(Dale Dapkins is the back to back grand prize winner of The Lorian Hemingway Short story competition for 1999 and 2000. He is looking for an agent for his upcoming novel, Church of the Bunny. Email: daledapkins@aol.com. Snail mail: PO Box 5152 Key West Fl, 33041. Tel. 305-292-3384)

Cousin Lucy ripped Gramma's funeral program into one-inch squares and wrote a number on each. She loaded them into Gramma's hat, set it on the casket, and with her red hair ignited by a shaft of afternoon sunlight, told us we'd draw lots to keep just one item each from the estate. Gramma's house had already been sold. The contents, after we'd chosen, would be auctioned to pay her medical bills. As the executrix of Gramma's estate, Lucy was anxious to keep things rolling, so, with little ceremony other than rubbing her lucky rabbit's foot, Paw Paw, Lucy drew first. From where I was sitting, partially blinded by the sun, it looked like she stuck her hand into Gramma's heart. I winced. Lucy drew number fifteen, dead last. She looked surprised, then betrayed. I was next to step up to Gramma, lying translucent in her casket as if the paraffin she once used to seal canning jars had been melted over her skin. I closed my eyes against the sun, reached in the hat and drew... out... number one.

Alive, Gramma rarely smiled, but on this cold clear afternoon when I selected Gramma's coveted oak claw-foot table as my inheritance, she came as close as I could remember in nearly a year. Lucy squeezed Paw Paw, hissing, "You, my little friend, are a piece of rabbit crap... Daddy should have dried your whole damn body!"

We grew up, Uncle Roy, Cousin Lucy and I, sitting countless hours across from Gramma at this table sipping bitter tea from cracked cups. We listened to Gramma snort discontent in the language of the old country. We kids and Roy, ten years our senior, sat dangling our legs above the table's nightmare claw feet, with Lucy teasing Roy and kicking my shins. Lucy was two years older than me and bigger. If I'd kick Lucy back, she'd only kick me harder the next time. Enduring the pain was always better than having Gramma scowl at my complaints. A gummy sugar glaze gripped our forearms, the result of saliva-coated fingers foraging for loose crystal. Each of us had our own private teaspoon. Mine had Charlie McCarthy with his monocle, Lucy's was elegant silver. She always made a point of grabbing and licking mine before we sat. I vowed to lick hers next time. I always forgot. Periodically, Gramma scowled and looked up from her murmurs to sip tea. She followed with her spoon driven deep into the sugar bowl, then piloted slowly back to her open lips. They would close like pale rubber flaps and I could almost hear saliva gush. It was understood, no kicking now. Then, one by one in order of age, we would follow suite until the sugar bowl was exhausted. The bottoms of our cups oozed more than leaked and the table top was ringed with stains. Once, delirious with flu, I saw in the table's mysterious galaxy of rings a code of the way things were and always would be. I can still vaguely picture it, but without detail or insight. I take solace now remembering I once touched something so spiritual.

"We want that table... those feet... you know we collect feet." said Lucy fingering Paw Paw like a Turk with his worry beads. She was a biologist and owned elephant's feet, chicken, turkey, gecko's feet, each catalogued and labeled in plastic bags on top of her TV.

We? Lucy became plural when upset.

"I'm going to keep that table." I told 'them' and watched Lucy's eyes shine. Problem was... she wanted it now simply because it was mine.

At the funeral, my relatives said they'd come Saturday and help clear out Gramma's house. So far, I was the only one there. I was in the attic clearing out boxes when I heard Lucy shout below, "Hey! We're down here. Anybody here? Hello?"

We? Still the 'poor us' mentality? I walked to the window and shouted, "Up here!" but she had disappeared into the garage. I was resigned to do battle with Lucy, who, I was sure would try to get the table from me like she did with everything since we were kids. Not this time! No way! Gramma's table was mine... and it's going to stay that way!

Walking back from the dusty window before my vision had readjusted to the attic dim I was distracted by the sound of Lucy's car driving off and banged my knee on something hard under a blanket. When I pulled the blanket back I found myself looking at Uncle Roy's bicycle! Its once puffy white tires had long ago gone flat, cracked, and melted to the floor from the heat and time. I got on it like I did years ago. I'd be sitting in front of my big Uncle Roy on the wide bar where the horn and the batteries were housed. I'd be hollering, unable to control my excitement. Roy'd be his inscrutable self. And then I remembered his book, Mom's birthday present to Roy, her little brother, when she was eight and he was four. He always kept it in his right saddlebag. I leaned and I lifted the stiff leather flap, reached inside (so excited I didn't even think about spiders or dead mice or whatever else might be lurking in there) and pulled out Roy's book. A brittle protective layer of old scotch tape meticulously and slavishly applied, half an inch thick and yellowed now, covered it like a mummy. "My God, it's still here!" I whispered, "Church of the Bunny!"

