A Handicap of the Devil? (8 page)

"What do you say when you want to dig a burrow?” Thumper was not being smart. She genuinely wanted to know. “That you understand a burrow?"

Now God was confused.

St. Peter sorted it out. “Let's forget God ever mentioned the word ‘dig'. It's an expression some people use for ‘understand'?"

The bunnies both nodded, but they didn't really dig ... understand.

God relaxed, crossed his legs in a yoga pose and looked thoughtful. “Jonathan Goodfellow is your ... err ... person, isn't he?"

"He's our staff member.” Bugs corrected God in her haughty tone. She was more at ease now that these two strange people had shown no sign of hostility.

Thumper was more relaxed too. “His job is to get us the right dinner and to keep our water bowl full of fresh water.... Oh, and he also chases cats back over the fence when they come into our yard."

Rabbits are very sure of their position in the world and certain that the world revolves around them and nothing else.

God sighed. “It's a little more complicated that that. Everything sort of depends on everything else down there. It's the way I set it up."

"If you ask me you could have done it much differently.” Peter looked at the bunnies and back to God. “Almost everything down there has to kill something else in order to survive. You could have set it up a lot better."

"It was groovy when I first made it."

"You should never have allowed them free will. Look what they've done with it. Everything kills everything else."

"You were a fisherman, weren't you?"

"I know a lot more now than I did then."

"Okay, okay, I stand corrected. Next time I design a world, I'll ask your advice."

Both bunnies nodded in agreement, thinking He meant them rather than St. Peter.

"Here's the deal, guys. I've got your ... staff member, on a mission to save the world from itself. There's far too much violence and nonsense going on down there."

Thumper nodded. “So you're going to kill all of the cats?"

God frowned. “No, no I'm not.” His look softened. “I need you to do a job for me. When Jonathan wants to talk to me, he has to ask you to make contact."

"Why don't you just let him talk to you himself?"

"Because he'd be at it all day every day, and I'm a very busy God."

Peter sniggered. He knew that if God was more organised, he could cut his workload by half. He said nothing and let God continue to outline what he wanted from the bunnies.

"The point is that this way he can only contact me when he's at home and close to you. I want you to limit him to no more than two contacts a week. If it's an emergency, you can get in touch anytime."

"How do we know if it's an emergency?"

"Listen to the tone of his voice. Check his body language. You rabbits are experts at telling if people are cool by the way that they are acting.... Hey, you can do this thing."

"Will we get some extra carrots or something if we do a good job?"

"I'll do better than that. If humanity continues to screw up, you can have the whole box and dice."

The rabbit's confusion was evident on their faces.

"The next go at running the world, man. I'll wind up the world and you'll inherit it. You can have it all."

"Wow, the whole world? All to ourselves?"

"You'll have to share it with the other animals."

"Some of them want to eat us."

"We'll think of a way round that. Hey, I can do anything.” God was a broad-brush strokes Being. He didn't want to get involved in too much detail until he had to.... And then he would pass it off to St. Peter. “When you go back on Earth, dig your burrows as deep as you can. Those crazy humans are out of my control. There's just a chance they will press the button and blow themselves and everything down there all the way to hell. If you've got nice, deep burrows, you can survive, and we can work out what happens next."

Bugs and Thumper nodded again. They both liked digging burrows and had a whole network of them under the earthen floor of the shed in their backyard.

"So, what do you say, little dudes? We got a deal or what?"

Bugs and Thumper agreed to the terms and conditions required by God. They both hoped that they could remember the instructions.

"Well.” St. Peter stood with finality. He would be glad to get the bunnies out of his space. They were nice little creatures, but as far as he was concerned, they belonged outside. “Let's go then, and I'll get you back to Earth."

"We're a bit hungry. Can we have some dinner before we go?"

God smiled. One of the quirky things he had done with the world was to give little rabbits huge appetites for food and.... “You can graze on the lawn for awhile. I reckon you'll really dig the grass out there."

"We don't want to understand the grass.” Bugs was confused again. “We just want to eat it."

