FAMILIES
When Justin offered to walk the younger children home, Ruby gave him a big hug, which was almost enough to make up for his having missed out on a Saturday afternoon with his teammates. Then Ruby invited Kate to have lunch with her and Mr. Jackson, and Justin headed down the street, pushing his bike behind Luther, Chip, and Lily.
When they reached the nursery, Justin started to turn in.
“Hey,” Lily said, grabbing his arm. “Don’t you remember? You promised to help us hunt for the rabbit.”
“Okay,” he sighed, giving up on the idea of having any time to himself that afternoon. “Where do you want to start?”
“The Old Place,” Luther said.
“We’ve already looked there,” Lily objected.
“He might’ve come back,” Chip said hopefully.
“We’ll start there,” Justin decided, not feeling one bit hopeful.
They spread out and stomped through the weeds around what had once been the yard of the old house. Finding no sign of the rabbit, they moved to the thorn-filled pasture out back. All they got for their efforts were a lot of scratches on their arms and legs. Lily and Chip even went a little way into the woods, but Justin called them back after a few minutes. There were no trails and the brush was too thick. The four of them worked their way back toward the barn, watching the ground for rabbit droppings.
“Rabbit!” called Luther. “Here, rabbit!”
Justin wondered why they’d never given the rabbit a name. Maybe because it wasn’t really theirs. He kept on looking, but he was pretty sure they would never see that rabbit again.
As the heat and thorn scratches got the best of them, one by one the younger children gave up. Finally Justin quit, too. He climbed into the goat pen with the others and flopped down on the grass in the shade cast by the old barn.
“Where else can we look?” Luther asked.
Justin shrugged and resigned himself to listening to them whine. Then he remembered something that would take their minds off the lost rabbit. He hadn’t forgotten to tell them about seeing Little Billy in Atlanta, it was just that he’d been waiting for the right time, when they were all together with no grown-ups around. He was deciding whether to tell them right then or wait until Kate was with them, when Luther let out a yelp.
“Oh my gosh!” he cried. “Look!”
Everyone stared at Luther, then looked where he was pointing. There, not ten feet away, was the big white rabbit.
Behind it trailed six tiny bunnies, pure white, with pink eyes and pink-lined ears.
“Ohhhh!” Lily breathed. “He’s a girl!”
Chip thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out a fistful of peanuts. He crawled toward the rabbit. She didn’t run, but sat there, nose twitching. Chip arranged the peanuts in a small pile, and waited to see if she would eat them.
Lily reached into the pocket of her shorts and retrieved some corn chip crumbs, which she put next to the peanuts. Luther inched forward and added a handful of something light brown.
“What’s that?” Justin asked in a low voice.
“Frosted Flakes,” Luther said. “It’s his—I mean, her—favorite thing.”
The big rabbit hopped forward and nibbled at each pile. The baby bunnies hung back, their little pink noses quivering. They didn’t seem much interested in people food.
“You know,” Lily said. “We never paid Mr. Grimsted for this rabbit.”
“And we’re not going to,” Chip said stubbornly. “Because she’s not ours and we didn’t keep her. We just helped her get away.”
Luther stretched out on his stomach, his face in the grass just inches from the rabbit. “You’re free now, Miz Rabbit,” he murmured. “You and all your babies. Forever and ever.”
They watched the rabbits awhile, until Justin jumped up. “Let’s go,” he said. “You all had ice cream in town, but I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I’m so hungry I could eat a handful of soggy Frosted Flakes myself. Even if it was mixed with frog spit from the inside of Luther’s pocket.”
When they reached the Martin place, they found Kate getting ready to milk the goat. They told her about finding the rabbit, which by now they were all calling Miz Rabbit. They argued awhile over what to call the baby bunnies, then decided that there was no point in giving them names, since they were all white with pink noses, and it was impossible to tell them apart.
It was there at the goat pen that Justin finally got around to telling them about Little Billy becoming the mascot for Booker’s baseball team. He was glad he hadn’t just whispered the news to them as soon as he got home, but had waited for the exact right moment. This way he could describe in vivid detail just how Little Billy had looked surrounded by cheerleaders in their red-and-gold uniforms, leading the home team around that enormous green field.
“You should’ve seen the way he pranced when the crowd cheered,” Justin concluded. “He’s a natural show goat, just like Old Billy.”
“But where does he live?” Kate asked. “They’re not keeping him shut up in the field house between games, are they?”
Justin laughed, “No way! The college has some kind of farm out in the country. Little Billy lives out there, and he just gets brought in for the games. I didn’t get to see it, but Booker says it’s beautiful.”
“I bet he misses his mama and sisters, though,” Chip said, reaching through the fence to pet Go-Girl, Honey, and Sugar.
“Probably. But he’s not alone,” Justin pointed out. “He’s got the other animals out on the farm, and when he comes to town, there’s Booker and a bunch of cheerleaders to keep him company. Plus the entire baseball team.”
Justin leaned against the fence, idly tossing a ball into the air. “Any time you’re on a team, after a while it gets to be like a family, too.”