The Rabbit Factory: A Novel

  “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  He went past her and touched her briefly on the shoulder and walked into the kitchen. She heard him opening a drawer.

  She hadn’t told him anything about her recent troubles. For some reason she’d felt it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. He still seemed a little mysterious and when she’d asked him about what he did for a living, he had said only that he dabbled in this and that. Which could mean almost anything. There were some nice paintings on his walls and pictures of him holding big fish that had come from some ocean.

  He came back in and sat down beside her and handed her a tiny green glass pipe and some brown weed that smelled pretty good when she opened the top of the bag. She set her drink down on the coffee table and loaded it and got her lighter from beside her cigarettes and fired the bowl up and took a hit. She handed him the lighter and the pipe and held the smoke in for a few seconds, then blew it out. He fired the bowl up and took a hit that made the little pile of marijuana glow red. He blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. He handed the pipe and the lighter back but she smiled at him to let him know she was fine and set them back on the coffee table. He patted her on the hand. He let it rest there and she was glad to feel it. Then for a few minutes they just listened to the singing in the darkened living room. Anjalee leaned back. She didn’t want to be alone tonight. She could tell Lenny just about anything she wanted to once she saw him again. If she did. Who knew if she would, even though he’d given her money and said in the note that he’d hook back up? Who’d have thought that Frankie would just up and disappear?

  But maybe he’d decided to dump her and this was just his way, to stop coming around, to stop calling, to stop coming by Gigi’s Angels.

  Harv was listening to the music. And then her cell phone rang. Just once because she reached into her purse and cut it off. She didn’t know who could be calling unless it was Moe, and she didn’t want to talk to him right now.

  “I’m not gonna answer that,” she said. He just nodded.

  It was driving her nuts who he looked like, but she couldn’t think who it was. Hopalong Cassidy? One of our cowboy heroes. She couldn’t help herself. She leaned to him and kissed him full on the mouth. His hand went naturally to her breast and cupped it, and her hair swung down beside her face and she put her other hand on his chest. She kissed him some more without taking her mouth away from his and reached lower and found something about the size of a Jimmy Dean smoked sausage in his pants.

  “Hot damn,” she said. “Where’s the bedroom?”

  82

  It was cloudy and overcast outside and looking like more snow but warm inside the Four-Runner, which they were both almost ready to buy since it was so nice. Merlot had already mentioned maybe trying to trade in the minivan on it once they got all the bullet holes fixed. They’d loaded up on pancakes and sausage and eggs at a Waffle House just outside Mathiston and had gotten back on the Trace there. He said they’d have to get off the Trace for a short while near Jackson since it disappeared for a stretch there, but that he’d catch it again at Ridgeland, and then it would be a straight shot on down to Natchez. They’d already passed through Kosciusko and he thought it was about an hour to Jackson from there, and then probably about two more hours or a little more to Natchez. Which would put them in there early. They’d have plenty of time to stop for a good lunch somewhere, and could take their time eating. They listened to music as they drove.

  The land beside the road was sometimes filled with woods, sometimes fields where hay had been cut and baled in large round bales and covered with rolls of either black or white plastic, and set in straight rows. Or she saw farms with red barns and neat brick houses where the fields were filled with the dead stalks of the fall’s crop. Corn. Cows. Once in a while some horses. There was not much traffic. Sometimes they saw creeks and there were deer feeding openly beside the road in places and she even saw a small one that had spots. She was still a little apprehensive, and didn’t really know why, only that she was. She was already getting a bit hungry but hadn’t said anything about it because she didn’t want him to think she ate too much. She wasn’t starving or anything. She just wanted maybe a Coke and a candy bar to tide her over until lunch. Or some Nabs. She decided she’d wait a while longer before she said anything. He didn’t eat as much as she did. Or as often. She couldn’t help it, she liked food. But he didn’t seem to mind her size. It was just the reverse. He’d told her she was his dream come true, big hipped and big breasted. He’d said that the women in all those old paintings you saw in museums were built like her, that the old masters knew what a good woman was supposed to look like naked.

  Merlot pointed.

  “Look at those turkeys.”

  She looked but didn’t see them. They rode in silence for a while. The highway was clean now with only scraps of white that lay in the shady places along the sides of the road. She remembered snow from when she was growing up and having snowball fights with her grandmother, who would go out every evening in the summer into the little garden she kept and pick some peppers for her supper, tiny curled and wrinkled green things that would bring tears to Penelope’s eyes, but which her grandmother would munch calmly along with her corn bread and buttermilk and fatback.

  If she hadn’t given her baby away, she wouldn’t have wound up here today, with this man, going to spend the night in the oldest house in Mississippi. If DeWayne had been willing to marry her, it might have turned out different. She might not even be a police officer.

  She was going to have to call sometime and see what they’d found out about Perk. She was going to have to know. If he was dead, it was going to be hard to deal with. She couldn’t believe that guy had gotten away from Rico. Everybody knew Rico was a bad son of a bitch. The only soft spot he had in him was for Perk.

