And then...PEPPER SAVES THE DAY

Pepper and Grady drove along the road in silence, which was rare for them, with three dead rabbits strung along a length of chain in the back of the truck.  Grady was driving actually and Pepper riding in the passenger seat staring out the window, his eyes scanning the side of the road, wholly diverted.  Typically there'd be a lot of chatter between the two of them--Pepper chattering mostly and Grady encouraging, and adding the odd observation from time to time just to give Pepper's brain a shake, like you would to a bucket of popcorn, to get the good stuff back up to the top.  Pepper was soaked through with sweat from having run through the brush scenting down rodents.  Despite being what most considered an "idiot" Pepper did make a pretty decent hound dog for a human, if given the chance, and Grady often did, though not out of opportunism as much as out of a genuine love and affection for Pepper that no one could quite put a name to.

Grady smoked which made Pepper sniff involuntarily every few seconds despite the open driver's side window.  Pepper would never complain though.  He revered Grady.  Grady spoke to him, whole conversations, and took him places.  Grady made him feel a friend when practically no one else did.  He was a brother, or like, and even when people teased him about how much he loved Grady, like when he'd be going on about how Grady had nailed up a gutter and made it stick on Mrs. Bennett's house when no one else had been able to really fix it right and Bob has said "boy that Grady sure do know a thing or two 'bout hammerin' a nail" and everyone in the diner had laughed, he didn't let it get to him, especially because Grady'd had told him about why people would tease and how it really was about them and not anything else important.  

-I ever tell you the magic rabbit legend Pepper?

-Magic what?

-Magic rabbit.  You know there's rabbits and there's rabbits, big small, white brown and black.  Some with brown eyes and some with pink.

-These three we got tonight all had brown eyes right Grady.

-That's right Pepper.  And so there was a time when people round our state got so good at hunting rabbits that the population just started dwindling down to practically nothing.  

-But there's a million of them up in that mountain.

-This was a long time ago Pep.  It got so you couldn't even get a decent hare for your dinner no more.  People resorting to eating squirrel and chipmunk.  

-How long ago?

-It's a long way back.  Before your Mama's mama was even born.  And you had squirrel before Pep and you know that there ain't no squirrel or chipmunk or anything the like can hold a candle to one of them big mountain bunnies.  Aint that right?

-Well sure Grady.  

-So the town got together and decided they had to do something about it, and it just so happens at the time there was a man passing through selling brushes from a case, going door to door, you know, a salesman.  Anyway, he had heard about the problem the town was having and said he knew all about rabbits and he knew all about how to fix it.  

Grady had his full attention now.  He knew the look on Pepper's face when he got this way which is why he never tired of thinking up stories to tell him.  He flicked his cigarette out the window and lit another from the pack in his shirt pocket with the dashboard lighter.  Pepper took a moment to look through the window in the back of the pick-up's cab at the rabbits laying there.  One brown eye stared up at him, unblinking.

-So they gave the man some money, they passed a hat and took up a collection and sent him off.  Some thought he'd never be seen again if they sent him alone up into the mountains the way he planned so they sent one of the old codgers in town up with him.  

-What's a codger.

-A codgers a really old guy.  Ned - Ned's a codger.

-I don't like the way Ned smells sometimes.

-That's part of what makes a codger a codger.  So three days passed and they hadn't come back.  There'd been a really bad storm one of the nights so they couldn't understand with all the rain why the two men hadn't at least come back to get out of the storm.  And just when they were about to get a search party together to at least go out and find the codger, not really ever expecting to see the salesman again and half worried that if they went out looking all they'd find was the dead body of the old man, the old guy himself comes walking out of the woods alone.

Pepper's jaw hung open.  He had no way of processing the anticipation.  He knew he had to pee too but he didn't want to say anything not wanting Grady to stop saying more of the story.  The image of the rabbit's eye in the back lingered in his memory, vaguely threatening though not consciously.  It was just a mild feeling of dread mixed with the excitement and bladder urgency.  

-And so the old man's eyes had gone pink just like a rabbit's eyes. 

-What?!?

-And his white hair had gone all wild and sticking up in all directions.  His clothes were all tatters and he was covered in cuts and bruises.

-Who did it?

-The codger says: "he just went and ATE him...it's a monster..."

Pepper jumped at the word "ate" from the way Grady'd emphasized it for effect, but the effect combined with everything else Pepper was feeling and he stared back again, fearful, at the dead rabbits in the back and he was somehow convinced now they weren't completely dead.  He thought he saw the eye blink.  

-And they asked the codger all kinds of questions, everyone yelling at once and the codger just starts shaking all over like he's having some kind of attack and they aren't paying any attention because coming out the woods behind them is the magic rab...

Grady had underestimated the effect the story was having on Pepper and later he would have trouble remembering anything about the whole evening before the accident.  He was told later by the troopers in the hospital room how Pepper'd pulled him out from under the water and saved him and how Pepper was just fine and waiting in the lobby eating Mars bars from the machine.  One of the many effects of the accident and his concussion was a pair of badly bloodshot eyes that he had noticed in the mirror a nurse had given him.  He was trying to figure out how he was going to convince the troopers to hang around a bit and wait for Pepper to arrive.  Someone was going to have to keep Pepper from busting every piece of furniture in the room once he got a look at Grady's pink eyes.