[Part 1] "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate Di Camillo
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CHAPTER I.
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ONCE, IN A HOUSE ON EGYPT STREET, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china.
He had china arms and china legs, china paws and a china head, a china torso and a china nose.
His arms and legs were jointed and joined by wire so that his china elbows and china knees could be bent, giving him much freedom of movement.
His ears were made of real rabbit fur, and beneath the fur, there were strong, bendable wires, which allowed the ears to be arranged into poses that reflected the rabbit’s mood — jaunty, tired, full of ennui.
His tail, too, was made of real rabbit fur and was fluffy and soft and well shaped.
The rabbit’s name was Edward Tulane, and he was tall.
He measured almost three feet from the tip of his ears to the tip of his feet; his eyes were painted a penetrating and intelligent blue.
In all, Edward Tulane felt himself to be an exceptional specimen.
Only his whiskers gave him pause.
They were long and elegant (as they should be), but they were of uncertain origin.
Edward felt quite strongly that they were not the whiskers of a rabbit.
Whom the whiskers had belonged to initially — what unsavory animal — was a question that Edward could not bear to consider for too long.
And so he did not.
He preferred, as a rule, not to think unpleasant thoughts.
Edward’s mistress was a ten-year-old, dark-haired girl named Abilene Tulane, who thought almost as highly of Edward as Edward thought of himself.
Each morning after she dressed herself for school, Abilene dressed Edward.
The china rabbit was in possession of an extraordinary wardrobe composed of handmade silk suits, custom shoes fashioned from the finest leather and designed specifically for his rabbit feet, and a wide array of hats equipped with holes so that they could easily fit over Edward’s large and expressive ears.
Each pair of well-cut pants had a small pocket for Edward’s gold pocket watch.
Abilene wound this watch for him each morning.
“Now, Edward,” she said to him after she was done winding the watch, “when the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the three, I will come home to you.”
She placed Edward on a chair in the dining room and positioned the chair so that Edward was looking out the window and could see the path that led up to the Tulane front door.
Abilene balanced the watch on his left leg.
She kissed the tips of his ears, and then she left and Edward spent the day staring out at Egypt Street, listening to the tick of his watch and waiting.
Of all the seasons of the year, the rabbit most preferred winter, for the sun set early then and the dining-room windows became dark and Edward could see his own reflection in the glass.
And what a reflection it was!
What an elegant figure he cut!
Edward never ceased to be amazed at his own fineness.
In the evening, Edward sat at the dining-room table with the other members of the Tulane family: Abilene; her mother and father; and Abilene’s grandmother, who was called Pellegrina.
True, Edward’s ears barely cleared the tabletop, and true also, he spent the duration of the meal staring straight ahead at nothing but the bright and blinding white of the tablecloth.
But he was there, a rabbit at the table.
Abilene’s parents found it charming that Abilene considered Edward real, and that she sometimes requested that a phrase or story be repeated because Edward had not heard it.
“Papa,” Abilene would say, “I’m afraid that Edward didn’t catch that last bit.”
Abilene’s father would then turn in the direction of Edward’s ears and speak slowly, repeating what he had just said for the benefit of the china rabbit.
Edward pretended, out of courtesy to Abilene, to listen.
But, in truth, he was not very interested in what people had to say.
And also, he did not care for Abilene’s parents and their condescending manner toward him.
All adults, in fact, condescended to him.
Only Abilene’s grandmother spoke to him as Abilene did, as one equal to another.
Pellegrina was very old.
She had a large, sharp nose and bright, black eyes that shone like dark stars.
It was Pellegrina who was responsible for Edward’s existence.
It was she who had commissioned his making, she who had ordered his silk suits and his pocket watch, his jaunty hats and his bendable ears, his fine leather shoes and his jointed arms and legs, all from a master craftsman in her native France.
It was Pellegrina who had given him as a gift to Abilene on her seventh birthday.
And it was Pellegrina who came each night to tuck Abilene into her bed and Edward into his.
“Will you tell us a story, Pellegrina?” Abilene asked her grandmother each night.
“Not tonight, lady,” said Pellegrina.
“When?” asked Abilene.
“What night?”
“Soon,” said Pellegrina.
“Soon there will be a story.”
And then she turned off the light, and Edward and Abilene lay in the dark of the bedroom.
“I love you, Edward,” Abilene said each night after Pellegrina had left.
She said those words and then she waited, almost as if she expected Edward to say something in return.
Edward said nothing.
He said nothing because, of course, he could not speak.
He lay in his small bed next to Abilene’s large one.
He stared up at the ceiling and listened to the sound of her breath entering and leaving her body, knowing that soon she would be asleep.
Because Edward’s eyes were painted on and he could not close them, he was always awake.
Sometimes, if Abilene put him into his bed on his side instead of on his back, he could see through the cracks in the curtains and out into the dark night.
On clear nights, the stars shone, and their pinprick light comforted Edward in a way that he could not quite understand.
Often, he stared at the stars all night until the dark finally gave way to dawn.
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CHAPTER II.
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AND IN THIS MANNER, EDWARD’S days passed, one into the other.
Nothing remarkable happened.
Oh, there was the occasional small, domestic drama.
