out in an attempt to stabilize the sudden and nauseous spin of the car. One hand stopped against the maroon door panel before he moved it down and clutched the pull handle within the arm rest. His other hand grabbed the steering wheel, then reached to the ignition switch and killed the engine. The “Car in Garage” Method, a variation of the garden hose from the tailpipe to the window, wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be peaceful and easy. And Painless. Winged cherubs were supposed to strum harps as he drifted away.
Dobie puked down the front of himself, onto the seat and floor mat. He pushed the door open, leaned out and puked again. Skin clapped against wet concrete when his obese body plopped down to the floor, hands first. Legs and feet hung twisted in the car until he crawled toward the side door and they tumbled out, dragging behind him.
The side door of the garage was locked. The simple task of unlocking the knob and turning it, while sprawled on the floor, nearly proved too much for his oxygen deprived body to handle. He stretched one arm up while steadying it at the elbow with his other hand, popped the lock and swung the door in. On the other side of the wall, he shoved his face into the bright, warm, life-giving air and coughed the carbon monoxide from his lungs. Still on his hands and knees, he crawled to the side of the garage and puked in the grass. His hands, outstretched in front of him, flushed pink and trembled. Dobie tried to stand, his large frame teetered, then tumbled to the ground. Only his sternum cushioned the impact. His tongue, yellowish-white and sandpaper dry, hung over his lip and touched the grass. He lay in the grass around the side of the garage unconscious and unnoticed.
* * *
Dobie pulled open the refrigerator door and leaned in. The light bulb inside seemed too bright. Only a container of cottage cheese, a few days past its expiration date, a partial ring of bologna, a wilted head of lettuce and a six-pack of beer were on the wire racks to absorb the light.
A variety of condiments filled the shelves in the door. Pour bottles of maple syrup, salsa, and barbecue sauce that he stole from some of his favorite restaurant’s dining rooms were packed in next to the nearly empty ketchup bottle, stored upside down to ensure none of it went to waste, and his personal collection of mustards from around the world. A large plastic cup stuffed with single serving sauce packets from various drive thrus stood out on the bottom shelf.
He moaned and the refrigerator rocked as he eased his body down onto one knee, using the door and the edge of the countertop for support. The door rested against his back as he sat on the floor in the warm glow of light. The bologna went first. Dobie tore at it with his teeth, spit out the paper casing and shot mustard into his mouth straight from the squeeze bottle as he chewed. He pushed food into his cheeks when he was ready for the next bite and didn’t want to take the time to swallow just yet. Beads of mustard collected at the corners of his mouth and globs of yellow fell to his plaid flannel shirt. The lettuce was mostly wilted. After pulling the brown and wet outer leaves off, he poured Ranch dressing onto the head and took bites from it like he was eating an apple. When the dressing was slow to pour, he reached up to the sink from his knees and ran some water into the bottle. He grabbed a spoon from the dirty dishes stacked on one side of the sink and returned to his seat on the floor. He shook the dressing bottle, poured it onto the lettuce and ate until he reached the bitter, yellow leaves around the core. Using the dirty spoon, he stirred the cottage cheese and smelled it. His nose wrinkled and a finger pointed at the condiments in the door until he found what he was searching for. He pulled the plastic cover from the can of chocolate syrup and poured it over the cottage cheese. When that was gone he took a drink from the syrup can, leaned back onto his elbows, then flat on his back and covered his face with his hands.
* * *
Dobie mucked out one of the stables when the distinctive green apple fragrance of a shampoo caught his attention. Amanda must have come in. He pulled his wheelbarrow to the front, by the sliding door, and shoveled the same spot over and over. The light was on in the small office at the end of the barn, and he wanted to be sure he would see her when she came out. She would have to walk past him with her blonde hair bouncing and flowing with each step, leaving her scent hovering in the air and penetrating even the stench of the damp and clumped hay he pulled from the stables.
The wide, flat shovel scraped against the same spot. Dobie overturned the empty load onto the pile heaping over the sides of the wheelbarrow while keeping his eyes fixed on the angular beam of light shining from the office into the afternoon shadows of the barn. He pushed the stable door closed just enough to stand behind a portion of it, fooling himself into thinking it would conceal the size of his body.
Amanda clicked the light off as she stepped back into the barn, throwing her into a silhouette of toned muscles and curves. As she emerged from the shadows her hair sparkled in a delicate prism of light. Once again, he wanted to stop her and talk to her and perhaps confess to her that he had been admiring her from afar for years. That the only reason he took the job shoveling shit was to have the chance to be near her again. Since they had graduated from high school, the only time he saw her was during chance encounters around town. That wasn’t enough.
She approached the stable Dobie stood at the front of. But as usual, he didn’t say a word. She smiled politely as she passed and said, “Hello, Toby.”
Dobie tried to speak, but no sound came. All he managed was a quick wave and a dopey smile. Before he knew it she was on her way back to the house when she stopped and chatted with some of the other farm workers gathered outside the double doors on the opposite end of the barn. The group spoke in hushed tones, and then they all laughed. Dobie knew whatever they said that was funny, was about him. He’d been working at the farm for three weeks. In that time none of the other workers stopped to talk to him or thought to invite him to sit with them at lunch or go for a beer after work. Sure, he would have refused their invitations, but they should have at least asked.
Amanda was the only one, other than her father- Doc Cavanaugh, Roosterville’s only veterinarian and owner of the farm, who even said hello. And she didn’t even know his name.
* * *
Dobie hunched over his plate, scraped the last few grains of fried rice onto his chopsticks and poked them into his mouth. Long bangs hung down over his eyes, shielding him from the world around him. He scooted from his booth in the corner, next to the black and white photo of a section of The Great Wall of China, and returned yet again to the steaming tables of the buffet.
Aromas of ginger and garlic wafted through the air around the glass and chrome buffet. The hot stainless steel spoons and tongs maneuvered in his hands with the precision of an artist wielding a paintbrush. Unwanted bits of celery and mushrooms were effortlessly left behind as he scooped from the troughs. His plate was an engineering marvel, piled so high it seemed to defy the laws of physics. A foundation of fried rice held egg rolls Lincoln Logged on one side of the plate and chunks of battered sweet and sour pork and General Tso’s chicken on the other. In between, he solidified the gaps with Peking Ribs, potstickers, Crab Rangoon, and dim sum. A strategically placed ball of a mysterious fried dough helped stabilize the lean of the tower.
Dobie carried a second plate that held bowls of egg drop, hot & sour, and wonton soup, along with a shiny red dipping sauce, soy, duck and orange sauces and two kinds of mustard. Efficiency was the key, maximize the amount of food on the plate and minimize the number of trips back and forth. Eating allowed the escape, not crossing the restaurant under the judgmental eyes of the public around him. Cholesterol, sodium, fat grams, calories, clogged arteries and the possibility of a heart attack by the time he was twenty-one didn’t matter.
Across the dining room in a booth against the wall next to a photo of Tiananmen Square, a group of teenagers, four boys, burst out laughing when Dobie wedged himself between the bench and table of his booth. A roll of his blubber extended onto the table’s surface and pushed his plates as he moved in. Two of the teens tried to cover their mouths and made an attempt to be discreet, to hold the laughter in. The other two didn’t bother. There was no need for Dobie to look and see if they were laughing at him. He knew they were. All of his life he walked just ahead of a cloud of whispers, laughter and fingers pointing in his direction.
Dobie sought out his own comfort to protect him from the cruelties of life. At a very young age he found a friend that would never even notice he was different than the rest of the crowd. One true friend that would never turn his back when he needed a shoulder to cry on. Day after day precious food was there for him with a gentle touch and an understanding ear.
