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The following novelet
was first published in The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2000. Cover art by Barclay
Shaw.
When I first submitted
this story, it was entitled "The Day I Died, or 'Woark?' Said the
Emu."
F&SF Publisher Edward
L. Ferman and Editor Gordon Van Gelder wisely suggested the title
change to "Bloody Bunnies."
"Bloody Bunnies"
Copyright 2000 by Bradley Denton. Please do not post or
publish any part of this story without the permission of the
author.
Bloody Bunnies
by Bradley
Denton
The day I died was Thursday,
December 10, 1998. It was overcast, drizzling, and cool here in
Central Texas. Brodie Lane, an asphalt road between my rural home
and the city of Austin, was shiny and slick.
A spot in the center
of my chest and another on my lower right ribcage didn't feel right.
The spot in my chest worried me, because I remembered reading about
the wreck that had killed the comedian Sam Kinison. Kinison had
walked away from his car, then sat down and died on the side of the
road because his aorta had torn apart when his chest hit the
steering column.
I didn't know whether
my chest had hit my pickup's steering column. I was still wearing my
shoulder belt, so maybe I was just bruised where the belt had caught
me.
If I had blacked out,
it hadn't lasted long. I could hear steam hissing from the radiator.
The windshield had cracked, but I couldn't see much else because the
hood had crumpled and popped up in front of it. I wanted to get out
of there.
But first I had to get
the zippered black nylon bag from behind the seat. I had to keep
that with me, although I couldn't remember why.
So I managed to unhook
my seat belt, twist around, and grab the bag's loop handles. A stab
of pain shot through my ribs, but I held on to the bag. It was
smaller than a briefcase and didn't seem to have much in
it.
Then I realized that my
glasses had flown off my face during the wreck, so I had to turn
back around and paw at the floor with my free hand until I found
them among the scattered pennies and Altoids. They were twisted, but
the lenses were still in place. I bent them back enough so they
stayed on my nose, and then I tried to open my door.
It was jammed shut, so I
hauled myself across the bench seat and found that I could get the
passenger door open about a foot and a half. That was far enough for
me to squeeze through, wincing at my chest and ribs, clutching the
black nylon bag.
Once outside in the
drizzle, I smelled gasoline and coolant. My blue Dodge Dakota pickup
truck was on the wrong side of a curve, its camper-shelled bed
blocking part of the lane and its crumpled front end resting just
off the edge of the pavement.
On the other side of the
road, broadside across the northbound lane, was the silver Nissan
pickup that had come around the curve too fast. I had been driving
north on my way to buy Christmas presents in Austin, and this guy
had come around the curve heading south. He'd started fishtailing
off the road, had overcorrected, and then slid across into my lane.
I had tried to get around him, but his rear axle had swung into my
grille like a battering ram. I had been going about 40 mph, and he
had been sliding toward me faster than that.
As I stood there with my
nylon bag in hand and my glasses askew, wondering whether my aorta
was emptying into my chest, I looked over at the Nissan and saw that
its cargo bed had caved in where it had hit my Dodge. But its cab
hadn't been touched, and the driver stood beside it looking
sheepish. He was a young guy in a letter jacket. He tried to smile
at me, but he knew he had screwed up.
"Are you okay?" he
asked.
I could hear the mingled
hope and fear in his voice, but all I could do was tell him the
truth.
"I don't know," I
said.
Then I turned away and
stumbled northward along the left edge of the road, staring west
past the ditch and the barbed-wire fence at the scrubby field
beyond. I saw something big and brown moving behind a clump of
twisted cedar, so I clutched the nylon bag tighter and walked
faster. Then the brown thing vanished. But I kept
walking.
I didn't know where I
was going, just as I didn't know why it had been important for me to
take the nylon bag from the truck. My chest and ribs hurt with every
step, but I was afraid of what might happen if I stopped. As long as
I was in motion, I told myself, I was still alive.
A telephone-repair van
approached from the north, slowed, and pulled over in front of me.
So I had to stop after all. I asked the van's driver to call the
sheriff, and then I looked back south through drizzle-specked
lenses. My Dodge's rear hazard lights were flashing, but I didn't
remember turning them on. I did remember, however, that I would need
my driver's license and insurance card when the law arrived. So I
went back and rooted around on the floor of the cab again until I
found my wallet. Then I paced back and forth in front of the truck's
crushed front end and watched green coolant trickle away through the
gravel under the radiator.
A good ol' boy in a
crew-cab Ford drove up and offered to use his truck to push my wreck
far enough off the road for traffic to pass. I took him up on it and
tried to put the Dodge in neutral, but the transmission had locked
up. The good ol' boy did it anyway, though. I had to shout to stop
him from pushing me all the way into the ditch, which was deep on
that side of the road.
A few minutes later a
Travis County sheriff's deputy showed up, along with two tow trucks.
The deputy asked me if I wanted an ambulance, but I didn't. I had
decided by then that my aorta was still intact. My ribs hurt worse
than my chest.
Then the telephone-van
driver let me use his mobile phone to call my wife, Barb, at home. I
told her I was only three miles from our house, and she said she'd
be right there.
The tow trucks hauled my
Dodge and the other guy's Nissan to a nearby church parking lot,
where the deputy took our statements and determined that the other
guy was at fault. Barb showed up in her Saturn before the deputy had
finished his paperwork -- she had been heading for the curve, but
spotted us in the church lot -- so I got into the car with her to
wait. I was glad to see her.
She pointed at the black
nylon bag on my lap.
"What's that?" she
asked.
I had been hoping she
would know, because I still couldn't remember. But I didn't want to
open the bag to find out just yet, because it might contain a
Christmas present that I'd hidden in the Dodge so Barb wouldn't see
it.
"A secret," I
said.
The deputy came over
then, returned my license and insurance card, and told me where my
wrecked truck would be towed. He also suggested I see a doctor, just
to be on the safe side.
I thanked him, and then
Barb drove us home. On the way, I put my insurance card back into my
wallet and started to do the same with my license. But its photo
made me stop. The photo was of me, all right -- same dark-straw hair
and beard, same farmboy face -- but I wasn't wearing my
glasses.
"This is weird," I said.
"I only take off my glasses to sleep."
Barb glanced at me.
"They made you take them off for the picture when you went for your
renewal. You thought it was weird then too."
Now I was afraid that I
had hit my head in the wreck and lost part of my memory. My head
didn't hurt . . . but I couldn't remember what was in the nylon bag,
or taking off my glasses for the driver's license photo.
