NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Lark is looking down into her own shadow as we stand in front of Diddlie’s house waiting for her to come home.
“She texted me that she was home. I don’t get it!”
“Let’s look in the backyard.”
We walk through the carport toward the back. Mr. Liddell presses his head against the front of his box. Lark walks over to him.
“Where is she, Mr.?”
“Look at all the straw he has thrown out!”
“Yes, he seems to be unsettled.”
He twitches an ear and his sensitive pink nose quivers.
We go on into the cicada’s seventeen-year garden song, stepping over a cluster of empty exoskeletons, curled like cashews. Lark shades her eyes with her hand, looking towards the Trip house next door.
“I don’t see her back here.”
“No, but look over there!”
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“A white rabbit just ran behind the compost heap.”
“No way, Mr. Liddell is in his hutch. We both saw him.”
“Well, he’s got company!”
We can hear the garage door open next door.
“Have you seen anything of Trip lately?”
“No, he is always jetting around. Is that him now?”
“Well, there was some doubt for a while, after Gale left him and the house had that notice on the door, but I think this is still his address.”
We both watch a hawk flapping hard over our heads with a white meal in its claws. It crosses Oval Street to perch in a broken red oak, which was struck by lightning last year.
“That hawk has carry-out.”
“Can you imagine getting rabbit carryout?”
“Bunny on a bun?”
“Only for hawks.”
“Look at that front!”
We can also see a continent of dark cloud drifting into the blue overhead.
“More rain!”
“This has got to be the rainiest year since I moved here.”
“A cicada just landed on your hair.”
“Get it off, will you?”
I pick it off and it flies out of my fingers. It’s yellow and black striped thorax suggestive of a sting.
“Look, there are two more bunnies!”
“Yes, and there’s one looking at us from under that hydrangea.”
I follow Lark slowly towards Diddlie’s excavated compost heap.
We look at the heap on one side and a new rectangle of concrete about twelve feet square.
“No rabbit here.”
“See that Fred, someone sealed up the cave-in.”
“The cave-in to what? That is the question.”
“Oh! Don’t get me started on that skullduggery!”
“Here comes the rain.”
Heavy drops splash on the broad hydrangea leaves, which dip gently under the impact.
“You know, I still have Theo’s umbrella. Should have brought it.”
“How is Theo?”
“Didn’t you hear? He died of complications from COVID.”
“Yes, I think you told me.”
“Right, back in February, February 19th. I was there.”
“Was he in the hospital all that time?”
“He was out for a while in November and December and back in by Christmas and I was taking care of him. You know, at my place.”
“You did well not to get infected!”
“I think I did, but it was a light case.”
“Have you been tested?”
“No.”
“How about vax?”
“No, I don’t trust it, besides I figure I have immunity now.”
“You don’t trust it?”
“No, it is a profit center for those big companies. There hasn’t been enough time to tell what the longer-term side effects may be.”
“That is a question alright, but it has saved a lot of lives and the economy too.”
“So, people say. So, the experts say. I think there is a lot more to come. Just think about the new Delta variant.”
“Okay, so, what about Theo?”
“He was a depressive.”
“I guess he was alone in the world.”
“Yeah, I didn’t see it when we were young and having sex all the time.”
“You think he was driven to it?”
“We both were!”
“At least you enjoyed it!”
“Oh Yeah! But it was kind of obsessive.”
“Gratifying!”
“Yeah, we didn’t talk about love.”
The rain comes to nothing. More cicadas land on both of us and we move back into the carport, throwing them off into the hydrangea by the entrance.
“Theo, kind of cut himself off.”
“Lucky you were there for him!”
“I know. I am in deep trouble. Augie went back West then
Theo got sick and Boyd took off too. I mean, what’s with the men in my life?”
“I don’t know Lark. Things seem to be piling up on you!”
“Yeah, really! Boyd found out Theo was at my house and came back for a while.”
“So, COVID brought you back together!”
“Well, kind of.”
“You and Boyd were not doing well together last time I saw you.”
“I told him that Theo was his real father and he got mad as hell.”
“Why didn’t you tell him before?”
“I wasn’t sure until we got a DNA test but then I couldn’t find him to tell him.”
“The resemblance was so strong I wonder if you really needed a test?”
“Well, I needed a test. I was fooling around a lot back then.”
“Have you heard from Keyes?”
“No, and I haven’t heard from either of them since they drove away in that car.”
“I’ll never forget that huge pink car!”
“God! How could Boyd have hooked up with that idiot!”
“What are you two doing back here?”
Diddlie walks in under the carport holding a green and orange Snaz-Naturals plastic bag over her head.
“Looking for you, Diddlie.”
“Well, I come in through the front, you know.”
“You texted that you were home, so here we are!”
“You didn’t say anything about Fred.”
“No, he happened by as I got here.”
“Well, I happened over to Lou’s after texting you.”
“Okay, and?”
“He said Mr. Liddell had come over into his yard.”
“No! He’s over there in his hutch.”
“I know but there was a white rabbit back there among the jewelweeds.”
“So, the Liddell family are visiting.”
“Lark, this is serious.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“There are plenty of brown bunnies around here, but I have never seen a wild white one.”
“Okay, so maybe it is someone else’s pet?”
“Maybe, but this is the third white one I have been called about.”
“You think there are that many?”
“They were all different. I can tell.”
“Well, I don’t know where they came from.”
“I think they are lab animals!”
“You mean they escaped?”
“Maybe, or maybe they were released.”
“You mean like retired?”
“I mean like in an experiment.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“First the Trump virus then the COVID virus and now a plague of white bunnies!”
“AND, cicadas!”
“Look up there.”
Lark points toward the top of a mature white oak on the edge of Diddlie’s yard.
“See, that new growth on the ends of the branches. It is all dying!”
Diddlie shakes her head. A Cicada wing catches the sunlight among the waves in her hair.
“That’s just cicada damage. Nothing to it.”
Lark steps closer to Diddlie.
“Well, something is killing those trees!”
“Sure, climate change and new bugs.”
Diddlie steps back, away from Lark’s advance.
“We used to live in the woods around here. Now it is getting more like a housing estate with some trees.”
“Don’t forget this was all farmland when these houses were built, and people let the trees grow instead of planting lawns.”
Lark advances again.
“And that hasn’t happened in many places!”
“The original houses went up about eighty years ago and that’s how old most of these white oaks are.”
Diddlie steps back again next to Mr. Liddel’s cage.
“Bails Lane is like McMansion Land. There’s three in a row now, erupting out of a long strip of lawn.”
“No sweat, they won’t last a generation. They are made out of glue, sawdust, and staples!”
“Well, it makes a pretty picture and that’s what people want.”
”As seen on TV!”
“With two trees left.”
“I know, and they are sick.”
“Did you see the old bamboo is coming up through that new grass?”
Lark steps forward again.
“Revenge of the invader!”
“Lark, keep your social distance, alright?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“She steps back again.
A translucent curtain of rain is drawn across the open sides of the carport.
Mr. Liddell screams in panic thrashing straw out of his hutch with his hind legs.
Wet white bunnies are crowding into the carport.
