Chapter 18: Holly
If Bobby stretched his imagination far enough, he could come up with an analogy to explain Tobie’s close friendship with The Insect. Bobby likened their relationship to that found in a medieval romance. In this modern version of the ancient tale, Tobie was the king’s care-free son whose life is saved by a young, local peasant. As a reward, the prince appoints the bumbling pauper to the court as his personal valet. But in this modern tale, there were a few unusual twists, beginning with Tobie’s childhood.
Tobie had been a surprise gift to the Barnes family. Jeremy and Janie had believed their family was complete after Bobby; they were positive when Jeremy had his vasectomy following Tobie’s birth. There was a considerable age difference between Tobie and Bobby, and Janie had been perplexed when Tobie complained as a boy that he had no playmates on their isolated ranch. So for his seventh birthday, Janie gave Tobie a tiny Collie puppy, the first pedigree dog on the ranch, the first dog to have access to the Barnes home. Tobie and the dog, named Holly, became inseparable. Most visitors to the ranch jokingly called the pair Timmy and Lassie; the similarity was there. Janie had put her foot down when Daniel and Bobby began tormenting her by calling her “June” instead of Mother.
No one in the family was sure what came first, Tobie’s love for Holly, or his love for all the animals that seemed to gravitate toward him. Despite him being such a problem for Janie – Tobie was a misfit in school and constantly behind in class – he was a gentle, quiet boy around Holly, or his rabbit, or the pet doe he fed each morning on the back porch while he was in junior high.
In his teens, Tobie became even more schizophrenic. His grades plummeted, he was a worthless, inconsistent hand on the ranch, yet he still fed and cared for his menagerie like clockwork. Janie eventually tried to blame his problems on puberty. Jeremy just considered him a typical teenager, although a bit lazy; besides, he and Daniel and Gilberto were too busy with the ranch to give it much thought.
Tobie scraped by with the grades required for graduation, and both Jeremy and Janie were shocked when he announced that his vocation was to be a veterinarian. They weren’t surprised with his choice considering his love of animals, but they were unsure if he had researched the grade requirements needed for admittance into post-grad vet school. Nonetheless, they were pleased with his choice and supported him in what they knew would require a Herculean effort on his part. Tobie enrolled at a local community college to acclimate himself to college life as his counselor suggested. But near the end of his first semester, a term filled with drunken debauchery, Tobie withdrew from school and fled home to the protective umbrella of the ranch and the unspoken loyalty of Holly. That December he received a slip of paper in the mail with the words “Withdrew Failing” beside each of his classes, including golf.
Back at the ranch, Tobie took a sabbatical from academia and began to write his life script based on a simple premise: maximum base gratification with a minimum of thought and effort. He had tried to emulate his two brothers and he had failed miserably. His quest now was to show them what they were missing – the freedom of irresponsibility – because of their success.
Soon after Tobie moved home, The Insect appeared on the scene. It had been a sunny, mild day in February when Tobie found Holly missing. She was a mature dog by then, and it was very unlike her to not be there for feeding, the sole responsibility remaining in Tobie’s life. Tobie made a cursory search for her earlier in the day, but work on the new jet boat Jeremy had bought for him had kept him from doing anything but have an unpleasant, anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach. Before supper, Tobie had stood out on the porch of the palatial Barnes home. A bizarre version of Tulia fog had crept into The Valley, making any search for the dog that evening a futile effort.
The fog was a low, heavy mist that hugged the ground, obscuring the trunks of the vines but not their bare canes. Tobie could see the rooftop of the tool shed and the silhouetted props of the wind machines in the vineyard; the fog lay like a down blanket three feet off the ground.
Tobie was absorbed in this strange scene when he first heard it, a scraping sound off in the distance. It sounded as if someone was dragging a fence post down the middle of the asphalt road that ran past the ranch. Janie had come to the door and paused to watch her son lost in concentration. When she heard the noise and failed in her attempt to identify it, she joined Tobie on the porch.
“What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s coming this way.”
They stared down the drive to where it disappeared under the fog. Below, where the farm road would have been, the unceasing noise grew in intensity; Tobie and his mother were held frozen by the crude sound. Slowly, Tobie raised his hand and pointed down toward the hidden drive. Through the pink-tinged, back-lit mist, a small dot bobbed up and down in the fog. Soon they could discern that the dot was a wide-brimmed hat, and below that, the small, rounded shoulders of a tiny man – or boy – who was moving slowly toward them. Because of the fog neither of them could see what it was making the irritable, grating sound, but it obviously was whatever the figure was dragging.
The outline grew larger, and the two, still transfixed, saw a scrawny young man in an outrageously gaudy black-leather gambler’s hat and matching leather vest. But for those two items his clothes were grimy and worn. He had a wispy moustache that appeared to have never felt a razor since puberty.
Emerging through the mist, the source of the horrible noise could be seen. It looked to be a homemade stretcher, the kind that only Boy Scouts on survival trips knew how to make. The young man stopped ten yards from the veranda and the grating noise finally abated. His name, unknown to them at the time, was Harold Mudd, a name no one would remember after Tobie had later knighted him “The Insect.”
