Lawrence followed his grandfather, Jessup, into the woods carrying an old Southern States feed bag like a penitent following a monk into a great cathedral. In school, his social studies teacher had shown them a film about Notre Dame (the church, not the college), and Lawrence could see how someone would be inclined to compare the vast expanse of trees behind their house to a cathedral. They both made you stop and stare in awe.
His grandfather slipped through the trees like a wraith, gliding like smoke made flesh. Jessup knew these woods like he knew the lines in his own dark face. Lawrence did his best to keep up, but the old man was maintaining a hell of a pace. The cold November wind sent chilly fingers between the threads of Lawrence’s corduroy jacket, tickling his ribs and making him pull the threadbare coat even tighter around his thin frame.
Lawrence didn’t complain though. This was the first time his grandfather had asked him to come check the traps with him. He didn’t want to whine about the cold like a baby. He was twelve going on thirteen. Next summer he’d probably be working at Macon’s Horticulture Farm like most kids in Red Hill did eventually.
They walked across a log that spanned the creek, signaling the halfway mark toward the eastern boundary of his grandfather and grandmother’s property. Many of the trees had relinquished their leaves as their skeletal branches reached toward the gray sky.
“You bring your knife?” Jessup asked.
Lawrence knew he was asking him now because he was testing him. A baby would have forgotten to grab his pocketknife. A baby would have paused and looked back toward the house. A baby might even feel a few tears running down his face. “Yes sir,” Lawrence said.
His grandfather grunted.
They crested a small hill and came upon a grove of short shrubs, carpet cypress and wild ivy and boxwoods.
“First one over yonder,” Jessup said.
Lawrence nodded even though his grandfather had his back to him.
They walked over to an unruly boxwood. Jessup dropped to one knee and reached under the bottom branches.
He dragged out a snare trap with a struggling rabbit attached. Lawrence could see the leader line as it wound its way through the bush to one of the top branches. It moved in frantic side-to-side motions as the rabbit struggled for its life.
“Get ya knife,” Jessup said.
Lawrence hesitated. He didn’t know what he expected coming out here with his grandfather, but it wasn’t this. The rabbit, brown on top and white on its belly, looked like a stuffed animal. A stuffed animal brought to life and driven mad by the experience.
The rabbit was twisting and turning like Timmy Jones when he had his epilepsy on the school bus the year before. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was the screaming.
It was a high squealing sound but somehow heavy, like the animal was putting its whole heart into it, like Mrs. Jackson when she sang “I Love to Praise Him” in church. To Lawrence it had the wail of mindless pain like his baby cousin Sally Boo when she cried. A raw, unyielding wail that could make you wince.
“You gotta cut him across his throat and end his suffering. You gotta put him out his misery,” Jessup said, not unkindly.
“Huh,” was all Lawrence could say. The pocketknife was in his hand, but he couldn’t remember taking it out.
The screams of the rabbit echoed through the air like a banshee’s. Lawrence had read a ghost story about a banshee last Halloween. He couldn’t imagine it sounded worse than this. “I . . . uh,” he said.
His grandfather shifted on his knees and faced him. He put his thick, heavily calloused hands on his shoulders. “Lawrence, either this rabbit die or we starve to death,” Jessup said.
Lawrence knew this wasn’t hyperbole. There was no food in the refrigerator. His daddy had asked for and received his mother’s whole disability check. Wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last. At least this time he didn’t take the television. His grandfather had retired from the State Road company but was now working three days a week at Lou Smith’s grocery store as a stocker. Lou Smith Inc. didn’t allow employees to take extra or slightly out-of-date food home. They needed that rabbit. In a pot. With gravy and onions and a pinch of salt and pepper. The rabbit screamed even louder. “I . . . can’t,” Lawrence whispered.
He dropped the bag and ran. Ran through the woods and over the creek and back to the house. He could hear the shriek of the rabbit until eventually it stopped. Abruptly.
Later, he heard his grandparents talking in hushed murmurs downstairs until finally they both went quiet. It was 11 p.m. He had not been sent to bed without his supper. He knew he should have been grateful, but he couldn’t bring himself to take one bite of the carcass on his plate. He’d picked at the potatoes and the carrots, trying to ignore the meat slathered in gravy.
Now he was creeping down the stairs, past his grandparents’ room, past the room his daddy stayed in sometimes, past the room they told him his mother died in (choking on her own vomit while his daddy slept on with a needle dangling from his arm like a vestigial limb), until he was down at the base of the stairs. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight from the catchall drawer and headed out the door into the night. He touched his pocket, making sure the knife was there.
He was on the third trap when he heard the shouting. It was coming from the house. There was one more trap to go. He’d freed two rabbits. The third was lying on its side as Lawrence worked on the rope around its neck. He freed him or her when he heard a scream.
He stood up and took off for the house.
When he got there, he saw his daddy on the ground, flat on his back, with his hands up. His daddy was yelling and crying at the same time.
Jessup was standing over him with his old Colt pointing at his son’s head. Lawrence’s father was bleeding from a wound on his forehead. The blood looked like war paint as it spilled down his face.
“You ain’t never want me!” Lawrence’s father yelled.
“You’re sick, boy,” Jessup said softly. “All ate up with them drugs. I should put you out your misery.”
Lawrence heard his grandmother howl from the house: “Jessup! Put that gun away!”
“I let the rabbits go,” Lawrence said breathlessly.
Jessup turned his head. He frowned. “What?” he said.
“I let ’em go. You always saying thou shalt not kill. It wont right. This ain’t right.” Lawrence didn’t say how he thought he would hear the rabbits crying like babies in the dark for the rest of his life. Would hear them haunting him for all time.
His father rolled over until he was on his backside. He motioned for Lawrence to come to him, but Lawrence didn’t move. His daddy looked more like a rat than a rabbit, but Lawrence didn’t want to ever touch either of them again.
Jessup lowered his gun. He turned away from Lawrence and his daddy. Lawrence saw his shoulders rise and fall like a piston.
Lawrence could hear him, crying gently as he put the gun in his coat pocket and walked into the house as his father shook his fists and railed at the night sky. 
S. A. Cosby is a best-selling, award-winning crime fiction author from southeastern Virginia. His work has received the Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ITW awards, as well as the LA Times Book Prize. When he isn’t writing, he is a whiskey enthusiast, a cinephile, and a cat dad.
Illustration: Sam Ward