The White Hare

A Willerby Story

Jamie learned to hunt after watching a late-night documentary on abattoirs and decided if he were not to go vegetarian he wanted the animals he ate to have good lives and quick deaths.

He researched the internet, read articles from reputable magazines and watched videos – eventually deciding on rabbit because bigger game meant a shotgun which felt far too big a stretch at least to begin with.

Next, he went to the gun-shop in Beckworth where he spent more than an hour talking to the smith about what he’d need.

He went home to think, and the following weekend went back to purchase a Pellpax Storm air rifle with a large lens scope, lead pellets and a thick pack of black and white targets.

“When you can hit the bullseye nine times in ten,” Amy, a Willerby neighbour and countrywoman brought up hunting, told him, “Come back and let me know. Then, I’ll take you out – just to watch the first time.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it,” Jamie told her, “When it comes to it.”

“That’s good,” said Amy, nodding, “it shows you’re taking this seriously. I’d rather you felt you don’t have to if you aren’t confident. It makes no difference to the animal if you’re new to it or nervous. It hurts just the same if you get it wrong.”

Jamie practised every morning and afternoon for a month and then went back to speak to Amy, who, after watching him shoot for twenty minutes or so in her garden one afternoon, agreed to take him out the next Saturday night.

“Come to mine around seven so we can have a chat. We’ll head out at twilight – about eight.”

…

They sat at Amy’s wooden kitchen drinking good ground coffee from a cafetiere, their rifles stowed away in their cases in an umbrella stand by the door.

“Tonight, you don’t shoot. Don’t even load your gun” Amy said. “Just watch me. Do what I do. Stand where I stand, go where I go and lie where I lie without asking any questions. Use your scope to line up shots and pull your trigger as if it were loaded. Just get used to the feel of it all – seeing me get one might be enough for you to know whether you could do it without the pressure of feeling you have to. I won’t push it – if you don’t want to shoot, I’ll assume it’s not your cup of tea and that’s fine with me – I won’t think any less of you.”

“Understood,” Jamie said, “that all makes sense.”

“Come on then,” said Amy as she washed out the coffee-pot and put the cups neatly into the dishwasher, “it’s a beautiful evening – let’s not waste it.”

The western horizon coming on crimson, they drove a few miles out of Willerby and pulled into a grassy layby by a padlocked fence.

“My cousin farms this land,” said Amy as she got out of the pick-up, “I texted him earlier today and he said it was fine.”

A foot on the bottom rung of the gate, just about to swing herself over, Amy stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him, blonde curls bouncing under a green John Deere cap.

“Don’t shoot in Willerby,” she said.

“Why not?”

Amy looked as if she were about to say more but didn’t – not then and not ever until it was too late.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, “if I need to, depending on how this goes,” and then hauled herself over the fence and into the field beyond.

After settling herself into an ancient furrow in the ground, Amy took a brace expertly and quickly – silhouetted against the setting sun they were both easy shots.

“Would you have shot when I did?” She asked Jamie.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I was aiming at different ones both times.”

Again, Amy nodded approvingly. “Good,” she said, “you were thinking about what you’d do. We’ll take another brace and that’ll be enough for this evening. This time I’ll tell you which I’m aiming for – when you think it’s the right time, pull the trigger and say ‘shot’ and we’ll see how close we are.”

…

“Will you come out again?” Amy asked later as they pulled up outside her house, the moon and stars already bright in the promise of the deepening night.

Jamie thought for a moment – the quick spasming kicks, the glazed eyes, the soft pliable bodies and how, while not pleasant, how better it was than over-fattened flesh crammed together in factory farms and the terror of mass slaughter – “yes,” he said, “I think I will.”

“Come in with me then,” said Amy, “you need to learn how to clean and dress.”

…

The next time they went out Jamie got one without fuss. He only wounded the second but was so quick to finish it off Amy was satisfied.

“It happens,” she said, “but you didn’t mess about, so it wasn’t in pain long.”

She clapped him on the shoulder.

“You’ve passed,” she said, “I’ll tell my brother you’re good to hunt without me if you want to.”

“Why did you say not to hunt in Willerby?” Jamie asked her in the Green Man later.

Amy took a sip of her bitter and started to say something, then, as she had before, she stopped.

