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Chapter 2: Dick Nibbler’s Duties

The temperature outside that morning was twenty-one degrees but the frequent thirty-mile per hour gusts of wind would momentarily drop the temperature into the single digits. There was no snow on the ground and every yard was a dark greenish brown and littered with leaves of the same color. Despite the yearly blizzard, the color of Nebraskan winters is grey. The winter months in Nebraska are best described with an emotion, and that emotion is depression.

Dick and Bo Jackson arrived at Sun-Mart and entered through the automatic doors at the front of the store. It had been another long and uneventful journey to work, other than Bo trying to take an orange windmill lawn ornament from the yard of an elderly couple’s house. Bo would pull the ornament out of the ground and Dick would tell him to put it back. Bo insisted that someone had lost it and he simply wanted to find the person and return it to them. This was a moderately clever ploy to keep the windmill considering Bo Jackson’s low level of brainpower. After nearly five minutes of arguing Dick angrily grabbed the windmill from Bo’s hands, jammed it back into the ground at the front of the house, and told Bo to “get walking or else” in a stern manner. The elderly couple watched this event unfold as they sipped Yuban coffee from their matching mugs while staring out the front window. They were entertained by the argument between the two strange men that walked past their house every morning, and they didn’t really care if the mentally challenged man stole the windmill lawn ornament. The windmill had been a gift from Reader’s Digest that they had received in 1992, and it didn’t quite mesh with the color of the house anyway.

Dick and Bo walked through the checkout lanes, through the middle isle, and into the back warehouse of the store. Dwayne was holding his clipboard in his left hand and a sugar-free Monster energy drink in his right.

“Well if it ain’t motherfucking Dick and B.J. About fucking time you fucking idiots got here!” Dwayne said as soon as he saw them walk through the swinging doors of the warehouse. The time was 6:50AM and Dick and Bo Jackson were early. This didn’t matter to Dwayne though. It didn’t matter what time anyone showed up for work because in his eye they were always late. Dwayne was supposed to be at work by 6:30 but he had only arrived there five minutes earlier.

Dwayne Johnson was the morning manager at Sun-Mart. He worked between the hours of 6:30AM and noon. He was a twenty-two year old Industrial Tech major at the University of Nebraska in Kearney, with a minor in Physical Education. He was fairly clever despite his common overuse of swear words. His nickname was

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“The Rock” because of the former wrestler and current actor that shares his name, although physically he carried an uncanny resemblance to a young Jerry Seinfeld. He was born and raised in Kearney and had been working at Sun-Mart since the second semester of his sophomore year in high school. He had worked his way up from a bag boy to the morning warehouse assistant manager. He hated his job but he told himself that it would look good on his resume. Little did he know that his future employer at the corporate offices of Sport’s Authority in Denver would pay no attention to his former work experience when they decided to hire him two years from now.

“Clock the fuck in and get your goofy asses over to the cereal boxes. We’ve got a whole shit ton of Honey Bunches of Oats to unload before Rick gets here at nine.” Dwayne said with a fake worried look on his face as he raised his energy drink towards his lips to take a drink. Rick was the warehouse manager and he probably wouldn’t arrive until 10:30 at the earliest. Rick was a fifty-five year old overweight man that had transferred from managing the children’s clothing department at Alco in Ord to his current job at Sun-Mart in Kearney. He was a slightly arrogant man that liked to portray an air experience and worldly travel. However, Rick had only traveled outside the state of Nebraska six times and had only flown in an airplane twice during his fifty-five years of life.

Bo wondered off towards the area of the warehouse where the crates of cereal boxes were located. Dick walked over to the check-in area to punch both of them in on the clock. Above the punch-in clock was a calendar that listed who was working that day. Dick saw that both Tia Lebutte and Jacey Munch were scheduled to come in at eight. This made Dick pleased, as Tia and Jacey were his favorite cashiers. He punched in his own time card and Bo’s with a smile on his face.

Tia Lebutte and Jacey Munch had both graduated from high school together in the nearby town of Ravenna and had moved to Kearney to attend college. They were roommates. Tia had flunked out of college her freshman year although she told others that she had been forced to quit due to an error made by the college enrollment office, and she planned on going back as soon as the error was fixed. This excuse was a lie and it really didn’t make any sense, but customers would nod and pretend to side with Tia’s displeasure of the imagined error while she scanned their items at the checkout counter. Jacey had never enrolled at the college as she had originally planned because she had met a twenty-one year old unemployed man at a college party that she attended on the weekend after her and Tia’s arrival into Kearney, and now she was seven and a half months pregnant.

Tia Lebutte was five foot four, twenty years old, and had fiery red hair with pale skin. She had suffered through her fair share of harassment due to her red hair color, freckles, and pallor complexion. She was often called a ginger and was told

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“Gingers have no soul!” This claim about the lack of a redhead’s soul was based upon an episode of South Park, which was titled “Ginger Kids”. It aired almost exactly seven years ago to the day while her and Jacey were in the seventh grade, and it marked the beginning of Tia’s torment brought about by the lack of pigment in her hair and skin; her mother’s Irish lineage was to blame.

Tia fought her bullies by making herself appear intimidating. She only had nine tattoos but they created the illusion of her body being predominantly covered with ink. Her smallest tattoo was on her right wrist and it was of a small USDA stamp that read ‘Un Approved’ in the middle.

Tia’s largest tattoo could be found on the top right quarter of her back. It was a tattoo of Little Red Riding Hood holding a smoking .357 magnum in each hand and standing in a Yosemite Sam fashion. Above Little Red Riding Hood was the sentence, FEAR ONLY MAKES THE WOLF LOOK BIGGER. tattooed in red capitalized letters. Dick had seen this tattoo twice and he felt a strange need to see it again. The tattoo caused a small spark of inspiration in its readers and Dick was one of them. The first time that he had seen the tattoo was when Tia had come to work wearing a tank top with sweat pants. Dwayne immediately told her to put on a Sun-Mart polo over the tank top and Tia followed his orders. The second time that Dick saw the tattoo was when Tia showed up on a Saturday evening in July, wearing nothing but a bikini top and cargo shorts. She had spent the entire day sitting around a baby pool with her friends, drinking Bud Platinum beer and teasing young men with her sexual prowess. She was rather sunburned and she had come to work to pick up her paycheck. Dick was slightly taken aback by Tia’s surprisingly attractive figure in the bikini, but he was mostly excited about the opportunity to see his favorite tattoo again. The words of the tattoo lit a small fire inside of Dick. He appreciated the fact that there was a period at the end of the tattoo’s statement rather than an exclamation point or no punctuation at all. It made the sentence more factual and to the point. The fire that was lit inside of Dick by his viewing of this tattoo would give him visions of standing up to his tormentors and taking what he wanted in life. Those visions of grandeur would last all of ten minutes until Dick once again shifted his mind back into idle as he stocked shelves and bagged groceries. Inspiration can be fleeting when it has no immediate target.

