The Rabbit Factory: A Novel by Larry Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

killed him when he did. He went to his grave still apologizing to her for it, and crying over it. But some things you couldn’t do anything for. You just had to get used to having one real leg and one made out of plastic. You had to get used to doing some kind of job that wasn’t too hard but that still brought in some money, like housecleaning, which she’d done for years all over Como and Sardis and Senatobia, or even house-sitting and dog-sitting for rich people like Mr. Hamburger. It wasn’t so bad. Miss Muffett knew that things could always be worse.
    The floors were shining from her diligent mopping with Mr. Clean. She looked behind a tall potted plant. Two small and perfect dog turds lay there, one crossed over the other in an X, almost identical, almost hidden. He had his own little personal dog door built right into the wall there in the kitchen, so why did he keep messing in the house? Because it was cold outside sometimes and he didn’t want to go out to use the bathroom, that’s why. He was very crafty about where he left his surprises. She believed he did it on purpose and it never failed to piss her off.
    “You little shit,” she said.
    She wondered where he was. Sometimes he hid in closets and was small enough to crawl up under the couch in the great room and sleep there undetected for hours. He moved through the house like a ghost, silent. Sometimes he showed her his teeth. And she’d never done one thing to him, hardly, had only tried to discipline him a few times, train him. He just didn’t like her, never had from the first when he was a puppy and she was keeping him and caught him crapping on the fine white-oak floors and warped him a good one with a rolled-up Glamour, which in all honesty was probably a bit heavier than a rolled-up newspaper. That was her right as the housekeeper. The dog shouldn’t have held that against her, she thought, but he evidently did. She’d tried to pet him and make friends with him plenty of times since then, but he wouldn’t let her. It seemed to her that he was holding a grudge. Rather than come whining or begging to her for water whenever his pan was dry, he would make an incredible leap from the rim of the second-floor guest bedroom’s bathroom tub to the seat of the commode, like a cat, and would get on the back side of the seat and put his forepaws down inside on the sloping front of the commode and lower his head, drinking on a downhill grade. She’d seen him do it. He’d drink for a long time, until he got his fill, his long-haired back sticking up through the hole in the toilet seat like some weird wig. She’d watched him once, when she’d heard the faint click of his toenails coming, hiding in the broom closet out in the hall and peeking past the corner of the cracked door.
    Getting back out was harder for him. He had to pick up one paw at a time and get them up on the seat of the commode, and he slipped that day and got his back feet wet. But she figured he had it down to a routine by now. So he wasn’t dumb, not at all. And since he wasn’t dumb, he had enough sense to know by now that he was grown and he wasn’t supposed to go to the bathroom inside the house. But did that stop him? Hell no. He was so cunning and strategic with his deposits that sometimes she didn’t find them for weeks, and by then they had turned chalky white and were hard, like peanuts. She’d cuss him while she bent down awkwardly and picked them up with toilet paper. He was hiding again somewhere, right now. Probably avoiding her. Didn’t want to be friends. Didn’t want to let bygones be bygones. Probably up under the couch again. He was kind of a spooky little dog. Once she’d wakened to a terrific thunderstorm, one so severe the power had gone off, on a night when Mr. Hamburger had gone on another trip to Chicago, and in a flash of blue lightning she’d seen the little dog lying on her chest, whining. She’d risen screaming since it had happened in tandem with a