The Hare

by Melanie Finn

  He was so careless. Had Andy been on the take — not just cooking the books for the company, but fixing his own little deal? Handy Andy padding his paltry income. His — ha ha — poultry income.

  Rose made $2,654.65 a month after state and federal taxes. Which, after all her bills and expenses, left her with exactly $26.28. This never seemed to materialize as actual money — a twenty, a five, a one and the change; she couldn’t splurge on dinner in the town’s one pizzeria, she certainly couldn’t afford a two-grand car repair. Most months, she squeezed by — she bought the cheaper meat, the discount bread. She’d even given up Netflix DVDs and took her chances with the tatty collection at the library. To pay back her emergency loan from Bob, she withheld her usual retirement savings and she ate eggs, beans and frozen spinach, reducing her general expenses to $736.

  When — only the day before — she had replaced the money in the petty cash, she had wanted very much to tell someone — Look, I’m honest! But no one had witnessed her decency as she slipped the bills back into the zippered bank purse during lunch. No one even knew the money had gone. After she’d replaced it, she noticed that the spider plant above the safe needed watering, so she took it into the bathroom, soaked it under the tap for several minutes. No one had thanked her. The plant had not looked greener, merely dangled the same timid tendril. The afternoon sun had come through the blinds, illuminating the dust motes in the air, and Rose had stood in the unremarkable stillness, stricken with the idea that she was as vital as a chair — and perhaps less relevant.

  Now, the ennui overcame her again — something like finding grit in the bed; a tedious surface discomfort that didn’t even have the energy to plunge into existential despair. Suddenly, there was a thud on the window by her desk, and Rose looked just in time to see a small shadow fall. She ran out and found the bird, a robin. It was inert, but she couldn’t tell if it was dead. Carefully, she examined it — how beautiful it became in her hands, so perfect a machine of life, the spare and necessary lines of it. Lifting it to her face, she smelled the bird: a faint dusty odor. She had imagined something more voluptuous. The way a dog can smell an entire story, she’d wanted to know where it had come from, the scent of pine or sea air or wood smoke, the storms and cats it had evaded. Pressing her ear to its chest, she wondered if she might detect a heartbeat. In the second of that action, the bird revived, and with a horror of her — a wild misunderstanding of her intention — it screamed and pulled away, for a moment its twiggy claws tangled in her hair and she felt the wings beat about her head, she entered into the panic with the bird, flapping and scratching and when she reached her hand up to try to free it, the bird pecked her palm savagely. In the next second, it was released, and flew away on certain wings, calling out a harsh rebuke.

  The wound was a perfect sharp “V” pointing to a tiny glob of blood. The blood genuinely surprised Rose, as if she’d forgotten her own blood. It had been years since she’d menstruated. Perhaps, she mused, this was why men are so careless — they are not reminded, monthly, of the frailty of the human form. They are not reminded, every day in magazines, on TV, on the internet, of their aging and their defects — cellulite, small breasts, floppy breasts, stretch marks, wrinkles. Men are not oppressed by the clocks of their bodies, decisions that must be made by a certain time. Bob could therefore steep in the delusional brew of his own mind, imagining himself desirable, virile. But women are trapped by form, by time — when they begin to menstruate, when they stop, and all the individual months in between that mark the ascendency of their fertility and its decline and its stuttering failure, culminating in the sweaty self-immolation of menopause.

  Rose wrapped toilet paper around her hand. She took a breath. The ruckus, the parade began to quiet, and then packed up the big top altogether. And when Bob had also left, Rose carefully removed the lid off the paper shredder. The narrow strips of paper had delicately folded upon themselves, and she was therefore able to scoop out the top sets. These were jumbled, but not beyond repair — no more difficult than a 100-piece jigsaw. She taped the pieces back together, two entire pages and one half. She considered scrounging around for the other half, but what she had was sufficient.

