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Brer Rabbit had tricked Brer Wolf and he was four times seven times eleven mad.
One day Brer Rabbit left his house to go to town, and Brer Wolf tore it down and took off one of his children.
Brer Rabbit built a straw house and Brer Wolf tore that down. Then he made one out of pine tops. Brer Wolf tore that one down. He made one out of bark, and that didn’t last too much longer than it takes to drink a milk shake. Finally, Brer Rabbit hired some carpenters and built him a house with a stone foundation, two-car garage, and a picture window. After that, he had a little peace and quiet and wasn’t scared to leave home and visit his neighbors every now and then.
One afternoon he was at home when he heard a lot of racket outside. Before he could get up to see what was going on, Brer Wolf bust through the front door. “Save me! Save me! Some hunters with dogs are after me. Hide me somewhere so the dogs won’t get me.”
“Jump in that chest over there,” Brer Rabbit said, pointing toward the fireplace.
Brer Wolf jumped in. He figured that when night came, he’d get out and take care of Brer Rabbit once and for all. He was so busy thinking about what he was going to do, he didn’t hear what Brer Rabbit did. Brer Rabbit locked the trunk!
Brer Rabbit sat back down in his rocking chair and stuck a big wad of chewing tobacco in his jaw. This here was rabbit-chewing tobacco. From what I hear, it’s supposed to be pretty good. So he sat there just rocking, chewing, and spitting.
“Is the dogs gone yet, Brer Rabbit?” Brer Wolf asked after a while.
“No. I think I hear one sniffing around the chimney.”
Brer Rabbit got up and filled a great big pot with water and put it on the fire.
Brer Wolf was listening and said, “What you doing, Brer Rabbit?”
“Just fixing to make you a nice cup of elderberry tea.”
Brer Rabbit went to his tool chest, got out a drill, and started boring holes in the chest.
“What you doing now, Brer Rabbit?”
“Just making some holes so you can get some air.”
Brer Rabbit put some more wood on the fire.
“Now what you doing?”
“Building the fire up so you won’t get cold.”
The water was boiling now. Brer Rabbit took the kettle off the fire and started pouring it on the chest.
“What’s that I hear, Brer Rabbit?”
“Just the wind blowing.”
The water started splattering through the holes.
“What’s that I feel, Brer Rabbit?”
“Must be fleas biting you.” “They biting mighty hard.”
“Turn over,” suggested Brer Rabbit.
Brer Wolf turned over and Brer Rabbit kept pouring.
“What’s that I feel now, Brer Rabbit?”
“Must be more fleas.”
“They eating me up, Brer Rabbit.” And them was the last words Brer Wolf said, ’cause that scalding water did what it was supposed to.
Next winter all the neighbors admired the nice wolfskin mittens Brer Rabbit and his family had.
After Brer Rabbit took care of Brer Wolf, Brer Fox decided it was time him and Brer Rabbit became friends. Every time he saw Brer Rabbit you would’ve thought he was practicing to meet the Queen of England. In a few weeks Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit could be seen sitting on Brer Rabbit’s porch in the evening, smoking their cigars and laughing like they was kin.
One morning Brer Fox stopped by and asked Brer Rabbit to go hunting with him. Brer Rabbit didn’t feel like doing a thing that day except sitting on the porch and watching his toenails grow, so Brer Fox went off by himself.
He had good hunting that day and caught some pheasant, wild turkey, squab, and a couple of squirrels. By evening his game bag was so full it was busting at the seams.
Well, long about that time Brer Rabbit stretched and thought he’d go and see how Brer Fox had made out. He heard Brer Fox coming along the road, singing loud. “He must’ve had good hunting,” Brer Rabbit muttered to himself.
He hid in the ditch. A few minutes later Brer Fox went by, singing. When Brer Rabbit saw how full his game bag was, his mouth started to water. He ran through the woods until he was some distance ahead of Brer Fox. Then he lay down in the road like he was dead.
