Orwell's Luck (2 page)

This is not a bad reputation to have.

"I thought you seemed quiet at breakfast," my father said. Somehow he had sniffed out my hideout. He was still dressed in his bathrobe, his eyeglasses were crooked, his hair was in disarray, and he needed a shave. Had he not been my father, he would have frightened me.

"I found him this morning, in the front yard," I explained.

"He's a handsome one," my father said. "Goes well with the colors of the bathroom, too. That should please your mother."

He knelt to examine Orwell. "Looks like his back is broken," he said. "Or his pelvis. Either way, he's a goner. Wild rabbits have a tough row to hoe, no matter where they live."

I guess he saw the look on my face, because his voice softened when he added, "I don't mean to criticize your work. It looks like you've done all anybody can do. But don't get your hopes up."

"I think he may have a chance," I said. I explained how Orwell had responded.

"Well, until we know what the damage is, all you can do is keep him warm, try to feed him, and keep him away from predators. Funny thing about rabbits, about the only thing they can do to protect themselves is run away. They're usually very good at running away. This one, however, is not.
Ergo,
a goner."

"But surely there's something we can do!" I protested.

"Not on a Sunday. All the animal hospitals are closed. Tomorrow's out, too. Federal holiday. But the first thing Tuesday, if he's still alive, we'll pack him up and take him to the vet."

"Thanks," I said.

"By the way, does this creature have a name?" he asked.

"Orwell. I named him Orwell."

"That's too bad," my father observed, preparing to leave the room. "Once they have a name, they become part of the family. It's always harder when you lose a member of the family."

My mother's position in the household was too important to keep her in the dark about Orwell for long. I was pleased that my father chose to break the ice for me.

"Of course the rabbit will have to go," he told her. "But it is a situation that will take care of itself. His days are numbered."

"I will not have animals living in my bathroom," my mother said.

"You'll probably get your wish very soon," he replied.

"Isn't there some place you can take it?" she implored him.

"Surely you can adapt," he said.

After a troubling pause, during which my mother gave my father that familiar, menacing flash from her eyes that he calls "house lightning," she took a deep breath and finally said, "Oh, all right. But please don't let it get anything on the wallpaper."

The remainder of that winter day was spent in idle pursuits.

My grandmother, my mother's widowed mother who lives nearby, dropped in to visit, which was unusual since she usually waited until my father was gone someplace. She brought cookies for everybody.

My father and I watched an old black-and-white movie about a detective who figures out that the black falcon statue a dying man delivers to his office is really made of solid gold. Everybody was after it, but the movie was mostly just people talking.

I watched another movie about the luckiest kid on earth, a boy my age who wins the lottery and uses the money to buy his school so he can be the boss. It was excellent.

Then I played Scrabble with my sister, a long game that I finally won, thanks to the skillful and creative spelling of a few guttural sounds that I convinced her were fragments of early human speech, plus an unexpected late-game break that gave me "X-ray" on a Triple Word Score.

"Luck of the draw," my father observed when my sister began to complain.

At appropriate intervals, I worked the feeding tube for Orwell and gently stroked his shoulders and that bumpy part behind his ears. He seemed to like the attention, but I felt really sorry for him.

"Please don't die," I begged him. "It's no way to start out a friendship."

That night, as I was sliding groggily into sleep, I realized that in all of the day's excitement, I hadn't looked at my horoscope! The first day of a brand new year and I had forgotten to check!

I pulled the covers up over my head. Whatever it was that fate had in store for me, it was too late to do anything about it now.

Orwell didn't die. He made it through the night, and maybe it was just my optimistic imagination, but he seemed to be perkier than the day before. Equally reassuring was the message in the newspaper's daily horoscope guide for Monday.

Horoscopes give you the lay of the land for an entire twenty-four hours in one short, simple phrase. If good things are destined to happen to you that day, you can be ready to receive them with open arms. On the other hand, if bad things are in store, you can be on your guard. Either way, you know what to expect.

