Following Rabbits
Brom turned away then, confidently, without looking back at John for any reproach, and walked to the hitching post in front of the house where his horse — a huge black beast with fiery eyes — was tied up. John stood by the shed until Brom had climbed on top of the creature and rode away, into the woods, then he turned and walked back to the house, his back and head throbbing like a rotten tooth.
John opened the door, saw that his family was still sitting around the table, and wondered if any of the events that had just transpired were evident on his red features. Meredith and Tillie refused to look up at him. Elsie smiled, as always. And as John took his seat, Lacie told her father, “It’s a tea bag, isn’t it?”
“What?” John asked draping his napkin in his lap.
“The answer to the riddle,” Lacie said, “It’s a tea bag, right?”
“Oh,” John said. “Yes. Yes it is.”
~*~
John couldn’t sleep. Despite always being tired, he rarely slept, especially at night, when sleep seemed the hardest to come by. It was at night that he noticed the aches and pains of his body. It was when the rashes that had sprung up in various places itched the worst, it was when the sockets in his gums pulsed the most resounding.
He sat up in bed and decided it was best to work than to simply lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling. He had managed to finish a grand total of eleven hats before he had retired for the evening. As early as it was, there was a chance he could finish one more before heading to market, making it an even dozen.
He dressed quietly, listening to Meredith snore in the bed. He took the old pocket watch from the chest of drawers by the door. He lit a candle and checked the
time. It was just past three o’clock in the morning. What he wouldn’t give for a full night of sleep. A world of good it would do him, he supposed.
He carried his boots to the front door and slipped into them, opening the latch and stepping out into the cold winter’s morning. He shivered, knowing that it would get colder still by the time he had loaded the mule down with his hats and began walking to the market.
Outside, here and there all around the house and shed were little rabbits, their noses twitching and ears flicking. There were more rabbits around these parts of the woods than anywhere else he had ever seen. Meredith was always complaining about there being a lack of meat in the house, but all she had to do was step outside on any given morning and take her pick of the dozens of rabbits that ate the clover scattered throughout the yard.
John walked from the house to the shed, one hand shielding the flame of the candle from the wind. He pushed open the shed door, the warm sour smell of cured felt rolled over him. It was a noxious smell, but there was nothing he could do about it. It came with the job.
John perused the hats that he had finished the night before. They hung from the wall, each with a white square of paper sticking out of the band. “10/6″ said most of them — ten shillings and six pence. The shillings were for Brom; the pence he’d take home for his family.
As he examined the seams and stitch work of the previous night’s work, a brownish gray bulk caught his eye.
There, sitting in the doorway of the shed, was a largish rabbit, sitting up on its hind legs and staring at John. It fell back to all fours, but continued to watch him, its nose twitching, its head tilting from side to side.
“You can’t be in here,” John said to the rabbit.
The rabbit’s nose twitched again, then it turned and left the doorway as though it understood John’s words.
With the rabbit gone, John shut the shed door, and began packing his hats into cases to take to market.
~*~
It was several hours after nightfall that John returned home from the marketplace. Elsie and Lacie would already be in bed, but perhaps Meredith would still be awake. He walked slowly next to the mule. He considered riding the old thing, but didn’t want to risk damaging any of the hats he had to return with; so he walked instead, and each step was a jolt of pain from heel to hip.
As he entered the yard, his breath coming shakily from his mouth, he saw that the rabbits were already chomping contently on the clover. Some of them scattered when they heard the mule’s clopping footsteps, but many of them simply stood by and watched, unafraid.
John led the mule to the door of the work shed and took the hat boxes and bags from the poor animal’s back and began stacking them on the tables inside. With its burden removed, he led the mule to the barn and fed it an extra helping of hay for all its hard work, then he went back to the shed to put his things away.
He had managed to sell only six hats all day. Not much more than sixty shillings. He wasn’t sure how Brom was going to take the news that he didn’t have the full hundred he had asked for, but he was even more worried about what Meredith was going to say when he told her that he would have to give it all to Brom.
very very good