I said, “So you get Mary?”
“Sure,” Ivan said. “That’s an old trick. They leave you with all the stuff, even the animals, and you can’t get rid of them or don’t want to, and you’ve got all this shit reminding you of how you fucked up, and these dogs or cats or squawking parakeets or whatever reminding you of everything you did together, and so when they’ve gone they’ve cut themselves completely loose, no strings, clean slate. You’ve got all the baggage. Next time you see them, they’ve lost weight and cut their hair and feel just great about themselves, got their teeth cleaned, stopped biting their nails. They’ve got the soul of a bluebird. You realize they were absolutely miserable with you all along.”
Ivan passed me a little skinny he’d rolled up earlier. I lit it, poured myself a cup of coffee from his heavy green thermos, and we pulled out, rolling past the thick stand of bamboo that rose up tall beside the old Victorian apartment house, the sharp-leaved tops tossing in the wind. They were as tall as the eaves and their leaves brushed against my screened porch. The blackbirds and grackles that had ventured from that protective thicket were already returning in little squadrons of threes and fours. As we turned onto the boulevard to the highway, I rolled down my window and let out a whoop, just like a kid. Ivan looked at me and laughed. We knew this retreat would be a success.
WE WERE STILL UNDER THE COLD AND MISTY FRONT WHEN we crossed the cattle guard into the farm, and we unloaded our gear in a hurry and took it into the farmhouse and built a fire to take the chill out of the room. I put my hands on the old plaster walls. They were as cold as the truck’s windows had been out on the road.
In a little while, the great room felt drier and warmer. We had a cup of thick chicory coffee and stood in front of the fire, then pulled on our jackets and boots and got the guns, coaxed young Mary away from the rug in front of the fire — she didn’t want to get up, kept her chin flat on the rug with her big brown eyes looking up at us, hoping we’d leave her alone— and headed out to walk the fenceline.
There’s something fine about walking a fenceline through wet fields in a steady, misting rain when you’re all wrapped up against it. The world is reaching saturation, the air is uniformly cool and wet. It wraps around you like your heavy clothing and feels close and somehow invigorating. I don’t know. I guess it has the opposite effect on some people, but it strikes a chord in me. You slop through the muddy fields and get a little numb with it and something inside of you lets go a little bit. There’s nothing else like it. Walking in the cold and dry is fine, too, but it’s not the same thing. Walking in the rain loosens up the bad things inside. You feel good, your heart is big enough for any sorrow. You’re walking, slogging, and you’re feeling strong. The dog’s trotting here and there, aimless, nosing around, stumbling onto wet coveys and then leaping like a fool dog when they burst past her. No one’s critical. You take an occasional shot at a bird, bag a couple, just enough to make dinner’s rice interesting. No big take. No worry. No desire for more than you need. It’s a walk as much as a hunt. We didn’t talk about the women. We didn’t say anything much.
We walked all over that thousand acres. The trees bordering the far ends of the pastures looked more like the ghosts of trees in the gray mist. We’d bagged a few quail along the fencelines and beside the creek. Way over by the hay rolls on the north rise we flushed some birds that flew into a low, dense grove of miscellaneous hardwoods. We spread out and walked through the grove, taking shots when the birds flushed, one here, two there, missing. There were still leaves, black and wet, along the gnarled branches that twisted from the short, stout trunks. The birds weaved in short bursts of flight, staying just out of range. At the far end of the grove we stopped and had a smoke.
We stood and smoked, not talking, and then Ivan caught my eye and nodded at something on the ground a few feet ahead. It was a rabbit, a young cottontail, sitting as still as could be. But when we saw it, young Mary saw it, and she leapt.
The rabbit dashed from the edge of the grove and into the adjoining pasture. Instinctively we shot, hobbling it just as it topped a little hummock, and then Mary zoomed over after it and disappeared. We heard a small, high scream, and then a crunching sound that carried with remarkable clarity in the wet, chilly air. It was an awful sound. Mary came trotting back up over the hummock with the rabbit hanging limp by its head from her jaws. She stepped back through the fence, sat down in the grass a few feet away from us, and started licking the rabbit’s fur.
“Christ,” Ivan said. “It’s just a little thing. It’s not even a rabbit. It’s a bunny.”
I felt pretty bad about shooting it, too. Mary had begun to toss the rabbit up into the air. Ivan shook his head.
“Hey,” he said to Mary. “Hey!” He took the rabbit from her and she leapt up into the air after it, playing.
“Leave it,” Ivan said. “Sit.” She looked at him, cocked her head. “Sit!” She sat and looked away, out into the field where she’d caught up with the rabbit.
Ivan put the rabbit into his jacket’s pouch, and we walked back to the house, Mary sniffing at Ivan’s jacket and pawing at the backs of his legs. We flushed a few birds on the way but didn’t take a shot. When we reached the house we followed the gravel drive around back and walked to the bridge over the creek. We took out the five birds and the rabbit and set them on the bridge timbers next to the railing, blocking Mary out with our arms. She stuffed her snout beneath Ivan’s armpit and stayed there for a moment, her nostrils working.
“What are we going to do with the rabbit?” I said.
“I guess we’ll clean it,” Ivan said. “We may as well eat it. We might as well eat our little rabbit brother.”
“I don’t really want to clean it,” I said.
Ivan gave me the birds and said he’d clean the rabbit. As I cleaned the birds I dropped the feathers and entrails and the heads into the creek and watched them float downstream. Ivan dumped the rabbit’s viscera into the stream, too, so Mary wouldn’t get into it. He tacked the skin high on a broken branch, and Mary sat beneath it looking up, not knowing whether to jump at it or not. She rose and sat and rose and sat, restlessly. Ivan came up behind me and stuck something into my back pocket. It was one of the rabbit’s feet. I pulled it out and looked.
“Pretty grisly,” I said.
“Unlucky rabbit,” Ivan said. “He takes on all your bad luck for you now.”
“Okay.” I tucked the foot into the fob pocket of my jeans.
WE WENT IN AND PULLED OFF OUR BOOTS, STOKED THE coals in the hearth and added wood, and poured a little whiskey while we sat in front of the fire drying our socks and pants leggings. We had a couple of stiff bourbons. Then we went into the kitchen to put together a meal. Ivan took the rabbit out of the refrigerator and we looked at it. Maybe it was the old anatomy charts in school that showed the muscle, the elliptical bands of sinew overlapping one other, symmetrically joined. I couldn’t stand to look at it.
“It looks human,” I said.
Ivan looked at me, then set the rabbit on the counter and studied it.
“Christ,” he said. “You fucker. Enough about the rabbit.”
He laughed. We both laughed so hard we had to set our drinks down and lean against the counter and wheeze it off.
“I don’t know how to cook it,” he said. “Let’s just put it on the fire. There’s a spit in there.”
He took the rabbit into the living room and pushed the spit through it and placed the ends of the spit into the cradles. I went back into the kitchen to whip up something for the quail. I don’t have the same kind of problem with birds. It’s all those grocery store fryers, I guess. Conditioning. I wrapped the quail in bacon and set them in a dish of rice and mushrooms and chopped green onions and slid them into the oven, and dropped some fresh green beans into the steamer. I’d come back in and turn them on last.