The old woman clapped her hands again. “Get to work, Clyde,” she said. “Scare them birds off.” And then she walked away from him, out of the garden and toward her small house.
The birds were insistent. They flew around his head. They tugged at the loose threads in his sweater. One large crow in particular would not leave the rabbit alone. He perched on the pole and screamed a dark message in Edward’s left ear: Caw, caw, caw, without ceasing. As the sun rose higher and shone meaner and brighter, Edward became somewhat dazed. He mistook the large crow for Pellegrina.
Go ahead, he thought. Turn me into a warthog if you want. I don’t care. I am done with caring.
Caw, caw, said the Pellegrina crow.
Finally, the sun set and the birds flew away. Edward hung by his velvet ears and looked up at the night sky. He saw the stars. But for the first time in his life, he looked at them and felt no comfort. Instead, he felt mocked. You are down there alone, the stars seemed to say to him. And we are up here, in our constellations, together.
I have been loved, Edward told the stars.
So? said the stars. What difference does that make when you are all alone now?
Edward could think of no answer to that question.
Eventually, the sky lightened and the stars disappeared one by one. The birds returned and the old woman came back to the garden.
She brought a boy with her.
BRYCE,” SAID THE OLD WOMAN, “GIT away from that rabbit. I ain’t paying you to stand and stare.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bryce. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and continued to look up at Edward. The boy’s eyes were brown with flecks of gold shining in them.
“Hey,” he whispered to Edward.
A crow settled on Edward’s head, and the boy flapped his arms and shouted, “Go on, git!” and the bird spread his wings and flew away.
“Bryce!” shouted the old woman.
“Ma’am?” said Bryce.
“Git away from that rabbit. Do your work. I ain’t gonna say it again.”
“Yes’m,” said Bryce. He wiped his hand across his nose. “I’ll be back to get you,” he said to Edward.
The rabbit spent the day hanging by his ears, baking in the hot sun, watching the old woman and Bryce weed and hoe the garden. Whenever the woman wasn’t looking, Bryce raised his hand and waved.
The birds circled over Edward’s head, laughing at him.
What was it like to have wings? Edward wondered. If he had had wings when he was tossed overboard, he would not have sunk to the bottom of the sea. Instead, he would have flown in the opposite direction, up, into the deep, bright blue sky. And when Lolly took him to the dump, he would have flown out of the garbage and followed her and landed on her head, holding on with his sharp claws. And on the train, when the man kicked him, Edward would not have fallen to the ground; instead he would have risen up and sat on top of the train and laughed at the man: Caw, caw, caw.
In the late afternoon, Bryce and the old lady left the field. Bryce winked at Edward as he walked past him. One of the crows lighted on Edward’s shoulder and tapped with his beak at Edward’s china face, reminding the rabbit with each tap that he had no wings, that not only could he not fly, he could not move on his own at all, in any way.
Dusk descended over the field, and then came true dark. A whippoorwill sang out over and over again. Whip poor Will. Whip poor Will. It was the saddest sound Edward had ever heard. And then came another song, the hum of a harmonica.
Bryce stepped out of the shadows.
“Hey,” he said to Edward. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and then played another bit of song on the harmonica. “I bet you didn’t think I’d come back. But here I am. I come to save you.”
Too late, thought Edward as Bryce climbed the pole and worked at the wires that were tied around his wrists. I am nothing but a hollow rabbit.
Too late, thought Edward as Bryce pulled the nails out of his ears. I am only a doll made of china.
But when the last nail was out and he fell forward into Bryce’s arms, the rabbit felt a rush of relief, and the feeling of relief was followed by one of joy.
Perhaps, he thought, it is not too late, after all, for me to be saved.
BRYCE SLUNG EDWARD OVER HIS shoulder. He started to walk.
“I come to get you for Sarah Ruth,” Bryce said. “You don’t know Sarah Ruth. She’s my sister. She’s sick. She had her a baby doll made out of china. She loved that baby doll. But he broke it.
