The Rabbit's Foot Business (standard:other, 3398 words)
Author: Kirdas	Added: Sep 13 2000	Views/Reads: 4015/2346	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A twelve year old Ohio farm boy discovers a unique, though nearly fatal, way to win the respect of his eighteen year old brother, and in the process, he discovers something important about his own "manhood."

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

and the state championship surrendered. 

The kitchen's gas stove, where his mother bent preparing bacon strips
and pancakes, made the room warmer than the boys' bedroom. George stood 
unnoticed just inside the narrow doorway and waited for his eyes to 
adjust to the bright kitchen. His head moved in jerks, as would that of 
a rabbit just emerged from protective brush cover into a sunny 
clearing. On the white porcelain table his father's plate sat empty 
except for a thin layer of syrup. Mr Byfield's enormous work boots were 
not beside the door. His father would be outside already, probably 
milking the cow in the shed behind the barn. 

His brother's shotgun leaned in the corner near the doorway where George
stood. Bill had gone into the fields yesterday and returned in only 
half an hour with the ears of a large grey-brown rabbit in his left 
hand and the shotgun clasped in his right. George had skipped along 
beside him as Bill strode toward the house. 

"You got one, didn't ya? You got a big one! Hey, Bill, come on, let me
clean your gun! I watched you before. I know how. OK? I know where the 
kit is - up in our room... OK?" 

Bill looked briefly at his brother and sniggered, "You want to clean
something, kid? Clean this!" 

Bill threw the limp mass of bloody fur at his brother where it arrived
with a thud against the boy's chest.  George held it silently to 
himself for a few seconds to savor its raw odor of wildness. A wave of 
contained violence stirred in him and mingled with grief in the cold 
afternoon. 

George moved as quietly as a rabbit into the kitchen. When his chair
bumped against a table leg, his mother turned from the stove to 
acknowledge him. 

"Your father's out in the barn," his mother began. "Wants you and Bill
to get that last piece of beans out this morning. Radio says we got 
snow comin' tonight, maybe ice. Your father wants all the beans out 
today." 

In the middle of her message, George's mother had turned back to the
stove to scoop George's bacon and pancakes onto a plate which she then 
took to the table. "Don't go and use all the syrup, now.  Your 
brother's got to have some." 

George seemed always to be hungry. His mother said that was the way with
twelve-year-olds. Bill had been the same, she said. George deftly 
pulled the pancakes onto his plate with his fingers and then snatched 
four pieces of hot bacon. The syrup bottle was still warm from his 
mother's running hot water over it in the sink. He saturated the cakes 
with sweet brown liquid. 

The hearty slap of Bill's hand on the doorframe caused George to snap
his head in that direction.  Bill smiled at having startled the boy 
again. "A bit jumpy this morning, ain't you, kid?" 

George didn't answer. He tucked his head to his chest and began to cut
the pancakes with his fork. Bill bumped the table leg with his knee as 
he sat down, and George reflexively grabbed his glass of milk. The 
older brother dumped the remaining pancakes and bacon directly onto his 
plate then reached for the syrup bottle. 

"What the...? You took all the damn syrup! Look at that!" Bill pointed
at George's plate. 

"Well, I was gonna get some more pancakes, but now you went and took 'em
all!" George's tried to imitate his brother's vehemence. "Besides, I 
left you some in there. See?" 

Bill turned his head, heaved a disapproving sigh of resignation, and
said nothing more during breakfast. When Bill had finished, George was 
nibbling a slice of cold bacon. Rising from the table, Bill growled, 
"You be outside in five minutes! Dad wants you to help me get the last 
of the beans out. Dad's gonna pull the full wagons back to the bin. You 
gotta ride with me on the 'bine, he says. So, damn it!, be out there in 
five minutes! I ain't gonna wait around all day for you." 

George's head came up and his eyes opened wide for the first time since
Bill had slapped the door frame. Had his father really said he could go 
with the men into the fields today? To ride the enormous combine?  To 
help them get the crop in? George stood to gulp the last of his milk, 
then pushed his chair to the table and walked directly to the wall by 
the outside door where his coat and hat hung beside those of his older 
brother. 

------- Oaks lose their leaves last - weeks after the elms and maples
do.  Then the world becomes brown and brittle. Everything that can pull 
into itself does so, and whatever is soft and warm must hide, or die. 
------- 

George Byfield waited beside the yellow monster. A constant wind swept
across the farms that lay flat to the west. Coldness penetrated his 
blue jeans and his raveling wool scarf. The boy walked slowly around 
the combine and reverently touched it with his bare fingers. The 
buttons and dials, the rows of levers, the colored lights beside them. 
George stood very close to the enormous combine, letting it block some 
of the wind, but not actually on it, lest some ominous power be 
accidentally released. He waited beside the combine for his brother. 