“There’s some things here that shouldn’t be killed,” she said, “let’s just leave it at that. If you need other places to hunt let me know and I’ll find them for you.”

…

Roast rabbit saddle; rabbit chow mein; rabbit curry; stewed rabbit.

Over the following months dinner at Jamie’s house became something of a joke.

“What about your early-onset midlife crisis means you can’t buy organic chicken?”, asked Samantha, one of his city-dwelling university friends, after a particularly gamey and tough attempt at a stir-fry, “or at least hunt me up something else next time?”

“There’s not much else about that you can take with an air-rifle,” Jamie told her. “Pigeon and hare – that’s about it.”

“Hare?”

“Yeah, there’s a few about this time of year,” said Jamie, “every time I see one, I think how much of an upgrade they are on rabbit – like a really serious software update just dropped.”

“My gran cooked hare although I’ve really no idea where she got it from. I think she chopped it up and put it in a sort of tall pot in a saucepan?”

“It’s called jugging,” said Jamie, who’d found that recipe in every game cookery book he’d read, “and it’s very traditional.”

“It was dreadful,” said Samantha, “but my mum liked it. Is it hard to do?”

Jamie shrugged. “I’ve not done it, but it doesn’t look too bad if you’ve got the stuff you need.”

“Could you get me one? “Smantha asked. “I could do it as a surprise for my mum – you know family recipe back from history sort of thing. I’ll tell her you got it me – she’s always liked you, so she’d like that.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” said Jamie, “if I get one do you want me to dress and freeze it?”

“Obviously, I want you to do the gross bits, yes,” said Samantha, laughing, “Don’t give it to me until it looks like meat. You’re the hunter-gatherer.”

…

Because Jamie liked Samantha a lot – they had once, for a brief season, been more than friends and he hadn’t entirely given up hope they might be again – he told her that night he’d get her a hare if he could.

He saw them often in the countryside around Willerby – their black-tipped ears and white tails bouncing away over the shallow rolls and folds of the heartland landscape at dawn and dusk,

Although there were similarities in the shape of their bodies, he was struck buy how different hares were to rabbits; faster, stronger and more agile.

And the knowing almost human way they studied the world around them – as if behind or inside the animal lurked something mysterious and deep.

Jame found hunting gave him greater appreciation of the grace and beauty of wild things, and how serious and profound a matter it was to take their lives. He could not imagine hunting anything solely for sport and even felt guilty throwing away the soft pelts of the rabbits he shot – it felt wrong to waste anything.

But impressing a woman with a present for her mother seemed to him a good reason, so he forgot – or chose to forget because remembering was inconvenient– he should not hunt in Willerby because of things there which should be left alone.

…

The hare Jamie saw the next time he went out for a walk were too far away and quick for him to shoot at, but there were enough about around the old hilltop fort for him to see this was where he was most likely to bag one.

And it was there - the following weekend in the late evening long shadows - that Jamie shot one for the first and only time.

He swore later he hadn’t meant to pull the trigger – that when he saw how pure white its coat was in his crosshairs, he’d chosen to spare it.

But – out of instinct or something else - pull the trigger he did, and her life was only saved because in that moment she sensed something was wrong and shifted her footing to make her escape, so that instead of hitting cleanly in the head the pellet hit and entered her close-furred and muscular thigh.

She screamed, over and over, shockingly loud in the still spring evening.

Jamie ran to her, sweating and sick to his stomach, afraid of what he knew he must now do with another pellet or the butt of his rifle.

As he drew near, to his horror, he saw she was bending herself into impossible shapes as she writhed and twisted on the ground, as if she were trying to break her own back.

He drew nearer still and saw the shapes only seemed impossible because the hare was no longer an animal but a pale ashen grey-haired young woman, a teenager or barely older than that, in a long grey dress, the skirt of it darkening with her own blood.

“I curse you,” she spat in agony, her English clear but coloured with an accent Jamie could not place, “I curse you, with all the power in me till the day you die.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jamie, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I swear I didn't."

“I curse you!” She screamed at him, and Jamie saw she was crying.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, panicking, “what do I do? How can I help?”

She screamed again.

Knowing that at the last the bleeding needed to be stopped Jamie pulled off his coat and moved closer to her.