On his fourth trip to the buffet, a few of the restaurant employees gathered in the round windows of the batwing doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room. One spoke in some Asian gibberish and the rest of them laughed. Laughter and ridicule transcended culture. Grown men wearing aprons and paper hats and working in a sweaty kitchen, likely for less than minimum wage, even found humor in the fat guy. Dobie stared at the window. The group of men scattered.
With another plate in each hand, Dobie sat back down, drank shots of pepper steak, smoked a bowl of beef and broccoli, snorted lines of lo mein noodles, and shot up with crab legs and shrimp.
After finishing his food Dobie drank down the last of his Coke, sucking air through a straw from the bottom of his plastic cup. The place piled on the MSG and it always left him parched. He scooted out of the booth and pulled his plaid flannel back on. Whispers floated around those teenagers at the Tiananmen Square table who stared in Dobie’s direction, watching him walk, as if with his next step he would break into a song and dance routine and they didn’t want to miss anything.
“…Sumo Wrestler…”
Dobie ignored them until he reached the door, and as he was about to push the metal bar to open it, he scratched at the back of his head and neck. With a single finger. His middle finger. A salute to the teens. The message was received. Denim squealed as it slid on vinyl. Whispers turned to gasps and moaning and then the laughter of sheer delight. Dobie usually avoided confrontation, and as much interaction with people as possible, but if one of those kids took exception and came out and stuck a knife in his throat or chest and killed him, it would save him the trouble of having to do it himself. He waited. The kids didn’t come after him, but the echoes of their laughter did, stabbing him in the ears, the throat, the chest, the back, and twisted into his stomach.
* * *
Dobie pulled into his brother Ron’s driveway, up the slight hill and all the way to the back by the garage. He parked just in front of one of the twin overhead doors. By the time Dobie eased out from behind the wheel and opened the hatchback of his Chevette, Ron came down the steps of the back porch.
“Dobie! What a surprise. I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow. What brings you out to this neck of the woods?” He was drying his hands on a dish towel that he slung over his shoulder when he finished.
“I have something I want to give Jack and Ben.” Dobie pulled a cardboard box packed with newspaper wrapped bundles from the car.
“Oh no! They’re at Sue’s parents tonight. Her sister had a,” Ron flipped his finger in a circle searching for a word that never came, “thing going on.”
“That’s okay. We can go ahead and set it up for them. Do you still have space in your basement?”
“Space for what? What’s in all these?” Ron poked through the boxes.
“The train set. And the buildings.” The set made an almost exact replica of the city of Roosterville.
“Dobie.” Ron’s surprise made him say Dobie’s name very slow. “No. I mean, the boys would love it, but, you can’t give that away. You’ve been working on that, for what? Five years now?”
“Six actually. But I’m sick of it. If I spend another weekend sitting at home mixing paint, trying to find the exact hue of Forrest Green to match the Casper’s house… I swear I’ll put a bullet in my head.” Dobie hoped for a reaction, but Ron didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t joking.
“Well,” Ron touched a fingertip to his temple, “there’s room down there, but I don’t think we have anything big enough to put all this on.”
“You have some saw horses and a sheet of plywood, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I sure do.”
“Then we’re all set.”
In the basement a slight cloud of smoke hung in the air. A purple, plastic bong was partially tucked behind an old chair.
“Having fun, Ron?” Dobie asked waving at the smoke.
“Yeah, well, you know- while the cat’s away…” Ron shrugged. “Did you want to hit it?”
“No thanks.”
Dobie and Ron smoothed a sheet of green felt over the makeshift plywood table, surrounded by the cinder block walls and pipes mounted to the joists in the ceiling. They unwrapped the newspapers off the buildings. There were several houses, a couple of churches, two schools, each painted to appear to be made out of bricks, and every one of the downtown businesses.
“Dob, wow. I’ve never seen some of these.” He held one of the school buildings and examined it. “You’ve really put a lot of effort into this. How did you do these Venetian blinds in the windows?” Ron ran the edge of his fingernail against the Plexiglas of one of the windows.
Dobie looked at the piece Ron held. He thought for a second, “I painted that one.”
Ron twisted the building, bobbing his head each time he counted another window. “That must’ve taken you a whole day.”
“Two and half days, actually.” Dobie set up the old train depot that was converted into a restaurant back before even Ron was born. The building stood next to the house Dobie currently rented.
“You don’t do anything half way do you?”
“You know me. Do it right, or don’t do it all.”
Ron looked over the models and wiped his hand across his mouth. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Dobie didn’t look up from the train tracks he locked together.
“Okay, I just want to make sure, especially before the boys see it, once they see it, it would be really-”
“Ron, I said, ‘I’m sure.’ Okay?”
“As long as you’re sure.” Ron set the school model down approximately where it should stand in relation to the depot. “I’m glad you stopped by.”
“Don’t worry about it, I can still come over and play with it with the boys if the mood strikes me.”
“Sure. Right. But, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
Dobie sensed hesitation in Ron’s voice. “What?” Dobie tilted his head to prepare for the answer.
“Um. Tomorrow, at the ride, I wanted to introduce you to one of my co-workers. I thought the two of you would make good fr-”
“Ronald. I swear, sometimes I think you’re a girl.” Dobie moved the models around the track, no longer handling them delicately. “What makes you think I need you to play matchmaker for me?” Dobie bit on his lower lip and pushed his hair from his eyes.
“Just relax. It’s not like that. I just happened to mention to Laura, who I work with, that my little brother started working at Doc Cavanaugh’s farm since the last time we took the kids out there for their rides. We were filling out next month’s calendar of activities, we have to make sure we can get the buses with the wheelchair lifts, and she just started asking questions.”
“Damn it. That’s even worse. She’s going to have her hopes all built up that I’m Prince Fucking Charming. How am I supposed to live up to that? She’ll have all these fairy tale notions that she’s going to meet some great guy. She’ll take one look at all this,” he rubbed a hand on his stomach and made it jiggle. “And she’ll run screaming in the other direction.”
“Dobe, she’s not going to run.”
“I’ve been repelling women since birth. Trust me, she’ll run. You better stay out of the way, because she’ll plow right over your scrawny ass.” Ron was thinner than Dobie, but no one else would consider him scrawny.
“Will you just meet her? You’ll be working there anyway. She and I will be taking care of the kids. I shouldn’t have even said anything.”
“Oh great, I’ll have mucked out six stables by the time you get there. I’ll reek of horse shit. That’ll be a great time to meet a new friend.” Dobie shook his head. “Anyway, I’ll be up in the stables, I don’t go out to the fields or the track.”
“Do you want me to tell her you’re not interested?”
“Yes. Not interested. No interest what so ever. Besides, I...” Dobie held up his hands for a second, then let them drop.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
A slow, sympathetic smile came across Ron’s face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You were going to say something about Amanda weren’t you?”
“No.” Dobie looked at the toe of his boot.
“You’re a fucking liar. When are you going to stop torturing yourself over that broad?”
Dobie stared at the ground.
“Don’t you think it’s time to face facts? She’s engaged, Dobie. When you had this secret crush when you were sixteen, it was a little cute. Mostly sad, but a little cute. But now that you’re twenty,” Ron shook his head, “and you’re still carrying a torch for her…” Ron didn’t finish his thought. “Do you ever even talk to her?”
“No.”
* * *
Dobie sat in his Chevette scraping the last stubborn streaks of peanut butter from the edges of a jar. He licked the plastic spoon as he stared at the wave design formed by the neon lights that ran the perimeter along the back wall of the movie theatre next door. His car was parked in the side grocery store lot facing the rear parking lot of the movie theatre. Inside a plastic shopping bag on the passenger seat, sat the dry and cold bones of a rotisserie chicken from the grocery deli counter along with a pile of wadded napkins and wet naps. Dobie added the empty jar and the spoon to the bag.
