Chapter Eighteen
I decided to take a look at Josef's project and see if there was anything I could do with it, so I picked it up off the floor and started from the beginning. As I attempted to read the words I made my way over to the workbench. I could see Josef's point. The diagrams didn't seem to match any of the materials I saw, until I realized that he had already opened, emptied and thrown away the pouches. What was sitting there in the tray was the result of his botched hack of a job.
He was supposed to have slowly combined pouch A with pouch B and stirred until achieving a stiff mixture, but the mixture seemed anything but that. It was sloppy and gooey. Perhaps he hadn't stirred enough, and why had he been stirring with that electric beater instead of the wooden spoon provided, which still looked fresh and clean? Aha, I told myself, the boy is lazy, but use of a beater is specifically warned against in the manual. I picked up the wooden spoon and began to stir the alleged bunny flesh.
At some point I would need to add the skeletal framing gel, and looking around I didn't see where he'd put that particular pouch. The gel was to be inserted through a metal straw. Seeing the illustration of that brought memories flooding back into my brain, of Joker Variety and his spitballs, of the taste of Chocolate Smoothies, of the words of Parsnip Caravan as she described her own settling process. “It gels,” she had told me, “things get more solid in your mind. The bits and pieces start to come together, and then all at once you come to know things you had never learned.” I was feeling that happening to me now, as previous mysteries began to reveal themselves to me. I glanced over at that computer tablet and understood the white rectangle to be a sort of security measure. Those letters I had put in there were supposed to be a secret, and actually were a secret to the regular people-people, whose eyes were unable to fully see – they were indeed practically blind, as Midgerette often said.
Looking around the room again I picked up patterns of movements whose vibrations and after-effects were still visible – to me and probably to no one else. I could see where Josef had been, his actions replaying as if happening in the moment. I glanced at the drawing of the skeletal framing gel pouch and sought its shape in the disturbances in the molecules in the room, and was quickly able to trace its movements too. He had placed it behind a toolbox where it drooped and sagged out of sight.
I continued to “stir vigorously” with the wooden spoon as instructed and soon felt the mixture properly hardening and stiffening. I inserted the metal straw and fed the skeletal framing gel pouch opening into it and gently squeezed from the bottom. The gel oozed its way into the mass on the tray and slowly but surely the goo began to take a rabbity form. It had to sit for several minutes, and in the meantime I leafed through the booklet to the extras section, where the eyes and tongue bits were to be inserted. I wondered where its brain was. The instruction booklet made no mention of the bunny's brain.
I was just putting in the final pieces when several events occurred at the same time. The first event was a sudden settling action that caused me to go completely deaf and blind for a few seconds. It was so disorienting that I nearly fell to the floor, but luckily my hand caught the edge of the workbench and kept me propped up. Then the door opened and Josef came into the garage.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. He rushed over and pushed me away from the workbench. This time I did fall down and smacked my head against the cinder block wall. My hearing and eyesight came back all at once, along with a vicious pounding in my skull.
“What did you do to my rabbit?” he yelled.
“I fixed it,” I murmured, rubbing the back of my head.
The bunny was alive, shuffling about in its tray and sniffing Josef's hand as he reached for it.
“Nobody said you could play with my toys,” he cried. He grabbed the rabbit by the throat and seemed about to choke it to death when June Lee came running into the room.
“Ooh, is that for me? Is that my bunny?”
“It's MY bunny,” Josef said, relaxing his grip on the unfortunate artificiality. His assertion was too strong, too soon, because even as he said the words he handed it over to the little girl, who cradled it in her arms and petted it softly. I was getting to my feet and wondering why he had given it up so easily when I noticed that Miss Marta had also come into the room. She had given him a look. She still had that look on her face.
“I love my bunny,” June Lee said, twisting her whole body as she stroked its head. Josef said nothing.
“Good job, honey,” Miss Marta sweetly said to him. Josef shook his head. He didn't know what to say. I was sure he wanted to take credit for the rabbit's construction but with me there as a witness he wasn't sure he wouldn't be exposed. He was embarrassed and furious and frustrated and disappointed all at once. It was supposed to be HIS bunny, that he was going to make from scratch for himself, and now he had not only failed to make the thing, but someone else had succeeded, and now it was even taken away from him. I felt sixty percent sorry for the boy, but I still didn't like him very much.
“Stan wants us to go to the beach,” June Lee announced, and Josef groaned.
“Where's the bunny's house?” June Lee asked. “We need to put her in her house while we go to the beach.”
“And,” she added before anyone else had a chance to speak, “her name is Princess by the way.”
“The bunny doesn't have a house,” Josef declared, before adding “it's not a house rabbit. It's a field rabbit.”
“That's just stupid,” June Lee struck back, assuming a hand-on-hip posture and glaring at the boy. “You make her a house right now.”
“Children, please,” Marta tried to intervene. “We can worry about the rabbit later. It can stay here in the garage for now, with Candles.”
“No,” June Lee turned on her. “Stan wants us to bring Candles to the beach. He says to meet him at Triplet Lakes at five o'clock sharp.”
“He would say 'sharp',” Josef said with a smirk that harsh looks from both Marta and June Lee quickly stifled. Marta rubbed the scar beneath her eye with her knuckle. She was staring at me in a way I didn't like when she told the children to run off and get their beach stuff ready and meet her outside at the car. Josef didn't even argue although it was plain to see he didn't want to go as he shuffled off. June Lee, on the other hand, went skipping out joyfully, dropping the rabbit carelessly as she did. The bunny hit the floor and bounced once or twice before hunkering down, fiercely twitching its little nose attachment but not hopping anywhere.