Pit of Adversity

Because of my diminutive size I had grown up scrappier and fiercer than the other males of my pack…except for one. Jeb was the alpha. And he was huge compared to me, with thick lustrous grey fur tinged with an abundance of black that shone in the sunlight like motor oil. Being the alpha coyote, Jeb feasted on the primo parts of a kill- brains and soft organs- that made his body healthily massive and slabbed with muscle.

Jeb was big. But my thin, smaller body made me faster. Running was my thing, it had become my job to scout ahead of the pack when we were on the move, whether seeking a fresh food source or avoiding humans.

My mate Verna was keen to my conflicting emotions. She was my cheerleader, my life coach, my love. In tune with my emotions, she was wont to say, “You’re not scrawny. You’re streamlined.” Or “You’re not gangly. You’re a lean running machine.” Or “You’re not scruffy. Your fur’s tufted in all the right places.”

Odd as it seems, I was most self-conscience of my ears. Because I was so scrawny- er, streamlined- my ears appeared to be ginormous. So out of proportion to the rest of me it’s a wonder I didn’t tip over and bonk the earth with my nose while standing still.

As if she could read my mind, Verna says with a sly grin, “Sedge honey, you know what they say about big ears.” Followed by a sweet little wink.

It was January and we were hungry. I’d spotted some fresh turkey tracks and guano half a day’s travel to the west and the pack was eager to get moving. We rested up and waited for dusk. A pack of eight was conspicuous in daylight and the stink of human men hung heavy in the crisp frigid air. We’d been living on seeds and grass and the occasional vole for the past month. Our females needed more substantial fodder in preparation for the breeding season which began just a few weeks from now.

“We go now,” said Jeb. He stood and shook his entire body with satisfaction. He’d grown leaner over the winter, but his coat remained dense and lustrous. His mate Lorna, the alpha female, bounded to his side and they led the way. To me, Jeb said, “Sedge, go on ahead and do your job.”

Given the okay to pass the alpha pair, I bounded off in the direction I’d gone earlier that morning. The pack trotted along behind me and rested when the moon was bright and white and round. I came back to them as they rested and circled the camp, sniffing out a wide radius. We were fairly safe from humans this time of night, but a silent cougar had been known to take out up to three of us in one swoop in the past. It’s a good thing those big cats were so stinky. I sensed nothing and the pack got moving once again, following my lead. I followed my previous trail not by urine markers but by the scents of the forest- cedar, cottonwood, hemlock, pine…an old campfire here, a long-lost human hand covering there. I did not use spots of urine because others not of our kind would smell us too.

Verna had said, “Oh Sedgey you’re so smart.”

And I’d given her that pointed look that said, ‘don’t go there, I’m not in the mood.’ Verna was of the ridiculous notion that I should be alpha. Me. She’d go on about how smart I was, and how must faster I was, than anyone else. Kinder, more compassionate, an all-around nice guy. I’d point out that’s not how politics work. The pack wants big and strong and fierce. Sometimes I thought she wanted me to be alpha male so she could be alpha female…then I’d feel guilty for thinking such a thing.

Fresh turkey tracks and droppings alerted me to the fact that the birds were still here in this vicinity. I yipped three times, a signal to hurry up, and the pack raced towards me, making sure Jeb and his mate were in the lead. The moon was high and small in the east. Dawn would creep up from the end of the world shortly and the turkeys would fly down from the trees. I would hear them before anyone else thanks to the pointed deformities on the top of my head. We lay down for a nap. Jeb lay next to me, our mates on either side.

He said, “So, how many are there?”

I shrugged. “A lot. Well worth the travel for certain.”

He nodded, a placid look on his handsome face. “And you are certain of which direction---” his words trailed off, his proud ears torqued forward, his wet nose twitched. In the tomblike quiet of pre-dawn, I heard him sniffing. He sat up. I sat up with him, alarmed. I allowed him to stand first then followed. I allowed him to step away from our curled-up pack… then followed. We stepped away from the pack and I smelled it too. Hare… Close. Jeb sniffed one way then the other until he narrowed in on the location of the hare. I smelled it too and began to panic. I heard the hare move and knew exactly where it was hiding.

Jeb started towards its hiding place, and I panicked full steam ahead. Jeb picked up his pace, head lowered to the ground. But I was lightning fast and leapt in front of him, turning to snarl in his face. He snapped at my muzzle, but I was too quick and to my surprise, snapped back and caught his sensitive muzzle in my jaws and instinctively shook my head furiously. He barreled forward until I was underneath him. I sank my teeth into his soft belly. His howls of rage and pain awoke the others.

“…Has Sedge gone mad?”

“…must be rabid!”

