Orwell's Luck Read online

  Orwell's Luck

  Richard Jennings

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Home delivery

  A room of his own

  The household awakes

  A member of the family

  Idle pursuits

  So far, so good

  Luck of the draw

  Deductive reasoning

  A certain smile

  A secret signal

  From the watchtower

  A goal realized

  A tousle-haired boy

  A brainstorm

  Orwell offers a clue

  A taste of spring

  Noises in the night

  The stars speak a different language

  Suspicions confirmed

  A plan gone wrong

  Orwell stops publishing

  My comic valentine

  The science of dreams

  Animal magnetism

  The Year of the Rabbit

  A concert for Orwell

  Orwell speaks

  The collected works of Orwell

  Home again

  The wheel of fortune

  The meaning of money

  A movie with a message

  A purloined paper

  A change in the weather

  A twister of fate

  A surprise encounter

  Who gets the credit?

  A change of pace

  Orwell takes a powder

  An impossible case

  Spring moves in

  Shooting the breeze

  A crash course in philosophy

  Spilling the beans

  The riddle of the day

  Scientists at work

  The amazing Orwell

  An intriguing who-dunnit

  Hard to believe

  Talent is recognized

  Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 2006

  Walter Lorraine Books

  Walter Lorraine Books

  Text copyright © 2000 by Richard Jennings

  All rights reserved. For information about

  permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jennings, Richard W. (Richard Walker), 1945–

  Orwell's Luck / by Richard W. Jennings

  p. cm.

  Summary: While caring for an injured rabbit which

  becomes her confidant, horoscope writer, and source of good

  luck, a thoughtful seventh grade girl learns to see things in

  more than one way.

  HC ISBN 0-618-03628-8 PA ISBN 0-618-69335-1

  [1. Rabbits—Fiction. 2. Horoscopes—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.J4298765 or 2000

  [Fic]—dc21

  99-033501

  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-69335-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  HAD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Philip, Alex, and Mary

  Home delivery

  All my life, I have been a person who wakes up with the birds. They say the early bird gets the worm, and I suppose it's true, but what gets me out of bed is not worms, but the opportunity to be the first one in my family to get to the newspaper.

  The newspaper contains the comics, and, more importantly, the comics pages contain the daily horoscope guide. This is vital information. I can't imagine getting through the day without it.

  On this particular day, the first day of a brand-new year, when I made the dash across the frost-covered lawn while the rest of my family slept, I was startled to discover a brown rabbit sprawled unhappily atop the fat, plastic-wrapped holiday paper.

  He held his head erect. His eyes were bright. His ears turned in my direction like satellite dishes. His nose twitched in that reassuring manner unique to rabbits. But his hindquarters were as lifeless as the laundry hidden beneath my bed. As I stood over him assessing the situation, he thrashed his forefeet about, which served only to turn him in circles.

  It appeared that I was confronted with yet another victim of urban carelessness, an event possibly perpetrated by the driver of the newspaper truck, a man I had never met, but who, I suspected, associated high speeds with professional achievement. The evidence lay at my bare feet, which were turning uncomfortably cold.

  I surveyed the surrounding front lawns, just in case this madman somehow had managed to dispose of an entire rabbit family in a single blow, but this was the only crippled creature in sight. The rabbit's discomfort, and mine, prompted me to remove him to warmer surroundings. I unrolled the newspaper, fashioned it into a makeshift gurney, and carried him into the kitchen, where I placed him on the countertop.

  "Don't be scared," I said, as if he could understand my words. "I like rabbits."

  I looked him over. He wasn't bleeding and there were no bones sticking out. Whatever his problem was, it was inside, not outside.

  Since I didn't know what else to do, I just talked to him, hoping that would make him feel better.

  "Do you have a name?" I asked him.

  He looked at me sadly in silence.

  "Well, you need one," I told him. "If only to make the conversation go more smoothly."

  First I thought about calling him Star, after the newspaper by the same name, but that sounded too much like something a kid would come up with. Then I tried out some more imaginative stuff, names that would signify his special status of being the first terrorist victim of the year, but TERREX-A and VIC-001 sounded like the government was involved. Even the perfectly innocent and popular name Thumper, which you'd think would be OK, seemed in bad taste under the circumstances.

  Finally, I settled on the name Orwell, because, like all good names, it just seemed to fit.

  A room of his own

  Orwell had not only arrived as a harbinger of the new year, he had come at a critical time in my personal career. I had recently turned twelve, and was well into the first half of seventh grade at a brand-new school, where instead of being one of the oldest kids knowing all the ropes, like I had been in sixth grade, I found myself one of the youngest kids knowing no ropes at all. That's why I was considering entering the field of private investigations, after school and on weekends, or maybe becoming an explorer like Lewis or Clark. I also liked shooting baskets in my driveway, which is where I had come up with these plans.

