Five Rabbits Came Home From the Timber

That same Friday, Della’s dad came home.

He drove straight from Missouri, eight hours in a co-op truck with two other linemen, and he did not even go in the house. He got out at the end of the driveway, still in his work boots and his orange shirt, and walked across the yard to Della, and picked her up off the ground like she was four years old.

He did not say anything for a long time. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Della girl. I should have moved them.”

She said, “It’s not your fault, Daddy.”

He said, “Yes it is. Some of it is.”

Then he went inside, changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, came back out, and walked into the timber with us. He walked it till six o’clock that night without stopping once.

I do not know what was said in that house that weekend. That is between them. I know he slept in the camper out back for two nights. I know Shawna drove to her mother’s on Saturday and came back on Sunday. I know that on Sunday morning, his truck was not in the church parking lot, and neither was hers.

I am not telling you that to make anybody look bad. I am telling you because it happened, and because a lot of people saw it, and because in a town this size, people talk.

People did talk. Somebody at the elevator asked me about it on Monday. Somebody at the gas station asked Della’s dad. By Tuesday, half the 4-H club knew. I did not tell them. Nadine did not tell them. It just went out the way things go out on a blacktop road, from one kitchen to the next.

I asked people to let it be. I said the rabbits were the point. Most people did.

The fifth one came home on Tuesday morning, three days before the fair.

It was a little broken-colored buck, white with black patches, named Pumpkin. He was the one Della had worried about most, because he was the youngest and the boldest. Huck found him almost a half mile away, on the far side of the creek, sitting in the middle of a hayfield.

He went across that field after him on his belly through the stubble, a foot at a time, for twenty minutes, with his net flat on the ground ahead of him. When he got close enough, he brought it up and over in one move.

He walked back across that field holding the rabbit against his chest like it was made of glass. He handed it to Della without a word.

Della looked at that rabbit, and then she looked at Huck, and she threw both arms around his neck and hugged him in front of everybody.

He turned as red as a beet. Then he said, “That’s five,” and went to get his bike.

We never found the other two.