The pounding in her head was three days old. It had begun with the argument’s first sharp words and had continued through the anger of last night. This battle was now the longest of their twenty-eight years together. It hadn’t ended at 3 a.m. when she had finally been too tired to speak. It wasn’t over even now, as the light of the morning tried to wake her. Jill attempted to lift her head from the pillow and push away the clouds of sleep, but the hammering in her head became louder.
As consciousness began to clear her thoughts, she started to separate the blurry images of dreams and the more defined edges of reality. And it was the pounding from outside the house that brought Jill’s sleep to its end.
“Michael, someone’s at the door.” Her hand reached across the bed to shake his shoulder. The heat of his body was warm to her fingers.
Swinging his feet to the floor, Michael pulled on his jeans with a single hop and moved away from the bed while pushing a shirt along the floor with his foot. He could never find the clothes hamper.
Jill slid her feet searching the sheets for a cool spot not already heated by Michael or the sleeping dog. Jill’s movements caused Miranda to growl a complaint.
“Why didn’t you bark? Someone’s at the door.”
The old lab lifted her head, looked at her mistress, and dropped her face back on the sheets, and closed her eyes.
“Spoiled brat.”
Michael and Jill had purchased the king-sized bed intentionally to accommodate the dog. As if knowing this, Miranda thought that the bed belonged to her, and she only half willingly shared it with them at night. Following sunny spots as they moved around the floor of the house, Miranda slept away a great part of each day, but even the dog didn’t sleep well last night. The argument had escalated to the point Michael had put a hole in the plaster just below the picture of the kids. Thinking of that punch and seeing the hole knotted Jill’s stomach.
Muffled voices could be heard from the back porch. Michael’s deep rumble and a higher pitched, excited voice that Jill did not quite recognize. She finally sat up and left the bed to Michael’s raised, “What?!” to head down the stairs.
As she hurried down the steps, she could still hear the voices, but they lacked shape. Jill looked out the kitchen window and could see the screen door open and the neighbor’s barefoot and shirtless son talking to her husband. Harry was so strange; his late father had built an elaborate tree house when the boy was young. Once he turned eighteen, he moved into the elevated home, and stayed there all year.
The screen door slammed, and Michael entered the kitchen with a slow and uneven step; Jill knew his foot must be bothering him again, and she wondered if that pain had intensified his anger last night.
“A bear got two of the rabbits.”
Jill’s “Oh, no!” was from her soul. The rabbits belonged to their daughter who had been in 4-H for years. Jackie had raised the animals to show, but they were her pets.
Jill went upstairs to the bedroom to steal a view of the back yard through the fruit trees. Cages were torn up and parts were scattered all over the ground. She slipped into her moccasins and quickly pulled on her robe as she headed back down the stairs with the dog behind her.
God, it was hot already.
Miranda obviously needed to go outside and followed Jill as she bolted through the back door. Jill reached for the hook on the side of the house.
“Whoa, get over here. I am hooking you on the line.”
Miranda stopped, but didn’t walk back. The dog hated being on the clothesline. It was as though it was a blow to her pride to be on a leash.
“Now!” Jill raised her voice as she saw the clear view to the rabbits’ cages. Reluctantly, the lab moved close enough for Jill to grab her collar and clip the metal ring. Jill moved towards the wood’s edge. The morning grass soaked her moccasins as she approached the cages, and the remaining rabbits were stamping a warning.
Two cages were completely down. Roofs were torn off most of the houses. Hardware cloth was pulled apart exposing wire. A thick tuft of course black hair was wrapped around three prongs. Jill pulled at it, feeling its foreignness and the sticky, wet blood, and then dropped the chunk of fur to the ground. Looking back, she tried to see into the dark shadows of the woods.
“Good. I’ll bet that hurt.”
The tan rex and the black angora were missing. Jill’s stomach fell; the rex was the last of a breeding line from her daughter’s first rabbit. She had held each of these bunnies and helped Jackie groom them. As they had watched the birth of the bunnies, its naïve mother scattered each baby around the birthing cage. Jill had to nest the babies into cotton until the first-time mother at last pulled out her chest hair and made her own bedding for the hairless bunnies.
The angora had been a gift from Jill’s sister on Jackie’s eleventh birthday. A docile and sweet buck, it was eager to greet people at the cage door and be held. Jackie had groomed its long hair once a week to keep it from matting.
Jill looked into the other cages. The remaining three rabbits were jumpy, but fine. Reassuringly, she reached inside each cage to stroke the nervous animals, and then she walked across the wet grass back towards the house. Purposely, she let her mind go blank.
The morning sun was already evaporating the dew making the air thick and heavy. Over the stream Harry’s voice carried easily into the yard. “It was one very big bear, Mrs. George. I saw him. He was tagged.”
“Thank you, Harry.”