I started probing my
scalp with my fingers as Barb pulled the Saturn into our garage, but
I couldn't find any bumps or sore spots.
"What's wrong?" Barb
asked.
I stopped probing my
scalp, and then I replaced the unfamiliar license in my wallet.
"Nothing," I said. "Just checking for contusions."
"We're calling for that
doctor's appointment now," Barb said.
So we went into the
house, made the call, and arranged an appointment for the next
morning. Then I went back to the small bedroom that serves as my
office, ostensibly to hide the Christmas surprise that was inside
the nylon bag. My fourteen-year-old Black Lab/Irish Setter dog,
Watson, was asleep on the office floor and didn't wake up when I
came in. I closed the door and sat down at my desk, then cleared
away a stack of papers and books to make room for the bag.
I sat there staring at
it for a while. What if I opened it, discovered what was inside, and
still didn't remember why it was important? What if a chunk of my
memory really had disappeared? What if I couldn't remember the names
of my friends or family? What if I had forgotten how to touch-type
or when to flush?
I told myself I was
being ridiculous, didn't believe it, and unzipped the bag
anyway.
Then I looked inside,
let out my breath, and grinned. Of course I knew what it was, and
why I had taken it from the truck even before retrieving my wallet.
I also knew why Barb
hadn't recognized the bag. She had agreed that we needed to protect
our pets and home, but she didn't approve of carrying weapons in our
vehicles. So I hadn't told her when I'd stashed one in the Dodge and
another in the Saturn.
I took the weapon from
the bag to make sure it hadn't been damaged in the accident. The
thin metallic barrel still flared into a neat parabola at one end
and tapered into a black plastic handgrip at the other with no dents
or dings in between. The three-position switch above the trigger
still clicked from E to O to C and back again, and the arming switch
in the handgrip still worked too. The red LED above the trigger came
on, and the green LED beside it began glowing a few seconds later
when the unit was charged.
My emu pistol was still
in good shape, and that might mean that my memory was too. I felt
much better.
#
It didn't last long. For
one thing, my ribs gave me a pang as I set down the emu pistol and
stood up from the desk. And then, as I went into the hallway, our
gray cat Rufus came sauntering out from the master bedroom and
rubbed against my ankle.
That might not sound
like a problem, but it was. Rufus had been dead for two
years.
Barb came running as I
yelled, and Rufus looked up at me as if he thought I was brain
damaged. And I was fairly certain I was. Rufus sure didn't look
dead anymore.
"What what what what
what?" Barb asked.
I pointed at Rufus.
"He's alive," I said.
Barb looked at Rufus,
then at me, then at Rufus. "When wasn't he?"
"Two years ago," I said.
"Two years ago, when he was ten, when he went outside and --
"
I stopped myself.
Somebody here was a few bubbles off true, and the circumstantial
evidence was pointing toward me. So I didn't say what I knew had
happened two years ago: Rufus had died when a lone emu had pushed
open the gate in our chain-link fence, come into the back yard, and
killed him.
"When what?" Barb
asked.
I shook my head.
"Nothing. I'm just rattled from the wreck."
Barb squeezed my
shoulder. "I don't blame you. But Rufus is fine, and Watson and
Clarence are fine too."
"Does Watson still have
arthritis?" I asked, looking back into my office at the sleeping
dog.
"Uh, yes," Barb said.
"And Rufus is still diabetic, and Clarence is still afraid of
everything. He probably ran and hid when you yelled."
So Rufus was alive, but
diabetic. It was news to me. I squatted and petted him, thinking
that I might discover he was a different cat from the Rufus I
remembered. But he had the same scruffy gray fur, the same bad
fish-breath, and the same attitude of fearless entitlement.
That was what had gotten
him killed in the first place. Our other cat, Clarence, had been in
our half-acre back yard that evening too, but he had run for the
house in a black-and-white blur when the emu had arrived. Rufus,
however, had stood his ground. He had probably thought that the
five-to-six-foot-tall bird was a giant chicken that the God of Cats
had sent him for supper.
I had looked out the
window when Clarence burst in through the pet door, caught a glimpse
of the emu in the waning light, and had then grabbed the
home-protection emu pistol from the hall closet and run outside. But
I had been too late. The bird had gutted Rufus with its talons,
stomped on him, and vanished back through the open gate -- the gate
I had stupidly forgotten to latch that afternoon -- before I could
get close enough to scramble its tiny, murderous brain.
Now, though, the cat
that I had buried by the live oak tree at the end of the yard was
purring as I petted him and batting at my hand when I tried to stop.
But I had to stop anyway, because squatting wasn't doing my ribs any
good. I thought about going down to the tree to see whether the
grave was still there, but decided that was a bad idea.
"How about lunch?" Barb
asked.
"Sure," I said. "I'll
make it."
I wasn't hungry. But I
didn't want to try to write, and making lunch was a good way to
avoid it. I burned three grilled-cheese sandwiches before giving up
and starting a salad.
Then, while looking for
croutons, I came across a bag of syringes.
"Honey!" I yelled. "Are
you on junk?"
"Excuse me?" Barb called
from the living room.
Then I saw that the
label on the bag said, "For Rufus (cat) -- 4 units/Once
daily."
Of course. If Rufus was
diabetic, he needed insulin.
"I mean, have you given
Rufus his shot today?" I yelled.
"No. You said you'd do
it as usual when you got back from Christmas shopping."
So giving Rufus his
insulin was my job, but I had no memory of ever doing it. Still, how
hard could it be?
I found a vial of
insulin in the refrigerator, figured out how to fill the syringe to
four units, and then grabbed Rufus and discovered how hard it could
be. But I managed. And I would do the same thing, I told myself,
with any other mental gaps that presented themselves. I would
spackle the holes in my memory one by one until they were invisible
again.
After lunch, I took the
garbage to the compost heap and found that being outside made me
paranoid. Even though no emus had come near our yard since the one
that had killed Rufus (an event which apparently hadn't happened in
the first place), I was convinced that I could hear a whole flock of
them pushing through the trees and brush behind our fence.
So after dumping the
garbage, I went back to the house and closed the pet door after
checking to see that Watson and the cats were inside. Then I went to
the hall closet. My plan was to arm myself, then go out behind the
fence and either brain-scramble or scare off the birds that I knew
were back there.