Memories came in like tides. I remembered how Roy always kept crullers, jelly donuts and a roll of scotch tape in the other saddlebag. Sitting in Roy's lap, I'd learned to read from this book. Roy told me how Gramma'd made my mother cry when she called Mom stupid for spending good money on this "daim piece of scrap." For my mother's birthday, Roy had gotten her a live rabbit she named Buzzie. Gramma said, "At least we can eat him if we have to."

I sat down and opened to the first page where my mother had written... so childlike. "To my best brother Roy. Roses are red, violets are blue. Happy birthday to a sweet boy like you. Love always -- your sister -- Mary."

I got off and sat on the raw pine floor with the book. Where I sat was dotted with time-hardened amber resin beads. I laughed bitterly, imagining Crystal, my hippie ex-wife saying, "How ironic, you, that family of yours, those resin beads, you all spent the last fifty years turning to crystals, but you're about as spiritual as pumpkins!" I felt sorry for myself when I thought about my unhappy marriage and was trying to swallow an emotional lump in my throat. If Lucy caught me she'd peck it open like a chicken's sore.

I looked up at the attic roof which seemed lower now that I was grown. Everything up here seemed smaller. There were only traces remaining of Roy's exotic temple. What little remained of the colored paper he and my mother had taped to the window panes was peeled, tattered and turned brown. The flowers he so carefully bundled with colored wire and hung on the walls had rotted, gone to mold and dust. Twisted colored wires were everywhere -- Roy removed them from appliances or motors he found on the street. He gathered them and wired together his world. The toasters, irons, radios, engine parts, all wired together so carefully like the work of some insane devil. Some held Roy's photographs in crude frames to the walls. And in every photograph, the heads were cropped out... except his sister's. Even without their heads, I could identify my relatives and jogged my memory back to the time when Roy and I sat here under buzzing attic wasps. I'd be sitting in his lap while his chubby hands patted fresh layers of tape to the cover. His high, rounded forehead shone like a Greyhound Bus, when he'd ask the riddles, "What's silent, smells like carrots?"

I'd answer the same answer every time, "Bunny fart!"

He'd say, "Yes, you're very smart, but what's orange and sloshes in a bowl?"

I'd answer, like a hundred times before, "Bunny puke!"

Wiggling with excitement, I'd beg, "Okay, okay... now turn to the Bunny's birthday." Roy would then open to the drawing of the Bunny dressed in white. "She's holding sephulcur," he'd say, his good eye closed, his milky eye orbiting slowly, "She's standing waist-deep in presents at the door of her chocolate Church."

"How could anybody get so many presents?" I'd marvel.

"Friends." Roy would say quietly. I could feel him grow tense, talking about something he could never get right. "Friends are... best thing you can have." He'd relax again and read, "Wearing sparkling birthday yellows, The Bunny blesses the little children. And even though it is the Bunny's birthday, she lets the youngest child open her birthday presents in a celebration so grand a wheelbarrow has to bring in the huge carrot cake with white icing so creamy and made with so much butter..." and here he'd ad lib, "The children had to... puke."

We had our roles: he, the stone faced improviser; me, the easy laugh. His insertion of bad words gave the same thrill as drinking screwdrivers years later with my adolescent friends.

I turned the page and, there, tucked neatly along the spine was a black and white photo of my parents on their wedding day sixty years ago. I'd never seen this one before. It had Roy's photo-signature, everyone's head, except my mother's, neatly chopped off. They were standing in front of my father's Ford with "Just Married", whitewashed on the side. They were about to leave on their honeymoon and my father holds my mother like a fish he's going to fillet. I can almost hear my father's endless advice to Roy as Roy snaps the picture, "A man's gotta have work ethic, Roy boy -- like a good pair of pliers. See, you gotta have a mind like an office file! And, Roy, why don't you do something about that hair of yours?" And on and on and on. And my mother, frozen by photography, stands beside my decapitated father. She is trying to smile. She thinks marriage will save her from her embarrassing family. But who will save her from married life? There is happiness on her face still coming from a time she shopped freely. Buying was a joy for her. But my mother was not a wise shopper. She'd buy "bad" things -- French horns, cheap chocolates, soda -- and have no money left for meat. My father, marinated in the frugality of the great depression, ended her shopping privileges. He took over with a vengeance, buying bargain canned foods, soap, lettuce... everything by the case, even if sat unused till he died, a bargain was a bargain! Eventually my father kept my mother from money entirely. She never had a check book. There were other pictures folded in the book. Everyone's head was chopped off. Even mine. Everyone except his sister.