Bill strode from the house, zipping his heavy blue parka against the
wind. He immediately hurled his body up into the only seat and yelled 
to his brother, "Well, get on!  You're not standin' around all day!"  
Bill dramatically turned the key, unnecessarily using his whole arm to 
do so. The combine groaned deep within itself as if it were angry at 
being roused from sleep. Soon the engine produced a sustained roar, the 
whole machine vibrating with the inestimable power of it. With a few 
throbbing jerks the combine resisted, seemed finally to accept the 
obligation Bill had forced upon it, gradually attained a steady pace, 
and moved like a huge yellow boulder out onto the field. 

George stood proudly on a small platform that protruded from the right
side of the cab overlooking the paddlewheel. He yelled in order to be 
heard over the mechanical din. 

"This is really neat! It'll do six rows at once, won't it?" 

Bill ignored his brother's question and shouted back at him, "Now,
listen! Dad wants you to look down the rows and check for stuff before 
we go through 'em. That pony of yours lost his rope out here last 
summer, and dad wants it back. Says it'll foul up the machinery if we 
don't find it. So, you keep a lookout for it! Hear me?" 

"OK!" George shouted back. "I'll find it, you bet! I'll spot it!" 

With intense determination, George began searching the bean rows as the
mighty combine moved onward, devouring a sea of naked brown stems and 
their hanging pods. The wind howled around them as they moved toward 
the center of the field. Occasionally George looked back toward the 
tiny farm house and barn. The enormity of the field, the powerful roar 
of the combine beneath him, the threat of the coming ice storm, and the 
pride of working with the men produced a flood of ecstacy in the boy. 

For two hours the boys rode the mighty combine back and forth through
the flat brown field. The bean rows seemed interminably long to George. 
He could neither estimate their length nor the amount of time in 
minutes it took to complete one swipe of the field. The boy began to 
mark in the dust which had collected on the bright yellow cab: one mark 
with his finger each time they turned to begin a return trip down the 
field. There were thirteen marks so far, but George thought he may have 
forgotten to mark at least one of the turns. He had a mental argument 
with himself about whether to make one more mark in the dust. 

Suddenly there was a prolonged scream of metal grating against metal.
George looked up from his dusty tally. Bill quickly braked the combine, 
then jerked a lever on the panel to stop the paddlewheel. The lever 
would not stay down. Bill pushed it again and held it for a few 
seconds. Still the lever would not stay. Finally, he wrestled the 
handle and forced it down, muttering obscenities lost in the roar of 
the engine and the piercing metallic whine. 

Had George been searching for obstacles in the combine's path, he still
would not have seen his pony's rope. It was the same dull brown color 
as the tired Ohio soil. The rain-splattered mud of early autumn had 
only camouflaged it further. Still, the boy felt immobilized by guilt. 
When Bill leapt out of the cab to investigate, George remained on the 
platform of the rumbling combine and stared crestfallen at his 
dust-record of the day's work. His failure to spot the rope seemed yet 
another irrevocable mistake -- like the football fumble and the 
basketball defeat of his morning fantasy. From the vibrating platform 
George observed his angry brother, hands on hips, standing in front of 
the machine and glaring at the full length of the pony's rope. One end 
of it was hopelessly enmeshed in the axle at one end of the enormous 
paddlewheel. The rope stretched thirty feet in front of the combine, 
ending in an open noose. 

George could see that Bill was shaking his head slowly. His large hands
had already stiffened in the bitter wind. Bill stormed down the length 
of the rope and snatched up the simple noose which had almost closed 
due to the relentless tug of the paddlewheel. The older brother glared 
first at George and then, in rage, at the expanse of field yet to be 
harvested. In a furious gesture of defeat, Bill flung the noose to the 
ground. 

How the lever happened to slip again was not certain. George wondered
for an instant whether he might have moved it himself. All either of 
the brothers knew was that the lever had somehow slipped, and that 
suddenly the paddlewheel was turning, and that the rope was slowly 
being wound around the axle again. The noose that Bill had thrown to 
the soil closed tightly around his left ankle. 

Bill hopped awkwardly on his right leg and tried to loosen the rope's
hold with his numb fingers. Repeatedly the rope was yanked toward the 
combine, causing the noose to close again just at the moment when Bill 
might have stepped out of it. 

"Hey! George! Come here, quick!" Now Bill's anger was focused on the
rope and at the relentless grip of the monster machine. 