She flinched and screamed louder. Then she began to plead.

“Let me be,” she said in her strangely coloured words, “leave me here, leave me be and I’ll bless not curse.”

It was only then Jamie saw her screams were about more than pain – she was terrified

He dropped to his knees and shuffled the rest of the way, gave her his coat and spoke to her as gently as he could.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, “use this to press down. We have to stop the bleeding.”

Because he didn’t know what else to do and he knew he couldn’t leave the woman where she was – he carried her back to his house and put her in bed in his spare room.

Then – knowing how much trouble he was in – he called Amy to tell her what he’d done and, furious, she was at his front door less than five minutes later with a big green first aid kit.

…

“Didn’t I bloody tell you not to shoot in Willerby?” She hissed at him in his kitchen. “Didn’t I bloody tell you?”

“Sort of,” Jamie said, spreading his arms, “But you definitely didn’t say I shouldn’t shoot hare because some of them are really people. I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered if you’d said that. It’s not the sort of thing I’d forget.”

“If wouldn’t have mattered if you’d just done what you were told,” said Amy. “You haven’t the faintest idea how much trouble we’re probably in now, do you? How many rules you’ve broken?”

Jamie thought about saying something else smart back but the look on Amy’s face stopped him.

“No,” he said, “I don’t. And sorry.”

Amy nodded at his apology and – still angry but not quite as angry as she’d been a moment before – made for the stairs beyond the kitchen.

“What’s her name?” She asked over her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Jamie replied.

“There’s no hope for you is there? You’ve just shot a woman in the leg, carried her home and stuck her in one of your beds and you haven’t even asked her name? Fuck me.”

And then she was gone.

“She’s called Coen,” Amy said later, bustling down the stairs, “and she’d bloody furious with you. She’s got quite a mouth. The pellet you shot her with is still in her leg, so I’m going to have to go and find some of her kind to come here and get it out. Give her half an hour and then see if she wants anything. Try hard not to do anything else stupid while I’m gone.”

…

Jamie put down a tray with tea and biscuits on it and knocked gently on the spare room door.

“What?”

“Coen?” Jamie called, “I brought you something to drink and to eat. Do you want it?”

“Come in fuckwit,” she called back, “give it to me and go away.”

She was sitting up in bed, wearing a green dressing gown that had been hanging up in the wardrobe. Her bare leg was neatly bandaged and stretched out in front of her.

She glared at him with shadow-grey eyes and folded her arms.

“I can really curse, you know,” she said, “I can do all sorts of things to you, if I want.”

“Are you going to?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “Now bring me that tray and get out.”

…

Mortifyingly, when Amy came back an hour or so later it was with Coen’s parents and they were even angrier than she was, shooting him daggers with the same grey eyes she had and refusing to even speak to him.

They went with Amy to the spare room where a short time later there was a lot of screaming and swearing, much of it aimed at Jamie.

After that Amy came out with Coen’s father, who looked just a little less tense than he had before he went in.

“She’s going to be OK,” said Amy, “The pellet came out clean and they heal much faster than we do. In a couple of weeks, she’ll be back on her feet and able to go home.”

Jamie felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

“For your sake it’s a good thing she’s strong,” her father said, in the same accent she had, “do what she asks and stay out of her way the rest of the time – you don’t deserve the warning, but I will tell you her temper is quite something even at the best of times.”

“She’s staying here,” said Amy. “I’m too busy to have her, she can’t go anywhere else, and this is your problem to fix.”

Jamie sighed and nodded. “I’ll take leave from work,” he said.

…

For the first couple of days Coen would not even say Jamie’s name and ordered him round as her private servant.

“Take me somewhere I can shit.”

“Get me some food.”

“I don’t like this take it away and get me something else.”

“Say sorry again, but better than last time.”

Jamie did what she told him to without complaining and on the third day she relented a little.

“Come here,” she called, ringing the bell Amy had given her to summon him with.

“I am very bored,” she announced when he came, “sit over there in the chair and talk to me. Tell me about what you do when you aren’t shooting people.”

Jamie settled into the chair, a twenty-year old Ikea swivel armchair, “when I’m not here I work in an office,” he said.

“What is an office?”

