Rabbit

By V. Campudoni

A middle aged slacker at the turn of the century, and the children he has created and destroyed. A novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: V. Campudoni
• Release date: Mar 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301340637

V. Campudoni

Born in Brooklyn. Presently living in the great state of Georgia.

Book preview

Rabbit

v.campudoni

Copyright 2013 v.campudoni

The Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

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to my mother and father

1

Abraham was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck cutting off the air to his brain and it would have killed him if it wasn't for a doctor with a knife. But during those moments, when his brain wasn't getting any air, something happened, something that stayed with him for the rest of his life.

I'm not saying he was retarded, because, first of all, when I think about somebody being retarded I think about somebody who wears their pants below their butt, or somebody who walks around with one of those cell phone things in their ear talking to themselves, or somebody who owns a ferret. That’s retarded. And, second of all, I hate that word. It's one of the ugliest words in the world, and anybody who would ever use that word to describe anyone, as far as I'm concerned, would be an asshole.

I could be an asshole sometimes, but I never used that word to describe him. I might say he was slow, or special, or, if I felt like wearing out my tongue, I might say he was developmentally handicapped. But usually, if you were to ask me, I would probably just say he was my friend.

I met him in 1998 when I moved from a small crappy apartment in Smyrna to a small crappy house in Marietta on a quiet wooded street with big magnolia tree in the front yard and a creek running through the backyard. To be honest, the backyard was my favorite thing about the house. It was one of those backyards with lots of weeds and bushes and trees growing wild and crazy and I didn’t have to spend too much time cutting anything because nobody else whose house backed up to the creek bothered cutting anything either.

Abraham lived in the house next door with his mother, Catherine, who was one of those sweet old fashioned southern ladies who was always offering me some ice tea, or some biscuits, or whatever else she happened to be fixing, and his dad, Mr. Ward, who was always working on something under the hood of his truck, or painting a part of his house, or straightening out his shed, or tearing down a tree, or doing something else that looked way too much like work.

Abraham never did anything that even came close to looking like work. He was always fooling around, poking a stick into a hole, chasing a snake, tossing a rock, and basically doing nothing, and the thing about Abraham, the thing that you would notice right away when you saw him, was that he was always dressed like a cop.

Yeah. Abraham dressed like a cop. All the time. He had a cop hat, and a cop shirt, and cop pants, and cop shoes, and on his belt he had a nightstick, a flashlight, and a pair of handcuffs.

The first time I saw him he was down by the creek fishing, and I wondered what a cop was doing down by the creek fishing, and I thought maybe he was looking for a body, like they do when they drag lakes on TV, but it didn't make sense because the creek was too small to hide a body, so I went down to see what was going on. The closer I got the more I could see it was just a kid, a teenager, whose hat was two sizes too big for his head, and his shirt and pants were splattered with mud and leaves, and he wasn't looking for a body at all. He was just fishing. I asked him if he was catching anything, and he reeled in his line and walked away. I thought that was kind of rude, but I was too busy wondering why he was dressed like a cop to get upset about it.

The next time I saw him he was swinging a stick at a hornet out in front of my house by the magnolia tree. He was swinging it like crazy. I watched him through the living room window for a while, and then I opened the front door. He looked at me, froze like a deer, and ran off.

I figured he didn't like me, or he was shy, or something, so I didn't bother him anymore after that, and one day I was coming home from work, pulling into the driveway, when I saw him standing in my front yard by the magnolia tree again. Just standing there. I got out of the car and walked towards the door, not saying anything, and then I thought I heard him mumble something, but I wasn't sure, so I kept on walking, and then I thought I heard him mumble something again. I stopped and turned around. He had his head down and his hands in his pockets, and I think he said hey, or hi, or hello, and then I said something, and then he said something else, and I didn't understand anything he was saying, but I think we had a wonderful conversation anyway.

I would see him standing next to that magnolia tree more and more, and he would mumble less and less, and soon he was talking my ear off. He liked to talk. There was nothing slow about his mouth. He talked about a lot of things, but mostly about how he wanted to be a cop, and he'd show me his hat, and his badge, and he'd swing his nightstick around, then he'd show me his flashlight, one of those long black heavy duty ones with three different settings on it, then he'd show me his handcuffs, which he was always trying to put on me, but I'd be a fool to let him because I knew he was just going to leave them on me all day long and think it was funny.

He also had a bunch cards