“…Jeb’s gonna kill him.”

Jeb lashed out furiously, his jaws found my neck as we rolled. I ducked and came up to crunch his muzzle again, this time hearing bone come apart. His blood filled my mouth, and I was sickened at what I’d done but reveled in the taste. He swiped his claws at my eyes, and I let go the muzzle…and went for his eye. It burst in my mouth. He was stunned just long enough for me to go for the paw that was still -now blindly- going for my eyes. I caught it in my jaws and snapped the bones in his toes. He leapt to escape and caught my ear. Blood ran down my face and a crazy thought passed my mind: ‘My great big ears! How I love them so.’

***

Two months earlier…

‘There! A hare!’ I thought gleefully, my belly already rumbling. I took off after it. Hares were fast but I was fast too. It was my thing. I had smelled its presence while scouting a new turf for my pack. The best thing about being scout was I was able to roam far from the pack and eat whatever crossed my path. I always saved half for Verna.

The hare was long and lean, a scruffy thing. But it was nearly winter, and prey was growing scarce. Even a scrawny thing like this fellow would sustain me and my mate another week. I’d lost sight of it when it ducked through the brush…but I could smell it. I crept with my nose to the ground and distinguished its fresh footfalls from others from past ages. Being smaller than most coyotes, I was not only faster… I was quieter too.

It was close. I smelled its droppings; I smelled its fear. I heard its lungs; I heard its fear. I crept low to the ground aware that it could hear me as well. But I was downwind, that was my advantage. Under a low hemlock patch I was careful not to make a sound, but it was difficult to move so slow. Slow made me impatient. I peeked out and spotted the stretched-out-rabbit-looking-thing, afraid the sound of my drool hitting the ground would alert it. It was sitting up tall on its back legs, sniffing the air and swiveling its ears left to right. It was in a small clearing- a small flat patch surrounded by pines and clumps of dead grass. I lowered my torso and raised my butt. A fleeting sense of wrongness wisped through my head, but I was in full steam ahead mode and couldn’t stop if I’d wanted to.

One great bound and I was upon the rabbitty thing!

It turned its head towards me, eyes wide, its mouth a small O.

And the world fell away in a rush of whirling leaves and a crashing of snapping sticks and branches!

I landed hard in darkness. “WHUMP!”

When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw amidst broken branches and dried leaves the body of the rabbit. I jumped back in surprise when it sat up and gasped.

“What have you done?!” the hare screeched at me.

“Wha---?”

“This is all your fault! You made this happen! You…you…aaah!”

“Wha---?”

“Look around. We are in a hole, a pit. Smells like boar. We are SCREWED.”

The hare still looked delicious.

“Stop looking at me like that! I’ve no meat on my bones. Eat me and you’ll still die, I won’t sustain you for long.”

He was right. He was pretty lean. And I was in a lot of pain. Once the shock wore off, my entire body ached. I may have sprained my left paw, and my head was lumpy and bruised. The rabbit didn’t seem too bad off. I felt broken and, irrationally, felt this cocky rabbit could kick my butt just now. I sighed as the dirt walls of the pit tilted and swam around me. “Okay, time out.” I passed out.

It was lighter in the pit when I awoke, and the rabbit was staring at me from across it.

“Didn’t you sleep rabbit?” I asked.

The rabbit just stared.

“Well, I might as well eat you,” I said and shrugged.

“You can’t even walk. Go ahead and try.” His eyes narrowed and he bared his impressive yellow front teeth. "I'm not a rabbit. I'm a hare."

I was cowed by his words because they were spot on. I sighed again.

We kept to our sides of the pit. For two days we didn’t speak. We stared and glared and sighed and he cried. Okay, I admit I did too. I had tried leaping to the top of the ridge but to no avail. It was just too high and steep. Perhaps if my paw wasn’t gimpy…I didn’t know.

I watched the moon as it passed and counted the nights that way. We were on day three when we spoke again.

“So, I think we can get out of here,” said the rabbit.

“Really? Do tell.”

“Well, I can jump upon your back and reach the top that way…and then pull you up.”

“Ha! You’re funny. You wouldn’t be able to pull me up and you know it.”

The hare nodded thoughtfully.

I said, “If you help me up, be like a steppingstone, I’ll get up and then pull you up.”

The rabbit shook his head. “You’ll just get away and leave me.”

“Why would I do that when I want to eat you?’

“Hm. Good point.”

I said, “By the way…what’s your name?”

The hare said, “Clover.”

“That’s a chick name.”

“No. It’s a hare name.”

“I’m Sedge. Any kids?”

“Twelve.”

“Damn. That’s a lot”

“What about you? Pups?”

