Everything Will Fall Its Way
Toby tied another string of Black Cats to the base of the tree, his fingers working fiercely to find a loose spot in the mound, then casually granny-knotting the wicks together. He stepped back. His work lay in heaps about the roots, heaved up like dropped shoulders. There was a book of matches in his left pocket, and he fumbled it free. He could see the possum’s eyes above, glowing yellow in the grey light of morning. “Ugly fucker,” he said and plucked a match from the book and held it against the striker pad.
The possum had jolted Toby earlier when he’d arrived to open the stand—a sort of chipped-up fireworks shop at the edge of the city. Somehow the thing crept its way in. It was rummaging a cabinet, its dirty tail dangling like a pink snake, and that was what Toby had first seen, that reptilian appendage flip-flopping back and forth, and at first it didn’t register; he’d even almost touched it, but then it moved, and instead of laying his hand on it, he banged shut the cabinet door so stiffly that the tail came loose, fell to the floor bloody and wriggling. The possum leapt from the cabinet and out the open door, and Toby watched it take refuge in the tree limbs he now stood nervously beneath. He didn’t want the pest there. He’d half thought about shaking the trunk until the critter fell, but he was worried it would come down upon him, so he thought maybe he could scare it down this way while standing off at a safe distance. He looked down at the piles of Black Cats. There were thousands of them. Toby dragged the match across the rough pad and the tip caught. He leaned above the bundle of tiny explosives and dropped the flame. It sparked a wick and the bundles started crackling. He danced back grinning as the firecrackers popped and hissed, and then the pace rallied. Snap, bang, bang, like a million toy soldiers making war with tiny rifles. The smell hit Toby strong, burnt chemicals and paper, and the tree limbs began to shake, and the possum flopped from the branches, bounced in the dirt beside the exploding Black Cats, rolled up to its paws and ran awkwardly toward Toby, who shrieked, his hands flailing in front of him, yet somehow, perhaps instinctively, he reared back and sank a kick deep into the possum’s face, and the thing rolled into the explosions. It tried to stagger away but only made it a few steps before Toby, in a way fortified by the landed kick, brought another boot to the possum’s side, and the animal just busted. Its charred belly blew wide open from the force—a rotten smudge of squash—and Toby looked down at the murder while the final Black Cats crackled. There was movement. Small pink and glistening things. It looked like the possum’s guts were trying to crawl back up into it. Toby leaned down and sort of poked at them with his book of matches. “Sweet Jesus,” he said when he realized they were babies.“There’s not much I can think to do,” the vet said to Toby, who held the baby possums in a jar, their pink bodies lurching upon each other, their mouths searching for food. “Can’t fix ’em?” he asked, his face grey with Black Cat smoke. “Well, see, they ain’t broken,” said the vet. “They just need their mother.” “I got her,” Toby said, “I already showed you.” Toby nudged the box again where the split mother lay in clumps of gore. “They need their alive mother,” said the vet, “and nothing’s bringing that back again.” Toby turned his attention to a clock on the wall, then to a poster of a horse. “I seen a video on the computer once,” said Toby, “about a cat that took care of a bird’s baby,” he scratched his head, “or the bird took care the cat’s,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Think something like that might work?” The vet looked at Toby. He looked at the jar. “I’m not sure I follow,” he said. “Like,” Toby held the jar toward the vet, “you think I could get them a stand-in mother?” “Like a surrogate?” “Sure,” said Toby. “Whatever you want to call it.” The vet chewed on his top lip and rested his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. “It’s possible,” he told Toby. Then he smiled, “I got some cats in the cages in the other room,” he said. “We could drop one in and see how it goes.” Then the vet kind of chuckled. “I’m serious,” Toby said. “So am I,” said the vet. “I just don’t think you’d like the results.” The vet tapped the side of the jar. “I don’t think they would, either.” The pink things writhed. “Hell,” said Toby. “I feel awful.” “Well,” the vet said. “It’s a sad sort of affair.” He nodded at Toby and looked at the box where the mother possum lay. “How’d you say you came to find them again?” the vet said. “Well,” said Toby and he lifted the box up to his chest and set the jar on top of it. “It’s complicated.” Then Toby left the vet’s office.
