Collective Nouns for Hares

A Flash Fiction by JP Relph

Photo by Mathias Elle on Unsplash

I didn’t even want a baby. Nudging forty, I’m content to coddle two collies. Some women were trying for years, had given up. One girl was seventeen. It swept through our little town like strep had two summers’ back. Our paper broke out a red headline.

A Bumper Crop of Babies Coming to White Tamarack!

Mom and Pop stores order extra maternity clothes, babygrows and ridiculous prams. Our OBGYN booked solid for scans; her waiting room heaves with women flicking read-soft magazines.

I hear the heartbeat, like a fat bee in a jar. Dr Green says small but otherwise normal and Neal makes a sex joke that falls flat as my belly.

a Husk

The baby kicks so hard at times, Neal sleeps on the sofa and the dogs steal his warm patch. I curl my hand around the impatient foot and it thump, thumps against my palm.

They all come one frost-grizzled May night. Borrowed cribs crammed together in the nursery; a patchwork of pink and blue hospital flannel. Neal wheels me to the big window, we scan blanketed lumps until we spot “Girl Usher”.

The nursery is winter-forest silent, every baby hushed. Sleeping with soft smiles or following the sway and spin of mobiles with topaz-brown eyes.

‘Iris,’ I press my hand to the scratched glass. Neal squeezes my shoulder. He’s oblivious to the eeriness of it all, but my neck hairs are buzzing.  

a Warren

At twelve weeks we find the strange bumps. Two on top of the head, where hair has thickened around them, one at the base of the spine. Soft bumps, not painful. Parents meet in tense living rooms, agree to keep the secret. Worry over boxed wine while our brown-eyed babies huddle in playpens, nuzzle each other’s bumps.

I’m washing Iris’ hair – now the red-brown of jack pine bark – when the bumps split open. Ears unfurl, ping up - morning sun captured in the velvety pink. I brush water from the soft fur and Iris giggle-squeaks. I lift her from the suds, see the tail like a fat white catkin twitching. Iris touches my cheek with soapy fingers, her nose scrunching. Her eyes impenetrable as forest nights.

a Band

She circles the garden on long legs slick with russet hair, preferring the sooty twilight, ears twitch-twirling. Eats her vegetables raw. Sleeps under a pile of blankets in a warm curl. Some mothers deny what’s coming, hide the truth of their babies in frilled dresses, sailor suits and hats.

We let Iris be free. Learning, adapting, for when we’ll lose her. Neal cries in the bathroom some nights. I stroke Iris’ silky back, watch time pass in the wintering of the hair there.

a Flick

We let them go at first snowfall. A smothering silence in the ranks of tamarack and spruce. Kicking free, they turn the snow to lace with their feet. Neal grips my hand – it’s mostly men here. One twists a tiny blue cardigan in his hands, another leaves a pink bear against a tree trunk. We stay until it’s too dark for anything but fuzzy outlines. Until our coiled hands are numb. Finally leave the babies with their new Mother, snow falling fast to hide their tracks.

a Down

I see Iris often on the forest’s jagged edge. I know the unique markings of her ear tips. Never close enough to touch; I take pictures for Neal, leave her something vibrant I’ve peeled and chopped out of habit.

The first summer, when she’s rust-brown glowing in the sun, Iris shows me her own family. Three fat leverets sticking close, stubby ears twitch-twirling. I watch them play a while, Iris eating weeds in the spangled shade of the tamaracks.

a Drove

Neal leaves the paper on the table with my coffee. They’ve used the red ink again,

A Bumper Season for Snowshoe Hares Following Local Population Decline!

A stock image alongside, everything white, a little too perfect. Neal has written – there are prettier hares than this – it makes me smile. He’s such a good man. I take my coffee into the living room where there’s a couple of collies need coddling. All melancholy blue eyes and upturned bellies.

I didn’t even want a baby, but I had one, for a time. Winter-white and summer-rust, topaz eyes impenetrable as forest nights. A wild thing I held for just a breath of time.

a Trace

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Author: JP Relph is a working-class Cumbrian writer, mostly hindered by four cats and aided by copious tea. She writes about nature and apocalypses quite a lot (but hasn’t the knees for the latter) and her post-apoc flash collection was published by Alien Buddha Press in June 2023.