  Big bear,

  Am a little Goldelocks. Only 13. Have no sexual experianse other than touching my self. I get myself wet so wet but don’t know what to do with wet soft tight pussy. I really want my first time to be with older guy who is experiansed. I dont like young guy, they are just look to please their own penis…

  Why had he printed this stuff out? He’d grown up when there were porn magazines. Penthouse and Tits. Maybe he needed to clutch something while he… while he…

  Rose abruptly aborted the thought before it congealed into an image. She remembered Billy telling her how male turkeys are so insane with lust during mating season that they’ll court anything vaguely resembling a female. Sticka coupla feathas to a cadboward box and ya gotta tom goin crazy.

  Though the pixilation and the shredder left much to the imagination, the pictures did not. Rose could make out various young girls in short skirts or baby doll nighties. Logging on to his computer, she was surprised to find she could go right to his home page. She checked his favorites bar — the guy was a moron — because he’d starred several sites as favorites: lolipop, naughteen, daddydome. On daddydome, the subjects (objects?) were teenage girls.

  Looking through the site, she wondered who these girls were. Obviously, they were avatars — “Dainty Debbie” was not a 15-year-old gymnast who wanted to show off her flexibility; more likely a Ukrainian housewife or a medical student in Delhi trying to pay his bills. But the pictures themselves, even if altered, were of real young women, somewhere. And Bob crept into that narrow, fictitious space, knowing that it was safe and dark, for he’d never really be called upon to satisfy a beautiful, tender, expectant 13-year-old. “I want slow and gentle, who will apreshiate my virgin, because I will never ever forget my first time,” Goldelocks wrote. “I know it will hurt. Please gentle —”

  Or maybe.

  Thought Rose.

  Maybe this is a trajectory.

  Taking out her phone, she took a screen shot of Bob’s favorites bar.

  The note read:

  Dear Rosie,

  It was a nice surprise to get your reply. I wasn’t sure you’d write back. As a matter of fact, I will be in Boston for a series of meetings the first week of June. Would you like to meet? My schedule is restrictive during the day, but I’m free in the evenings. It’s very old-fashioned to write like this, so here’s my email chrisbarrow@windmere.org.

  Hope to see you—

  Chris

  Windmere, Rose typed. Windmere Cruises popped up, Windmere Realty, Windmere Dry Cleaners, Windmere Condominiums, 2,367,046 additional pages. She added Christopher Barrow but nothing relevant came up. She switched the search to images — cruise ships, happy couples on cruise ships, idyllic Caribbean islands… she scrolled down to the one photograph of a middle-aged man; but this turned out to be Charles Windmere of Barrow Island, Michigan. Still, Rose scrutinized him, if only to help her imagine Chris at the same age.

  Dear Chris,

  Here I am on email, then. It’s strange to think we are so old this wasn’t invented when we knew each other.

  Yes, let’s try to meet. If you give me a time and place I’ll do my best to be there.

  But then how to end it? Warm regards? Best? Yours? Cheers? She couldn’t use Hope to see you because he’d used that. At last she just wrote her name. Rose. Not Rosie. So he’d know there was a difference.

  “Rose?”

  She held the phone awkwardly, her other hand scrabbling for the light. “Yes?”

  “It’s Nick.”

  “Nick, yeah, hi.” The light on now, she could see the clock: 02:37. “Is everything all right?”

  Stupid question. A phone call at this hour was never all right.

  “Uh, I’ve, uh, been arrested.”

  Rose swung herself upright now, feet o
n the floor. Christ almighty, the house was cold, rain drooling down in the dark outside. She thought about the traitorous roof. Then Nick, the dark hair falling in his eyes. “For what? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the state police.”

  “Why?”

  “Killing a moose.”

  “You ran into it?”

  “We shot it.”

  “But it’s out of season.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you called your dad?”

  “No.”

  “You probably should.”

  “Can you come?”

  “I really think you should —”

  “Please. Rose.”

  “Now?”

  There was silence and then the softest sniffle, softer than a mouse’s, so she barely heard it. “Nick?”

