Rabbit, Chapter One

by bhogg

Book of the Month Contest Winner

Prologue

I suppose that each one of us has a time in our lives, pivotal in the development of character. Certainly not the focus of all knowledge, but more a lens that helps frame our view of the world. I know exactly my time. It was summer and early fall of 1960. I turned nine that summer.

Earlier in March we learned Mom was pregnant. There were already three of us. My older brother John was ten and my younger brother Bob was six. Houses were smaller then, so finding a private spot to speak was hard. I remember overhearing my mom's conversation with Dad. "The baby is due in August and there's no way that I can have this baby with both John and Bill, (me), around at the same time. They fight like cats and dogs. It's constant warfare all the time. I can handle Bob, but not those two. We have to get them out of the house."

Instant panic set in. Just the previous night, we huddled together in the living room and watched the movie, "Boys Town" on our black and white television. It looked to me like Father Flannigan was about to inherit two more boys, my brother John and me. Panic turned to joy as I heard her go on to say, "I've talked to your mom and she will take Bill for the entire summer. My mom will take John. The pregnancy won't be easy at my age, but with those two boys with their grandmothers, it should work out just fine."

Yes! This was great news. I stayed with my grandmother some each summer, usually for two or three weeks. The prospect for the entire summer was just too much. Don't get me wrong. I loved my mom and dad and the house in the country where we lived. My grandmother's place though was to die for. It was a working farm with cows, chickens, horses, gardens, and two ornery mules. There was a pond and creek for fishing and swimming. It was also where my best friend on earth hung out. His name was Virgil Gates.

Some might have thought this a strange friendship. Virge was an eighty-six-year-old black man. He lived in an old cabin on the property. He did work for my grandparents for free rent. He would cut wood, take care of the yard and general chores. His most important job involved the mules. He once described his primary job as, "I'm the mule engineer." Perhaps this was in reference to my grandfather who was a part-time farmer but a full-time railroad engineer.

The two mules paid little attention to any one other than Virge. They were big old mules, one named Red and the other, Buck. My grandfather could plow with them but they played with him. They would act up, pull sideways, buck against their brace and generally make a mess of things. Grandpa claimed that the mules saved their floppy ass, smelly farts for when he was behind them. His rows looked amateurish. Virge's would be straight as an arrow. For some reason, those mules loved Virge. A special treat to me was when he would swing me up on their backs as they moved from their pens to the fields.

Yep, going to stay with my grandmother for the entire summer was something to look forward to. A book that my grandmother frequently read to me was Joel Chandler Harris's 'Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit.' My favorite story concerned the Tar Baby that Br'er Fox came up with to capture Br'er Rabbit. He'd been trying to catch the old rabbit for years and when Br'er Rabbit got stuck on the tar baby, the fox wanted to punish him in special ways. Br'er Rabbit cried out, "Do what you want but please, please don't throw me into the Briar Patch!" Of course he did to the Rabbit's delight. If you haven't read the story, you should. All I knew is that I was being thrown into the briar patch and I loved it.

Chapter 1

Sometimes, you can view your life as a bookshelf. Depending on where you are, that shelf might be full, or pretty empty. In my case, it is pretty full, darn near overflowing. It's full of kid's stories, drama, comedy, novels and books of sheer poetry. To keep things tidy, it helps to have bookends. I have one on the left hand side, but the right hand side is still open; hopefully, more pages to be written and books to add.

My bookend on the left is an old black man named Virgil Gates. Part of this is purely chronological. Virgil came into my life in 1957, when I was just 6 years old. There are things to the left of that bookend, but they are mostly scattered pages and fragments of stories.

I'll never forget when I first met Virgil. My father had just finished a tour of duty in Japan and we had all summer to wait between assignments. We stayed where my father grew up, the family place in West Central Georgia. It was late June and hot. I was looking up the dirt road and had to rub my eyes. There appeared to be two people walking right on top of each other on what looked like water. The air around this apparition was shimmering and wavy. I know now that it was a simple mirage created by mid-day heat on the road bed. For a six year old boy, it just looked strange.

"Grandma - something strange is a walkin' down the road."

She put her ice tea down, smoothed her summer frock, and with her hand shielding her eyes took a look. "Bill, that ain't nothin' strange, that's just old Virge come down to help your Grandpa put the mules in the harness. They're going to plow some of the new ground up."

I looked again. The heat shimmer disappeared as he got closer, and I could tell that it was an old black man. He was not a large man. He had some height, but was quite slim. There were crinkles around his large expressive eyes. His teeth, when smiling, looked like the keys on my grandma's piano. He was dressed in the same fashion as I always saw him from that day on. On the top of his head was a sweat stained railroad engineer's cap. He had on a pair of blue denim overalls, and a long sleeve blue and white striped cotton shirt. On his feet were scuffed brown leather brogans.

Virge walked in a way I'd never seen. It's like he would plant one foot in front of himself and then glide forward the rest of his body to catch up with that foot. My grandma saw me once trying to copy that walk. She just laughed, saying, "You ain't got it in you to walk like that."

Virgil tipped his hat to my grandma as he said, "Hey Ms. Louise. I'm here to help Mr. Horace with dem mules. Who dat little tow head boy on da rocker?"

"Hey Virgil - thanks for coming. That there's Mr. Jack's middle boy, Bill. His brothers John and Bob are around some where. Bill - take Virgil around back. Your grandpa is waiting for him."

For the first and last time, Virgil addressed me in the way that was so common in the South those days. "Mr. Bill - how old you be?"

I had pretty clear directions on how to address older people, so I responded, "Mr. Gates, I'm six. You don't have to call me Mr., just Bill. That's what everybody calls me." He continued the Mr. and Ms. connection with all my family; even my brothers were Mr. John and Mr. Bob. Me though, he treated special. He called me Rabbit.

He also asked me not to call him Mr. "You do dat, and I be lookin aroun to see who you talkin to. You just call me Virge."

My grandma once asked Virgil why he called me Rabbit. "Cuz he's like the rabbit. He sits still and quiet, but all da time, he's pointin dem ears and movin dem eyes. He takin it all in. Ain't nobody gonna get one by de rabbit!" For whatever reason, it stuck. Everybody started calling me Rabbit. I didn't mind.

My brother John and I fought all the time, and my brother Bob was just a baby. By default, Virgil became my best friend. I asked my father once how old Virgil was. His answer said it all. "I'm not sure, but Virgil was an old man when I was your age." I later found out that Virgil was eighty three.

That summer and any time we would visit, I would hang out with Virge. I would help him do his chores and he would help me do mine. If we were done, we could go fishing or just sit on his front porch and rock. He was often visited by his niece, Carrie and his nephew, Joe Leslie. They became part of my life too.

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