The Rabbit Factory: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  “How do I know where your hands been?” the bartender said, loud again, and it was easy to see that he was mad. For no reason. People. Shit.

  “Hey, mister, take it easy, okay? I just wanted a piece of lemon with my shot ’cause you didn’t give me one.”

  “You didn’t ask for one.”

  “Yeah, well most bartenders serve them with one.”

  The bartender had his arms at his side and he took a step closer. Like an invalid relearning to walk. Then he pointed toward the door.

  “You don’t like the way I serve drinks, you can get your fucking ass out of here, navy. Right now.”

  Everybody within earshot was listening now because the bartender had gotten so loud. This was all going badly wrong. And Wayne wanted to stop that if he could. He started backing away.

  “Take it easy, mister. I’m just going back to my drink. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “I’ll give you some fucking trouble,” the bartender said.

  Wayne sat back down in front of his beer and his shot glass. Damn. The bartender glared at him for a few more seconds and then he turned away, went back to what he was doing. But he was cussing under his breath. One unhappy man. Wayne looked at the beefy bouncer at the door who was watching him with his arms crossed.

  And one of the firefighters laughed. Wayne caught eyes with him. About two-ten, about five-ten. Hair razored down to the skin of his tanning-bed tanned head but a short black beard with no mustache. Going for the semi-Ahab look. Had a diamond stud in one ear. Probably didn’t wear it on smoke calls. He didn’t look away. But Wayne did. He had to keep sitting here. He had to try and make peace with the bartender and he’d seen the bartender joking and laughing with the firefighters before, calling them by name, so it was plain that they were regulars or at least knew each other. He was the outsider here. He knew how it was. He knew how dogs were about their yards. He didn’t want any trouble. Some trouble would mess up everything. He should have just waited for the lemon. He wished now that he had.

  There was a salt shaker within reach and he got it, licked the web of his hand, and sprinkled some salt on it. He was hunched over the bar with the toes of his black oxfords hooked on the rungs of the stool and he lifted the shot glass to his mouth and drank about half the tequila, then set it down and bit into the lemon, and licked the salt from his hand. He sipped his beer.

  He hadn’t called his mother and daddy yet. He knew he should have done that this afternoon, and told them what had happened with the whales, but he’d known it would turn into a long conversation with his mother, and she would have insisted that he talk to his daddy, too, who might have been out in the barn or up in the loft or out in one of the fields on the tractor cutting down cornstalks or just anywhere on the farm. Then he would have had to wait while she called him to the house on the walkie-talkie. Wayne had given the little durable Motorolas to them for Christmas last year and they used them all the time between the farm and the house, said they didn’t know how they’d ever gotten by without them before. They sat in their chargers each night with their tiny red lights burning in the dark of the kitchen. His. Hers. Home.

  And he could always go there for Christmas. He knew they were hoping for that, and he knew that the right thing to do was to go see them. Go right back to the bus station, he could be home in fourteen hours of riding. Put on his old clothes. Eat some of his mother’s cooking. Go mess around in the fields with his daddy. They could probably find some pheasants to shoot. Deer season would be open. They could hunt. They could watch TV. They could drink beer. See all his buddies and aunts and uncles and cousins, maybe even Stella. His mother said she was working at the telephone office in town now. Hell. If he went home, maybe they could go have a beer. He still liked her okay. He sure didn’t have anything against her now.

  But shit. What good would that do? That was over and done with. She didn’t want to make love anymore if they weren’t married and that was all there was to it. Said it had gotten to where it made her feel like a whore. As much as they’d done it, for eight months, and then for her to come out with that shit. Just because she wanted to get married. He wanted to be married, yeah, he wanted to have kids, but not before he was ready, and not just because somebody said it was time for him to. Not just because Stella said it was time for him to. Nope. He hadn’t seen the world yet. But after that he joined up to do just that. And his daddy was really proud of him. He needed to go see them. They were getting old. Slowing down.

  He took another drink of his beer and the firefighter laughed again. It pissed him off but he tried to ignore it. He didn’t want any shit to get started in here. He had to stay in here. He had to apologize to the bartender again and tell him he was sorry and tip him good even though actually he’d been tipping him pretty good already and see if he couldn’t find out how he could get ahold of her. But he’d had four or five beers and some shots. And he was upset that she wasn’t here. And he hated for some wise son of a bitch to be able to sit back there and think he could laugh at him. He didn’t have anything against firefighters. Hell no. The ones on the ship had a hell of a job. All that jet fuel, all those rockets and bombs, and missiles, all those tons of explosives, if any of that shit went off, it was the firefighters who had to get the hoses and go in there and put their asses on the line to put it out. No, he had respect for firefighters. But this one was acting like an asshole. He knew he was going to have to look at him again.

  So he did.

  The guy was watching him with his head kind of laid back on his thick neck. He was smiling at Wayne, and sipping on a drink, and just kind of chuckling to himself. A private joke maybe. Wayne smiled at him, too, and picked up his shot glass again.

  “Fuck you,” he said to the guy, through the music.