Once, while Abilene was at school, the neighbor’s dog, a male brindled boxer inexplicably named Rosie, came into the house uninvited and unannounced and lifted his leg on the dining-room table, spraying the white tablecloth with urine.
He then trotted over and sniffed Edward, and before Edward even had time to consider the implications of being sniffed by a dog, he was in Rosie’s mouth and Rosie was shaking him back and forth vigorously, growling and drooling.
Fortunately, Abilene’s mother walked past the dining room and witnessed Edward’s suffering.
“Drop it!” she shouted to Rosie.
And Rosie, surprised into obedience, did as he was told.
Edward’s silk suit was stained with drool and his head ached for several days afterward, but it was his ego that had suffered the most damage.
Abilene’s mother had referred to him as “it,” and she was more outraged at the dog urine on her tablecloth than she was about the indignities that Edward had suffered at the jaws of Rosie.
And then there was the time that a maid, new to the Tulane household and eager to impress her employers with her diligence, came upon Edward sitting on his chair in the dining room.
“What’s this bunny doing here?” she said out loud.
Edward did not care at all for the word bunny.
He found it derogatory in the extreme.
The maid bent over him and looked into his eyes.
“Hmph,” she said.
She stood back up.
She put her hands on her hips.
“I reckon you’re just like every other thing in this house, something needing to be cleaned and dusted.”
And so the maid vacuumed Edward Tulane.
She sucked each of his long ears up the vacuum-cleaner hose.
She pawed at his clothes and beat his tail.
She dusted his face with brutality and efficiency.
And in her zeal to clean him, she vacuumed Edward’s gold pocket watch right off his lap.
The watch went into the maw of the vacuum cleaner with a distressing clank that the maid did not even seem to hear.
When she was done, she put the dining-room chair back at the table, and uncertain about exactly where Edward belonged, she finally decided to shove him in among the dolls on a shelf in Abilene’s bedroom.
“That’s right,” said the maid.
“There you go.”
She left Edward on the shelf at a most awkward and inhuman angle — his nose was actually touching his knees; and he waited there, with the dolls twittering and giggling at him like a flock of demented and unfriendly birds, until Abilene came home from school and found him missing and ran from room to room calling his name.
“Edward!” she shouted.
“Edward!”
There was no way, of course, for him to let her know where he was, no way for him to answer her.
He could only sit and wait.
When Abilene found him, she held him close, so close that Edward could feel her heart beating, leaping almost out of her chest in its agitation.
“Edward,” she said, “oh, Edward.
I love you.
I never want you to be away from me.”
The rabbit, too, was experiencing a great emotion.
But it was not love.
It was annoyance that he had been so mightily inconvenienced, that he had been handled by the maid as cavalierly as an inanimate object — a serving bowl, say, or a teapot.
The only satisfaction to be had from the whole affair was that the new maid was dismissed immediately.
Edward’s pocket watch was located later, deep within the bowels of the vacuum cleaner, dented, but still in working condition; it was returned to him by Abilene’s father, who presented it with a mocking bow.
“Sir Edward,” he said.
“Your timepiece, I believe?”
The Rosie Affair and the Vacuum-Cleaner Incident — those were the great dramas of Edward’s life until the night of Abilene’s eleventh birthday when, at the dinner table, as the cake was being served, the ship was mentioned.
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CHAPTER III.
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“SHE IS CALLED THE QUEEN MARY,” said Abilene’s father, “and you and your mama and I shall sail on her all the way to London.”
“What about Pellegrina?” said Abilene.
“I will not go,” said Pellegrina.
“I will stay.”
Edward, of course, was not listening.
He found the talk around the dinner table excruciatingly dull; in fact, he made a point of not listening if he could help it.
But then Abilene did something unusual, something that forced him to pay attention.
As the talk about the ship continued, Abilene reached for Edward and took him from his chair and stood him in her lap.
“And what about Edward?” she said, her voice high and uncertain.
“What about him, darling?” said her mother.
“Will Edward be sailing on the Queen Mary with us?”
“Well, of course, if you wish, although you are getting a little old for such things as china rabbits.”
“Nonsense,” said Abilene’s father jovially.
“Who would protect Abilene if Edward was not there?”
From the vantage point of Abilene’s lap, Edward could see the whole table spread out before him in a way that he never could when he was seated in his own chair.
He looked upon the glittering array of silverware and glasses and plates.
He saw the amused and condescending looks of Abilene’s parents.
And then his eyes met Pellegrina’s.
She was looking at him in the way a hawk hanging lazily in the air might study a mouse on the ground.
Perhaps the rabbit fur on Edward’s ears and tail, and the whiskers on his nose had some dim memory of being hunted, for a shiver went through him.
“Yes,” said Pellegrina without taking her eyes off Edward, “who would watch over Abilene if the rabbit were not there?”
That night, when Abilene asked, as she did every night, if there would be a story, Pellegrina said, “Tonight, lady, there will be a story.”
Abilene sat up in bed.
“I think that Edward needs to sit here with me,” she said, “so that he can hear the story, too.”
“I think that is best,” said Pellegrina.
“Yes, I think that the rabbit must hear the story.”
Abilene picked Edward up, sat him next to her in bed, and arranged the covers around him; then she said to Pellegrina, “We are ready now.”