Gramma stands decapitated behind my parents. You can't see her mouth, of course, but I know she is muttering in her thick Swedish accent, "Daim Scrape!" This translates to, "Damn scrap!" The same curse she hurls, holding Jesus by the scruff of his neck behind her little house. She makes him join her in damning women passing on the street. "Gott Daim Whore!"

Even as a child I sensed Jesus didn't have the same feeling for blame and guilt that Gramma did. Like the rest of us, though, Jesus couldn't stand up to her. It was easier to be what she said you were. Jesus went along with it thinking he could soften her... help her smell the roses. But, she was a master at getting the young golden one involved. It was he who changed until he was cursing with Gramma, insulting and haranguing the immigrant ladies. And as luck would have it, Jesus' father got wind of it and came down hard. Roy told me how they wrestled in the road, Gramma spitting, scratching, kicking dust in God's face, clutching at Jesus then at God's wing as he tried to fly off with his son. "Ya Daim Scrape! Don't think you can leave me down here alone in your stinking Hell-hole with its stench of bitches. You call yourself God, but I'll tell you something. Your little sisters are whoring all over your cross like the Devil's Easter. They got pointy ears under that pretty hair and sharp teeth like brown needles! They laugh at you! They suck each other's blood!"

Gramma stood for a long time shaking her fist at an empty sky. Then she stumbled into the woods where she lay face down barking until they came and sat with their red tails high in a row. They stayed out of reach because foxes don't like to be touched. Not to worry: Gramma didn't care for touching either. But the foxes did hunger for gossip. She found them attentive and always hungry for it. Soon, they salivated when they heard her shuffling through dry leaves in the woods for they knew they'd be shredding rumor with her by the silver brook. With serrated teeth parted, delicately, avoiding each other's lips, they'd yip little yelps and pull damnations from behind Gramma's teeth and under her tongue. It wasn't long before the foxes moved like shadows into Gramma's house... into her bed... under the covers at Roy's feet, where they twisted into his nightmares. They scratched the soles of his feet with their constant movement and licked off the blood. Soon after, Roy was institutionalized. She tried to live without them but couldn't now. In the end, Gramma's compromise with the red-tails proved her undoing

On August 31, 1935, my parents left Naugatuck Connecticut for their honeymoon in Maine. My mother told Roy, "I'll be back in a couple of days, Honey."

Roy knew this wasn't true because Joe had said, "Hell, this is 1935. A trip to Maine in a car like mine only takes twenty-six hours! There's only got one way to go... just head straight up Rt. 1." The way he said it made it sound like they were going to be driving straight up a tree or the side of a building, but either way it was going to take a couple of days just to get there. Roy asked Joe why he said 'UP' when he meant North. Joe didn't answer. Joe said, "The same road goes all the way to Florida if you go the other way... DOWN South. And, Roy, let me tell you, once a guy like me gets moving, except for gas and food -- and going to the bathroom, of course -- nothin stops me! We'll see you guys in a... little while, now!"

And Roy could only climb on his bicycle where he rested his forehead on the handlebars and stared at the ground. Gramma slapped the top of Roy's daim scrape' head and sent him to his room.

After what seemed like days, with Mary dreaming of an "I love you" my father could never say, black rainy night was becoming pink dawn when my father rolled to a stop on a cottage lawn. The newlyweds staggered through the raindrops to a musty feather bed in the little cottage. In the morning they awoke and made love, opening and coloring in the blueprint for my existence. Outside it was a clear sunny pine needle afternoon. And after a hearty breakfast of potatoes and eggs the newlyweds walked. My father found a large white fan-shaped mushroom growing on an oak and pulled it down. On the cottage table, he scratched the likeness of an Indian named Manco on its satin surface, and wrote their names and the date below. He hung it over their bed. Although it was never his intention, the Indian looked like Gramma and made intimacy difficult.