  Like himself, the house that Orwell entered was damaged in the back. My father had approved my mother's remodeling scheme, and thanks to an ever-changing team of workmen, the back of our midwestern bungalow was torn away, leaving boards and pipes exposed, with only loosely fastened sheets of thin blue plastic separating our living space from the skeletal rooms-in-progress beyond. As a result, it was chilly in the kitchen that morning—no place for an injured rabbit to recuperate.

  Not only that, but when the other members of my family got up, they were sure to be hungry, cranky, and outspoken about their objections to encountering wild animals in the food service area. My mother, I suspected, would take the horrified view of a public health inspector. My sister would vacillate between the feeling that rabbits are cute, and the realization that this one, in its present damaged form, was "too sad." My father's verdict was unpredictable.

  To avoid a family quarrel, I decided to move Orwell once again, this time to the relative safety of the unfinished master bathroom. The plumbing fixtures were inoperative, but the heat was on and the door could be closed. Everything in the room was covered with a fine layer of construction dust, so I spread open the front page of the pa
per in the new ceramic tub and gently placed the rabbit on the clean newsprint.

  It made a fine nesting place.

  The household awakes

  Apart from the risks associated with the introduction of a wounded wild rabbit into a household made up of four highly independent people, there were also the dog and the cat to consider.

  I mention the dog first because he joined us first, as a puppy many years ago, when we were a young family on the way up. He is of mixed pedigree, half Pomeranian and half poodle, a combination that gives you an obedient, curly-haired creature about the size and shape of a pig.

  Now generally ignored by the people who picked him out, the dog sleeps in the house at night and surveys his fenced kingdom in the backyard by day. He lives well enough, I suppose. His diet consists of tuna, cheddar cheese, baked chicken, and sweet-and-sour pork from the Imperial Garden, bolstered by the occasional interlude of canned Lucky Dog and Science City diet pellets, food he rarely eats but is there anyway, just in case.

  The fact is, the pellets are consumed each morning by the blue jays, starlings, and other feathered camp-followers who come to drink at the goldfish pond, and the Lucky Dog sustains the scavengers housed in and around the woodpile. Whenever the dog's bowl is empty, my father barks at me, "Feed the dog!" What we are doing, of course, is feeding the birds, the mice, and the occasional visiting possum.

  The cat is my sister's. Within the house, they go everywhere together.

  In considering the family pets, it occurred to me that if their natural instincts should ever, by some miracle, return, it could affect Orwell's chances for getting better. A debilitated rabbit would be an easy meal for a less well fed dog and cat. Even as sport, Orwell could provide fine high jinks for a couple of bored household carnivores.

  For the time being, I thought it best to refrain from advertising Orwell's existence and the location of his hideout. Mum was the word of the day.

  While my family performed their morning rituals upstairs, I located some supplies left over from a sixth-grade science fair project. From a one-liter glass beaker, a drip valve, a strip of plastic tubing, and a metal stand, I assembled a contraption that would provide Orwell with nourishment on an as-needed basis.

  I filled the container with a nutritional mush made from pulverized Science City diet pellets mixed with bottled water. I forced the tubing past the rabbit's amazingly sharp incisors. This was not only difficult, it was a mistake. The little guy bit me, making a deep and bloody cut in my forefinger, which I treated with antibiotic ointment and sterile gauze. I made a mental note to find out later about rabies, tetanus, and rabbit fever. I also found a pair of heavy leather gloves. Ironically, the gloves were lined with rabbit fur.

  Orwell seemed willing enough to consume the dog food mush, a good sign for a creature I feared was on death's doorstep. I closed the door to the bathroom and joined my family in the kitchen for a satisfying breakfast of thawed waffles soaked in syrup and topped with sliced bananas. I kept my bandaged finger in my pocket.

  "You've taken the comics again!" my sister accused me.

  "What in the world has happened to the front page?" my mother complained. "This is so irritating!"

  "Must we?" my father sighed, looking up from the Help Wanted ads. My father always read the Help Wanted ads because my father disliked his job. Turning to me, he said, "If you're going to read the newspaper before anyone else, please have the courtesy to reassemble it."

  I quietly excused myself, leaving my sticky plate, glass, and silverware in the middle of the kitchen table surrounded by strands and globs of maple-flavored syrup. Later, this would launch a general discussion on household responsibilities, eventually concluding with my mother and my father ignoring me, while continuing to debate the subject between themselves.

  "It's just her age," my mother would maintain, while my father, taking it upon himself to clear my breakfast dishes, would suggest that absent-mindedness was a genetic flaw I had inherited, possibly from my mother's mother. It would be a momentary skirmish, an airing of opposing views. Strictly routine stuff.

  A member of the family

  Orwell's new home was more like a church sanctuary than a rabbit hutch. Separated from the rest of the house by a minefield of fallen nails, discarded two-by-fours, plaster rocks, long-forgotten soda cans, and other worker's flotsam, the new master bathroom was a wonderful place to be alone with one's thoughts and one's rabbit.

