Orwell's Luck

by Richard W. Jennings

  "Luck of the draw," my father observed when my sister began to complain.

  At appropriate intervals, I worked the feeding tube for Orwell and gently stroked his shoulders and that bumpy part behind his ears. He seemed to like the attention, but I felt really sorry for him.

  "Please don't die," I begged him. "It's no way to start out a friendship."

  That night, as I was sliding groggily into sleep, I realized that in all of the day's excitement, I hadn't looked at my horoscope! The first day of a brand new year and I had forgotten to check!

  I pulled the covers up over my head. Whatever it was that fate had in store for me, it was too late to do anything about it now.

  So far, so good

  Orwell didn't die. He made it through the night, and maybe it was just my optimistic imagination, but he seemed to be perkier than the day before. Equally reassuring was the message in the newspaper's daily horoscope guide for Monday.

  Horoscopes give you the lay of the land for an entire twenty-four hours in one short, simple phrase. If good things are destined to happen to you that day, you can be ready to receive them with open arms. On the other hand, if bad things are in store, you can be on your guard. Either way, you know what to expect.

  The horoscope messages in the newspaper are hidden from the casual reader. They consist of twelve tiny boxes, one for each sign of the zodiac, with each box containing seven numbers and a little circular moon.

  Depending on what kind of day you're going to have, the moon wears a smile face or a frown face, or, if your day is "neutral," it has no face, but is presented as half dark and half light. Between the two vertical rows of message boxes is a long list of words that correspond to all the numbers. To find out what's going to happen to you, you must first decode the message.

  I am a Scorpio, like my father— exactly like my father, since fate long ago decreed in a curious coincidence that we share the same autumn birthday. The horoscope for Scorpio had a moon with a smile face and seven numbers that I hurried to decipher.

  The first word was "take." I looked up the next one. It was "friend." Then came "to," followed by "exclusive" and "restaurant." In my haste, I almost made a mistake on the next word. At first I thought it was "explode," which gave me a start, but then I realized that I was looking at the word above the word for me. My word was "treat." The last word was actually two words stuck together. It was "him/her."

  TAKE FRIEND TO EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANT

  TREAT HIM/HER.

  Huh? I didn't get it. What did this have to do with a broken rabbit in my mother's not-quite-finished new bathroom?

  Then it came to me. Of course! The friend was Orwell. And at this very moment he was the only customer in the most exclusive restaurant in town—my place! I was already doing what the horoscope recommended! I was not only on track, I was a little bit ahead. No wonder the stars gave me a smile face moon!

  The Monday holiday passed into history. Two days of the new year had been encountered and survived by all, Orwell included. There was still the matter of the medical evaluation to deal with, but so far, so good, I figured. So far, so good.

  Luck of the draw

  My father's willingness to make the trip to the animal hospital, in spite of his forecast of Orwell's doom, was a good sign. Even better, he didn't seem to mind my being late for school after such a long holiday break.

  With a hopeful heart, I searched for more encouragement in Scorpio's horoscope for Tuesday, the third day of the year. Decorated with the face of a smiling moon, the encryption when decoded said

  CONCENTRATE ON MECHANICAL REPAIRS

  ENJOY AMUSEMENTS TONIGHT.

  I double-checked my deciphering because, once again, the horoscope did not make much sense to me. The smile face made it seem good, and the word "enjoy" was a welcome ingredient, but what sort of "mechanical repairs" and "amusements" did the stars have in mind? After giving my brain a workout, I finally decided they must be talking about getting Orwell's legs fixed. Repairs like that would provide plenty of amusement later on.

  Equipped with these astrological insights, I was feeling pretty cheerful by the time we walked into the animal hospital.

  I don't know why they call them animal "hospitals." They're really just little office buildings with a few tables and pens in various sizes, more like pet stores than hospitals. This one was called Family Pet Care.

