Shooting Rabbits

By Lisa Harris

Theodore Wilson studied his twin’s photo in The New York Times. He set the red porcelain mug on the café’s tabletop, resting his beefy hands on his thighs. How could Sherman look so young? Where were his wrinkles, liver spots, jowls? Sherman either spent hours sipping consommé or paid piles of moolah for liposuction and the knife. His teeth, too, must be capped. Theodore stroked his wattle. Sagging skin hadn’t sent him running to the plastic surgeon to look youthful. On the contrary, he had embraced his folds as a flip-off to upper-crust norms.

“Here you go.” Two tables over, the waitress Lottie scooted a muffin in between K.C. and her book. “It’s your fave. Blueberry.”

K.C. put down the paperback and pinched bits of the muffin with her forefinger and thumb. She held the bite up and showed the waitress. “No offense to your baking, but if I eat slow, it won’t go to my hips.” She popped the crumbs into her mouth.

Lottie placed another muffin, this one folded into a red napkin, at the table next to Theodore; the package looked small on Ruthanne’s empty four-top. “Now that sounds like a diet for me.” Lottie patted her ample thighs. “It’s so hard to stick to a program when I test-taste everything.”

Lottie had been dieting or talking about dieting ever since Theodore had started coming mornings to Roads’ End Café, eleven years now. None of them had worked. He took a bite of the muffin she’d served him. Smoothing the newspaper, his veiny hand stopped broadside of Sherman’s picture. Always a head shot. Always alone. Was Sherman happy?

At the counter, Larry held out his plate. “Don’t forget me, Sis.” His multicompartment tool belt stuffed with wire strippers, screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers, rolls of wire, was draped across the adjacent stool.

“Larry, I swear.” Lottie said. “I only got two hands. Haven’t you already snagged one when my back was turned?”

Reggie burrowed his wet nose under Theodore’s hand. On the table, the muffin perched inches from the dog’s nose. Theodore patted the Chesapeake Bay retriever’s broad head in a ‘that’s enough’ way. But the dog was having none of it and scratched at Theodore’s jeans. Theodore muttered, “People food, Reg. Not for dogs.” Or, not with the baker looking on. “Must read this article.”

Looking at The Time’s Business Section, he scowled. Sherman’s smile was not a genuine show of internal glee but a gotcha meant for Theodore alone. His prior “Whistler” should have settled the score, but here was Sherman grinning at him in newsprint, lobbing their tit-for-tat back into Theodore’s court, baiting him with Whistler No. 312.

Best to one-up Sherman before his wife learned what he was up to and wagged her finger at him. She did not understand their game. As an only child, she suffered from the delusional idea siblings loved each other unconditionally. Once he had shared his scrapbook with her, a recording of every Whistler played between him and Sherman over nearly eight decades. Instead of oohing and aahing at his bold moments, she said their game was silly. That he, both of them, should grow up.

Larry asked, “Anybody know when Ruthanne’s coming? She’s usually here by now.”

Theodore glanced at the empty table with its lonely muffin. Was she trimming her Braeburns? If so, how many trees had she completed? Was she one row ahead of him? Two? If an early frost struck, her trimmed apples would be spared. While his…

“If Ruthanne doesn’t come soon, can I have her muffin?”

“Oh my god, Larry. No.” Lottie said. “She’ll be along, she always comes.”

It was too early in the season to panic over the quality of Ruthanne’s future apple crop and whether or not she could unseat him come fair time, eleven months hence. More pressing was the trouble at hand. He had barely caught his breath since smashing Sherman with last month’s sweep of Island County Fair's Crop Division. The Record’s article with the accompanying photo of his trophy, shaped as a Golden Delicious, commemorating his decade-long domination in the apple category, should have crushed Sherman. But his twin’s pearly whites said otherwise.

Theodore smoothed the paper. What predictable accomplishment was his brother gloating about? Had Sherman orchestrated another take-over of a soulless financial corporation? Changed his Forbes’ ranking? Demonstrating again that he was a bigwig. And Theodore was what? At a minimum, someone to snicker about at the country club because he colored outside the lines.

He scanned the article’s first paragraph.

How blasé. Sherman had bestowed their shared alma mater a cash gift. Whoopie-do. But wait, how much again?

“Son-of-a-bitch!” The largest donation in the school’s history, an institution where bequests containing long strings of zeros was common.

Reggie stuck his wet nose under Theodore’s hand.