“So,” said Pellegrina.
She coughed.
“And so.
The story begins with a princess.”
“A beautiful princess?” Abilene asked.
“A very beautiful princess.”
“How beautiful?”
“You must listen,” said Pellegrina.
“It is all in the story.”
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CHAPTER IV.
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ONCE THERE WAS A PRINCESS WHO was very beautiful.
She shone as bright as the stars on a moonless night.
But what difference did it make that she was beautiful?
None.
No difference.”
“Why did it make no difference?” asked Abilene.
“Because,” said Pellegrina, “she was a princess who loved no one and cared nothing for love, even though there were many who loved her.”
At this point in her story, Pellegrina stopped and looked right at Edward.
She stared deep into his painted-on eyes, and again, Edward felt a shiver go through him.
“And so,” said Pellegrina, still staring at Edward.
“What happened to the princess?” said Abilene.
“And so,” said Pellegrina, turning back to Abilene, “the king, her father, said that the princess must marry; and soon after this, a prince came from a neighboring kingdom and he saw the princess and, immediately, he loved her.
He gave her a ring of pure gold.
He placed it on her finger.
He said these words to her: ‘I love you.’
But do you know what the princess did?”
Abilene shook her head.
“She swallowed the ring.
She took it from her finger and swallowed it.
She said, ‘That is what I think of love.’
And she ran from the prince.
She left the castle and went deep into the woods.
And so.”
“And so what?” said Abilene.
“What happened then?”
“And so, the princess became lost in the woods.
She wandered for many days.
Finally, she came to a little hut, and she knocked on the door.
She said, ‘Let me in; I am cold.’
“There was no answer.
“She knocked again.
She said, ‘Let me in; I am hungry.’
“A terrible voice answered her.
The voice said, ‘Enter if you must.’
“The beautiful princess entered, and she saw a witch sitting at a table counting pieces of gold.
“‘Three thousand six hundred and twenty-two,’ said the witch.
“‘I am lost,’ said the beautiful princess.
“‘What of it?’ said the witch.
‘Three thousand six hundred and twenty-three.’
“‘I am hungry,’ said the princess.
“‘Not my concern,’ said the witch.
‘Three thousand six hundred and twenty-four.’
“‘But I am a beautiful princess,’ said the princess.
“‘Three thousand six hundred and twenty-five,’ replied the witch.
“‘My father,’ said the princess, ‘is a powerful king.
You must help me or there will be consequences.’
“‘Consequences?’ said the witch.
She looked up from her gold.
She stared at the princess.
‘You dare to talk to me of consequences?
Very well, then, we will speak of consequences: tell me the name of the one you love.’
“‘Love!’ said the princess.
She stamped her foot.
‘Why must everyone always speak of love?’
“‘Whom do you love?’ said the witch.
‘You must tell me the name.’
“‘I love no one,’ said the princess proudly.
“‘You disappoint me,’ said the witch.
She raised her hand and said one word: ‘Farthgery.’
“And the beautiful princess was changed into a warthog.
“‘What have you done to me?’ squealed the princess.
“‘Talk to me of consequences now, will you?’ said the witch, and she went back to counting her pieces of gold.
‘Three thousand six hundred and twenty-six,’ said the witch as the warthog princess ran from the hut and out again into the forest.
“The kings’ men were in the forest, too.
And what were they looking for?
A beautiful princess.
And so when they came upon an ugly warthog, they shot it immediately.
Pow!”
“No,” said Abilene.
“Yes,” said Pellegrina.
“The men took the warthog back to the castle and the cook slit open its belly and inside it she found a ring of pure gold.
There were many hungry people in the castle that night and all of them were waiting to be fed.
So the cook put the ring on her finger and finished butchering the warthog.
And the ring that the beautiful princess had swallowed shone on the cook’s hand as she did her work.
The end.”
“The end?” said Abilene indignantly.
“Yes,” said Pellegrina, “the end.”
“But it can’t be.”
“Why can’t it be?”
“Because it came too quickly.
Because no one is living happily ever after, that’s why.”
“Ah, and so.”
Pellegrina nodded.
She was quiet for a moment.
“But answer me this: how can a story end happily if there is no love?
But.
Well.
It is late.
And you must go to sleep.”
Pellegrina took Edward from Abilene.
She put him in his bed and pulled the sheet up to his whiskers.
She leaned close to him.
She whispered, “You disappoint me.”
After the old lady left, Edward lay in his small bed and stared up at the ceiling.
The story, he thought, had been pointless.
But then most stories were.
He thought of the princess and how she had become a warthog.
How gruesome!
How grotesque!
What a terrible fate!
“Edward,” said Abilene, “I love you.
I don’t care how old I get, I will always love you.”
Yes, yes, thought Edward.
He continued to stare up at the ceiling.
He was agitated for some reason that he could not name.
He wished that Pellegrina had put him on his side so that he might look at the stars.
And then he remembered Pellegrina’s description of the beautiful princess.
She shone as bright as the stars on a moonless night.
For some reason, Edward found comfort in these words and he repeated them to himself — as bright as the stars on a moonless night, as bright as the stars on a moonless night — over and over until, at last, the first light of dawn appeared.
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CHAPTER V.