A few minutes later Brer Fox came along and saw the rabbit lying in the road. “This rabbit dead,” Brer Fox said. “He’s fat too.” Brer Fox thought for a minute. “Naw, I got plenty game meat,” and he went on his way.
Brer Rabbit jumped up, ran through the woods to get ahead of Brer Fox again, and lay down in the road.
When Brer Fox saw what he thought was another dead rabbit, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Here’s another one. And this one is just as plump and fat and juicy as the other one.” His mouth and nose started to twitch, and his knees trembled just thinking about how good that rabbit would taste. He put down his game bag. “Well, if the Lord wants to provide me with rabbit, ain’t no sense in me turning it down. I’ll just run back and get that other rabbit, and then come and get this one.”
Brer Fox was hardly out of sight before Brer Rabbit grabbed the game bag and went on home.
Next morning Brer Fox came to visit. Brer Rabbit asked him how he had made out hunting.
Brer Fox started foaming at the mouth. “I caught a handful of common sense, Brer Rabbit.”
Brer Rabbit smiled. “If I’d knowed that was what you was hunting for, I’d have loaned you some of mine.”
When all the animals saw how well Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox were getting along, they decided to patch up their quarrels.
One hot day Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Coon, Brer Bear, and a whole lot of the other animals were clearing new ground so they could plant corn and have some roasting ears when autumn came.
Brer Rabbit got tired about three minutes after he started, but he couldn’t say anything if he didn’t want the other animals calling him lazy. So he kept carrying off the weeds and brambles the others were pulling out of the ground. After a while he screamed real loud and said a briar was stuck in his hand. He wandered off, picking at his hand. As soon as he was out of sight, he started looking for a shady place where he could take a nap.
He saw a well with a bucket in it. That was the very thing he’d been looking for. He climbed, jumped in, and whoops! The bucket went down, down, down until – SPLASH! – it hit the water.
Now, I know you don’t know nothing about no well. You probably think that when God made water, He made the faucet too. Well, God don’t know nothing about no faucet, and I don’t care too much for them myself. When I was coming up, everybody had their own well. Over the well was a pulley with a rope on it. Tied to each end of the rope was a bucket, and when you pulled one bucket up, the other one went down. Brer Rabbit found out about them kind of wells as he looked up at the other bucket.
He didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t even move around very much or else he’d tip over and land in the water.
Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit might’ve made up and become friends, but that didn’t mean Brer Fox trusted Brer Rabbit. Brer Fox had seen him sneaking off, so he followed. He watched Brer Rabbit get in the bucket and go to the bottom of the well. That was the most astonishing thing he had ever seen. Brer Rabbit had to be up to something.
“I bet you anything that’s where Brer Rabbit hides all his money. Or he’s probably discovered a gold mine down there!”
Brer Fox peeked down into the well. “Hey, Brer Rabbit! What you doing down there?”
“Who? Me? Fishing. I thought I’d surprise everybody and catch a mess of fish for dinner.”
“Many of ’em down there?”
“Is there stars in the sky? I’m glad you come, ’cause there’s more fish down here than I can haul up. Why don’t you come on down and give me a hand?”
“How do I get down there?”
“Jump in the bucket.”
Brer Fox did that and started going down. The bucket Brer Rabbit was in started up. As Brer Rabbit passed Brer Fox, he sang out:
Goodbye, Brer Fox, take care of your clothes,
For this is the way the world goes;
Some goes up and some goes down,
You’ll get to the bottom all safe and sound.
Just as Brer Fox hit the water – SPLASH! – Brer Rabbit jumped out at the top. He ran and told the other animals that Brer Fox was muddying up the drinking water.
They ran to the well and hauled Brer Fox out, chastising him for muddying up some good water. Wasn’t nothing he could say.
Everybody went back to work, and every now and then Brer Rabbit looked at Brer Fox and laughed. Brer Fox had to give a little dry grin himself.