“What’s happened?” Larry eased off the café’s counter stool and walked to Theodore’s table. He peered at The Times. “Hey, that’s you in the paper.” Reeling round, Larry faced K.C. and Lottie. “Mr. Wilson’s in The Times.”

From behind the counter, Lottie paused in picking at a dried spot on her apron’s bib. K.C. stuffed the remainder of her muffin into her mouth.

Everyone stared at him.

Reggie barked, tail thumping against the black-and-white-tiled floor. Every third wag hit Theodore’s chair leg. Three pair of eyes staring at him, four if he counted Reggie’s—and he always counted Reggie—was three too many. Theodore grunted. How he hated being related to Sherman, let alone his twin. People would think he was just like Sherman: a ruthless cad.

K.C. dug into her backpack and removed a reporter’s notebook. “You holding out on me, Mr. Wilson?” She pulled a pen embossed with Promise Record from the notebook’s stiff brown cover and clicked the pen’s top. “Something for the Notable Section? Some good dirt? A tell-all tidbit with a revealing photo? Too bad nobody moons anymore. Those photos sold papers.”

Whistler No. 56 and a trailblazer. Theodore’s backside a beacon larger than a harvest moon, weaving through the Harvard-Yale football contest. Sherman had retaliated in the same newspaper months later with a head shot photo announcing he’d been voted Junior Warden to the Freemason’s Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. Now, both No. 56 and No. 57 accomplishments were antediluvian.

Theodore folded the Business Section. With the newspaper editor poised to misstate his words and Larry, Promise's only licensed electrician and leading gossiper, raising his ears higher than Reggie’s, Theodore wasn’t going to make their jobs easy. No need for them to know about Sherman, or Theodore’s life before moving to the tad-pole shaped speck of an island at the end of the ferry route from Seattle, the furthest spot within the continental U.S. from family.

“A shirttail cousin gave money to Harvard.” Theodore deliberately pronounced the last word like the native Bostonian he was, to make light of the situation.

Larry peered at the paper. “You’re related to Sherman Wilson? The Sherman Wilson?” He motioned to the photo with his mug. “I didn’t know you were blue-blooded.”

“Distantly.” Three thousand one hundred miles.

“Oh come on, Larry.” K.C. swatted Larry’s shoulder with her notebook. “How else could he and his wife buy Old Adams’ place with all those beach rights if he wasn’t connected? Remember, we talked about it at the time.”

He had bought the property out on Bush Point going on fifteen years ago. When would his sixty acres of heaven be called “The Wilsons’ Place?” That was a drawback to Promise; the institutional memory of its inhabitants was deep, almost as deep as that of the Boston Brahmins. Everybody knew everything about everybody.

He’d scored moving to Promise, though. Only misfits retired to the backwater apple-growing rock then. But a lot had come since. Any day it would appear on one of those best-to-live-in lists and the place would be officially “in.” Sherman might even snap up a beach cottage.

Larry jabbed a finger at the newspaper article. “That picture looks a lot like you, Mr. Wilson. You sure he’s only a distant relative?”

Lottie, holding a pot of steaming coffee, stood next to her brother and studied the photo. “Weren’t all you bluebloods marrying first and second cousins not too long ago?”

“Like rabbits,” Theodore said.

“Lucky you don’t have hip dysplasia or something,” Larry said.

K.C. said, “More like hemophilia.”

“I think slippy-hips would be worse.” Larry rotated his pelvis. “Wouldn’t know which way you were going when you walked.”

“Make you a better dancer.” With one hand on her hip and an outstretched arm around an invisible partner, K.C. two-stepped, her clunking Chippewa boots graceful for once.

Theodore drained his mug and placed it on top of Sherman’s photo. His bladder pinged. Dang! He could not hold it like he used to.

That’s how the Whistlers had started. They had been five when he dared Sherman to pee off the back porch, see who could shoot farthest, a nose-thumbing challenge. Both of them whistled as petals flew. Theodore had been the one to nickname their pissing endeavor ‘shooting rabbits,’ in case Mater asked what they were up to. Saving her prized roses from vermin garnered praise, but urinating into the garden would have elicited ear-boxing. It was Sherman who took their competition off-porch, as he was too much of a good boy to produce more than a drizzle.

Now, the university was planning to name a building after the dolt.

Theodore’s bladder knocked louder.

A photo of him pissing outdoors would remind Sherman that Theodore still was the more talented of the two.

