MY AUNT HAD COME down South to visit us and we were all sitting around the fireplace talking. Aunt Nellie did most of the talking and my mother the rest of it. My father came in occasionally for a few minutes at a time and then went out again to walk around the house and sit in the barnyard. He and Aunt Nellie did not get along together at all. Aunt Nellie was sure she was smarter than anybody else and my father did not want to get into an argument with her and lose his temper.
Aunt Nellie’s husband had gone down to Florida on a hunting trip and she came as far as Carolina to see us while he was away. My uncle was crazy about hunting and spent all his spare time away from home gunning for game.
“Bess,” Aunt Nellie asked my mother, “does Johnny like to hunt?” She nodded impersonally toward me where I sat by the fireplace.
My mother said I did not. And that was true. I like to catch rabbits and squirrels for pets but I did not want to kill them. I had a pet hen right then; she had been run over by a buggy wheel when she was growing up and one of her legs was broken. I hid her in the barn so my father would not know about her. She stayed there about two weeks and when the leg had healed I let her out in the yard with the other chickens. When my father did find her he said she would not have to be killed if I would take care of her and feed her because she could not scratch for worms like the other chickens. Her leg healed all right, but it was crooked and she limped every step she took.
“Well,” Aunt Nellie said to my mother, “that is a shame. If he doesn’t like to hunt he won’t grow up to be a real Southern gentleman.”
“But, Nellie,” my mother protested for me, “Johnny does not like to kill things.”
“Nonsense,” Aunt Nellie said derisively. “Any man who is a real Southern gentleman likes to hunt. The Lord only knows what he will turn out to be.”
My father would have taken up for me too if he had been in the room just then. My father did not like to kill things either.
“I’m disappointed in having a nephew who is not a real Southern gentleman. He will never be one if he never goes hunting,” Aunt Nellie always talked a long time about the same thing once she got started.
I was not greatly interested in being a real Southern gentleman when I grew up, but I did not want her to talk about me that way. Every summer she wrote my mother a letter inviting me up to her home in Maryland, and I wanted to go again this year.
My father heard what she said and went out in the backyard and threw pebbles against the barn side.
I went into the dining room where the shotgun was kept and took it off the rack. The gun was fired off to scare crows when they came down in the spring to pull up the corn sprouts in the new ground. My father never aimed to kill the crows: he merely fired off the shotgun to make the crows so gun-shy they would not come back to the cornfield.
Taking the shotgun and half a dozen shells I went out the front door without anybody seeing me leave. I went down the road towards the schoolhouse at the crossroads. I had seen dozens of rabbits down at the first creek every time I went to school and came home. They were large rabbits with gray backs and white undercoats. All of them had long thin ears and a ball of white fur on their tails. I liked them a lot.
At the first creek I stopped on the bridge and rested against the railing. In a few minutes I saw two rabbits hop across the road ahead. Picking up the gun I started after them. A hundred yards from the bridge the road had been cut down into the hill and the banks on each side were fifteen and twenty feet high. At this time of year when there was nearly always a heavy frost each morning the bank facing the south was the warmer because the sun shone against it most of the day. I had seen several rabbits sitting in holes in the bank and I was sure that was where these rabbits were going now.
Sure enough when I got there a large gray-furred rabbit was sitting on the sunny bank backed into a hole. When I saw the rabbit I raised the shotgun to my shoulder and took good aim. The rabbit blinked her eyes and chewed a piece of grass she had found under a log somewhere. I was then only ten or twelve feet away but I thought I had better get closer so I should be certain to kill her. I would take the rabbit home and show my aunt. I wanted her to invite me to spend the summer at her house again.
I edged closer and closer to the rabbit until I stood in the drain ditch only three feet from her. She blinked her eyes and chewed on the grass. I hated to kill her because she looked as if she wanted to live and sit on the sunny bank chewing grass always. But my Aunt Nellie thought a boy should be a sportsman and kill everything in sight.