  The guy stopped smiling then. He was out of his chair in just a second and almost up in Wayne’s face within the next few.

  “You got a problem, sailor boy?” he said. He wasn’t sober either.

  Wayne wasn’t excited but he stood up just in case the guy took a swing. People were watching, he knew.

  “I got a problem with you laughing at me,” Wayne said.

  Some of the guy’s friends were yelling at him to shut up and sit his ass back down but he didn’t pay any attention. Wayne was afraid of getting sucker-punched and knew that if he didn’t step carefully here, there would probably be some police involved within a few minutes. Maybe a quick trip to the friendly local jail. And he didn’t need that. He knew he didn’t need that.

  He risked a glance at the bartender. Everything had stopped but the music. He was going to explain things to the firefighter. He was going to calm everything down and make friends with the bartender and get Anjalee’s number and call her when he got back to his room in the Peabody and everything was going to work out tonight. He was going to go to the doctor when he got back and get his head seen about. Stop boxing for sure since that obviously was causing his problems, getting hit with too many straight rights. He was good but not great. And that was a vast difference in boxing. He was lucky. He could always farm.

  And, shit, in a bar like this? It was just stupid. It was small-time punk stuff. Which didn’t change the fact that you could get hurt in it. You could get hurt in it even worse than in the ring. Where there were rules.

  “I’ll laugh whenever I get damn ready,” the firefighter said. He was young and stocky, and his eyes were rimmed slightly with red. And Wayne didn’t want to fight a drunk. He sure didn’t need to get hit in the head.

  “Look, man,” Wayne said, and held up a hand. “Let’s just sit back down and call it over. Call it even. Call it whatever the fuck you want to call it. I don’t need no trouble. If you think I’m scared of your ass, that’s fine.”

  The firefighter stared at him with drunken intensity, and Wayne took a step back, and felt himself weave just a bit. Hell. He didn’t have any business fighting. And just like that it all changed.

  “Just get your fucking troublemaking ass out
!” the bartender said. And he waved to the guy on the door. “Tommy! Get this asshole outa here!”

  “Wait a minute, man, I ain’t done nothing,” Wayne said, and the bouncer was coming over, and the firefighter was still standing there, and he knew somebody was about to put their hands on him, and he didn’t want that either, but the bouncer, big, dark clothes, in loud music, made a grab for his arm, and Wayne snatched it away, and ducked a punch he barely saw coming, and then his instincts took over, and he coldcocked the bouncer with one hard shot to his jaw, so that his knees bent, and he fell over and knocked over a table with some drinks. And everything seemed to stop except for the blaring music. He was watching the faces. He was watching the other firefighters getting up from their table, and he was watching the girls watching from the stage while the loud music kept pouring out of the speakers, and he didn’t see the bartender at all, who had reached somehow for the same fifth of tequila, and raised it high, and leaned out over the bar, and was just about to bring it down on Wayne’s head in a splinter of glass and tequila and blood, like an explosion, when the front door opened and Anjalee walked in.

  “Don’t!” she screamed.

  So he didn’t.

  97

  The cops at the Shelby County Jail were not overly nice to Helen since it was her third trip in there. There were cops everywhere and there were people screaming and shouting and begging in the bedlam that was going on, cell doors slamming, but the police didn’t seem to pay any attention to any of it. They fingerprinted her and photographed her while she sobered up and she only wished that she could go back and do the last few hours over again. All Arthur’s money couldn’t do her any good in here. Or in that courtroom where she would have to face that judge again. She was too scared to even cry.

  But the worst was when they put her in the cell. It was so crowded there near the holidays that they had to stick her in with another woman, a large and mean-looking black woman with big feet and titties and some bandages on her melon head and who looked like she was about half man. Helen tried not to look at her when the cell door slammed. But she did. And the woman stood up, towering over her, and said: “The hell you lookin’ at, bitch?”

  98

  In Wayne’s heart the love beat deep for the country girl sleeping beside him in his nice room at the Peabody. He knew the big river was out there flowing, and he heard the sad horn of a tug going down to maybe New Orleans blow a long flat note out across the water he couldn’t see. A little moonlight shafted in through the window, and he knew that same moon was hanging over his daddy’s farm in Ohio. He could picture the house in shadow, the old white barn dark except for the single light his father left on over the front so that you could read the big numbers, hand-painted, “1928,” the trucks and tractors and corn pickers that were parked out there beyond the gate with frost all over them. The two rat terriers, Georgie B. and Big Mama, would be sleeping in the barn. And his parents would be sleeping now, too, upstairs in their bed. He had already imagined taking Anjalee there one fine spring day, to their house, to the back door inside the screened porch with all the flowers and plants, opening it to the kitchen, stepping in, holding her by the hand, and his mother in her apron would turn from the stove, and she would rush to hug him, and laugh, and kiss him, and then she would look, smiling, past his shoulder at the girl he would be turning to, and he would say, with pride in his voice: “Mother, I’ve got somebody I want you to meet.”