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THE HOUSE ON EGYPT STREET became frantic with activity as the Tulane family prepared for their voyage to England.
Edward possessed a small trunk, and Abilene packed it for him, filling it with his finest suits and several of his best hats and three pairs of shoes, all so that he might cut a fine figure in London.
Before she placed each outfit in the trunk, she displayed it to him.
“Do you like this shirt with this suit?” she asked him.
Or, “Would you like to wear your black derby?
You look very handsome in it.
Shall we pack it?”
And then, finally, on a bright Saturday morning in May, Edward and Abilene and Mr. and Mrs. Tulane were all onboard the ship, standing at the railing.
Pellegrina was at the dock.
On her head, she wore a floppy hat strung around with flowers.
She stared straight at Edward.
Her dark eyes glowed.
“Goodbye,” Abilene shouted to her grandmother.
“I love you.”
The ship pulled away from the dock.
Pellegrina waved to Abilene.
“Goodbye, lady,” she called, “goodbye.”
Edward felt something damp in his ears.
Abilene’s tears, he supposed.
He wished that she would not hold him so tight.
To be clutched so fiercely often resulted in wrinkled clothing.
Finally, all the people on land, including Pellegrina, dis-appeared.
Edward, for one, was relieved to see the last of her.
As was to be expected, Edward Tulane exacted much attention onboard the ship.
“What a singular rabbit,” said an elderly lady with three strings of pearls wrapped around her neck.
She bent down to look more closely at Edward.
“Thank you,” said Abilene.
Several little girls onboard gave Edward deep glances full of longing.
They asked Abilene if they might hold him.
“No,” said Abilene, “I’m afraid that he’s not the kind of rabbit who likes to be held by strangers.”
Two young boys, brothers named Martin and Amos, took a particular interest in Edward.
“What does he do?” Martin asked Abilene on their second day at sea.
He pointed at Edward who was sitting on a deck chair with his long legs stretched in front of him.
“He doesn’t do anything,” said Abilene.
“Does he wind up somewhere?” asked Amos.
“No,” said Abilene, “he does not wind up.”
“What’s the point of him then?” said Martin.
“The point is that he is Edward,” said Abilene.
“That’s not much of a point,” said Amos.
“It’s not,” agreed Martin.
And then, after a long thoughtful pause, he said, “I wouldn’t let anybody dress me like that.”
“Me neither,” said Amos.
“Do his clothes come off?” asked Martin.
“Of course they do,” said Abilene.
“He has many different outfits.
And he has his own pajamas, too.
They are made of silk.”
Edward, as usual, was disregarding the conversation.
A breeze was blowing in off the sea, and the silk scarf wrapped around his neck billowed out behind him.
On his head, he wore a straw boater.
The rabbit was thinking that he must look quite dashing.
It came as a total surprise to him when he was grabbed off the deck chair and first his scarf, and then his jacket and pants, were ripped from his body.
He heard his pocket watch hit the deck of the ship; and then, held upside down, he watched the watch roll merrily toward Abilene’s feet.
“Look at him,” said Martin.
“He’s even got underwear.”
He held Edward aloft so that Amos could see.
“Take it off,” shouted Amos.
“NO!!!!” screamed Abilene.
Martin removed Edward’s underwear.
Edward was paying attention now.
He was mortified.
He was completely naked except for the hat on his head, and the other passengers onboard the ship were looking at him, directing curious and embarrassed glances his way.
“Give him to me,” screamed Abilene.
“He’s mine.”
“No,” said Amos to Martin, “give him to me.”
He clapped his hands together and then held them open.
“Toss him,” he said.
“Please,” cried Abilene.
“Don’t throw him.
He’s made of china.
He’ll break.”
Martin threw Edward.
And Edward sailed naked through the air.
Only a moment ago, the rabbit had thought that being naked in front of a shipload of strangers was the worst thing that could happen to him.
But he was wrong.
It was much worse being tossed, in the same naked state, from the hands of one grubby, laughing boy to another.
Amos caught Edward and held him up, displaying him triumphantly.
“Throw him back,” called Martin.
Amos raised his arm, but just as he was getting ready to throw Edward, Abilene tackled him, shoving her head into his stomach, and upsetting the boy’s aim.
So it was that Edward did not go flying back into the dirty hands of Martin.
Instead, Edward Tulane went overboard.
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CHAPTER VI.
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HOW DOES A CHINA RABBIT DIE?
Can a china rabbit drown?
Is my hat still on my head?
These were the questions that Edward asked himself as he went sailing out over the blue sea.
The sun was high in the sky, and from what seemed to be a very long way away, Edward heard Abilene call his name.
“Edwaaarrd,” she shouted, “come back.”
Come back?
Of all the ridiculous things to shout, thought Edward.
As he tumbled, ears over tail through the air, he managed to catch one last glimpse of Abilene.
She was standing on the deck of the ship, holding on to the railing with one hand.
In her other hand was a lamp — no, it was a ball of fire — no, Edward realized, it was his gold pocket watch that Abilene held in her hand; she was holding it up high, and it was reflecting the light of the sun.
My pocket watch, he thought.
I need that.
And then Abilene disappeared from view and the rabbit hit the water with such tremendous force that his hat blew off his head.