Thursday nights were Bargain Night at the theatre. Amanda and her fiancé Joe went almost every week. Dobie sat and watched them leave almost every week too. He’d become so efficient at watching the ages, genders and body language of the groups of people as they exited the theatres, he could tell which of the movies they had seen. He alternated between checking the clock on his dashboard and the theatre doors. The earliest movie, the romantic comedy, should be letting out. If Amanda and Joe saw that one, they’d come out the door all the way down on the right. They usually walked out holding hands or with the arms around each other’s waist and shoulders when they saw the romantic ones. Dobie had a pretty good idea what they did in the time between when they went back to Joe’s place and when he drove her home for the night.
Dobie took the peanut butter jar and spoon back out of his trash bag, resumed scraping at the edge and licked off what he could manage to get out. He eyed the movie start times in the newspaper one more time. If they saw the science fiction movie or the action flick, they’d come out either the middle door or down on the left by the hardware store. Amanda almost never cuddled up close to him when they came out of those. She usually looked somewhere between bored and relieved when they came out of those movies. And some of those times they might get ice cream or make a stop at the bowling alley when their friends were in the leagues or tournaments. And best of all, when they saw the science fiction movies, sometimes Joe dropped her straight home without the stop at his place.
Down on the right, where the romantic movie played, people started coming out the door. First were four teenage girls, laughing and gushing. After them came couples of various ages, most seemed older, probably married. Almost all of them assumed that same intertwined walk that Amanda and Joe used. The men opened car doors for women and one by one the cars drove away. The theatre door remained closed for several minutes. Just when a spark of hope started to build inside of Dobie, Amanda and Joe came out, walking close and slow. He watched them walk all the way to the orange Mustang. Amanda leaned over and kissed Joe.
* * *
Dobie sat on the edge of his bed holding a .38 revolver to his temple.
“No. Not there. The bullet might ricochet off your skull and come out your eye. Then you’ll just be a pathetic, half blind, half deaf failure. The only ones who fail at suicide are the ones who want to fail. Fuck that ‘Cry For Help’ bullshit.” He spoke to himself as if he stood outside of his body. As if he wasn’t the person holding the gun.
He moved the barrel under his chin.
“Shoot there and you might just give yourself brain damage, maybe put yourself in a coma. Or you could live at The Butterfly House with the speds and tards. And Ron can wipe your ass for you and take you on monthly excursions to ride the horses you used to clean up after. That would only make things worse than they already are. Or maybe you’d just lose your lower jaw, and you’d never eat solid food again. What a twist of fate that would be.”
He put the barrel in his mouth. Squeezed his eyes shut and gave a quick wipe to his brow. The metal clicked against his teeth and left a film of oil on his tongue.
“That will do it. You’ll never live through blowing off the back of your head. Even if you live through the bullet exiting, which you won’t, you’ll bleed out. And you’ll leave a nice spray of blood, and brain matter, and skull fragments down Mr. Kranich’s wall.”
“What a nice way to repay him for allowing me to pay the rent late last month.” He spoke as Dobie to his other self, “Your bloated and rotted corpse could lay here, dead for weeks, before anyone noticed you were gone. Mr. Kranich would never get your stench, or the fluids that would leak out of you, out of the walls and carpet. No one would ever rent this place again. It would sit here empty. And you know people would drive by. Losers packed into their cars with nothing to do on a Friday night would say, ‘Let’s go by that place where that fat fuck swallowed a bullet.’ He’d probably have to tear the place down.”
Dobie just sat there.
“Go ahead and pull the trigger, you fucking pussy. What are you waiting for? You’ve got your own problems to solve. Who gives a flying fuck about what’s going to happen to Kranich? That fucker’s got more money than he knows what do with anyway.”
“Do it right, or don’t do it all.” Dobie took the gun out of his mouth and wiped away the spit that ran down his chin. “What about tomorrow? Who’s going to get the horses ready for the kids? I’m going to do this,” he looked at the gun, “but I’m not going to leave any loose strings, and I’m not going to fuck things up for someone else. I’ll go to work tomorrow and get the horses ready. he Butterfly speds and retards will come out with Ron and what’s-her-name. I’ll just have to leave the horses extra food. Cavanaugh and the rest of those bastards won’t notice I haven’t been there until the mares are all knee deep in their own shit and ready to knock the walls down because they haven’t eaten. But they’ll be fine. There are plenty of people to take care of them.
“Tomorrow I’ll come home and do this thing right. In the car. In the garage. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Clean and tidy. No loose strings. Even if no one finds me for weeks, I’ll only ruin the car. And that piece of shit is about ready for the scrap pile anyway.”
“But it’s still Mr. Kranich’s garage.”
“So, maybe he has to knock it down. At least he’ll still be able to rent out the house… Tomorrow. I just need to figure out how to keep the body from overriding the mind’s decision this time. I don’t want to crawl out of the garage puking on myself again, do you?”
Dobie put the gun back in his lock box, laid down in bed and stared at the ceiling.
“How are you going to keep yourself from bailing out this time?”
* * *
Dobie walked into the barn. The light was on in the office and the aroma of green apples hung in the air. Dobie closed his eyes and breathed in deep before he went into his routine of mucking out the stables and hauling the soiled hay to the compost pile out behind the far shed. After he finished the first stable, Amanda came over to him holding a plastic tub. His heart began to pound as she approached.
“Toby, you know the special kids are coming today, right?”
“Y- y-yes, I was just talking to Ron about that yesterday.” Dobie eyed her chest, hoping it seemed he was looking at the tub.
“Good. One of the measures we take to keep everyone safe, the kids and the horses, is to administer some naturally soothing herbal supplements to the horses. So when you feed them today I need you to sprinkle one scoop of this powder onto their feed.” She handed the tub, labeled QUIETEX, to Dobie.
Dobie opened the lid on the tub of powder. A small scoop was inside. “Okay.”
“We’ll bring the horses outside an hour or two before the kids are supposed to get here and if any of them are still acting a little feisty, we’ll give them this.” She held up a syringe with the same label as the powder.
“Is that a tranquilizer?” Dobie asked. He leaned closer to her and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. He closed his eyes in wonder.
“Sort of,” Amanda started. Dobie’s eyes pinged open and he stepped back when he remembered where he was. “It’s natural and herbal. It’s made from Valerian Root. The same thing Valium is made from. There’s no needle,” she showed him the tip of the syringe, “it’s a paste that they eat, not an injection.”
Dobie went back to cleaning the stables. When Amanda left the barn Dobie slipped into the office. A desk stood on one side of the room. A stainless steel table, like the ones in most doctors’ examining rooms, was in the center. Doc Cavanaugh did emergency treatments for people’s pets in the office. The wall opposite the desk looked like a mini-kitchen. Several cabinets were mounted on the wall, and a dorm room refrigerator, stainless steel counter, sink, more cabinets and drawers were below the counter.
Dobie went to the doorway and checked to see if anyone was coming. The barn was a ghost town. One by one he opened the cupboards looking for more of the plastic tubs like Amanda handed him earlier. The last cabinet was locked.
In the top, center drawer of Doc Cavanaugh’s desk, Dobie found three small keys held together by a paper clip. One by one he poked them at the keyhole, on the third try the round silver key slipped all the way in and unlocked the cupboard. A thin cardboard box holding several of the syringes, each individually boxed and sealed in shrink-wrap, and the plastic tubs were lined on the shelf.