Back in Connecticut, the grief of his sister's parting was like a spider bite. Roy's brain swelled until his eyes ached. As he lay sleepless, his hand fell on the book his sister had given him and the room filled with a soft light. It intensified until it distilled and hovered above him.

"Stop it! Please. Go Away!" Roy begged.

Before his stunned gaze a Bunny grew in splendor and reality until she filled the room. Roy closed his eyes and waited for death. But this wasn't about death and when Roy opened his eyes again he looked directly into The Bunny's eyes which sparkled a radiant heat like sunlight on Roy's trembling chest. She smiled straight into his heart. Her ears were large as banana leaves. Her fur was luscious, thick, and smelled of sourdough bread and cold stars. The bunny held out the stump where her left paw had once been as into it streamed pure mint light from the Big Dipper arriving by way of Mars. And her features, her soft moist nose and lips, her deep brown eyes all danced with mirth.

"Roy, aren't you the boy I gave Silver Light?" (Roy's wonderful Schwinn) she asked.

"Yyyess," Roy said.

"What's all this self-pity? I think you know what you have to do, don't you?" said the Bunny.

"B-b-but how'm I gonna find them?" asked Roy.

"Oh Roy! My boy! Have you forgotten the big dipper? Where does the handle always point?" asked the Bunny.

"North," said Roy. And as the Bunny turned her body, her stump pointed to the blackest part of the sky where one star shone brightest. With a click, all the light which had slowly poured into the Bunny's stump shot out toward the North Star at once. The room shook violently with a noise like a tree falling and she was gone.

Roy rubbed his face. Yes! Of course. North. North to Maine... a dirt road to the lake. So simple. His saddlebags were always packed. He had crullers too -- and maybe there were jelly donuts in the cupboard downstairs. He took the time to put a fresh layer of scotch tape on the cover because like Mama says you have to take care of things or they fall apart. Then, real careful that his feet with their big slippers wouldn't bang into things, He went downstairs quiet as a mouse. Roy opened the front door slow, but still it squeaked. His mother woke up and yelled, "Who's out there?"

"It's me. Go back to sleep!" he said. And soon, when she was snoring again, he tip-toed outside where he gave his bell the tiniest of rings. Forgetting he was still wearing his slippers, he started pedaling.

On the second day of my parents honeymoon it was August hot. They swam several times in the lake, my mother always swimming sidestroke to keep her hair dry. Lunchtime my father set up his box camera to photograph them eating lobster. And always, the Indian on the mushroom watched. The third day they began a work program my father had planned. First, they painted the cottage and every so often my father'd smile and ask, "Mary, I don't know about you, but, isn't work just the best way a husband and wife should play?"

His first night in a field by the roadside Roy huddled over his book. The sky was overcast and dark. He thought rubbing the cover might make the Bunny show herself again. But it didn't work and his heart sank. Feeling alone and frightened he kept falling in and out of a recurring dream where a cow was eating him. His arm would be all the way down her throat before he'd snatch it back. Dawn took forever to arrive and when it finally came Roy woke up sweating. He was hungry. The crullers were gone. He'd eaten them all in the first hour.

His second day was worse. It was cold and drizzled. Roy could not get dry. Tired and cold, Roy was passing through the village of Walpole when a black wire-haired terrier mutt, who featured himself a herder, lowered his head and ears while focusing his yellow eyes on Roy as if he would round up the strange bicyclist. "I'm just passing through, you idiot, and if I have to, I know a large bunny who'd just love to bite you in two!" Roy snapped, kicking at the pesky animal. But the little terrier wouldn't let it go. He barked himself into a frenzy, whirling, jumping, and as Roy tried to reason with the critter, something Roy was usually very good at, the dog lunged to bite. Only by thumping on the dog's head and thrusting Church of the Bunny into the dog's mouth was Roy able to protect himself. The dog's incisors did, however penetrate the cover -- holes barely visible now under the many layers which Roy meticulously, day by day, year by year, applied. Perhaps the dog's teeth made contact with the Bunny's heart -- who knows? -- but the dog did an immediate attitudinal about-face.

Man and dog (Roy named him Tom) together now continued North. At noon, during a break in the rain clouds, Roy sat under a tree by the roadside and pressed a fresh layer of scotch tape over the bite holes. After that they continued north all afternoon. The dog, despite his critically imprinted sense of direction, did not understand road forks. "You just don't get it, do you, Tom?" teased Roy. But late in the day, after not having seen signs for Rt. 1 for hours, and with Tom whirling in tight worried circles, Roy had to admit they were lost. The two of them pumped up their courage and went inside a pharmacy on the Main Street.