“He broke it. He was drunk and stepped on that baby’s head and smashed it into a hundred million pieces. Them pieces was so small, I couldn’t make them go back together. I couldn’t. I tried and tried.”
At this point in his story, Bryce stopped walking and shook his head and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.
“Sarah Ruth ain’t had nothing to play with since. He won’t buy her nothing. He says she don’t need nothing. He says she don’t need nothing because she ain’t gonna live. But he don’t know.”
Bryce started to walk again. “He don’t know,” he said.
Who “he” was, was not clear to Edward. What was clear was that he was being taken to a child to make up for the loss of a doll. A doll. How Edward loathed dolls. And to be thought of as a likely replacement for a doll offended him. But still, it was, he had to admit, a highly preferable alternative to hanging by his ears from a post.
The house in which Bryce and Sarah Ruth lived was so small and crooked that Edward did not believe, at first, that it was a house. He mistook it, instead, for a chicken coop. Inside, there were two beds and a kerosene lamp and not much else. Bryce laid Edward at the foot of one of the beds and then lit the lamp.
“Sarah,” Bryce whispered, “Sarah Ruth. You got to wake up now, honey. I brung you something.” He took the harmonica out of his pocket and played the beginning of a simple melody.
The little girl sat up in her bed and immediately started to cough. Bryce put his hand on her back. “That’s all right,” he told her. “That’s okay.”
She was young, maybe four years old, and she had white-blond hair, and even in the poor light of the lamp, Edward could see that her eyes were the same gold-flecked brown as Bryce’s.
“That’s right,” said Bryce. “You go on ahead and cough.”
Sarah Ruth obliged him. She coughed and coughed and coughed. On the wall of the cabin, the kerosene light cast her trembling shadow, hunched over and small. The coughing was the saddest sound that Edward had ever heard, sadder even than the mournful call of the whippoorwill. Finally, Sarah Ruth stopped.
Bryce said, “You want to see what I brung you?”
Sarah Ruth nodded.
“You got to close your eyes.”
The girl closed her eyes.
Bryce picked up Edward and held him so that he was standing straight, like a soldier, at the end of the bed. “All right now, you can open them.”
Sarah Ruth opened her eyes, and Bryce moved Edward’s china legs and china arms so it looked as if he were dancing.
Sarah Ruth laughed and clapped her hands. “Rabbit,” she said.
“He’s for you, honey,” said Bryce.
Sarah Ruth looked first at Edward and then at Bryce and then back at Edward again, her eyes wide and disbelieving.
“He’s yours.”
“Mine?”
Sarah Ruth, Edward was soon to discover, rarely said more than one word at a time. Words, at least several of them strung together, made her cough. She limited herself. She said only what needed to be said.
“Yours,” said Bryce. “I got him special for you.”
This knowledge provoked another fit of coughing in Sarah Ruth, and she hunched over again. When the fit was done, she uncurled herself and held out her arms.
“That’s right,” said Bryce. He handed Edward to her.
“Baby,” said Sarah Ruth.
She rocked Edward back and forth and stared down at him and smiled.
&n
bsp; Never in his life had Edward been cradled like a baby. Abilene had not done it. Nor had Nellie. And most certainly Bull had not. It was a singular sensation to be held so gently and yet so fiercely, to be stared down at with so much love. Edward felt the whole of his china body flood with warmth.
“You going to give him a name, honey?” Bryce asked.
“Jangles,” said Sarah Ruth without taking her eyes off Edward.
“Jangles, huh? That’s a good name. I like that name.”
Bryce patted Sarah Ruth on the head. She continued to stare down at Edward.
“Hush,” she said to Edward as she rocked him back and forth.
“From the minute I first seen him,” said Bryce, “I knew he belonged to you. I said to myself, ‘That rabbit is for Sarah Ruth, for sure.’”
“Jangles,” murmured Sarah Ruth.
Outside the cabin, thunder cracked and then came the sound of rain falling on the tin roof. Sarah Ruth rocked Edward back and forth, back and forth, and Bryce took out his harmonica and started to play, making his song keep rhythm with the rain.