That answers that question, thought Edward as he watched the hat dance away on the wind.
And then he began to sink.
He sank and sank and sank.
He kept his eyes open the whole time.
Not because he was brave, but because he had no choice.
His painted-on eyes witnessed the blue water turning to green and then to blue again.
They watched as it finally became as black as night.
Edward went down and down.
He said to himself, If I am going to drown, certainly I would have done so by now.
Far above him, the ocean liner, with Abilene aboard it, sailed blithely on; and the china rabbit landed, finally, on the ocean floor, face-down; and there, with his head in the muck, he experienced his first genuine and true emotion.
Edward Tulane was afraid.
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CHAPTER VII.
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HE TOLD HIMSELF THAT CERTAINLY Abilene would come and find him.
This, Edward thought, is much like waiting for Abilene to come home from school.
I will pretend that I am in the dining room of the house on Egypt Street, waiting for the little hand to move to the three and the big hand to land on the twelve.
If only I had my watch, then I would know for sure.
But it doesn’t matter; she will be here soon, very soon.
Hours passed.
And then days.
And weeks.
And months.
Abilene did not come.
Edward, for lack of anything better to do, began to think.
He thought about the stars.
He remembered what they looked like from his bedroom window.
What made them shine so brightly, he wondered, and were they still shining somewhere even though he could not see them?
Never in my life, he thought, have I been farther away from the stars than I am now.
He considered, too, the fate of the beautiful princess who had become a warthog.
Why had she become a warthog?
Because the ugly witch turned her into one — that was why.
And then the rabbit thought about Pellegrina.
He felt, in some way that he could not explain to himself, that she was responsible for what had happened to him.
It was almost as if it was she, and not the boys, who had thrown Edward overboard.
She was like the witch in the story.
No, she was the witch in the story.
True, she did not turn him into a warthog, but just the same she was punishing him, although for what he could not say.
On the two hundred and ninety-seventh day of Edward’s ordeal, a storm came.
The storm was so powerful that it lifted Edward off the ocean floor and led him in a crazy, wild and spinning dance.
The water pummeled him and lifted him up and shoved him back down.
Help! thought Edward.
The storm, in its ferocity, actually flung him all the way out of the sea; and the rabbit glimpsed, for a moment, the light of an angry and bruised sky; the wind rushed through his ears.
It sounded to him like Pellegrina laughing.
But before he had time to appreciate being above water, he was tossed back down into the depths.
Up and down, back and forth he went until the storm wore itself out, and Edward saw that he was beginning, again, his slow descent to the ocean floor.
Oh, help me, he thought.
I can’t go back there.
Help me.
But still, down he went.
Down, down, down.
And then, suddenly, the great, wide net of a fisherman reached out and grabbed the rabbit.
The net lifted him higher and higher until there was an almost unbearable explosion of light and Edward was back in the world, lying on the deck of a ship, surrounded by fish.
“Eh, what’s this?” said a voice.
“Ain’t no fish,” said another voice.
“That’s for sure.”
The light was so brilliant that it was hard for Edward to see.
But finally, shapes appeared out of the light, and then faces.
And Edward realized that he was looking up at two men, one young and one old.
“Looks like some toy,” said the grizzled old man.
He bent and picked Edward up and held him by his front paws, considering him.
“A rabbit, I reckon.
It’s got whiskers.
And rabbit ears, or the shape of rabbit ears at least.”
“Yeah, sure, a rabbit toy,” said the younger man, and he turned away.
“I’ll take it home to Nellie.
Let her fix it up and set it to rights.
Give it to some child.”
The old man placed Edward carefully on a crate, positioning him so that he was sitting up and could look out at the sea.
Edward appreciated the courtesy of this small gesture, but he was heartily sick of the ocean and would have been satisfied never to set eyes on it again.
“There you go,” said the old man.
As they made their way back to shore, Edward felt the sun on his face and the wind blowing through the little bit of fur left on his ears, and something filled his chest, a wonderful feeling.
He was glad to be alive.
“Look at that rabbit,” the old man said.
“Looks like it’s enjoying the ride, don’t it?”
“A-yep,” said the young man.
In fact, Edward Tulane was so happy to be back among the living that he did not even take umbrage at being referred to as “it.”
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CHAPTER VIII.
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ON LAND, THE OLD FISHERMAN stopped to light a pipe, and then, with the pipe clenched between his teeth, he walked home, carrying Edward atop his left shoulder as if he were a conquering hero.
The fisherman balanced him there, placing a callused hand at Edward’s back.
He talked to him in a soft, low voice as they walked.
“You’ll like Nellie, you will,” said the old man.
“She’s had her sadness, but she’s an all-right girl.”
Edward looked at the small town blanketed in dusk: a jumble of buildings huddled together, the ocean stretching out in front of it all; and he thought that he would like anything and anybody that was not at the bottom of the sea.
“Hello, Lawrence,” called a woman from the front of a shop.
“What have you got?”
“Fresh catch,” said the fisherman, “fresh rabbit from the sea.”
He lifted his cap to the lady and kept walking.
“There you are, now,” said the fisherman.
He took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed with the stem of it at a star in the purpling sky.
“There’s your North Star right there.