He checked his watch: 10:20. If today was like all the others, and no reason it wouldn’t be, K.C. would say her goodbyes in twenty-five minutes. Taking into account she drove twice as fast as he, and the distance they traveled on the same road, he’d leave in fifteen. When K.C. arrived in her beaten-up Saab at the crossroads with Main, she would find him shooting rabbits.

“If I remember correctly,” K.C. said, “and I’m usually dang on, there was an interview with Sherman Wilson after he gave a bundle to some Back East Hospital. While everybody thought what a philanthropic example Wilson was to give so much money, the reporter nailed the man for his tax evasion scheme.”

Whistler No. 236: Sherman’s ribbon-cutting photo at Mass General’s new Wilson Foundation Cardiac Center.

Lottie snapped her fingers. “Oprah, right? I remember Wilson saying he was being a good citizen by creating the hospital, and Oprah zinged him with ‘isn’t the gift a tax offset and access to free medical care?’, and then what got me, she asked ‘Didn’t you give because of a rivalry with your brother?’ Remember, Larry, I told you about it at the time.”

“Leslie Stahl,” Theodore said. “60 Minutes.”

K.C. banged the table with her hand, looked at him. “You saw it, too?”

Over and over again, checking Sherman’s reaction when Ms. Stahl pounced. He had fast-forwarded the recording, past IRS games and on-demand medical care, because those were old-hat, to the bit about the Whistlers, although Sherman never mentioned them by name.

“I liked the part,” K.C. said, “when Leslie skewered him. You knew she gutted him when he flinched, blinked, and looked away.”

This was the bit Theodore fast-forwarded to.

“God, she’s one of my heroes,” K.C. said. “When she asked direct if the gift was so he would be more like his older brother, a man that had created a legacy of community support rather than the man associated with oil spills, toxic waste dumps, and class action suites.”

“Of screwing the little guy and the environment,” Larry said.

“Exactly,” Theodore patted Reggie’s head.

“I couldn’t believe he called his brother a complete idiot on national T.V.,” Lottie said. “Even if I thought it,” she looked at Larry, “And, I don’t, well not much, I wouldn’t say it out loud, or on T.V.”

Also calling Theodore a “bleeding heart fool of a liberal” who didn’t know the value of money, who threw away the family fortune on sequoia trees (No. 237), spotted owls (No. 202), and flaming Lake Erie (No. 176). The best part was Sherman’s smirk, such jealously. Sherman knew that Theodore had the better reputation than he, and it bothered him.

“Glad I don’t have any siblings,” K.C. said.

Larry and Lottie traded looks.

“Never hear of the older brother, anymore.” Lottie said.

Older by seven and a half minutes.

“Can you imagine having a younger sib who outshined you?” Larry said, sneaking a glance at Lottie, the younger of the two. “Would be an ego-buster. No wonder the older one works at saving the world, puts distance between himself and that Sherman creep.”

Theodore tickled Reggie’s chin.

“I heard the older was the eccentric one, maybe looney from what Sherman Wilson let on,” K.C. said.

Theodore’s hand stopped. “Probably retired to some distant place and tends…roses.”

“Boy, if I had bucks like that family,” Lottie said. “I wouldn’t care if everybody called me looney-tunes, especially if I could do whatever I wanted.” Careful not to step on Reggie, she hovered near Theodor’s shoulder. “Refill?” She held up the pot. "Last of the morning blend."

He covered the mug with his palm. The gold wedding band deeply embedded into his finger clanked against the cup’s side. “No time.” Would K.C. respectfully turn away when she spotted him shooting ammo into blackberry clumps? Or, be impressed enough to point the handy Canon she kept on her car’s passenger seat at his performance?

Through the tops of his bifocals he looked up at Lottie. “I changed my mind. I’ll take a refill but make it a to-go.” He never ordered a to-go but more caffeine guaranteed more ammo.

Lottie raised her eyebrows.

Countering Sherman’s schemes had been a cake-walk when he was younger. But now tending apples on Promise, with a twice-weekly rag for documentation, pushing the Whistler envelope was a challenge. He gathered his papers and buried the business section in the middle of the pile.

He paused, what had he been thinking? An outdoor piss was too tame a follow-on. Sherman’s giving away millions versus his amber cupful wasn’t even close. Still, it would remind Sherman that Theodore had been the leader of their twosome from the start. What would Sherman do in retaliation, once Theodore lobed a Whistler? Sherman always acted quickly and usually without thinking through consequences.