I grimaced and said, “only the alpha pair mate. The rest of our pack care for and raise the pups.”

“That’s dumb. How come you’re not alpha?” he asked with a slight smirk.

I was silent for ten minutes, stewing. “I’m the runt of the litter,” I said with my head held high as if daring the little beast to push my buttons. My mate---” I didn’t know how to finish, I was overcome by sadness. Not only did I miss her terribly, but I feared her heart was breaking.

“What’s her name?”

“Verna. She’s so lovely. And so wise. She deserves pups of her own.”

“She’d make a great alpha female.”

I was flabbergasted by the insight this rabbit -er, hare, had. But I figured he was just making nice so I wouldn’t eat him. But…I pondered what he’d said. We talked throughout the night and when the moon disappeared, in the complete darkness, it was easy to imagine he was not a hare at all…and I, a predator no longer. We were disembodied spirits, simple forms of pure energy much like the first creatures on earth who up and decided to crawl upon land.

And though I missed Verna, I was not lonely. The voice from the other side of the pit I had not only become grateful for, but I found I was intrigued by. I’d only ever known coyotes.

I had always assumed that other creatures lived like the coyotes did- in a pack for safety and comfort. I was intrigued that Clover lived with only his mate, Onion, and their twelve pups. I said, “I suppose when danger is afoot, it is easier to flee as fourteen than it would be, say, thirty…”

“Yes. It is easier to concentrate on your children and their safety this way. Ours are called leveret by the way, not pups.”

“Heh heh. Our entire pack is the size of your one family.”

“We must make many leverets because we are low on the food chain. Only one or two of my wee kin will survive.”

“That’s sad. You must be very worried about them right now. So vulnerable.”

“I suspect that out of my twelve, I may only have five or six left.” There was deep sadness in the voice in the dark, but also a resignation that this was just the way it had always been. He added, “Yes, I am sad every time one is taken. But I look forward to my next breeding season, we have three yearly.”

“Three? Our alphas have only one and it’s coming up in three months.”

“Can’t you and Verna breed?”

“We could but it would disrupt the hierarchy of the pack. We’d be ousted and on our own.”

“What’s so bad about that? Life is short. Us hares only live about 5 years…if we’re lucky.”

“Gosh. We live three times longer and that seems too short. I am truly sorry for you.”

Faint light tinged the sky high over our heads. We were silent as we realized we could see each other, faintly, once more. This was a different silence than before. It was no longer pregnant with the certainty that we each were out to best the other. But rather, the other now a kindred spirit who understood exactly what it felt like to sense the reaper just on the other side of the curtain. We slept with confidence that neither of us was going to murder the other.

I awoke from a such a happy dream I had to blink tears from my eyes when I remembered where I really was. I had dreamt that Verna and I had our very own litter of four pups. We basked in a sun in a straw-colored field, fat and happy and…complete. I recalled recent conversation with the hare. Life is too short is what it all came down to. Something was different this morning. The air. It stank.

Sunlight found its way down into our pit. Noon up top. I looked over at Clover. He looked dead. ‘No no no no-‘ I went to him and nudged his shoulder with my uninjured paw. No response. There was no way he could have died overnight and smelled so off so quickly. I nudged him again but with force enough to turn him over. He flopped over like an old husk of corn. I bit his ear.

“Gahhhh! I knew it! You are still a fiend. After all we’ve been through---What’s that smell?”

I sat on my haunches, dully aware that my injured paw was no longer screaming with outrage and bleeding. I sniffed the stagnant air of the pit- it reeked of our bodily evacuations. And then…there! We looked at each other in horror. Human man. With a long gun. Coming this way.

Clover, still wary of my intentions, squinted at me and said, “he’s a ways off still---”

“About a mile. They’re slow on foot, two silly legs…”

Clover nodded in concurrence then glared at me. “You just tried to eat me.”

“I did not.”

“You bit me!”

I came clean and said, “I was worried you were dead.”

Clover thought on this for a minute.

I said, “I’ve never seen anything sleep like the dead before. It freaked me out.”

Clover thought another minute. Then said, “I believe I was going into hibernation mode. It’s what we do to survive harsh winters.” He looked at me then grinned. “You were worried about me.” Not a question but a statement.

The boar hunter was close now, we both not only smelled his reek and gun oil but could hear his heavy footfalls crunching away over twigs and dried leaves like the ignorant creatures they were.

I said, “I can pull you up now, I’m sure of it.”

***

Back to the present…

Jeb limped away from me bleeding from his stomach and missing his right eye. I was covered in blood but only missing the tip of my left ear. The pack slowly surrounded us. Jeb slumped to his belly and rolled over.

I was now alpha.