  Was he even still there?

  “Nick?”

  Very quietly, “I told Tyler not to shoot.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  A red dawn leered over the Kirby Mountains to her east as she drove to St. Johnsbury, to the state police barracks just beyond the Comfort Inn.

  A woman sat behind the bullet-proof glass, and Rose wondered: if it was bullet proof, how could it really be glass?

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here for Nick Booth.”

  Checking a list, finding the name. “And what do you want with Mister Booth?”

  “I’m his ride.”

  “You his mom?”

  “No.”

  “Aunt?”

  “Friend.”

  The woman looked Rose over: what kind of an older woman friend came to the cop shop at dawn. “Hang on. He’s not done bein’ processed.” Rose waited, scanning the “Wanted” posters hanging in the lobby. All these “adult, white males” she thought, all their mischief. Assualt, assault and battery, domestic assault, attempted homicide.

  At last, a series of unseen doors clicked and buzzed, and at last Nick appeared. He was thin and pale, as if vampires had been at him. Her instinct was to rush and embrace him; but she checked herself. She stood, waiting.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, then half-cocked a smile. “And thanks.”

  Rose took him for breakfast at the P&H Truck Stop a few exits down the interstate. Nick was ravenous, she ordered another round of waffles for him, she stuck to tea and a toasted muffin. “What about Tyler?”

  “Oh hessh swill inwar.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “He’s still in there.”

  Rose adjusted herself. If she wore glasses, she would peer at him over them in a Mother Superior way. “What were you thinking?”

  Nick was about to put another forkful in his mouth. He stopped, the fork hovering for a moment, a drip of maple syrup descending onto the plate. “Thinking?” Nick put the fork down. “Now, that’s the problem right there.”

  “Tell me then.”

  He took a breath, with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, he dabbed away the drip of syrup at his mouth. “We were just driving. Up past Willoughby, you know the road goes right along the lake. We were drinking but we weren’t tanked, not even really buzzed. And this moose came out of the dark and stood there in the middle of the road and Ty stopped. And she was caught in the headlights, she didn’t move, she just looked at us. Ty took down his rifle, and I said, ‘Don’t.’ I guess I could have stopped him or at least clapped my hands or shouted so the moose ran away. But I was kind of like her, I just sat there, like there was something inevitable, like we’d all waited our whole lives to be in this one place. I can’t explain it. But it’s what I mean about not thinking. It was all happening outside of me, somehow, forces were directing me, like I couldn’t stop. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. He shot her. But didn’t kill her. Even at that close range. So he had to get out and shoot her. And then —”

  Nick paused, he pushed his plate away.

  “It was terrible.”

  “It was Tyler not you —”

  “No — I should have stopped him. Why didn’t I? I kept just not stopping him and then just doing what he said. We hitched that poor cow to the back of his truck with a bunch of chains, we were going to tow her to Brownington, he’s got a cousin there, but by the time we got to the turn off, the moose was all fucked up, just this bloody stumpy thing on the chain. So we dumped her and figured no one had seen us.” He swallowed and looked down.

  “How did the cops find out?”

  “Maybe Tyler said something to his cousin. I dunno. Fish and Game put a reward out. Someone told them.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Tyler says we should deny it. There’s no proof.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Tyler says.”

  The waitress came with the coffee refill, gestured to Nick’s plate, “You done with that, hon?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said.

  “No,” Rose said. “You should eat more.”

  Nick made a stab at a pancake, drove it into the pool of maple syrup, making circuits around the plate. This went on for far too long. Rose waited, she sipped her tea, she finished the last crust of her muffin. Then she became aware of Nick, his face still down, his shoulders shuddering.

  “Oh,” she said.

  And he looked up at her, eyes pooled with tears. “She had milk, Rose. Her tits were full of milk.”

  For a moment he seemed to broach the hill of his tears, to regain control, he sniffed hard and blinked. But then the features of his face contracted in on themselves and he started all over again.

