Rabbit’s Foot
I watch the water droplets tremble against the walls of my tent. It reminds me of sweat beading along a long, pale neck, and I swallow against the morning dryness of my throat. I remind myself that if there’s enough light to see dewdrops, there’s enough light to work. I slip from my sleeping bag, wincing at the sound of the nylon rasping against itself, and unzip the doorway. Three large mosquitoes immediately rush inside, seeking the warmth of my blood, but I pay them no mind. They will find no meal in me, trapped where I was.
The forest is quiet, as it often is early in the morning. The high-pitched grind of the tent’s zipper feels like shouting in a library. My spine tingles as though I am being stared at by a thousand judging eyes, but when I turn around there is no one to greet me but the trees.
Morning mist has settled on the forest floor, making the world pale and blurry at the edges. I walk the perimeter of my camp, eyes tracking every moving leaf and wisp of fog. I pause on a rock that has been cleared of forest debris, eyes closed and holding my breath so I can listen.
Somewhere, far away, a whip-poor-will is calling.
My machete is strapped to my belt. I’d had a gun, months ago, but it had fallen into the lake during a scuffle. I tighten the laces of my boots and mentally count how many days it’s been since I last changed my clothes. Probably long enough that I’ve started to smell, but I have little reason to care about that.
Although the fog clings to its shape as the morning continues to warm, I count this day as a lucky one. Two successful catches come from my traps: a rabbit, which appears to have broken its own neck in an attempt to escape, and a struggling squirrel that I kill with my machete. A third trap was set off, but all that remains in the snare is a rabbit foot ending in a bloody stump. I crouch next to it, fingers hovering to re-set the wire, but I pause. The brown fur looks soft, and I remember the rabbit’s foot my father once gave me as a birthday present.
‘It’s lucky,’ he had told me.
‘Not for the rabbit,’ I had replied.
I look down at my hands. There’s a smudge of blood on my left thumb from when I handled the freshly-dead squirrel. I give myself a sliver of time to remember the way it had felt to throw my arms around another person’s shoulders. The flush that was brought to my face whenever someone squeezed me tightly. The feeling of warm, human skin under my hands. Looking at my empty palms carves out a tight, aching hollow in my chest.
Something moves in the leaf litter to my left. My hand snaps to the handle of my machete, but it is only a small brown rabbit, digging amongst the wet leaves for its breakfast. It lifts its head to regard me cautiously, glassy black eyes shiny with what I imagine to be fear. I feel a stab of empathy for the tiny creature, hunted every moment of its life. I want to say: me too, little one.
The rabbit hears something that I do not, and with a flash of white tail and kicked debris, flees. I hold my breath in the ensuing silence, but I can hear nothing except the whip-poor-will, still crying his morning song.
The sun has risen high enough to burn away the last of the stubborn fog, and I am in the process of skinning my catches. The rabbit’s pelt comes off like a wet sock, a trick my father had taught me on a weekend hunting trip, and I heft the skin in my hand for a moment before tossing it aside. I feel as though I should try and use it, somehow, but I wouldn’t know where to start, and I don’t have the time or security to figure it out through trial-and-error.
I think about how my little sister had once told me, a book clutched to her chest, that rabbits will die if they are alone for too long. Not because of disease or predators, but because the loneliness makes them wither away. I had been doubtful then, certain that any animal that could die of loneliness wasn’t meant to survive for very long. Now, washing rabbit blood from my hands to keep the scent from attracting any unwanted visitors, I wonder if humans are anything like rabbits. Perhaps I, too, will die of loneliness long before something comes to kill me. I wonder if that would be worse.
By the time I set the meat cooking over my small fire, I still don’t have an answer. The rustling branches, however, tell me that loneliness probably won’t be what kills me.
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