  I waited restlessly for the veterinarian to finish examining a cat that was one can of Chicken of the Sea over the line, followed by a big red Irish setter that was being vaccinated for the latest in dog diseases.

  I cradled Orwell in my arms, being careful to situate myself so that his lifeless legs would rest gently against my thighs. My father leafed distractedly through the pages of a fashion magazine. Then it was our turn.

  The veterinarian appeared to be surprised by the purpose of our visit. "Wild rabbits don't have much of a chance," he said.

  At my father's insistence, the veterinarian took X-rays anyway. They looked like the amateur snapshots that some people take where they accidentally cut off their subjects' heads. You could see Orwell's bones from his shoulders down. There was a top view. There was a side view. But nobody bothered to get a picture of his face, his best feature.

  The X-rays proved to be evidence of nothing more than the fact that some creatures have extremely small bones. The good news was that none of them appeared to be broken.

  "It could be spinal cord injury," the veterinarian speculated.

  "Does that mean he'll recover?" I asked.

  "Well," he answered unconvincingly, "sometimes they do."

  He gave Orwell a cortisone shot. He gave him an antibiotic shot. He gave him shots for all the diseases and conditions that make life hard for the bedridden patient. In less than half an hour, the charges he ran up were equal to the cost of a major household appliance.

  "Keep doing what you're doing," he said. "And hope for the best."

  This was probably good advice, but I didn't think it was worth that much money. As my father signed the check with his usual illegible scribble, I was discouraged by the veterinarian's cheery confession. "Thanks for coming in," he said. "I've never had a wild rabbit before."

  At school that day, all I could think about was Orwell. Nothing had changed. Nothing except that no one could say for certain what was wrong. But Orwell could not move his back legs. The running part, the kicking part, the getaway part was useless and nobody could tell me why.

  That night I couldn't sleep. I got up every hour or so and visited Orwell. I fed him fresh vegetables from my ungloved hand. I stroked him. I talked to him. He looked at me and every once in a while feigned a useless struggle to run away. I cleaned up after him. The new bathroom had begun to smell faintly like Family Pet Care.

  The food tube worked exceptionally well. At the veterinarian's suggestion, I had switched from dog food mush to rabbit food mush. Orwell swallowed it right down and clamped his teeth on the plastic tube, hungry for more. I let him have as much as he wanted.

  "Hang in there, Orwell," I said. "You still have a chance." I didn't know if this was true. I hoped it wouldn't hurt to say it.

  I became angry with the newspaper truck driver. Animal killer! Maimer! Agent of evil! Orwell was just another "whup-thup" sound to him, like a fat newspaper hitting a concrete driveway. That's the kind of thing I was thinking.

  During the night my father came to see me. "Get some sleep," he insisted. "I'll take over."

  I didn't go right away. We took turns watching, touching, hoping.

  "If they're not broken," I asked, "why can't he move them?"

  "Luck of the draw," my father replied.

  Was it just bad luck? I wondered. Or was something else involved? Something that actually caused certain days to be good days and certain days to be bad days, like the stars that rule my daily horoscope.

  Maybe I was misinterpreting the message in the newspaper. It hadn't been especially clear anyway. I decided I'd better study to
morrow's horoscope more carefully.

  As I turned to leave, Orwell looked at me. He raised his head as best he could, and stared at me with those big brown rabbit eyes. I picked him up. I held him to my chest, his lifeless legs dangling, his tiny rabbit heart beating softly against mine.

  Deductive reasoning

  I woke up Wednesday with two big problems on my mind. The first was school, which, after so much time off for creative loafing and lifesaving, was an unwelcome change of pace. The other problem, of course, was Orwell.

  I hurried through my morning routine, getting dressed, letting the dog out, getting the paper, and pouring myself an extra-large bowl of crunchy, sweetened cereal to gulp down while figuring out my horoscope. I wanted to read it first, before I checked on Orwell, just in case it said something like NEW FRIEND PASSES AWAY QUIETLY IN NIGHT. But what it actually said was

  TODAY WILL RUN SMOOTHER

  THAN YOU ANTICIPATED.