Dobie grabbed one syringe. As he was closing the cabinet, he saw a row of small glass vials behind the QUIETEX. Ketamine hydrochloride. Of course. Special K. He took a vial of Ketamine and put the syringe of QUIETEX paste back and continued rooting through the drawers until he found a hypodermic syringe with a small needle.
Problem solved. He locked the cabinet, returned the keys, and got the hell out of the office. All he had to do was make sure no one saw him holding it. Dobie wouldn’t care about getting fired, but if Doc found it on him and took it from him he’d be back to square one. He pulled off his flannel, put the vial and syringe in the chest pocket, folded the shirt over itself to seal the pocket, then tucked the wadded shirt onto the corner shelf next to the faucets.
* * *
Dobie brushed a mare as she stuffed her head into the bucket of water.
“Don’t tell anyone, but this is my last day. The Cavanaughs don’t know it yet, so don’t let the cat out of the bag--” footsteps coming into the barn interrupted Dobie. He stepped behind the horse and looked through the open front of the stable to see who was coming.
It was his brother Ron and he was pushing a wheelchair over the lip of the barn floor. Dobie cowered down, hoping to go unnoticed. A crowd of children, some in wheelchairs, some with braces on their arms and legs and some who didn’t look any different than average kids gathered in the middle of the barn, between the stables that faced each other. The horses neighed and the kids marveled at their brawn and grace.
Ron poked his head into the stable Dobie was in. “Hello?” He called to Dobie.
Dobie could see that Ron saw him. He grabbed the broom leaning against the wall and came from behind Peggy to the stable door. He stood with the broom in front of himself and gave an awkward wave to the kids who were too busy looking at the horses to notice him.
Ron spoke to the group, “I’d like to introduce my brother. This is Dobie, he is one of the workers who helps take care of the horses.” Ron turned to Dobie, “Can you tell us a little about what you do?”
Dobie bit down on his lip pretending to smile and fought the urge to punch Ron for putting him on the spot. “Sure. I…I…” Dobie stammered. “I have to make sure the horses have a nice place to spend their time. A clean and dry stable.” The kids looked around and at the horses, but not at Dobie. He felt invisible for the first time in his life. Dobie spoke easier. “And that they have enough to eat and drink. And that they get exercise and groomed.” He held up the brush that strapped to his hand on demonstrated its use on Peggy’s front shoulder.
The young girl in the wheelchair, in front of Ron, raised her hand. It made Dobie laugh a little to himself to see her with her hand in the air, waiting for his permission to speak.
“Hi. Do you have a question?”
“Yes. What is that horse’s name?”
“This one is Peggy.” Dobie petted the tuft of white hair on her otherwise brown head. “That’s short for Pegamento.”
The girl pointed at one of the other horses.
“That one is Colle.” Dobie pointed around to the other stables in the barn. “And she is Kleber. And Kit. And Klister. And down there on the end is Lim. These horses are all called mares. That means they are all girls who are at least four years old.” Dobie stood there smiling, proud of his job for the first time since he began working there.
Ron moved the group along telling them Dobie had a lot of work to do. As they made their way out of the barn one of the wheelchair bound came toward Dobie. She was an adult. And beautiful. Her auburn hair flowed down past her shoulders and she had a smile that belonged in toothpaste commercials.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dobie. Ron has told me a lot about you.”
“Oh.” Dobie’s mind was busy for a few seconds as he remembered how to speak. “Right, you’re L-Laura?”
“Right.” She flashed that smile at him again and reached out and touched his hand. “I’ll let you get back to work. Are you going to be down at the track when you’re finished here?”
“I usually just work up here,” Dobie said obliviously.
“Okay. Well, I’ll see you around then.” She caught up to the rest of the group.
Laughter came from outside the barn on the opposite end. Dagger laughter. The damn workers from the other barns had been standing there watching him the entire time.
* * *
Dobie patted the Ketamine and the syringe tucked into his flannel as he made his way down the hill to his car where it was parked next to the two big yellow buses. He went out the backside of the barn and walked the long way around to where his car was parked to try to avoid being seen by Ron and the rest of the Butterfly gang.
The time was right. He could end it. The kids were riding. The horses were taken care of. No loose strings left behind. Once he took the Ketamine there would be no crawling out. He still might puke, but he wouldn’t know it. He might even go out Rock Star Style, choking to death in his own vomit. The Ketamine itself might even kill him, and if it didn’t, then the fumes would. All the bases were covered.
He put his flannel on the passenger seat, started his car and shifted into reverse. All he had to do was get into the garage, give himself an injection and all his troubles would drift away.
“Dobie!” It was Ron. He ran at Dobie. “Dobie! Wait!” He held out a hand.
Dobie shifted back into neutral and lifted his eyebrows to Ron.
“We need your help.” Ron doubled over, breathing heavy.
“I’ve got plans.”
“Can you put them on hold? Please?”
* * *
Dobie helped Laura on the platform next to the track. They moved the kids from their wheelchairs onto the specially designed saddles for the physically challenged. Some cried and wouldn’t let them take them from their chairs.
Dobie smiled as he lifted a girl out of the saddle after her turn who could not stop giggling.
“I’ll be the first to admit that being in a wheelchair really gives you a new perspective on people.” Laura strapped the girl into her regular wheelchair. “Just when I thought I had my whole life planned out, the horse I was riding got spooked. I have no idea what it was that set him off, but the next thing I new I was falling off backwards. I landed on my head and never walked again.”
“That’s what put you in the chair? And you still spend time around horses?” Dobie asked.
“It took me a while to come back around, but you know what they say. If you fall off the horse, you got to get back on.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine. It… Wow…” Dobie shook his head, knowing he sounded like an imbecile.
“It took me two years to accept the fact that I’m never going to walk. I told the doctors I was going to be a miracle of medicine. I told them that for two years. But it only took my fiancé at the time two weeks to run screaming in the other direction.”
Dobie and Laura strapped a young boy into the saddle.
His arms randomly raised and lowered and twisted around each other and over his head. His mouth opened and closed as it saw fit. When Dobie and Laura backed away, his face contorted. He looked stressed. Worried. Laura reached out a hand, to start unbuckling him, but he wouldn’t let her. He was scared, but he wanted to ride.
On the ground below Amanda led the horse away and around the track. That boy squealed with delight. All the way around the track. All of the kids on the horses laughed as they rode and laughed as they watched the others ride. Warm laughter floated all around the track. Dobie stood there, mostly watching both Amanda and Laura, and closed his eyes as he just listened to the sound of the kids laughing.
* * *
The kids sat on the buses waiting to go back to the Butterfly house. Ron helped Laura onto the chair lift and waved to Dobie. The door closed and after a few minutes the bus began to pull away. Dobie watched in the dust kicked up by the bus’ tires. A spattering of hands lifted and waved in the windows, making Dobie laugh out loud as he walked over to his car. Between the barn and the track, Amanda walked up the hill, carrying a saddle.
Before he climbed into his car Dobie reached for his flannel as he watched both Amanda and the bus that Laura was somewhere inside of. He put on his flannel, ready to leave, when an unnatural weight to it touched his chest and kept it from hanging on him straight. Confused, his hand reached into his pocket and the hour old memories crashed over him as he pulled out the Ketamine. Dobie stood there watching the bus shrinking in the distance, and Amanda about to disappear inside the barn and clenched his hand tight over the vial.
The steering wheel pressed against the flab of his stomach. With the flip of a chrome lever, the driver’s seat fell against the back seat, throwing him into a semi-horizontal position. The car’s climate control was set to ‘vent’ and the fan was on ‘high.’ The reclining position allowed him to breathe easier.