The more time the animals spent with each other, the more they liked it. They got to liking each other so much that Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Possum decided to live together. Don’t know what their wives and children thought about it. They probably didn’t mind since Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Possum was never at home nohow.
Everything was going along fine until the roof sprung a leak. The first sunny day Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Possum got out the ladder, the hammers and nails, and climbed up on the roof. They took their lunch with’em so they wouldn’t have to waste time climbing down to eat at lunchtime. But they realized that the butter would melt in the sun, so they went and put it in the well to keep it nice and cool.
They hadn’t been working long before Brer Rabbit began thinking about that butter. His stomach started growling like a cat getting ready to fight. He was hammering and nailing when all of a sudden he jumped up and yelled, “Here I am! What you want with me?” Off he went like somebody was calling him.
Brer Fox and Brer Possum watched him go off through the woods and wondered what was wrong. Brer Rabbit hid behind a tree and when he saw them go back to working, he sneaked over to the well, whacked off a pat of butter and ate it. Then he went on back.
“Where you been?” Brer Fox wanted to know.
“Oh, I heard my children calling and I had to go see about them. My wife done took sick.”
A half hour passed. The memory of that butter began to work on Brer Rabbit’s mind, not to mention his stomach. He raised his head, his ears shot up real straight, and he hollered, “Hold on! I’m coming!” Down the ladder he went.
This time he stayed away a little longer, and when he came back, Brer Fox asked, “How’s your wife?”
“Mighty low. Mighty low.”
Brer Rabbit didn’t work more than fifteen minutes when he was off again. He didn’t leave the well this time until the butter was all gone. When he got back to the roof he was feeling mighty good.
“How’s your wife?” Brer Possum asked.
“She dead,” answered Brer Rabbit, with a sorrowful look.
Brer Possum and Brer Fox felt mighty bad. They decided to stop work, eat lunch, and try to make Brer Rabbit feel better. Brer Fox laid out the food and sent Brer Possum to the well to get the butter.
In a few minutes Brer Possum came back all out of breath. “Hey, y’all! Better come quick! All the butter is gone!”
“Gone where?” Brer Fox wanted to know.
“Just done dried up.”
Brer Rabbit grunted. “Dried up in somebody’s mouth, I bet.”
They went to the well, and sure enough, no butter. Brer Rabbit starts looking at the ground real close, like he’s Sherlock Holmes or somebody. “I see tracks. If the two of you go to sleep, I can find out who ate the butter.”
Brer Possum and Brer Fox went to sleep. Brer Rabbit took the butter left on his paws and smeared it on Brer Possum’s mouth. Then he went back to the roof, ate the lunch, come back and woke Brer Fox.
“There’s the butter,” he said, pointing to Brer Possum’s mouth. “He was the one you sent for the butter, wasn’t he? He was the first one down here. Couldn’t be nobody else but him.”
They woke Brer Possum and Brer Fox accused him of eating up the butter. Naturally, Brer Possum denied everything. But Brer Fox pointed to the evidence around Brer Possum’s mouth.
Brer Possum kept pleading his innocence. Finally, he had an idea. “I know how we can catch the one what really did it. Build a fire and everybody try to jump over it. The one that falls in is the one what stole the butter.”
They built the fire high and they built the fire wide, and when it was going good, the test began. Brer Rabbit was first, and quite naturally, he leaped over the fire so high he didn’t even feel the heat. Next came Brer Fox. He got a good running start and managed to make it over, but it was so close that his tail caught on fire. That’s why to this day the underside of a fox’s tail is white.
Last to go was Brer Possum. He got a good running start, jumped, and – wham! – landed right in the middle of the fire. That was the end of Brer Possum.
I know it don’t seem right, since Brer Possum didn’t have a thing to do with the disappearance of the butter. But that’s the way of the world. Lots of people suffer for other folks’ sins. And I could tell you a thing or two about that if I had a mind to.
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