BRYCE AND SARAH RUTH HAD A father.
Early the next morning, when the light was gray and uncertain, Sarah Ruth was sitting up in bed, coughing, and the father came home. He picked Edward up by one of his ears and said, “I ain’t never.”
“It’s a baby doll,” said Bryce.
“Don’t look like no baby doll to me.”
Edward, hanging by one ear, was frightened. This, he was certain, was the man who crushed the heads of china dolls.
“Jangles,” said Sarah Ruth between coughs. She held out her arms.
“He’s hers,” said Bryce. “He belongs to her.”
The father dropped Edward on the bed, and Bryce picked up the rabbit and handed him to Sarah Ruth.
“It don’t matter anyway,” said the father. “It don’t make no difference. None of it.”
“It does so matter,” said Bryce.
“Don’t you sass me,” said the father. He raised his hand and slapped Bryce across his mouth and then he turned and left the house.
“You ain’t got to worry about him,” said Bryce to Edward. “He ain’t nothing but a bully. And besides, he don’t hardly ever come home.”
Fortunately, the father did not come back that day. Bryce went out to work and Sarah Ruth spent the day in bed, holding Edward in her lap and playing with a box filled with buttons.
“Pretty,” she said to Edward as she lined up the buttons on the bed and arranged them into different patterns.
Sometimes, when a coughing fit was particularly bad, she squeezed Edward so tight that he was afraid he would crack in two. Also, in between coughing fits, she took to sucking on one or the other of Edward’s ears. Normally, Edward would have found intrusive, clingy behavior of this sort very annoying, but there was something about Sarah Ruth. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do more for her.
At the end of the day, Bryce returned with a biscuit for Sarah Ruth and a ball of twine for Edward.
Sarah Ruth held the biscuit in both hands and took small, tentative bites.
“You eat that all up, honey. Let me hold Jangles,” said Bryce. “Him and me got a surprise for you.”
Bryce took Edward off in a corner of the room, and with his pocketknife, he cut off lengths of twine and tied them to Edward’s arms and feet and then tied the twine to sticks of wood.
“See, all day I been thinking about it,” Bryce said, “what we’re going to do is make you dance. Sarah Ruth loves dancing. Mama used to hold on to her and dance her around the room.
“You eating that biscuit?” Bryce called out to Sarah Ruth.
“Uh-huh,” said Sarah Ruth.
“You hold on, honey. We got a surprise for you.” Bryce stood up. “Close your eyes,” he told her. He took Edward over to the bed and said, “Okay, you can open them now.”
Sarah Ruth opened her eyes.
“Dance, Jangles,” said Bryce. And then, moving the strings with the sticks with his one hand, Bryce made Edward dance and drop and sway. And the whole while, at the same time, with his other hand, he held on to the harmonica and played a bright and lively tune.
Sarah Ruth laughed. She laughed until she started to cough, and then Bryce laid Edward down and took Sarah Ruth in his lap and rocked her and rubbed her back.
“You want some fresh air?” he asked her. “Let’s get you out of this nasty old air, huh?”
Bryce carried his sister outside. He left Edward lying on the bed, and the rabbit, staring up at the smoke-stained ceiling, thought again about having wings. If he had them, he thought, he would fly high above the world, to where the air was clear and sweet, and he would take Sarah Ruth with him. He would carry her in his arms. Surely, so high above the world, she would be able to breathe without coughing.
After a minute, Bryce came back inside, still carrying Sarah Ruth.
“She wants you, too,” he said.
“Jangles,” said Sarah Ruth. She held out her arms.
So Bryce held Sarah Ruth and Sarah Ruth held Edward and the three of them stood outside.
Bryce said, “You got to look for falling stars. Them are the ones with magic.”
They were quiet for a long time, all three of them looking up at the sky. Sarah Ruth stopped coughing. Edward thought that maybe she had fallen asleep.
“There,” she said. And she pointed to a star streaking through the night sky.
“Make a wish, honey,” Bryce said, his voice high and tight. “That’s your star. You make you a wish for anything you want.”