The problem with Tia was that she had become a bit of a bully herself. Some people grow in the face of opposition and others overcompensate by pushing back with too much force. During the turmoil of her youth, Tia had discovered that the best way to fight bullies was to become one herself; a common side effect of people that claim to have been “pushed too far”. Tia would often make wisecracks to obtain laughs at the expense of others, including Dick. Dick still liked Tia because unlike the rest of the world, Tia still acknowledged Dick as a person.

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Jacey Munch was an entirely different story. Jacey was nineteen years old and Dick had a crush on her. Under no circumstances would Dick ever admit his crush on Jacey because he was more than twice her age and he knew how inappropriate this crush was. She was now over seven months pregnant and even though her stomach looked as if it were ready to burst, the rest of her body and face appeared gaunt and lacking nourishment. Since the age of six, Jacey had received peer-induced punishment due to her innately odd nature and thin body.

Jacey Munch was considered to be the quiet type ever since she was introduced to the world of academia at age five. She had not been formerly introduced to the life of childhood competition through means of daycare, preschool, or coping with sibling rivalry. Jacey was the only child of an over protective divorced single mother and had been robbed of important life experiences during her early existence. She was quiet around others because she felt that she had nothing important to share. She had relegated herself to sitting in the back of the classroom in both the literal and metaphorical sense. During high school she was picked on because of her quietness. Rumors spread around the school that she was a lesbian. In the ESPN fed minds of Republican offspring, homosexuality is a very rational explanation for someone being a bit more reserved than those around them. Her last name added fuel to the lesbian accusations and Jacey was often referred to as Carpet Munch or the more formal name of, The Carpet Muncher.

Jacey had always been skinny and this could be attributed to both her genetics and her lack of appetite since birth. Both of Jacey’s parents were thin and even as an infant she would refuse to breastfeed and her mother being the feminist that she was, refused to feed poisonous Enfamil to her only child. Her sparse feeding habits continued as she aged. Jacey remained thin and frail her whole life and only grew to a height of five feet tall.

Jacey often dressed in dark clothing and wore heavy eyeliner with lipstick. It gave the appearance of her being gothic or “emo” but this was purely by accident. Her mother had taught her daughter to dress in non-revealing clothing and nobody had ever properly trained Jacey how to apply makeup. Jacey didn’t even listen to gothic or “emo” music; her favorite band was a toss-up between Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga and her favorite movie was Finding Nemo. Despite her absurdly normal taste in entertainment she still strongly resembled Winona Rider in Beetlejuice or a younger version of Helena Bonham Carter’s character in Fight Club; both of which were movies that Jacey would not see for another six years and she would strongly relate to both of them. Jacey also began to dye her hair at the age of fourteen. She felt that changing her hair color was the easiest way to drastically change her physical appearance, so she altered her hair color about every four months on average. Right

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now her hair was purple and the black roots of her true hair color were beginning to show at the bottom. No matter what her current hair color was, Dick thought it was beautiful.

Dick had a crush on Jacey. He believed that there was some sort of unspoken bond between him and Jacey because they both shared the same shyness around people and in Dick’s mind’s eye Jacey had never been mean to him. Jacey commonly greeted Dick by calling him “Cookie” when bumping into him while she was around other people. Dick thought that this was a cute nickname that she had given him and he looked forward to hearing it from her. He didn’t know that she called him “Cookie” because it was short for Cookie Monster. She had told Tia once that Dick’s eyes resembled those of the Cookie Monster in the way that they seemed to move about as he walked. Tia laughed hardily when Jacey had revealed this bit of truth,

but Jacey was the one that had taken the moniker from the break room to reality by calling Dick “Cookie” to his face. This term was much more polite than the nickname of “Walleye” given to Dick by Dwayne. The nickname of “Walleye” was an obvious stab at the fact that Dick’s eyes were always staring at the walls.

However, Jacey was quite fond of Dick. She had no real sexual interest in Dick, but when the hypothetical question of how much money would it take to have sex with Dick was brought up by Timmari during a cigarette break by the dumpsters, Jacey had given the lowest price of $10,000. Timmari had stated that she wouldn’t touch Dick’s dick for anything under a million dollars, but Timmari was fired in September for stealing two cartons of menthol cigarettes for her boyfriend Darnell, so now her opinions were either moot or completely forgotten. Jacey looked at Dick as if he were a puppy dog, and not only a puppy dog, but also the runt of the litter.

Dick placed his and Bo’s punch cards back into their designated slots. He then casually strolled over to stacks of boxes filled with various cereals where Bo was opening boxes while Dwayne sipped on his energy drink and watched.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Dick. Are you gonna help your little brother do some work or are you gonna play pocket pool all fucking morning?” Dwayne said to Dick without taking his eyes off of Bo.

“Yes Dwayne. I mean, I’m sorry Dwayne. Yes, um… what do you want me to do?” Dick stammered.

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“Take the fucking boxes to the fucking cereal isle where this shit belongs. You’re the hired handler for your re-re brother so make sure he doesn’t move the Rice Crispies into the fucking dog food isle or any other kind of brilliant shit he might think of.” Dwayne said in his nonchalant but highly insulting way.

“Bo, go get a grocery cart to put these boxes in, and then we can take them to the cereal isle.” Dick said to Bo.

“Okay Dick. Wait here and I’ll be right back.” Bo smiled as he walked away to fetch a grocery cart from the rear of the warehouse.

“Dicks and B.J.’s. They go together like farts and car seats. But seriously Walleye, did your parents even understand English when they named you two?” Dwayne asked.