Almost immediately the air smelled of the engine’s exhaust. The fumes caused numbness on his tongue and a sting in his throat. He wiped slow at the sweat on his face and rubbed at the moisture that collected in the corner of his eyes, then let his hand stay there, pinching the bridge of his nose. With each breath his nostrils flared wide. The pillows of his chest and stomach puffed out, screaming the buttons on his flannel. He waited for sleep to take him away.
Before it could, he clutched at his forehead. Pain seared deep. Each of his hands pushed out in an attempt to stabilize the sudden and nauseous spin of the car. One hand stopped against the maroon door panel before he moved it down and clutched the pull handle within the arm rest. His other hand grabbed the steering wheel, then reached to the ignition switch and killed the engine. The “Car in Garage” Method, a variation of the garden hose from the tailpipe to the window, wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be peaceful and easy. And Painless. Winged cherubs were supposed to strum harps as he drifted away.
Dobie puked down the front of himself, onto the seat and floor mat. He pushed the door open, leaned out and puked again. Skin clapped against wet concrete when his obese body plopped down to the floor, hands first. Legs and feet hung twisted in the car until he crawled toward the side door and they tumbled out, dragging behind him.
The side door of the garage was locked. The simple task of unlocking the knob and turning it, while sprawled on the floor, nearly proved too much for his oxygen deprived body to handle. He stretched one arm up while steadying it at the elbow with his other hand, popped the lock and swung the door in. On the other side of the wall, he shoved his face into the bright, warm, life-giving air and coughed the carbon monoxide from his lungs. Still on his hands and knees, he crawled to the side of the garage and puked in the grass. His hands, outstretched in front of him, flushed pink and trembled. Dobie tried to stand, his large frame teetered, then tumbled to the ground. Only his sternum cushioned the impact. His tongue, yellowish-white and sandpaper dry, hung over his lip and touched the grass. He lay in the grass around the side of the garage unconscious and unnoticed.
* * *
Dobie pulled open the refrigerator door and leaned in. The light bulb inside seemed too bright. Only a container of cottage cheese, a few days past its expiration date, a partial ring of bologna, a wilted head of lettuce and a six-pack of beer were on the wire racks to absorb the light.
A variety of condiments filled the shelves in the door. Pour bottles of maple syrup, salsa, and barbecue sauce that he stole from some of his favorite restaurant’s dining rooms were packed in next to the nearly empty ketchup bottle, stored upside down to ensure none of it went to waste, and his personal collection of mustards from around the world. A large plastic cup stuffed with single serving sauce packets from various drive thrus stood out on the bottom shelf.
He moaned and the refrigerator rocked as he eased his body down onto one knee, using the door and the edge of the countertop for support. The door rested against his back as he sat on the floor in the warm glow of light. The bologna went first. Dobie tore at it with his teeth, spit out the paper casing and shot mustard into his mouth straight from the squeeze bottle as he chewed. He pushed food into his cheeks when he was ready for the next bite and didn’t want to take the time to swallow just yet. Beads of mustard collected at the corners of his mouth and globs of yellow fell to his plaid flannel shirt. The lettuce was mostly wilted. After pulling the brown and wet outer leaves off, he poured Ranch dressing onto the head and took bites from it like he was eating an apple. When the dressing was slow to pour, he reached up to the sink from his knees and ran some water into the bottle. He grabbed a spoon from the dirty dishes stacked on one side of the sink and returned to his seat on the floor. He shook the dressing bottle, poured it onto the lettuce and ate until he reached the bitter, yellow leaves around the core. Using the dirty spoon, he stirred the cottage cheese and smelled it. His nose wrinkled and a finger pointed at the condiments in the door until he found what he was searching for. He pulled the plastic cover from the can of chocolate syrup and poured it over the cottage cheese. When that was gone he took a drink from the syrup can, leaned back onto his elbows, then flat on his back and covered his face with his hands.
* * *
Dobie mucked out one of the stables when the distinctive green apple fragrance of a shampoo caught his attention. Amanda must have come in. He pulled his wheelbarrow to the front, by the sliding door, and shoveled the same spot over and over. The light was on in the small office at the end of the barn, and he wanted to be sure he would see her when she came out. She would have to walk past him with her blonde hair bouncing and flowing with each step, leaving her scent hovering in the air and penetrating even the stench of the damp and clumped hay he pulled from the stables.
The wide, flat shovel scraped against the same spot. Dobie overturned the empty load onto the pile heaping over the sides of the wheelbarrow while keeping his eyes fixed on the angular beam of light shining from the office into the afternoon shadows of the barn. He pushed the stable door closed just enough to stand behind a portion of it, fooling himself into thinking it would conceal the size of his body.
Amanda clicked the light off as she stepped back into the barn, throwing her into a silhouette of toned muscles and curves. As she emerged from the shadows her hair sparkled in a delicate prism of light. Once again, he wanted to stop her and talk to her and perhaps confess to her that he had been admiring her from afar for years. That the only reason he took the job shoveling shit was to have the chance to be near her again. Since they had graduated from high school, the only time he saw her was during chance encounters around town. That wasn’t enough.
She approached the stable Dobie stood at the front of. But as usual, he didn’t say a word. She smiled politely as she passed and said, “Hello, Toby.”
Dobie tried to speak, but no sound came. All he managed was a quick wave and a dopey smile. Before he knew it she was on her way back to the house when she stopped and chatted with some of the other farm workers gathered outside the double doors on the opposite end of the barn. The group spoke in hushed tones, and then they all laughed. Dobie knew whatever they said that was funny, was about him. He’d been working at the farm for three weeks. In that time none of the other workers stopped to talk to him or thought to invite him to sit with them at lunch or go for a beer after work. Sure, he would have refused their invitations, but they should have at least asked.
Amanda was the only one, other than her father- Doc Cavanaugh, Roosterville’s only veterinarian and owner of the farm, who even said hello. And she didn’t even know his name.
* * *
Dobie hunched over his plate, scraped the last few grains of fried rice onto his chopsticks and poked them into his mouth. Long bangs hung down over his eyes, shielding him from the world around him. He scooted from his booth in the corner, next to the black and white photo of a section of The Great Wall of China, and returned yet again to the steaming tables of the buffet.
Aromas of ginger and garlic wafted through the air around the glass and chrome buffet. The hot stainless steel spoons and tongs maneuvered in his hands with the precision of an artist wielding a paintbrush. Unwanted bits of celery and mushrooms were effortlessly left behind as he scooped from the troughs. His plate was an engineering marvel, piled so high it seemed to defy the laws of physics. A foundation of fried rice held egg rolls Lincoln Logged on one side of the plate and chunks of battered sweet and sour pork and General Tso’s chicken on the other. In between, he solidified the gaps with Peking Ribs, potstickers, Crab Rangoon, and dim sum. A strategically placed ball of a mysterious fried dough helped stabilize the lean of the tower.
Dobie carried a second plate that held bowls of egg drop, hot & sour, and wonton soup, along with a shiny red dipping sauce, soy, duck and orange sauces and two kinds of mustard. Efficiency was the key, maximize the amount of food on the plate and minimize the number of trips back and forth. Eating allowed the escape, not crossing the restaurant under the judgmental eyes of the public around him. Cholesterol, sodium, fat grams, calories, clogged arteries and the possibility of a heart attack by the time he was twenty-one didn’t matter.
Across the dining room in a booth against the wall next to a photo of Tiananmen Square, a group of teenagers, four boys, burst out laughing when Dobie wedged himself between the bench and table of his booth. A roll of his blubber extended onto the table’s surface and pushed his plates as he moved in. Two of the teens tried to cover their mouths and made an attempt to be discreet, to hold the laughter in. The other two didn’t bother. There was no need for Dobie to look and see if they were laughing at him. He knew they were. All of his life he walked just ahead of a cloud of whispers, laughter and fingers pointing in his direction.
