I. Bunny ears, bunny ears
"This scrawny and sobbing piece of tears and mucus, rehearsing her knots, eyes that scream 'I didn't mean to.'"
Context –
Dry Bread ain't Greasy is a serialized novel of roughly 30 chapters, each around 2.000 words, that will be published weekly starting October 5th. It functions as a raw and poetic female-driven neo-western.
Tension escalates between four ex-convicts inside a women-only reintegration program with wild horses in the Canadian prairies. The intellectual disability of the younger one threatens the participants' chance at a steady future that they would secure if they complete the program's last task: crossing the country on horseback. Early on their journey, this dysfunctional quartet will be forced to work together when they're framed for a murder they didn't commit and set their mind on finding the real felons before they're sent back to prison.
Companion Playlist –
Chapter I. Bunny ears, bunny ears.
She stops wiping her nose at this point and just embraces the cold, slug-like mucus on her lips. She's still humming the "Bunny Bunny song" she was taught. Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me... Her hands, wearing thick yellow leather gloves, are busy with an old rope around two swinging metal gates. She passes the rope around, simple shoe knot, ties it up, makes another shoe knot on top of it, ties it up again. Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole, popped out the other side, beautiful and bold. She gives the gates a good tug—nice and steady—but bites her leather gloves off her bony and shaky hands the second after to untie the knot and start all over again. Again. And again. Till sunrise if need be. The sobs command and the body shall obey, and so she makes that knot again.
She shoots a few looks behind her, tries to clock where this hum of engines and shouts comes from. They seem to be scattered in the prairie, with some quads at 11 o'clock and two motorbikes at 2 o'clock. And at the tree line over there, not too far from the ranch's bunkhouse, this sounds like hooves. Two or three horses at least, running in a circle, unsure. She makes an attempt to shout, "The tree line, they're here, some of 'em!" but there's not much left in her body and her shriek can't cut through anything.
Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me... Tie, untie, tie again. Until perfection, until it's mechanical, till these gates won't ever open by accident again. Slugs still on her lips, her red hair escaping her messy bun and falling all over her face. There's a newborn-like cluelessness in these eyes anchored on the rope, as big as silver dollars. They betray something people told her—folks in gowns and masks at the institution, her brother's friends, and even the women from the program here—something she never fully grasped and had no idea what to do with for the thirty-something years of her foggy life. "You're just not fully there, Hedy."
Bunny ears, bunny ears, jumped into the hole, popped out the other side, beautiful and-- shit, and now she clocks a pair of headlights ahead of her, two floating balls of deep yellow coming toward her. And she knows it's the guys driving, she pictures them with their fingers pointed at her forehead, spitting mean and ugly words, "Fuck you Hedy, you retard, you fucking waste of skin." And so she works on her knot even faster, the sobs getting in the way of her even breathing now, but still trying to catch sight of these horses in the prairie.
They'll soon go over the 450.000km mark with this pickup truck from the 80s, a beast that makes every blue-collar whisper, "Holy shit eh" like they were cat-calling a lady. An old relic with unmatched painting and a bad case of "flesh-eating disease" as J.R. referred to the rust gaining ground all over. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on the trembling gear shifter, half of his attention on a ballad from the radio, the other half on Boggs' rant, riding shotgun. About thirty years of age difference between the nephew and the uncle, but it looked like double at least. Boggs is a vagrant Santa Claus with a messy grey beard reaching the sternum, dipping eyebrows over heart-wrenching blue eyes like they were made of glacier water. He's sipping an alcohol-free Coors, taking sips when he isn't pecking on sunflower seeds resting on his greasy jeans. "You go with a gooseneck trailer and somethin’ happens on the road: you dead. Don’t go with--"
"That’s my point, Boggs, nothing’s gonna happen with a gooseneck trailer, they’re solid. They’re designed to--"
"--Go with gooseneck then, but if somethin’ happens to you on the road, I ain’t helpin’, nuh-uh. Just watching ya, muttering ‘Fuckin’ told you so, eh?’ over and over."
"Oh, ‘cause you can’t fix a gooseneck but you know all about hitchball and trailer coupler?"
And J.R. could swear Boggs blushed just then, as he pretends to triage his sunflower seeds to avoid eye contact.
"Yessir. Hitchball I can fix. Eyes closed."
That's how they said I love you bud, you're all I fucking got to each other, isolated in the rough prairies and mining towns of Northern Manitoba. Boggs cracks open a new alcohol-free beer to fuel his rhetoric. 883 days sober now, closing in on the two years and a half mark. Went through the fits of quitting cold turkey almost on his own before J.R. brought him to the closest hospital for a little pharmaceutical helping hand. Decades of gulping double digits tall boys, with a fair amount of the last years putting an increasing dose of crushed codeine in it like you would salt meat. A chemically imbalanced version of himself for well over two-thirds of his life, and now he wears that pin proudly on his jacket, rambling to everyone willing to listen that being sober is like "living life on easy mode."
He opens his window to throw his sunflower shells away and stops mid-movement, his ears pricked up.
"Quads seem to be on, for some reason? D'you hear that-- The radio, turn it down, I'm trying to--"
J.R. swerves and brakes before Boggs can finish. The truck stops only a few meters away from a few loose horses crossing the road. J.R. grabs a flashlight from the glove box, scans on his right.
"How many was that, d’you count them, Boggs?"
J.R. sweeps the pasture. Still, motionless.
"Fuck. Has to be all five of 'em."
