The Rabbit's Den

Rabbits are Animals

Jacque Ives was a hardened man long before the world had gone to shit, long before he had met the love of his life and long before the Den. Growing up in middle of the methamphetamine crisis in the Midwest had assured that he grew up fast or died in the process. His father, a once large gangbanger was now a sad angry shell of the man that he had been. His hobbies included alternating between smoking and shooting the crap and beating the hell out of his girlfriend and their ten-year-old son. Jacque's only escape was school, and the many odd jobs he took to help support them. The jobs not only helped keep him and his mother fed but got him out of the hell that was his house.

When he was thirteen Jacque's mother had a fatal overdose in the ramshackle camper that they called home. Jacque had been the one to find her thin lifeless body. All he could remember was running next door to call the ambulance, and her cold dead eyes. Those eyes haunted him for the rest of his life. He always thought that she had done it on purpose, to get out of her own hell. Jacque had hoped with his mother's overdose that the state would step in, they hadn't. His father took out his sadness and anger on Jacque; he blamed the boy for his girlfriend's overdose. Telling the young boy that they never wanted him and how he had ruined their lives.

Jacque had only a ninth-grade education when he left home, leaving his father beaten and bloody on the camper floor. The man had come after him yet again in a methed-out rage, the young man found the strength to fight back. His father spit out blood when he screamed at him, telling him to leave and never come back. So that's exactly what Jacque did, he left his father and his home.

He was always big for his age, and the young man used that to his advantage. Taking jobs that used his size and commitment to work. Working on farms and ranches he made his way through the western states, before coming to the Laskie Research farm. This was the easiest off all the jobs he had ever had, all he had to do was clean the cages of the test animals and give them the food that corresponded with the cage numbers. One of the researchers had discovered him frantically washing a rather deep nasty bite mark on his hand. She was kind, helping him wash it and bandage the wound. "They're usually so nice, I don't know what I did." He admitted. She smiled at him, "Rabbits can be mean, they'll kill each other if we have them in the same cage. Sometimes they get worked up because they can't get to each other. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time kid. They are animals." This stuck with him his whole life, he thought back on his own father. Wasn't he just an animal then too? It helped him be with peace with people that were horrible; they were just animals after all.

He had lost his job at the research farm when they closed down from lack of funding. Then he was back to drifting his way through the country, moving from farm to farm until he turned eighteen. It was then he met a shy beautiful girl, he loved how her dark brown skin seemed to shimmer in the sun. There wasn't anything about Milly that didn't captivate him. Even her parents loved the young man who was completely infatuated with their daughter. Milly gave him the confidence to complete his GED and enroll in trade school. In the small, primarily Christian town he was welcomed with opened arms and told that he was worthy. Worthy of life, success, love and Milly. He was home.

Jacque was so far from where he had come from, his past was far away, and he had buried it. He had made a promise to himself and Milly that he would never do what his father had done to him and his mother. He would be a caring husband and a doting father. The goals he had set for himself were monumental considering his childhood, and role models. Milly was there for him with her uplifting words of encouragement and unconditional love.

Then the world went to hell, Jacque had no luck in the construction business after that. The world wasn't interested in remodels, new barns or office building. And in the middle of their physical and personal worlds crumbling around them Milly had become pregnant. The couple shared the fear that she would lose the baby like so many other women around them had. Milly taught Jacque to pray, and they prayed every day. Then Ryan was born, and he was perfect. Ryan filled the place in Jacque Ives heart that he didn't know was empty. Milly fell more in love with Jacque at that time. He was convinced that even though he had never acknowledged God before, that he had answered their prayers. He swore then that he would never abandon God and would teach his children and do what the good book instructed as long as he lived.

It wasn't just his wife that day that compelled him to follow the little boy into the abandoned grocery store. He knew he had to, if just to make sure he was okay and return him to his family. There was something about the little tyke that caught his attention, not just the spunk but the fear in his eyes. He knew then this child was alone, and scared. He had known that look, it was the same one that followed with a fight, it was the one he had worn as a child. It broke him, this large well-adjusted grown family man. Not his heart, but him, a look from a tiny child broke him. He was immediately in love with this child, just like the love he had for his own son. This child needed saving just as he had, and he wasn't going to turn a blind eye like they had done to him.

As she grew her logical sense of thinking and her personality spite him to his core, and he loved her more for it. She questioned everything, even things he couldn't answer. Little Trixie defiantly wasn't the little boy he had originally thought she was, but she wasn't the living doll that Milly hoped for in a daughter either. Trixie even as a child was her own person; she made herself the outsider in the family. Never resisting their love, and never holding back her love for them she knew she stood out. She wasn't godly, affectionate, black or one to turn the other cheek; she wasn't one of them. His heart cried out with pride when she took to Ryan with a fierce kind of love, he was and would always be her little brother.

He taught his children how to be better in a world that was in total chaos. Nurturing and protecting them in any way he could. That would be his downfall, and as he sat on his knees with his adult son, they held hands and prayed as Trixie fought. The last thing he saw before he died was the little black storm that was Trixie. He didn't have to wonder if she was going to be okay, she would always be okay. Twenty years of love couldn't extinguish the burning fire in her, this wouldn't either.