The large-bodied car salesman kept eyeing Toby where he sat. He’d been over twice, had strolled purposefully across the storeroom and stood wide-legged in front of Toby, whose head was lowered toward the jar of possums, and he’d said, “I can show you any of these cars just as good as Robby,” but Toby had shaken his head, rocked a bit in the plastic chair and said, “If it’s all the same, I’d rather wait.” The second time the salesman had looked at his watch, and looked out the plate-glass windows of the showroom storefront and said, “No telling when he’ll be returning,” but Toby had returned his attention to the jar and said, “There’s nowhere I need to be.” Then the salesman said, “What you got there? Rats?” Toby didn’t look up. “Sure,” he said. “Something like rats.” When Robby did return the wider salesman motioned to Toby, and Robby shook his blond head, made his way to Toby, smiled a bright grin, and shook Toby’s hand jerkily. “Well, Toby,” he said. “We inking a deal today?” Toby looked out to the lot. “There’s just one more I’d like to try, if that’s okay by you?” Robby laughed. “I’ve never met a harder sale than you. We took out the Tacoma and there was something wrong with the suspension, next week was a Forester but you thought there were blind spots, then there was a F-150 but the interior didn’t suit you. The Frontier you liked, but you didn’t move on it quick enough. And the past few, hell, I don’t even know if you ever said what your problem was with those. You just said you needed time.” “Just want to weigh all my options.” “Yeah,” said Robby. “That’s exactly what you said. Weigh the options,” he blinked a few times. He had the palest green eyes. They looked erased from the inside. “Well,” Robby said, and he began to move toward the rack where the keys were kept. “What did you want to take out today?” “The Land Cruiser,” said Toby. “The Land Cruiser?” “Yes, sir.” “Is that in your price range?” Toby nodded. “I reckon it is.” The two walked out onto the lot, got to the Land Cruiser and Robby turned to Toby. “You know, most folks who come for test drives are looking to buy,” he said. There was a couple looking at cars a few rows away and Robby motioned to them. “Those folks,” Robby said, “they’re looking for something to get their family around in. But I don’t know, Toby, you’ve been coming here for a couple a months now, once a week or so, and I just get a different feeling off you. Some of the fellas,” Robby said and motioned to the showroom where the other salesman and a mechanic stood watching from the window, “they think you might have spooky intentions.” “Spooky?” Toby said. “Spooky how?” He looked about the lot uneasily. He looked away from Robby’s pale-green eyes. “I’m not sure that I can say for certain,” Robby said. “It just seems insincere you always showing up and never buying anything.” Toby nodded. “I suppose maybe,” he said. “I just don’t want to rush into anything. If you feel you’re wasting time on me I’ll understand, and if you don’t want to show me this one today that’s fine,” Toby looked down at the sticker price. “Might be this one’s out of my league anyhow,” and he traded the jar of possums from his right hand to his left, and made to shake Robby’s hand, but Robby looked at the jar and said, “What are those,” and leaned to look, “rats?” Toby pulled back his hand. “Something like that,” he said, and he walked toward his rusted flatbed, got in, and drove away.