The thin young man squatted and let go of the two wooden poles on which he had been tugging. And without changing the stupid, exhausted expression on his face, he looked up at them through the thick lenses of his unstylish glasses and said simply, “Hey there.”
The words broke the ice for the frozen pair on the veranda. He wasn’t a badly disguised alien who fell to earth as Janie had suspected. Mother and son walked down the steps of the porch together. Tobie was the first to spot the familiar sable coat showing through an opening of the blanket covering the stretcher. Tobie ran toward the boy’s contraption and spotted Holly on the stretcher, her head poking out from under the blanket that was carefully tucked under her. He could see her nostrils flare slightly, rhythmically; she was alive. Janie saw the patch of fur a split second later, and assuming Holly was dead, ran into the house calling for Jeremy. Tobie looked up at the startled boy, who appeared surprised for being responsible for all the commotion. In a fit of uncontrolled despair, Tobie commanded the timid boy to tell him what had happened. Harold’s expression turned to that of the accused.
“A Porch.”
“What?”
“A Porch. A tourist in a Porch hit her.”
“Where did you find her?”
“By my house. I was out at the road lookin’ for beer cans. I saw the whole thing. This black Porch, a two-eleven ‘essie,’ was racing by. Your dog was crossing the road. They skidded and hit her and stopped and then they just sped off. I don’t think they saw me. I was in the ditch.”
Harold had spoken as fast as he could so he wouldn’t have to hear the sound of his own voice. Janie and Jeremy ran out of the house and stood over Tobie, who knelt with his hand on the blanket, afraid to raise it.
“Where is she hurt?”
“Her back leg.”
Harold pulled back on the blanket. A slight cry came from Janie as they looked at the collie’s grotesquely contorted hind leg. A feeble attempt at a crude splint was wrapped around the blood-matted fur of her leg. A ragged tourniquet was tied around her thigh.
“How far did you pull her?”
“From my uncle’s house, ‘bout two miles. I don’t have no phone and no car. So I used my stretcher to bring her here.” Harold pointed at his inquisitor, “I seen you drivin’ her around in your Ranger, and I knew you lived here.”
Jeremy thought it was unusual for the boy, who must have been out of high school, to not have a car. Tobie turned to his father and began to plead his case.
“We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to try.”
Jeremy told Tobie to call Watson, the veterinarian, and Tobie flew into the house. Jeremy bent down and stroked the dog’s forehead as he looked over to the boy.
“What’s your name?”
“Harold. Harold Mudd.”
“I haven’t seen you around The Valley before.”
“I moved in with my aunt and uncle about six months ago. The Baileys.”
“Yes. I know them.” Jeremy knew of the old couple that lived in a dilapidated trailer house on a tiny patch of ground down the road. The Baileys had retired – survived – for more than fifteen years on the pension of a career Naval NCO. The postage-stamp lot in The Valley had become their little plot of paradise.
The vet was pessimistic after he examined Holly. “I don’t think she’ll make it, Jeremy. And if she does, she’ll surely lose that leg. She’s not a young dog,” Watson had confided.
Jeremy turned to Tobie to discuss what he thought was inevitable – humane.
“No you don’t!” Tobie pled. “Damn it, she’s all I’ve got. She can make it. Call Daniel. Call somebody! We gotta try.”
Jeremy always had found it impossible to say no to Tobie. Perhaps his belief or his fervor in discipline had eroded over the years, or maybe he was trying to alleviate the guilt from feeling that Tobie was unwanted, a feeling that in truth wasn’t really there. Or perhaps it was simply because Tobie only asked for easily obtainable, material things. The vet suggested that they call the hospital of veterinary medicine at UC-Davis and arrange for the dog to be operated on the next day. It was decided that Tobie could stay with Daniel, who was in Davis for a week-long viticulture seminar. The doctor did what he could, and they carefully loaded Holly into the wagon. With everything set, Tobie jumped in the Ranger and sped off into the night.
Janie insisted that Harold spend the night after she learned that he was alone at the trailer house, the Baileys having left to visit relatives in Arizona. Harold was too overwhelmed at the offer to stay in a stranger’s home, such a fancy home, to refuse. Exhausted from his trek and at the same time terrified that he might have to carry on a conversation with his hosts, Harold went straight to bed.
Jeremy and Watson, an old family friend and their vet for decades, stood in the kitchen drinking coffee when Janie entered, having completed her role as hostess.
“Do you know that boy, Janie?” Jeremy asked his wife.
“I might have seen him in Healdsburg, but I can’t really say that I recall him.”
“Well, I remember him, Jeremy,” Watson had said. “And you won’t believe the circumstances. About three months ago I was in my office when this kid comes in. It was Harold. He had on that same crazy gambler’s hat and was carrying a shoebox. He opened the lid and there was this sparrow inside. One of its wings was broken and had been for some time. The bird was half dead. He asked me something like, ‘Hey, man, do you think you can fix this little bird’s wing?’ I told him I wasn’t sure if the bird would live, but he was quite adamant about the bird being treated. He told me he’d found it while walking to town. I asked him if he was going to pay for my services. He said no, it wasn’t his pet and he didn’t have any money. I said I’d do what I could and he left.”
