Percy felt the gentle reminder of Evaline’s presence, as her foot traced its way absent-mindedly down his furry leg. Less sensual than admonitory, he knew the old gal’s message. “Watch your eyes, old sir. That is my daughter.”
Clearly, she was indeed. Nineteen-year-old Esther Wells, playing croquet in the side yard with her young friends, was so much modeled in the image of her adopted mother that she seemed a younger reproduction of her. Save for her flaming red hair, styled in the manner of her mother (with several curls further than respectfully advised by societal norms), Percy could readily see the posture and carriage and laughter he knew so well to be that of his longtime friend Evaline Wells.
His large, soulful eyes perhaps lingered over young Esther for too long. Most eyes did. But it was the pitch of his ears that alerted Evaline to his attentions. The elder madam was a student of body language and physicality, having addressed the physical form in strangers across the country for more years than she cared to acknowledge. It had served her and kept her out of tight scrapes on innumerable occasions. And though Percy’s was not the characteristic male form, she had known it intimately enough and for long enough as to divine his thoughts as clearly as any other.
Percy was a rabbit. Or a hare, more accurately. He had appeared one snowy evening in the darkened corner of Tolbert’s saloon. As quiet and subdued as the darkened shadow to which he clung, it was only the glow of his thin cigar that illuminated his muzzle and his large eyes. Evaline, a beautiful and seasoned courtesan over forty years old at the time, had sent her girls home for the evening. The saloon stools were empty of anyone but tired old coal haulers who were unlikely to produce the coin necessary for a woman’s time.
Curiosity alone informed her that this short creature, standing on his hind legs and leaning with the casual hitch of a seasoned “sport,” was worth the approach. Until she drew near enough to address him, she feared he might actually dart back out into the cold. He held fast. His ears picked up from the collar of the small coat which was pulled up close to his chin. Somewhat wide-eyed at her mature beauty, he nonetheless drew casually on his cigar as she approached.
She pulled up a stool and sat beside him. Not opposite him, as he expected, to lean in as if she were addressing a child. No, this one sat beside him and simply said, “With four rabbit’s feet, I imagine I’m four times lucky to have you near on this cold and terrible evening.”
He replied, “In truth, many rabbit’s ‘feet’ they’re selling are actually the rabbit’s knob.”
With hardly a pause she replied, “FIVE times lucky, then! So what’ll I call you? And what will you have to drink, my furry friend?”
Seventeen years of closest friendship and myriad adventures later, Percy sat in the summer room of Evaline’s fine home on Prospect Hill. It was the fall of 1883 in the burgeoning Wabash river town of Lafayette, Indiana. An Indian summer day warmed the crisp leaves still clinging to the glowing yellow ash trees in Evaline’s yard.
Percy was more than a little intrigued with the blooming flower named Esther, who was guiding her younger friends through the run of a croquet course in the grass. As opposed to their lighter, shorter outfits, young Esther was fully presented in women’s long sleeves, grass-sweeping skirt, high collar, and exaggerated shoulders and bustle. But beneath all the fabric and structure, it was clear that her womanly attributes were considerable.
The children were all offspring of Evaline’s lady friends. As such, each was illegitimate – all children of passing fancies and failed precautions. But all were subject to the warmest care from their unique band of mothers/courtesans, dressed well, fed to satisfaction, read to, and amply loved.
Esther, at nineteen years, was the oldest. She was also the only child born to a married couple, though it had not served her any better than any of the bastards at play around her. Little Esther had appeared in Tolbert’s saloon one day nine years ago in the company of her young, ne’er-do-well parents, who were making their way aimlessly down the Wabash-Erie Canal in search of opportunity. They were immature and short-sighted, quickly becoming inebriated on the local grog and stripped of their savings in a one-sided game of chance.