When Roy walked in he saw a grungy kid on the other side of the store who was walking beside a dog that looked a lot like Tom. It turned out to be a big wall mirror. He stopped in his tracks. That's what he looked like? He should clean up. His slippers made him look foolish. The pharmacist behind the counter started yelling, "Hey, idiot brain!! You wouldn't bring a shopping bag full of bubonic plague into a hospital, would you? Well, this is the next best thing to a hospital... and your dog there, he's the bag! Now, get yerself and that mutt-bag out of here!"

Roy told him they were lost but the pharmacist didn't care and just said, "Well, you can't get there from here! Fact is, you can't get anywhere from here! Now, go on, git out of here! Ya got two seconds. .one , two! Okay, I'm calling the cops!"

He wasn't kidding either. He didn't wait for nothing, just picked up the phone. Roy and Tom ran out from his store to the woods. It was just getting dark and it started to really pour. The cop came lickety-split with his siren wailing. But it was raining so hard he didn't want to get out of his nice dry car to chase anybody. He just revved his engine and shined his big spotlight through the trees. Roy held Tom's muzzle to keep him from barking. His clothes were soaked again and he was cold and starting to get worried. He was so far from home now he couldn't just quit and go back. He started to wonder what if there'd been some disease outbreak here and that's why the pharmacist was upset. What if Tom did have bubonic fleas? The dog was a stranger. Was he crazy to be here anyway and never going to find his sister or get back home again. He'd heard they like to put people in jail if they haven't arrested anybody in a long time and a jail call is empty. They shoot people too if they think they can get away with it. No one cares. They want to feel what it's like to shoot a real body full of holes, not just a cardboard target.

A twig snapped. Tom growled. A flashlight shone right in his eyes blinding him. "Hold it right there!" said a voice like a cop you hear on the radio. Tom snarled and ran at the voice. There was growling and swearing and then the flashlight beam did a crazy loop in the trees illuminating drips of light on the branches. Roy heard a thud and the dog yelp. The voice said. "Think you can bite me? Here, take some of this!"

And Roy heard several more blows. He hoped he wasn't going to shoot Tom. "You could have just kicked him..." he said. The man didn't say anything back, but Roy could hear him coming through the woods. He didn't remember taking the book out, but he was holding it in front of his face like a shield when the man hit him on the hands with the flashlight. Even though much of the force was taken on the book, it hurt a lot because Roy's hands were cold. It knocked the book back against Roy's forehead. He fell momentarily unconscious and when he came to a fluorescent glow like you see in a pastry shop at Christmas lit up the woods.

"What the Hell is that?" asked the cop. Roy could see the man now. He was a cop. The cop was covering his head with his hands and was grabbing at his chest like there were bees in his shirt or something. He was rolling on the ground coughing and crying. Then he got to his feet and ran. Roy looked for Tom and found him lying in a sticky bunch of leaves and blood. Tom wasn't moving. Roy called out the dog's name, but there was nothing. He cradled the dog's head and could see there was blood coming from his ears. He'd only known the dog half a day and had lost him already. The Bunny appeared and spoke, "Now, listen to me Roy. This is very important." She said, talking in a warm voice like a blanket. "You're going to need strength. Say these words: carrot and stick. Carrot and stick. Say them whenever you need strength," she said.

"Yes, I can do that, but... what about the dog? He's not dead, is he? Please don't let him die," Roy begged.

"Try the words, Roy!" she said.

Roy said, "Carrot and stick. Carrot and stick." And as he was saying the words, The Bunny picked Tom up. "Carrot and Stick!" said Roy. Tom's eyes flickered. The dog whined and tried to clear the cobwebs from his head with his paws.

"You're okay, both of you," said The Bunny as she set Tom down on his feet. "And Roy, listen to me. Look at me, Roy, and listen! When you need strength repeat these words: Carrot and stick. Carrot and stick. Say them whenever you need strength." And when Roy raised his eyes, the clouds parted for just a moment, long enough for him and Tom to follow the tips of the Bunny's long ears pointing to the handle of the big dipper. The stars burned bright in a sky as black as bituminous coal. The Bunny disappeared.