The horoscope messages in the newspaper are hidden from the casual reader. They consist of twelve tiny boxes, one for each sign of the zodiac, with each box containing seven numbers and a little circular moon.

Depending on what kind of day you're going to have, the moon wears a smile face or a frown face, or, if your day is "neutral," it has no face, but is presented as half dark and half light. Between the two vertical rows of message boxes is a long list of words that correspond to all the numbers. To find out what's going to happen to you, you must first decode the message.

I am a Scorpio, like my father—
exactly
like my father, since fate long ago decreed in a curious coincidence that we share the same autumn birthday. The horoscope for Scorpio had a moon with a smile face and seven numbers that I hurried to decipher.

The first word was "take." I looked up the next one. It was "friend." Then came "to," followed by "exclusive" and "restaurant." In my haste, I almost made a mistake on the next word. At first I thought it was "explode," which gave me a start, but then I realized that I was looking at the word above the word for me. My word was "treat." The last word was actually two words stuck together. It was "him/her."

TAKE FRIEND TO EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANT
TREAT HIM/HER.

Huh? I didn't get it. What did this have to do with a broken rabbit in my mother's not-quite-finished new bathroom?

Then it came to me. Of course! The friend was Orwell. And at this very moment he was the only customer in the most exclusive restaurant in town—my place! I was already doing what the horoscope recommended! I was not only on track, I was a little bit ahead. No wonder the stars gave me a smile face moon!

The Monday holiday passed into history. Two days of the new year had been encountered and survived by all, Orwell included. There was still the matter of the medical evaluation to deal with, but so far, so good, I figured. So far, so good.

My father's willingness to make the trip to the animal hospital, in spite of his forecast of Orwell's doom, was a good sign. Even better, he didn't seem to mind my being late for school after such a long holiday break.

With a hopeful heart, I searched for more encouragement in Scorpio's horoscope for Tuesday, the third day of the year. Decorated with the face of a smiling moon, the encryption when decoded said

CONCENTRATE ON MECHANICAL REPAIRS
ENJOY AMUSEMENTS TONIGHT.

I double-checked my deciphering because, once again, the horoscope did not make much sense to me. The smile face made it seem good, and the word "enjoy" was a welcome ingredient, but what sort of "mechanical repairs" and "amusements" did the stars have in mind? After giving my brain a workout, I finally decided they must be talking about getting Orwell's legs fixed. Repairs like that would provide plenty of amusement later on.

Equipped with these astrological insights, I was feeling pretty cheerful by the time we walked into the animal hospital.

I don't know why they call them animal "hospitals." They're really just little office buildings with a few tables and pens in various sizes, more like pet stores than hospitals. This one was called Family Pet Care.

I waited restlessly for the veterinarian to finish examining a cat that was one can of Chicken of the Sea over the line, followed by a big red Irish setter that was being vaccinated for the latest in dog diseases.

I cradled Orwell in my arms, being careful to situate myself so that his lifeless legs would rest gently against my thighs. My father leafed distractedly through the pages of a fashion magazine. Then it was our turn.

The veterinarian appeared to be surprised by the purpose of our visit. "Wild rabbits don't have much of a chance," he said.

At my father's insistence, the veterinarian took X-rays anyway. They looked like the amateur snapshots that some people take where they accidentally cut off their subjects' heads. You could see Orwell's bones from his shoulders down. There was a top view. There was a side view. But nobody bothered to get a picture of his face, his best feature.

The X-rays proved to be evidence of nothing more than the fact that some creatures have extremely small bones. The good news was that none of them appeared to be broken.

"It could be spinal cord injury," the veterinarian speculated.

"Does that mean he'll recover?" I asked.

"Well," he answered unconvincingly, "sometimes they do."

He gave Orwell a cortisone shot. He gave him an antibiotic shot. He gave him shots for all the diseases and conditions that make life hard for the bedridden patient. In less than half an hour, the charges he ran up were equal to the cost of a major household appliance.