Jill walked past the sniffing dog, and started to go inside. From the woods came a sudden rustling of leaves. She turned her head sharply around, and studied the deep brush. Nothing moved, but she waited.
Finally, she walked up the porch stairs, went inside to the sink, and washed her hands. Jill filled the kettle with water and twisted the burner to high, but somewhere between measuring the third and fourth scoop of coffee, her hands started to tremble, and a tear silently slid down her cheek. It was then that the rest followed; there were no sounds, just the quiet tears.
Jill heard Michael coming down the stairs. His weight caused the bottom stair to complain and then his feet moved unevenly across the floor. Taking the dishtowel, Jill quickly removed any signs of emotion before she said, “Coffee’s almost ready.”
As Michael sat down by the window, Jill moved to the cabinets for two mugs.
“Are they gone?” Michael stared out the window. Jill could sense his impatience; he disliked the rabbits and the care they took.
Pouring the hot liquid into the two cups, Jill added sugar to Michael’s, and milk to both. She kept her eyes on the coffee as she carried the mugs to the table.
“It appears so.”
Michael turned to stare evenly at his wife, and lit a cigarette as she sat down.
“We live in the country, kid. You have to expect things like this to happen. Did you get the papers?” An ash landed as Michael tapped his smoke against a clay dish.
“No, I’ll get them now.”
Carrying her mug, Jill left the kitchen and stepped out the back door to let Miranda back into the house. The dog brushed past her, as she headed back to bed. Jill shook her head; there go the sheets again.
After placing her mug on the stone wall that supported the screen porch, Jill stopped. Michael and she had laid each stone themselves. One by one, the fieldstones had been fit into place until the porch wall reached six feet. Then they had poured the cement shelf that now held the wooden framed screens. Jill loved the porch. Normally, the cool stone and the shade from the towering, ancient oaks held the overnight temperatures until early afternoon, but not today. Five days of over ninety degree temperatures had even affected the porch. Jill allowed her fingers to trace a deep purple stone. They had fought the day this particular rock was placed into the wall. Michael had raised his voice so loudly that a passing car had slowed down in front of the house on their country road. Jill had cried that day holding the heavy stone as Michael got into his truck and sped away. This morning the stone was only slightly warm, but seemed to burn her as she fingered its rough surface.
Something made her stop. Jill looked out to the back and saw the cages lying twisted and mangled in the morning sun. She jumped suddenly as a robin flew up from the grass.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Jill walked down the stone stairs. Behind an arbor laced with Jackson Perkin’s climbing roses was a galvanized garbage pail. Opening the lid, Jill scooped out sunflower and fennel seeds for the bird feeders. The doves were already calling her, and the sharper sound of the cardinals came from bushes across the street.
Sprinkling the seeds, she watched as the smaller birds braved her company to eat. A junco, inches away, ignored her as she emptied the scoop before moving down the driveway. Doves fluttered as she pulled the two newspapers from their boxes, and Jill slowly started back to the house. She replaced the scoop, the lid, and then picked up her coffee cup before turning for the stairs.
Jill froze on the second step; the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. She sensed the space where the bear had moved inside her, and she looked back towards the apple trees. It was quiet, save the feeding birds, belying the current Jill felt approaching. Where the edge of the yard acknowledged the deep woods with bayberry bushes and rhododendron, was a place the bear had crossed a line. Jill did not like the feeling it gave her and continued staring as she entered the house.
Putting the papers down on the table, Jill noticed that Michael was gone. Upstairs she heard the shower start to run, as she poured the remains of her cold coffee down the drain. Fortunately, the pot was still hot enough for a warm cup, which Jill carried upstairs to the bedroom.
Miranda had managed to find a section of exposed bottom sheet to lay her wet cut-grass-mud-footed body down. Jill ignored the dog, and sat on the bed’s edge staring out the back window. She could still feel the bear like a dark, icy shadow slipping into her life. Wondering how she would tell Jackie, Jill gazed at the cages that were still standing and knew how upset this would make her daughter. Both of the kids had been nervous lately over Michael’s bad mood swings; this would not help.
Later, when the kids woke, they could help move the other bunnies’ cages closer to the house. Jill watched as the robins hopped across the exposed lawn. A phoebe took off from the clothesline to the garage gable where she had laid her three eggs. Jill’s eyes rose again to the shadowed trees.
Jill could feel her hatred of the bear; it had pushed itself into a dark place and changed her world. As she sat on the bed, she could feel its muscled fur rippling inside her stomach. Her heart skipped a beat and her hands were sweating around the coffee mug.
Michael came into the room, opened drawers, and then closed them again.
“Look, Michael, about last night…”
“Forget it, Jill.”
He left the bedroom and headed back to the bathroom. Jill sat up straight as she stared out the window, watching the sunlight come over the lawn as the shadows began to shorten. She sipped her coffee twice before Michael returned.
“What are you looking for, Jill?”
“Nothing.”
Jill took another sip from her mug and finished her coffee.