The Wasp Factory Page 0,11

up and forward. I was down-wind, of course, and the breeze was stiff enough to cover most small noises. As far as I could see, there were no rabbit sentries on the hill. I stopped about two metres down from the summit and quietly cocked the gun, inspecting the composite steel and nylon pellet before placing it in the chamber and snicking the gun closed. I closed my eyes and thought about the trapped, compressed spring and the little slug sitting at the shiny bottom of the rifled tube. Then I crawled to the top of the hill.

At first I thought I would have to wait. The Grounds looked empty in the afternoon light, and only the grass moved in the wind. I could see the holes and the little piles and scatters of droppings, and I could see the gorse bushes on the far slope above the bank which held most of the holes, where the rabbit-runs snaked tiny paths like jagged tunnels through the bushes, but there was no sign of the animals themselves. It was in those rabbit-runs through the gorse that some of the local boys used to set snares. I found the wire loops, though, having seen the boys set them, and I tore them out or put them under the grass on the paths the boys used to take when they came to inspect their traps. Whether any of them was tripped up by his own snare or not I don’t know, but I’d like to think they did go sprawling head first. Anyway, they or their replacements don’t set snares any more; I suppose it has gone out of fashion and they are out spraying slogans on walls, sniffing glue or trying to get laid.

Animals rarely surprise me but there was something about the buck, once I noticed it sitting there, that froze me for a second. It must have been there all the time, sitting motionless and staring straight at me from the far edge of the level area of the Grounds, but I hadn’t noticed it at first. When I did, something about its stillness stilled me for a moment. Without actually moving physically, I shook my head clear inside and decided that the big male would make a fine head for a Pole. The rabbit might as well have been stuffed for all the movement it made, and I could see that it definitely was staring right at me, its little eyes not blinking, its tiny nose not sniffing, its ears untwitched. I stared straight back at it and very slowly brought the gun round to bear, moving it first one way then slightly the other, so that it looked like something swaying with the wind in the grass. It took about a minute to get the rifle in place and my head in the correct position, cheek by stock, and still the beast hadn’t moved a millimetre.

Four times larger, his big whiskered head split neatly into four by the crosshairs, he looked even more impressive, and just as immobile. I frowned and brought my head up, suddenly thinking that it might just be stuffed; perhaps somebody was having a laugh at my expense. Town boys? My father? Surely not Eric yet? It was a stupid thing to have done; I’d moved my head far too quickly for it to look natural, and the buck shot off up the bank. I dipped my head and brought the gun up at the same time without thinking. There was no time to get back into the right position, take a breath and gently squeeze the trigger; it was up and bang, and with my whole body unbalanced and both hands on the gun I fell forward, rolling as I did so to keep the gun out the sand.

When I looked up, cradling the gun and gasping, my backside sunk in sand, I couldn’t see the rabbit. I forced the gun down and hit myself on the knees. ‘Shit!’ I told myself.

The buck wasn’t in a hole, however. It wasn’t even near the bank where the holes were. It was tearing across the level ground in great leaps, heading right at me and seeming to shake and shiver in mid-air with every bound. It was coming at me like a bullet, head shaking, lips curled back, teeth long and yellow and by far the biggest I’d ever seen on a rabbit, live or dead. Its eyes looked like coiled slugs. Blobs of red