Thick Bob was kind of entertainment at McDoogle’s. He rarely had money, and the main bartender, Meredith, had a Taser Gun that she kept behind the bar for safety’s sake. Once, when Thick Bob was good and loaded, he’d popped off to Meredith a time too many and Meredith took the Taser to him, thumping his fat body from the barstool in one electrifying shock. The regulars broke into unhinged laughter because it was something Thick Bob deserved, and Bob himself laughed as he got up from the plaid carpet uneasily. They turned this into a routine. There was a small stage in the corner where he and Meredith would think up things that she could do to him. Once she threw a dart at him as he stood (with safety goggles on) in front of a dartboard. Once they filled his shirt and pants pockets with Black Cats that Toby provided and lit the pockets one by one. One time she sprayed him with pepper spray. Once she hit his belly with a bat. But the Taser was always the favourite, and now Toby watched from a bar stool as Thick Bob stood wincing with anticipation at the centre of the stage, and Meredith held the Taser at full blast, the blue arc crackling between the electrodes, and the patrons of McDoogle’s pounded their mugs in unison against their tables, egging on the endeavour, and they roared when Meredith put the shock to Thick Bob, his face seizing in pain and his fat body jiggling for two whole seconds before Meredith killed the power, and Thick Bob fell to his knees, and laughter filled the bar. Then Meredith pulled Bob to his feet, helped him over to his stool, gave him a shot of bourbon, and slid Toby a Scotch and tapped on his possum jar. She frowned, “How’s something so cute grow up to be so nasty?” she asked. Toby sipped his Scotch mightily, the sip slurping aloud, as the rowdies had died down. “Well shit,” Thick Bob said, rubbing where he’d been shocked. “I seen you when you was in high school, darling, and you took a turn for the worse the same.” Then Thick Bob hacked a flabby-throated chuckle that broke into a cough, and then he bent forward in pain. “Fuck you,” said Meredith. Thick Bob plucked a cigar from the ash tray in front him, puffed it, and said, “Maybe when you was in high school,” and broke into a painful laugh again, this time smoke aching from his gape. When his laughter faded, he grumbled, “Babe, you know I’m messing.” “If you weren’t I’d tase you again,” said Meredith, and she pulled a towel from the counter and began drying wet tumblers. “What you aim to do with ’em, Tobe?” “Shit,” said Toby, “I imagine they’ll die. I took ’em to the vet, but he said there wasn’t nothing he could do. Didn’t try or nothing.” “Ever seen that video with that cat and that monkey?” said Thick Bob. “Cat and monkey?” said Meredith. “Yeah,” said Thick Bob. “There was this cat that took care of this baby monkey,” he took another drag off his cigar, “or maybe the other way around,” he said. “It was the cutest thing.” “Now see,” said Toby, “I mentioned something like that to the vet, but he didn’t think too high on it.” “Vet?” said Thick Bob. “Doc Cooter?” “Joey?” asked Meredith. “Yup,” said Toby. “Him.” “Well Joey Cooter don’t know shit,” said Meredith. “He fingered my asshole in sixth grade.” Thick Bob was wiping cigar ash off the counter in front of him, and the ashes floated down toward his lap. “Now there’s a story,” said Thick Bob, and he half chuckled and looked toward Meredith. “On accident,” she said. “On a dare game,” she nodded. “One of those seven minutes in a closet things,” she toweled a tumbler. “He was supposed to do it regular, but must’ve been nervous or confused.” “You wouldn’t think a guy called Cooter would fuck that up,” Thick Bob said. Meredith shook her head, and smiled so her lips sunk back into her fluffy cheeks and said, “Well he did,” then she took a sip from a wine glass that she had stashed behind the bar. “I think it was his first time trying.” “Well hell,” said Thick Bob, “why didn’t you stop him?” Meredith sort of pursed her lips. “Don’t know,” she said. “Guess I was nervous, too. But I tell you I never suspected that boy would be any kind of doctor.” “Ain’t a good one,” said Toby, “or he’d have had at least some kind of strategy.” “I got a strategy,” said Thick Bob, “I’ll take care of one.” “What,” said Toby, “split ’em up?” “It’s not like they’d know,” Fat Bob said. “I’ll take one of ’em. I’ll feed it something, you feed your four something else, we’ll figure out what works.” Toby looked at Meredith. Meredith shrugged. Toby looked at Thick Bob. Thick Bob smiled. Then Toby tilted the jar and one of the pink possums tumbled to the bar top, its little legs limping about it, its mouth squeaking around for food. “It’s a damn precious little thing,” said Meredith. “Yup,” said Toby. “Just as precious as anything,” Thick Bob said, and then he pulled his cigar from his mouth, ashed it in his tray, blew on the cherry a bit so it went red, and then he put the hot tip down on the possum's head heavy, and the pink thing shrieked to a still. “What the fuck you doing?” said Meredith, and Toby grabbed at Thick Bob’s arm and flung it back and looked down at the pile of pink mottled possum, and he flicked it twice with a fingernail, but the thing didn’t move. He slammed his fist twice against Thick Bob’s girthy shoulder. “You killed it,” he said. Thick Bob stood from his stool. “Woo hoo,” he hollered, “don’t feed yours cigars,” and his face went plum as he winced and hacked laughs, and he rubbed at his shoulder as he made his way out of the bar.