But Whistler No. 312 had been a while in the making and couldn’t be in response to his No. 311 apple win. There would have been luncheons with the university foundation and the president, details to work out, stocks to sell, papers to sign, font for the new Sherman Wilson building plaque to choose. Donor cultivation took time; months not weeks.

“Damn!” He was behind. Sherman would double down and lob another one soon, to counter No. 311.

Lottie handed him the cup. "Here you go.” She stared at him. "Everything alright?"

“Fine, just fine.” But he wasn’t. He was saggy-old and behind, with Whistlers, with winter pruning.

K.C. dug into her backpack. “Yikes! Before you head off, brought some extras.” She laid several Records on his table. His photo was on the front page.

Lottie, said. “Nice your ideas were acknowledged.”

This had been the Whistler No. 311, not the Delicious Apple keepsake. ‘Theodore Wilson is honored for his contribution in preserving Promise Island’s heirloom apple genetics,’ the lead judge, a university agricultural professor, had been quoted in the Record as saying, ‘modernizing local horticulture techniques so Washington State’s unique varieties are preserved for generations to come.’

Finally. After years of being told by other Promise growers that his genetically modified trees didn’t belong.

To follow No. 311 with a newspaper photo of him pissing in public would be pathetic. Sherman would think Theodore had indeed gone round the bend, and suffered with senility.

He folded into his chair. Shooting rabbits would not do. He would have to think of something else which would twist Sherman's privates.

K.C. hoisted her backpack. A red Swiss Army knife dangling from a silver carabiner fastened to a side-strap jangled. It was similar to the one he kept in his garden shed and never could find. K.C. had the right idea: clip it someplace handy, like to a belt-loop. Not a girly accessory but K.C. was utilitarian. Didn’t bother with what others thought of her. He admired that about Promise. Folks hoed their own path, didn’t let what neighbors might say detour them.

A useful tool, that knife. Sample apple-flesh in the field, graft branches onto hardier rootstock, trim suckers. He should buy monogrammed pocket knives for his wife, Vanessa and the grandkids as well. A photo of them all wearing their knives clamped to their belts could be this year’s Christmas-card photo. Maybe K.C. would publish it in the Notables column.

Ahh, the Whistler Sherman had responded to by writing the whopper check. No. 310: last May’s group photo in the Record: the Promise Wilsons on the beach, with Vanessa and the grandkids, marking his golden wedding anniversary. Producing Mater and Pater’s only descedents.

Lottie picked at her apron’s smug. Gravy? Scone batter? Soup?

“Chasing after any stories K.C.?” After a quick glance to his sister, Larry removed the bell-shaped top of the pastry display. “That we should know about?” he grabbed a muffin.

"If I told you, nobody would buy Saturday's Record and where would my mortgage payment be?"

Lottie walked around the counter. “Come on K.C., it’s been slow without Ruthanne.”

He pushed back his chair. The drive home may offer clarity to a Whistler.

Reggie heaved upright.

Theodore dug his billfold from his back pocket and calculated twenty percent, adding a five-spot to his figure. Lottie would need money to make up for the extras Larry ate without paying. He placed the bills underneath his saucer.

Reggie, tail wagging, trotted to the door.

“Wouldn’t it be nice just to hang out,” K.C. said. “Not work. Not have to turn over rocks constantly so there’s something interesting in the Record?” She snapped the jackknife shut. “Lucky you, Mr. Wilson, being retired and all. You can spend the day puttering in your trees.”

Putter? He did not putter. He cultivated. He fertilized. He trimmed (or tried to). He was a horticulturalist and had a newspaper clipping to prove it. Puttering was for feeble men.

She snapped the knife onto the carabiner and swung the backpack over her shoulder.

Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-ling.

The door barely missed Reggie’s rump as Ruthanne burst inside. Brambles poked from her baggy sweater. Her red hair, typically pinned in a coil at the nape of her neck, had come undone and curls sprung like popped cushion springs. Her flouncy skirt was ripped in three places. Wearing muck boots smeared to her ankles in goo, she tracked dirt onto the tiles.

Theodore grunted. She had been trimming, and by the looks of her, not a row ahead but an entire orchard. Next year’s ribbons were in doubt.

“She’s gone. Ruby’s gone.” Ruthanne waved her arms. Bits of twigs, leaves, straw flew from her sweater, undone bun, and skirt, adding to the muck on the floor.

