Breeding Like Rabbits Read online

  Breeding

  LIKE

  RABBITS

  Ardyce C. Whalen

  BREEDING LIKE RABBITS

  Copyright © 2017 Ardyce C. Whalen.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  ISBN: 978-1-5320-2415-3 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5320-2416-0 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909791

  iUniverse rev. date: 07/03/2017

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,

  the courage to change what can be changed,

  and the wisdom to know the one from the other.

  —Reinhold Niebuhr

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am thankful to my two good friends and readers, Carolee Mock and Judie Kelly, for their honesty and helpful criticism.

  INTRODUCTION

  The name of my book, Breeding like Rabbits, is derived from Pope Francis’s press conference with journalists on the plane back to Rome from the Philippines on January 19, 2015. During the conference, he stated that Catholics do not have to “breed like rabbits” and should instead practice responsible parenting, adding that there were “many” church-approved ways to regulate births. (Abstinence and the rhythm method are the only two approved ways.)

  He firmly defended the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (Human Life), which prohibits the use of contraception, “any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” (Humanae Vitae 14). Such an action is a mortal sin, putting the soul in danger of death.

  “Human weakness” was given as a reason for this constraint, especially the weakness of young men who must be encouraged to be faithful to moral law. “It is also feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion” (HV 17).

  Notice that it is male weakness that the pope understands, but the conjugal act also involves a female who brings an egg to the act—no small thing. The female, who provides the egg; who nourishes the embryo, should conception take place, with her own life’s blood; and who raises the resulting child, had no say or thought given to her in the formulation of the encyclical.

  The act of sexual intercourse has two persons inextricably related in an active manner that makes both persons involved responsible for the act; it takes two to tango. To make church law about such a situation without considering both persons equally is unconscionable and results in a flawed law.

  Perhaps the pope and those around him realized that they could not understand the female perspective; after all, they were all unmarried men.

  Britt, the protagonist in my book, realizes that her marriage is unraveling—the rhythm method does not work for her and Andy. She decides to do what she must to save her marriage and her sanity. She and her husband would be “responsible parents.”

  Today we have serious problems: world population is more than 7 billion, and of that number, the Vatican figures 1.2 billion are Catholic (40 percent live in Latin America). The biggest growth spurt of Catholics is in some parts of Africa, where brother fights against brother and fathers against sons for enough land to support their families—and the Zika virus is spreading.

  This is not acceptable. I’m not so naive to think that I can change the encyclical, but if enough people decide that “responsible parenting” is their moral duty, they will change what they cannot accept, as Britt does in my novel. (Perhaps the church can reason its way into needed change and into the twenty-first century.)

  CHAPTER

  1

  A lone figure made her way down a dark street of a small town in northern Minnesota. It was two in the morning. Her boss had let her go an hour early from her job as a carhop at the only drive-in hamburger place in town. It wasn’t easy getting Jackie to let her go early, but when she volunteered to help with cutting whole chickens into pieces for the Chicken-in-the-Baskets next Saturday, Jackie agreed. Britt just couldn’t miss the coming-home party for the boys back from the summer harvest brigade. This was Andy’s second year of being a combine driver with Mel Olson’s fleet of combines. In May, they trucked their combines to Oklahoma and became part of the great custom combining operation. They worked their way up and across the Great Plains, harvesting the ripened fields of wheat, earning eight dollars an acre. In September, when there were no more wheat fields to harvest, they headed back home to Minnesota.

  Britt had missed Andy a lot. She picked up her pace, eager to get to the party at Andy’s parents’ home. She could hear the music, and her tiredness vanished. “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” not Britt’s favorite tune by a long shot, blared out into the night—someone had probably piled a whole stack of 45 rpms on the record player. She hoped they’d play “Buttons and Bows”—she liked the rhythm. Someone let out a loud belly laugh—that was Luke, Andy’s brother. He was, as usual, the life of the party.

  Britt opened the door in time to see Luke weaving toward her, balancing a large platter of sliced ham. Too many beers in that boy, she thought. Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth gaped as the ham started to slide off the platter, slice by slice—splat—onto the floor. Oh no.