  “What else you got to listen to?” Merlot said.

  “I’ve got some more back here,” she said, and reached back between the seats and into her bag for her CD case without unfastening her seat belt. It was a little black zippered box that held ten discs. She put it in her lap and opened it up.

  “What about Al Green? You got any Al?” Merlot said.

  “I did have but he got to skipping. Let me see what else I’ve got.”

  She looked.

  “I’ve got Lightnin’ Hopkins,” she said.

  “Stop right there,” Merlot said.

  They’d been listening to mixed Motown and she pushed the button to eject it. She got Lightnin’ out and pushed him into the player. Guitar strokes like bolts of velvet lightning started throbbing up in the Four-Runner.

  They rode with the music for a while and she watched the land go by. She watched the curves go by and sometimes she saw roadside stands where pumpkins or vegetables had been sold, but now they were empty and deserted, lightless and abandoned until next year. There were small windmills for sale in yards, draft horses in pens beside the highway. Once she saw a DEER CROSSING sign, a black deer in silhouette outlined against bright yellow. But in a way she didn’t really see any of it. Things passed that she didn’t notice.

  She wanted to see Gabriel again, that was what she wanted, to hold him, or if that wasn’t possible, to maybe just stand somewhere at a distance and be able to watch him for a while. Like at his high school graduation, wherever he was. He could be anywhere. He could be in Louisiana. Or Texas. Or Wisconsin. Or Florida. Anywhere. Maybe even overseas. She’d checked already, lots of times, but hadn’t been able to find out anything. The records had been sealed, they’d told her. She’d signed a bunch of papers, but she didn’t remember now what-all they said. There were so many of them, and she’d been crying so much she had wet all the pages. Smeared the ink with her signature. Maybe she wouldn’t ever see him again. How was she going to know? What if he was sick? What if whoever had him was mean to him? How would she ever find that out? What did she ever give him up for? Other girls raised their babies by themselves. Or with the help of their mothers. If they had mot
hers who were around. Or sisters. Or aunts. Or grandmothers. And her mamaw had begged her not to do it, had come to the hospital and told her she’d take it and raise it until Penelope was out of school and had a job and was able to take care of it herself. But she’d been so confused. And so embarrassed. And so scared. And so young. You could make a mistake when you were young and then it would follow you around for the rest of your life. She wanted to tell Merlot. She was going to tell Merlot. But she wanted to wait until the time was right. If he really loved her, maybe he’d help her find out what had happened to her baby. He was smart. He’d been to college. Hell, he taught at a college. Maybe together they could find him. Was that too much to hope for?

  “How much longer you think it’ll take?” she said.

  Merlot reached up and turned Lightnin’ down some.

  “We’ll be there in a couple more hours. We’ll stop and eat some lunch somewhere. You getting hungry?”

  “I could use a snack.”

  “We’ll get you one next place we see.”

  She reached out and put her hand on his arm.

  “I like going places with you.”

  Merlot smiled and she watched his eyes.

  “I can stop at the next town and find a gas station and get you a snack to tide you over if you want,” he said. “A hot dog or something till we can get to a place for lunch.”

  “That’d be great,” she said.

  That made her happy and she settled back in her seat. The nameless worries she’d had earlier had about gone away now. She was looking forward to seeing where he lived when they got back, what he had in his house, what his yard looked like. He’d tried to describe it. He’d said it was lovely in the summer when the leaves were on the trees.

  After a while she got sleepy and closed her eyes, reached for the knob on the side of the seat, and leaned it back. She kept listening to the music and Merlot kept driving. It was absolutely wonderful being off with him. Once in a while the sun broke through and she could feel it through her eyelids.