  99

  Rico was not crying but was mercifully sleeping for a little while when the knocks on the door woke him. His dog, Fred, was in the bed with him, as it usually was, now that Lorena was gone for good, and it got up and howled with its nose pointed up. It only weighed about four pounds, and shook sometimes, and it had bugged-out eyes, and he told it to hush and got up and put on his robe and then picked the dog up and put it under his arm like you might carry a loaf of bread or a football.

  He could see the blue flashes of light through the curtains of his living room, and he knew then that they had found his brother.

  He stopped, and stood there just short of the door, very afraid, and remembered a Christmas long ago when he’d been hoping to get a guitar, only to see a red one with plastic strings show up on Elwood’s side of the tree. And he remembered that he had gotten a model train, and had cut his finger putting the track together, and he could remember pushing Elwood into a mud hole when he was about three or four, and making him cry. Now he hated so bad he’d done that. He would have given anything if he could go back and do some things over. With his brother. With his wife. With his life.

  He knew that his brother was dead, had known it all along, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know where they’d found him, only that they had. He pushed the curtains aside, and looked out. The whole road in front of his house was filled with cruisers, and people were walking around in his yard, and all the blue lights were winking, making flashes of color on his curtains, and on the face of Fred, who howled bravely, fiercely, loudly at what was out there in the night, safe in the warm crook of his large buddy’s arm.

  100

  It was only a few nights before Christmas, and Arthur had put up a small tree and strung multicolored blinking lights that made the living room look warm and happy. The tree held some last-minute presents under its narrow lower branches, and dishes of pecans and English walnuts were sitting on the coffee table with a new nut-cracker set. Also displayed were some nice fake holly leaves and red wax berries in a pleasing configuration.

  The cool thing going on with WTBS tonight was another twenty-four hours of Clint, back to back, around the clock. Hang ’Em High. Coogan’s Bluff. For a Few Dollars More. All his favorites. He had his occasional gin and tonic going and was feeling comparatively good, relatively speaking. It had been four days now since he’d heard from her lawyer, and sent the lawyer the money for her bond, so he guessed she was still staying in the Peabody. He guessed maybe she wasn’t coming back in time for the holidays. He’d already accepted that. But it was her decision. She was the one who chose to drive drunk this close to Christmas. But he guessed he’d wind up being the one who paid the fine again for her anyway. He hoped the judge wouldn’t really send her to the penitentiary like he’d threatened, but would maybe let her do her time at the jail here so that he could visit her a little easier. He’d always known what she was in Montana. Town pump they called it out there. They even had some gas stations named that. But that hadn’t mattered to him and it still didn’t. She’d get through this somehow or other. Then maybe she could come back home, if he wanted her to, if she wanted to, and maybe they could work things out from there. If they couldn’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  He sipped at his gin and tonic. It was just the way he liked it, with a bit of lemon peel in it alongside the lime chunk. Eric had told him that he’d learned how to make drinks from his daddy. And he’d told him about the rabbit factory. And they were going to see it soon. And there wasn’t anything much better than having a few drinks in the warmth of your own home and sitting down to a real good western movie with your supper. Like the one they were getting ready to watch in about thirty more minutes, Once Upon a Time in the West. Directed by Sergio Leone. With Henry Fonda. Charles Bronson. Jason Robards. And Claudia Cardinale. Now there was one fine woman. That was the main reason he’d been attracted to Helen in Montana that night, because he’d had a few gin and tonics and she’d gotten to looking like Claudia Cardinale. But even after he’d sobered up the next day and had taken a good look at her lying naked in the bed next to him, sleeping, with her wild hair around her face, it hadn’t mattered that she was the town pump. He’d always feared he wouldn’t be able to hold on to her. He’d always secretly known she’d married him for his money. He’d known this day might come. He’d known she liked men. So now that it had happened, it wasn’t like some big surprise. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t find another woman if he did split up with Helen, now that he had his equipment in goo
d working order again. If he wanted one. He didn’t know right now. But if he did, all he’d probably have to do was put on a good suit and go down to the Peabody one evening, order a gin and tonic, and hang out a little. Find a young one looking for a sugar-daddy. The world was full of them. Like Helen twenty years ago.

  He looked around but he didn’t see it. Hiding probably.

  Jada Pinkett had been playing with it but maybe it was taking a nap under the couch now. He thought it was going to tame down, now that they’d let it out of the cage and let it walk around where it could see that they weren’t going to hurt it. That had been Eric’s suggestion, and Eric had been right.

  He seemed to be real good with animals. He’d evidently had hundreds of dogs in his lifetime. And the kitten was already house-trained. It was using the kitty-litter box Eric had brought home from the pet shop.

  And the frozen rabbit he’d brought over from the pet shop smelled heavenly now. He sipped his drink and turned his head to look at Eric. He was quietly cooking in the kitchen, turning the rabbit in the skillet, making mashed potatoes, and they were trying to time it so that they’d have their plates loaded and on their laps with their napkins and their drinks on the coffee table when the shot of the train station opened, and the creaking of the windmill started up, and Jack Elam was sitting in a rocking chair, with a fly buzzing loudly around his head.