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Show Acting Alone Page 149 in us. Such bad feelings lurk deep inside of all of us, according to Mr. Cicerone, on a pretty permanent, unconquerable basis. All these feelings need is the tiniest breath of stimulus to make them swell up and co-opt our entire experience, to depress and incapacitate us severely for the rest of the day, or even week. But Mr. Cicerone had provided Axelrad with access to the Center of Inner Strength that we all share, unknown to most of us; and Axelrad was now able to make that rabbit seem like a brontosaurus - at least to his own eye. None of the kitchen staff had even acknowledged the rabbit's existence here in the mess tent, nor Axelrad's own, for that matter. Some occasional meat was needed to supplement the meager diet around here. So, in order to solidify his position within the group, to gain some status beyond that of mere do-nothing trainee or novice, Axelrad had volunteered to go out and bag wild game on a regular basis. He wanted to provide himself with some first-hand experience at hunting/gathering, for scholarly reasons. He was, after all, an anthropologist. While not soft-hearted, Axelrad would always, in a pinch, steal an already dead animal rather than kill a fresh one. Gather rather than hunt. Hence his secret (or formerly secret) acquaintance with the Servant Sisters of Saint Willibrord of Perpetual Adoration and their butcher block. What other reason would a normal, unperverted man have to break and enter into a convent? As he skinned and dressed his helpless, dead, stolen bunny, pulled its outer layer off as though divesting an emaciated baby of its cold-day sweater, fingered out the snake- and wormlike contents of the small thorax, Axelrad felt like a member of his Master's committee back at the University |