Meredith sat at the edge of the bed with a paper plate on her lap, and on the plate rested the last living possum. They tried feeding them all types of food. They tried sugar-water and milk and cat food and some old bits of meat from the garbage, because possums were always getting into garbage, and they tried beer even, and coffee, and they tried little clumps of bread balled up to the size of doodle bugs, and they tried peanut butter, and chocolate, and apple juice, and saltine crackers, and the second to last one they’d given a little whiskey, and they’d tried putting them in various faux habitats, and they’d set them up in the bathtub, and then they found them a cardboard box, and Toby had even let them climb around on his bare belly, but nothing they tried had worked, and one by one they were all slowing to stops, their pink little bodies just ceasing to be alive, until they got to this last one, and even it was showing signs of fading, its little shoulders less frequently heaving in breath, and its pink parts going paler, and its movements much more spare. Toby sat down next to Meredith, who had spent the night helping in every which way she was able, and who was accustomed to spending the night some, but not in this way, and the two didn’t say anything until the small thing teetered out for good. “I think that’s it for him,” said Meredith. Toby tapped at the critter. “Yup,” he said, “seems the life has moved on.” Meredith sort of folded the plate up over the possum carefully, stood up, and walked the paltry coffin to the kitchen where she slid the body into an empty tin of butter cookies with the others, and she put the tin of dead possums into the freezer, because trash day was near a week off, and Toby didn’t want them causing a stink just rotting in the waste basket. Then Meredith walked to the bedroom door and leaned against the jamb. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Toby stared off at nothing and nodded. “I’ll not be opening the stand today I don’t figure,” he said. “Makes sense,” said Meredith. “I didn’t mean to kill the thing’s kids,” said Toby. Meredith sat on the edge of the bed with Toby and rubbed his shoulders with the open palm of her hand. They both needed to shower. Their skin and hair dingy in the sleepy morning light. “Course you didn’t,” she said. Her hand slowed on his back. She laughed one of those forced chuckles that seeks to be asked a question. “What?” Toby said. “You ever think about having kids?” she asked. Toby looked at Meredith. Her face creased about the eyes, and her teeth stained by so many mornings spent sipping coffee. He smiled. “Got one,” he said. Meredith moved back from him. Her eyes puckering as she looked at his face. “No,” she said. “Well you’ve never mentioned it.” “You know,” said Toby. “It’s one of those things.” He sort of shook his head. “I wasn’t even in on raising him.”
