Photo by Richard Wilberg
Dirty Bunny
Creative Nonfiction
At four or five years of age, I played with a flop-eared, matted-cotton, one-eyed stuffed rabbit. I named him Dynamite. Before being beat up, half-eyed, and my best friend, I called him Bunny. Just one of many ordinary stuffed animals I kept in my bedroom toy box.
On Saturday evenings in winter, dad entertained my sister and me with Kiko The Kangaroo movies. He projected films onto a portable screen in our living room. For each movie, I snuggled with all my stuffed animals, including Bunny. We watched Kiko’s nemesis, Foxy Fox, dash from his cave to pounce upon baby birds and chase other vulnerable animals for his wicked delight. Kiko always rescued terrified victims. At the very last minute, he foiled Foxy Fox. I imagined Foxy Fox lived in our basement where dad stored his movie projector.
One Saturday night, just before movies, mother asked me to fetch a jar of peach preserves. I trembled. Peaches were stored in the basement. A good boy would retrieve a jar but only with protection from Foxy Fox. Could I rely on Kiko to rescue me? Unsure, I ran to my room and grabbed Bunny. He would help me like Kiko might use sticks of dynamite to eliminate Foxy Fox. With that decision, Bunny became Dynamite. We were inseparable for the next year or two.
#
“How did Dynamite get so dirty?” Mother asked as she tossed him into her bright-white, post-World War II Bendix washing machine for a routine bath.
I shrugged. Monthly washes had stripped his original golden-brown bunny fur from two locations on his premature bald head. Yellow straw stuffing, his rabbit innards, protruded from a buff-colored body-bag.
Mother left the room for chlorine bleach. I pulled a bench close to the washer, white knuckles gripping the edge of the Bendix. My heart raced as I watched Dynamite’s brown head dip and bob, dip and bob below sudsy waves. “Hold your breath, Dynamite. Maybe if I help you learn how to swim–”
“Stay back from the washer, Dicky.” Mother pulled my arm from the Bendix and lifted
me down from the bench. “The agitator will rip your arm off.” She closed the washer’s lid and walked me out of the room.
“He’ll drown, momma.” I wiped tears from my eyes.
“No, Dynamite will be fine.” She knelt beside me. “You named him Dynamite because he’s strong.”
An hour later, we returned to the Bendix. Mother’s swift action saved my arm, but Dynamite lost his right eye. Agitators apparently not only rip off arms.
Mother fetched the rolling pin that earlier in the month rolled cherry pie crust for a summer treat. “Poor baby,” she said, pushing it over Dynamite’s wet body. The white terrycloth towel she placed under him absorbed clear water that squeezed out. “We’ll make him a new eye after he hangs on the clothes line to dry.” She patted my shoulder.
Later that day, I found a sun-warmed, fluffy Dynamite propped on my bedroom pillow. I smelled bleach, lemons, and straw as I touched the spot absent his eye where mother had sewn an “X” with black thread. My comic books showed dead animals with black cross-marks in place of eyes. The agitator must have killed Dynamite, too. So what? Even if he were dead, I reasoned, Dynamite would come back to life in my arms. I recalled how Foxy Fox would return each Saturday after he was killed by Kiko the week before.
Or Dynamite may have died a week before his bath in the Bendix when I threw him from the back window of dad’s Oldsmobile. We were headed down 3rd Street to grandma’s house. “Stop, daddy.” I grabbed his shoulder. “Dynamite jumped out the window.”
Dad wheeled to the side of the street, ran up the sidewalk, retrieved the dirty bunny from curbside debris, and handed him to me. “Jumped, huh?” He smiled and rubbed my tousled hair.
#
By the time I was six or seven, summer days seemed endless. My high point of each day was the arrival of the postman. One August afternoon I lay on the lawn and balanced Dynamite on my knee. I never received any personal mail except birthday cards addressed to my parents. Collecting the mail was my job. I felt older with this responsibility.
I anticipated the roar of the mailman’s World War II military Jeep, that had been converted into a postal delivery vehicle. With letters and packages jammed to the roof, he barely had enough room to sit, drive, and steer to the opposite side of our country road. Once in position, he would reach through his window to stuff our mailbox.
While I waited, the sun played hide and seek with clouds. We didn’t watch movies in the summer, so viewing clouds was my daily entertainment and boyhood meditation. Suddenly Dynamite slipped from my knee and tumbled to the grass. Dappled sunlight danced across his face. A canopy of Beechwood leaves above me filtered sunlight. Shadows darted to give a semblance of animation to Dynamite’s one good eye. He seemed to wink at me as if to say, “Foxy Fox is gone. You’ll be fine. Time to move on.”
I got up from the lawn and walked to my room. I lay Dynamite in my toy box and sprinted to the garage for my baseball and glove. The mitt was soft and warm, a bit too large for my hand, but of a size and a challenge I would grow into. I pounded the ball into the oiled leather mitt. A pocket formed above Joe Adcock’s name stenciled into the palm.
The postman shouted from his Jeep, “Hey, Dicky, you’ve got mail. It’s addressed to
you.”
The Author
Richard Wilberg, MS, PCC is a published author, musician, photographer, creativity coach, and former business executive. He writes creative nonfiction, narrative essays, flash fiction, poetry, and self-development articles. His feet touch the ground in Middleton, Wisconsin. Publications include:
Winner’s Club (Unlimited Literature Magazine, 2021) retrieved from
Found Money (Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, 2021) retrieved from https://www.harespawlitjournal.com/issue-2-home
See his blog at www.rwilberg.com/blog.
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