He tried to describe it to her, but she lost interest almost straight away.

“This is very boring too, why do you do this?”

Jamie tried to explain jobs and money, but it soon became clear Coen didn’t care enough to try and understand. “It seems a very silly way to live,” she said, “if you want food go and get food. If you need somewhere to live, make or find one. Let’s do something else.”

Books were no good. Coen couldn’t read, and reading to her was frustrating for them both because she never understood the premise and kept interrupting.

“They should just ask the ghost what it wants.”

“If they don’t like it where they live, they should just go somewhere they like better.”

“This is silly, rabbits don’t talk.”

“What is space? No don’t tell me, I don’t care, it sounds pointless.”

Jigsaws bored her. So did television and so did radio.

Her boredom became insufferable.

Then, out of desperation more than anything else, Jamie dug out his old SNES console and plugged it into the TV in the living room, where Coen was now spending most of her time when not sleeping. She said it was because it was easier than ringing the bell to call Jamie, but he suspected while she’d never admit it, she was warming to him at least a little.

The first time they played Mario Kart, Jamie won. The second time he won again but by only a fraction of a second.

He never won after that.

Coen’s reactions were just too good and her decision making too perfect.

By the end of her first gaming session, she’d won the 50cc championship and the next time she played she won the faster 100cc one too, laughing and bouncing on the sofa with joy as she crossed the line.

After that she completed Mario, then Donkey Kong Country, then Streetfighter 2.

Hoping to slow her down Jamie tried to get her onto Zelda but she had no patience for it or any other of the more involved games.

“Too slow, too boring,” she said, “find me another fast one.”

Whatever the game what she loved most of all was beating Jamie and then teasing him for his ineptitude.

“Why are you so bad at this?” She asked, mock seriously, her Blanka battering his Ryu out of existence, “has anyone ever been as bad at anything as you are bad at this?”

…

After the first week Coen needed no help to get around and was bouncing off the walls.

By the beginning of the second week the wound in her thigh had healed to a fading bruise and Jamie knew by the way she was peered through the gaps in the closed curtains soon it would be time for her to go.

“I want to run!” She said one afternoon, “In your garden I want to run.”

Jamie looked at her and folded his arms. “Is that allowed?”

Coen shrugged at him. “I don’t care,” she said. “Open the door and don’t look while I change.”

Jamie watched her on the mown grass of the lawn and realised he would miss her.

…

“Ready to go?”, her father asked, when it was finally time.

“Yes!” She said, “I’m all better now.”

“How has it been?” Her mother asked.

Coen looked over at Jamie, frowned and then smiled. “He’s been nice,” she said, “He can come with us to say goodbye, if he wants.”

They walked together to the hill of the old fort in the dimming light of the late spring falling evening, birds singing, the air fresh.

When they got there, Coen stood in tiptoe to kiss Jamie on the cheek.

“I lied about cursing and blessing,” she said, “but even if I could, I wouldn’t curse you.”

Jamie turned round while they changed. When he turned round again, they were already gone – two white deer on either side of a white hare arrowing out into the setting sun.

…

“Bean chilli?” Samantha asked the next time she came round for dinner. “I’m not complaining – just expected one of your rabbit things again.”

“I don’t hunt anymore,” said Jamie, spooning rice into a bowl.

“No hare for my mum then?”

“No, sorry,” said Jamie. “I tried for one for you and hit in the leg. It was awful.”

“Oh,” said Samantha, putting down her spoon and looking him seriously. “What did you do?”

Jamie thought for a moment.

“I brought her back here and looked after her until she was better,” he said.

“Are you teasing me?”

Jamie thought again.

“No,” he said. “That’s really what happened.”

Samantha's eyes softened. “That’s actually really sweet,” she said.

Jamie shrugged.

“She stayed for a while, and then one day, she just left. I know it’s silly but I really hope I’ll see her again.”

She looked at him with an expression he remembered from that brief season they’d been more than friends. Then she nodded and picked up her spoon again. “That’s nice though. I get it.”

Jamie looked away. “I couldn’t bring myself to hunt after that. I’m full on vegan for now. So, here we are—bean chilli and all.”

Samantha grinned, taking a bite. “Well, anyway, it’s delicious.”