  Quietly, she invited him: “Is there something else?”

  He bit his lip to stop it from juddering. “My dad, Rose. I don’t want to be him in twenty years. Those poor fucking chickens. I want to leave, I want to just get in my car and drive away. So fucking far away.” Dabbing his face with a napkin, he tried another laugh. “I can join the military, I guess. That’s what Tyler’s going to do. But I’m not a huge fan of killing. Or dying.”

  Her hand went to his face, but then she was instantly aware of a wider perspective, who might be watching, who might casually see this interaction, and she pulled her hand away. Leave, she wanted to tell him, she wanted to shout. Just leave! But she’d never left, had she?

  Last spring, she’d found a dead snowshoe hare under her porch. The body was perfectly preserved, freeze-dried, so she could see the buckshot that mortally injured it. How it must have run, panting and bleeding through the snow, to find refuge. It must have collapsed in exhaustion, and perhaps died quite quickly, drowsy from the cold and the loss of blood. It lay in an attitude of action, legs stretched out, ears back, still running — a permanent and futile pose of escape.

  “What if I never get away from here? What if I end up in chat rooms with underage Russian girls? What —” Taking a deep inhale, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Sorry —”

  “It’s OK, Nick.”

  “No —”

  “Finish your pancakes.”

  “Diane Polinski. Hi.” Her hair was short. She extended her hand. Rose noted that she wore a large man’s watch. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

  “Of course.”

  They sat in the corner booth at the Bagel Depot. Diane took out a notebook and sharpened pencil and put them carefully on the table. Then she placed her smart phone in alignment. “OK if I record this?”

  Rose shrugged, “If that’s helpful, sure.”

  “It just means we’re clear. What you say. What I say. No ambiguity.”

  Right, Rose thought. Because the spoken word is never ambiguous. “Before you turn it on —” she announced. “I just want to say one thing.” And when Diane gave a small nod, Rose went on: “I understand my daughter’s need for closure. And I hope that’s what’s happening here. That it’s not about false hope. Or money.”

  “Ms. Kinney told me you’d probably say that.”

  Ah, Rose thought. Diane wants to make sure I know there’d been a lot of discussion behind my back. �
�Got it,” Rose said. No ambiguity.

  Diane pressed record. “I guess we just start with why you’re so certain Bennett Kinney is dead.”

  “Do you have some reason to think he isn’t?”

  “This,” said Diane. “Will be smoother if you just answer my questions.”

  Rose attempted contrition. “He didn’t just go out for a cigarette for thirty years.”

  “Did you look for him?”

  “No.”

  Diane tilted her head, waited.

  Rose complied: “I didn’t have the time, I was working three jobs. It wasn’t like now when you just Google.” Then she looked directly at Diane. “And I couldn’t afford a private detective.”

  “What about his family? Did you contact them?”

  “I didn’t know them.”

  “None of them — parents? Siblings?”

  “I think there was a sister.”

  “Her name?”

  Rose shrugged.

  “Can you speak out loud, please?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where was he born?”

  “No idea.”

  “And no one ever contacted you from his family?”

  “Never.”

  “Did you wonder why?”

  “No.”

  This sounded implausible to PI Di, who frowned.

  So Rose said: “For the record, you’re frowning. And I’m answering. I never wanted to see my grandmother again. I wanted nothing to do with her. I assumed that’s how it was for Bennett.”

  “I hear assumed. Did you ever have a conversation about it with Bennett?”

  “He said his mother committed suicide.”

  “He said?”

  Rose pointed to the phone and made a cutting motion. Diane obliged and turned the recorder off.

  “He was a liar. Whatever he told me about his family, I never questioned it, because who lies about their family? Who lies about their mother committing suicide? Bennett would. Do I want Miranda to know that about him? That he was a liar as well as a drug trafficker? No.”

  Diane took a sip of her coffee and winced. “Miranda wants to know what there is to know. It’s her right, as an adult.”