Black Rabbit and Other Stories (14 page)

“I saw her last night with little ones.”

“They're called kits.” He spits some pits and bears down again.

“I don't scare easy but I almost shit my pants.”

The neighbour grins. “No doubt. I concreted the space under my shed. She must be staying someplace else.” He wipes his lips with the back of his hand and tosses the watermelon rind among his sick tomatoes.

Helen's been in the bathroom for over an hour when I decide to knock. She doesn't answer at first. I try the doorknob: locked.

“Helen?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go.”

The door opens. I start. Helen has dyed her hair jet black. She asks me what I think about it and I tell her it looks very Goth, is that what she wants? She brushes by me, pumping her elbows. I follow her into the kitchen. She looks like another person with the black hair. I find it alarming. She stands at the sink and stares out the window.

“Helen, what's going on?”

“I hate you, Ralph.”

“Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way.”

“No, I mean I really hate you.”

“Yes.”

“You're not listening, Ralph. You're not listening to me.”

When I get home from a bike ride one afternoon, Larry Holmes greets me howling at the door and does a tap-dance, so I know he has knocked down the baby gate that kept him confined to the kitchen. But Helen left the bedroom door open and Larry Holmes took a nap on the bed and, perhaps in his guilty excitement upon my arriving, peed on it. I strip down the mattress and launder the soiled bedding.
Stain-repellant saved the mattress, and it's nice to know that some things in life work and are worth the extra money. I banish Larry Holmes to the backyard for the rest of the day where he sulks under the oak tree. When Helen comes home she refuses to believe he peed on the bed.

“I demand proof.”

“But I laundered everything.”

“You're a terrible person.”

An argument erupts next door, shattering a peaceful, violet evening. Larry Holmes stirs in his sleep. Helen looks up from her Vanity Fair, sniffs, and despite the poor light returns to reading, though a quiver in her upper lip puts me on alert. Something has gone off in her head, has irked her, something she read, the drama next door, maybe something in the back of her mind, but it will fall on me like stones, it will bury me alive. I can feel it coming.

Meanwhile the fight next door continues until I hear what sounds like a clap or a slap; then a screen door opens and shuts. My neighbour remains on his deck, attacking a wire coat hanger with needle-nosed pliers. Helen seethes in the dying light. Larry Holmes goes back to sleep. Stomach cramps force me inside.

A few days later an ambulance pulls up to Viola's house. Two burly paramedics push a gurney up the driveway. Moments later they roll a body out of the house. Even though they've covered her up, an arm dangles loose and I can tell by the porky fingers and the chintzy rings that it is Viola.

When I break the news to Helen she buries her face in her hands and sobs. She liked the old woman. They shared something precious, something human. Tears pour through her fingers and she rocks to and fro, inconsolable. I don't know what to say or do to comfort her.
When I venture too close she makes a hissing sound. That's a new thing, the hissing.

Next morning, under cloudy skies, the neighbour descends the porch steps with a crimson cap pulled low on his head. Spotting Larry Holmes he slows down, though he sees the leash. Larry Holmes can do this to people, but then I notice the man's black eye and his slumping shoulders, and I reckon that this victim of violence needs comfort, reassurance.

“Hey, neighbour,” I say in my most natural voice.

He stares at me, pained, tense, fragile, and looks as if he is about to say something when, without warning, he bursts into tears. It's amazing. I don't know how to treat it. Empathy is my forte but I reckon mere words will not assuage him. I am not beyond strong measures when the situation calls for them and so I do not hesitate to stretch out my arm and with my hand grip his neck, massaging him through his pain, though he snaps out of it and hurries down the street, glancing once over his shoulder.

But the following morning the neighbour greets me from his deck with jubilation. What could it be? I wonder. Has he knocked up the wife again? Has he won the lottery? And yes, it's a beautiful day, the sky so blue it makes me want to scream. Everything is fabulous. Blue jays flock with cardinals. Black squirrels marry gray. Rose of Sharon blooms gaily in my garden and its saucy pinks merit praise. I feel light as a balloon, helium-filled, colourful. Not a cloud on my horizon, save for the wife in bed with a rubber hot-water bottle, warming her back spasms. But what, there is more? Larry Holmes circles around the yard sniffing the earth, his tail like a pole. What's going on here, eh? What's afoot?