But the emu pistol that
we kept in the closet was gone, and so was its holster. Even the
hook that the holster had hung from was missing.
My paranoia worsened.
With the sore spot in my chest aching and my ribs feeling as if they
were wrapped around a steak knife, I went into the garage and
reached under the Saturn's passenger seat. All I found were a wadded
Kleenex and an empty Butterfinger wrapper.
I rushed back into the
house and almost shouted to Barb that two of our emu pistols were
missing, but stopped myself. She was reading a book, and there was
no point in alarming her -- especially since she hadn't even known
about the pistol I'd hidden in the Saturn.
Barb had never believed
that the emu threat in our area was serious, since most of the flock
sightings and the worst of the attacks had taken place far out in
the Hill Country. And since I had caught only an uncertain glimpse
of the emu that had killed Rufus, she had always suspected a bobcat
or raccoon.
But I had known better,
so I had bought two extra pistols beyond the one provided by the
state so we'd have protection away from home. We lived close to
Austin, but not so close that lone emus or ostriches separated from
their Hill Country flocks couldn't cause trouble for someone
changing a flat tire.
Now two of our three
pistols were gone. But since I remembered buying the extras because
of Rufus's death, and now Rufus wasn't dead, maybe we'd never had
more than one in the first place.
I went into my office
and found that the pistol I'd taken from the Dodge was still on my
desk, charged and ready to go because I'd left the arming switch
on.
So I took it outside
and tramped around behind our fence until I was satisfied there were
no emus lurking about. Then I returned to the house and opened the
pet door so Watson, Rufus, and Clarence could have access to the
back yard again.
Clearly, both my
paranoia and my memory problems had been caused by stress from the
wreck. So my theory now was that Rufus's death had occurred in a
hallucination I'd had during a blackout after the impact with the
Nissan. The memory seemed much more real than that, but perhaps that
was only an indication of how hard the two trucks had
collided.
As I finished taking
the plastic slide out of the pet door to open it, I heard Barb's
voice behind me.
"What the heck is that
thing?" she asked.
I turned and saw that
she was pointing at the emu pistol, which I had laid on the floor
while opening the pet door.
I could tell from
Barb's tone of voice that she wasn't kidding. She really didn't know
what it was.
Great.
I could have told her
the truth, but there was no point in that. If the truth could have
made sense to her, she would have known it in the first
place.
"It's a toy," I said.
"I found it in the back yard. One of the neighbor kids must have
thrown it over the fence."
"Oh," Barb said. Then
she looked at me with concern. "You probably don't feel like
working. Want to watch a video?"
"You bet. Pick one out,
and I'll be right there."
Barb went to select a
movie, and I switched off the emu pistol and put it back into its
nylon bag in my office. Then I joined Barb in the living room, and
we watched a Bill Murray film, Groundhog
Day.
I tried to take comfort
from the fact that I recognized the plot, but I didn't succeed. In
the Groundhog Day that I remembered, Bill
Murray had been bald. In this one he had hair, but it looked as if
it had been applied with a glue gun.
That night I tried to
stay awake because I was afraid to fall asleep. I was afraid that I
was still in my truck at the moment of impact, and that instead of
Rufus's death, it was my whole waking life since the wreck that had
been a hallucination. If I fell asleep, the hallucination would be
over. And so would my life.
But despite my best
efforts and the pain in my side, I finally did sleep. I dreamed of
trying to run away down Brodie Lane while being pursued by a
thundering flock of ostriches -- which, as most people know, can be
even more dangerous than emus.
#
I woke up on Friday
morning, so I was either still alive or still hallucinating during
the split second before my death. But I didn't have time to try to
figure out which, because Barb rousted me from bed to drive me to
the doctor's office in Austin. It was another gray, drizzly day, and
I clenched the armrest all the way to town.
Barb went into the
examination room with me. She wanted to stay close both to keep me
calm and to find out whether I was seriously damaged.
I was curious about
that myself, because I still didn't feel square to the world. My
toothpaste had tasted odd that morning, like peppermint instead of
cashews, and it had freaked me out a little.
The doctor asked a lot
of questions, squeezed my ribs (which hurt), thumped my chest (which
was feeling better), and then sent me down a hallway for an X-ray.
Barb came along, and we waited outside the X-ray room until a
technician appeared and called my name.
I went in, and Barb
stayed outside as the technician closed the door.
Inside the small room
was a white table, and suspended over it was a gigantic machine that
could have been a prop in a 1935 Universal horror movie.
"What the heck is that
thing?" I asked.
The technician gave me
a quizzical look. "It's the X-ray machine."
I stared at it. "I've
had X-rays before," I said, "and the machines weren't anything like
this. This looks like something an evil genius would use to torture
James Bond."
The technician
chuckled. "Just take off your shirt and lie face down on the
table."
"I'm not kidding," I
said. "The last X-ray I had was about eight years ago, and the
machine was the size of a Polaroid camera."
The technician raised
an eyebrow. "I think that probably was a
Polaroid camera. Take off your shirt and lie face down,
please."
I did as I was told. It
was painful to lie on my belly, and I gritted my teeth as the
technician fiddled with knobs and switches on the contraption above
me. Then he inserted a piece of film the size of a cookie sheet into
a slot in the table.
"It wasn't a Polaroid,"
I said, wincing. "The radiologist had me stand against the wall, and
then she picked up the unit and pushed a button. The film came
rolling out from the bottom. I thought they were all like
that."
"Okay," the technician
said. "Don't move."
Then he took a heavy
apron from a peg on the wall, put it on, and stepped behind a metal
partition. He peered at me through a window that looked as if it
belonged on a space capsule.
"Take a deep breath and
hold it," he said.
I had a bad feeling
about all of this. "Why are you standing way back there?" I
asked.
"Because I do this
thirty times a day," he said, as if speaking to a three-year-old.
"The lead apron and the barrier protect me from too much
radiation."
His explanation only
made my bad feeling worse. "Hey, I'm lying here without even a
shirt. What's protecting me?"
"Take a deep breath and
hold it."
I was beginning to
freak out a little more than I had from the peppermint toothpaste.
"Do you expect me to
talk, Goldfinger?" I cried.
"No, Mr. Denton," the
technician said. He sounded annoyed. "I expect you to take a deep
breath and hold it."
I took a deep breath
and held it, convinced that the next thing I felt would be a laser
beam slicing through my spine. But there was only a click and a
buzz, and then the technician came out from behind the partition. He
pulled the sheet of film from the table and inserted
another.