  There was a skylight over the raised bathtub, a double vanity, a shower, a heat lamp, and several illuminated sconces controlled by a dimmer switch. A long mirror had been installed over the twin sinks, and another, opposite it, over the tub. The floor by the shower was covered with handmade tiles from Italy. On the rest of the floor, deep wool carpeting snuggled your feet. The wallpaper had been custom-made to complete the effect, and the effect, in my view, was like being at the altar of the Hedge Grove United Methodist Church, where my family and I sometimes attended services.

  Lying reverently in the center of it all was Orwell. He raised his head when I entered, but he exhibited no fear. Remembering to wear my gloves, I offered him a stolen piece of celery. He needed coaxing at first, but soon began gnawing at it greedily. As he ate, I stroked the back of his tiny head. He lay his ears back to accommodate me. I was careful not to touch his spine.

  As we both became more comfortable, I removed the glove from my right hand and felt his soft chest. There was a strong, rapid heartbeat. I gently pinched his back feet to try to determine if he was more than half a rabbit. He responded with a slight wiggle in his shoulders. I held his feet one at a time. They were warm, like the rest of him.

  It appeared that life was flowing through Orwell, but any notion of rabbit's feet being talismans for good fortune was dispelled by the sad sight of this helpless, crumpled creature. I guessed that his pelvis had been broken, probably by a glancing blow from the wheels of the newspaper truck. Even if he had a chance to live, he could be crippled for life.

  Looking at him lying so still in the natural spotlight created by the skylight above him, my heart went out to this unlucky little rabbit. Whatever was to become of him, I realized, was up to me.

  As a family, even though we do go to church sometimes, the meaning of life is not always on our minds. But somehow Orwell had found his way to me, and therein lay a duty that I could not deny. Maybe he'd dragged himself for miles to get to my house. Maybe the word was out among the forlorn, the homeless, and the wounded that here was a house with a soft touch, a house where the Science City diet pellets and the Lucky Dog flowed in a magical endless stream.

  This is not a bad reputation to have.

  "I thought you seemed quiet at breakfast," my father said. Somehow he had sniffed out my hideout. He was still dressed in his bathrobe, his eyeglasses were crooked, his hair was in disarray, and he needed a shave. Had he not been my father, he would have frightened me.

  "I found him this morning, in the front yard," I explained.

  "He's a handsome one," my father said. "Goes well with the colors of the bathroom, too. That should please your mother."

  He knelt to examine Orwell. "Looks like his back is broken," he said. "Or his pelvis. Either way, he's a goner. Wild rabbits have a tough row to hoe, no matter where they live."

  I guess he saw the look on my face, because his voice softened when he added, "I don't mean to criticize your work. It looks like you've done all anybody can do. But don't get your hopes up."

  "I think he may have a chance," I said. I explained how Orwell had responded.

  "Well, until we know what the damage is, all you can do is keep him warm, try to feed him, and keep him away from predators. Funny thing about rabbits, about the only thing they can do to protect themselves is run away. They're usually very good at running away. This one, however, is not. Ergo, a goner."

  "But surely there's something we can do!" I protested.

  "Not on a Sunday. All the animal hospitals are closed. Tomorrow's out, too. Federal ho
liday. But the first thing Tuesday, if he's still alive, we'll pack him up and take him to the vet."

  "Thanks," I said.

  "By the way, does this creature have a name?" he asked.

  "Orwell. I named him Orwell."

  "That's too bad," my father observed, preparing to leave the room. "Once they have a name, they become part of the family. It's always harder when you lose a member of the family."

  Idle pursuits

  My mother's position in the household was too important to keep her in the dark about Orwell for long. I was pleased that my father chose to break the ice for me.

  "Of course the rabbit will have to go," he told her. "But it is a situation that will take care of itself. His days are numbered."

  "I will not have animals living in my bathroom," my mother said.

  "You'll probably get your wish very soon," he replied.

  "Isn't there some place you can take it?" she implored him.

  "Surely you can adapt," he said.

  After a troubling pause, during which my mother gave my father that familiar, menacing flash from her eyes that he calls "house lightning," she took a deep breath and finally said, "Oh, all right. But please don't let it get anything on the wallpaper."

  The remainder of that winter day was spent in idle pursuits.

  My grandmother, my mother's widowed mother who lives nearby, dropped in to visit, which was unusual since she usually waited until my father was gone someplace. She brought cookies for everybody.

  My father and I watched an old black-and-white movie about a detective who figures out that the black falcon statue a dying man delivers to his office is really made of solid gold. Everybody was after it, but the movie was mostly just people talking.

  I watched another movie about the luckiest kid on earth, a boy my age who wins the lottery and uses the money to buy his school so he can be the boss. It was excellent.

  Then I played Scrabble with my sister, a long game that I finally won, thanks to the skillful and creative spelling of a few guttural sounds that I convinced her were fragments of early human speech, plus an unexpected late-game break that gave me "X-ray" on a Triple Word Score.