There was nothing else I could do. I would have to shoot the poor rabbit and take her back for my aunt to see.
I took steady aim along the center of the double-barreled shotgun, shut both eyes, and pulled the triggers one after the other. When I opened my eyes the rabbit was still sitting there looking at me. I was so glad after the gun went off that the rabbit was not dead that I dropped the gun and crawled up the bank and caught the rabbit by her long ears. I lifted her in my arms and held her tightly so she could not run away. She was so frightened by the gunshots she was trembling all over like a whipped dog. When I put her in my arms she snuggled her nose against my sweater and stopped quivering while I stroked her fur.
Holding the rabbit tight in my right arm I picked up the shotgun and ran home as fast as I could.
My father was still sitting in the back yard when I got there.
“What’s that you’ve got under your arm?” he asked.
“A rabbit,” I told him.
“How did you catch it?”
“I shot at her and missed her. Then I caught her by the ears and brought her home.”
“Look here, Johnny,” he said to me. “You didn’t shoot at that rabbit while it was sitting down, did you?”
“I guess I did,” I admitted; adding hastily, “but I didn’t hit her, anyway.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t hit it. A good sportsman never shoots at a rabbit while it is sitting down. A good sportsman never shoots at a bird until it flies. A real sportsman always gives the game he is after a chance for its life.”
“But Aunt Nellie said I had to kill something and she didn’t say not to kill things standing still.”
“You stop paying any attention to your Aunt Nellie. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about anyway.”
I let my father hold the rabbit while I fixed a box to keep her in. When I was ready I put her in it and shut her up tight. “What are you going to do with the rabbit?” he asked me.
“Keep her.”
“I wouldn’t put it in a box,” he said with a queer look on his face. “If it wants to stay it won’t run off. And if it doesn’t want to stay it will worry itself to death in that box all the time. Turn it loose and let’s see what it will do.”
I was afraid to turn my rabbit loose because I did not want her to run away. But my father knew a lot more about rabbits than I did. Just then Aunt Nellie and my mother came out on the back porch.
“What have you got there in the box?” Aunt Nellie asked me.
“A rabbit,” I said.
“Where did you get it?”
“I shot at her with the gun but I didn’t hit her and she didn’t run away so I brought her home.”
My aunt turned to my mother in disgust.
“There you are, Bess! What did I tell you?”
I did not hear what my mother said. But my father got up and went down to the barn. Aunt Nellie went into the house and slammed shut the door behind her. My mother stood looking at me for several minutes as if I had done the right thing after all.
Taking the rabbit out of the box I went down to the barn where my father was. He was sitting against the barn side shelling an ear of corn for half a dozen chickens around him. I sat down beside him and turned the rabbit loose. The rabbit hopped around and around and then sat down and looked at us.
“Why don’t you name it Molly Cotton-Tail?” my father suggested, throwing a handful of shelled corn to the chickens.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“There are two kinds of rabbits around here: jack rabbits and molly cotton-tails. That one has a cotton-tail — see the ball of white fur on its tail that looks like a boll of cotton?”
The rabbit hopped around and around again and sat down on her cotton-tail. The chickens were not afraid of her. They went right up to where she sat and scratched for corn just as if she had been a chicken too.
“Why don’t you go into the garden and get a head of lettuce for it? Get a good tender one out of the hot-bed. All rabbits like lettuce,” he said.
I got the lettuce and gave it to my rabbit. She hopped up to where we sat against the barn side, asking for more. I gave her all I had and she ate out of my hand.
“If you had killed that rabbit with the gun you would be sorry now,” my father said. Anybody could see that he was beginning to like my rabbit a lot.
She hopped around and around in front of us, playing with the chickens. The chickens liked her, too.
“I’d lots rather have her living than dead,” I said, suddenly realizing how much I liked her myself.
Molly hopped up between us and nibbled at my father’s hand. He reached to stroke her fur with his hand but she hopped away.
“Whoa there, sooky,” he soothed, reaching for our rabbit.
(First published in American Earth)