"One more," he said.
Then he looked down at me with a smirk. "Think you can stand
it?"
He sounded mighty
condescending, I thought, for a guy wearing a lead apron.
Twenty minutes later,
back in the examination room, the doctor told me and Barb that the
X-ray had revealed three cracked ribs. She wrote a prescription for
painkillers, then gave me a velcro-fastened elastic-bandage "rib
belt" and told me to come back for more X-rays in three
weeks.
I told her I'd think
about it.
#
We stopped at our usual
supermarket on the way home, and I headed for the pharmacy window
while Barb grabbed a cart and went to pick up a few other items. The
rib belt was tight and uncomfortable, and I wanted to loosen it. But
that would have involved unbuttoning my shirt and ripping open the
velcro while on line behind an elderly lady who was there to pick up
her blood-pressure medicine. It didn't seem like a wise
move.
After getting my
prescription, I met Barb at a checkout lane and helped her unload
the cart. It was at this point that I once again began to freak out
a little.
The kid manning the
register took the first item, a can of soup, and waved it over an
asterisk-shaped plate of glass set into the counter. Something made
a beeping sound, and then the kid rolled the can down the counter to
another kid who looked at me and asked, "Paper or
plastic?"
My rib belt seemed to
constrict around me even tighter.
"Uh, neither," I said.
"It's soup."
Both kids looked at me
dully.
"Plastic will be fine,"
Barb said, giving me a don't-be-a-smartass look.
But I wasn't being a
smartass. I was baffled. I could see now that the glass plate had a
red light burning beneath it, and the beeping sound happened every
time the cashier waved something over it. And the kid at the end of
the counter was putting our groceries into flimsy plastic bags
instead of sturdy foldout boxes. Everything except the canned goods
would be mashed flat before we got home.
All of this oddness,
plus my lingering unease over the giant X-ray machine, made me
dizzy. I wanted to close my eyes, but I was afraid that if I did, I
would reopen them to discover that I was lying on the wet asphalt of
Brodie Lane with mist falling into my face and my brains dribbling
into the ditch.
And maybe that was
where I belonged, because I sure didn't seem to belong where I
was.
So I went ahead and
closed my eyes, but when I opened them I was still at the checkout
counter with Barb, and she was paying for our groceries by passing a
credit card through a slot. That, at least, was familiar. But that
was how the groceries should have been tallied, too -- by swiping
price tags through a slot, not by waving things over a glass
plate.
The only thing that
made me hope I still might be mostly sane was that Barb seemed to be
the same person she had been before the wreck. She was five-foot-two
with curly brown hair, green-flecked eyes, and a lot of
patience.
On the other hand, she
didn't know what an emu pistol was, and the bizarre
supermarket-checkout routine didn't faze her. I wished I'd dragged
her into the X-ray room so I could have seen her reaction
there.
I didn't say any of
this to her, though. First, I decided, I would give my brain a
chance to straighten itself out. The tow yard where my Dodge now sat
was on our way home, and we were planning to stop there to retrieve
a few things that I hadn't thought to take with me after the
accident. Seeing the crumpled truck, I hoped, might jolt my head
back into place.
But when I slogged
through the muck in the tow yard toward the Dodge, all I could think
was that it was impossible for me to be alive. The front end of the
truck was even more crushed than I had realized the day before. The
hood had folded, the right front tire had exploded, the grille had
disintegrated, the radiator had burst, and the frame had bent like
al dente spaghetti. The right front fender looked like an aluminum
can that had been run over by a lawn mower. The engine had compacted
up against the fire wall, and the fire wall had bowed inward. The
Dodge was totaled and then some.
As I stared at the
destruction, Barb snapped some pictures of me and the truck with a
disposable camera she'd bought at the supermarket. We had decided to
photograph the damage in case there were insurance problems, but now
I also thought I'd want the pictures just so I could see myself
standing beside what should have been my coffin. Just so I'd have
visual proof that I walked away from it.
And right on the heels
of that thought, I recalled that a photograph wasn't proof of
anything. You could alter a photograph to make it look as if Abraham
Lincoln walked away from a wrecked Dodge.
Or was that only true
in the world I remembered? Was it also true in a world where
groceries were packed into plastic bags, X-ray machines were the
size of bass boats, toothpaste tasted like peppermint, and Bill
Murray had hair?
Barb drove us home from
the tow yard via Brodie Lane, and once again I glimpsed something
big and brown off among the cedars. So I leaned down to grab the emu
pistol from under the seat, but remembered just as the pain cut
through my ribs that there wasn't one there anymore.
And whatever I had
glimpsed was gone when I looked again.
#
That night, after Barb
fell asleep, I left our bed and went across the hall into my office.
My ribs were hurting like mad despite my pain pills, but I wouldn't
have been able to sleep anyway. Too much in the past day and a half
had just been wrong.
I closed the door,
turned on my computer, and booted up my Internet software. Then the
modem dialed and logged on as it was supposed to, and I relaxed a
little. I had been afraid that this new world might not have the
same Web that I knew, but so far it looked familiar. Even my
incoming e-mail list was loaded with the usual get-rich-quick junk
and porn-site solicitations. And I still didn't know how my name had
gotten onto the porn-solicitation list. Honest.
After deleting the junk
and reading the few pieces of real mail -- all of them from names I
recognized, thank goodness -- I jumped to a search-engine site and
typed in "dangerous," "Texas," and "emus."
Then, as I waited for
the list of hits to pop up, I took my emu pistol from its bag and
pointed it at the screen as if expecting one of the feathered
monsters to leap out at me. I almost hoped one would, because at
least then I'd know for sure that I was hallucinating. And I would
have the right weapon at hand to dispatch the
hallucination.
To my initial relief,
there were some promising news-article hits. But when I jumped to
the sites and began to read, a chill spread up from my sore ribs
into my chest.
According to the online
articles, a few out-of-business Texas emu and ostrich ranchers had
simply released their birds rather than destroy or sell them. And
these birds were indeed a potential problem to farmers, motorists,
and others.
However, what I read
made it clear that the emu and ostrich industry had never been an
important one in the state, that the numbers of free-roaming birds
were few, and that dangerous encounters were rare. The birds were
big and skittish, but they weren't murderous.
This was not as it was
in the world, in the Texas, that I remembered.
