Big Bad Love by Larry Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

out from under my corn crib. The only thing was they kept the rats away and I guess a man has to give up one or two things to get another thing or two, but I went and got me a hammer handle and put that baby rabbit out of its misery. I used to raise them a long time ago, rabbits. I was pretty familiar with the rabbit family. They were so cute when they were little. Justlittle balls of fur. They’d hop around there in the cage, eating lettuce, plus I fed them Purina Rabbit Chow, and they grew pretty fast on that, and it wouldn’t be but about eight weeks before they’d be ready to kill. They’ll dress out about two pounds of meat at that age. By then your doe’s bred again and expecting some more or maybe even having them by then, and they’ll eat you out of house and home if you don’t harden your heart and take eight or ten of them and a hammer handle out behind the corn crib and knock them in the head. I had some neighbor kids then. They played with those rabbits all the time. They’d hold them up beside their cheeks and just smile and smile and rub that fur with their faces. And here I was out behind the corn crib while the kids were in school, knocking rabbits in the head and dressing them and then telling the kids they got out of the cage and ran away. It finally made me so uneasy and torn in different directions I had to quit it. I gave my doe away and turned the buck loose, I guess the coyotes ate him. I was thinking about all that while I was riding around, looking for a drink. I knew Mildred wouldn’t be happy to see that dead dog in the yard. I knew she’d be happy to see it dead, only not in the yard.
    I ran up on a Negro fishing by a bridge and stopped and hollered at him and asked him did he have anything to drink. It turned out it was Barthy, or Bartholemew, Pettigrew, a Negro I’d been knowing for most of my life. I had even picked some cotton with him a long time before, in my teenaged years. He didn’t want to let on like he had anything to drink, but I knew he did because he always did. He was an old-timey Negro, one that wouldn’t give you any sass. Of course I don’t thinkone man ought to have to bow down to another one because of the color of his skin. But I had to get down in the creek with him and squat down talking to him before he’d even let on that he might have
anything
to drink. And what he had wasn’t much. Three Old Milwaukees in some cool water that his minnows were swimming around in. We talked about cotton and cows for ten minutes and corn some, then finally I gave him a dollar and got one of his beers. He didn’t know where U. T. Oslin was.
    By the time I’d gone about a mile I’d finished half of that one. I knew that wasn’t going to get it. I had a dog to bury, and I knew it would take more than one half-hot Old Milwaukee. I checked my billfold and I think I had four dollars. I kept driving slower and drinking slower, but the closer I got to the bottom, the hotter it got. I drank the rest of it and chunked the can out the window. I would have loved to’ve had about a cold six-pack iced down, and about ten dollars worth of gas in my truck. I could have rode and rode and drank then. I decided I might better get back to the house and see if I could find my checkbook.
    Mildred wasn’t in yet. My old dog hadn’t moved any. I poked him a little with my tennis shoe toe. He just sort of moved inside his skin and came back to rest. I estimated the time before Mildred would be home. I judged it to be about forty-five minutes. That was enough time for a shower, piss on burying the dog. I figured I could do it when I come back in. I’d already taken that first drink and I wanted another one. And I told myself it wasn’t every day a man’s dog up and died.
    I run inside and showered and shaved and slapped some shit on my hair. I drove uptown and wrote a twenty-dollar check at Kroger’s, picked up