"Okay, okay. Forget I spoke. Just get a tummy full of grass and off you go.” God went quickly to the back door. He paused with his hand on the door handle and turned to Peter. “Far out, man! You'd think I was obfuscatory or something.” He went out, muttering something about being late for another appointment.

Bugs and Thumper ate their fill on the front lawn before they returned to Earth. The grass was the nicest they had ever eaten. It was just ... heavenly.

Bugs looked smugly at Jonathan. “We saw God last Tuesday when we went to heaven."

"God took you up to heaven to talk to you?"

"Yes. He said that if he stopped winding the world up, you'd all die. Then he said you'd probably blow yourselves up anyway, so all the rabbits have to dig nice, deep burrows and hibernate in them while people all die out."

"He said He'd wind the world up again then, and we'd inherit it.” Thumper was exaggerating what God had actually said.

"God told you all of this?"

Thumper ignored the question. Again she put words into God's mouth. “There are three intelligent species on Earth, Netherland-Dwarfs, dolphins and people. God can't decide whether dolphins or people run second."

"You're not a complete species. Netherland-Dwarfs are part of a species."

"All the rabbits will survive. Netherland-Dwarfs will
rule.
” Bugs was almost shouting. “Our mother said we're the only ones who count."

"How do you know so much? Did God tell you all this?"

"Some of it, but God's given us the power to read and understand what people say. We read the newspapers now, when Mrs. O'Reilly chucks them in the shed after she's finished with them.” Thumper shifted position slightly to see Jonathan better. “And we watch television in the guests’ lounge. We know all sorts of things you don't know we know."

Jonathan was unsure if reading newspapers or watching television qualified rabbits, or any other beings, to be adjudged to have knowledge. He wondered if Bugs and Thumper had it right about being the likely inheritors of the Earth. They were certainly meek.
The meek shall inherit the Earth.... But all animals are geared to flee or fight, and rabbits are most definitely geared to fleeing.
But despite what these two bunnies said, Jonathan was unconvinced that they were really at the top of the evolutionary scale.

These thoughts stemmed from an article he once read in ‘Rabbit's Forever'
magazine. It pointed out that rabbits are not always the best problem solvers. They aren't really deep thinkers and never plan too far ahead. They don't have the brains for it. This was a result of the static nature of their dinner. A dog or a cat is a hunting animal. Its dinner is likely to be on the move—or at least it used to be before ‘meaty bites’ and tinned tuna. These animals have evolved to be able to work out plans and strategies to trap their prey. The grass, weeds, bushes and other foliage that rabbits consume never moves anywhere. You don't have to plot to get a carrot, because it just sits there—growing—waiting for you to come along and nibble it.

Jonathan ceased his musing and looked at both the bunnies in turn. Bugs now had her half-asleep look on her face, and Thumper was measuring him. Measuring was another thing they did constantly. They were forever standing on their hind legs measuring him with their whiskers, checking to see if his dimensions had changed since they last saw him.

"Alright, whenever I need to contact God, I'll let you know."

The bunnies both nodded and then hopped out of the room. As a parting shot Bugs said, “Don't forget to put fresh water in our bowl when you get our dinner."

Jonathan was hurt again. In the two years the rabbits had lived with him, he had never failed to put fresh water in their bowl. Jonathan thought it odd that God would choose such self-centred creatures for so important a task.

On their way outside, Bugs and Thumper almost bumped into Mrs. O'Reilly as she lurched through the house toward her cellar. She was in quest of another bottle of her homemade brew. She did not see them, and they waited until she was well out of the way before they moved outside. Not that they were afraid of Mrs. O'Reilly.

The two soft, fat, little, white bunnies—who looked so solemn most of the time—stirred Mrs. O'Reilly's maternal instinct. They touched her Irish heart and were the cause of the occasional poteen induced tear in her eye as she surveyed them. Mrs. O'Reilly didn't know it, but what stirred her about these two little bunnies was the fact that she was childless. Although Mrs. O'Reilly pretended to have a stern indifference to the rabbits, Bugs and Thumper became child substitutes.