And then he catches Hedy in his the light beam, by the swinging gates, this scrawny and sobbing piece of tears and mucus, rehearsing her knots, eyes that scream "I didn't mean to."
"How many, Hedy? They all loose?"
"I can do the knot now, yes, yes. I did the wrong one and the gate opened and they ran away but now I can do the knot, I did it sixty-two times sir, I did--"
"--Gate was open?"
"They’re trying to catch them is what they said, Oneida said they’ll take the quads and bring them back, she said the gate was open."
"Hedy, you keep that gate open, ready to lock it if we lead the horses back inside, hear that?"
"Yessir, I keep the gate open, open, yes, I can do the knot now."
And Hedy watches the pickup truck peel off in the distance, leaving her in a little cloud of dust as the hum of the engines gets louder. She rushes back to the knot, unties it, opens the two swinging gates.
Some shouts.
Horses' hooves and panicked neighs.
Distant yelps.
Hedy clocks silhouettes of galloping horses in the vehicle’s headlights that try to circle them, leading them straight toward her. Both hands on the cold metal, her grip so strong her knuckles turn white and the skin threatens to crack and she stares at the ballet of horses and quads, just some 50 meters away from her now, and she wishes she could plug her ears as it's so loud, and this avalanche cascades on her now and—shooo—she buries her face in her shoulder as the first mustang passes inches away from her. She dares open an eye in that cloak of floating dust and shoo, shoo—two other horses run past her, burying her deeper in the dust.
There's Boggs' voice cutting through the bedlam somewhere, screaming orders, and she also recognizes Jean's, cursing mean and ugly words. Shoo—a fourth mustang passes the gate, lifting dirt and rocks that fall on Hedy's back, her face fully burrowed in her shoulder, biting the fabric of her jacket to shush her shrieks.
"Gate, gate, gate!" Hedy obeys Boggs, smashes the metal gates and starts the knot she's been rehearsing sixty-two times. Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree--
"Now you can do a fucking knot, eh? Now you can fucking do it!" Jean LeDoux storms toward Hedy with daggers in her cat-like eyes, spitting familiar mean and ugly words. An erratic soul with a jittery jaw unable to find a place to rest, shifting left and right like a broken metronome. She blinks with an unnecessary intensity as if wanting to chase a bad thought away every time. Seven years for drug trafficking.
Oneida Carlin steps in between, eerily calm and slow. In her thirties as well, a tall and collected woman who only speaks when needed. Fleeting brown eyes, keeping her cards close to her chest. Six years and a half for armed robbery and assault of a law enforcement officer.
She hugs Jean from behind, straight-jacket style, but it only makes Jean rage even more, her voice like screeching tires now. "Why is this retard even here, why is she still with us? She's nothing but a fuck-up!" And her voice can't be tamed, piercing the night, her mean eyes on Hedy crouching on the ground, arms all over her face to avoid a beating.
"Can't even tie a fucking knot, fucking retard can't even do basic stuff and we--"
And J.R. slaps Jean.
Hard enough to turn her cheek a little red, hard enough to make the eyes a little watery.
"Not that word. You watch it."
Boggs tiptoes toward the gate and finishes the knot Hedy started. He shoots a look at her, this beaten dog still on the ground a few feet away, thinks really hard of something kind to say but Hazel Broadbent, the fourth and last woman, reaches him on cat's feet.
"The sanctuary is going to be pissed, right Boggs?"
An infinite benevolence in this soft-spoken woman who would soon reach retirement age in the normal world. A voice like a blanket, eyes like a well-needed hug. The mama bird bringing worm after worm for her kiddos, forgetting to nourish herself in the process. 26 years for the first-degree murder of her late husband with a rusty bike chain.
"Real pissed, I reckon. Right?"
"Hey now, don't you worry none Hazel, no one's in trouble. Just a colt on the loose is all, the program's still on. J.R. will make sure of that. Pinky."
J.R. stares at Hedy, catching his breath, hands on the hips. Zoned out. He'll have to phone the animal sanctuary in British Columbia first thing in the morning, talk to his partner Merle. But see if they can find that colt in the morning before the call, maybe. He'll spin a yarn about it, maybe pretend the colt got itself stuck in the fence, broke a pair of bones, had to be shot. It's not on the girls, none of them, they still deserve a shot in his sanctuary. It's just a colt, the four other mustangs are here, safe and sound, they'll make it to the sanctuary, the government funds will still apply. He'll put on his best actor performance if Merle is pissed about the colt, he'll say how the girls couldn't stomach going back to their parole officers in Winnipeg if this reintegration program falls through. He nods to himself and makes for the main ranch to mark everything down for tomorrow's call.
"Bunny ears, bunny ears, remember?" Oneida crouches next to Hedy and pets her shoulder like you would make first contact with a shaky stay dog. Hedy's dusting off her hat, no more tears left in her. "It didn't work, I swear I tried to do it and I did but it didn't work, I did the Bunny Bunny song but the knot came loose anyway."
"It's alright. Step by step. Keep doing what you're doing and give it a hundred percent every time."
Hedy gives her a shy nod. Throws fleeting glances toward Jean who's on J.R.'s heels now, pretty far away but Oneida wants to lock eyes with her, insisting. Finally does for a split second, just long enough to give her a wink.
"You're OK walking back to your trailer?"
And Hedy scampers away alongside the fence to go hide, heading for that tree line over there in the dark.
Chapter II.