Dobie sought out his own comfort to protect him from the cruelties of life. At a very young age he found a friend that would never even notice he was different than the rest of the crowd. One true friend that would never turn his back when he needed a shoulder to cry on. Day after day precious food was there for him with a gentle touch and an understanding ear.
On his fourth trip to the buffet, a few of the restaurant employees gathered in the round windows of the batwing doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room. One spoke in some Asian gibberish and the rest of them laughed. Laughter and ridicule transcended culture. Grown men wearing aprons and paper hats and working in a sweaty kitchen, likely for less than minimum wage, even found humor in the fat guy. Dobie stared at the window. The group of men scattered.
With another plate in each hand, Dobie sat back down, drank shots of pepper steak, smoked a bowl of beef and broccoli, snorted lines of lo mein noodles, and shot up with crab legs and shrimp.
After finishing his food Dobie drank down the last of his Coke, sucking air through a straw from the bottom of his plastic cup. The place piled on the MSG and it always left him parched. He scooted out of the booth and pulled his plaid flannel back on. Whispers floated around those teenagers at the Tiananmen Square table who stared in Dobie’s direction, watching him walk, as if with his next step he would break into a song and dance routine and they didn’t want to miss anything.
“…Sumo Wrestler…”
Dobie ignored them until he reached the door, and as he was about to push the metal bar to open it, he scratched at the back of his head and neck. With a single finger. His middle finger. A salute to the teens. The message was received. Denim squealed as it slid on vinyl. Whispers turned to gasps and moaning and then the laughter of sheer delight. Dobie usually avoided confrontation, and as much interaction with people as possible, but if one of those kids took exception and came out and stuck a knife in his throat or chest and killed him, it would save him the trouble of having to do it himself. He waited. The kids didn’t come after him, but the echoes of their laughter did, stabbing him in the ears, the throat, the chest, the back, and twisted into his stomach.
* * *
Dobie pulled into his brother Ron’s driveway, up the slight hill and all the way to the back by the garage. He parked just in front of one of the twin overhead doors. By the time Dobie eased out from behind the wheel and opened the hatchback of his Chevette, Ron came down the steps of the back porch.
“Dobie! What a surprise. I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow. What brings you out to this neck of the woods?” He was drying his hands on a dish towel that he slung over his shoulder when he finished.
“I have something I want to give Jack and Ben.” Dobie pulled a cardboard box packed with newspaper wrapped bundles from the car.
“Oh no! They’re at Sue’s parents tonight. Her sister had a,” Ron flipped his finger in a circle searching for a word that never came, “thing going on.”
“That’s okay. We can go ahead and set it up for them. Do you still have space in your basement?”
“Space for what? What’s in all these?” Ron poked through the boxes.
“The train set. And the buildings.” The set made an almost exact replica of the city of Roosterville.
“Dobie.” Ron’s surprise made him say Dobie’s name very slow. “No. I mean, the boys would love it, but, you can’t give that away. You’ve been working on that, for what? Five years now?”
“Six actually. But I’m sick of it. If I spend another weekend sitting at home mixing paint, trying to find the exact hue of Forrest Green to match the Casper’s house… I swear I’ll put a bullet in my head.” Dobie hoped for a reaction, but Ron didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t joking.
“Well,” Ron touched a fingertip to his temple, “there’s room down there, but I don’t think we have anything big enough to put all this on.”
“You have some saw horses and a sheet of plywood, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I sure do.”
“Then we’re all set.”
In the basement a slight cloud of smoke hung in the air. A purple, plastic bong was partially tucked behind an old chair.
“Having fun, Ron?” Dobie asked waving at the smoke.
“Yeah, well, you know- while the cat’s away…” Ron shrugged. “Did you want to hit it?”
“No thanks.”
Dobie and Ron smoothed a sheet of green felt over the makeshift plywood table, surrounded by the cinder block walls and pipes mounted to the joists in the ceiling. They unwrapped the newspapers off the buildings. There were several houses, a couple of churches, two schools, each painted to appear to be made out of bricks, and every one of the downtown businesses.
“Dob, wow. I’ve never seen some of these.” He held one of the school buildings and examined it. “You’ve really put a lot of effort into this. How did you do these Venetian blinds in the windows?” Ron ran the edge of his fingernail against the Plexiglas of one of the windows.
Dobie looked at the piece Ron held. He thought for a second, “I painted that one.”
Ron twisted the building, bobbing his head each time he counted another window. “That must’ve taken you a whole day.”
“Two and half days, actually.” Dobie set up the old train depot that was converted into a restaurant back before even Ron was born. The building stood next to the house Dobie currently rented.
“You don’t do anything half way do you?”
“You know me. Do it right, or don’t do it all.”
Ron looked over the models and wiped his hand across his mouth. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Dobie didn’t look up from the train tracks he locked together.
“Okay, I just want to make sure, especially before the boys see it, once they see it, it would be really-”
“Ron, I said, ‘I’m sure.’ Okay?”
“As long as you’re sure.” Ron set the school model down approximately where it should stand in relation to the depot. “I’m glad you stopped by.”
“Don’t worry about it, I can still come over and play with it with the boys if the mood strikes me.”
“Sure. Right. But, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
Dobie sensed hesitation in Ron’s voice. “What?” Dobie tilted his head to prepare for the answer.
“Um. Tomorrow, at the ride, I wanted to introduce you to one of my co-workers. I thought the two of you would make good fr-”
“Ronald. I swear, sometimes I think you’re a girl.” Dobie moved the models around the track, no longer handling them delicately. “What makes you think I need you to play matchmaker for me?” Dobie bit on his lower lip and pushed his hair from his eyes.
“Just relax. It’s not like that. I just happened to mention to Laura, who I work with, that my little brother started working at Doc Cavanaugh’s farm since the last time we took the kids out there for their rides. We were filling out next month’s calendar of activities, we have to make sure we can get the buses with the wheelchair lifts, and she just started asking questions.”
“Damn it. That’s even worse. She’s going to have her hopes all built up that I’m Prince Fucking Charming. How am I supposed to live up to that? She’ll have all these fairy tale notions that she’s going to meet some great guy. She’ll take one look at all this,” he rubbed a hand on his stomach and made it jiggle. “And she’ll run screaming in the other direction.”
“Dobe, she’s not going to run.”
“I’ve been repelling women since birth. Trust me, she’ll run. You better stay out of the way, because she’ll plow right over your scrawny ass.” Ron was thinner than Dobie, but no one else would consider him scrawny.
“Will you just meet her? You’ll be working there anyway. She and I will be taking care of the kids. I shouldn’t have even said anything.”
“Oh great, I’ll have mucked out six stables by the time you get there. I’ll reek of horse shit. That’ll be a great time to meet a new friend.” Dobie shook his head. “Anyway, I’ll be up in the stables, I don’t go out to the fields or the track.”
“Do you want me to tell her you’re not interested?”
“Yes. Not interested. No interest what so ever. Besides, I...” Dobie held up his hands for a second, then let them drop.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
A slow, sympathetic smile came across Ron’s face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You were going to say something about Amanda weren’t you?”
“No.” Dobie looked at the toe of his boot.
“You’re a fucking liar. When are you going to stop torturing yourself over that broad?”
Dobie stared at the ground.
“Don’t you think it’s time to face facts? She’s engaged, Dobie. When you had this secret crush when you were sixteen, it was a little cute. Mostly sad, but a little cute. But now that you’re twenty,” Ron shook his head, “and you’re still carrying a torch for her…” Ron didn’t finish his thought. “Do you ever even talk to her?”