“No. Our parents died when we were young.” Dick replied without answering the actual question. It was a slight lie, but Dick had no concern for Dwayne’s feelings.

“Well shit Dick, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to insult your family or anything like that.” Dwayne replied with fake sincerity.

“It’s okay Dwayne, you didn’t know.” Dick kindly said with a smile.

“Okay then. Now that we’ve sobbed over your fucking life story, why don’t you and Bo go grab a Kleenex and dry your vaginas so you can finally unload all of this Honey Bunches of Oats and shit in the fucking cereal isle before Rick gets here and chews my ass!” Dwayne said sternly as he towered over Dick.

Bo arrived with a grocery cart and Dick promptly filled it with boxes of cereal. He fit six large boxes into a cart and then grabbed two more carts and filled them as well. Dick pushed a cart while pulling another behind him over to the cereal isle. Bo followed him while pushing one cart in front of him.

They arrived in the cereal isle, opened the boxes, and went about placing the boxes of cereal into their proper areas. Dick knew that this task would take less than twenty minutes and if he and Bo finished their duties too quickly then Dwayne or Rick might send them home early, and that would mean less time on the clock and less money on their paychecks. Dick couldn’t afford to have less money on his or Bo’s paychecks, all pun intended.

The task of stocking the cereal shelves carried Dick and Bo into 8:10AM. It was then that both Tia and Jacey walked through the front door. They had rode to work together in Jacey’s bright red Dodge Neon.

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“How’re my two favorite nerds doing this morning?” Tia asked as she poked her head around the corner of the cereal isle.

“Oh, hi Tia. Hi Jacey. Good morning.” Dick replied as if he hadn’t been anxiously awaiting their arrival and didn’t see them come in.

Tia walked over to Dick and put her hand on his back while he opened another large box full of smaller boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats. Dick felt somewhat startled by this unexpected human contact.

“Dick, I need to ask you to do me and Jacey a huge favor. Like, a colossal life changing favor.” Tia said as she removed her hand from Dick’s back and he turned around to face her. Jacey was standing behind her remaining quiet. Just then Dwayne walked into the cereal isle.

“Sha…sure Tia. Whatever you need. What do you want me to do?” Dick said.

“We’ll tell you later. We’ve got to check in and do some shit first. We’ll find you during one of our breaks and ask you.” Tia said.

“F and S Dick. How long does it take two retards to stock a few cereal boxes? I’ll tell you the answer to that question as soon as you two maroons are done.” Dwayne said sarcastically to Dick as Tia and Jacey left the isle.

“Uh, don’t you mean morons Dwayne?” Dick asked as he increased his pace of stocking cereal boxes.

“Shut the fuck up Dick. I called you two maroons. I heard it on Looney Tunes.” Dwayne replied.

Dick and Bo went about their usual day of stocking random isles with random groceries and items that they would never buy themselves due to their low pay or lack of knowledge for cooking or personal hygiene. One of them would randomly be called to a checkout isle to place a customer’s purchased items into bags of either paper or plastic, and then carry them to the customer’s car for them. This was a task that could easily be carried out by any non-elderly customer, but people liked to take advantage of people like Dick and Bo, and they rarely tipped them for their efforts.

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These menial duties carried Dick and Bo into 11:30AM, when Tia and Jacey took their first break. Tia found Dick leaving the employee bathroom when her and Jacey stopped him.

“Dick! Holy shit, you have to do the biggest favor for me and Jacey today.” Tia said.

“Wha…what favor is that Tia?” Dick replied.

“Well, we’re having a little pre-Thanksgiving party for one of our foreign friends before they go back to Brazil, and we were wondering if you could buy us some booze.” Said Tia.

“Tia. I am way too old to be buying alcohol for minors.” Dick murmured back.

“Oh for fuck’s sake Dick. We would ask Dwayne to buy it for us but then we’d have to hang out with him and we’d much rather hang out with you.” Tia said, lying through her teeth. Jacey watched quietly over Tia’s shoulder.

“I don’t know Tia. I could get in big trouble…”

“Oh don’t be such a little bitch, Dick. We’ll give you money for the booze and a little extra. Jacey get’s off at two for a doctor’s appointment and I’ll take my lunch break at the same time. We’ll all walk over to the liquor store next door and get what we need. It’s not a big deal.” Tia said.

Dick glared over Tia’s shoulder at Jacey, giving her a look of disapproval.

“I’m not going to be drinking, Dick. We just need some alcohol to entertain our guests. I promise that I won’t touch a drop… I promise.” Jacey said to Dick in defense of the look that he was giving her.

For some reason Dick’s words had some clout with Jacey. She respected Dick not only because he was older and she had been raised to respect her elders, but she figured that somebody like Dick Nibbler had probably endured a hellish existence due to his name and unfortunate physical ugliness, and yet he was still sane and participating in life. She admired Dick’s undying spirit and thought that Dick would have some great insight on life. Five months ago, after Jacey and Tia had finished their cigarette break by the dumpsters and were entering through the ‘employees only’ door in the back, Dick had pulled Jacey aside to talk to her in private. He asked her to promise him that she would quit smoking for the sake of her unborn child and especially for herself. She was still unfamiliar with Dick at that time and she had never understood why this strange looking little man would say this to her, but she hadn’t smoked a cigarette since.

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“Well I don’t know about this. How much alcohol do you want me to buy?” Dick asked.

“We made a list so it’d be easier for you!” Jacey removed a piece of notebook paper from her pocket and handed it to Dick with a big grin on her face.

“Four thirty-packs and three bottles of whipped cream flavored vodka?!” Dick shouted as he looked at the list.

“Jesus shit, Dick. You don’t have to fucking yell it out to the whole store.” Tia placed her hand over Dick’s mouth.

“This is way too much Tia. Besides, anyone in their right mind knows that only minors drink whipped cream vodka and Natural Light. They’ll know right away that I’m buying alcohol for minors. No Tia, this is too much.” Dick was shaking his head while still staring at the list.

“Oh please Dick. Ple-e-e-a-a-a-s-s-s-e-e-e. We’ll never ask you for another favor again. Ever. We swear. We’ll suck your dick, Dick. Oh please oh please Dick.” Tia begged while holding her hands in a praying fashion and Jacey was giving Dick her sad puppy-dog face behind Tia.

