Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (31 page)

A few minutes later, Jeremy and Ariadne sat back down, still reeling.

“That much?” Ariadne said blankly. “We don’t need that much money.”

“No, we don’t,” Rory said, deep voice all patience. “But that’s why we set up an overflow account. So there will be money we can draw from, but what’s not in use will go in a trust where it will collect interest. The trust will make monthly donations to—what is it again, Jer?”

Jeremy looked up from the totals sheet, not even sure if he was seeing real numbers anymore. “Operation Smile,” he said, feeling a little numb. “They send doctors out to people and places who don’t have access to doctors and such. ’Cause you guys got insurance and all, but not everyone does. So it gives free surgery to anyone who needs it.”

“Jeremy!” Ariadne said, her voice so full he startled.

“What?”

“That’s wonderful! I thought it was all going to the blanket place!”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am—that’s Project Linus, and mostly what they take is blankets. I had to give some of the clothes and stuff to the WIC shelter here in town, and Stanley gave his to the one in Boulder.”

“Wait a minute,” Craw interrupted, his habitual irritation almost comforting. “So, we made that much
money
—how many blankets did we raise?”

Jeremy did some complicated math in his head. “Forty or so blankets,” he said, “give or take a few. And we had an entire case full of hats and sweaters.”

There was a stunned silence, and he looked up again from that amazing list of totals into the faces of his family.

“What?”

Aiden was the one who found his voice first. “Jeremy—oh my
God
!” Aiden stood up, knocking his chair over, and the next thing Jeremy knew, his foolish boy had him hoisted in his arms and was whirling him around in the empty pub in front of Junior, his family, and everyone.

“
Jeremy
!”

“Put me down!” he complained after a breathless minute. “What’s got your panties in such a knot!”

“Do you know what you’ve done? Lookit you! You… you did this
thing.
Lookit all these good works, Jeremy! You didn’t even think you could throw a benefit, but you just helped so damned many people!”

Jeremy couldn’t look at his boy’s shining eyes anymore. He looked down, feeling humble and proud at once. “Well, you know. Good things happen when you go honest.”

Whooping and hollering commenced, and suddenly Jeremy was the center of the biggest group hug known to man. It would have been overwhelming, but Aiden was the primary in the hugging group, and Jeremy could endure all sorts of indignities when he was mashed up against his boy’s chest.

The celebration faded after a moment, and folks started gathering jackets, purses, and car keys. Craw spoke suddenly into the quieting euphoria, and all the noises stopped.

“We should keep doing this,” he said soberly.

All eyes were on him.

“We should. Jeremy—can you and Ariadne keep taking donations for the blanket people and the shelter? We can give discounts on yarn, start a special pattern section, that sort of thing. Have classes. You two would have to hash out the details, but could you do that?”

Jeremy didn’t even have to think about it, but Ariadne was quickest to speak. “Yeah, Craw. As long as I have Jeremy in the shop sometimes to help, I’m game.”

Craw nodded.

“And we could raffle our store samples too. Usually we sell them, but it’s not hardly any part of our business. We raffle them and put the money in the charity account. Are you all okay with that?”

Pretty much to a one, they shrugged. The store samples were fun to knit, but after you looked at them for a while, they weren’t so much fun to wear or bring home.

“That’s a good idea,” Ben praised, and Craw smiled shyly under his beard.

“You think you can help me with the tax end of things? We’ll need the breaks to make up for the hits.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “You do not
even
have to ask. But you know what?”

They all knew what he was going to say.

“Maybe tomorrow. I think we’ve changed the world enough for today.”

After a murmur of general assent, Ariadne spoke up. “And oh my
God
, I have to pump my boobs. You guys, you don’t even know. It’s like having blue balls strapped to your
chest
!”

After a horrified silence, the men practically ran screaming from the building.

J
EREMY
SHOWED
Aiden the picture after they got home and the dog stopped trying to lick their faces off while standing on her hind legs and putting her paws in the middle of their chests.

“It’s a good thing we were gonna have this shit dry-cleaned anyway,” Aiden muttered, and then he got a good look at the painting.

