Run, Run, Rabbit

By the time I drive past Nora, the sun is casting long shadows from her roadside stand.

She’s where the social media rabbit hole promised: on a two-lane highway through San Ardo’s farmland, sitting behind a card table, smoking and resting her feet on an upturned fruit crate. A few yards on either side of her are handwritten “Good Luck Charms” signs, and across the road is a shoulder to park in.

The dirt kicks up around my feet as I get out of the car and bound toward her. Her sharp eyes circle me like turkey vultures.

“Let me know if you have questions,” she says as I get near.

I offer a smile and scan the top of her table: four-leaf clovers in plastic boxes, three hamsa hands, a herd of crystal elephants, a necklace stand strung with pewter amulets, and a penny. Each item was marked five dollars. I smirk. The gingham tablecloth snaps at my ankles.

I glance up at her hazy, green eyes. “Are you Nora by any chance?”

“Why’re you asking that?” She shifts in her chair.

My hands lift involuntarily. “Oh, no—sorry—I found out about your stand online—”

“I’m not on the internet.”

“You’re sorta famous on TikTok,” I soften the news with a stuttered laugh. “And on Reddit.”

Nora squints, draining her menthol before dropping it onto the cigarette graveyard at her sandaled feet.

“I’ve got no clue what you’re saying to me.”

“Just got a little star-struck, I guess.”

“Why don’t you just get to the part where you tell me what sorta luck you need?” She shoots down my grin with a glare and pats the card table in front of her, unsettling her wares.

“Something I don’t already have.”

Nora points at an evil eye pendant. I reveal the nazar around my neck.

“Rose quartz elephant.”

“Have it, and in tourmaline.”

“Wishbone.”

“At home.”

“Saint Christopher medallion.”

“In the glove compartment—”

“Alright, why are you here? Love, career, health?”

“Just luck in general, I guess.”

“It sounds like you have all the luck you need.”

“Can’t ever have enough, right?”

A car passes us. Nora slips another cigarette into her mouth and lights it. My stomach twists.

“Hon, I don’t have much—I’m sure you’ve already noticed—but I do have time. And you’ve been luxuriating in mine too much for my taste.”

I shake my head. “I’m not here to waste your time—”

“You’re paying me with lollygaggin’ and blabber—”

“I’m a serious buyer—”

“Speak plain,” she says, smacking her foot on the crate. Something rustles in the dead grass beneath it. “Your stories don’t pay my bills.”

“I’ve heard that you help people make their own.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking—”

“I want to make my own luck.”

Nora looks me over, lolling her head to the side. Behind her, a distant murmuration of birds folds into itself.

“You got a hundred on you?”

“I only have a fifty,” I lie.

She nods her chin to my waist pack, and I comply, pulling out a folded fifty and offering it to her. Nora’s hand plucks the bill from mine and tucks it under her bra strap.

From under the card table, Nora pulls out a clipboard with a piece of notepaper struggling against the wind. “Take a picture of this list—yes, you’re gonna need to buy all of it. You can get it at the hardware store in town. You local?”

I shake my head and flatten the paper, struggling to read her handwriting.

“You’ll need a cooler and some ice then too, or it’ll start to smell.”

I frown and look up at her, but she’s already up from her chair and squatting next to the fruit crate. Without taking the tote bag off its spot on her chair, she fishes out a butcher’s cleaver and sets it on the ground.

“Jesus!” I recoil. “What’s that for?”

In a swift, practiced movement, Nora shoves her hands under the fruit crate and lifts a sand-colored rabbit from underneath. She holds it up for me. I only count three paws. The twist in my stomach tightens as she lays the rabbit on the ground.

“Oh, do you have any that are already made?”

My stupidity is palpable under her glare. “How’re you supposed to make your own luck if I make it for you? Hold the cleaver.”

“You want me to cut it off?!”

“Hey, you came to me. This is how it’s done.”

The rabbit heaves in the heat, his fawn-hued fur fluttering in the scattered light, and accepts Nora’s weathered hands on his torso.

Nora sneers. “It’s bad luck if you don’t do it.”

“I don’t think that—”

“Get down here and grab the damn cleaver.”

I kneel in front of the rabbit and, hand shaking, lift the cleaver off the ground. It’s so much lighter than I expected.

“Is he old? Sick?”

“Not particularly.”

I grip the hilt of the cleaver with both hands.

“This’ll get you anything you want. I’m helping you.”

Her voice smells like mint and rot.

“Don’t they scream?” I ask.

“Ain’t his first rodeo, kid.”

The nausea ebbs and flows as I raise and lower the blade over the rabbit’s haunch. His nose wriggles.

“The faster you go, the kinder it is.” She feigns a smile and trails a sun-dried finger over his remaining hind leg. “Just pretend there’s a little dotted line—do-do-do-do-do—right here, and swing.”

I take a sharp inhale and raise the cleaver over my head, searching the rabbit’s face for permission. I see myself in his obsidian eyes.

“I can’t,” I whisper, lowering my arm.

Nora scoffs. “Everyone wants to make their own luck until they know what it really takes.”

I stare at the white toes of my sneakers.

She removes a hand from the rabbit and holds it out for the cleaver. “I knew you weren’t serious.”

Without thinking, my free palm lands in the center of Nora’s chest, sending her onto the flat of her back. Her cigarette flies into the grass beside us.

“Run, rabbit!” I shout. “Run!”

The rabbit looks up at me, too hot and tired to budge. My heart sinks.

“You entitled brat!”

I toss the cleaver into the field behind her and, before she can lunge for either of us, take off with the rabbit tucked in my arms.

“Thief!”

I clutch the rabbit to my chest as I bolt to my car, my feet thudding into the dirt the way his teeth sink into my hand—shallow and thoughtless.

The rabbit bites harder as Nora shouts curses at my back, both of which I tear myself from as I get into the driver’s seat and turn the ignition.

“I’m taking you home,” I say. His nails dig into my thighs as we peel onto the other side of the road.

A truck horn blares as it drives past us, but we’re already driving through the dust we kicked up, passing Nora as she runs onto the road, hurling insults and a rock—both of which land on the trunk of my car.

It takes fifteen miles for the dust to clear from the cabin, for the rabbit’s heart rate to even out, and for the bites to start hurting. I wipe the narrow trails of blood on my sleeve and keep driving, looking down at my three-legged rabbit.

My evil eye necklace, broken and buried under his front paw, glints in the summer sun. I unfurl a laugh into the wind.