Orwell's Luck
Authors: Richard W. Jennings
Richard Jennings
Table of Contents
The stars speak a different language
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 2006
Walter Lorraine Books
Walter Lorraine Books
Text copyright © 2000 by Richard Jennings
All rights reserved. For information about
permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jennings, Richard W. (Richard Walker), 1945â
Orwell's Luck / by Richard W. Jennings
p. cm.
Summary: While caring for an injured rabbit which
becomes her confidant, horoscope writer, and source of good
luck, a thoughtful seventh grade girl learns to see things in
more than one way.
HC ISBN 0-618-03628-8 PA ISBN 0-618-69335-1
[1. RabbitsâFiction. 2. HoroscopesâFiction] I. Title.
PZ7.J4298765 or 2000
[Fic]âdc21
99-033501
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-69335-1
Printed in the United States of America
HAD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Home deliveryFor Philip, Alex, and Mary
All my life, I have been a person who wakes up with the birds. They say the early bird gets the worm, and I suppose it's true, but what gets me out of bed is not worms, but the opportunity to be the first one in my family to get to the newspaper.
The newspaper contains the comics, and, more importantly, the comics pages contain the daily horoscope guide. This is vital information. I can't imagine getting through the day without it.
On this particular day, the first day of a brand-new year, when I made the dash across the frost-covered lawn while the rest of my family slept, I was startled to discover a brown rabbit sprawled unhappily atop the fat, plastic-wrapped holiday paper.
He held his head erect. His eyes were bright. His ears turned in my direction like satellite dishes. His nose twitched in that reassuring manner unique to rabbits. But his hindquarters were as lifeless as the laundry hidden beneath my bed. As I stood over him assessing the situation, he thrashed his forefeet about, which served only to turn him in circles.
It appeared that I was confronted with yet another victim of urban carelessness, an event possibly perpetrated by the driver of the newspaper truck, a man I had never met, but who, I suspected, associated high speeds with professional achievement. The evidence lay at my bare feet, which were turning uncomfortably cold.
I surveyed the surrounding front lawns, just in case this madman somehow had managed to dispose of an entire rabbit family in a single blow, but this was the only crippled creature in sight. The rabbit's discomfort, and mine, prompted me to remove him to warmer surroundings. I unrolled the newspaper, fashioned it into a makeshift gurney, and carried him into the kitchen, where I placed him on the countertop.
"Don't be scared," I said, as if he could understand my words. "I like rabbits."
I looked him over. He wasn't bleeding and there were no bones sticking out. Whatever his problem was, it was inside, not outside.
Since I didn't know what else to do, I just talked to him, hoping that would make him feel better.
"Do you have a name?" I asked him.
He looked at me sadly in silence.
"Well, you need one," I told him. "If only to make the conversation go more smoothly."
First I thought about calling him Star, after the newspaper by the same name, but that sounded too much like something a kid would come up with. Then I tried out some more imaginative stuff, names that would signify his special status of being the first terrorist victim of the year, but TERREX-A and VIC-001 sounded like the government was involved. Even the perfectly innocent and popular name Thumper, which you'd think would be OK, seemed in bad taste under the circumstances.
Finally, I settled on the name Orwell, because, like all good names, it just seemed to fit.
Orwell had not only arrived as a harbinger of the new year, he had come at a critical time in my personal career. I had recently turned twelve, and was well into the first half of seventh grade at a brand-new school, where instead of being one of the oldest kids knowing all the ropes, like I had been in sixth grade, I found myself one of the youngest kids knowing no ropes at all. That's why I was considering entering the field of private investigations, after school and on weekends, or maybe becoming an explorer like Lewis or Clark. I also liked shooting baskets in my driveway, which is where I had come up with these plans.
Like himself, the house that Orwell entered was damaged in the back. My father had approved my mother's remodeling scheme, and thanks to an ever-changing team of workmen, the back of our midwestern bungalow was torn away, leaving boards and pipes exposed, with only loosely fastened sheets of thin blue plastic separating our living space from the skeletal rooms-in-progress beyond. As a result, it was chilly in the kitchen that morningâno place for an injured rabbit to recuperate.
Not only that, but when the other members of my family got up, they were sure to be hungry, cranky, and outspoken about their objections to encountering wild animals in the food service area. My mother, I suspected, would take the horrified view of a public health inspector. My sister would vacillate between the feeling that rabbits are cute, and the realization that this one, in its present damaged form, was "too sad." My father's verdict was unpredictable.
To avoid a family quarrel, I decided to move Orwell once again, this time to the relative safety of the unfinished master bathroom. The plumbing fixtures were inoperative, but the heat was on and the door could be closed. Everything in the room was covered with a fine layer of construction dust, so I spread open the front page of the paper in the new ceramic tub and gently placed the rabbit on the clean newsprint.
It made a fine nesting place.
Apart from the risks associated with the introduction of a wounded wild rabbit into a household made up of four highly independent people, there were also the dog and the cat to consider.
I mention the dog first because he joined us first, as a puppy many years ago, when we were a young family on the way up. He is of mixed pedigree, half Pomeranian and half poodle, a combination that gives you an obedient, curly-haired creature about the size and shape of a pig.