Toby got his fireworks stand from an uncle who’d passed away over thirty years back. It was not an entirely lucrative little business, but Toby didn’t have an expensive lifestyle. He lived in a doublewide in one of the winter-Texan communities, a small mobile-home park that was near-deserted in the summer—an angry season that saw humid-highs in the low one-teens, which chased all the old timers back to Wisconsin and Montana and Québec and Manitoba. He owned the building outright, again an inheritance earned in another uncle’s passing, and monthly fees at the park were only eighty dollars in the low season and one-twenty in the high, and even during bad months he’d make that in Black Cat sales alone, all the dirty-necked children of the nearby neighbourhoods showing up in hordes on Friday afternoons with sweaty dollars they’d swap for the uncomplicated explosives, and he supplemented the income from fireworks sales by also offering a rudimentary menu of concessions (hot dogs, chips, cold cokes), food sales actually being the bulk of what he consistently brought in, and his spending was modest. He woke to generic coffee, ate mostly packaged foods, and got sloppy on well-Scotch that Meredith would pour heavy for him every night at McDoogle’s Tavern. It was a Scottish pub, in theory, evidenced by the red-tartan carpet and the writing on the restroom doors—‘Lads’ on the men’s room, ‘Lasses’ on the ladies—and his months and days sort of hallucinated by in modestly accented debauchery and fatigue. He was forever nursing a hangover in the heat—his tongue sticky against his teeth, and his eyelids tight to his eyes—and he was forever almost dirty, the dust from the fireworks dry on his hands and beneath his fingernails, and his clothes greyed from Black Cat paper, and a gunpowder smell that never came off. But he hadn’t always been so lucky. Years ago, back when he was young, his body still tight along the lines, and his jaw squared and trim, he’d worked alongside Thick Bob at a hotel downtown as a bellhop. At the time, it was the highest-starred place to stay in town. There was a fountain in the entry that lulled sleepily and beside the fountain sat a Flamenco guitarist, perched on a wood stool, flicking strings with his fingers, and Toby had to dress in an ivory polyester uniform highlighted by bands of turquoise, and he had to wear a pillbox hat with a gold chinstrap that would chafe him, and he had to keep clean shaven, altogether well-groomed, because his manager would inspect him every day, rub the prints of his fingers across Toby’s face checking for stubble, and level the shoulder pads of his uniform, and pull the pillbox hat to the crown of Toby’s head. Thick Bob, who at the time was not so thick, worked as a porter. He mopped the floors and emptied the ashtrays, and he’d always come alongside Toby post-inspection and say, “Sure as shit glad I’m not you.” Thick Bob was always around Toby and in his ear. He was lecherous toward the guests. He’d watch the women entering the hotel as he watered plants and then, when Toby would return to the entry, after having lugged the luggage away to the guest’s room, he’d come to Toby and ask, “What’d ya think about that?” “Bout what?” Toby might ask, and Thick Bob would look angrily at him. “Don’t play dumb,” he’d say. “You always play dumb.” Toby would roll his eyes and look for the manager. “Don’t you got something to clean?” he’d ask Thick Bob. “Course I do,” Thick Bob would say. “Go upstairs and clean that blonde woman’s plate.” “That woman?” Toby’d say, and Thick Bob would nod. “The one who just came in?” And Thick Bob still nodding. “What was wrong with it?” Thick Bob would ask. “She wasn’t even pretty,” Toby would say. “That’s the best part,” would say Thick Bob. “You could do it all angry, and not care nothing. Fuck her in the ass and punch her in the back of the head as soon as you was done.” Toby would look at Thick Bob, repulsed by the wet in his eyes as he spoke. “Your little dick ain’t fucking nothing,” he’d say, and Thick Bob’s face would go flat at him. “Well,” he’d say and brush a thumb across his crotch. “I might not be able to hit the bottom of the tuna can, but I can sure as shit scrape all the sides.” As far as Toby knew, Thick Bob never bedded one of the hotel’s guests; it seemed certain a thing that Thick Bob would have talked about it if his