The Children on the Hill(5)
She was swinging and reading, and listening to the porch swing creak, creak, creak until the creaking became a song—torrent of light, torrent of light, torrent of light—and she closed her eyes to listen harder.
That’s when she heard her name being called. From far away at first, then closer. Louder, more frantic: Vi, Vi, VI!
She opened her eyes and saw her brother. He was tearing up the driveway, bare-chested. His red T-shirt was wadded up in his hands, wrapping something he cradled carefully as he sprinted toward her. He was crying, his face streaked with mud and tears. Whenever Vi saw him shirtless, she thought her little brother looked like one of those terrible pictures you saw in National Geographic of a starving kid: his head too big for his pale, stick-thin body, his ribs pressed up against his skin so you could count each one like the bars of a xylophone.
Eric’s tube socks were pulled up nearly to his knobby knees, yellow stripes at the top. His blue Keds were worn through at the toes, his shorts ragged cutoffs of last year’s Toughskins jeans. His crazy tangle of curly brown hair bobbed like a strange nest on top of his head. After the long Vermont winter, he was pale as the inside of a potato.
“What happened?” Vi asked, standing up, setting her book down on the swing.
“It’s a baby rabbit,” he gasped, holding the filthy bundle to his chest, unwrapping it enough for Vi to see the brown fur of the tiny creature. “It’s hurt,” Eric said, voice cracking. “I think… I think it might be dead.”
Eric was always saving animals: stray cats, a woodchuck rescued from the jaws of a dog, countless mice and rats from Gran’s experiments in the basement—rodents too old to run the mazes, to be conditioned by treats and little electric jolts. Eric felt bad for the animals in the basement and had even freed one—Big White Rat, who Gran thought had managed to escape on his own and now lived in the walls of their house and made appearances from time to time, but could never be caught.
Eric’s bedroom had been turned into a crazy zoo full of aquariums and metal cages. He had a whole city of plastic tubes connecting Habitrail cages full of mice running on wheels, building nests with cardboard and newspaper. His room always smelled like cedar shavings, alfalfa, and pee. Gran not only put up with Eric’s bedroom zoo but seemed pleased by it, proud even. “You have a way with animals,” she would say, smiling at him. “A gentleness and kindness they pick up on.”
He knew everything about animals: their Latin names, how they were all ordered by family, genus, species. His hero was Charles Darwin, and Eric said he wanted to grow up and travel around the world studying animals just like Darwin had.
Vi leaped down off the porch steps. “Let’s see,” she said.
“Is Gran here?” he asked hopefully. Even though she was a human doctor (not even a regular doctor, a psychiatrist), Gran was a miracle worker with hurt animals. She could mend broken bones, do stitches, even minor surgery. She also knew when an animal couldn’t be saved and was quick to put it out of its misery with a tiny injection or a rag soaked in chloroform.
“No. She had to go to the Inn.”
Vi lifted the folds of the red shirt, put her hand on the rabbit. It gave a twitch when she touched it. She couldn’t tell where the blood on the T-shirt was coming from, but it seemed like a lot for such a tiny body. She looked from the rabbit to her brother’s worried face.
“Old Mac killed the mama. Got her with his twenty-two. He shot at this guy too, but then it ran into the bushes, and I grabbed him.” He bit his lip, more tears sliding down his cheeks. “Mac’s probably on his way here right now to finish the job.” He swiveled his head around, looking down the driveway, out across the road, at the massive front lawn and gardens that surrounded the Hillside Inn. And sure enough, Mac was heading their way: a stooped scarecrow of a man in a wide-brimmed hat and tan work pants, carrying a rifle. Why Gran would ever let the caretaker at a lunatic hospital walk around with a loaded gun was beyond Vi, but as Gran was fond of pointing out, the Inn was not like any other hospital anywhere.
“What we’re doing here,” Gran always said, “is revolutionary.” And as Vi watched Old Mac, an ex-patient himself, stalking toward them, she thought, Revolutionary? as her heart hammered and all the spit in her mouth dried up.
“Take the rabbit into the kitchen,” Vi ordered her brother. “Go!”
“What about Mac?” he asked, swallowing hard, eyes wild.
“I’ll take care of Mac. Don’t worry.”
Eric rewrapped the baby rabbit and ran up the porch steps, flung open the front door, and hurried inside.
Vi stood waiting, hands on her hips, watching Old Mac get closer, adjusting the gun in his hands, his jaw working like he was chewing something tough.
“Help you, Mr. MacDermot, sir?” she said when he was close enough to hear.
“Those rabbits are destroying the entire vegetable garden. No more spinach or lettuce left,” he said. He spoke slowly, with a slight slur, like the words were thick and heavy in his mouth. Medication, Vi thought. Most of the patients at the Inn were on medication. It could make them move and walk funny, have trouble talking.
Mac was a tall man with a weathered face and icy blue eyes. He licked his lips constantly so they were always chapped and raw-looking. “T-t-tell your brother to bring that animal out here. It don’t belong in the house.”