And even though it was Sarah Ruth’s star, Edward wished on it, too.
THE DAYS PASSED. THE SUN ROSE and set and rose and set again and again. Sometimes the father came home and sometimes he did not. Edward’s ears became soggy and he did not care. His sweater had almost completely unraveled and it didn’t bother him. He was hugged half to death and it felt good. In the evenings, at the hands of Bryce, at the ends of the twine, Edward danced and danced.
One month passed and then two and then three. Sarah Ruth got worse. In the fifth month, she refused to eat. And in the sixth month, she began to cough up blood. Her breathing became ragged and uncertain, as if she was trying to remember, in between breaths, what to do, what breathing was.
“Breathe, honey,” Bryce stood over her and said.
Breathe, thought Edward from deep inside the well of her arms. Please, please breathe.
Bryce stopped leaving the house. He sat at home all day and held Sarah Ruth in his lap and rocked her back and forth and sang to her; on a bright morning in September, Sarah Ruth stopped breathing.
“Oh no,” said Bryce. “Oh, honey, take a little breath. Please.”
Edward had fallen out of Sarah Ruth’s arms the night before and she had not asked for him again. So, face-down on the floor, arms over his head, Edward listened as Bryce wept. He listened as the father came home and shouted at Bryce. He listened as the father wept.
“You can’t cry!” Bryce shouted. “You got no right to cry. You never even loved her. You don’t know nothing about love.”
“I loved her,” said the father. “I loved her.”
I loved her, too, thought Edward. I loved her and now she is gone. How could this be? he wondered. How could he bear to live in a world without Sarah Ruth?
The yelling between the father and son continued, and then there was a terrible moment when the father insisted that Sarah Ruth belonged to him, that she was his girl, his baby, and that he was taking her to be buried.
“She ain’t yours!” Bryce screamed. “You can’t take her. She ain’t yours.”
But the father was bigger and stronger, and he prevailed. He wrapped Sarah Ruth in a blanket and carried her away. The small house became very quiet. Edward could hear Bryce moving around, muttering to himself. And then, finally, the boy picked Edward up.
“Come on, Jangles,” Bryce said. “We’re leaving. We’re going to Memphis.
”
HOW MANY DANCING RABBITS HAVE you seen in your life?” Bryce said to Edward. “I can tell you how many I seen. One. You. That’s how you and me are going to make some money. I seen it the last time I was in Memphis. Folks put on any kind of show right there on the street corner and people pay ’em for it. I seen it.”
The walk to town took all night. Bryce walked without stopping, carrying Edward under one arm and talking to him the whole time. Edward tried to listen, but the terrible scarecrow feeling had come back, the feeling he had when he was hanging by his ears in the old lady’s garden, the feeling that nothing mattered, and that nothing would ever matter again.
And not only did Edward feel hollow; he ached. Every part of his china body hurt. He ached for Sarah Ruth. He wanted her to hold him. He wanted to dance for her.
And he did dance, but it was not for Sarah Ruth. Edward danced for strangers on a dirty street corner in Memphis. Bryce played his harmonica and moved Edward’s strings, and Edward bowed and shuffled and swayed and people stopped to stare and point and laugh. On the ground in front of them was Sarah Ruth’s button box. The lid was open to encourage people to drop change inside it.
“Mama,” said a small child, “look at that bunny. I want to touch him.” He reached out his hand for Edward.
“No,” said the mother, “dirty.” She pulled the child back, away from Edward. “Nasty,” she said.
A man wearing a hat stopped and stared at Edward and Bryce.
“It’s a sin to dance,” he said. And then after a long pause, he said, “It’s a particular sin for rabbits to dance.”
The man took off his hat and held it over his heart. He stood and watched the boy and the rabbit for a long time. Finally, he put his hat back on his head and walked away.
The shadows lengthened. The sun became an orange dusty ball low in the sky. Bryce started to cry. Edward saw his tears land on the pavement. But the boy did not stop playing his harmonica. He did not make Edward stop dancing.