The happy neighbour says, “The skunk is dead.”

“The skunk is dead?”

“My youngest pinged her in the skull with a slingshot ball bearing.”

“You're kidding me.”

“I'm not kidding you. That boy has talent.”

“It was the mamma skunk?”

“It was the mamma skunk, that's right.”

I don't know how I feel about it. On the one hand I'm gripped by a weird nostalgia for the events that have just passed, though few of them were pleasant. I admit I miss the skunk, and wonder what will become of the little ones. Will they stink up some other neighbour-hood? On the other hand, my sentiment for the skunks falls short of true sadness. I mean, they were skunks.

Helen packed her bags in the night. She's going up north for a while to visit her mother and to think about things. I've got things to think about myself, but this is irrelevant right now.

After Helen loads up the rental car and gets behind the wheel, Larry Holmes starts howling. Brushing a strand of black hair from her face, she smiles, and with a little wave departs. It's the last time we'll ever see her, I imagine. It happens.

I take Larry Holmes for a walk to the park. We spot a coyote by a stand of birches and it puzzles the dog. He doesn't know what to do. He looks at me and whines but I have nothing for him. It is what it is. Later, he dozes at my feet as I sip a gin and tonic on the front porch, sniffing the dark air, wondering where the summer went.

People came up the stairs. Lion glanced at the eight-foot partition, then at the door. He jumped off his pedestal.

“You mean to tell me . . .”

“It's not about the . . .”

“Bonnie, he doesn't even . . .”

The voices faded in and out. They whispered a lot, spoke low. He could hear them when he had to hear them, when they wanted him to hear. They were planning. What were they planning? It didn't matter. He opened the window to air out the room. It smelled rooty. The air coming in smelled of water. Then he threw himself onto his straw bed and imagined it was an enormous water buffalo, eviscerated and spread out. He stretched across the ribs and spine.

“Lion!”

The mother called. She always called for something. Her voice had long arms. His body roared at him not to lie across the ribs. It wanted water. He took the carcass out, paddling with his paws. The water looked like petroleum. Bodies floated in it. Charlie the neighbour skimmed across the surface in his blue postman's uniform. They had fought before over property. Charlie always crossed the line, and when he crossed the line Lion wanted to shred him. Now he floated, dead. Lion reached into the water but could not touch him.

Lion's green eyes blazed when the mother opened his door so she left him alone. He came to a shore. The water buffalo slid into the sand. Lion dug with his claws. Water oozed around his limbs. His
claws curled around something hard: a skull. The treasure had a cracked crown. He rolled it. He took it in his jaws. He returned home.

The mother entered and stood beside the partition. “You can't do that all day.”

Lion pretended to be sleeping on his straw bed. He stirred his legs as if running in a dream. He was chasing a fat zebra, about to clamp down on a hind. The mother sighed and went out again. He heard her murmuring in the hall. Then the door closed.

Lion felt playful. He looked at the twin dolls in the toy basket. The little moustaches twitched. He touched their tweed caps, licked their shooting coats, and scratched their check stockings. Then he watched them smoke their pipes. Purple smoke went up in the air. It smelled pleasant, of plums. He climbed into his crate and lowered the lid down over himself. Then he burst through it like a jack-in-the-box, leaping out of the crate and tearing the dolls to pieces.

They put him in the garage once. He made so much noise the neighbours threatened to call the police. Then Dad fed him horse-meat and he stopped tearing about. He let him play on the wet lawn in the back yard. Lion shook his paws; he didn't like the damp, but Dad wanted to try the head-in-mouth trick. When he pulled Lion's mouth open, lifting his face and nose to the sky, he noticed a muscular tension in his jaws. Lion tensed all over. Dad's head went in anyway. He counted to ten slowly and then gave the usual tap-on-jaw cue to release. No response. He tapped the jaw again. But Lion gazed at the clouds, wondering if rain would fall.