luck brought him the opportunity. But Toby did, though just the once. It was on a Tuesday, always he remembered it was a Tuesday, because he had not been scheduled to work that evening but had been called in last minute because the other boy twisted an ankle, and he’d been drinking that afternoon, and even told this to his manager, and his manager had said, “On a Tuesday?” as if weekday drinking was an unacceptable thing, but the manager told him to come in anyhow and just not to act drunk around the guests. It was a slow evening and Toby’s cap sat crooked on his head, but the manager was too flustered with filling accident reports to take notice, and he let him get away with it. A woman guest, though, she noticed. She was all alone. Toby couldn’t figure why. She was older than him. Perhaps in her thirties, and she had hair so blonde it looked plastic, and it fell all about her tiny, tanned body and stayed still even when she moved, as though impossibly heavy. Her face seemed cruel. She needed help to her room. Her luggage all matched. Four bags, each smaller than the next, each red as Roman Candle fire, and Toby had flung the things uneasily where she asked him, his muscles thick in his arms like ribbons of mucus, and she had looked him over when he’d completed the task. Studied his arms, his shoulders, his face. She had even straightened his cap for him. And the whole thing just happened organic. Their faces collided, and then a tussling ensued. A split-second and violent sex emerged. She’d been wearing a dress, something with sequins, thin straps at the shoulders, and Toby had pulled those from her, and lifted her skirt to her waist, and she shimmied quick from her panties, and he chucked his uniform shirt, and let his ivory pants fall to his ankles, and then she drove him into a chair and climbed upon, grinded her body down against his, again and again, Toby’s pillbox hat rattling on his head, and it only took a few dozen thrusts, he balled his fists as he came in her, and she moaned a withered gasp that somehow matched the yellow light of the room. She shrank off him, and their breath slowed, and it was awkward. She went to the restroom and closed the door without saying a word. He got up, pulled his clothes together, and scrammed. Toby didn’t see her again that evening, and the next night he took a different guest’s luggage to that room—now a guilty, haunted space to him—and he never told anyone about it until that morning when he told Meredith.
http://www.puritan-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EWFIW.mp3 As Toby slept, the truest dream. He came face-to-face with the sixth grade Doc Cooter, his finger buried in Meredith’s asshole up to the final knuckle, the three of them in a closet that smelled of stale clothes, and Cooter looked Toby blank in the eyes and said, “Possums play dead,” and then all that faded, and Toby was back in the trailer, the light some hideous hue, seated on his bed, and who should wander in but the busted mother possum on all fours, that long snout bathed in light unnatural, and blessed with the ability to speak, she said simply, “How could you?” and then all about her ambled the babies, and Toby sprang from his bed and out the trailer door, but everywhere he went, the image trailed him, became the corners of his imagination, and his dream mind sent him on a search for the box that he had stashed, the one that the dead mother rested in, the one he’d placed in a dumpster behind McDoogle’s Tavern, and lifting it from the blue metal box, and flipping the lid, found it to be empty, and then the Possum tapped his shoulder, “Looking for me?” it asked, now larger than it had been, the size of a man, twirling its bloodied tale nonchalantly, and Toby touched his hand to the busted belly, his fingers stained red by the wound, and then he took to running again, sprinting in fact, but every step was plagued by memory, every dim spot in the landscape inhabited by the dead beast, and he couldn’t shake it, couldn’t go fast enough, and moved so much he couldn’t breathe, fighting for breath, haunted by possum, and quickly all things snapped from him, and he was upright awake in his bedroom and gasping for breath. “You okay?” Meredith asked. Toby looked around. Clearly fazed. He looked at the clock by his bed, leapt to his feet and said, “I gotta go open the stand.”
