Red Rabbit

by Alex Grecian

He began to think about the various curses, spells, and hexes he knew. He thought he might need them sooner than anticipated.

It bothered Tom that he couldn’t recall where he had learned the particular hex he had fixed above Joe Mullins’s grave. He couldn’t remember whether Rose was right about the doll needing specific ingredients to work. The truth about a thing sometimes got muddied over time by storytelling and embroidery. Still, he was certain he knew more about witchery than Rose Nettles could ever hope to learn.

She was a cold woman, he thought, and rough in ways he found displeasing. He didn’t understand why Ned seemed to respect her right away, and he didn’t like the way Rabbit had taken to the woman.

He began to think about the various curses, spells, and hexes he knew. He thought he might need them sooner than anticipated.

Rose had insisted Rabbit ride with her, rather than Tom, which Moses thought was a fine idea. He was glad to have someone along to care for the girl. No matter how well intentioned they were, he and Ned had no experience with children.

Ned was happy to have a concrete destination for a change, but he was bemused by the odd band of strangers he and Moses had accumulated. Tom Goggins was easy enough to figure out, but Rose was perplexing, and the child Rabbit was a complete cypher. He thought it might help if she would tell them why Old Tom thought she was a boy.

What confused him most of all was the purpose of their journey. Ned had seen men holler “witch” when they disagreed with a woman, but he had never known the accusation to hold any truth.

He would talk with Moses; they would figure out what to do when they reached Burden Co...

Rose struck another match and puffed on her husband’s old pipe. She had kept the pipe, as well as a long pinewood crate of tools, and a few pairs of warm woolen stockings she had knitted for Joe, but those few things were all she had left of him. Still, she did not feel the slightest bit sad as she rode away from the house and the farm. She had done her duty as Joe’s wife, but now he was buried and his name was buried with him. She would be Rose Nettles again for this third chapter of her life, and this time she would lead a life she chose for herself. She was no longer a schoolteacher who tiptoed around her mother’s moods, nor a farmwife who tolerated her husband’s silences. She was free.

The only responsibility she felt was for Rabbit. She thought she could trust Moses to care for the girl, but he and his friend Ned were wanderers. They would eventually leave Rabbit with a farmer or an innkeeper along the trail, and what would happen to her then?

It had been a bad year. The summer was dry and dusty, with no sign of rain. The sky was flat and yellow all summer long, and a hard wind blew from the south, tearing the roofs off barns and breaking tender young stalks in the cornfields.

Every morning Sadie Grace found some new offering on her front stoop: seven fresh eggs wrapped in a clean cloth, a whole chicken, a cow liver on a slab of shagbark hickory that was still oozing sap. One day she found a letter of apology signed by the mayor of Riddle. She had long suspected that the mayor couldn’t read or write, and she thought it likely his wife had written the note. She burned the letter in her potbellied stove and sprinkled the ashes in the well behind his house. The next day the mayor’s wife took to her bed with stomach cramps.

Hank Crenshaw would find the baby and take him home to Elizabeth. Elizabeth Crenshaw had raised six strong boys, without losing any of them to the cough or sleeping sickness. She would know what to do with a baby. Sadie certainly didn’t.

She had woken one morning on the south bank of the Arkansas River, naked, cold, and muddy, with a deep gash in her throat just above her left collarbone. She had walked three miles to the nearest settlement. The local doctor stitched her wound and examined her, determining that she was somewhere between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and that she had at some point probably given birth.

She recalled nothing of her life before waking up beside the river.

A farm couple had taken her in, but had soon grown fearful of her. Whenever she entered their kitchen, the pots and pans hanging above the stove began to shake and bang together. Three of the farmer’s chickens disappeared one night, and a neighbor claimed to have seen Sadie squatting in the...

Considering how the week had begun, her fortunes were vastly improved.

Since she had woken up south of the river and knew a little of what lay there, she decided to head north, crossing at a shallow spot where the current was gentle, pausing halfway across to fill her canteen. She walked all that first day across fields of wheat and barley, through dense green woods, and over wide stretches of prairie. She had no shoes, but the soles of her feet were tough as leather, and she felt no pain, even when she stepped on rocks and sharp twigs. She stopped only twice, to rest.

Emerging from a field of tall corn, she found a dirt road and followed it until she saw a sign for a town called Riddle. She left the road and skirted the town, meeting back up with the trail on the far side.

At the top of a hill overlooking a broad pasture was a lone house, white with bright green shutters. The front door stood open. She knocked, and when there was no answer she wiped her feet on a straw mat and entered.

The air was heavy and smelled metallic, and bluebottle flies buzzed lazily about. Sadie opened a window before venturing farther into the house. There was a tiny kitchen with a potbellied stove and a pantry that was fully stocked with cured bacon, boiled eggs, and tins of flour and cornmeal.

An elderly couple lay on top of the blankets. The woman’s legs were black with gangrene, but her eyes had been closed and her hands placed across her chest. A pillow lay beside her head. Her husband—Sadie assumed it was her husband—lay next to her, the top of his head missing, a sticky brown stain on the wall behind him. His right hand hung limp over the side of the bed, one of the old man’s fingers still caught in the trigger guard of a sawed-off shotgun. “Well,” Sadie said. “At least I won’t have to sleep in a tree tonight.”