  Once again, my horoscope bore the sign of the smiling moon. I was glad about this, of course, and glad, too, that this one was easy to understand, unlike the previous two. But I remained wary, since the other two hadn't exactly panned out. I wondered, Is there a limit to how many smile faces in a row a person can get? How long could my luck—and Orwell's—hold out?

  I admit it. I was afraid. I entered Orwell's hideout like I was entering the mummy's tomb. I tiptoed in, shutting my eyes when I opened the door, afraid to look. I didn't open my eyes until I was completely inside and there was no turning back.

  The first thing I saw was Orwell looking back at me. He was still alive, thank goodness, awake and alert and hungry for the apple slices I'd brought. He munched happily as I scratched his knobby little head and thought about my personal career.

  The day before, while shooting baskets in the driveway, before it got too cold and I had to come inside, I changed my mind about what I wanted to be. I was still interested in becoming a detective, but I was also thinking about being a veterinarian, one who specializes in small animals that people find in their yards, and, unlike some I could name, actually figures out how to fix them. I was also trying to work the trombone into whatever I chose, since I'd recently started playing it at my new school and sort of liked it.

  School was not really such a bad place. It just contained too many strangers and lasted too long. My father told me that for him, the worst part about his job was not being able to leave when he wanted to. That's how I feel about being at school. Once you get there, you're stuck like a bunny in a bathtub.

  But some parts of school are actually interesting. Like band and science and P.E. Math is OK. Also, I started taking French. I hadn't learned very many French words, but the few I did know made me think that one of the reasons there's more than one way of saying things is because there's more than one way of looking at things.

  For example, in English, when we decide it's time to leave, we say, "Let's go!" The French, however, say, "Allons-y," which means, "Let's go to the aforementioned place." This little difference between the two languages says to me that the French don't go anywhere unless they know where they're going, but Americans, on the other hand, are happy just to keep moving.

  Orwell could not keep moving, and so, I concluded, unless he is French, he must be unhappy.

  I tried to imagine what he must have been thinking when he found himself unable to hop and was forced to crawl on his belly, powered only by the strength of his underdeveloped front legs. Did he say to himself, "Let's go!" and then, through sheer luck, wind up here? Or did he think, "Let's go to the aforementioned kid's house"?

  When I found Orwell in so exhausted a state, how far had he traveled before pausing to rest, putting a rolled-up newspaper between his tender white belly and the hard, cold, frost-covered ground? Was he trying desperately to get to my door, like a doomed man delivering a newspaper-wrapped falcon to a black-and-white detective? Was Orwell delivering something to me? A message, perhaps?

  This is called deductive reasoning. All the best detectives do it. By putting my brain to work doing deductive reasoning, I was able to come up with a few plausible theories.

  Theory number one was that Orwell was an accident victim, a hapless rabbit who stepped blithely into the path of a newspaper truck driven by a careless part-time worker in a hurry to get back to bed.

  Theory number two was that someone tried to kill Orwell to prevent him from delivering a message.

  Then there was theory number three, made up of parts of theories one and two. Theory number three dismissed the injury as an accident, but kept in the part about the message.

  The only problem with this line of reasoning was that it led to a very big question—namely, What was the message? Whatever it was, I had a feeling it was going to be a lot tougher to crack than the seven little numbers printed in my daily horoscope guide.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the bathroom door. It was my sister, wearing a smile that looked like the one the stars had been issuing to Scorpio lately. Standing behind her, lined up like they were waiting to buy tickets for a movie, were the two little girls who live next door.

  "They want to see Orwell," my sister said.

  "Beat it!" I told them. "Va-t'en!"

  A certain smile

  The next day, a frown face on my horoscope made everything go haywire. The prediction for Scorpio began positively enough. "A good day," it said. But by the time I finished decoding the rest of the message, it had turned into

  A GOOD DAY TO CUT YOUR LOSSES.