Not waiting for morning light, Roy and Tom were moving again, north, through the intermittent rain. The soft man with the large forehead and the milky-moon eye saying ever so quietly, but with great determination now, "Carrot and stick. Carrot and stick." And the dog punctuating with a single "Woof."

They followed Rt. 1 by day and the big dipper by night. "Carrot and stick, Carrot and stick." Covering more than a hundred miles each day, Roy pedaled ten, fifteen, nineteen hours. He slept no more than two hours at a time. "Carrot and stick! Carrot and stick!" Tom scavenged meals from paper bags and road kill while Roy grazed in the tangles of blueberries and wild red raspberries. Carrot and stick. Carrot and stick! They encountered moose and deer. Roy's dreams were not always pleasant. But they traveled on. Carrot and Stick! Carrot and stick!

Just past midnight on the fifth day of my parents' honeymoon, there came a shy knock on the cottage door. My father wrapped himself in his wool robe and grabbed the axe he kept by the bed. He and my mother peered out the upstairs window. My mother rushed past him downstairs. "It's Roy!" she cried, rushing to hug her brother. My father rolled his eyes.

My mother, happy as a clam, fed the two exhausted travelers. "I'm going to fix them a place to sleep." she said. "No dogs in here, Mary. They're dirty and we just painted these floors!" My father said. So Roy's sister fixed Tom a special bed under the cottage. But before before going back to bed, my father asked my mother if he wait till morning to tell Roy the honeymoon was over and they were leaving tomorrow morning. Roy overheard, but was already asleep.

My mother didn't sleep. Early the following morning my father roped Roy's bicycle to the Ford's front bumper. Then he shook his head at Tom and said, "No mangy flea-bag dog's gonna ride twenty-six hours in any car of mine. I can tell you that right now!"

Roy intended to stay behind and travel with the dog, but Roy's will was no match for my father's. "I can't leave you here and have that on my head," my father said. "Trust me, Roy. A dog's got no feelings. And, besides, if he's half the dog you think he is, he'll find you," my father said.

Tom watched with tilt-headed detachment as the Ford pulled from the pine needle driveway. He loped behind the car for miles eventually appearing from around corners to Roy's delight. But toward noon, the dog fell further and further behind and Roy could no longer stand to look. Trying to distract himself, Roy rode in the back seat reading Church of the Bunny until he got carsick. My father had to pull over so Roy could get out and vomit. Roy dawdled best he could, hoping Tom might appear, but there was no sign of the yellow-eyed dog.

The wheels were turning in my father's head long before he announced near Portsmouth, "Mary, I'm going to straighten your brother out." And true to his word, when they returned, my father checked Roy out of the hospital and moved him into the little upstairs bedroom which would become mine when I am born.

Under my father's wing, Roy seemed to be doing okay. He watched the road and the cars at night hoping to see Tom go by and run out to stop him. Roy liked helping with the dishes because he could be with Mary. And he liked his little room where he could read.

Years later my father would marvel, "He was actually talking to that Bunny, Daley Boy. You could hear him in your room plain as day, right, Mary?" And he'd shaking his head in wonder.

Whenever he talked like this, my mother would get quiet, remembering how Roy's rehabilitation ended. Tired from hauling brush for my father one evening, Roy had plopped himself down in the overstuffed wing chair in the living room like he usually did after work. Unfortunately, this chair was the favorite nap spot for Buzzie, my mother's now aged and deaf rabbit. A splintered rib and punctured lung resulted in Buzzie being put to sleep. From what I can gather, the job fell to Lucy's step-father who knew how to prepare a lucky rabbit's foot.

Roy fell into a deep depression. It became necessary to put him back in the state hospital during the week and back into Gramma's attic on the weekends. The years passed. And I was born and Cousin Lucy was born and the world wars came and went. My father got work in California, but it didn't last. We moved back soon after my sixth birthday. On the first day of my return, Lucy, ten now, took me to Roy's attic to make fun of the overgrown child and his crazy chapel. When Roy let us in, Lucy made disgusted faces and whispered, "creepy." But I found his emotion-free ways fascinating and I liked his quiet attic with its mud wasp choir. As my visits became a pattern the walls grew velvet curtains and the vaulted attic ceilings became a cathedral in both Roy's and my mind. Through the application of colored papers used to wrap fruit, the windows became stained glass, and under Roy's magical talent with colored wire, pieces of cast off junk became holy objects. The seasons revolved like a carousel, and once, I remember, when the snow whirled hypnotically past our attic window on an early dark December evening, the sky opened upon crystal blackness. "There. See! She's right there!" Roy cried! And, I swear, I saw the stately Bunny as clearly as Roy.