In that world, the
Texas ratite industry enjoyed a boom in the late 1980s akin to the
booms enjoyed by the Texas petroleum industry in times past. Emus
became lucrative because of demand for their low-cholesterol meat
and the skin-care products made from their body oils, and ostrich
feathers and eggs followed suit. So emu and ostrich ranches sprang
up throughout the state, with a heavy concentration in the Central
Texas Hill Country.
Then, in 1991, the
Texas beef industry fought back with a television ad. In the ad, a
prissy Yankee orders a chopped-emu sandwich at the counter of a
barbecue joint. As he does so, a group of Texans surrounds him, and
a rawboned hombre drawls, "Yew're new around here, ain't yew?" Then
the hombre buys the Yankee a slab of beef ribs -- and at his first
bite, the prissy guy morphs into John Wayne in a ten-gallon
hat.
"Now, that's
good eatin', pilgrim!" he says.
At that, everyone draws
six-shooters, yells "Yee-hah," and blasts holes in the
ceiling.
That ad -- plus the
persistent rumor that emus were carriers for various avian flu
strains -- put an end to the emu and ostrich boom. Most of the
ranchers went bankrupt, and they set thousands of birds
free.
The freed birds went
feral and got mean. Something about roaming wild, or about the diet
available to them in the Hill Country, turned them into vicious
marauders. By 1993, flocks of emus and ostriches ranging from a half
dozen to several hundred birds were roaming through the hills
destroying property and occasionally slicing or trampling people and
livestock to death. Still more deaths resulted as many of the
bullets and shotgun blasts intended for the tiny heads of emus
instead hit the people being attacked. To make matters worse, shots
to the emus' double-feathered bodies tended not to kill them right
away, but made them stomp and kick even harder.
Thus, to their shock,
Texans discovered that firearms were an ineffective defense against
emus. Or, to be accurate, we rediscovered that fact . . . because
the Australians learned the same lesson in 1932, when troops armed
with machine guns and artillery attempted to destroy a flock of
twenty thousand emus that was devouring Western Australian crops.
The campaign failed, however, when the besieged emus split their
army into squads and adopted guerrilla tactics. In the end, the 1932
Emu War resulted in exactly twelve enemy casualties -- and in the
decision to build a six-hundred-mile-long fence between wilderness
and farmland.
That solution wasn't
practical for the Lone Star State, but the members of the Texas
Legislature realized they had to do something. So scientists at
Texas A&M University were commissioned to 1) find a way to wipe
out the roving emu and ostrich flocks over the long term, and 2)
find a way for people to defend their families in the meantime
without wasting ammunition and/or killing each other.
There's nothing the
Aggies like better than a challenge that involves both livestock and
weaponry, so by the fall of 1994 they had solved both
problems.
The first problem would
be handled by air-dropping contraceptive food pellets over the
thousands of acres of tree-covered hills where the birds roamed and
hid. Then, over the course of a decade or so, the flocks would
dwindle and disappear.
The second problem
would be dealt with by state-subsidized emu pistols. These were
ultrasonic-pulse devices designed to daze the birds long enough for
endangered humans to either get to safety or use a firearm at
point-blank range. A sustained ultrasonic blast aimed at an
individual bird's head could possibly kill it, but the Aggies
envisioned that most situations would call for blasts fired in a
wide pattern so as to incapacitate an entire flock for a short
period of time.
The Legislature decided
that one emu pistol would be provided to every rural household in
counties with confirmed feral emu sightings, and that extra weapons
would be available at nominal fees. City dwellers, however, would
have to pay full retail. Or they could rent a pistol if they just
wanted to go camping for the weekend.
Unfortunately, the emu
pistols' manufacture and release to the public were delayed by
legislative wrangling. The weapons had initially been designed for
use against emus only, but then a representative from Dripping
Springs rose to point out that ostriches, while fewer in number, had
also caused plenty of trouble. Specifically, they had smashed his
carport. So the Legislature asked the Aggies if the pistols would
work on ostriches, and the Aggies replied that while the frequency
required to stun an ostrich differed from that required to stun an
emu, the pistols could be built with both.
Then a state senator
from Nacogdoches described how he had been trampled and spit upon by
camels during a vacation trip to Big Bend. Camels, he insisted, were
far more hostile to man than either emus or ostriches -- and if the
so-called emu pistols did not include a setting for camels, he would
block the appropriation for their manufacture.
Legislators from the
Big Bend region were furious, and they insisted that the few camels
wandering their districts were relatively tame. But the senator held
his ground, and the Aggies finally agreed to include a camel setting
on the pistols . . . even though it was soon well known that the
setting was virtually useless, and that the only way to stun a camel
with an emu pistol was to use it as a shiny object to induce
hypnosis.
So it was that my own
emu pistol had a three-position selector switch, and I clicked it
back and forth as I searched the Web and found no mention of any
such pistols or switches. I did find an article about the senator
from Nacogdoches, though, in which he still claimed that he had been
trampled and spat upon while visiting Big Bend. In this version,
however, he blamed a combined group of gay-rights and Earth First
activists. I began to think it could have been anybody.
I logged off, then shut
down the computer and sat in my office staring at the emu pistol.
Even if I had imagined
the other discrepancies, the pistol was tangible evidence that
either I or the world had been transformed in the moment that my
Dodge had crumpled into a useless hulk.
It was tangible
evidence, in fact, that I and this new reality might not even belong
in the same plane of existence.
#
But on Saturday morning
Barb drove us to Katz's Deli on 6th Street in Austin -- and when we
arrived, everything there felt normal and right. We had been going
to what I called "Herd Breakfast" on Saturday mornings with our
friends Caroline, Warren, Bud, and Sven for almost ten years, and
today they all seemed to be just as I remembered them from before
the accident.
The breakfast
conversation began with words of sympathy about my wreck, after
which the Herd shifted gears as a group and gave me grief about
whether I had been wearing clean underwear in case of a trip to the
hospital. This sort of shift was typical and therefore
reassuring.
Then the trouble
started again.
"Speaking of
underwear," Caroline said, her eyes lighting up the way they do when
she's about to plunge into a real briar patch of a topic, "what kind
of person would think that exposing her thong to the President of
the United States was an appropriate thing to do?"
"What kind of President
would agree?" Bud asked, grinning through the steam from his coffee
cup.
Warren groaned. "Who
really cares?"
"The congressmen
pursuing impeachment," Barb said.
"They're just jealous
because someone is having sex and it isn't them," Sven said. He took
a sip of his Diet Coke. "I'm a little miffed about that myself,
actually."
