“How’s your drink?” Eric said from the kitchen. He’d already taken over just about all the cooking, and everything he did was good. He could make biscuits from scratch. And the best gravy you ever tasted. He could fry some chicken. Said he’d learned how cooking for his daddy when he was little.
“I’m good,” Arthur said. “You sure you don’t need any help in there?”
“Everything’s cool,” Eric said, and slid the lid back over the skillet where the rabbit pieces were browning nicely. He picked up his beer and came on in the living room and sat down on the couch. He had a towel stuck in his belt to wipe his hands on while he was cooking.
“It sure smells great,” Arthur said. He was glad Eric had all his stuff in the house now, his books and clothes, his dog food.
“It’s gonna be more than me and you can eat probly,” Eric said, and took a drink of his beer. “It’s a lot of meat on a grown rabbit.”
“What day you want to go see your daddy?” Arthur said. He had the Jag back now. Some nice police officer had driven it over from the jail. Helen couldn’t use it anyway since they’d taken her license again.
“I don’t care. I can call him first. See how he is.”
Both of them looked at the big TV screen for a while. Some woman who used to be a wrestler was selling something. Then they cut back to the last scenes of Dirty Harry, and watched Harry shoot the punk, and toss his badge in the water, and then Eric got back up to go check on the rabbit.
He knew one thing he was going to do. Arrange a good hunting trip for Eric next year out in Montana. Just the two of them. He could hire all the help over the phone, find a guide, get somebody to wrangle the horses, carry the tents, set up a camp, find a cook. But he’d probably never be able to find anybody who could cook enchiladas as good as Lark Linkhorn.
“Well, it’ll be ready in a little bit,” Eric said from the kitchen. “I’ll start makin’ the gravy in a minute.”
“I’m ready,” Arthur said. “You’re really going to love this movie.”
“I can’t believe I never have seen it,” Eric said.
Jada Pinkett came walking up and put his chin on the cushion next to Arthur’s legs. Arthur put his hand out and petted him. The old dog whined and looked around. Arthur looked up at Eric.
“I think he misses Helen,” he said.
Eric didn’t say anything. But he had a look on his face that Arthur hadn’t seen before. And then it went away from his face as he went back to his cooking, just as the kitten came walking down the hall, hugging the wall, its crooked tail arched up, and it was mewing softly, and it sounded like a question, like somebody looking for friends.
About the Author
Larry Brown was born in Oxford, Mississippi, and lives happily on a cattle farm near Yocona with his beloved family. He is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, and his work has been translated into other languages around the world.
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Larry Brown, The Rabbit Factory: A Novel
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