FICTION
The Rabbit in the Yard
A story
--
It was a Saturday morning.
Javi looked out the window. Another bright morning behind a junkyard in his little Mexican border town.
He stared at the dead cars: they had been in crashes, burned down, salvaged…
They weren’t useful anymore.
Every so often, a new lot would arrive. Then, someone would come looking for a piece. “Hey, my car needs this? Do you have it?”
Most of the time, one of the cars in the yard provided what was necessary.
The owner, Mr. Wilson, had two dogs: Terry and Johnny.
Terry was a boxer who, in his past life, had been used for fights. When he couldn’t win anymore, his master sold him to Mr. Wilson. He was covered in scars and had lost all vision on the right eye.
He was merciless.
Whenever someone dared enter the yard without Mr. Wilson by his side, he was sure to get bitten.
Johnny was a girl. She was a mutt someone abandoned at Mr. Wilson’s door. He had brought her here since day one, even though she couldn’t have been a day over two months. “She will gain her bread,” he said. Despite Javi’s constant asking, he had never revealed why he had called her Johhny.
It was the strangest thing: whenever another dog, male or female, dared enter the yard, Terry would chase them down, most of the time hurting them badly.
It would break Javi’s heart to see the other dogs get hurt. Whenever he could, he would go to the chain-link fence and distract Terry so the other dog could make his getaway. The fact that he was only a child, and that his mother constantly asked him to stay away from the yard, didn’t deter him.
Javi was a brave, kind boy.
“Damn it, Terry! Just let him go,” he would shout, hitting the fence with whatever he could find, just to make noise.
Terry would turn to look at him, and the other dog would take the chance to escape.
“Look at what you did! There’s blood all over the place.” But he couldn’t stay angry with him for too long. He knew this wasn’t his fault. He had been taught by cruel people to be this way.
And so it became an endless cycle: dogs would get in, Terry would attack them, Javi would do his best to help them, and so on.
Terry could be very vicious, alright. But not with Johnny. Oh, no.
Terry loved Johnny.
He would lie by her side under the shadow of the one tree in the yard. He would let her eat from his bowl when Mr. Wilson didn’t give her enough. Whenever she was out of his sight, he would look for her all over the place until he found her.
Johnny was fixed. Mr. Wilson said he wanted no puppies in his yard. That was perhaps the one kind thing he did for her: sparing her a life of birthing litter after litter. But for the rest, he barely fed her and Javi had seen him kicking her whenever he had a chance.
Javi had asked Mr. Wilson to let him adopt her. “I’ll take care of her. You’ll save a couple of bucks in food each month.” But even a moron as Mr. Wilson could see that Terry loved her. He knew his beast would lose his spark if he took his girl away from him.
And so the years went by. Javi made it a habit to pet both dogs on his way to school. Sometimes he even gave them some leftovers, tossing them over the fence. They might not be his, but he loved them with all his heart.
Mr. Wilson got old. Javi turned 15. Terry and Johnny got slow and now had gray hairs over their coats.
And there it was, this Saturday morning, a bright sunny one, with Javi standing by the window.
He saw the same junkyard he had seen for the past half-decade…with one small difference.
There was a white rabbit in the middle of the yard.
“Oh, no,” he said.
He knew what was going to happen. He had seen it before with cats and a few small birds: Terry was going to destroy him.
Yes, Terry could go wild whenever he spotted another dog that wasn’t Johnny. But when it came to small prey, things got worse. The images of the bloody corpses of half a dozen cats flashed through his mind.
What to do now?
“Javi, breakfast is ready!” called his mother’s voice.
“Coming!” he said.
He looked for Terry and, after a couple of seconds, found him. He and Johnny were under the hood of a large pick-up truck, sleeping. The rabbit was quite far away.
“Things could be ok,” he thought. But he couldn’t count on it.
A plan started to form in his mind.
Javi gulped down his breakfast.
“Careful! Don’t want you to choke!” his mother said.
“Sorry,” he replied.
She was already wearing her uniform and was busy prepping her things. She was a nurse at a hospital nearby. To make ends meet, she would take on as many shifts as possible. She felt guilty whenever she looked at her son, and then she got angry at herself for thinking this way.
What else was she supposed to do? They needed the money.
Her days seemed to go away in a blur of duty, sorrow, and resentment. But she didn’t have time for this right now.
“Remember: do your homework, do the dishes…” she started.
“…put the laundry away, not opening the door, you’ll call at 1 pm,” finished Javi. “I know, Mom. I know.’
She smiled.
“Just making sure, hon,” she said. She grabbed her lunch bag and her backpack, kissed her son, and headed outside.
We could call it maternal instinct, intuition, or divine inspiration, but, for a moment, she considered calling in sick and spending the day with her son. But it had been a while since she had stopped listening to her inner voices. A life of ever-present constraints and worry will do that to you. Not her fault, really.
Once she closed the door, Javi waited a few minutes, just in case she came back to pick something up. Then, he sprinted back to his window.
Sure enough, there was the yard, the cars, the rabbit, the dogs, and the sun — all of the actors on the stage.
Javi went to the kitchen again. He grabbed some leftover fried chicken and biscuits. He had read somewhere that dogs are not supposed to eat chicken bones, so he took the time to separate the meat from the bone, a crunching sound accompanying his movements.
Once he was satisfied, he put everything in a plastic container and stepped outside.
It was even hotter than he anticipated.