I was both appalled and
confused. "What on earth are y'all talking about? Was there
something about this in the paper this morning?"
They all stared at
me.
"I mean, it's
ludicrous," I said. "President Ferraro would never put up with stuff
like that."
Everyone laughed, but I
didn't know why.
On the way home, Barb
stopped at the supermarket to drop off the disposable camera, with
its photos of the mangled Dodge, for developing. I waited in the car
while she went inside because I was afraid of seeing anything else
that I knew hadn't been in the world before Thursday.
I turned on the car
radio and flipped around the dial, and pretty soon that seemed to be
a bad idea too. I hadn't heard of half the bands or songs. But then
I realized that had been true before the wreck, too. Pop-music
ignorance was just a function of being forty.
I couldn't blame
everything else on that, though. So far, this new reality didn't
seem to have changed anyone I knew -- but I couldn't help fearing
that I had changed. I couldn't help fearing
that I had been swapped for the man Barb and our friends remembered.
And I couldn't help wondering how they would react when they found
out.
When Barb returned to
the car, she gave me a package of "Nutter Butter" cookies that she
seemed to think were my favorites. So I ate one, and it was pretty
darn tasty.
But I had never eaten
one before. I had never even heard of them.
I didn't tell Barb,
though.
For now, I still wanted
her to think that her husband had survived.
#
I spent most of
Saturday afternoon and evening watching familiar old movies like
Casablanca, Body
Heat, and Blazing Saddles, and I found no more
discrepancies like the hair problem in Groundhog
Day. Even so, I didn't want to go down the hall to my office
to try to work. I was afraid that whatever story-in-progress I
pulled up on my computer screen would be something I had never even
started writing.
By bedtime, however, I
had almost convinced myself that I was being silly. Each of the
things that had seemed unfamiliar or weird since the accident -- the
Nutter Butters, the name of the President, the X-ray machine, etc.
-- had been a thing outside myself. So there was no reason to think
that any of my work was anything other than what I remembered it to
be.
But on Sunday morning,
I opened the closet in my office to get a fresh ream of paper and
happened to glance up at the shelf that holds copies of my published
books.
I didn't recognize one
of them.
My hands were shaking
as I pulled that book down to look at it. Its title and dust jacket
were utterly unfamiliar. So was its title page.
Its contents page,
though, was another matter. The book was a story collection, and I
recognized all of the titles except the last one. In fact, other
than that title, I recognized the page itself. It was from my
collection Bloody Bunnies, which had also been the
title of a story I'd written especially for the book. A story that
wasn't there anymore.
In its place was a
story I'd never heard of, and the book itself was stamped with the
ludicrous title One Day Closer to Death.
That was it. I'd had
enough.
"Who wants to read a
book called One Day Closer to Death?" I yelled. "And
who cares if this Blackburn guy bakes cookies or not?"
I went on in this vein
for a while. When I finally looked up, Barb was standing in my
office doorway with an expression on her face that went beyond
concern. It went all the way to contemplation of signing me up for
electroshock therapy.
"What would a better
title have been?" she asked.
"The same one I already
used! Bloody Bunnies!"
Barb frowned. "That
doesn't sound too good."
I was stunned. "Bloody
Bunnies" was the best story I'd ever written, and Barb had said so.
I was sure of it.
Then I realized that I
couldn't remember a single thing about it except its title.
And that was the final
proof.
This world was not my
world. The people closest to me might seem the same, but too much
else was different.
Either I was dead and
this was the Afterlife, or I was alive and stuck in an alien
reality. Either way, I was no longer where I belonged.
That left me with only
two options.
One was to try to adapt
to my new surroundings. But in a world where even my books and
stories were different, in a world with no Bloody
Bunnies, I wasn't sure that I'd have much luck.
So I decided to try my
other option first.
I would try to find a
way back home.
#
I slept through Sunday
night because I was too exhausted to stay awake. The only dream I
had involved an emu, an ostrich, a camel, and a Harvey-sized
bleeding rabbit all attempting to draw and quarter me. Then they
gave up, and the rabbit just smothered me.
When I awoke Monday
morning, Rufus was curled up on the bed two inches from my face. I
yelped, and he opened his eyes halfway and yawned before going back
to sleep.
Barb, still in her
nightgown, came into the bedroom from the bathroom. "Something
wrong?" she asked.
"Just a bad dream," I
said. "Asphyxiation by giant bunny." I began to sit up, and pain
shot through my right side. I had slept without taking the useless
pain pills or wearing the rib belt, but I would have to try the belt
again.
Barb was shaking her
head. "I don't think you're in shape to drive. But I can't
reschedule my interview, so we'll have to reschedule with the
veterinarian instead."
"Huh?" I
asked.
"I have a job interview
at 9:00," she said. "Don't you remember?"
And now I did, sort of.
At least, I knew that Barb was on a job hunt -- in this world too,
it seemed. "Yes. Sorry. I'm still half asleep." I hoped that would
be a sufficient excuse. "And what's this about the vet?"
"Last Wednesday you
made a 9:30 appointment for Rufus to have his blood sugar checked
today."
Well, how could I have
known that? In the place I had been last Wednesday, Rufus had been
dead for two years.
"But since we only have
one vehicle now," Barb continued, "we'll have to reschedule.
Otherwise you'd have to drive me to the interview, zoom back south
to take Rufus to the vet, and then pick me up. I doubt that your
ribs are up to it."
My ribs hurt, all
right, but Barb had given me an idea. Our veterinarian's office was
only a mile from the site of my wreck. If I really wanted to get
back to the world I remembered, I would have to begin at the spot
where things had changed. And I would have to go there without
Barb.
I got up from the bed,
doing my best not to grimace. "I'm feeling better," I said. "I can
drive."
Barb was dubious. "I'm
not sure that's a good idea. I almost lost you last Thursday, and I
don't want anything like that to happen again."
I forced a smile. "What
are the odds?"
#
After showering and
dressing, and while Barb was putting on her interview clothes, I
took the black nylon bag with the emu pistol to the garage and slid
it under the driver's seat in the Saturn. It was the only thing that
I knew for sure came from my rightful world, and I wanted it with me
when I revisited the scene of my reality shift. I didn't know what I
would do when I got there, but I wanted to be ready if I gained any
sudden insight. I was even wearing the same clothes that I had worn
at the time of the wreck -- blue jeans, black T-shirt, leather
jacket. The only difference was that I was wearing the rib belt,
too.
