My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Seite 119

“Sissy never leaves the house anymore.
She’s scared of the rabbits. Two or three
weeks back, she was outside, chasing
one rabbit, I was standing in my back
yard, saw it with my own eyes. Saw
‘em both running down toward the
cemetery, when lightning struck a tree
down yonder, just after the rabbit
jumped behind it. Spooked her, I guess,
because she come running back toward
the house, went in through the pet door
we cut out for her and Scout. Haven’t
been able to get her to go outside since.
Rabbits!” Jeff spit contemptuously on
the ground.
“Uh, so…but Scout still goes out with
you, right?” I tried to distract him or at
least get him off rabbits.
“I call him Buddy, when my wife’s not
around. He thinks he’s a dog, Comes
out with me every night, just follows
right along, as if he’s wearing a leash.
Now, Buddy, he doesn’t pay the rabbits
any mind.”
Rabbits. Here we go again.
“There’s an army of them, I tell you.
Evenings, I see them across the street
nibbling on Kay and Bill Skerret’s
mums, I caught ‘em peeking around
the corner of the Wilson’s house in the
cul de sac.”

118

“My father used to say the same thing
about the rabbits in our neighborhood,”
I said, smiling nervously.

Jeff didn’t have to wonder where his
long-eared interlopers came from.
The nearest ones resided right in my
backyard, because I had elected not
to clear the foliage back there in the
farthest corner of my property where
I knew they lived. When the crepe
myrtle split down the middle and a
hurricane brought the mature
chinaberry tree down on top of it and
the ivy started taking over everything
back there, I just let it go. I mowed
up to the tangled part and let the rest
of it alone.
When we moved in twenty years before,
Jeff had said,
“We don’t need a fence between us.
Makes your yard look small, feel small.”
I said, “‘good fences make good
neighbors.’”
“Aw, that’s just some joker who lived
in the city all his life. This is Comity
Grove where “good neighbors live
in good peace,” just like the motto
on the sign says when you enter our
neighborhood.
Jeff filled his last gallon bottle with
water to fertilize his wife’ assorted
plants. “I’ll see you later, Jeff,” I said,
wondering if he thought about Comity
Grove as it used to be, when the trees
were healthier, the water was cleaner,
the weather was more predictable, the
neighborhood was quieter and tv, cell
phones, the internet and integration
were all in the future.

I crossed the lawn to my house.
Comity Grove, the name’s promise of
good will and harmony was in contrast
to the ancient history of the area,
where rebel soldiers had once snuck
weapons and ammunition through the
wooded trail of Quarterpath Road two
miles away. Fille d with pear, cypress,
pine, yew, oak, magnolia trees, and
an assortment of bushes and flowers,
cg was a grove of equanimity and
poise — live-and-let-live — most of
the time. For example, it was considered
in poor taste to string up Christmas
lights or, during election season, to
place campaign placards in your yard
endorsing candidates for public office.
If people didn’t agree with your politics
or religion, they simply avoided those
subjects. You were still in the rotation
to host the Christmas party, the May
Day party, and the Summer solstice
potluck party, unless like Drew Patterson,
every blue moon, you got toasted on
some of the best bourbon west of the
Mississippi and South of the MasonDixon line and decided to sleep it off
under the rose bush on your front lawn.
A few evenings after our first conversation
about the rabbits, I sat on Jeff’s deck
on my third Bud lite.