A shy smile flirted at the corners and edges of his full lips. “So, you and me?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not the wolf,” Jeremy said seriously, and that elicited a laugh.

“I’m reasonably sure that’s true,” Aiden affirmed. “It’s gorgeous. Want to put it on the wall in the living room?”

Jeremy sucked in a breath.
“God, Aiden, it’s so nice. Do you think—”

“I think it’s going on the wall in the living room,” Aiden interrupted in a tone that brooked no argument. “C’mon, Jer—even
you
have to admit this thing won’t fit in the goddamned floor safe.”

Jeremy had to concede that no—no, it probably wouldn’t.

But the words echoed in his head for what was left of the night. They were too tired to do much more than trudge upstairs and drop their clothes in a pile. Even after a quick shower together (because the smell of the pub was deep in their skin), they didn’t have much energy for more than a sleepy, languorous sort of grope of each other’s chests and private parts. It was more like petting than making love—making sure they smell-marked each other so they could sleep.

They drifted off with Jeremy’s hand snugged between Aiden’s boxer shorts and his naked hip and Aiden’s palm resting at the base of Jeremy’s neck, hand spanning his throat, as though to hold him gently down.

Jeremy awoke hearing that no-nonsense voice telling him “no” about the floor safe again, and as the sun broke through their bedroom window, he had an epiphany.

Silently, he slid out of bed and dressed in his oldest, rattiest clothes. He moved quietly, thinking Aiden had earned a sleep in. The mill wasn’t open today, the critters wouldn’t expect food for another hour or two, and his boy deserved a rest.

He was almost soundless when he reached under the bed and spun the dial and pulled out all of the mittens and the scarf he’d stashed in the floor safe. Aiden had a cedar chest at the foot of the bed—it kept out moths, and it was a good place to stash their knitted sweaters, blankets, and such. Jeremy stowed his precious woolens in there with their brethren and squatted to drag the floor safe out from under the bed.

And fell backward, tripping on the dog and landing on his ass with a clatter as the dog ran around barking like something had tried to get her in her sleep.

Aiden shot up in bed. “What in the holy fuckin’ hell—” He squinted at Jeremy and the open floor safe in confusion. “What’re you doing, Jer? We can’t
fit
the damned painting in the safe, I
told
you that!”

“We can’t fit my
life
in the safe either!” Jeremy said, holding the dog close and trying to still everybody’s thundering heart. “In fact,” he snapped, “it’s not good for much of anything, and you keep stubbing your toe on it when you get too close to the bed. I was going to get rid of it.”

Aiden’s face was a study. Part of him was obviously trying to smile like a sunrise over the hills, but part of him was trying to scowl in confusion.

The scowl won, but probably only because he’d been woken up rather rudely.

“Where in the fuck were you gonna take it?”

Jeremy grinned at him, tickled by this idea. “I was gonna bury it under the rabbit shit.”

The sound Aiden made was probably bad for his health, but that didn’t stop him from making it twice. “
Where
?” he finally forced out.

“Underneath the rabbit shit compost pile, you know? I mean, it’ll take a few years, but that shit is
really
fucking acidic—I figure it’ll break it down maybe, you know, before they have to bury
us
out in the garden.”

Aiden stopped smirking and cocked his head. “I… I’m speechless. I can’t decide if that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or if it’s really fucking morbid.”

Jeremy’s face heated. “I think it’s really goddamned moot, if you want to know the truth. Apparently I haven’t healed much at
all
, because the damned thing is too fucking heavy for me to lift now!”

There was silence from the bed, and Jeremy studied Aiden’s face for clues.

“What’re you thinking?”

He grunted. “Ariadne and me. We thought you were trying to carry too many bags—you know, the bags from your past, bags from your present. We thought you needed to put something down.”

It was Jeremy’s turn to squint. “You have lost me. We were talking about a floor safe.”

Aiden rolled his eyes. “Hush. I’m saying something profound.”

“You are fooling me!”

“Did I say hush?” he snapped before swinging his legs over the bed and standing up. “What I’m talking about is helping. You want to get rid of your baggage from your past? Great. You need some help. Guess what?”