“What happened to the bird?” Janie asked.
“Now Janie, I was really busy then. It was a week before the track opened at Bay Meadows, and I had horses to treat. So I stuck a cotton ball of formaldehyde in the shoebox and threw it in the trash.”
“Oh! How could you?”Janie cried.
“Now Janie — ” her husband began in a mock-scolding tone.
“Another crazed idealist,” Watson replied. “That bird wasn’t eating, it was sick, it – it was a sparrow!”
“Did Harold come back to visit his bird?” Janie asked.
“No, and I don’t think he recognized me tonight.”
“That’s strange. I wonder why he wears that silly hat. He still had it on when I showed him to his room.”
“I think when he puts it on and looks in the mirror, he sees the High Plains Drifter,” Jeremy interjected.
“But that we could all have his heart,” the vet added. “Do you realize that Holly would have bled to death without that tourniquet? That bone had broken an artery and gone clear through the skin.”
“And he pulled that wooden frame all this way!” Jeremy noted. “Why didn’t anyone stop and help him?”
“You know that since the cult moved in, no one stops for anyone walking in this valley anymore,” Watson replied.
The following afternoon, Tobie called home to say that the operation was a success, but that now they’d have a three-legged dog hobbling around the ranch. Janie told Tobie that the Good Samaritan had left after breakfast, and she told her son what the veterinarian had said about Harold’s tourniquet.
After bribing her guest with pancakes, Janie had drawn from Harold that he had learned to make the stretcher and apply the tourniquet while in the Boy Scouts. He failed to tell her that Outdoor Safety was his final badge as a scout before he was hounded out of his troop by the constant tormenting of his peers, who found him too slow, to uncoordinated, too stupid. It was a recurring pattern in Harold’s young life. He had withdrawn into himself, slowly, and seldom ventured from his room but for school. His hobbies became his obsession. For hours he would sit and construct model cars from their plastic kits, or look at the pictures in Hot Rod or examine the diagrams in his father’s auto repair manuals. His love of toy cars was soon surpassed only by his love for the glue with which he put his models together. He found that breathing the fumes dulled his sense of loneliness and made him forget his social ineptitude. Unfortunately, it also diminished the gray matter in his head. He dropped out of high school at age sixteen.
Harold did tell Janie over his third helping that his father, a truck mechanic, was transferred from their small town in western Kansas to Des Moines, and that his parents told him because of their distressed financial situation, he wasn’t going to Iowa with them. They put Harold, age seventeen, on a bus to California to live with his relatives, the Baileys.
Three days after Holly’s operation, Tobie brought home the recuperating dog. The following day he stopped by the Bailey’s mobile home and thanked Harold for all he had done. Tobie invited Harold, three years his junior, to dinner at the ranch. Thanks to Tobie’s generosity – and Janie’s tolerance – Harold ate five hot meals at the Barnes ranch over the next week. At first Tobie had instigated the Barnes’ contact with Harold. Two weeks after Holly’s operation, Harold was riding a bike over each day to check on the old dog. The bike was a rusty ten-speed Tobie had found in the garage and given to him. Tobie never once discouraged Harold from his visits. It wasn’t really a friendship that developed between the two. They seldom discussed politics, or sports, or for that matter, anything. Harold never had much to say and neither did Tobie. Bobby had been dismayed, yet somewhat amused to come home from college that Easter to find Holly with three legs and Tobie with an odd little shadow. He thought Harold was just another part of Tobie’s menagerie. Bobby teased Tobie about Harold’s constant buzzing around him, which led the younger brother to dub his shadow “The Insect,” a name Harold would take to the grave.
The Insect’s adopting of Tobie as his spiritual leader did much to bring him out of his shell, although he still would be like a hermit crab all his life, dragging the shell that others had created. Unfortunately, The Insect had learned his social skills from Tobie, who definitely was not the Emily Post of The Valley.
Tobie was the one to discover The Insect’s potential as a mechanic. And Jeremy had given Harold the title of assistant mechanic for the tractors, irrigation pumps, and wind machines on the ranch, a position he held for only a short time, since The Insect’s ties with Tobie had slowly turned the business relationship sour.
Jeremy spoke to Bobby of The Insect’s most recent termination, this time by Jeremy.
“I suppose one of the hardest things I’ve had to do was take away The Insect’s job, Bobby,” his father said as he gazed out toward the waning sun, its rays penetrating the furrows trailing from his squinting eyes. “And to know it’s my own son’s influence over the boy that’s made him so – so irresponsible. But damn it, I think Tobie’s getting better. I think his two days in jail had a big impact on him. Gave him time to think — like Thoreau.”
“Thoreau? Come on, Jeremy, don’t you think that simile is a bit grandiose? I think the last six months have only been a lull before the storm.”