After stashing the emu
pistol, I undertook the adventure of putting Rufus into his carrier.
The carrier was nothing more than a cat-sized plastic box with air
holes, a wire door, and a handle -- but Rufus seemed to think it was
a meat grinder. Each time I got any two of his feet inside, the
other two would grab the outer edges and hang on. I tried putting
him in frontwards, backwards, and sideways, but nothing worked. I
got a few scratches out of the deal, though.
Finally, Barb came out
of the bedroom wearing a crisp navy business suit, scooped up Rufus,
and tucked him into the carrier without getting so much as a wisp of
fur on her sleeve.
"You usually don't have
any trouble with this," she said as she closed and latched the wire
door. "Are you sure you want to drive?"
I was breathing hard
and my ribs ached, but I said I was fine.
Then I drove Barb to
downtown Austin through the city's abominable rush hour traffic,
made worse by the fact that this was yet another damp, gray day. But
despite the wet asphalt and the countless drivers who didn't
understand the concept of hydroplaning, I delivered Barb to the
right address by 8:45 with no difficulties other than constant pain.
The rib belt didn't seem to be helping.
As Barb opened her
door, she pointed at a coffee shop across the street. "Can you meet
me there in two hours?"
"Sure," I said, and
wondered whether it was true. If I somehow managed to slip back
through the truck-wreck reality rip into the world I came from,
would Barb still be downtown for an interview? And would the "I" who
belonged in this reality be able to slip back through
as well . . . or had he died in the accident?
"Are you going to be
okay?" Barb asked.
At that point, Rufus
let out a pitiful yowl from the carrier in the back seat.
"I'd better be," I
said. "I don't think Rufe would put up with waiting
here."
That answer seemed to
make Barb feel better. She kissed me and I wished her luck, and then
she headed into the building for her interview.
I turned the car around
and drove south while fighting off my sense of guilt by telling
myself that I was trying to do the right thing. Even if finding my
way back home meant leaving this world's Barb a widow, I argued,
wouldn't that be better than leaving her with a false husband from
another dimension?
The veterinarian's
office was as I remembered it, and so was everyone there. They were
gentle and efficient with Rufus, and they finished his bloodwork
even more quickly than I had hoped. It turned out that he needed a
slight boost in his insulin dosage, but was doing well otherwise. He
had even gained a few ounces since his last visit, they said. He was
up to eleven pounds. That was still down from the thirteen of his
glory days, but not bad for a twelve-year-old cat with
diabetes.
I was able to get him
back into the carrier without help. Then I paid the bill, thanked
the doctor and his staff, and took Rufus out to the Saturn. Once
inside the car, I found a notepad and pen in the glove compartment
and wrote out the new insulin instructions. I tore off the page and
folded it, wrote Barb's name on the outside, and tucked it into one
of the carrier's air holes. Just in case.
Then, with Rufus
strangely quiet, I drove to the curve on Brodie Lane where I had
died.
#
I approached from the
north, just as the Nissan that had hit me had done, and then pulled
off onto the narrow strip of gravel between the asphalt and the
ditch. I didn't see any ripple in the air or feel my hair stand on
end, but my pulse quickened anyway.
This was where it had
happened. This was where my mangled Dodge had stopped, and where I
had stumbled into the drizzle clutching a black nylon bag from
another world.
There was no traffic
from either direction, but to be safe I scooted over the brake lever
and got out of the car on the passenger side. My first step made a
crunching sound that wasn't gravel, so I looked down and saw shards
of blue, black, and amber plastic. They were the remains of the
Dodge's grille and turn signals.
I stood there gripping
the rubbery top edge of the open Saturn door, staring down at the
Dodge fragments, and wondered what I had been expecting to find.
There was no doorway back to the world I remembered. There was only
slick pavement, a muddy ditch, and broken plastic.
Then a gray streak shot
past my legs and leaped into the ditch.
It was Rufus.
Apparently, I had failed to latch the wire door on the carrier. So
now he was out of the car and down in the ditch, chasing something I
couldn't even see. A field mouse, maybe. Or maybe nothing at
all.
I jumped down after
him, and when I landed it was as if I had been run through with a
javelin. My ribs blazed, and I dropped to my knees. The air turned a
misty red for a few seconds -- and even when I could see clearly
again, my head and ribs continued to throb with each beat of my
heart.
Rufus had stopped about
thirty feet to the north and was looking back at me with an annoyed
expression, as if I had scared off his mouse.
Then I heard a loud
hiss above me, and I looked up and saw the emu on the other side of
the fence.
It was huge. Six feet
tall, eight feet long.
And this section of
fence was missing three strands of barbed wire, leaving it about two
feet high.
The emu cocked its head
and bent its long, feathered neck to look down at me. Then it hissed
again and stamped its foot, giving me a good view of its talons.
They looked sharp. And there were three more just like them on the
other foot.
I tried to yell and
wave my arms to spook it. But all I could manage was a wheeze, and
waving my arms only twisted the javelin in my ribs. It hurt so much
I almost cried.
The emu's throat
swelled, its beak opened wide, and it let out a roar like cannon
fire.
Then it hopped over the
fence into the ditch. Its feet hit the wet ground with a loud thud.
"Shoo," I
rasped.
The emu took a step,
and now it was within kicking distance of my face. Within kicking,
gouging, and shredding distance.
I could see in its evil
little eyes that it was an emu from my
world. And an emu from my world would just as soon gut you as look
at you. It had come through the reality rip with me on Thursday, and
it had been hanging around Brodie Lane for four days, waiting for
someone to maim.
And unless I could move
fast, that someone would be me.
But I couldn't move
fast. I wasn't sure I could move at all.
Then the gray streak
shot past me again, and the startled emu leaped back up toward the
fence.
Rufus, in this world as
in mine, didn't care that the emu was enormous and deadly. All he
saw was a big bird. All he saw was something to chase.
Or maybe he was trying
to protect me. Because even when the emu stopped with its back to
the fence and began kicking and stomping, Rufus kept after it. He
matched the thing hiss for hiss and swiped at it with his pitiful
little paws, dodging this way and that -- when he could have, should
have, turned and run.
Whatever his
motivation, the result was that he distracted the emu long enough
for me to lurch to my feet and stagger up to the Saturn. I fell into
the car, howled as the javelin spiked me again, and clawed under the
driver's seat for the black nylon bag.
