I stood beside my father when he killed a rabbit at the back of our farm. It was the same day that Regan, my baby brother, was born. Halleluiah!
The rabbit burst from the brush pile and Dad’s rifle came up fast. Bang! The bullet went through the cottontail’s brain. It leapt in the air, spun and landed dead on the ground.
Rabbits overran our property. They cleaned out the vegetable garden and destroyed the fruit trees by stripping the bark. If left unchecked, it would be impossible to run our small family farm.
“Stew tonight.” Dad lifted it by the ears.
“I could have done that.”
He rolled his eyes. “Hardly. We’d starve relying on you to put supper on the table.”
I grimaced, and he laughed.
“Don’t give me that face. You won’t get a husband looking like that.”
“Why would I want one?” Grumbling, I followed him to the farmhouse.
Afterwards, Dad and uncle lolled in the wicker porch chairs. They had cigars and blew smoke rings and drank beer. I listened from the kitchen. Mom was in the hospital with my new brother.
“We’ve got three girls already, so I said don’t come home unless it’s a boy. They can do it if they try.”
They laughed. But I wondered if he meant it.
“Finally, I’ve got a boy to inherit the farm.”
After uncle left, Dad skinned and rinsed the rabbit, reminiscing about his upbringing on a rough-scrabble farm.
“When I was a kid, nothing grew. They tried. The soil’s no good. A fox broke into the henhouse and killed the chickens. Wolves got their sheep. Mostly, we went hungry.” He glanced at me. “Did I tell you about the bear that chased Great-Grandma?”
“Nope.”
He dropped the carcass into a saucepan of water and headed for the stove. I followed.
“What happened?”
“In those days, there weren’t many cars. Grandma was driving the horse and wagon home from the town with enough groceries for the winter.”
He flipped the burner switch and the gas burst into blue flames. He laid cut onions and carrots on top of the meat and sprinkled salt and pepper. The water bubbled and steamed.
“The wagon was fully loaded. Flour, sugar, potatoes... everything. The route went through the bush. Half-way home, the horse tried to bolt. Grandma looked behind and saw a bear.”
Steam burned my hand when I dropped the lid on the pot. “Ouch!” I hid my tears and turned the heat down.
“She kept going. Always looking around.” Dad glanced over his shoulder as if the bear was hiding behind a kitchen chair and pretended to aim a rifle. “She had a gun but was scared to use it. The bear followed all the way. Luckily, when she got to the farm, the dogs chased it off. We could’ve starved.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid. I’m not scared of anything... not even you.”
“You should be. Women are soft-hearted. Can’t shoot to save their souls. You’d cry for a man to come rescue you.”
I bit my lip. He’d cuff me if I sassed him, so I set the table. “When’s Mom coming home with baby Regan? Is she okay?”
“She’s tired. You’ll need to help out more with the house chores.”
We had the rabbit stew for supper, and it was delicious.
In the morning, my job was to feed the horses. Sometimes they’d kick the walls or rear up if I wasn’t fast enough. I dropped the 50-pound hay bales down a chute to the barn floor, used a jack-knife to cut the twine and put hay in their stalls. Dumped oats in their buckets. The horses were quiet then and moved over to let me bring in the wheelbarrow and clean out their muck. Fresh straw finished their beds.
At eleven-years-old, I was tall and strong. But I was a girl.
Soon after Mom came home from the hospital, Dad said he wanted to hire a boy. “Your mother’s hands are full managing the household and baby Regan.”
I protested. “We don’t need help. I work better than any boy could. He wouldn’t care about the animals.” Despite what father told my uncle… I was confident Regan couldn’t replace me and worked harder to prove it.
For the next two years, my parents trumpeted Regan’s accomplishments. He was the strongest, smartest child ever born! Enthroned in his high chair, he reigned over the supper table.
“More, more!” yelled little King Regan, banging his cup until he was served.
One morning, our cat, ‘Trapper’, came around the barn corner with a big mouse dangling from her mouth. Her belly dragged low.
Dad dumped a bag of oats into a storage bin and slammed the lid. “That damn cat’s gonna have kittens again! More mouths to feed. Same thing every year.”
“I’ll find homes for them. She’s a wonderful mouser—other farmers would be glad to have one.” I hung up the pitchfork and swept the barn floor.
By afternoon, Trapper had made a straw nest in an empty horse stall. I leaned on its half-height door and counted six little bodies curled against her pink tummy, tugging at her teats. They were too young to touch. Their eyes weren’t open. Three were grey-striped like their mother, two were black and one was a tabby. Trapper only left them to drink and get a meal. Usually, she fended for herself, but in the past, when she’d birthed, Dad had allowed me to put out treats.
The morning after the kittens arrived, I brought out a bowl of milk. A thunderstorm had kept me awake during the night. Trapper’s stall was deserted.
That was strange. Maybe the storm scared her. She must have moved them.
I swept the broken straw out to the yard. It was hot, so I left the barn doors open for fresh air and leaned the broom in the sunshine.
Something wasn’t right.
Coming from an oil barrel we used as a trash pail was a weird sound… like a baby crying.
But the barrel overflowed with binder twine.
Butterflies formed in my stomach. The mewling sound got louder. I yanked out the twine and peered inside.
At the bottom, six small shapes twitched in a shallow pool of water. I tipped the barrel over, then crawled in and grabbed the kittens. They were soaking wet, but they were alive.
I rubbed them with a towel and placed them on a clean bed of straw. They were cold and barely moved. There was a screech as I dried the last kitten. Meowing, Trapper leapt from the floor to the top of the half-door, then landed in beside her babies. She pawed and licked their fur, then curled around them. I placed each one on a teat, and they latched on and sucked.
