Chapter 17: Tobie and The Insect
Bobby had heard the tale of his younger brother’s short-term employment at Schloss often enough from the victim himself to develop an animated version of the story. Tobie had quit Schloss after the cellar foreman had fired his closest friend. Bobby thought the whole episode was a damn good example of the symbiotic relationship that develops between a pair of fast friends – at least in a quaint sort of way. Bobby briefly replayed his self-produced tape of the incident:
Jeremy had pulled some strings with Delaney to land Tobie a Crush job at Schloss two years before. And as part of the deal, Schloss also had to hire Tobie’s companion, his shadow, The Insect. Tobie had been put in charge of unloading grapes from gondolas using the electric hoist. The crew leader had given The Insect the job of sweeping, cleaning out gutters and the like, the only jobs that the cellar foremen believed he could be trusted.
The Friday morning of their third week on the job was also their last at Schloss. Tobie was unloading a bin filled with bunches of zinfandel. The Insect was down by the row of trucks awaiting their turn to dump their grapes. His task that morning was to stand over the hydro sieve, a screened sump that caught large objects floating in the winery’s wastewater, and to retrieve the fifty-cent-a-piece black washers that had collected on the screen of the contraption. The washers were used to connect fittings with wine hose, and without them, work in the winery would have come to a standstill. The Insect would methodically lower his arm into the smelly, algal water, scooping up a handful of the oozing muck like a steam shovel. Fishing for washers was the most vile, unwanted job at the winery, but The Insect didn’t mind; it was his chance to observe the tadpoles change in the perfect breeding ground of the sump’s murky water.
The Insect – and Tobie – enjoyed all the animals that lived in the environs around the winery. On their second day at Schloss, during their lunch they had found a litter of abandoned kittens starving under the old disused greenhouse behind the winery. They found homes for all the refugees but one, their favorite, the one Tobie brought home for a single night. In a fit of terror, the wild kitten had shredded the love seat of Janie’s new living room suite, and she had him remove it from her home the next morning. Reluctantly, Tobie returned it to the hothouse and fed it diligently until it disappeared a week later.
Tobie and The Insect would spend their lunch hour with the deer that lived in the dense woods behind Schloss. They would hike up through the sloping vineyards surrounding the winery, and quietly sit where the vineyards gave way to the thick underbrush and the few towering redwoods on the steep slope. Near the end of their break, they would be rewarded for their stillness by the approach of countless birds, a raccoon or a family of deer, all oblivious to their presence. The deer had been especially plentiful during the harvest of the drought year, when the scent of the sugared berries on the vines would draw them from the woods and into the vineyards. But the deer had been hiding since the day a bored driver for a co-op grower, waiting in the long line to dump his grapes, zeroed in on a deer from beside his truck. It was the last day for Tobie and The Insect at Schloss.
Tobie was operating the hoist, scraping out the last zin berries from the bin when he had looked up from his work to see a familiar four-point buck gazing down on him from a high ridge. A moment later he saw, in what appeared to be slow motion, the young buck’s head jerk violently, its legs pulled out from under it as if by an invisible rug, and the deer fall quietly on the matted grass. Only then did he hear the loud report of the rifle that seemed to momentarily silence the myriad sounds of the busy winery. Tobie held his gaze for a moment. He couldn’t avoid looking down toward the sound to see the proud expression on the face of the marksman. Then he saw the blur – a small, scrawny blur – collide into the side of the poacher. The rifle flew out of the man’s hands and skidded along the asphalt. The Insect did his best to land a second blow, but to no avail; he was being pounded into submission by the angry owner of a damaged rifle. Tobie arrived on the scene, grabbed the driver, and proceeded to vent his anguish on the man’s face. By the time the crew leader and cellar foreman had pulled the muscular Tobie off of the man, all three were a bloody mess.
In the brouhaha that followed, the buck privates at Schloss were abandoned by their CO, the cellar foreman, during The Insect’s court martial. The cellar foreman was a fellow poacher, often “spotlighting” in the vineyard after work, a method of hunting where he would drive his truck through the roads behind the winery until his spotlight flashed upon the red reflection of a deer’s eyes, frozen in the beam of light. To score a goal in the sport, all he had to do was point and shoot.
Without support from his superior, The Insect was found guilty as charged, and the sentence received was a quick “Goodbye” and a hastily drawn check from the accounting department. Tobie, being Jeremy Barnes’ son, was not a part of the official inquiry. Tobie quit the moment he heard The Insect had been fired.
The final credits rolled through Bobby’s mind as he turned to Jeremy.
“Have you ever talked to the GM about that mess?” he asked his father.
“Sure I did. He called me before Tobie made it home. I told him that what Tobie did was his own affair – that Tobie was a young man who had to face the consequences of his actions.”
“So why do you think he believed your scheme with Heath was retaliation for Tobie quitting?”
“Because I don’t think he could conceive of me seeing Daniel’s death as anything but an accident. And I think he believes that because I’m a farmer, I’d have to get revenge for Tobie’s leaving Schloss. You know, the ‘Hatfield’s and McCoy’s’ syndrome. I believe he thinks we’re all hicks.”
“Well, I’m proud of Tobie sticking up for The Insect. At least it showed some character,” Tobie replied.