Javi walked towards the junkyard. As he approached the door, he tiptoed. He looked all around. Mr. Wilson was not on sight. “Good,” Javi said to himself. He bent over, grabbed some pebbles, and put them in his left pocket.
Then, he removed the lid from the container with the delicious chicken and snuck it under the door. He strained his eyes, looking for the rabbit. He was far away, but he was sure he could make it.
He reached into his pocket for a couple of pebbles and tossed them at the rabbit. Just as he expected, the rabbit got startled and moved…but he did not get out of the yard.
“Ok, let’s try again,” Javi said to himself. He threw another pebble, this time getting closer. The rabbit ran to the fence but stopped short of getting under it.
“Damn it!” Javi screamed in frustration. That’s what woke Terry up.
At first, he was just startled, but he quickly sensed something was up. He looked all around, trying to figure out where the menace was.
“Hey, Terry, boy, over here,” Javi called out. He used one of the pebbles and clinked it against the fence, near the food container. Sure enough, this got Terry’s attention.
Terry went straight for the food, but Javi knew this was only going to buy him a bit of time. He decided it was time for more decisive actions.
Slowly, as Terry kept on eating the food, Javi crawled under the fence. He had never before dared do that, but this was a desperate situation; he knew once Terry devoured all of the food, it was going to be the rabbit’s turn.
Javi walked towards the rabbit, looking over his shoulder from time to time. He kept on throwing pebbles at the rabbit, with no results.
“What’s wrong with him?” Javi asked himself. “Maybe he is sick.”
He was just a couple of steps away from the rabbit when he heard it: Terry’s bark.
He turned around in time to see him run towards the rabbit, murder in his eyes. Had he had time to think, maybe he would have made different choices, but it was as if everything had been previously ordained.
Without much contemplation, he ran, picked the rabbit up, and faced Terry.
He held the rabbit high, in case the dog tried to reach it. “Come on, boy,” Javi said. “It’s me.”
He thought that Terry would recognize him as the boy that sometimes pet him through the fence and occasionally gave him leftovers. But he failed to take into consideration that, once on the other side of the fence, things always look different.
Terry kept on running at him and then jumped high.
He went for Javi’s face.
For the rest of his life, whenever he recalled the story, Javi would tell how his most vivid memory of this event was the crunching sound his nose made as Terry’s jaws destroy it.
And the blood. Lots of it.
Javi felt backward, letting go of the rabbit. As he tried to push Terry away, he managed to see how the rabbit finally escaped under the fence. Under different circumstances, he would have smiled.
Terry didn’t stop at Javi’s nose. He also went for his left cheekbone and kept trying to get to his neck, but Javi instinctively did a very good job of protecting it with his hands. As a consequence, he ended up losing two fingers on his right hand, but considering the alternative, he counted himself as lucky.
As he lay on the dirt, trying to get Terry off him, he heard some barks on the distance.
Johnny.
She seemed to be furious and kept on barking at Terry, but it was no good. Terry was determined to finish the job.
After all, he was a good dog.
It was funny. No particular thoughts went through Javi’s mind. Never in his life, before or after, would he be this aware, just on the moment, conscious of everything going on in his body.
That’s why he was so surprised when he heard Mr. Wilson’s voice, screaming at Terry. Javi couldn’t see him, but he was running, a bat on his hand and yelling expletives.
“Go, Terry, go! Kill him! Fucking thieves, getting into my yard!” he shouted.
Mr. Wilson got closer; bat held high. He assessed the situation. All he saw was two furious dogs and a young man on the floor. But then he looked closer,
“Damn, boy! What are you doing here?” he asked Javi.
He quickly realized having his neighbor, a young boy, died in his place of business wouldn’t be any good, so he decided to intervene.
Although Johnny wasn’t attacking Javi, there was spit coming out of her mouth, and she kept showing her teeth. Mr. Wilson decided it would be best to get her out of the way first.
He swung his bat high and strong, hitting her on the right side of the head. She let out a single yelp and ended up on the dirt.
This got Terry’s attention, he let go of Javi and went to her, licking her all over. Mr. Wilson looked down at Javi; bat still held high.
“Boy, what’s gotten into you? What are you doing here?” he asked.
“The rabbit, the rabbit…” was all Javi managed to say.
“Rabbit? What? Nevermind, come on,” Mr. Wilson said. He bent over and helped Javi up. “It’s best if we take you to the office,” he added, half-carrying Javi, who was struggling to keep his footing.
As they headed to the office, Javi looked back.
There on the ground, Terry kept on licking Johnny. There was a small pool of blood collecting around her head. She did not move, despite Terry’s persistence.
Javi let out a small whimper.
“Don’t cry, boy. You shouldn’t have gotten in here. I could have let him kill you, you know?” Mr. Wilson said.
Javi realized it would be better to look ahead.
A whole year went by.
Terry did another lap around the yard. Since the day Johnny died, he had become even more vicious. Sometimes he would bark at people walking a whole block away from the yard.
He stared at the fence. Vague memories of a nice boy who used to pet him came to his mind. He hadn’t seen him in a long time, and the house where he used to live now smelled empty.
Mr. Wilson came out of his office, a bowl of food in his hands. Terry went running to him.
Terry devoured his food, …almost all of it. Out of habit, he left a bit of food on his bowl. No matter what Mr. Wilson tried, he couldn’t get him to eat the whole thing.
Then, with a full belly, he lay under the shadows the cars provided, all alone.
In the meantime, outside the yard, a small rabbit hid amongst some bushes. It was too hot of a day to be out in the open.