In a cruel twist of fortune, Esther lost her mother that afternoon after a bizarre accident involving a spittoon, a newly waxed floor, and a collapsed balcony in the saloon. Evaline turned up that night and soon learned of the sad case of little Esther, minus a mother due to the accident and promptly abandoned by her father, who had moved on down the canal to avoid both local authorities and those who had pocketed his debtor’s tabs. Evaline, struck by the girl’s large, expressive eyes, was moved to take the girl home with her. Eventually she adopted poor little 10-year-old Esther and gave her a home.
Not for one moment had Evaline regretted her choice. Esther fairly blossomed from a frightened, ill-kempt waif to a brilliant, sunny-dispositioned pixie, constantly at play and ever in search of adventure and mischief.
The arrival of her teenage years saw the eyes of more than one of Evaline’s male friends wandering too long over young Esther. Percy was not the first, and he was likely the least for which she needed to be concerned.
At that very moment, from the corner of her eye, Evaline caught a well-known figure making his way down the prominent Ninth Street thoroughfare. At present, he had the awkward gait of a man not watching where he was going. Colonel Mel Wigglemann (retired) was a seemingly decent but easily distracted gentleman, who lived further up the hill and thus higher up the financial stratosphere than Evaline. He possessed power from his wealth but fragility of his emotions. And he was clearly fixated upon the vision of young Esther bent over in the yard. He stumbled over a break in the slate walk in front of the house. Though she chuckled, Evaline noted to herself that he bore observation.
But now it was time to send Percy on his errand. Besides, her housekeeper Mrs. Trincotti would complain incessantly about the fur Percy was undoubtedly leaving on the fine horsehair lounge chair. At this time of year, he was generally molting a bit in preparation for his rich winter coat.
Evaline was as anxious and gleeful about the plan they’d formed as one of the children in her yard. She was anxious for Percy to enact it as soon as possible.
Percy was up from the lounge and signaling his departure before it was requested. One of his unique gifts, Evaline would point out repeatedly, was knowing when to be in the right place and when to not be in the wrong place. He always seemed to sense the precise moment in which he would be best served to be elsewhere. Before Evaline could delineate her instructions once again, the hare had already pressed a furry kiss to her blushed cheek and was nearly to the door.
Percy was as trusted a courier as could be, and she knew she could rely on his discretion. And his clever thinking. In a hard scrabble town like Lafayette, Percy had lived a surreptitious life in the shadows and narrow byways. He had encountered all sorts of riff-raff and scoundrel along the Lafayette streets. Hardly had they given him pause. He was shifty and quick-witted and fleet of foot. As a relatively smaller hare in the world of men, that served him well.
His human counterparts, though much larger and customarily aggressive, were generally dim-witted and too fogged of alcohol to take great concern of him. He was, in fact, about to seek out and force an admission of guilt from one of the most dim-witted and fogged characters along the canal – and in so doing he would set in play another of Evaline’s twisting, city-wide games of cascading fortune.
Evaline had come by information through one of her cohorts in the house (the girl herself obtaining it from an amorous “appointment”), that would hopefully change the fortune of a local river trader. Today’s game might be called, “The Irishman’s Cigarillos.”
With Evaline’s end game foremost in his mind, Percy set out via the pantry door, seeking to evade the young ones. Children in general were his agitants, as they were generally quicker and smaller and more difficult to slip than adults. Too often he found himself being hugged and snuggled by a well-meaning young girl. The young girls were far too likely to want to make him a pet and far less likely to recognize he was a grown and mature hare who had not the time nor the inclination for their adoration. But young Esther caught his escape, knowing the sounds of the house, the pantry door, and the porch. She hissed at him slinking low behind the hedge along the walk and gave him a beguiling smile and a small wave. It was meant to let him know she’d caught him and, though she could, she wasn’t going to spill his presence to the children.
“Dammit.” he thought to himself. “Girl’s too clever by half. And far too attractive to be too clever. Mark it. Sense and caution around her or she’ll bring you up short someday.”
But Winks Bubher awaited his treatment. And that was the order of the moment. So he treated the girl to only a few fleeting shadows of his passing down the hedge. Percy plucked his stick from the bush in which he’d stashed it. The high end of it bounced momentarily above the hedgerow, then plunged below it, until there was no sign of him at all.