  She picked up the ham slices and put them into a large bowl. “Here, Luke. You
dropped them; you deal with them.” How he dealt with them, she didn’t care, but as the girlfriend of a returning combine driver, in whose home this party was held, it was probably up to her to clean the grease off the floor—someone might slip in it and get hurt. She’d have to get down on her hands and knees in order to scrub the cracked linoleum. Thank goodness it was a small kitchen. Britt went into the closet off the kitchen and found the scrub bucket, filled it half full of water, and poured in some Pine Sol. She then grabbed the scrub brush and scrub rag and set to work.

  Job done—no one would slip on ham grease now. She stood, put her hands to the small of her back, and stretched to get the kinks out. Luke was making some kind of speech.

  “Lishin up, guys! You’re at this party, firs’ ’cause the parents are out of town, secon’ ’cause Andy is back home and he bought a keg …” Luke paused until the cheers and whistles died down. “An’ third cause Andy joined the navy! I kid you not, he’s gonna be swabbin’ a deck in a cute sailor suit for four years!”

  Britt felt sick. He’d just come home, and now he was going again. She had no idea he was planning such a thing. Some of the partiers started singing “Anchors Aweigh,” others were thumping Andy on the back, and someone yelled, “A girl in every port!” Britt headed for the back door.

  She plopped herself down on the splintery bench in back of the house. Coming to the party after seven hours of work at the drive-in, having to get down on her hands and knees to scrub ham grease off a floor, and then hearing that Andy had enlisted in the US Navy was just too much. Brit was exhausted. Her mind was awhirl, and in the whirl, she found an old nursery rhyme that her mother used to read to her and her sister:

  Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,

  Silver buckles on his knee:

  He’ll come back and marry me,

  Pretty Bobby Shaftoe!

  But maybe he won’t come back. His ship might be bombed. Or maybe he’ll come home with a war bride.

  The back screen door slammed. A guy came out and walked to the back of the house. It was Andy. He saw Britt sitting on the old bench.

  “Scoot over.” He sat down and tried to hug her.

  Britt pushed him away. “How could you? How could you sign your life away for four years and not tell me first?”

  “You’re making too much of it. I enlisted so I wouldn’t be drafted. I didn’t want to take a chance on that and end up living in a foxhole somewhere in Korea.”

  “When do you go?”

  “In two weeks.”

  “So soon? What for? And just where is that anyway?”

  “It’s for basic training, or boot camp, and it’s at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago.”

  “And I had to find it out from Luke at this party, at the same time everyone found out.” Britt crossed her arms across her chest to avoid hitting him. “You’re chicken. You thought that with all those people around I wouldn’t get mad, didn’t you? Well, I’m mad.”

  Andy leaned back on the bench, resting his head against the white clapboard of the house. He didn’t know what to say, so he looked up. He tried to think but was distracted by the night’s beauty. The town was too small for any streetlights to interfere with starlight. The stars twinkled, and in Technicolor yet: some slightly pink, and there was a pale blue one. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. How would the stars look out at sea with the whole sky in view? He wanted to get away. Winter was coming, and if he stayed around, he’d be stuck in a dark, dank potato warehouse, sorting potatoes for shipment. A mole, that’s what he’d be.

  Britt broke the silence. “You’ll be gone four years. What am I supposed to do? Sit and wait? You know I don’t like waiting; I’m not an ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ kind of person.”

  “You’re in college, so study!” His head left the clapboard siding, and he sat erect and looked right at her. “Get your degree.”

  “But I haven’t even chosen a major yet! Dad doesn’t want me to be a nurse. A couple of his sisters were nurses, and he says it’s a dog’s life, whatever that means—after all, some dogs have it pretty darn good. I could be a teacher, but I’d just die if I had to stand up in front of a class—everyone looking at me—and then I’d have to talk.”

  “You’ll think of something.” He leaned back to rest his head on the clapboard siding once more and closed his eyes.

  “We could get married. If a girl doesn’t want to be a nurse, teacher, or secretary, all that’s left is to get married. We’ve been dating for four years, after all—we know each other. I want to know your intentions. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, you just want to go out with other guys. That’s all.”

  “I don’t want to be dangling on a string, or as you sailors would say, dangling on a lanyard, not knowing where we stand. I want some certainty.”