Now generally ignored by the people who picked him out, the dog sleeps in the house at night and surveys his fenced kingdom in the backyard by day. He lives well enough, I suppose. His diet consists of tuna, cheddar cheese, baked chicken, and sweet-and-sour pork from the Imperial Garden, bolstered by the occasional interlude of canned Lucky Dog and Science City diet pellets, food he rarely eats but is there anyway, just in case.
The fact is, the pellets are consumed each morning by the blue jays, starlings, and other feathered camp-followers who come to drink at the goldfish pond, and the Lucky Dog sustains the scavengers housed in and around the woodpile. Whenever the dog's bowl is empty, my father barks at me, "Feed the dog!" What we are doing, of course, is feeding the birds, the mice, and the occasional visiting possum.
The cat is my sister's. Within the house, they go everywhere together.
In considering the family pets, it occurred to me that if their natural instincts should ever, by some miracle, return, it could affect Orwell's chances for getting better. A debilitated rabbit would be an easy meal for a less well fed dog and cat. Even as sport, Orwell could provide fine high jinks for a couple of bored household carnivores.
For the time being, I thought it best to refrain from advertising Orwell's existence and the location of his hideout. Mum was the word of the day.
While my family performed their morning rituals upstairs, I located some supplies left over from a sixth-grade science fair project. From a one-liter glass beaker, a drip valve, a strip of plastic tubing, and a metal stand, I assembled a contraption that would provide Orwell with nourishment on an as-needed basis.
I filled the container with a nutritional mush made from pulverized Science City diet pellets mixed with bottled water. I forced the tubing past the rabbit's amazingly sharp incisors. This was not only difficult, it was a mistake. The little guy bit me, making a deep and bloody cut in my forefinger, which I treated with antibiotic ointment and sterile gauze. I made a mental note to find out later about rabies, tetanus, and rabbit fever. I also found a pair of heavy leather gloves. Ironically, the gloves were lined with rabbit fur.
Orwell seemed willing enough to consume the dog food mush, a good sign for a creature I feared was on death's doorstep. I closed the door to the bathroom and joined my family in the kitchen for a satisfying breakfast of thawed waffles soaked in syrup and topped with sliced bananas. I kept my bandaged finger in my pocket.
"You've taken the comics again!" my sister accused me.
"What in the world has happened to the front page?" my mother complained. "This is so irritating!"
"Must we?" my father sighed, looking up from the Help Wanted ads. My father always read the Help Wanted ads because my father disliked his job. Turning to me, he said, "If you're going to read the newspaper before anyone else, please have the courtesy to reassemble it."
I quietly excused myself, leaving my sticky plate, glass, and silverware in the middle of the kitchen table surrounded by strands and globs of maple-flavored syrup. Later, this would launch a general discussion on household responsibilities, eventually concluding with my mother and my father ignoring me, while continuing to debate the subject between themselves.
"It's just her age," my mother would maintain, while my father, taking it upon himself to clear my breakfast dishes, would suggest that absent-mindedness was a genetic flaw I had inherited, possibly from my mother's mother. It would be a momentary skirmish, an airing of opposing views. Strictly routine stuff.
Orwell's new home was more like a church sanctuary than a rabbit hutch. Separated from the rest of the house by a minefield of fallen nails, discarded two-by-fours, plaster rocks, long-forgotten soda cans, and other worker's flotsam, the new master bathroom was a wonderful place to be alone with one's thoughts and one's rabbit.
There was a skylight over the raised bathtub, a double vanity, a shower, a heat lamp, and several illuminated sconces controlled by a dimmer switch. A long mirror had been installed over the twin sinks, and another, opposite it, over the tub. The floor by the shower was covered with handmade tiles from Italy. On the rest of the floor, deep wool carpeting snuggled your feet. The wallpaper had been custom-made to complete the effect, and the effect, in my view, was like being at the altar of the Hedge Grove United Methodist Church, where my family and I sometimes attended services.
Lying reverently in the center of it all was Orwell. He raised his head when I entered, but he exhibited no fear. Remembering to wear my gloves, I offered him a stolen piece of celery. He needed coaxing at first, but soon began gnawing at it greedily. As he ate, I stroked the back of his tiny head. He lay his ears back to accommodate me. I was careful not to touch his spine.
As we both became more comfortable, I removed the glove from my right hand and felt his soft chest. There was a strong, rapid heartbeat. I gently pinched his back feet to try to determine if he was more than half a rabbit. He responded with a slight wiggle in his shoulders. I held his feet one at a time. They were warm, like the rest of him.
It appeared that life was flowing through Orwell, but any notion of rabbit's feet being talismans for good fortune was dispelled by the sad sight of this helpless, crumpled creature. I guessed that his pelvis had been broken, probably by a glancing blow from the wheels of the newspaper truck. Even if he had a chance to live, he could be crippled for life.
Looking at him lying so still in the natural spotlight created by the skylight above him, my heart went out to this unlucky little rabbit. Whatever was to become of him, I realized, was up to me.
As a family, even though we do go to church sometimes, the meaning of life is not always on our minds. But somehow Orwell had found his way to me, and therein lay a duty that I could not deny. Maybe he'd dragged himself for miles to get to my house. Maybe the word was out among the forlorn, the homeless, and the wounded that here was a house with a soft touch, a house where the Science City diet pellets and the Lucky Dog flowed in a magical endless stream.