“How much money do you have?” Dick said while ignoring Tia’s false promises of giving him fellatio in exchange for cheap booze.

“We’ve got one hundred and fifty-five dollars and you can keep whatever’s leftover. We’ve been saving up for this party for more than two weeks now Dick, and you’re our only hope. If you won’t buy us this alcohol then you will be ruining the weekend for hundreds of people.” Tia claimed.

“Hundreds of people, huh? Well I’ve never been to your guy’s apartment but I highly doubt you could even fit fifty people in it. I just don’t know Tia. I mean, I could really get into a lot of trouble over this. I could lose my job or even go to jail.” Dick was still staring at the list.

Jacey chimed in from over Tia’s shoulder, “Dick. I will do anything you want if you do this one favor for us. We really need this alcohol and I am putting all of my faith into you to get it for us. Please.”

Jacey’s words had much more impact on Dick than his words had on her. That was it. He was going to buy a ridiculous amount of teenaged type alcohol for two girls that were way out of Dick’s league and he would receive nothing more than a thank you and maybe some spare change after the purchase.

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“Alright then. I suppose I could buy it for you. But you can’t tell anyone that I ever bought alcohol for you and after this one time I will never by beer or hard liquor for you again.” Dick said this while looking directly into Jacey’s eyes.

“Fucking-A Dick! I knew you’d pull through for us! Okay, we’ve got to get back to the front before Rick or The Rock come looking for us, but we’ll meet you in front of the liquor barn around two. We’ll park Jacey’s car right in front of The Liquor Barn so you can just put all the booze in it when you leave the store. Oh my God Dick, you are a fucking rock star! I fucking love you so much!” Tia said as her and Jacey slowly walked away, still facing him as they disappeared around the corner of the canned foods isle.

Dick walked back to the laundry detergent isle where he and Bo were straightening bottles of detergent so the labels were facing the front before Dick had to leave for a bathroom break. Bo watched Dick sulkily enter the isle with his head down.

“What’s wrong Dick? Was the toilet broken?” Bo asked kindly.

“It’s nothing Bo, just get back to work. We’re going to take a break together in a couple of hours and I don’t want you to tell anyone about it. Okay Bo?” Dick was making eye contact with Bo while placing both hands on Bo’s shoulders.

Bo nodded his head in agreement without asking any questions and they both continued the meaningless task of arranging the detergent bottles so that the customers would be able to identify the labels without exerting the monstrous effort of having to slightly turn the bottles.

Dick felt bad about caving in to Tia and Jacey’s begging. It made him feel weak. The liquor store next door was a large barn that had been converted into a store decades ago. It was called The Liquor Barn. Dick knew that Spencer would be working at The Liquor Barn today and that he would question Dick as to why he was purchasing so much alcohol, or any alcohol at all. Dick was not opposed to drinking, but he detested going into liquor stores. When someone saw a man like Dick in a liquor store they automatically assumed that he would be drinking his purchase alone and that he most likely had a drinking problem. Dick could feel the stares every time he entered The Liquor Barn. On a bit of a cosmic level, it was funny that Dick hated the liquor store so much because The Liquor Barn would end up being a very important location in his life. It was the location in which Dick would die.

The Life and Death of Dick Nibbler

By Lucas Cox

Dick stared up at the bottom of the mattress that was supported by three flimsy boards only a foot above his face. It had been another night without sleep. He had to be at work by 7:00 AM and he was quietly waiting for the sound of country music to play from his alarm clock, signaling him that it was 5:30AM and he could give up the meaningless charade of silently lying in bed throughout the night in an attempt to convince others or perhaps himself that he was a normal person that was capable of sleep. Dick had not slept for longer than a three-hour stretch since the age of fourteen. He turned his head to look at the clock; it was 3:56AM.

Just as Dick looked at his alarm clock the mattress above his head began to rise. Dick closed his eyes and pretended to sleep as a way of avoiding the chance that his younger brother might see him awake. He heard his brother climb down the short ladder at the foot of the bunk bed and walk to the corner of the room. Dick knew that his brother was on the other side of the room because the thin floor of their single bedroom trailer home was rather creaky, which gives away an occupant’s location easily. Dick opened his eyes and watched. His brother, Bo Jackson, was facing away from him. Bo Jackson had lifted up the lid to the clothes hamper and was apparently urinating into it as if it were a toilet. Bo Jackson had a tendency to sleep walk and mistaking the clothes hamper for a toilet during his nocturnal strolls was a common occurrence; it happened at least twice a month. Dick realized that his morning work clothes were in the clothes hamper that his brother was currently relieving himself in, but he didn’t care. He remained silent and listened as his brother finished his business and climbed back up the ladder and nestled himself back into his position at the top of their bunk bed. Dick then resumed his staring at the bottom of the mattress.

After what seemed like an eternity, the voice of Toby Keith singing “Red Solo Cup” began to emit from Dick’s radio. Despite his deep love for country music, Dick absolutely hated this song. This song was a representation of the party lifestyle. A lifestyle that Dick had never lived, it was the lifestyle of the various bullies that had tormented him throughout his entire life. He let out a short sigh of relief, as he no longer had to pretend to sleep and then climbed out of bed. Despite being on the bottom level of the bunk bed it was still a bit of a climb down because Dick was only five feet and two inches tall.

He turned off the alarm clock and put on his glasses that he placed on top of the nightstand every night before bed. He was helpless without his glasses. The lenses of his glasses were more like mirrors rather than glasses that would bend light to aid in the focus of objects that were near or far. They wrapped around the sides of his eye sockets much like a pair of aviator goggles. Dick was born with a rare type of strabismus defined as constant exotropia of both eyes. In other words

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both of his eyes pointed outward; a sort of reversed crossed eyes. Dick had the lenses of his glasses permanently tinted to hide his embarrassment for his wonky eye alignment. He went about his daily routine of getting ready for work.

