Chapter 8: A Not So Quiet Sunday

Sunday dawned bright and clear and once again Kathy was awakened to what she considered way too early by the dancing dog. "Gosh, Lucy do you have to wake me so early? Couldn't you have slept just a little longer?" Knowing the dance wouldn't end until the poor animal was outside to relieve itself, Kathy quickly dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt. She was surprised to find John sitting at the table in a pair of cotton pajama bottoms with a hot cup of coffee in front of him.

"Good morning Little Bit, Lucy did you completely desert me girl? This makes two nights in a row I've slept by myself."

Lucy did not answer but her body language clearly stated "If you don't open that door right now, I will not be held responsible for my actions!"

John took the hint and opened the back door allowing the grateful dog to run outside and relieve the tension.

"After a couple of cups of coffee to get awake, I need to go and take care of the animals. You can tag along if you want." John told Kathy as he poured himself a fresh mug of coffee.

"That sounds like fun. What kind of animals do you have?" Kathy responded while pouring herself a mug.

"Not a lot, just a few hogs, some rabbits, chickens and two horses."

"I understand the hogs, but why do you have rabbits? I've only heard people keeping them as pets or wild rabbits."

"Pound for pound rabbit is the cheapest red meat you can raise on a small farm. For every pound of meat you would get feeding feed to a cow, the same amount of feed will give you 6 pounds of rabbit. Plus they take up much less space and are a lot easier to butcher in the home. It would be hard to cut up a two thousand pound steer in the kitchen, but a five pound rabbit is easy." Kathy saw that this was a subject that John enjoyed as he continued. "It would be hard to keep even a few head of cattle on a place this size, and with the amount of woods I have there is not enough pasture for cows and horses. I like watching the horses and riding them a lot more than watching and trying to ride a cow. I think you will like the "Rabbit Hole" as we call it. It makes taking care of them pretty easy and I'm all for easy."

After a couple of cups of coffee, they both returned to their bedrooms to change into clothing suitable to work in. Or rather that is what John did. A few minutes later while standing in the living room dressed in his ever present black tee and jeans he heard Kathy on the stairs, turning towards her his heart stopped. If she kept this up he wouldn't survive her staying with him much longer. She was wearing a short skirt (actually shorts with a skirt front but John didn't know that) and a cotton blouse tied in the front just under her breast leaving her stomach bare. Her hair pulled into two pigtails on each side of her head gave her that combination of sweet innocent and vixen look that would arouse even a statue and John was no statue, he could feel something getting very hard almost immediately.

"WOW!" John exclaimed louder than he intended. "If I knew farm hands from Missouri looked like that I would have gotten me one 10 years ago."

The smile that lit Kathy's face threatened to out dazzle the early morning sun. "Silly, if you had, I would have been too little to do any work."

Their laughter filled the room and John turned to head toward the back door but not before Kathy had taken notice of the bulge in the front of his jeans. Kathy's smile changed only slightly to one of both happiness and pride. She had picked this outfit hoping to get noticed and it succeeded better than she dreamed.

John began to show Kathy around his small place, the garage she already knew about but he showed her his wood working workshop, the horse barn and where the feed was kept. The next stop was a barn about 25 X 40 with a handmade sign over the door "The Rabbit Hole, Beware, not all who enter come out the same!"

"That's a very ominous sign." Kathy commented when she read it.

"Patty made that, it was her joke about the bunnies that go in as rabbits but come out as dinner." John told her with a wistful look in his eyes.

"You really loved her."

John felt something inside him crack, just a little. The pain and anguish inside him seeking a release. He did not know why he was opening up to this girl. Although he was beginning to have deep feelings for her he really didn't know a lot about her. But he trusted her and felt comfortable with her.

"She was my whole life; I have never known anyone like her. I was attracted to her from the first date we had. She was wearing a flowered print sundress. After I made a fool of myself pigging out on fried catfish at Ryan's, we went down by the river to a set of rocks that jutted out into the water. The whole time we sat there I could not take my eyes off her legs. They were the sexiest legs I had ever seen, and believe me as a trucker I have seen a lot of legs. Then our next date was the 4th of July fireworks in the park. They had a band and I asked her to dance. I couldn't dance for love or money, but it was an excuse to hold her. I fell in love with her that evening in front of half the town but I never saw anyone else but her, only her. She loved it out here in the country, but she was comfortable in any social situation. Boy, could she throw a party."

John stopped for a moment with a slight smile on his face as he remembered and Kathy waited quietly for him to begin again.

"Her eyes would light up whenever she saw me. If I told her 'I Love You', her eyes would begin to shine and a smile unlike anything would fill her face. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met and she never stopped being beautiful. Even when the cancer tried to steal her looks, she held onto her inner beauty. She could find the good side to almost any situation, where I would find the bad, so I guess we balanced. When she passed I thought I would die too. I buried myself in work and let life pass by me. I really wanted to die too. Yeah, I really loved her." John stood there staring out into space, not really seeing anything but his past.

Kathy could feel her heart swell for this man; he was sensitive, without being wimpy. He had a depth of feeling that Kathy was just beginning to see. She reached out and touched his arm breaking the spell, "I wish I had got to meet her."