Don’t never have to be lost when you know where that fellow is.”
Edward considered the brightness of the small star.
Do they all have names? he wondered.
“Listen at me,” said the fisherman, “talking to a toy.
Oh, well.
Here we are, then.”
And with Edward still on his shoulder, the fisherman walked up a stone-lined path and into a little green house.
“Look here, Nellie,” he said.
“I’ve brought you something from the sea.”
“I don’t want nothing from the sea,” came a voice.
“Aw, now, don’t be like that, Nell.
Come and see, then.”
An old woman stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron.
When she saw Edward, she dropped the apron and clapped her hands together and said, “Oh, Lawrence, you brung me a rabbit.”
“Direct from the sea,” said Lawrence.
He took Edward off his shoulder and stood him up on the floor and held on to his hands and made him take a deep bow in the direction of Nellie.
“Oh,” said Nellie, “here.”
She clapped her hands together again and Lawrence passed Edward to her.
Nellie held the rabbit out in front of her and looked him over from tip to toe.
She smiled.
“Have you ever in your life seen anything so fine?” she said.
Edward felt immediately that Nellie was a very discerning woman.
“She’s beautiful,” breathed Nellie.
For a moment, Edward was confused.
Was there some other object of beauty in the room?
“What will I call her?”
“Susanna?” said Lawrence.
“Just right,” said Nellie.
“Susanna.”
She looked deep into Edward’s eyes.
“First off, Susanna will need some clothes, won’t she?
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CHAPTER IX.
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AND SO EDWARD TULANE BECAME Susanna.
Nellie sewed several outfits for him: a pink dress with ruffles for special occasions, a simple shift fashioned out of a flower-covered cloth for everyday use, and a long white gown made of cotton for Edward to sleep in.
In addition, she remade his ears, stripping them of the few pieces of fur that remained and designing him a new pair.
“Oh,” she told him when she was done, “you look lovely.”
He was horrified at first.
He was, after all, a boy rabbit.
He did not want to be dressed as a girl.
And the outfits, even the special-occasion dress, were so simple, so plain.
They lacked the elegance and artistry of his real clothes.
But then Edward remembered lying on the ocean floor, the muck in his face, the stars so far away, and he said to himself, What difference does it make really?
Wearing a dress won’t hurt me.
Besides, life in the little green house with the fisherman and his wife was sweet.
Nellie loved to bake, and so she spent her day in the kitchen.
She put Edward on the counter and leaned him up against the flour canister and arranged his dress around his knees.
She bent his ears so that he could hear well.
And then she set to work, kneading dough for bread and rolling out dough for cookies and pies.
The kitchen soon filled with the smell of baking bread and with the sweet smells of cinnamon and sugar and cloves.
The windows steamed up.
And while Nellie worked, she talked.
She told Edward about her children, her daughter, Lolly, who was a secretary, and her boys: Ralph, who was in the army, and Raymond, who had died of pneumonia when he was only five years old.
“He drowned inside of himself,” said Nellie.
“It is a horrible, terrible thing, the worst thing, to watch somebody you love die right in front of you and not be able to do nothing about it.
I dream about him most nights.”
Nellie wiped at her tears with the back of her hands.
She smiled at Edward.
“I suppose you think I’m daft, talking to a toy.
But it seems to me that you are listening, Susanna.”
And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening.
Before, when Abilene talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless.
But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said.
It made him wonder if some of the muck from the ocean floor had gotten inside his china head and damaged him somehow.
In the evening, Lawrence came home from the sea and there was dinner and Edward sat at the table with the fisherman and his wife.
He sat in an old wooden highchair; and while at first he was mortified (a highchair, after all, was a chair designed for babies, not for elegant rabbits), he soon became used to it.
He liked being up high, looking out over the table instead of staring at the tablecloth as he had at the Tulane household.
He liked feeling like a part of things.
Every night after dinner, Lawrence said that he thought he would go out and get some fresh air and that maybe Susanna would like to come with him.
He placed Edward on his shoulder as he had that first night when he walked him through town, bringing him home to Nellie.
They went outside and Lawrence lit his pipe and held Edward there on his shoulder; and if the night was clear, Lawrence said the names of the constellations one at a time, Andromeda, Pegasus, pointing at them with the stem of his pipe.
Edward loved looking up at the stars, and he loved the sounds of the constellation names.
They were sweet in his ears.
Sometimes, though, staring up at the night sky, Edward remembered Pellegrina, saw again her dark and glowing eyes, and a chill would go through him.
Warthogs, he would think.
Witches.
But Nellie, before she put him to bed each night, sang Edward a lullaby, a song about a mockingbird that did not sing and a diamond ring that would not shine, and the sound of Nellie’s voice soothed the rabbit and he forgot about Pellegrina.
Life, for a very long time, was sweet.
And then Lawrence and Nellie’s daughter came for a visit.
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CHAPTER X.
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LOLLY WAS A LUMPY WOMAN WHO spoke too loudly and who wore too much lipstick.
She entered the house and immediately spotted Edward sitting on the living-room couch.
“What’s this?” she said.
She put down her suitcase and picked Edward up by one foot.
She held him upside down.
“That’s Susanna,” said Nellie.
“Susanna!” shouted Lolly.
