John Brandon - A Million Heavens

“I remember,” his sister-in-law repeated. “But it was easy back then.”

A small noise issued from behind them, a throat-clearing, and they turned to see an old man approach a nearby grave. He pulled a newspaper out from under his arm and rested it in front of the stone. It wasn’t yellowed or stiff, the paper. It looked like today’s paper. The old man removed his hat with a shaky hand. He didn’t seem to notice anyone else was around, and Mayor Cabrera and his sister-in-law, in order not to disturb him, grew still and quiet.

He was in ninth grade but was almost six feet tall and had strapping forearms. Each morning he came out before he left for school and fed his rabbit and stroked its ears back. It wasn’t a normal rabbit, nor even a jackrabbit. It was some European breed with long hair and a permanent frown that the boy’s mother had rescued from a defunct circus. The rabbit looked like a wizard. It had taken the boy’s mother one day to realize she didn’t want the rabbit inside the house and two days to realize it would make a poor pet. By then, the boy was attached.

When the boy came out, still chewing his last bite of cereal, he saw the buzzards all around and knew what had happened. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew the rabbit was dead. He couldn’t see the cage from where he stood because it was tucked against the side of the house in a utility shed that was really only some sheets of plywood. The buzzards had not dared inside. They were building courage. The wolf now knew everything about the boy. The wolf, by this time of morning, was hiding somewhere on the edge of the wilderness. He was hiding but he wasn’t worried about getting shot or captured. He was worried because the songs were coming less often and he needed them more and more. The girl in the house with the chickens was failing him. The wolf would have been relieved, somewhere inside him, to have the humans corner him, the same as the pets were relieved in their souls when they saw the wolf’s eyes before them.

The boy, the rabbit’s owner, was always alone at the house in the mornings because his mother worked early, and for once the boy was grateful for this. He went in and got the shotgun and the paper bag of shells. The paper of the bag was stiff and rough, like it had been rained on and then dried out. He sat himself on a stack of vinyl siding and aimed the shotgun and put even pressure on the trigger. Then he quickly fired the other shell. Then he reloaded. He was so close to his targets, he didn’t have to use the bead at the end of the barrel. Each time he shot a pair of buzzards he had to wait for the rest of them to resettle. They would scurry a short ways, flapping and stumbling, wanting to get to safety but not wanting to forfeit their spot in the chow line. The boy didn’t want to see the rabbit yet. He wasn’t going to school. He was excusing himself. He shot twice and waited, shot twice and waited. The sun ascended shapeless and white. After a half-hour, there were more buzzards, not fewer. Some of them had lost interest in the hidden rabbit and were poking at their dead brethren. The man who lived on the next property came over to see what was happening. When he realized the boy’s pet was dead and the boy was almost out of ammo, he allowed the shooting to continue. It was a sight. The yard looked war-torn. The shot buzzards were fifty low, tattered flags from fifty defeated little forces.

In time, the boy had to go look. He saw. The rabbit had beaten its head against the bars. The boy had been right that the cage was sturdy enough to keep out any predator, but he had not counted on an animal that would scare the rabbit to death just to do it. The wolf hadn’t wanted to eat the rabbit, only to torture it. It was a lot for the boy to take in.

The man from the next property sent the boy inside. He agreed that the boy didn’t need to go to school that day. The man got his pickup truck and tossed every last buzzard in the bed, so he could haul them out in the desert and dump them. He couldn’t believe how light they were. Each bird weighed about as much as an apple. He had a tarpaulin cover for the bed and he stretched it on, to keep the rest of the buzzards at bay. He wondered if all the live ones would follow him when he drove off, a grim cloud. He got the rabbit out of its cage and rested it on the seat of his truck, and then he grabbed a shovel. He was going to dig a grave for the rabbit, and the buzzards he was going to dump on the side of a little-used road, to show them what it felt like.

He finally answered one of Gee’s calls and she told him before he could even say hello that she was only interested, at this point in her life, in getting swept up in a person, and that with Soren’s father she had been doing all the sweeping. She wasn’t looking to take care of someone. She wasn’t misery looking for company. She had given more than she’d gotten all her life, she told Soren’s father. All her life. She’d realized she’d wanted to start a restaurant mostly for him , to give him a partner and work to do and distraction and self-respect, and so she’d scrapped the plan. The restaurant was off. She was going to work on her memoir full time, something selfish, something for her.

Soren’s father had a perverse impulse to beg her not to leave him, to say he wanted to join in on the restaurant even, but he was able to swallow it. She had never been angry with him before.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. Just be grateful. Be grateful for the time you had with me.”

“I’m that too.”

Gee exhaled into the phone. “This was the last time I was going to try calling you. I’m driving to Phoenix to see my son. Bags are packed.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Not yet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Drive into his six-month-old neighborhood in my twenty-year-old van and knock on the front door of his mini-mansion. That’s what.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Soren’s father said. “I wish you luck.”

“I can feel that it’s time,” said Gee.

Soren’s father was grateful to know Gee, but he was also grateful to her for sharing her intentions about seeing her son. It was good news that felt like good news. Gee could’ve said her little piece about breaking up with him and then hung up the phone. Soren’s father felt a burning in his sinuses and realized it was the beginning of tears. He took a greedy breath to hold them back.

“There’s going to be a reunion,” Gee said. “And that occasion will be the final triumphant chapter of my memoir.”

“I’ll read it when it comes out.”

“And it will come out,” Gee said. “I’ve done harder things in my life than publish a damn book.”

“Yeah, you tried to be my girlfriend.”

“I was trying to help myself at first. I thought I needed to get close to Soren or close to you. I thought I needed something, but I don’t. I’ve fixed myself dozens of times.”

“I’ve never fixed myself once.”

“You don’t need a whole lot of fixing. You don’t need a complete overhaul. You’re just a little lost.”

Soren’s father looked over at his son. Whenever he was upset, it seemed to him that Soren was breathing slower, but it was only Soren’s father’s impatience.

“Let’s say I’m lost,” he said. “What am I supposed to look for?”

“You don’t find anything,” Gee told him. “You just be brave. You make that a policy.”

Soren’s father had never thought about bravery. He didn’t know what his policy was.

“We’re friends,” Gee said, “and I’m going to tell you one thing before I get off the phone.”

“Okay,” said Soren’s father.