“No.”
* * *
Dobie sat in his Chevette scraping the last stubborn streaks of peanut butter from the edges of a jar. He licked the plastic spoon as he stared at the wave design formed by the neon lights that ran the perimeter along the back wall of the movie theatre next door. His car was parked in the side grocery store lot facing the rear parking lot of the movie theatre. Inside a plastic shopping bag on the passenger seat, sat the dry and cold bones of a rotisserie chicken from the grocery deli counter along with a pile of wadded napkins and wet naps. Dobie added the empty jar and the spoon to the bag.
Thursday nights were Bargain Night at the theatre. Amanda and her fiancé Joe went almost every week. Dobie sat and watched them leave almost every week too. He’d become so efficient at watching the ages, genders and body language of the groups of people as they exited the theatres, he could tell which of the movies they had seen. He alternated between checking the clock on his dashboard and the theatre doors. The earliest movie, the romantic comedy, should be letting out. If Amanda and Joe saw that one, they’d come out the door all the way down on the right. They usually walked out holding hands or with the arms around each other’s waist and shoulders when they saw the romantic ones. Dobie had a pretty good idea what they did in the time between when they went back to Joe’s place and when he drove her home for the night.
Dobie took the peanut butter jar and spoon back out of his trash bag, resumed scraping at the edge and licked off what he could manage to get out. He eyed the movie start times in the newspaper one more time. If they saw the science fiction movie or the action flick, they’d come out either the middle door or down on the left by the hardware store. Amanda almost never cuddled up close to him when they came out of those. She usually looked somewhere between bored and relieved when they came out of those movies. And some of those times they might get ice cream or make a stop at the bowling alley when their friends were in the leagues or tournaments. And best of all, when they saw the science fiction movies, sometimes Joe dropped her straight home without the stop at his place.
Down on the right, where the romantic movie played, people started coming out the door. First were four teenage girls, laughing and gushing. After them came couples of various ages, most seemed older, probably married. Almost all of them assumed that same intertwined walk that Amanda and Joe used. The men opened car doors for women and one by one the cars drove away. The theatre door remained closed for several minutes. Just when a spark of hope started to build inside of Dobie, Amanda and Joe came out, walking close and slow. He watched them walk all the way to the orange Mustang. Amanda leaned over and kissed Joe.
* * *
Dobie sat on the edge of his bed holding a .38 revolver to his temple.
“No. Not there. The bullet might ricochet off your skull and come out your eye. Then you’ll just be a pathetic, half blind, half deaf failure. The only ones who fail at suicide are the ones who want to fail. Fuck that ‘Cry For Help’ bullshit.” He spoke to himself as if he stood outside of his body. As if he wasn’t the person holding the gun.
He moved the barrel under his chin.
“Shoot there and you might just give yourself brain damage, maybe put yourself in a coma. Or you could live at The Butterfly House with the speds and tards. And Ron can wipe your ass for you and take you on monthly excursions to ride the horses you used to clean up after. That would only make things worse than they already are. Or maybe you’d just lose your lower jaw, and you’d never eat solid food again. What a twist of fate that would be.”
He put the barrel in his mouth. Squeezed his eyes shut and gave a quick wipe to his brow. The metal clicked against his teeth and left a film of oil on his tongue.
“That will do it. You’ll never live through blowing off the back of your head. Even if you live through the bullet exiting, which you won’t, you’ll bleed out. And you’ll leave a nice spray of blood, and brain matter, and skull fragments down Mr. Kranich’s wall.”
“What a nice way to repay him for allowing me to pay the rent late last month.” He spoke as Dobie to his other self, “Your bloated and rotted corpse could lay here, dead for weeks, before anyone noticed you were gone. Mr. Kranich would never get your stench, or the fluids that would leak out of you, out of the walls and carpet. No one would ever rent this place again. It would sit here empty. And you know people would drive by. Losers packed into their cars with nothing to do on a Friday night would say, ‘Let’s go by that place where that fat fuck swallowed a bullet.’ He’d probably have to tear the place down.”
Dobie just sat there.
“Go ahead and pull the trigger, you fucking pussy. What are you waiting for? You’ve got your own problems to solve. Who gives a flying fuck about what’s going to happen to Kranich? That fucker’s got more money than he knows what do with anyway.”
“Do it right, or don’t do it all.” Dobie took the gun out of his mouth and wiped away the spit that ran down his chin. “What about tomorrow? Who’s going to get the horses ready for the kids? I’m going to do this,” he looked at the gun, “but I’m not going to leave any loose strings, and I’m not going to fuck things up for someone else. I’ll go to work tomorrow and get the horses ready. he Butterfly speds and retards will come out with Ron and what’s-her-name. I’ll just have to leave the horses extra food. Cavanaugh and the rest of those bastards won’t notice I haven’t been there until the mares are all knee deep in their own shit and ready to knock the walls down because they haven’t eaten. But they’ll be fine. There are plenty of people to take care of them.
“Tomorrow I’ll come home and do this thing right. In the car. In the garage. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Clean and tidy. No loose strings. Even if no one finds me for weeks, I’ll only ruin the car. And that piece of shit is about ready for the scrap pile anyway.”
“But it’s still Mr. Kranich’s garage.”
“So, maybe he has to knock it down. At least he’ll still be able to rent out the house… Tomorrow. I just need to figure out how to keep the body from overriding the mind’s decision this time. I don’t want to crawl out of the garage puking on myself again, do you?”
Dobie put the gun back in his lock box, laid down in bed and stared at the ceiling.
“How are you going to keep yourself from bailing out this time?”
* * *
Dobie walked into the barn. The light was on in the office and the aroma of green apples hung in the air. Dobie closed his eyes and breathed in deep before he went into his routine of mucking out the stables and hauling the soiled hay to the compost pile out behind the far shed. After he finished the first stable, Amanda came over to him holding a plastic tub. His heart began to pound as she approached.
“Toby, you know the special kids are coming today, right?”
“Y- y-yes, I was just talking to Ron about that yesterday.” Dobie eyed her chest, hoping it seemed he was looking at the tub.
“Good. One of the measures we take to keep everyone safe, the kids and the horses, is to administer some naturally soothing herbal supplements to the horses. So when you feed them today I need you to sprinkle one scoop of this powder onto their feed.” She handed the tub, labeled QUIETEX, to Dobie.
Dobie opened the lid on the tub of powder. A small scoop was inside. “Okay.”
“We’ll bring the horses outside an hour or two before the kids are supposed to get here and if any of them are still acting a little feisty, we’ll give them this.” She held up a syringe with the same label as the powder.
“Is that a tranquilizer?” Dobie asked. He leaned closer to her and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. He closed his eyes in wonder.
“Sort of,” Amanda started. Dobie’s eyes pinged open and he stepped back when he remembered where he was. “It’s natural and herbal. It’s made from Valerian Root. The same thing Valium is made from. There’s no needle,” she showed him the tip of the syringe, “it’s a paste that they eat, not an injection.”
Dobie went back to cleaning the stables. When Amanda left the barn Dobie slipped into the office. A desk stood on one side of the room. A stainless steel table, like the ones in most doctors’ examining rooms, was in the center. Doc Cavanaugh did emergency treatments for people’s pets in the office. The wall opposite the desk looked like a mini-kitchen. Several cabinets were mounted on the wall, and a dorm room refrigerator, stainless steel counter, sink, more cabinets and drawers were below the counter.
Dobie went to the doorway and checked to see if anyone was coming. The barn was a ghost town. One by one he opened the cupboards looking for more of the plastic tubs like Amanda handed him earlier. The last cabinet was locked.