"Keep doing what you're doing," he said. "And hope for the best."

This was probably good advice, but I didn't think it was worth that much money. As my father signed the check with his usual illegible scribble, I was discouraged by the veterinarian's cheery confession. "Thanks for coming in," he said. "I've never had a wild rabbit before."

At school that day, all I could think about was Orwell. Nothing had changed. Nothing except that no one could say for certain what was wrong. But Orwell could not move his back legs. The running part, the kicking part, the getaway part was useless and nobody could tell me why.

That night I couldn't sleep. I got up every hour or so and visited Orwell. I fed him fresh vegetables from my ungloved hand. I stroked him. I talked to him. He looked at me and every once in a while feigned a useless struggle to run away. I cleaned up after him. The new bathroom had begun to smell faintly like Family Pet Care.

The food tube worked exceptionally well. At the veterinarian's suggestion, I had switched from dog food mush to rabbit food mush. Orwell swallowed it right down and clamped his teeth on the plastic tube, hungry for more. I let him have as much as he wanted.

"Hang in there, Orwell," I said. "You still have a chance." I didn't know if this was true. I hoped it wouldn't hurt to say it.

I became angry with the newspaper truck driver. Animal killer! Maimer! Agent of evil! Orwell was just another "whup-thup" sound to him, like a fat newspaper hitting a concrete driveway. That's the kind of thing I was thinking.

During the night my father came to see me. "Get some sleep," he insisted. "I'll take over."

I didn't go right away. We took turns watching, touching, hoping.

"If they're not broken," I asked, "why can't he move them?"

"Luck of the draw," my father replied.

Was it just bad luck? I wondered. Or was something else involved? Something that actually caused certain days to be good days and certain days to be bad days, like the stars that rule my daily horoscope.

Maybe I was misinterpreting the message in the newspaper. It hadn't been especially clear anyway. I decided I'd better study tomorrow's horoscope more carefully.

As I turned to leave, Orwell looked at me. He raised his head as best he could, and stared at me with those big brown rabbit eyes. I picked him up. I held him to my chest, his lifeless legs dangling, his tiny rabbit heart beating softly against mine.

I woke up Wednesday with two big problems on my mind. The first was school, which, after so much time off for creative loafing and lifesaving, was an unwelcome change of pace. The other problem, of course, was Orwell.

I hurried through my morning routine, getting dressed, letting the dog out, getting the paper, and pouring myself an extra-large bowl of crunchy, sweetened cereal to gulp down while figuring out my horoscope. I wanted to read it first, before I checked on Orwell, just in case it said something like
NEW FRIEND PASSES AWAY QUIETLY IN NIGHT.
But what it actually said was

TODAY WILL RUN SMOOTHER
THAN YOU ANTICIPATED.

Once again, my horoscope bore the sign of the smiling moon. I was glad about this, of course, and glad, too, that this one was easy to understand, unlike the previous two. But I remained wary, since the other two hadn't exactly panned out. I wondered, Is there a limit to how many smile faces in a row a person can get? How long could my luck—and Orwell's—hold out?

I admit it. I was afraid. I entered Orwell's hideout like I was entering the mummy's tomb. I tiptoed in, shutting my eyes when I opened the door, afraid to look. I didn't open my eyes until I was completely inside and there was no turning back.

The first thing I saw was Orwell looking back at me. He was still alive, thank goodness, awake and alert and hungry for the apple slices I'd brought. He munched happily as I scratched his knobby little head and thought about my personal career.

The day before, while shooting baskets in the driveway, before it got too cold and I had to come inside, I changed my mind about what I wanted to be. I was still interested in becoming a detective, but I was also thinking about being a veterinarian, one who specializes in small animals that people find in their yards, and, unlike some I could name, actually figures out how to fix them. I was also trying to work the trombone into whatever I chose, since I'd recently started playing it at my new school and sort of liked it.