After a brief stretch Dick walked over to the clothes hamper where his younger brother had urinated onto his daily work clothes only an hour and a half earlier. These were his only suitable work clothes and he didn’t have time to wash his green polo shirt and kakis before having to arrive at work; besides, the washing machine caused his younger brother to panic. He reached into the clothes hamper and removed his polo and kakis that had been resting on top of the pile of clothes, making an easy target for his brother’s pee stream. Luckily his clothes only felt damp and not fully saturated with urine. Dick took his work clothes into the bathroom with him and hung them over the top of the shower door as he showered before work. Maybe the shower steam would remove some of the urine smell from his clothes. Meanwhile in the bedroom, Bo Jackson began to awake from the deep sleep that he achieved nightly with little to no effort. In fact, Bo Jackson could fall asleep anywhere.

Dick’s younger brother, Bo Jackson, was born with moderate mental retardation in the year 1985 and today was his twenty-seventh birthday. Twenty-seven years ago when Barry and Kathleen Nibbler asked their then fourteen-year-old son, Dick Nibbler, what he wanted to name his little brother, Dick proudly announced, “Bo Jackson!” At the time of Bo Jackson’s birth, the multi talented athlete Bo Jackson of the famous “Bo Knows…” advertising campaign had just won the coveted Heisman Trophy and both Dick and his father Barry Nibbler were huge college football fans. More importantly, Dick Nibbler had already suffered through fourteen years of harassment over being named Dick Nibbler and he felt that his baby brother could avoid such mental anguish by having a fine name like Bo Jackson Nibbler. Much to Dick’s surprise, his parents chose to go with Dick’s choice for his newborn baby brother’s name. Dick had never thought of the possibility that his brother would be declared mentally retarded by the age of three, or even worse that people would shorten his brother’s name to B.J. Giving him the title of Mr. B.J. Nibbler; which was on par or possibly worse than the title of Dick Nibbler. Dick had been named after his late grandfather on his mother’s side of the family, Dick Johnson. With a name like Dick Johnson Nibbler it was entirely unavoidable for Dick to escape ridicule whether he used his first or middle name for means of identification. He had tried to go by the name of John Nibbler but everyone already knew his name in the small town of Kearney, Nebraska.

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Dick finished his shower and dried off his short statured and overly hairy body. Dick had more hair on his back and shoulders than he did on his scalp. His hairline had begun its recession at the same time that his body had chosen to grow vast amounts of pubic hair, beginning at the age of sixteen. Dick was short, bald, overweight, hairy bodied, had eyes that appeared to constantly be staring at both of his shoulders, but he also had a sixth ailment that was far worse than all of the others. He was reminded of this disability multiple times per day, everyday. Every morning after his shower he was faced with the first reminder of his most horrible challenge as soon as he fastened the straps of his adult diaper around his waist. Dick had been born with a high lesion imperforate anus. Meaning that when Dick entered this world he was born without an anus. He was lucky enough to have not been born with any internal malformations and nothing more than the lack of an opening for his feces to exit his body. The doctors had immediately made an incision to give Dick the ability to remove excrement from his body and this action was enough to save him from an infantile death, but it also left him with no muscles to control his anal opening. When Dick had to address the proverbial “number two” he had no ability to control the timing of his release. The option of having a colostomy was always before him but he feared the expenses that and especially having to go under the knife.  Dick fastened the diaper around his waist and reached for his dampened work clothes. He placed his green polo shirt under his nose to inspect the smell. The shower steam had managed to lighten the scent but it still smelled of urine. He put on his kaki pants, applied some deodorant under each arm, put on his polo and tucked it into his kakis, and walked into the six by eight foot kitchen area.

Bo Jackson was sitting at the small fold out card table in the kitchen that also doubled as the living room. Bo was eating a bowl of generic Cheerios and diligently watching a rerun of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Dick was a news junky that was often deprived of his morning news feast due to his mentally challenged brother’s need to watch the Disney Chanel every morning. This was the episode of Zack and Cody where a new kid joins the orchestra as a violinist and flirts with Zack’s girlfriend. They had seen this episode several times but that didn’t matter to Bo Jackson. Bo could witness a single episode of Zack and Cody a thousand times and every viewing experience would feel like the first.

Dick walked to the kitchen counter and removed a bowl from the cupboard. He saw that there were no clean spoons so he chose to eat with his fingers. He took his special cereal from the cupboard above the sink. His special cereal was anything full of fat and sugar while specifically lacking fiber. Eating healthy was not an option for Dick because a lifestyle of exercise and healthy foods made Dick regular while a life of junk food and laziness delayed his needs to use the restroom. Two decades of purposely eating a diet full of over processed fats and sugars had saved Dick from many messy and embarrassing accidents involving his bowels but had also caused him to become rather overweight and unshapely. His intentionally poor diet had also been the culprit behind him never having hit a growth spurt during his youth.

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Dick poured himself a bowl of generic brand Cookie Crisps and sat down next to his brother. Bo Jackson acknowledged him with a quick glance and a smile before continuing to watch and laugh at the Zack and Cody rerun he had already seen countless times.

Dick gazed at his bowl of cereal with his tired glazed over eyes that pointed towards opposite walls of the trailer home. He was tired of eating this garbage. Everyday he would tell himself that this was the day; the day that he would turn his life around. He would present the reasons in his head of why he should be courageous and take what he wants in this world because goddammit, his life was passing him by, and then one by one he would shoot those reasons down with what he presumed to be logic. He had been going through this daily mental pep talk and shoot-down for forty-one years now and yet he remained in the same living purgatory that he had placed himself in.

“Is there a toy?” Bo Jackson asked as he broke the silence and chewed his dry generic Cheerios loudly.

“What’s that Bo?” Dick said while shaking his head to wake himself from his trance.

“A toy. Is there a toy in your breakfast box?”

“No Bo. They don’t put toys in the cheap boxes of cereal. They only put them in the expensive boxes of Cookie Crisps.” Dick replied.

This news caused Bo Jackson to stare at his bowl of cereal for a moment with the slight hint of a frown on his face. After a second’s pause he resumed shoveling cheap cereal into his mouth and shifted his attention back to the television with a renewed smile on his face.