Toby remembered very well the first time Robby came to his fireworks stand. He came in a pack of other children, of which he was clearly the leader, and they bought bottle rockets for the purpose of “shooting ’cross the canal.” Those words stayed with him. That first meeting was not when Toby suspected the boy of being his. It took years before he’d made that connection. It wasn’t that Toby and the boy looked the same, it was that Toby just felt it. Robby came every Friday for four or five years, and while it was clear to Toby that Robby didn’t recognize him when he’d go to his used car lot, Toby couldn’t mistake him for anything. Those were the palest green eyes he’d ever seen, a truly different colour than Toby’s, but the same colour eyes his mother had, the woman at the hotel, who’d thrown him against a chair and had her way with him. Toby didn’t go directly to the stand after waking from the dream. He’d gone to Robby’s car lot, had stared into those pale-green eyes and promised he wanted to buy a car, and then, while they were driving, Toby behind the wheel and Robby in the passenger seat rattling off logistics of the vehicle while drumming his fingertips on the dash, Toby had said, “Mind if we make a quick stop,” and Robby said, “No problem with me,” and Toby pulled the Land Cruiser up to his fireworks stand, and Robby said, “Hell, I’ve been here,” and a gladness took Toby’s heart. “Is that so?” Toby said. Then Robby looked at Toby, his eyes clearly studying him, “Shit,” he said, and pointed at Toby. “You’re the fireworks man.” And Toby just nodded and said, “I’m gonna buy this car.”
A few days later, there was a scare. Thick Bob had taken a bit longer to come off the carpet. He’d stayed there dazed, his body writhing a bit even after the shock ceased. The drunks at the bar even kind of gasped. It was one of those movie-set silences. All things seemed constricted. As though the whole world was choked. But it was only a momentary silencing of him. He had fallen to his back, frozen, but he shot up with a gasp, a wide-opened look on his face, and then most everyone at McDoogle’s cheered him. Meredith aided him to a bar stool and took the batteries out of the Taser. “I think we’ll be through with that for a while,” she said. Thick Bob stayed silent. He rubbed his head vacantly, and then looked at one of the drunks who sat a table away. The man was not a regular, and he wore a terrible shock. “Hey,” Thick Bob said to him. “Me?” said the stranger. “Yuh huh,” said Thick Bob. “You know,” he continued, “you need to be careful around here.” “Careful?” said the stranger. “Yup,” said Thick Bob, “cause there’s a faggot in this bar.” “A faggot?” said the stranger, and he sort of looked around. “It’s true,” Thick Bob said. “But,” he continued, taking a bourbon from the bar and sipping daintily at it, then staring at the new man, looking him up and down, “if you give me a kiss, I’ll tell you who it is.” The stranger laughed uneasily, then sipped at his beer. Thick Bob winked at him and turned back to the bar. He again rubbed his head. “There was something,” he said, his face going vacant. Then he looked at Toby, “I brought you something,” he said. “Brought me something?” said Toby. “Yup,” said Thick Bob, and he reached beneath his bar stool and thumped a hefty book to the bar. “A book?” said Toby. “It’s a ledger,” answered Thick Bob. “Meredith told me about your ordeal.” Thick Bob had stayed on at the Rivera Hotel even after Toby’d gone away. He was still employed there, though he’d never graduated from porter, or perhaps he’d elected to keep the position, as it grew increasingly easier for him as the hotel lost distinction, and as he was somehow predisposed toward occupations that called for skimp responsibilities. The story struck Thick Bob curiously, the details redelivered to him with great specificity, and after Meredith told him he let himself into the Rivera Hotel office, found the log book for the first year he’d been employed there, the only year Toby had worked alongside him, cross-referenced an accident log where he found a report for a twisted ankle filed the same year, and found the exact Tuesday evening when the lady guest had checked in. The one Toby had slept with. Hillary Olsteen, Room 183. Toby could not remember the room number specifically, but once Thick Bob explained the exact location of the room, sort of mapped it out on a bar napkin with a felt pen, Toby agreed it had to be the same, and that this must have been the woman. But hearing the name did not leave him feeling secure. “What good is it knowing that?” he asked Thick Bob. “Well,” said Thick Bob. “Just figured you’d want to be sure. You think you got her packed with seed. Seems to me if I had that suspicion, I’d want to look into it all, just to be certain.” Toby did not like the name in mind. He looked at Meredith. She glanced at him and then away. Then Toby stood and left.