"Jesus, what's wrong with you? Reality check! Hello! You're up in some creepy attic talking with your booby uncle about some stupid... bunny. Here! Look at this!" Lucy said when I told her what I'd seen. She swung the rabbit's foot she called Paw Paw in front of my face and said, "I got her foot right here on this chain... Your stupid bunny is dead!"

"You got to give that back to her," I said.

"Yeah, Right! You two are cuckoo, I swear!" she replied.

In the end, she limited her own imagination refusing to believe. But schism came, as it always does, from within. I had begun to grow, and rapidly. And by the time I was twelve I was nearly six feet tall. I attracted friends for no reason other than I was an athlete. They'd yell from the street, "Come on! Slide your tail, Dale. Let's go!" (On the field they called me, Dale the Whale.)

ROY -- "What smells like carrots and is invisible?"

FRIENDS -- (Calling from the street.) "Come on, will ya, Dale! Let's go, man!"

ME -- "Yeah... listen, Roy. I can't do this today... You hear those idiots? I gottta go.."

ROY -- "What is liquid and orange in a bowl?"

FRIENDS -- "Yo, Whale man! Let's go!

ME -- "Come on, Roy. I gotta go... Listen, I'll see you tomorrow. They're waiting for me."

I abandoned Roy to be with my friends. Weeks passed. The attention I was getting on the athletic field had me intoxicated. I worshiped at the temple of Adonis and drank like a sot from the fountain of egos.

. . .

"We had to... do something with him, Dale. I mean, he was just sitting there like a zombie." My father said.

"Don't say we," my mother snapped.

My father, rolling his eyes, responded: "That's the kind of thanks I get.

My mother, red as a beet, asked, "Yeah, well, what I want to know is, what kind of man sticks a sick human being in the back of his truck like some... box of nails? Not the back seat, mind you, but the... back, where you put your tools and... all your other crap!"

"What are you talking about? Took who where?" I asked.

Ignoring me, my father continued, "A pick up truck doesn't have a back seat, Mary! I carried that poor half-wit all the way down those stairs. In my arms.. like a goddamn baby! And, Mary, I had to put him back there because I had BLUEPRINTS on the front seat, okay? Hey, listen! I'm going to tell you something. Your brother was all done before I ever got hold of him! I mean, his brain was cooked! The guy talks to...bunnies!"

"Your Uncle," my mother said, turning to me, "your father had to... take him to the... hospital."

"Is he going to be okay?" I asked.

"Oh, Dale! He was just lying up there... for so long. like he was -- well, not like he was dead, but... he just laid there."

. . .

Fifty years later, sitting in my grandmother's attic, I remembered. Everyone, including me, had abandoned Roy. I could picture him like it was yesterday, his milky eye wandering as he applied layer upon fresh layer of tape, rubbing that glossy surface until time was a ray of light that flickered and nearly went out. But before it did, just like he knew she would, The Bunny appeared. It had long ago become clear to Roy he had no reason to remain with us. Now he needed only to summon the Bunny one last time and announce his intention to devote his conscious being to her, from this time forth, forever. She could take all the time in the world -- weeks, months, whatever it took -- to walk down that endless flickering shaft of starlight to him and hold his hand and take him home... and right behind her, guess who was running like the wind but still never catching up? Old yellow-eyed Tom, of course! He was barking, whining with joy, jumping all around trying to lick Roy's face. The Bunny took Roy up in her good arm, hugged him till his eyes misted and he cried for the first time since he was a child.

"It's all right Roy." The Bunny said, "Close your eyes now."

Roy did as he was told and when the Bunny said, "Now open them," he found himself and Tom in an Easter basket sitting on blueberries as big as couches. The Bunny then pulled a slender braided cord and with Roy grinning from ear to ear at the force and the roar, the three of them sky-rocketed off toward the north star.

. . .

"Oooh, give us a look-see at that book!" said Lucy, snatching The Church of the Bunny out of my hands. I'd heard her come up the attic stairs but waited passively as she walked up behind me. "I bet this would bring good money on ebay. Get rid of this crap on the cover. Was this stuff always here? Do you think a little Clorox would take this crap off?"

"Alright, Lucy. You win!" I said, prying loose her sweaty fingers before she found a seam in the tape. "Gramma's table... It's all yours!"