Dick pushed his bowl aside and placed his elbow onto the table and then rested his head in his open hand. He looked at his brother in awe. Bo Jackson was mentally challenged and had been given the name of B.J. Nibbler. Bo had suffered through the same amount of torment that Dick had agonized through during his childhood. And just like Dick, Bo had never experienced love in neither the emotional or physical sense. In fact, neither Dick nor B.J. had ever received the physical pleasures that Bo’s abbreviated name stood for, and they never would. The difference between Dick and Bo Jackson was that Dick was fully aware of their dire situation while Bo Jackson was able to live a happy life within his unintentional ignorant bliss. Dick loved his little brother more than anything in the world but on

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some small level, Dick was jealous of his younger brother because of this. To most individuals, intelligence is a gift. But to Dick, intelligence only meant that he must be fully aware of his dismal existence at all times while Bo’s stupidity allowed him to live with no comprehension of how pathetic the lives of him and his older brother really were. Ignorance is bliss, and Dick yearned for this bliss.

Dick slightly cocked his head to one side and looked at the time on his oversized digital watch. It was already 5:44AM.

“Five minute warning Bo. Finish your cereal because it’s time to go to work.” Dick said to his brother as he scooted away from the card table and walked towards his shabby blue winter coat hanging on the doorknob of the front door.

Bo began to eat his cereal at a ravenous pace while slowly moving away from the table. Dick had already put on his own worn out winter coat that he had worn every winter for the past twenty-one years and was holding Bo’s jacket in preparation to place it on his younger brother and zip it up for him. It was an unusually cold November in Nebraska and it was his duty to make sure his little brother avoided catching any kind of illness this winter. They couldn’t afford to pay any medical bills and neither one of them received any benefits from the grocery store where they were both currently and most likely permanently employed.  They received a check in the mail from the government for Bo Jackson’s disability every month but after using it to pay for their much-needed DirecTV satellite, Xbox video games, and some groceries there was little if any leftover to pay for rent and other necessities. Dick was in charge of both his and Bo’s financial investments, and though he could be considered a penny-pincher by most, their parents had never given Dick any sort of financial education.

Dicks father, Barry Nibbler, was possibly the stingiest man that had ever lived in terms of spending money. Nearly all children that are born with an imperforate anus are immediately given a colostomy, in which an opening is made in their abdominal wall as an alternate exit for waste. Barry Nibbler had gone for the much cheaper option of cutting the membrane that covered Dick’s anal opening, knowing that Dick would never have control over his bowel movements. Barry

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chose this cheaper option because he felt that the purchasing of a new water heater was a higher priority than the future dignity of his newborn son.

When Dick was born, he and his parents lived in a small but adequate three-bedroom home. His mother, Kathleen Johnson-Nibbler, endured the never-ending task of cleaning up after Dick’s accidents. Due to the constant soaping and rinsing of the carpets throughout the house large amounts of mold had grown underneath the carpeting and between nearly every floorboard of their home. Mold is like cancer to a house and is highly dangerous to the people living within it. The Nibbler family was unaware of the lethal damage that the hidden mold within their home was performing on their respiratory systems for the fourteen years that they lived under its roof.

Two months after the birth of Bo Jackson, Kathleen Johnson-Nibbler continued to have severe uterine bleeding as a result of his birth. The problem should have been addressed earlier but Barry Nibbler refused to pay the hospital for anymore “bullshit procedures because the labor had cost him enough Goddamn money already”. So Kathleen avoided medical assistance as long as she could until one day while she was working her secretary job at Rocky River’s Real Estate office, the bleeding would not stop. Rocky River was the name of the real estate agent, and it was in fact his actual name. Quirky names are common in small towns like Kearney Nebraska. Rocky was quite fond of Kathleen and he felt that her husband treated her cruelly. Despite her arguments Rocky drove Kathleen to the hospital himself. It was determined by the doctor that Kathleen required a hysterectomy as soon as possible, and that was her only option.

The doctor had given this news to Kathleen on Tuesday, and at 6:00AM on the following Monday morning she found herself lying across an operation table. There were no complications and the operation was a success. However, during her anesthetized incapacitation a minor infection had set its course for destruction within her lungs.

Dick’s last happy memory of his mother was of him sitting on her hospital bed while she was holding his baby brother in her arms. Their father had gone downstairs to the hospital cafeteria to take advantage of the free dinner rolls, so Dick and Bo were alone with their loving mother. He remembered her hazel eyes looking at him through the lenses of his strange glasses. It was the only look of admiration that he had ever received in his life. And while sitting on her hospital bed that afternoon, he heard something that he would not hear again until the age of forty-one years. She said, “Dick, I love you.” He would carry those amazing words

from his mother with him and use them as a shield against every hateful remark

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from strangers and bullies that he would hear on a regular basis for the rest of his life.

A nurse had told Dick that his mother would only need to be hospitalized for two days, but she had developed a mild cough the day after the surgery. The cough quickly progressed into violent gurgling coughs and a fever of 102 degrees. The morning after the cough had begun, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. A doctor had told Barry that the lung infection seemed to have been present before she had even entered the hospital. He recommended that he check their home for signs of mold. Barry kept this recommendation to himself. He kissed his sleeping wife on the forehead and drove home with his children for the night. After Dick and Bo had fallen asleep, he used a box cutter to cut through a small portion of carpet in the living room and then peeled it back. Underneath it was a thick fuzzy yellow-green layer of mold that was growing between the padding and the wooden floor. Barry was furious.

The following morning Barry called a friend of his that was a carpenter to ask him for some advice on the situation. His friend told him that the mold had most likely been caused by the constant use of water on the carpeting to clean up after Dick’s uncontrollable and accidental bowel movements. He said that with the amount of mold that must be growing within their house, it would be easier and much cheaper for him to sell the house and buy a new one. This infuriated Barry Nibbler. Barry slammed the phone back into its hook and as soon as he turned away, the phone began to ring. He turned around and picked it up. “What now?” he growled into the phone.

“Is this Mr. Barry Nibbler that I’m speaking with?” asked the female voice on the other end of the line.

“Yep. This is Barry. Who’s this?”

“Um Mr. Nibbler, we need you to come to the Good Samaritan Hospital as soon as possible. This is concerning your wife.”

“Let me guess. You need to milk some more fucking money out of me. Look asshole, I’ll be at the hospital after I’ve run some errands. I’ve got more important shit to do rather than forking over all of my hard earned cash to some namby-pamby fucking doctors.”