In the top, center drawer of Doc Cavanaugh’s desk, Dobie found three small keys held together by a paper clip. One by one he poked them at the keyhole, on the third try the round silver key slipped all the way in and unlocked the cupboard. A thin cardboard box holding several of the syringes, each individually boxed and sealed in shrink-wrap, and the plastic tubs were lined on the shelf.
Dobie grabbed one syringe. As he was closing the cabinet, he saw a row of small glass vials behind the QUIETEX. Ketamine hydrochloride. Of course. Special K. He took a vial of Ketamine and put the syringe of QUIETEX paste back and continued rooting through the drawers until he found a hypodermic syringe with a small needle.
Problem solved. He locked the cabinet, returned the keys, and got the hell out of the office. All he had to do was make sure no one saw him holding it. Dobie wouldn’t care about getting fired, but if Doc found it on him and took it from him he’d be back to square one. He pulled off his flannel, put the vial and syringe in the chest pocket, folded the shirt over itself to seal the pocket, then tucked the wadded shirt onto the corner shelf next to the faucets.
* * *
Dobie brushed a mare as she stuffed her head into the bucket of water.
“Don’t tell anyone, but this is my last day. The Cavanaughs don’t know it yet, so don’t let the cat out of the bag--” footsteps coming into the barn interrupted Dobie. He stepped behind the horse and looked through the open front of the stable to see who was coming.
It was his brother Ron and he was pushing a wheelchair over the lip of the barn floor. Dobie cowered down, hoping to go unnoticed. A crowd of children, some in wheelchairs, some with braces on their arms and legs and some who didn’t look any different than average kids gathered in the middle of the barn, between the stables that faced each other. The horses neighed and the kids marveled at their brawn and grace.
Ron poked his head into the stable Dobie was in. “Hello?” He called to Dobie.
Dobie could see that Ron saw him. He grabbed the broom leaning against the wall and came from behind Peggy to the stable door. He stood with the broom in front of himself and gave an awkward wave to the kids who were too busy looking at the horses to notice him.
Ron spoke to the group, “I’d like to introduce my brother. This is Dobie, he is one of the workers who helps take care of the horses.” Ron turned to Dobie, “Can you tell us a little about what you do?”
Dobie bit down on his lip pretending to smile and fought the urge to punch Ron for putting him on the spot. “Sure. I…I…” Dobie stammered. “I have to make sure the horses have a nice place to spend their time. A clean and dry stable.” The kids looked around and at the horses, but not at Dobie. He felt invisible for the first time in his life. Dobie spoke easier. “And that they have enough to eat and drink. And that they get exercise and groomed.” He held up the brush that strapped to his hand on demonstrated its use on Peggy’s front shoulder.
The young girl in the wheelchair, in front of Ron, raised her hand. It made Dobie laugh a little to himself to see her with her hand in the air, waiting for his permission to speak.
“Hi. Do you have a question?”
“Yes. What is that horse’s name?”
“This one is Peggy.” Dobie petted the tuft of white hair on her otherwise brown head. “That’s short for Pegamento.”
The girl pointed at one of the other horses.
“That one is Colle.” Dobie pointed around to the other stables in the barn. “And she is Kleber. And Kit. And Klister. And down there on the end is Lim. These horses are all called mares. That means they are all girls who are at least four years old.” Dobie stood there smiling, proud of his job for the first time since he began working there.
Ron moved the group along telling them Dobie had a lot of work to do. As they made their way out of the barn one of the wheelchair bound came toward Dobie. She was an adult. And beautiful. Her auburn hair flowed down past her shoulders and she had a smile that belonged in toothpaste commercials.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dobie. Ron has told me a lot about you.”
“Oh.” Dobie’s mind was busy for a few seconds as he remembered how to speak. “Right, you’re L-Laura?”
“Right.” She flashed that smile at him again and reached out and touched his hand. “I’ll let you get back to work. Are you going to be down at the track when you’re finished here?”
“I usually just work up here,” Dobie said obliviously.
“Okay. Well, I’ll see you around then.” She caught up to the rest of the group.
Laughter came from outside the barn on the opposite end. Dagger laughter. The damn workers from the other barns had been standing there watching him the entire time.
* * *
Dobie patted the Ketamine and the syringe tucked into his flannel as he made his way down the hill to his car where it was parked next to the two big yellow buses. He went out the backside of the barn and walked the long way around to where his car was parked to try to avoid being seen by Ron and the rest of the Butterfly gang.
The time was right. He could end it. The kids were riding. The horses were taken care of. No loose strings left behind. Once he took the Ketamine there would be no crawling out. He still might puke, but he wouldn’t know it. He might even go out Rock Star Style, choking to death in his own vomit. The Ketamine itself might even kill him, and if it didn’t, then the fumes would. All the bases were covered.
He put his flannel on the passenger seat, started his car and shifted into reverse. All he had to do was get into the garage, give himself an injection and all his troubles would drift away.
“Dobie!” It was Ron. He ran at Dobie. “Dobie! Wait!” He held out a hand.
Dobie shifted back into neutral and lifted his eyebrows to Ron.
“We need your help.” Ron doubled over, breathing heavy.
“I’ve got plans.”
“Can you put them on hold? Please?”
* * *
Dobie helped Laura on the platform next to the track. They moved the kids from their wheelchairs onto the specially designed saddles for the physically challenged. Some cried and wouldn’t let them take them from their chairs.
Dobie smiled as he lifted a girl out of the saddle after her turn who could not stop giggling.
“I’ll be the first to admit that being in a wheelchair really gives you a new perspective on people.” Laura strapped the girl into her regular wheelchair. “Just when I thought I had my whole life planned out, the horse I was riding got spooked. I have no idea what it was that set him off, but the next thing I new I was falling off backwards. I landed on my head and never walked again.”
“That’s what put you in the chair? And you still spend time around horses?” Dobie asked.
“It took me a while to come back around, but you know what they say. If you fall off the horse, you got to get back on.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine. It… Wow…” Dobie shook his head, knowing he sounded like an imbecile.
“It took me two years to accept the fact that I’m never going to walk. I told the doctors I was going to be a miracle of medicine. I told them that for two years. But it only took my fiancé at the time two weeks to run screaming in the other direction.”
Dobie and Laura strapped a young boy into the saddle.
His arms randomly raised and lowered and twisted around each other and over his head. His mouth opened and closed as it saw fit. When Dobie and Laura backed away, his face contorted. He looked stressed. Worried. Laura reached out a hand, to start unbuckling him, but he wouldn’t let her. He was scared, but he wanted to ride.
On the ground below Amanda led the horse away and around the track. That boy squealed with delight. All the way around the track. All of the kids on the horses laughed as they rode and laughed as they watched the others ride. Warm laughter floated all around the track. Dobie stood there, mostly watching both Amanda and Laura, and closed his eyes as he just listened to the sound of the kids laughing.
* * *
The kids sat on the buses waiting to go back to the Butterfly house. Ron helped Laura onto the chair lift and waved to Dobie. The door closed and after a few minutes the bus began to pull away. Dobie watched in the dust kicked up by the bus’ tires. A spattering of hands lifted and waved in the windows, making Dobie laugh out loud as he walked over to his car. Between the barn and the track, Amanda walked up the hill, carrying a saddle.
Before he climbed into his car Dobie reached for his flannel as he watched both Amanda and the bus that Laura was somewhere inside of. He put on his flannel, ready to leave, when an unnatural weight to it touched his chest and kept it from hanging on him straight. Confused, his hand reached into his pocket and the hour old memories crashed over him as he pulled out the Ketamine. Dobie stood there watching the bus shrinking in the distance, and Amanda about to disappear inside the barn and clenched his hand tight over the vial.