“Dude. Wake up. I need you. Dusty, open the door!”
Dusty turned over in bed, thinking Ryan would soon give up and pass out, he didn’t have the energy to deal with his belligerent roommate.
“I stole a truck on accident. I need help, wake up!” The panic in Ryan’s voice was becoming apparent, his banging on the door getting louder.
“Oh crap, hold on a minute,” Dusty mumbled as he rolled onto his stomach to reach for the dirty clothes that were on the floor near his bed. Ryan continued to pound on the door, so drunk he didn’t realize he was banging on the bathroom door which was directly across the hallway.
“Alright Ryan, what happened?” Dusty said as he walked out of his room.
“I was at a party, some girl took my keys because she said I was too drunk to drive, so I ran away.”
Three in the morning was no time to be dealing with his twin, especially when Dusty had work at ten. “Ryan, why did you run away?“
“I got tired of walking, found this construction site, and that’s when I saw the truck. I always wanted to drive one and it had it’s keys in it so I took it,” Ryan’s face lit up as he recounted the story.
“Bro, focus here, why did you run away in the first place?” Anger was slowly becoming apparent in Dusty’s voice.
“Because that bitch took my keys and I didn’t want to be near her. Fuck man, why are you harassing me?”
Dusty rubbed his forehead, “Did anyone see you take the truck, Ryan?” He wished that Ryan wasn’t an identical twin, it would be so much easier to ignore him if he really were just his stupid roommate, especially because Ryan frequently gave him headaches with his drunken adventures. At least this time he wasn’t breaking the front door down with a ten foot metal pole that he found in the woods. Dusty gathered that it would be simple enough to have Ryan hop back in the stolen vehicle, follow him in his own car to the construction site, and then drive him home where he would be able to get back to sleep. All they had to worry about was not hitting any police in the short drive and everything would be fine.
“Nobody saw me. I don’t want to get arrested.” Dusty assumed that Ryan had started to remember he had broken the law and could get in trouble. Ryan had never done anything this serious before, unless you counted the DUI he received two months prior. Usually he just lost his phone or ended up waking up in somebody’s house he didn’t know.
“Well let’s just go return it and nobody will ever know what an imbecilic asshole you are,” Dusty said as he dragged Ryan out the apartment door. He believed that until he saw that the truck was really a bulldozer, something he was sure Ryan didn‘t know how to operate. “Fuck, are you serious?”
Ryan looked with starry eyes at the vehicle, “Naw man, it’s not a problem, I got it.”
“Whatever dude, I’m going to follow you in my truck and after tonight let’s just forget this happened.”
“Umm Dusty, I don’t have the keys.” Ryan looked like a little kid telling his mom he broke her favorite vase. It was a little too pathetic for Dusty to get pissed over. Ryan had perfected the puppy dog face when they were children, always using it to get their mom and teachers to forgive him for being wild.
“Alright man, where was the last place you had them?”
“I don’t know, maybe the woods?”
“Ryan, why would the keys be in the woods?” Dusty felt deja-vu. It seemed to Dusty that almost every time Ryan got out of control with his partying he somehow ended up in the woods. It wasn’t hard to do with small patches of woods all over the town and they had grown up in a desert city, so Dusty understood the infatuation.
“Dude, I was looking up at the stars when I got here and they just looked infinite. I had to look at them through the trees. How else would I hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon or ask the grinning bobcat why he grins? I had to get with nature dude.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Did you do drugs tonight?”
“Naw man, Evil made me watch Pocahontas with her yesterday and I just wanted to see the colors of the wind. I mean that movie is bad ass, that bitch takes bear cubs from their mom and jumps off waterfalls and holds wild eagles. I want to be that connected to nature. How cool would that be?”
“You know if Evilinne knew you called her Evil when she wasn’t around she’d probably stop sleeping with you.” Dusty would never admit that he thought it was hilarious. He wasn’t Evilinne’s biggest fan, in fact he pretty much hated her for what she had done to him. She thought she and Ryan were a couple¾ she doted on him, did her best to control him, and basically used her vagina to keep him preoccupied with her all the time. Dusty and Ryan’s mother tried to bring them up to be gentlemen and never treat a lady poorly, so he refused to ever condone how badly Ryan treated Evilinne, but he secretly loved it. Evilinne was a typical fake bitch, a girl who smiled to people and pretended to be their friends but backstabbed as often as she could. She got away with everything because she was really hot. She was a blue-eyed blonde in perfect shape with a juicy ass and tits that perfectly fit in your hands. Dusty knew this from experience. Before Evilinne ever saw Ryan, Dusty had already had sex with her three times. When she found out that Dusty was a twin she secretly went behind his back and met up with Ryan, whom, for one reason or another, she decided to stick with. She was a whore, though nobody would know just looking at her.