  Yikes! I thought. And for good reason.

  I got a C on a history paper, my father lost his job, the construction project on the back of my house was stopped dead in its tracks, and my mother walked around all evening with a goofy look on her face hardly saying a word.

  The one good thing about this day was that Orwell didn't die.

  After the school bus brought me home, I shot baskets until suppertime. I like the way a basketball feels. Unlike a baseball, a basketball is too big to hold on to for very long. You have to do something with it. You have to keep it moving. If a basketball could talk, it would always be saying, "Let's go!"

  After supper, I did my homework with Orwell in his private rabbit hutch. He seemed to be doing OK. He really liked the lettuce leaves my mother had saved for him. In spite of what she sometimes says, deep down inside, my mother has a kind heart.

  I tackled my science homework first. Science is an interesting subject. I especially like learning about animals. Take rabbits, for example. A lot of people will try to tell you that rabbits are rodents, like guinea pigs or woodchucks or mice, but they're not. Rabbits are members of the order Lagomorpha. Unlike rodents, they have not one, but two sets of upper front teeth, a little pair behind the big pair. And let me tell you, every one of those front teeth is razor sharp!

  There are many kinds of rabbits living all over the world. The best known is the cottontail. Orwell is a cottontail rabbit. According to my science book, although many rabbits settle in large groups in underground burrows called warrens, cottontail rabbits are different.

  Cottontails are "Let's go!" kind of rabbits. They like to stay on the move, spending their days above ground. Their homes are just temporary hiding places in tall grass or bushes. They prefer to be alone and only get together with other rabbits when it's time to eat or to start a family.

  I looked up from my notebook. Orwell was watching me. He didn't act scared at all.

  "Hey, Orwell," I said. "Was there something you wanted to tell me?"

  His ears perked up and he raised his chest up, too, like he was going to stand. But, of course, he couldn't.

  "Don't worry, Orwell," I told him. "It'll be all right. My grandmother says that when stuff happens, even when it's bad, it happens for a good reason. It's just that we don't always know what the reason is."

  Orwell twitched his nose at me a mile a minute and opened his little pink mouth like he really was going to say something. Then, all of a sudden, he smiled a
t me. It was really fast, and it only lasted a second, but it was definitely a smile.

  A secret signal

  Three weeks passed, but nothing changed. Not Orwell. Not my house. Not my father's jobless situation. It was as if time, like an injured rabbit, had simply stopped moving forward.

  Each morning, before getting ready for school, I read my horoscope, and each morning it said things like

  MAKE GOOD USE OF OPPORTUNITIES PRESENTED YOU

  and

  RESUME PROJECT YOU HAVE PUT ON HOLD.

  Hardly predictions. Not even very good advice. About what you'd expect from the fortune cookies at the Imperial Garden. It seemed that even the stars had slowed down.

  And then, quite unexpectedly, my horoscopes began to change. One Monday morning in late January, the seven deciphered numbers in Scorpio spelled out this message:

  UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

  WATCH FOR SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS.

  "What kind of horoscope is this?" I asked right out loud.

  Starting over at the beginning, I carefully checked every word again. Then I deciphered Pisces and Aries, choosing two strangers at random, to see if their messages were anything like mine. Theirs was the usual stuff:

  DRESS FOR SUCCESS TODAY YOU'LL BE GLAD

  and

  A TELEPHONE CALL BRINGS NEWS FROM AFAR.

  This is strange, I thought. But by the time I got to school, I had forgotten all about it.

  The next day, my horoscope was at it again, advising

  STAY TUNED FOR AN IMPORTANT NEWS BULLETIN.

  This is really weird, I thought.

  Then, in a complete departure from horoscope protocol, I got the very same message for two more days. Just when I was getting tired of staying tuned, on Friday the repetitive series was broken with these words: