Lee Klein: Jrzdvlz

I waited for the sun to drop over the horizon. At dusk I soared lower, seeing that the first level of the house had been covered in sand, its windows boarded other than a side door and another on a third-story balcony from which she emerged to hold a lit lantern, standing straight, not singing, facing the sea, hat always on.

Each night for years I followed the woman and each night she stood on the balcony holding a lantern, staring at the ocean. She stood there even in terrible storms, soaked, hat on head, veil over her face like a sturdy curtain.

I longed to contact her but could not. It would have been like disturbing the sun.

How many years passed I do not know, but whatever pressure within me that kept me so long on the island one day released. I flew over the mainland, exploring the endless pines, hovering over the cities of Philadelphia and New York, amazed at the density. Oh to settle atop a rooftop among those squat water towers, the open-air washing and soot. I walked the streets at night and did not stir a soul, no one even glanced my way. But I wanted an expanse of pines and sand, and before long, near my birthplace, I found myself attracted to an enormous construction, isolated from the world.

The house did not seem abandoned. One night outside it I found a rabbit chained to a pole, the words For you on a sign. The occupant of the house had chained a rabbit like a fisherman who pushed a raft out on a pond and dropped a baited hook into the water, hoping to catch a behemoth. I did not know what this fisherman intended to do when the line stretched ahead and pulled him under.

The man did not see me remove the first rabbit, I now know, though he discovered odd prints in the spot he had cleared of grass in the hope of finding such evidence.

The next night he stayed up, but snoozed at the critical time. Again he missed the rabbit’s end.

The next night I swooped in, I gulped the rabbit down, licked my chops, and left.

He did not disbelieve his eyes. The next night, the same. Perhaps he thought I had lost my legendary aggressiveness. But if I attacked him, what better way to die?

I hovered out of sight behind the house. The sun slanted though western windows. Calm, quiet, a bowl of water at his desk. He removed his glasses, wet his handkerchief, and ran it across his eyes. He hesitated lighting lamps but did so to reread what he had written.

Clear and moonless, the sky absorbed the color of the surrounding pines. In those last moments before complete darkness, he visited his rabbit pen and picked out a sacrifice: the fluffiest charmer of a lop-eared Londoner. If presented at a county fair, it would win awards for girth and grace, its nose so twitchy even the callous would call it cute. I was glad he offered it tonight.

A rabbit’s life is dedicated to the detection of threat. A quivering ball of tenderness, its mind is committed to its body’s continuation, a minor, automatic part compared to what’s devoted to fear. Long oval ears shoot fear through flesh the same for a snapped twig as the approach of owl or fox. Nose and whiskers, the nerve center of fear, register disturbances like a bat’s radar. Great leaping abilities, of course, though the man had fattened his rabbits so those powerful legs couldn’t lift their bodies far off the ground. With added girth, their threat-detection skills became more precise. His rabbits shivered on warm autumn days at the clamor of falling leaves. No chance of escape from omnipresent threats made these rabbits cute, cuddly balls of constant alarm.

Night fully arrived, the man sat in a simple wood chair on the porch, eyes moist, sucking back his breath, afraid of alarming me with too excited a huff. The specially chosen lop-eared Londoner was chained out front.

I crouched out of sight in a tree. A bat flitted and disappeared. No other monsters. So soft the night. He brought out a blanket, pulled it to his eyes. His back seemed sore and, from constant repositioning, it seemed his buttocks had gone numb, which was favorable, perhaps, because otherwise he might drift to sleep before I consumed the rabbit.

Blanket over nose, hat on head—its brim greasy from a decade of touches—slanted over his forehead, and through that slit between brim and blanket, clarified by glasses, he observed the animal as it registered an unusual disturbance. For hours, the pure-white, lop-eared Londoner had sat there, pink eyes open but otherwise calm. Now its ears rotated and rose as high as they went. The nose surpassed its usual curious state to something more like alarm. Some combination of sound and smell sent its legs a message to flee.

It tried to rise. It hopped, heavily, a baby step toward the man, away from the threat it perceived. Another burdened hop toward the porch. And another. Midway through the next the chain went taut. The rabbit sounded terminal alarm. Its tail turned toward the woods, and perhaps for a moment it felt safe. Or maybe the chain and collar and the inability of its body to fulfill natural instinct paralyzed it. The only place it could flee was to a space inside itself so close to sleep it resembled living death.

As the rabbit like a fishing bobber signaled something near, the old man removed blanket and hat. His brow was bald and spotted, a long gray collar of hair on his jacket’s shoulders. He revealed himself so not to startle me when I appeared. Treat it as a man, he’d thought, and it will be a man. Treat it as an animal and it will attack as an animal.

He treated me like an animal by offering a live meal, but once I appeared he treated me like an esteemed visitor. I needed him, he knew, for he needed me. It was not the first time such creatures had found mutual comfort.

The rabbit did its best to disappear, escaping its fear like a child covering eyes with small soft palms. It came as close as it could to nonexistence, still as a stone. He heard the snapping of an enormous towel, a musty, whooshy flapping, and there I was. He later told me he’d thought at first I resembled a disfigured sprite, but once I opened my wings again I was gorgeous, an angel descended from family lore.

When young, he had heard of a beast in the pines banished more than a hundred years ago. He identified with the story of a son who had damaged his family and set off into the wild.

I watched him on the porch and sniffed at the rabbit. Ears up, hopping away but held back by a chain, it nearly hanged itself in mid-air.

“If you are the one who puts out these rabbits,” I said, “I thank you.

I emitted these words without excessive rasp. He neither seemed fearful nor able to reply. I wondered whether my first words to a human since last I spoke to Daniel Leeds were understood.

“Thank you,” I said. Again he seemed not to have heard.

He stood and stepped toward me on the porch.

“Do you understand?” I said.

“It’s not a matter of understanding,” he said. No more than five feet from me, he held his blanket like the cape of an amateur bullfighter. “If I throw this blanket over what I see, it will fall straight to the ground. It’s a matter of belief.”

“You understand me?”

“As any man,” he said.

“My heart soars.”

“My head spins.”

I licked back excess saliva. “You raised these rabbits?”

“I hope they appease your hunger. My flesh, by the way, is old and bitter.”

“Except at birth, I have never devoured someone unprovoked.”

“I only hope you accept an offer of friendship. I am old and alone and familiar with your story, though I’m sure you have histories that escaped family lore.”

“All I know is what I’ve overheard,” I said.

“Then we have talk ahead that will interest you. But first, a feast.”

He pointed at the lop-eared Londoner that seemed calmed by the conversation, not understanding a word.