It took a few days for all the financial matters to be organized, and Robby had the Land Cruiser cleaned up to near-mint before Toby came in to finalize the purchase. He watched Robby hover above several forms, a pen in hand, a tightness to his posture. He was speaking an almost foreign language. Financial jargon and mechanical issues, dull and hollow words that rolled lifelessly through Toby’s brain. He’d other things on mind. How could he pose the question? It all felt ignorant to him now. He held in his right hand a Styrofoam cup of black and acrid coffee that he’d nearly polished off, and now he swirled the final swallow at the bottom, so it seemed a critter chasing itself. “Toby,” said Robby, and Toby looked up from his cup. There was a question about adding a warrantee, and Toby declined, as it cost a couple thousand dollars, then he said, “How’s your mother doing?” And Robby looked slightly puzzled and said, “My mother?” Then Toby told a lie. He said he remembered her bringing him by the stand some and Robby said she might have done, and he tried to redirect the conversation back to the matter of the Land Cruiser, but Toby wouldn’t let it. He said the name. “Hillary.” But a silence followed. Robby eyed him. “Hillary?” “Your mother,” said Toby. “Stacy,” said Robby. He reached into the top left drawer of his desk and pulled out a portrait in a black plastic frame. It was of Robby some several years prior standing in front of some woman strange to Toby’s eyes, and aside a man that looked near identical to Robby, though some many years his senior. Toby took the portrait from Robby and puzzled over it. “Not the woman you were thinking,” said Robby and smiled. “Now we’re all about done,” he said, “just a few final signatures.” “I don’t suppose,” Toby said, “that you were adopted.” Robby laughed a sort of forced and crinkled laughter. He worked side to side in his seat, and then took the photo back from Toby. “Not at all,” he said. Toby looked off at a nothing. He felt soft. Made a fool. Something hideous swallowed him empty. Robby made to hand him a pen. Held it in his polished-fine hand. Smiled the cleanest smile beneath his ornamental eyes. Toby looked at the pen. He looked at Robby. “I’m having second thoughts,” Toby said. Toby couldn’t quite remember all that happened after that. His exit was blurry to him. But he could recall, as he walked away, that Robby yelled at him to never return.
That night Toby’s sleep was demonized by troubled dreaming. He could not place the nature of the terror, but there was an ever-present panic that forced him scrambling in mad directions through his unconsciousness. Some dreams are like that. They are terrible for no given reason. He rose clammy from his slumber, feverishly looking for the cause of his haunt, as though somehow it had woken with him. It was early in the morning. Hours before the sun would rise. Toby got dressed and went out to the garbage, which had been dragged down to the curb just before going to sleep. He lifted the lid from the can and pulled out the butter-cookie tin. He pried open the container. The four possums were still partly frozen, their carcasses made gooey from the thaw. It was not the right way to leave them. Toby placed the lid back on the tin and climbed into his flatbed. He drove slowly down dark deserted streets, the hum of streetlight muddled in the humid early hours. He drove straight to the fireworks stand. He somehow knew he should. And, once there, he knew to go inside, to take four rockets from the back cabinet and place them near the spot he stomped the mother. Toby had chicken wire in the stand. He’d give bits of it to children, actually teaching the technique he now used to bind the possums to the rockets. The four little beasts, partially frozen and bound, like miniature crucified things, the rockets taped to sticks that Toby pierced in the dirt. Moonlight made them glisten as though toys. Toby struck a match. He was able to get all four wicks with one go. Each wick hissed as it caught. And then, when they ignited, the rockets spit skyward with a scream, a plume of white smoke coughing them away from the earth, and they sailed up that way, climbing away from where Toby stood, and the rockets, one by one, burst into fits of colour—oranges, greens and blues, embers falling so gently, explosions that marked the spots where the possums would have made their way back down to the ground, and wherever they landed is where they stayed.