John turned toward her and smiled, "She would have liked you, Little Bit. She liked almost all the strays I brought home. Anyway, let's go in the hole and introduce you to the warren." With that, John opened the door to a building unlike any Kathy had even seen.

All the cages were stacked two high with a tray below the cages to protect the bottom cage and catch any waste. There were cages on both long walls with a center isle of back to back cages. Each cage was equipped with its own water nipple, feed bin and a small hay rack. Also, each cage had a clipboard hanging on its front filled with information about the rabbit in that cage. The building was climate controlled and a very comfortable seventy-six degrees. Kathy then noticed there was soft music playing, it was almost like elevator music and the volume was very low. To the left of the door was a table and two fifty-five gallon drums which turned out to be feed bins. With the way it was set up, it just took a few minutes to fill the feed bins on the cages, stuff a little hay in the ones low and just check on the general health of each animal. Kathy wanted so much to take one out and cuddle it but was afraid to ask.

Just as she was sure they were finished and ready to leave the building, John surprised her and leading her to the one cage with a permanent nameplate, told her "Let me introduce you to Queen." With which John reached into the cage and brought out the biggest rabbit Kathy had ever seen and placed her in Kathy's arms.

"Queen has been with us for five years, her grandmother was the first Queen and we have always kept one of her offspring as the next 'Lady in Waiting'. We keep one around so that people can pet her. There's just something nice about petting a soft rabbit."

Kathy was amazed at both how soft and warm Queen was. She was also impressed that John had known she wanted to hold one of the rabbits and had let her.

John continued talking in a low voice, "We keep music playing in here so the rabbits won't get jumpy every time someone enters the building."

Kathy was glad she didn't ask earlier about the music. She was beginning to know how John thought, he seemed to know what she was thinking from time to time and she would have to be a bit careful.

John allowed Kathy about fifteen minutes of petting before he told her. "We need to put her back, although she is a lot tamer than the others she isn't used to being held a long time."

Kathy reluctantly let John return the rabbit to its cage but secretly vowed to spend a bit of time each day with Queen.

The next stop on the grand tour almost made Kathy forget the rabbit; it was the pasture with the two horses. Both of them were paints one was brown and white the other almost all brown. John explained their names were Spirit and Little Joe. He produced an apple from his pocket and cut it in half. He gave one half to Kathy and the other to the brown and white horse.

"Go ahead and give it to Spirit, or she'll get jealous. Ain't nothing worse than a jealous female, especially when she outweighs you by about a thousand pounds."

Kathy laughed as she fed the apple to the horse, but at the same time she took note of what he said and thought to herself, I've got to make sure I don't show any jealousy around him.

John once again called an end to the petting of the animals long before Kathy was ready to quit, but she didn't complain, after all these were his animals and he knew them better than she did.

During what she supposed was a roundabout way back to the house John had one more surprise up his sleeve. They came around a little copse of trees she saw what had to be the biggest above ground pool made. It looked a good 15 feet wide and 30 feet long. The weirdest thing about it was that it was half buried in the ground; the wood deck surrounding it was only a couple of steps up. Kathy could not stop a girlish squeal from bursting from her lips.

"Wow, you have a pool!" as if this would be news to John. "Can we go swimming today?" Kathy knew she sounded like a 10 year old but she couldn't help herself.

"I have to get it clean, check the chemicals and turn the heater on. It will probably take a couple of days before you can go swimming. I will try and get it up as soon as I can."

The grin on Kathy's face dimmed with disappointment. John knew he could not let that stand; he would do everything in his power to make her happy, so he continued. "I'll call the pool people tomorrow and see how soon they can get someone out here."

Kathy giggled and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. "You are too much!"

John's arms went around the girl's waist by reflex as he accepted her kiss. This was different than The Kiss, it was one of friendship and almost nonsexual, just a kiss from a very happy girl. "I take it then you can wait a few days to go swimming?"

"If I must, I must." Kathy responded with her dazzling smile at full radiance. The rest of the tour was almost mundane, the equipment shed with its tractors and mysterious implements. There was the little chicken house with the small flock of birds waiting impatiently at the door to be let out to run the yard to look for bugs. The tour ended at the tornado shelter.

"I hope don't have to use this for its intended purpose ever, but I want you to know where it is just in case. But, if you hear the sirens, you get yourself inside. We've had some pretty good tornados near here"

John continued, "It's also our root cellar. Patty always wanted something underground to store her canned foods and keep things like apples and potatoes cool."

With this introduction, John swung the steel door open on its well oiled hinges. Down the short flight of stairs was a medium sized room lined with shelves. The shelves were about a third full of glass jars filled with colorful fruits and vegetables. The wooden bins along the back wall were empty. Just inside the door was a dinning set. None of the chairs matched and the table was scuffed and worn. Sitting on a shelf above it was an emergency radio.

"I've never seen a storm shelter this big!" Kathy exclaimed, turning slowly in the middle of the room. Although lit with three bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling it didn't feel dark or spooky.

"It's actually a shipping container I buried, 8'6" wide and 26" long. For what they wanted for a prefab cement job that was 6 X 6 I could buy this. So I did and buried it myself. I sealed the walls on the outside with waterproofing and placed it on a 6 inch deep bed of gravel to protect the oak floor. It should last a hundred years or more."