I stomped off to find my father.
He was in the orchard, balanced on top of a ladder, picking fruit. Scattered on the ground lay bruised apples that had fallen during the overnight storm.
“It’s gonna be another bad year. That damn wind has ruined this crop.” He climbed down the treads and wiped his brow. “What’s up? Did you bring me a coffee?”
I shoved him off balance. “You’re a terrible person! I’ll never forgive you. You tried to drown those babies, but it didn’t work! I rescued them.”
He sputtered, stumbled, and spilled his basket. “Now we’ve lost those apples too! How the hell can I feed all the mouths around here? That’s the last batch she’s gonna have. Hear me?”
But he let them live. We never spoke of it again.
A week later, he carried something into the barn, inside his straw hat. Two orphaned bunnies he’d found while mowing the orchard grass.
“Thought you’d like these.”
“Wow!” They were twin cottontails—small enough to fit in my hand. Under their soft brown fur, I felt their hearts beat. “Should we put them back? Won’t the mother look for them?”
He shook his head. “She’s long gone. If someone’s handled them, she won’t reclaim them. You want to care for baby animals, so they’re your responsibility.”
We had an empty chicken coop with a fenced pen. Previously, a weasel had rampaged it, and the mess of slaughtered hens had discouraged us from raising more. I placed a cardboard box inside the pen, lined it with grass and used Regan’s infant formula and an eyedropper to feed the bunnies.
By then, Regan was a toddler, and he liked to squat nearby and watch.
The baby rabbits grew and were skittish. If I was patient, I could hold food in my hands to capture them. They enjoyed being cuddled, and sometimes I let Regan chase them in circles. They were fast and would bolt past as he staggered around.
“Catch ’em, catch ’em,” he yelled.
He never could.
The kittens grew quickly, too. Their eyes opened, and they were playful. I dressed them in Regan’s outgrown baby clothes, and placed them in a doll buggy. Regan liked to imitate everyone, and tried to join in. Sometimes he’d squeeze too tight, and they’d mew and scratch.
“Gentle.” I showed him how to hold them.
“Gentle,” he cooed, in a perfect mimic.
It was afternoon. I came in the barn and stopped. My skin prickled. Balanced on the top edge of Trapper’s stall door was a grotesque looking round shape.
She’d been hunting.
It was the severed head of a full-grown rabbit.
A medieval head stuck on a stake. Its eyes were wide open. I didn’t want to get close or touch it. It was a warning. Gagging, heart thumping, I peeked into the stall. Trapper and the kittens were inside, ripping apart the body.
The outside barn door opened and Regan toddled into the barn, arms outstretched. I didn’t think he should see the mess, so I led him away, out to the bunny cage. He knelt on the ground and tried to shove clover through the wire fence. The bunnies weren’t afraid and nibbled from his hand.
“Mmmm.” He rubbed his tummy, and in a mimicking deep voice said, “Stew tonight.”
Something in my chest hardened. I picked Regan up and slung him on my hip. In the distance, I heard Dad mowing hay with the old Ford tractor. I walked to the field and waved at him to stop.
“Mom wants you to come for coffee,” I lied, lifting Regan up. “He’s too heavy for me to carry. If you take him, I’ll drive the tractor.”
“Sure.” Wiping sweat from his brow, he shut off the engine. “I’d love a coffee. Come on, little man.” He swooped Regan onto his shoulders. “We can stop on the way and look at those kittens.”
“Good idea.” I climbed on the machine, stood on the clutch and brake pedals, and turned the key. When the engine roared, I used both hands on the gearshift and drove away.
While I cut the long grass, I kept a sharp eye to avoid hitting anything else with the mower blades. So many questions wrestled for answers. Why’d she do that? Why’d he say that? Why couldn’t I…? Near suppertime, I stopped near the barn.
I held my breath, afraid to enter. It was quiet, then a horse nickered and kicked a board. I exhaled, and stepped inside.
The head was gone… and so was Trapper. She’d left her kittens sleeping on some of Regan’s outgrown baby sweaters. Stuck to the wool were bloody bits of bone and rabbit fur. I flung the clothes into the trash barrel, then shook straw into the stall to hide everything.
I marched out to the rabbits’ pen, opened the door, and stepped back.
Tentatively, the rabbits hopped forward, expecting to be fed. I swore and kicked their cage.
“RUN!”
They sprinted across the field and disappeared.
In the distance, the dinner bell rang. Little King Regan sat in his throne, banging his empty cup and waiting.
Following a career as a High School English and Visual Art teacher, Frayne decided to write full time. ‘The Sound of a Rainbow’ is a prize winning YA novel, published by Latitude 46 Publishing. ‘Caught Between the Walls’, is a YA hybrid novel set in Niagara, combining fiction and non-fiction. It breathes life into untold tales of Canada’s Indigenous people,
Canada’s first race riot, impoverished British orphans and Polish Soldiers training for WW1. Frayne’s prize winning short stories include: the South Simcoe Short Story Contest, the Stratford Rotary Fiction Contest, the Eden Mills Writers Festival, Rising Spirits, and the NOWW Non-Fiction contest. She’s published by CommuterLit, Uproar, Ekphrastic Review
and local media. She’s a member of the NOTL Writers’ Circle and the Writers Union of Canada. Her upmarket speculative-fiction novel, ‘Webs: Tales of Survival and Magick’ is awaiting publication. She lives in NOTL and Muskoka with her supportive husband and happy Labrador Retriever.
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