“Bro, I’m done with that bitch, today I was at her place and told her that I was going out tonight and she forbade me to go. I told her that I’m unattached and will do whatever I want. She can go to hell for real man, I’m over her pussy.”
“Alright. Now, back to what’s important, where did you go in the woods? We need to find those keys and get the, um, truck, back to its home.” Dusty couldn’t let Ryan distract him with philosophical conversation about nature or pissing him off with memories of Evilinne.
“That way.” Ryan pointed just past the bulldozer into a thickly treed section.
“Alright, get your cell out and start looking.”
Ryan began turning his pockets inside out, “Umm, Dusty. I think I lost my phone.”
Dusty knew he should have seen that coming, “Ryan, when was the last time you remember having your phone? Was it when you last remember having the keys?”
“Yeah, I went into the woods and found this nice pile of leaves to lay down in and my phone kept beeping because Evil was calling me over and over and over, stupid bitch.”
“Seriously, focus. What did you do with the keys and the phone?” Dusty felt each second ticking by, he just wanted to get back to bed, why couldn’t his brother appreciate the need to be hasty?
“Well I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and I think I felt the keys fall out too but I didn’t feel like finding them so I answered the phone and told Evil to leave me alone. She said she was worried about me because her friend Laura had my keys. Stupid bitch had people spying on me! I told her I hate her and that I had left with another girl and had to go because we were about to hook up and she was ruining my game. She started crying and I hung up on her.”
Ryan had a mischievous look in his face, Dusty figured he must be imagining how upset Evil was. If he wasn’t over sleeping with her, which he usually never was, Dusty figured Ryan must have been thinking about the make-up sex they would be having as well. “Okay, so now we know where your keys are, but what did you do with your phone, Ryan? This is important.”
“Dude, calm down already. After I hung up with her I tried putting my phone back in my pocket but then I realized I could see the grinning bobcat. Well maybe it wasn’t a bobcat, but something was grinning at me through the trees,” Ryan said.
“Perfect! Hopefully all we have to do to find your phone AND the keys is call you. Once we hear the ring we should be able to locate both the objects. Just stand still and I’m going to run back inside and grab a flashlight just in case the keys are hidden in leaves and hard to find.” Dusty was happy his suspicion was correct, it would be pretty easy to find the keys and return the truck and get back to bed, as long as the phone wasn’t dead yet. He felt like his luck had finally changed. If he was tired at work at least he would have a good story to tell his boss when he started complaining that he wasn’t in top form. He could never understand why his boss what such a prick, especially when he was a coke-head and always a mess and basically didn’t do anything useful at all. Dusty had heard that most restaurant managers were cokeheads though, and he did work at IHOP so what should he expect? He sometimes wished that he wasn’t the “good twin” or the “responsible twin,” because it seemed that while he stressed out all the time his younger brother by ten minutes was able to live a lazy, free life.
The flashlight was under the kitchen sink like it was supposed to be so it only took Dusty about half a minute to retrieve it. He dashed back outside, eager to put an end to the night, only to realize that Ryan had not listened to him and had apparently wandered off somewhere. Dusty really hoped that his brother hadn’t thought up another “adventure” in those few moments that he was inside. Then he heard the shrill scream of Evilinne’s angry voice.
“I knew you weren’t getting any from some slut. You are so pathetic, you disgust me.”
Dusty followed the voice and found Ryan and Evilinne at her car around the corner, “Evilinne, just leave him alone. If you were really disgusted by him you wouldn’t have gotten in your car and hauled ass over here to yell at him. We’re busy and you’re gonna wake the neighbors, last thing we need is more complaints to the condo-owner’s association, or worse, noise complaints to the cops. Just go home and talk when you have calmed down, he’s too drunk to understand what he did anyway.” Dusty did not want the COA to be involved in the mess because they would call his mom because she technically owned the condo. Dusty rented it from her and worked as a waiter to pay his way through medical school. She would argue with him any chance she got to tell him that he should just focus on his studies and let her pay for everything. He loved his mom and was proud of her for the success she had as a romance novelist, but he was tired of people telling him that he only got the things he had because of his rich and famous mother. Ryan didn’t look at things quite the same way, which was why he only worked part time at a sporting goods store.
“That’s right bitch, get out of here! I told you I don’t want to see you any more, you’re nothing more than a slut and I’m tired of your deal.” Ryan, though drunk, seemed like he actually meant the words.