“I’m sorry sir, but you need to come to the hospital right away. It’s very important.”

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“Alright then. I guess I’ll put all of my shit on hold and come to your fucking hospital.” Barry grumbled these last words in a sarcastic tone. He hung up the phone and called for his eldest son to hurry downstairs. Dick came rushing down with his baby brother in his arms.

“Get dressed, we’re going back to the hospital and I’m getting your mom out of that fucking place before they rob us of every penny we’ve got.”

Dick rushed back to his bedroom and put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. He wrapped his baby brother in a clean blanket and accompanied his father in a slow paced car ride back to the hospital in their rusty outdated station wagon. Once they had arrived at the hospital and were checking in at the front desk, a doctor came out to greet them. The doctor acted pleased to see them but he had a very sorrowful demeanor. The doctor pulled Barry aside to talk to him in private. Dick held his baby brother while standing next to the front counter and watched the doctor converse with his father on the other side of the room, but he was unable to hear the conversation. The doctor said something to his father and then his father’s jaw dropped open. His father ran his fingers through his hair and then placed his hand over his mouth. He looked sad. After a few more words with the doctor, his father looked at Dick and motioned for him to come over to him. Dick did just that.

“What is it dad?” Dick asked in his sad childish voice.

“Dick. We’re going to go see your mother. And it isn’t good Dick. It isn’t good at all.”

“Mr. Nibbler. I’m sorry but it probably isn’t very appropriate for your…” The doctor was saying to Barry before he was interrupted.

“Shut your Goddamn mouth already! My son needs to see his mother one last time! He needs to see what’s happened, he needs to see what he’s done!” Barry Nibbler shouted at the doctor.

Barry had never fully understood why his father had said those words to the doctor, and his father had never given him an explanation either. This was the kindest thing that Barry would ever do for his son. The doctor had told Barry that his wife had passed away during the night due to complications from pneumonia. The doctor explained that they had determined that she had been exposed to some sort of airborne contaminant or possibly some kind of mold for a very long time. And this exposure had weakened her respiratory and immune system. The surgery was too much for her body to recover from and her weakened state had allowed the lung disease to wreck her body. As a result, her body had surrendered to the battle.

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Barry placed a firm hand on his son’s shoulder and led him upstairs through the elevator and to the door of his mother’s hospital room. Dick did not understand the unspoken tension and he was too nervous to ask his father because of the angry look on his face. They entered his mother’s room and there she was lying on her bed. The sounds of the machines that had previously been attached to her were still in the room, but now they were no longer attached to her and they were silent. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slightly opened. She was wearing a blank but somehow peaceful expression on her face. Barry tightened his grip on his son’s shoulder.

“Your mother’s dead, Dick. Go over there and say your goodbyes.” Barry said to his son in a very straightforward and slightly strained voice.

Dick froze at the sound of those words. He looked at his mother, and then looked up at his father and then back at his mother. He handed his baby brother over to his father and very slowly approached his mother’s still body. He reached out and took her right hand into his own. It was ice cold. The warmth of his mother’s touch had been the only physical affection that Dick had ever known, and now it was gone. Dick looked closely at his mother’s lifeless face. Blood had crusted her nostrils and there were lines of dried tears streaming down her cheeks. It gave her face an expression of terror and unanswered concerns. He would always regret not being there for her in her final hours but in that same thought he hoped that it was him that his mother had been crying out for. Nobody could forget a sight as horrific as the aftermath of his or her mother’s tragic and lonely demise. Dick’s crooked eyes welled with tears and his bottom lip trembled. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Her cheek was cold to the touch and her face gave no response. Dick fully realized that the only person that ever held any concern for him was gone.

Dick would never know that the doctor had told Barry that it would be unwise for him to show the body of his recently deceased wife to his young teenage son. Barry was a cruel and selfish man however, and he believed that Dick was the reason that his precious Kathleen was dead. It was Dick’s accidents that had created the need to wash the carpets and it was the washing of the carpets that had caused the mold to grow. If Dick had never been born then Barry would still have his beautiful Kathleen. Instead he now had an ugly untalented teenage son and an infant that would later be diagnosed as being mentally challenged. Dick was the source of all of his miseries.

Fourteen-year-old Dick Nibbler found it nearly impossible to sleep that night, and he would not obtain a peaceful sleep until the time of his death.

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The morning after his mother had died, a man in coveralls knocked on the front door. Dick answered the door and the man explained that he was a carpenter that was friends with his father and he was there to inspect the house, so Dick let him in. Barry led the man around the house and the man peeled up corners of carpet and looked under every bit of furniture in every room of the house. Half an hour later, Barry shook the man’s hand and the carpenter left. As soon as Barry closed the door behind the man, Barry looked at Dick and said, “Well Dick, we’re getting the fuck out of this place.”

Two days later there was an open casket viewing of Kathleen Johnson-Nibbler’s body at the lesser known Homer-Liskey Funeral Home and Cremation Services building on the Northeastern edge of Kearney. The Homer-Liskey Funeral Home was open to visitors from 8:00AM to 7:30PM and Dick spent every moment he could of the two days before his mother’s cremation sitting next to her casket. He would begin his walk to the funeral home at 7:00AM and arrive at the front doors by 7:30. Jason Liskey, the eldest son of John Liskey, would arrive at 7:55AM and unlock the front door for Dick to enter. Jason felt sorry for the unusual looking boy and he had placed a metal folding chair next to his mother’s casket for him. The funeral home had pillows for elderly visitors to sit on when visiting their departed loved ones, and Jason had placed on of these pillows onto Dick’s chair for him. He knew that Dick would be sitting in that chair until he was asked to leave at 7:35PM. Dick showed up early on the third day and when Jason arrived to unlock the front door, Jason felt heartbroken at the sight of the boy. Jason took young Dick aside to tell him that his mother’s body had been cremated. Dick didn’t want to believe him and insisted that he be let inside to see for himself. Jason unlocked the door and held it open for Dick to enter. Dick walked into the visiting room and saw that an obese old man had taken his mother’s place in the casket. Jason patted the short teenage boy on the head and told him he was sorry. Very few visitors had come to view Kathleen’s body, and Barry Nibbler was not one of them. Dick would never comprehend how a woman as wonderful as his mother could be so ignored in both life and death. He walked home with his head down.