Men in white coats came and put an oxygen mask over Dad's face. The throb of a resuscitator in Lion's ears enraged him. He paced back and forth. Someone felt Dad's pulse and a stethoscope went down on his heart. It was a terrible moment. Sticks hit Lion. Someone from a distance darted him. He went to sleep.

The mother reached over the partition and touched his whiskers. It was a cold hand, ugly. It smelled like fish. He bit it. It tasted sour. It recoiled. He turned the skull in his hands and held it under the green lamp on the night table. Green light bathed the flaw in it, the crack. Lion's body was thin and green. Yesterday he was tan and thick out
back playing with Toby the white bull terrier. Toby jumped on Lion. Lion held him against his body. Toby didn't like that. It pleased Lion to think about the dog but not to be with him all the time. Dad said to play with him for the peace and the fresh air. But it puzzled Lion when Toby pinned back his ears and growled. It puzzled him when he didn't listen to him or when he peed without asking. It puzzled him when the dog ate his own poop.

Parrot visited that afternoon. The colouring of the bird was blue but overlaid with green stripes and yellow spots. Streaks of crimson in the deep blue head gave it richness. They sat in the living room for a time, neither with much to say. Parrot noted the figurine on the mantelpiece: a pink majolica cockatoo. He laughed at it. Lion laughed too though he thought it not funny. Then they ate little sandwiches and drank tea. The afternoon receded. A freakish winking of Parrot's eyes, like stars, gave Lion cause for speculation. Was it a deliberate difference of design? Then Parrot admitted he had painted on the spots. Everyone has to be themselves, he argued. Lion couldn't judge his friend, but he felt he had grown vain over the years.

After one more tea, Parrot made apologies and left. He was usually good for a couple of pots. But things change even with the best of friends. They get full of themselves, or they run out of things to say. Lion had run out of things to say a long time ago. It happens. You talk and talk and your mouth gets dry, then your mind gets dry. All we can do is go with it. Fighting the inevitable just makes it harder to accept.

Lion returned to his room to improvise with string. The mother thought it would help him pass the time. She provided a big ball of string for him. He nervously tapped at it. Then it began to unravel. He pulled string over his bed and over his dresser.

It was so hard to concentrate; the punch in the eye didn't help. Dad punched again: the other eye. They said they would put Lion in the crate if he roared. He tried to be quiet. It wasn't easy. Dad pointed at him, then rubbed his head. Lion didn't care for it. Later the mother and Dad ate cucumber sandwiches side by side on the couch and when they finished they shook themselves of crumbs and kissed on the lips. Lion took his bowl of milk and looked at it in silence.

Dad filled his pipe and smoked. His eyes glazed over. Lion licked his milk. It tasted sour. He knocked the bowl with his paw and milk spilled onto the floor in a white blob. Then he lapped up the milk left in the bowl.

Dad stroked Lion's mane. “To return to what I was saying . . .”

“Be careful around him,” the mother said. She wiped her hands with her apron and slapped her thighs. “Come here, big guy.”

Lion went to approach her but Dad jumped out of his chair and crawled to her on all fours. She patted his head and slipped him a cracker. Lion wandered into the nursery. He touched the hideous bride-doll on the mantelpiece. He could sense its power coursing through the house. He wanted to shred it but feared punishment. He had been punished for less. Its eyes locked with his and would not look away. How horrible! And its flesh was like glass! He returned to the kitchen. At the table Dad wore a shiny visor and bifocals and sorted through a pile of bills and letters. The mother stood behind him looking on. She glanced at Lion, then spoke under her breath.

“His mind is thinking of something else,” she said.

“He blends so profoundly the stuff of thought.”

“He's one with himself.”

“I think our plan is working.”

“What would you like for dinner, dear? Pork roast?”

“I love your pork roast.”

One day when Dad was angry he took out the lasso, slipped the noose through the slats and over Lion's head. Lion let out a screech that sent the mother running. Another time Dad took a broomstick and poked the rounded end into Lion's mouth. He pushed the broomstick through his mouth until his wrist rested between his fangs. Then Dad stuffed a cardboard funnel with chloroformed rags and strapped it to Lion's face. Dad said he needed a stronger cage. This one he had bought at an auction, part of a collection of circus mementos, but flimsy.