"Gosh, Bill! Did you get caught in the rope?" George could see perfectly
what had happened, but he did not know how to respond to his brother's 
physical awkwardness. The situation was too foreign for him to 
comprehend at once. He had never seen his brother defeated by any 
opponent. 

"Hurry! It's pulling my leg! I can't get out of it! George!" Now his
brother's words sounded more fearful than angry. George jumped from the 
combine and ran to where Bill was frantically pulling at the rope. 

"The lever! On the combine, George! Push the lever down and hold it!
Damn it! Go on!" 

George tried to understand how his negligence might have contributed to
this strange series of events. It all happened so quickly, he thought, 
and now it seemed certain that his brother would be swallowed by the 
hungry wheel. He imagined Bill's body being dragged legs-first into the 
sharp prongs that combed the brittle bean stalks inward for thrashing. 
George watched the struggling body as the master combine slowly dragged 
it toward itself. The contest between this mechanical monster and his 
brother's strength aroused a new and nameless fascination in George.  
From deep within him some previously obscured emotion rose that utterly 
displaced his guilt. 

Then George left the combine and walked slowly toward the horizontal
form of his brother. He observed his brother's trauma with aloof 
calmness. He sank his cold hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. He 
fingered the pen knife he'd put there while getting dressed that 
morning. Walking just outside of his brother's reach, it occurred to 
George that he might pace out the rope's remaining length and thereby 
estimate the time it had yet to travel before the machine had devoured 
it all. 

The metallic scream was constant now. 

George thought he would attempt a conversation with his brother. He
wondered, then, if he and Bill could finally be like friends and if 
they might share secrets and plans with each other -- like brothers. 

"Hey, Bill..." George began. 

"Where's your knife? Get it out! Get your goddamn knife out and cut the
rope, George!" Bill's voice slashed out to the boy from terror. His 
tears mixed with dust on Bill's cheeks. His hands no longer tore at the 
rope's noose but grasped outward to reach either of George's legs. 

"I got your rabbit all cleaned. Mom says we're gonna have it for supper
tonight." George squinted calmly at the distant farm house and then 
looked at Bill's struggling body. He watched Bill's hands futilely 
grasping for his skinny legs. "Hey, you want a rabbit's foot? I'd give 
ya one if ya asked me for it." George considered the ridiculousness of 
his own question and quickly added, "You could maybe trade it off for 
something, I guess." 

Bill stopped yelling then. His body had turned so that he was being
dragged on his left side, the whole vulnerable front of him facing 
George. 

Twelve feet of rope had already wound around the driving axle of the
paddlewheel. The older brother seemed no longer to fight its steady 
pull. Instead, he stared in bewilderment at the form of the stranger 
who walked beside him. George played with his knife, threw it in 
spinning arcs into the cold air, caught it, threw it up again. 

"Hey, Bill! Ya' know... maybe you and I could start up a rabbit's foot
business," George began again. "You could shoot 'em, and I could clean 
'em, and then we could sell the skins and feet. And we could split what 
we made. I could skin 'em with my knife. See?" 

Bill stared into his brother's face. Something unmistakable had changed
there. George was watching carefully, and acknowledged his brother's 
recognition with a brief nod. As if at a signal, George stopped tossing 
his knife, opened its largest and sharpest blade - its callous-shaving 
blade - and walked slowly toward his brother. Without saying a word, he 
placed the knife into Bill's hand. 

For supper that night, Mrs. Byfield served rabbit stew. A shared sense
of hard-won accomplishment seemed to surround the white porcelain table 
where the family ate. Outside, the wind swept indifferently across 
naked fields and coated acres of bean stubble with ice. 

"I seen yesterday that Waycaster up the road was burnin' out the brush
around his field," the father said. "We'll do the same, onc't that ice 
gets off everything." 

Bill looked at his father. "Why? What's the point in it?" 

"Nothin' really," his father responded, "'cept that it looks better, I
guess. It's good if your place looks clean and kept up. Might kill off 
a few weeds for next year, too." 

"I say that's a damn stupid thing to do," Bill responded with his usual
arrogance. 

"Huh?" said the father, turning to face his older son. 

"Well, I mean..." Bill sat up straight in his chair then and looked
intently at his father.  "If ya burn out all the brush, where are the 
rabbits goin' to live?" he asked. 

The father regarded his older son's point briefly, then turned with a
grunt to his wife and said, "Ma, sometimes I'd swear we done raised us 
a couple crazies." 

George's head bobbed up to search Bill's face. Then, grinning broadly,
he looked down at his plate again and continued eating his stew. 


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