I was mostly insane at
that point, but I had one clear thought screaming at me over and
over:
Not this time! NOT THIS
TIME!
I couldn't get that out
of my head . . . even though I knew that if I did nothing, I would
be on my way back home. Because as Rufus had run toward the emu, I
had realized what it would take to reopen the rip between worlds. I
was as sure of it as I was of the pain in my side.
If the emu killed
Rufus, then that one event would again be as I knew it had been. And
then everything else would topple back to the way it all was before,
one domino after another, as quick and inevitable as a truck wreck.
That was why I had come
back to the curve on Brodie Lane. That was what I had wanted ever
since the accident.
But in the moment that
Rufus's stupid little cat brain had once again decided that it was a
good idea to stand up to a six-foot-tall psychopathic monster, I had
reconsidered.
Maybe I didn't belong
in this reality. Maybe this wasn't my world.
But God damn it, my cat
was still my cat. And I wouldn't let him die because of my mistake
again.
I tore the emu pistol
from the bag and made sure the selector was set to E. Then I flipped
the arming switch, threw myself backwards out of the Saturn, and
fell down the muddy slope to the bottom of the ditch again. I landed
on my back and looked up through another red haze -- but I could
make out Rufus and the emu.
The emu was still
kicking and Rufus was still swiping and dodging. But Rufus had
slowed, and as I raised the pistol in both hands, the emu's right
foot came down and caught him.
Rufus shrieked as only
a cat can shriek.
The red and green LEDs
were glowing, so I drew a bead on the emu's head and pulled the
trigger. The handgrip went from cold to hot in a quarter second, and
the pistol shuddered and hummed.
The emu's head snapped
back as if smacked by a shovel, and then the monster just stood
there swaying and blinking.
I kept the trigger
depressed and my aim on the emu's head as I rolled onto my left
side, got to my knees, and finally stood. Then I clambered up toward
the fence yelling "Die, die, die!" or something similar until the
business end of the pistol was right against the emu's
beak.
"Woark?" said the emu.
Then it fell back onto
the fence and lay draped there, staring up at the gray
sky.
At that point the emu
pistol became too hot to hold, and I dropped it. It landed smoking
beside Rufus, whose tail was still trapped under the emu's
foot.
Rufus looked up at me
and yowled.
I lifted the emu's foot
and saw that Rufus's tail had been pressed down into the muddy soil.
It was dirty, but it didn't look broken. And the emu's talons had
missed it. I didn't blame Rufus for shrieking, though.
I picked him up, hugged
him to my chest, and climbed back up to the Saturn. This time he
didn't object when I put him into the carrier. And this time I made
sure the door was latched.
Then I looked back at
the emu. It hadn't killed Rufus again, so I hoped I hadn't killed it
either.
I went back across the
ditch and found that the creature was still breathing. So after a
lot of grunting and javelin-stabs to the ribs, I lugged it off the
fence and laid it on the ground. Then it lifted its head, and its
legs began to twitch. It would have to be tied up.
I used the only thing I
had. I pulled up my shirt, took off the rib belt, and wrapped the
emu's ankles together. I wasn't sure the Velcro would hold, but it
was the best I could do.
Then I picked up the
cooling emu pistol. The barrel was warped, and something inside
rattled like cracker crumbs. I flipped the switches back and forth,
but the LEDs stayed dead.
I carried the pistol
back up to the road . . . and then I dropped it among the fragments
of my Dodge, lifted my foot, and stomped it to bits.
#
The vet said that
except for losing a little fur, Rufus was fine. And as for me, I
discovered that I actually felt better without the rib
belt.
Meanwhile, Animal
Control picked up the emu. (A few weeks later, it was shipped two
hundred miles north to the Dallas Zoo. Better them than
us.)
The only black mark on
the day was that a few hours after Rufus and I returned to the
house, Barb had to call from the coffee shop downtown to ask where I
was.
All I could say was,
"I'm home."
And so I am. But the
world still seems a bit off kilter, and I'm reminded of that every
time I look at the photos Barb took of me and my wrecked pickup.
In one of the photos,
there are two of me. I'm standing on either side of the Dodge's
crumpled engine compartment, and one of me is holding an emu pistol.
And behind the truck, glaring around the corner of the camper shell,
is an evil-eyed emu.
I've shown this photo
to my friends without telling them what I see in it. And as far as I
can tell, everybody else sees only one of me -- sans emu pistol,
sans emu.
I have no explanation,
and the only other piece of tangible evidence has been stomped. So
I've fallen back on what most people with no explanation or evidence
fall back on: Belief.
Most often, I choose to
believe that the wreck knocked my brain around just enough to result
in a small shift in my perceptions, which in turn resulted in small
discrepancies between the world I now perceive and the world I
perceived prior to cracking up on Brodie Lane.
Other times, I
entertain the quasi-religious notion that no one ever dies, but
instead pops out in an almost-but-not-quite-the-same reality in
which he or she goes on living and driving and drinking coffee --
and maybe even getting to pet a resurrected cat.
But whatever the truth
may be, I've discovered that the differences between this world and
my previous one don't often cause problems. In fact, I rather like
the absence of rampaging emu and ostrich flocks, and I don't need a
camel to spit on a state senator. And while I do miss the
accomplishments of the Ferraro administration (such as the Universal
Health Care and Child-Proof Trigger Lock Initiative), at least the
guys running the show in this new reality are keeping themselves
busy.
So for the most part,
things are going well. Barb got the job and likes it a lot. Our pets
are old, but alive and happy. Herd Breakfast is as regular as the
tides, and Caroline and Sven humiliate me at cutthroat pool
precisely as I remember. My cracked bones have healed, and I have a
new Dodge that'll be paid off in five years, barring further reality
shifts.
Once in a while,
though, a difference between worlds does trip me up. So I'd like to
ask a favor.
If I'm in the
supermarket and I don't seem to understand the concept of "Express
Lane" . . . or if I refer to the Prime Minister of Canada as
"Michelle Pfeiffer" . . . or if I attempt to jump-start your SUV
with the battery in my pocket watch . . . or if I see you playing a
video game and say, "I thought those were taken off the market
because of the tumors" . . . or if I fail to understand the critical
reasoning behind Oprah Winfrey's book club selections . .
.
Please, have a little
patience. Give me a break, and cut me some slack. Buy me a slab of
beef ribs.
After all, I'm new
around here.
Contact:
braddenton@aol.com
Updated March
2006
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