  What would she do while he was gone? She’d completed two years at the university but had not yet chosen a major. She’d started out in home economics, but being sure she was not cut out to be a teacher, she switched to nutrition—she’d be able to wear a white coat and work in a lab—but she found the required organic chemistry course to be tedious, so she dropped it and the nutrition idea. She was now taking a business course. She really didn’t know what to do, but she knew she didn’t want to not know where their relationship was heading during the four years Andy would be gone. Was she going to lose her best friend or not?

  Andy turned and faced her. “Okay. Let’s get married.”

  Britt was stunned. She thought for sure he’d say something like, “Okay, let’s cool it and decide later when I get mustered out.” Had she wanted him to turn her down? Did she love him enough to actually marry him? She’d never gone steady with anyone else. Oh, there was Jesse. He’d sat behind her in one of her classes last semester, but they’d only gone out twice. She liked him.

  But marriage to Andy was what she needed to consider now. She was comfortable with him—she trusted him. He liked people and could talk to anyone, so unlike her. He was her icebreaker. How could she face the world on her own?

  She sat, her arms wrapped around her in a hug, more to comfort and protect than to ward off the slight chill of the early morning. She was too tired to think.

  “Andy, I can’t answer you right now. I need time to think. I need sleep.”

  “Well, think about this: I’ll have my service pay. We can make it.” He gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “You can come with me no matter where the navy sends me. It’ll be great.”

  After a few kisses and a big hug, they said good night.

  Britt walked to the house where she’d rented a room for the summer—not a long walk in a town of fewer than eight hundred people. Her parental home was ten miles out in the country, an unacceptable commute, especially since on weekends carhops worked until nearly sunup. She’d have a hard time sleeping tonight—so much to think about.

  Lying awake in bed, Britt wondered if Andy was right when he said they could manage to make it as a married couple and that she could travel with him. But marriage? That was serious—that was forever. She could practically hear doors—doors of other choices, other opportunities—slamming shut. It was frightening, but the thought of losing Andy was more frightening, and he must have felt the same way when he suggested marriage.

  Did she really want to drop out of college? She’d have earned no degree. What would her parents say? They’d feel they’d wasted money on her, just thrown it away. But she was so lonely! She’d made no real friends in the two years she’d been attending the U. The classes were easy, but when not in class, she felt out of place. The girls in the dorm seemed so sophisticated, so worldly; in comparison, she was a baby. Britt was afraid that if she opened up to any of them, they would treat her as she was treated in high school. She didn’t want to go through anything like that again. Britt rolled over, sat up, and gave her pillow a couple of hard punches.
Lying down again, she thought about those bad old days.

  High school! Her first year there was a disaster. She didn’t know how to act after coming from a country school that never had more than a dozen students—relatives and neighbor kids. Around strangers, she lacked social skills. Small talk, what’s that? Britt was especially uncomfortable talking to boys. She blamed her cousin, a town kid, for most of her freshman problems, because she told everyone that Britt had showed her how one of her growing breasts was bigger than the other. When Britt came to class, she was greeted with, “Here comes Britt the Tit!”

  She wanted to die. Just thinking about it made her face flame—she could feel the heat—embarrassment? Rage? Idiots. One day it got so bad that she left school and just walked around town until it was time to get on the bus for home. She didn’t realize that the powers that be would call her parents. Britt got the third degree when she got home. She cried and pleaded with them to let her quit school. They wouldn’t hear of it. When her sister, Hannah, two years younger than she, started high school, it was better. They’d wave to each other when passing in the halls, and by that time, she’d made a friend of her own—she wasn’t as lonely anymore.

  Britt couldn’t just drop out of school and go home; life would be awful. She’d spend her days arguing religion with her mother, who’d remind her that her Pentecostal preacher grandfather had fled Norway and come to America to avoid persecution, which was much worse than any problems Britt might have. Her mother would say, “You can get over your shyness if you just practice talking to people; push yourself. In time, you’ll have lots of friends; I know it. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”

  Her mother didn’t understand that Britt did not want “lots of friends”—one or two would be great, three would be almost too many. More than hating to argue with her mother, she hated disappointing her father. He wanted his daughter to be a college graduate and get a job that paid well. He had always wanted more schooling. After one year of high school, the near death of his father from Spanish flu had forced him to quit and come home and farm. Marriage seemed the only way out for Britt.