When Dick arrived home he saw that a moving truck was parked in front of their home. The front door was propped open with a brick. Dick walked inside and saw his father attempting to move the blue love seat in the living room on his own.

“Holy shit Dick! Where the hell have you been? Don’t just stand there like a lump on your ass, get the hell over here and help me with this couch!” Barry yelled at Dick as he strained to pick up the couch on his own.

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Dick immediately ran over to the opposing side of the couch and helped his father lift it. Dick began to ask questions as they carried the couch through the front door.

“What’s going on dad?”

“Like I said. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“But where are we going?” Dick asked.

“I got us a nice little trailer over in East Lawn. Now that your mother’s gone, we won’t be needing a big old house like this. Its just going to be us men living together and roughing it from now on.” Barry answered.

Barry was attempting to sound like a caring father that was teaching his son how to be a man, but Dick had just returned from the funeral home where his father had ordered for his mother’s cremation without informing him about it first. Dick didn’t understand his father’s thought process but he hated him now nonetheless.

After helping his father fill the medium sized moving truck with furniture and clothing for a laborious three hours, Barry drove Dick and an infant Bo Jackson towards their new home. They parked the truck in the alley behind the Salvation Army to drop off most of his mother’s clothes and belongings in the donation area that resembled a small landfill. Dick was bewildered when he witnessed his father forcefully shoving his mother’s wedding dress into the donation dumpster but he continued to pile the boxes of his mother’s belongings in fear that his father would yell at him for not following his orders.

Dick sat in the passenger seat of the bumpy moving truck as it drove towards their new home, holding his brother in his lap. They entered the front gates of East Lawn and Dick looked out the window at his new neighborhood. The trailer park was filled with old rusty trailer homes and very small unkempt lawns with various children’s toys strewed about. It seemed that in the driveway of each trailer home was a pick-up truck or a Monte Carlo that appeared to be twice as nice and more expensive than the trailer home itself, and on the other side of each trailer home was a ridiculously oversized barbeque grill. Dick was not pleased with this neighborhood.

Barry then unexpectedly turned the truck into the driveway of the second smallest trailer home in the neighborhood and stopped the truck.

“Here it is boys. We’re home!” Barry said with a phony happy expression.

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Dick grunted and exited the vehicle. After inspecting their new single bedroom trailer home Dick was holding back tears. He wanted to go home. He wanted his old bedroom. He wanted his mother.

“Sorry Dick, but you’re going to have to sleep in the living room with your baby brother until you get a job to help pay for a bigger place.” Barry told his son as he stacked boxes of his own belongings in the single bedroom.

Dick was fourteen and was about to begin high school in less than a month. He had never held a job before.

Dick attended North Kearney High School that following month of August. He was greeted with nothing but awkward stares and random insults as he took his first walk through the hallway towards his assigned locker. Dick never met any meaningful friends during his high school career. During his high school days, he considered someone a friend if they refrained themselves from verbally harassing him while standing amongst a crowd of jocks that were berating him much like a pack of wolves feasting on the wounded. School was a living hell for Dick and he found no solace within his home either. His father had taken a factory job at Baldwin Filters that required him to work seventy hours per week. When his father wasn’t working he was spending his free time with fellow coworkers at Chug A’ Lug’s bar. After school Dick was stuck at home caring for his little brother. They would be awakened while sleeping in the living room when their father would come bursting through the front door at two in the morning, dragging a random trailer trash whore to the bedroom with him. Fowl words and sounds of sexual pleasures would escape his father’s room for half an hour after that, and then he and Bo Jackson would be able to fall back to sleep.

High school was a never-ending battle of mental endurance for Dick Nibbler, and he surrendered to the enemy halfway through his junior year. Dick dropped out of high school and chose to rely on his part time job as a stock and bag boy at the Econo-Foods supermarket on top of the hill on 39^th and 2^nd Avenue. Despite the different owners and name changes of this grocery store, Dick would remain an employee there for the rest of his life.

Four years after Dick had entered high school and one year after he had dropped out, he came home from work one evening to find his brother sitting on the floor of a bare living room. He gently grilled his incompetent younger brother for details but never came to a reasonable explanation of what had happened. All that Dick knew is that their father had taken all of his belongings and had left them the single bedroom trailer. Dick was more frightened than angry.

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Dick learned through an unwanted crash course on how to pay monthly bills and care for himself and his disabled brother, but he never quite got the hang of it. Every month he obtained some new level of credit debt or late payment warnings. He hated his life and the only thing that prevented him from making an exit was his fear of death. He avoided taking risks in life so that he could safely make it to death. He saw the lack of logic in this common way of thinking but he didn’t know how to break the mental chain.

“Dick. Dick! I need my mittens!” Bo Jackson shouted at Dick to wake him from his daydream.

“Yeah Bo, I know.” Dick said as he pulled Bo’s slightly too small pair of Pac-Man winter mittens from the pockets of his winter coat. Bo held out his hands and Dick put them on for him. He then pulled the hood of Bo’s winter coat over his head to keep his little brother’s ears warm.

“Okay Bo, let’s go.” Dick said as he patted his brother’s hooded head.

Dick and Bo had to walk to work every morning. Dick could not afford the current gas prices let alone afford a car. They made the nearly one hour trek across town every morning whether snow or rain, and they were never late for work. Dick and Bo were seen as being the strange idiots that everyone had witnessed walking on the sidewalk at one time or another, but nobody knew of their true past. Rumors abound about their true history. Children would be playing in their front yards, only to run inside their homes at the sight of Dick and Bo’s approach. Dick knew the children were watching them pass by while they peeked through blinds and cracked doors but he kept his face down and stared at the sidewalk. Dick and Bo Jackson were the freaks of Kearney Nebraska. They were ostracized from the very community that they served and lived in.

Dick hated his life. Most men like Dick would simply fade away. No one would ever know of his death; they would only realize they no longer saw him walking the streets on occasion. Most men like Dick would disappear like the flame of a candle in the wind, but Dick’s life was about to become much more important. Unbeknownst to Dick or anyone else for that matter, this was the last day of Dick’s life. Dick’s final breath would not be wasted on a cowardly whimper, it would be belted out with a heroic roar.