The anger that spilled out of Evilinne was pathetic, “You’re going to regret this Ryan, you’ll never find another girl like me. I’m too good for you anyways. I mean you were just a project for me. Dusty told me you were a virgin and I couldn’t resist, I had to have you because I like to be someone that nobody could forget, and nobody ever forgets their first!”
“Virgin,” Ryan started laughing, “I haven’t been a virgin since I was a freshman in high school. That’s a good one. You’re an idiot”
Dusty felt the situation getting out of his hands, and the lost phone and keys rapidly slipping from Ryan’s concentration. “Evilinne, please leave before you two say too much more that you’ll regret in the morning. Let me take care of Ryan, you go home and take care of yourself.”
Evilinne hopped in her car, rolled down the window, and shouted, “Have fun dreaming about me, losers,” as she peeled out of the spot and sped away.
“That chick is insane man,” Ryan said as he watched her car get smaller and smaller down the road.
“Um, yeah, Ryan, let’s just go get those keys. And, you know, I told her that lie about you being a virgin because I thought that it would keep her away from you. I thought girls didn’t like virgins and well. . . ”
Ryan didn’t seem to be paying much attention, “Oh yeah. Can I grab a beer? Evil has me bugging out right now, one beer and I’ll be good.”
Dusty tried to remain calm, “I’ll make you a deal, let’s get the keys, return the bulldozer, and then you can have all the beer that we have in the condo.”
“Really? Deal.” Ryan agreed, not realizing there was only one warm beer left.
Dusty and Ryan walked into the woods in the direction that Ryan had pointed to. Dusty kept calling Ryan’s phone but they couldn’t seem to hear it anywhere. Finally, they found it, so far into the woods that they could no longer see a glint of light from the condo’s parking lot. Five minutes later they found the keys. When Ryan had said he had found a big pile of leaves, he had meant it. It literally looked like someone had brought a rake into the area and put all the leaves together. Dusty could only imagine what kind of bugs and reptiles might have been crawling around his dumbass brother as he had laid there earlier in the night.
As they walked back out of the woods Dusty looked at his watch, “Almost four in the morning. Dude we got to get that thing back right away, I have to get some sleep before work. My manager told me if I come in one more time with huge bags under my eyes and no energy I’ll start getting scheduled for the graveyard shift which would suck ”
Ryan put his palm out to Dusty for the keys, “No problem man, I got this.”
Dusty dropped them into Ryan’s hand, watched him vault into the cab of the bulldozer, and mumbled, “I really hope you do, bro,” while he turned to go to his own truck and follow his twin back to the site.
Ryan hollered at Dusty, “Umm dude, how the hell am I supposed to drive this, it doesn’t have a steering wheel?”
Dusty whipped around, “What do you mean ‘how do I drive this’? How the fuck did you get it here in the first place?”
“I don’t know, I was drunker before,” Ryan put on his pathetic puppy-dog face again. “Maybe if I drink all those beers I’ll be able to remember how to work these levers?”
“Ryan, all we have is one beer sitting in the cooler from the game last weekend. While you have fun drinking that I’ll YouTube and see if there are any videos that can tell us how to get that machine back before you get charged with robbery.” Dusty felt like he had invested too much time to give up, he was going to get that damned bulldozer returned if it killed him.
Dusty found almost five hundred videos on driving a bulldozer, though many of them were about Tonka toys and video games. Ryan and him watched a handful of the instructional tutorials that were available as Ryan sucked on the warm beer. Finally, Dusty decided that it was ‘now or never’ and that they better get going because the longer they waited the higher chance Ryan really wouldn’t be able to operate the construction vehicle and the higher possibility that someone would realize that it was not where it was supposed to be. The two boys walked outside, Ryan hopped into the bulldozer, Dusty jumped into his truck, they both started their engines.
Dusty felt the seconds tick by as he watched Ryan gradually moved the bulldozer through the parking lot foot by foot, wondering how he ever got it home in the first place. Ryan got the bulldozer out of the community with no problems, Dusty started to feel like they were actually going to get away with returning it. That’s when Ryan started stopping every two minutes and then started driving again. Panic rose in Dusty, why was Ryan driving like a kid who just got their permit? Drive, stop, drive, stop, drive, stop, eventually the pattern was going to get them noticed by someone who normally wouldn’t have thought twice about seeing a bulldozer on the road in the dark. If Ryan could have just driven it normally maybe people would think it was his and that he was just driving it to work for some reason. Halfway there. All of a sudden Ryan stopped and Dusty’s phone rang.