She tried giving them salt, but fortunately they ignored her.

The bunnies did not ask to be allowed to communicate with God and Jonathan, or to be the conduit for good against evil. In fact, if it hadn't been for God being so nice and persuasive, they almost certainly would have declined—preferring to go on doing the usual things that rabbits do. No animal on Earth likes its routine disturbed less than the bunny—and especially the Netherland-Dwarf bunny at that.

Jonathan missed the 7.27 and was late getting to work the next morning. His head still ached from the application of the five iron, and he had slept even worse than usual. The man sitting next to him woke him when the train arrived in the city. He walked groggily to his office, only to find the lift out of order—again.

No fat woman screeched from inside it, and the alarm did not peal. The lift simply sat on the ground floor—mute—looking as though it would never move again. Not that it mattered to anyone other than the employees of Jones P. & Son. The company owned the building, and the other floors were empty, pending a major building renovation in the coming year.

Jonathan realised that of the forty-three years he had worked there, the elevator had been out of commission almost the entire time. The only time the elevator had worked was years ago—when he had first started work—at the age of twenty-one. He wondered how any piece of equipment could be so inefficient.
Never mind. ‘The exercise has been good for me all these years. Heaven knows I get little enough of it, sitting behind a desk five days a week.

Miss Bloomingdale sat fatly, demolishing a large watermelon piece by piece. Many other fruits surrounded it. She looked wetly up as Jonathan came into the office. “You're late.” She belched with obvious satisfaction. “Sign the late book.” She sneezed and farted loudly, then stared at Jonathan—daring him to say something.

The ‘late book’ was an innovation Jones P. junior implemented the first week he took over as head accountant. It was demeaning and belittling—something one might expect for primary school students. Jonathan mutely took the book from the watermelon besmeared Bloomingdale and signed it with date, time and reason for lateness.

"You look different.” Bloomingdale looked closely at Jonathan. “Is something wrong with your head?"

"It's nothing, thank you. Just a slight bump.” Jonathan sat at his desk, switched on his computer monitor and began the day's work. He couldn't concentrate. Images of the handicapped people, God, policemen and policewomen and talking rabbits came back to him. The thought kept recurring.
How do I become a Messiah? Do I simply go up to people and say, “Hi, would you like to be a disciple"...? How do I go about it?

Eastman looked over from the next desk. “What's up? You've been daydreaming all day."

Jonathan took the plunge. “I've got a message from God."

"Oh, yeah?"

"No, really. I got hit on the head last night. Here's the lump, look ... And then I finished up dead and temporarily went to heaven. God said he wanted a messenger, well a Messiah actually, to return to Earth to save the planet from itself."

"What's the punch line?"

"No punch line. I'm telling you the truth."

His colleague was silent for some time. The only sounds in the office were the soft taps on Eastman's keyboard. Then he stopped typing and looked up at Jonathan. “You drinking more than usual lately?"

"You know I don't drink."

"You've started smoking those funny cigarettes?"

"
Certainly not!
"

"Well you're on something pretty heavy, man. Next you'll tell me about the voices you hear at night.... God's giving you messages, right?"

"Oh, not with voices. My rabbits talk to me."

"Uh huh."

"God uses them as a sort of conduit. I could hardly believe what was happening myself, but the bunnies brought a message saying to ‘stay cool'."

"Stay cool?"

"God's kind of hip, you know? He wears this caftan and beads and...."

"Either this is the biggest wind up in office history, or you're in real trouble, Goodfellow.... Now leave me alone. I'm trying to work."

"I had hoped that you might become a disciple...."

There was no reply as Eastman went back to his typing.

At lunchtime, Jonathan ate one of the two cheese and pickle sandwiches Mrs. O'Reilly had packed for his lunch, and he drank a cup of tea from the mug he'd brought especially from the boarding house. He didn't like the dirty cups in the lunchroom that no one washed properly. Jonathan tried to broach the subject of his mission with several of his fellow workers. All he got were strange looks.