When I Was Ten, Mom Died, Giving Birth to Dopey

When I was ten, Mom died, giving birth to Dopey. She was just a little bitty woman, seven kids were one dwarf too far for her. Then just a few months later Dad was killed in a mine cave-in, so we were alone after that. So I never got a chance to ask my folks the question I always wanted to ask—how they could have looked in my cradle the day I was born and decided to call me Grumpy. I can’t believe I was that unpleasant right from the getgo. But it must have worked for them, because the five who came after me all got adjectives for names too. They didn’t do it to the oldest of us—he got a normal name; well, Terrence. And then the ungrateful son of a bitch refused to use it. He insisted we call him Doc.

He wasn’t a real doctor. Oh he tried, but there wasn’t a medical school in the world that was interested in taking a home-schooled German forest dwarf. No, Doc was actually a chiropractor. But like all of them, he insisted on being called Doctor, to separate himself from people who ran massage parlors.

He actually had a practice for a while, but he had to give it up. It was a height problem, more‘n anything else. He’d tell all his patients there was something wrong with their spines, just like he’d been taught to do in Chiropractor Correspondence School, but then he couldn’t reach their spines to do anything about it. Too short, see? And in his racket, you can go belly-up pretty fast if all you can do is chiropractic triage.

So Doc tried being a chiropractic veterinarian. It made sense; horizontal spines, close to the ground. There were a lotta people around with animals, too. And it worked, until his clients realized they were paying him fifty marks a visit, just to pet their cat.

So Doc worked the problem, and revised his basic diagnosis. He’d tell people the problem was the alignment of their lower spine. And by that he meant their butt. Which he could reach, see? But spending all day re-aligning strangers’ butts wasn’t how he pictured his life. There aren’t many butts that are all that enjoyable to manipulate, actually. Just very few. And he couldn’t choose the tookas he took. We started to get some pretty strange types hanging around, too, people whose butts were perfectly all right, but they still wanted the treatment, and wanted it good and hard. From a dwarf.

So Doc finally gave up and stuck with diamond mining, which made sense financially. I’ll bet if every practicing chiropractor had his own diamond mine, there’d be a hell of a lot less practicing chiropractors.

But Doc still worked on us, to keep his hand in, so to speak. And whether one of us had a squirrel bite on the knee, or well, like Bashful with the dyslexia, Doc’d get around behind us and start this business, jerking us right up off our little feet. And it never did any good. So one day, when he was off taking his turn selling diamonds at the little stand we had down by the highway, I snuck everybody else out to see a real doctor.

I had to. We dwarves had a lot of medical problems. Like Sneezy. This is a guy who sneezed every two minutes for 34 years. Irritating? You can’t believe it. We wanted to be sympathetic, but my God! We couldn’t go to the movies with the guy! People’d want to kill him before the previews were over. A nice restaurant? Forget it. One night Sneezy shot a jumbo prawn 120 feet across a hotel dining room; hit the maitre d’ right in his dickey.

Well, he’s the reason Sleepy was always sleepy. It wasn’t the drugs, at least not at the beginning. Sleepy had the bunk next to Sneezy! (On the sleeping porch, we were alphabetical from the door to the window: Bashful-Doc-Dopey-Grumpy-Happy-Sleepy-Sneezy.) Down there at the end, that poor little bastard was awake all night long. The drug problem really started with all the sleeping potions Sleepy was taking.

© 2003 Greg Palmer So after Doc manipulated ol’ Sneez’s spine about four thousand times—to no effect—I suggested that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t his spine. Maybe he was allergic to something! Doc wouldn’t consider it. He said allergies were all in your mind. And your spine. And your butt. In town the real doctor gave Sneeze the whole range of allergy tests, you know, those little scratches on your arms? Only Sneeze’s arms were too short, so they did half the tests on his legs. That night all four limbs blew up to six times their regular size. He looked like one of those big balloons in a parade. Turned out he was allergic to everything.

Especially dander. The doctor says to me, “Do you have any pets? You’ll have to get rid of your pets.” Pets!? That cottage was wall-to-wall vermin! And it got worse after Snow showed up. She trained the vermin to do all our washing and cleaning. Which may sound cute, but personally I had a problem eating dinner off a plate that had been wiped “clean” by a squirrel’s ass. A week of that and we were the poster dwarves for shigellosis. We were always hungry, too, because once the animals started working around the place, we couldn’t really eat ‘em. It’s kind of inconsiderate to say to a rabbit, “Hey, Flopsy, make sure you scrape what’s left of your brother off the platter.”

Anyway, Sneezy tried to stay with us for a while, especially after Snow showed up. Nobody wanted to leave then. But he suffered for it. He left the day after she did. The real doctor got him into the hospital, and they put him in a, what-do-you-call-it, allergen-free environment. Yup; Sneeze was the original Dwarf In a Bubble. But that was after Snow had come and gone.

You probably want to hear about her. Everybody does. That very first night we found her asleep in Doc’s bed, I tried to give her the bum’s rush. I said to the others, “Don’t you know what’s going to happen here?” But they ignored me. They were already gaga over her. So they offered her a deal. We’d protect her from the Queen, and in return, she’d do all our cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, knitting, sewing and gardening. And she agreed, which told me right off that she was desperate, and dumb. But nobody ever went to Snow White for intellectual stimulation.

The next afternoon we came home from the diamond mine whistling like idiots. We were all happy, which was kind of confusing to Happy, but that was his problem. And it didn’t have anything to do with Snow being gorgeous. Hell, when she arrived, we seven guys had been living alone in the woods for a long time. There were wild boars in that forest looked good to us.