She gave Edward a shake.
His dress was up over his head and he could see nothing.
Already, he had formed a deep and abiding hatred for Lolly.
“Your father found her,” said Nellie.
“She came up in a net and she didn’t have no clothes on her, so I made her some dresses.”
“Have you gone skivvy?” shouted Lolly.
“Rabbits don’t need clothes.”
“Well,” said Nellie.
Her voice shook.
“This one seemed to.”
Lolly tossed Edward back on the couch.
He landed face-down with his arms over his head and his dress still over his face, and he stayed that way through dinner.
“Why have you got out that old highchair?” shouted Lolly.
“Oh, don’t pay it no mind,” said Nellie.
“Your father was just gluing on a missing piece, wasn’t you, Lawrence?”
“That’s right,” said Lawrence, without looking up from his plate.
Of course, after dinner Edward did not go outside and stand beneath the stars to have a smoke with Lawrence.
And Nellie, for the first time since Edward had been with her, did not sing him a lullaby.
In fact, Edward was ignored and forgotten about until the next morning, when Lolly picked him up again and pulled his dress down away from his face and stared him in the eye.
“Got the old folks bewitched, don’t you?” said Lolly.
“I heard the talk in town.
That they’ve been treating you like a rabbit child.”
Edward stared back at Lolly.
Her lipstick was a bright and bloody red.
He felt a cold breeze blow through the room.
Was a door open somewhere?
“Well, you don’t fool me,” she said.
She gave him a shake.
“We’ll be taking a trip together, you and me.”
Holding Edward by the ears, Lolly marched into the kitchen and shoved him face-down in the garbage can.
“Ma!” Lolly shouted, “I’m taking the truck.
I’m going to head on out and do some errands.”
“Oh,” came Nellie’s tremulous voice, “that’s wonderful, dear.
Goodbye, then.”
Goodbye, thought Edward as Lolly hauled the garbage can out to the truck.
“Goodbye,” Nellie called again, louder this time.
Edward felt a sharp pain somewhere deep inside his china chest.
For the first time, his heart called out to him.
It said two words: Nellie.
Lawrence.
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CHAPTER XI.
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EDWARD ENDED UP AT THE DUMP.
He lay on top of orange peels, coffee grounds, rancid bacon, and rubber tires.
The first night, he was at the top of the garbage heap, and so he was able to look up at the stars and find comfort in their light.
In the morning, a short man came climbing through the trash and rubble.
He stopped when he was standing on top of the highest pile.
He put his hands under his armpits and flapped his elbows.
The man crowed loudly.
He shouted, “Who am I?
I’m Ernest, Ernest who is king of the world.
How can I be king of the world?
Because I am king of garbages.
And garbages is what the world is made of.
Ha.
Ha, ha!
Therefore, I am Ernest, Ernest who is king of the world.”
He crowed again.
Edward was inclined to agree with Ernest’s assessment of the world being made of garbage, especially after his second day at the dump, when a load of trash was deposited directly on top of him.
He lay there, buried alive.
He could not see the sky.
He could not see the stars.
He could see nothing.
What kept Edward going, what gave him hope, was thinking of how he would find Lolly and exact his revenge.
He would pick her up by the ears!
He would bury her under a mountain of trash!
But after almost forty days and nights had passed, the weight and the smell of the garbage above and below him clouded Edward’s thoughts, and soon he gave up thinking about revenge and gave in to despair.
It was worse, much worse, than being buried at sea.
It was worse because Edward was a different rabbit now.
He couldn’t say how he was different; he just knew that he was.
He remembered, again, Pellegrina’s story about the princess who had loved nobody.
The witch turned her into a warthog because she loved nobody.
He understood that now.
He heard Pellegrina say: “You disappoint me.”
Why? he asked her.
Why do I disappoint you?
But he knew the answer to that question, too.
It was because he had not loved Abilene enough.
And now she was gone from him.
And he would never be able to make it right.
And Nellie and Lawrence were gone, too.
He missed them terribly.
He wanted to be with them.
The rabbit wondered if that was love.
Day after day passed, and Edward was aware of time passing only because every morning he could hear Ernest performing his dawn ritual, cackling and crowing about being king of the world.
On his one hundred and eightieth day at the dump, salvation arrived for Edward in a most unusual form.
The garbage around him shifted, and the rabbit heard the sniffing and panting of a dog.
Then came the frenzied sound of digging.
The garbage shifted again, and suddenly, miraculously, the beautiful, buttery light of late afternoon shone on Edward’s face.
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CHAPTER XII.
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EDWARD DID NOT HAVE MUCH TIME to savor the light, for the dog suddenly appeared above him, dark and shaggy, blocking his view.
Edward was pulled out of the garbage by his ears, dropped, and then picked up again, this time around the middle, and shaken back and forth with a great deal of ferocity.
The little dog growled deep in its throat and then dropped Edward again and looked him in the eye.
Edward stared back.
“Hey, get out of here, you dog!”
It was Ernest, king of garbages and therefore king of the world.
The dog grabbed Edward by his pink dress and took off running.
“That’s mine, that’s mine, all garbages is mine!”
Ernest shouted.
“You come back here!”
But the little dog did not stop.
