Joey Cloudy online

 

TRAMP White Rabbit Season  

“One pill makes you larger 
And one pill makes you small 
And the ones that mother gives you 
Don’t do anything at all 
Go ask Alice 
When she’s ten feet tall” 

-Jefferson Airplane 

The bullet from the old man’s 22 caliber semiautomatic pistol must have clipped its spine and its little rabbit brain was terribly confused, wondering why it wasn’t hopping quickly back through the pinewoods easily outdistancing the skinny white canvas Chuck Taylor wearing kid in faded Levi’s and a yellow and green Kawasaki moto racing jersey approaching with a Bowie knife.  

It did occur to the kid that the animal must have been suffering and that he had to do something. The old man had put the 22-caliber pistol that looked exactly like a German Luger back under the driver’s seat of the dirty red Ford pickup and was looking at his son standing over their dinner with that humongous hunting knife in his hand. He thought that the kid was about to field dress the animal before bringing it back to the truck. The old man hit the horn twice in rapid succession. Before shouting out of the drivers side window.  

“We right down the road from your grandmother’s house! I’ll take care of dressing him when we get there. Now, Hurry up git me my rabbit and git your narrow ass back in the truck!” 

The kid slid the knife back into the sheath. The animal was still alive and he was in no mood to debate with the old man, he just had to put this creature out of its misery. He places a foot over the rabbits back just below the shoulders then he reached down grabbed it by the head and twisted its neck around until it snapped a bit after turning 180 degrees.  

Aaron picked it up by its ears and trotted through the underbrush back to the truck, flinging the rabbit into the bed of the bed of the truck the furry brown and white body tumbling limply across the bed of the truck until it skidded to a stop under his cousin Robbie’s boot, leaving a bloody trail half across half the length of the bed of the pickup.  

Aaron slapped the side of the truck two times with the bloody palm of his hand signaling to his father that he was back in the truck as the old man shifted the three in the tree into first and the 17-year-old faded red 1966 Ford pick up began to roll on down the narrow-blacktopped east Texas road to Mudea’s house.  

“And if you go chasing rabbits 
And you know you’re going to fall 
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar 
Has given you the call 
He called Alice 
When she was just small” 

-about the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.