“You checked her stall, didn’t you, Hon?” Lottie asked.

Larry looked first at Theodore, then Lottie. “Llamas don’t wander, do they? They’re not like dogs when they go into heat?”

Theodore shook his head. “No. Not like dogs at all.”

Reggie’s nails click-clacked on the tile. He nuzzled Theodore’s hand. He petted the dog. There was no love between Reg and the llama.

“She’s gone! Gone!”

K.C. clicked her pen. “Ruthanne, you did check her stall?”

Ruthanne nodded, cast leaves to the floor. “First thing. Searched her pasture.” Lottie grabbed the broom. “Checked among the apple trees around the pond.” Larry snagged another muffin. “She has a sweet tooth. Although this time of year she’d be tipsy eating fermented ones off the ground.” Was that her secret? Old apples as fertilizer? “I called as I walked our road...” She glanced at Theodore. “…toward the beach.” K.C. wrote. “But she wasn’t near the water.” Larry stuffed a third of the muffin into his mouth. “I followed the pasture fence thinking maybe she went over to your place, Mr. Wilson. I called and called and called.” Lottie swept debris into piles, brushed the broom over Ruthanne’s boots. “But she’s gone! Gone!” Ruthanne raised up her hands.

What a drama queen. The animal would be back by feeding time.

Lottie guided Ruthanne to her regular spot while K.C. pulled out a chair. Larry downed the remainder of the muffin.

Ruthanne sat. She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged her sweater.

K.C. stuffed the pen into her backpack. “Send me a photo of her and I’ll make posters.”

Larry slid from his stool. “I’ll slap them on every signpost along my repair route.”

“I’ll offer a reward,” Lottie said. “Free lunch for a month.”

“I’ll run a front-page story.” K.C. said.

Lottie rubbed Ruthanne’s back with her right hand. “If somebody finds Ruby between now and then, you can write about that, too.” With her left, she pulled brambles from Ruthanne’s sweater and stuffed the twigs into her apron’s pockets.

Theodore sipped from the to-go cup. There it was, his Whistler. He would find Ruby. (How far could a llama wander on a one-town island?) Reunite lost pet with distraught owner. Hero material, there. Anybody could throw money around, but mend a broken heart? Sherman couldn’t touch such sky-high sentiment regardless of how many millions he donated.

He could see the front-page photo now. A group shot of all involved. Him standing on one side of Ruby, Reggie at his side. Ruthanne on the other side. He holding Ruby steady so Ruthanne could kiss the animal’s muzzle. Lottie and Larry in the back. His blue button-down would contrast best with Ruby’s russet red. Where was that shirt? His wife would know. He’d ask her to find and iron it. Be ready for the photo op.

“Gotta go.” K.C. swung the pack over her shoulder. “Got my work cut out.” She ran her hand through her spiked hair. “Ruthanne, send me a photo ASAP.”

Ruthanne nodded. “I knew I could count on you guys.” She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shuddered.

Larry tightened his tool belt. “I should leave too, get to my first appointment.” From the coatrack he pulled a charcoal-gray fleece jacket. “K.C., I’ll stop by your office later and grab Ruby’s posters.”

“Come on, Boy.” Theodore gathered his papers and walked toward the front door. He’d stop off at Ruthanne’s, take Reg to Ruby’s stall so the dog could get a good sniff, then they’d set off to trail the llama.

At the door, K.C. nearly bumped into him. She motioned to Reggie with her chin. “Best nose on the island. If anyone can roust that llama it’s your retriever.”

“Did you hear that, Reg,” Theodore patted his thigh and the dog fell in. “The editor thinks you’ve got talent.”

He reached for the doorknob.

“Wear your blue shirt for the photo of you finding Ruby. Blue makes everyone look good in newsprint.” She cupped her chin with her hand. “I’ll Photoshop your neck. Digital editing does wonders. So you can one-up your brother with the photo. You’ll look a decade younger than that Son-of-a-Bitch.”

His hand fell from the knob. She knew. He glanced at Lottie.

“Blue is your color,” the waitress said.

Larry nodded.

They all knew. Knew he was Theodore Wilson, of the Wilson family. Probably knew all along. And didn’t care.

“Are you going to open the door?” K.C. asked. “Or, are we dancing?”

His hand was outstretched, awfully close to her waist.

“Where are my manners?” he turned the knob and held the door open for her.

THE END

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