No, it was because for the first time in our lives we had something to come home to that wasn’t down on all fours and covered with hair. We had a friend. I hadn’t realized until then just how much a guy needs somebody to talk to, who doesn’t know already everything about him.

But even that first day we were beginning to change. We’d always gotten along okay. We had everything we needed, and we didn’t need much. Sneezy drove us crazy, and I had a problem with Happy. Try being around a guy who’s happy all the time, and see if there aren’t times when you just want to bust him in the mouth. But generally we were satisfied. We didn’t have anything to fight over.

And within hours after Snow got there we were snapping at each other, competing for her attention. She was a very sweet kid—then, anyway—but she started playing us against each other. She couldn’t help herself; probably thought it was fun, it was a game for her. She was too young to see she was tearing us apart.

© 2003 Greg Palmer We were all infatuated with Snow, so it may seem odd to say that only one of us really fell in love with her. That would be me. I came back from the mine early the next day to check on Dopey. He wasn’t feeling well, so he’d stayed home. With any of the others I would have thought it was a trick to be alone with Snow, but not Dope’. He’s never been sneaky in his life. Wouldn’t know how. Very straight ahead guy, is Dopey.

I went up to the sleeping porch, and she was sitting in his bed, with his head in her lap, softly stroking his shoulders, telling him a story about faraway kingdoms and magical beasts. When you have a brother who’s retarded, you tend to judge strangers by how they treat him. You hope for kindness; you insist on respect. But Snow was already beyond all that. She realized instinctively what it took his brothers years to see, something outsiders never understood. Dopey’s the best of us.

Seeing the two of them together like that was like getting hit in the head with a mallet. I was in love, and I knew it. At the same time I was ashamed of myself, because I wanted to grab Dopey up and throw him out of his own bed and take his place, so I could lie there with her forever. I was jealous of Dopey. Jesus!

That week was kind of sublime agony for me. We were together, all the time--I could watch her and hear her laugh and dream about a life with her. And it was agony seeing my brothers fawning over her.

One day she said she had little cold. Doc immediately went into his chiropractor routine. He was knocking the furniture over to get behind her and grab on. But before he could I jumped him, and we fought. I would have killed him, too, but in the middle of it I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was some big animal that had crept in. It was Dopey, curled up on the floor in the corner. He was terrified, sobbing, staring at me like he didn’t know me. And still not making a sound.

I…I just ran out the door. I walked for hours in the forest that night. I realized that the only way I could have Snow to myself—if she wanted me, which was big if—was to destroy my family. I couldn’t do that, even for her. I decided to get as far away as I could from all those people. I’d come to America, and start again.

The next morning we marched off to the mine as if nothing had happened. I apologized to Doc, to all of them, and they said they understood. But they didn’t. That was the afternoon we came home and found Snow lying on the floor, with that apple in her hand. We tried to revive her, but it was hopeless. She was stone cold—there was nothing we could do. Yeah, I know, people think we chased the queen over a cliff. Nonsense. That bitch was long gone, back in her palace, back to being a queen. And royalty could kill anybody they wanted to.

It was my idea not to bury Snow, to build the glass coffin, to keep her with us that way. And by not putting her in the ground to rot, we finally did save her life. Because pretty soon the tall handsome prince rode in on his big white horse, and without so much as a word to us, gave her a big kiss full on the lips. She jumped up, patted us all on the head like we were goddamned children, and rode away with a guy she’d never even spoken to before. The whole process took fifteen minutes. I guess she’d had enough of small furry animals and small furry men. I lost her again, and this time I lost her for good.

I’m told it was a lovely royal wedding, though I don’t know, because we weren’t invited. But the wicked Queen was. When she got there, Snow had her grabbed up, and they forced her to put on iron dancing shoes that had been heated red hot in the fire. Then they made

© 2003 Greg Palmer her dance until she died of pain and exhaustion. A very efficient torture—excruciating, and yet entertaining for the wedding guests. You don’t believe sweet little Snow White could do that? Look it up—it’s one of the few things those Grimm Brothers got right.

A few months later the Prince nationalized our diamond mine. Apparently Snow had told him all about it. Soldiers showed up, and gave us 24 hours to get out. We spent the time gathering up all the diamonds we could, and killing the soldiers, with a ferocity that was as big a surprise to us as it was to them. Then we all escaped to America.

Sneezy was out of the hospital by then. His doctor told him he had to live in a warm, dry climate. So we all headed for the Southwest. We became cowboys, riding around on horses— well, ponies—helping folks out. We called ourselves The Magnificent Seven…Dwarves. But that’s a whole different story. Some other time, maybe.

I think about Snow all the time, whether I want to or not. I don’t blame her for what happened. She was born to beauty and the imperial life. Those are hard habits to kick once you get used to ’em. You can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. And after all, her father married somebody just because she was beautiful, and ignored the fact that she was also vicious. Why shouldn’t Snow be allowed to make the same mistake?

We dwarves eventually split up. The others wanted marry, settle down, have kids of their own. And they did—great kids. But that wasn’t for Dopey and me, so we lit out together. I couldn’t ask for a better man to ride with. Some nights though, we’ll be sitting around the campfire, out there in the middle of nothing, and I’ll look across at Dopey and he won’t be there anymore. He’ll have tears in his eyes, and that goofy smile on his face. And I know he’s thinking about her, about that week we had together. The best week of our lives. And the worst.

She broke his heart too, but he still loves her. He’ll always love her.

What’s good enough for Dopey is good enough for me.

Heigh ho.