The sun was shining and Edward felt exhilarated.
Who, having known him before, would have thought that he could be so happy now, crusted over with garbage, wearing a dress, held in the slobbery mouth of a dog and being chased by a mad man?
But he was happy.
The dog ran and ran until they reached a railroad track.
They crossed over the tracks, and there, underneath a scraggly tree, in a circle of bushes, Edward was dropped in front of a large pair of feet.
The dog began to bark.
Edward looked up and saw that the feet were attached to an enormous man with a long, dark beard.
“What’s this, Lucy?” said the man.
He bent and picked up Edward.
He held him firmly around the middle.
“Lucy,” said the man, “I know how much you enjoy rabbit pie.”
Lucy barked.
“Yes, yes, I know.
Rabbit pie is a true delight, one of the pleasures of our existence.”
Lucy let out a hopeful yip.
“And what we have here, what you have so graciously delivered to me, is definitely a rabbit, but the best chef in the world would be hard-pressed to make him into a pie.”
Lucy growled.
“This rabbit is made of china, girl.”
The man held Edward closer to him.
They looked each other in the eye.
“You’re made of china, aren’t you, Malone?”
He gave Edward a playful shake.
“You are some child’s toy, am I right?
And you have been separated, somehow, from the child who loves you.”
Edward felt, again, the sharp pain in his chest.
He thought of Abilene.
He saw the path leading up to the house on Egypt Street.
He saw the dusk descending and Abilene running toward him.
Yes, Abilene had loved him.
“So, Malone,” said the man.
He cleared his throat.
“You are lost.
That is my guess.
Lucy and I are lost, too.”
At the sound of her name, Lucy let out another yip.
“Perhaps,” said the man, “you would like to be lost with us.
I have found it much more agreeable to be lost in the company of others.
My name is Bull.
Lucy, as you may have surmised, is my dog.
Would you care to join us?”
Bull waited for a moment, staring at Edward; and then with his hands still firmly around Edward’s waist, the man reached one enormous finger up and touched Edward’s head from behind.
He pushed it so it looked as if Edward were nodding his head in agreement.
“Look, Lucy.
He is saying yes,” said Bull.
“Malone has agreed to travel with us.
Isn’t that swell?”
Lucy danced around Bull’s feet, wagging her tail and barking.
And so it was that Edward took to the road with a hobo and his dog.
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CHAPTER XIII.
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THEY TRAVELED ON FOOT.
THEY traveled in empty railcars.
They were always on the move.
“But in truth,” said Bull, “we are going nowhere.
That, my friend, is the irony of our constant movement.”
Edward rode in Bull’s bedroll, slung over Bull’s shoulder with only his head and ears sticking out.
Bull was always careful to position the rabbit so that he was not looking down or up, but was, instead, forever looking behind him, at the road they had just traveled.
At night, they slept on the ground, under the stars.
Lucy, after her initial disappointment about Edward being unfit for consumption, took a liking to him and slept curled up beside him; sometimes, she even rested her muzzle on his china stomach, and then the noises she made in her sleep, whimpering and growling and chung, resonated inside Edward’s body.
To his surprise, he began to feel a deep tenderness for the dog.
During the night, while Bull and Lucy slept, Edward, with his ever-open eyes, stared up at the constellations.
He said their names, and then he said the names of the people who loved him.
He started with Abilene and then went to Nellie and Lawrence and from there to Bull and Lucy, and then he ended again with Abilene: Abilene, Nellie, Lawrence, Bull, Lucy, Abilene.
See?
Edward told Pellegrina.
I am not like the princess.
I know about love.
There were times, too, when Bull and Lucy gathered around a campfire with other tramps.
Bull was a good storyteller and an even better singer.
“Sing for us, Bull,” the men shouted.
Bull sat with Lucy leaning against his leg and Edward balanced on his right knee and he sang from somewhere deep inside himself.
Just as Edward could feel Lucy’s whimpers and growls resonate through his body at night, he could also feel the deep, sad sound of Bull’s songs move through him.
Edward loved it when Bull sang.
And he was grateful to Bull, too, for sensing that a dress was not the right kind of clothing for Edward.
“Malone,” said Bull one night, “it’s not my desire to offend you or to comment negatively on your choice of garb, but I’m forced to tell you that you stick out like a sore thumb in that princess dress.
And also, again, with no wish to offend you, the dress has seen better days.”
Nellie’s beautiful dress had not fared well at the dump or in its subsequent ramblings with Bull and Lucy.
It was so torn and dirty and full of holes that it barely resembled a dress anymore.
“I have a solution,” said Bull, “and I hope that it meets with your approval.”
He took his own knit stocking cap and cut a big hole in the top of it and two small holes on the side of it and then he took off Edward’s dress.
“Look away, Lucy,” he said to the dog, “let’s not embarrass Malone by staring at his nakedness.”
Bull slid the hat over Edward’s head and pulled it down and poked his arms through the smaller holes.
“There you go,” he said to Edward.
“Now you just need some pants.”
The pants Bull made himself, cutting up several red handkerchiefs and sewing them together so that they formed a makeshift covering for Edward’s long legs.
“Now you have the proper outlaw look,” said Bull, standing back to admire his work.
“Now you look like a rabbit on the run.”