  83

  Eric didn’t even hear the Jag pull up to the curb outside but it wasn’t because he was asleep. It was partly probably because the Jag had such a good muffler, but it was also partly because he was concentrating on a movie. He was on his second glass of scotch and he’d opened another pack of cigarettes from his car and Jada Pinkett was asleep under the coffee table. Mister Arthur had slipped in his sleep down deeper into the couch earlier and Eric had gone over quietly and lifted his legs up onto the couch and had taken his house shoes off and then wandered into another room and found a folded comforter that he brought back and spread over him. Carefully he’d removed his glasses and put them on the coffee table. Mister Arthur had turned in his sleep and put his face to the back of the couch. Now he was snoring and the only light was from the enormous television screen, and Eric was watching Shane, with wonderful sound quality and digital enhancement that you had to actually see to believe. It was one of his favorites. It had been made before Eric was born and it had everything. It had good guys, it had bad guys, it had a kid, the kid had a dog, it had a hardworking man and his hardworking wife, it had the new little guys trying to carve out pieces of land they could homestead being pitted against the big old guys who were trying to hold on to all of it for themselves. It had gunfights, and drinking, and fistfights, and thunder, and everybody was still pissed off about the Civil War, and a small man in buckskin who’d seen enough of gunslinging and only wanted peace showed up one day, but wound up having to unlimber his fists and duke it out with Ben Johnson because Ben Johnson got to calling him Sody Pop in the saloon, and he eventually had to strap on his gun one more time because hot lead was the only thing some people understood. And the kid, the young Brandon de Wilde, running after him down the dusty road, almost at the end, yelling for him to come back. And it was almost to that part now. Alan Ladd had already outpulled two-gun Walter Jack Palance in Grafton’s saloon, had blown him into a bunch of wooden beer barrels, and he’d gone down shooting through a cloud of smoke. Alan Ladd had twirled his gun, and spun it back into the nicely tooled holster, and the kid had seen everything from the bottom of the bat-wing doors. But upstairs a board had creaked, and the kid had yelled for Shane to look out!, and he had spun, and fired, killing the guy with the gun at the rail upstairs, who shot and crashed down to the floor, but he might have hit Shane. It kind of looked like he did hit Shane, because Shane flinched and staggered. And now the kid was going to follow him out to the dusty road, and run along after him once he’d mounted his horse and ridden away, yelling for him to come back, and you knew he was hurt, because one arm looked real limp, and he was kind of leaned over sideways in the saddle in the last few frames, and you knew with a sick feeling in your soul that he was probably going to ride over the mountain and die somewhere up there in the black woods all by himself after he’d been such a good dude, and had helped all the new little guys in the valley, but the movie didn’t show that. That was the cool thing about it. The ending was left up to you. And just as Shane was going outside to untie his horse from the hitching rail and tousle little Joey’s hair, and say a few things to him about growing up strong and straight, Eric heard the door opening and turned his head to see Miss Helen standing there. Fuck. Talk about bad timing. Now not only was he going to miss the end of Shane after investing almost two hours in it, he was going to have to talk to her, and she looked like she was drunk.

  She also had what looked like a half gallon of Edy’s Rocky Road ice cream in her hands. For a moment she didn’t say anything. For a moment she just stared at him. Then she came on in and stumbled a little and shut the door and locked it. Turned the dead bolt, too. He wondered why she did that.

  He should have already gone, he knew that, but he hadn’t wanted to just go off and leave Mister Arthur there asleep on the couch all fucked up and alone. And plus he’d wanted to watch Shane in a warm place with a full belly and have a few drinks. What was wrong with that?

  But was it just that? Or was he sitting here this long also because he wanted to see her again, even if he hadn’t gone over to the Peabody to have drinks with her? Could it be that he was still wondering what might have happened? Mister Arthur was asleep. Mister Arthur wasn’t doing her any good evidently. He hated to think that, but it looked like that’s the way it was.

  “Hey,” she said quietly, her hair swinging gently as she turned.

  He took a drink of his scotch. Then he looked up.

  “Hey.” Just as quietly.

  She stood there for a moment looking at Arthur on the couch.

  “How long’s he been asleep?”

  “Hour or two I guess. I was just watching some TV. I probably better go, I guess.”

  Arthur moved on the couch and seemed to settle deeper into it.

  “You ain’t going nowhere,” she said.

  She walked into the kitchen and he saw her open the top section of the refrigerator and put the ice cream in there and then shut it. She turned the light on over the stove. That gave just a little light to the kitchen, but it was still mostly dark. She got something down from a cabinet. A bottle.

  “Why don’t you come in here?” she said. “We can talk and he probably won’t wake up. And no big deal if he does.”

  Eric stood up, with his drink. He looked down at it for a few seconds, then back up at her. He didn’t know if he needed to be driving or not. He probably didn’t. These Memphis cops were hell on drunk drivers. They’d take your ass to the Shelby County Jail and he knew he didn’t want to go there. But his car was out front. He could get Jada Pinkett up off of the floor and get their quilt out of the trunk and get him on the back seat with him, and curl up, and cover them both up, and sleep until he was okay to drive somewhere for breakfast. Maybe if it would warm up a little tomorrow he could take Jada Pinkett over to Overton Park for a while and let him walk. He was tired of all this. Being in a big city and not having a place to stay. Not having much money. Being cold at night. He wanted to go
home. See if his daddy would let him come back. Maybe he would by now. It had been almost three months. But what if he wouldn’t let Jada Pinkett come back? Or what if he still wanted to shoot him?

  “I better go,” he said. “It’s done got pretty late.”

  “Come on in and sit down,” she said. “I’m fixing myself a drink.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if sitting around here drinking with her was the thing to do right now. He didn’t want to stick around because he was afraid something might happen. And Mister Arthur was right there.

  “Let me fix you another one,” she said.

  Eric looked back at Mister Arthur, and glanced at Brandon de Wilde trotting down the road behind Shane, and moved on into the kitchen. Miss Helen was standing there pouring whiskey over ice in a glass. Her lipstick looked smeared and he wondered if she had been kissing somebody. He figured she probably had. Maybe even something else. Maybe it had been somebody she’d met in the Peabody. Or maybe she had some regular guy there she saw. Met there maybe.