Dusty answered, “Dude, what’s going on, we need to get this back already. Stop playing games and just drive the damn thing like you actually know what you’re doing.”
“Bro, I don’t feel so good” Ryan said as Dusty watched him lean out and puke all over the road and the side of the vehicle.
Dusty knew it was over, once a drunk person starts puking it’s usually the end of night. One of two things normally happened. The first is that they continue to puke for a while and then pass out. The second is that they almost certainly have no idea what is going on and pass out almost immediately. Immediately for Ryan was about five minutes. Dusty had five minutes to try and get Ryan to drive as fast as the bulldozer would go, get to the site, and get in in the truck before they were in serious trouble. “Ryan, focus here, let’s race. You get that thing back to where you find it before I get there and I’ll give you a hundred dollars, okay?”
“Naw man, I don’t feel good. Can we just go home?”
“Ryan, we have to return that so let’s race, come on, you can do this, you always beat me.”
“Why do we have to bring it back? I don’t feel good.” Ryan leaned out and puked again.
There was no way Ryan was going to be able to drive any more. Dusty started trying to figure out what to do as he sipped on his water bottle. That’s when it struck him, why did they have to bring it back? If they left it in the middle of the road nobody would know it was Ryan. He had never been arrested so they wouldn’t even be able to trace his DNA to the puke in the chance that they decided they wanted to find the person responsible for moving and abandoning the construction equipment. “Okay Ryan, you’re right, let’s just go home. Climb down and come get in my truck and we’ll get you into bed in a minute.”
“Mmkay,” Ryan slurred.
Dusty watched him attempt to climb down, slip, and fall straight on his back. He jumped out of his own car and ran to Ryan to check on him. Ryan wasn’t moving, he wasn’t responding to Dusty’s voice. That’s when Dusty realized that there were lights flashing behind him.
“What’s going on here?” a female voice called to the two boys.
Dusty turned around, “Officer, please help, it’s my brother, he hit his head and he isn’t answering me.”
The officer walked over to Ryan and checked his pulse, “Has he been drinking tonight?”
“I believe so, but I wasn’t with him tonight.”
“Well I’m going to have an ambulance come get him, but it looks like you have some explaining to do while they are on their way. I’ll need to see your license.”
Dusty ran back to the car to get his wallet and call his mom, “Mom, Ryan got drunk tonight, stole a bulldozer, fell out of it, and now the police are sending him to the hospital. He’s probably going to need a lawyer. I’ll let you know how he is after they see him. I’m sorry.” He hung up before she could say anything to him, he didn’t want to hear her lecture about how he should have been paying more attention to what his twin got into. Being the ‘responsible one’ meant that no matter what Ryan did, it was always somehow Dusty’s fault. He didn’t need her aggravating him when he was concerned about Ryan.
Dusty walked back over to his brother and handed the cop his information, “Here is my I.D. and registration officer. I hope you don’t mind that I called my mom and told her what was going on.”
“Duffy? You don’t happen to be the sons of Gina Duffy do you? I heard a rumor she had been seen in town a couple of times. I guess that would make sense if ya’ll live here,” she replied after looking at his license.
“Yeah, that’s our mom.”
“I’m not going to lie, I’m not really a fan. Romance novels seem mighty silly to me. Do either of you write as well?” She said politely, but her face seemed to hold a lot of contempt.
“No ma’am. Ryan wants to eventually work managing athletes. I’m in med school out in Jackson. We moved here because we wanted a change of scene, it’s been a nice experience.”
“That’s very nice, so tell me about what you two were doing out here tonight.”
Dusty went into a short explanation, telling the officer that Ryan had borrowed the bulldozer and they were simply trying to return it but he got sick and fell out of the cab once they realized he just wasn’t able to operate it and needed to go home.
The officer listened quietly and then said, “Well, I’m sorry to say this to you, but I have to bring you in as an accomplice to the crime. It will be up to Judge on what to do with you two boys, but he doesn’t much take to people who think they are above the law, especially people who are prior offenders. Better hope your momma’s expensive lawyers are willing to come down here and plead your case for you. Now, please turn around and put your hands behind you back. I’m going to need you to sit in the car while I sit with your brother and wait for the ambulance to get here.”
Dusty didn’t know what to say, he couldn’t believe that the night had become what it had. He turned around and let the officer cuff him as he thought of all the ramifications from helping his twin out. He should have just told Ryan to go to bed and play dumb the next day. He wasn’t sure why he never thought of that before, but as he climbed into the police cruiser he knew that it didn’t matter anymore.
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