Jeremy gave the dog one more apologetic pat and touched his dry nose to her wet one. She licked his face once to let him know there were no hard feelings, and padded over to the foot of the bed, where she
belonged
,
and flopped down to sleep some more. Well, she was young.

“What?” Jeremy asked, extending his hand so Aiden could help him up.

“Other hand,” Aiden said gently, and Jeremy realized he’d put up his weaker arm. He swapped arms and Aiden leveraged him up. “See?” Aiden murmured, holding him close, so gentle, so soft, it was like Jeremy was a rabbit himself.

“See what?” Jeremy asked, suddenly wondering how crazy he had to have been to leave these arms early in the morning on the day he got to sleep in.

“There’s ways to help you that don’t hurt you or your pride. You know what one of them would be?”

Jeremy said it a lot. “I’m not stupid.”

Aiden’s hard chest rumbled beneath his cheek. “Prove it.”

“Boy, would you help me haul that piece of crap outside so we can bury it under the rabbit shit?”

Aiden’s mouth was warm on his, and then he pulled away, nodding. “Sure, Jer. Let me get dressed. We can have that thing out of our home before breakfast.”

T
HE
COMPOSTING
rabbit crap was close to the edge of the mountain valley—the sun hit this spot last. Even though it was almost May, by the time the two of them had stomped outside in their rain boots and most disposable clothes, the sun still hadn’t touched the place.

It was a fit resting place for Jeremy’s darkest fears.

Aiden made quick work of the hole, not stopping until it was at least four feet deep. Jeremy brought him a clean plank of wood so he could vault out without getting too nasty, and together, they hauled the empty floor safe to the open space.

Together they let it drop. It hit the bottom with a muffled squelch.

“You want to say any words over the damned thing?” Aiden asked in the silence that followed.

Jeremy turned to his boy and smiled. “My life’s a lot lighter now,” he said.

The smile Aiden had buried before now rose to the surface. “That’s right fitting,” he said. “Now give me the shovel, Jer. I cannot
wait
to get this thing out of our lives.”

It took less time to cover it up than it had to dig the hole.

A
FTERWARD
, A
IDEN
went back into the house with the dog so he could feed her and take the first shower while Jeremy tended to the critters. He figured that maybe it was the day to shave everybody, since it was a day off and the weather was getting considerably warmer. A breeze blew off the top of the mountains as he neared the hutch, and he shivered and changed his mind.

Maybe not. Maybe a good day to go shower, have breakfast, and see if he couldn’t talk his boy back into bed. That sounded like a plan.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy his daily routine, petting, brushing, talking, humming.

He was in the middle of “Blackbird” when he thought that maybe it was time to change the song up a little. His fingers moving sure and patient in the soft fur, he tended his oldest bunny friend and pondered other songs until one of them stuck.

“Born a poor young country boy, Mother Nature’s son….”

His voice rose and fell in the quiet of the early morning, and Jeremy looked forward to nothing more than the prospect of being loved.

The Chain-Mail Scarf

Note: This pattern is actually a simple progression and regression—it’s an undulating rib, both horizontal and vertical, repeated. Now usually, I don’t stress about marking the right or wrong side of a fabric, but in this case, you may want to, because the right and the wrong side of the pattern switch off. I used a grayish variegated yarn, and I lost track of where I was a
lot.

Materials:

• Worsted-weight yarn, between 300-500 yards, depending on your desired width and length.
  
• Size 7 or 8 needles
  
• Yarn needle and scissors
  
• I used a rough, rustic wool that was actually more of heavy DK weight, but it worked up well for this.
  

Gauge:

• For a scarf, the gauge is really knitter’s choice. For this rib, I like a rather tight gauge—nothing too drapey.
  

Pattern:

• Cast on a multiple of 8 + 2.
  
• The first and the last stitch are selvage—they are slipped at the beginning of each row.
  
  • Row 1: (P7, K1) across.
    
  • Row 2: (K5, P3) across.
    
  • Row 3: (P3, K5) across.
    
  • Row 4: (K1, P7) across.
    
  • Row 5: (P3, K5) across.
    
  • Row 6: (K5, P3) across.
    
• Repeat rows 1-6 until scarf is desired length.