Weird. Sleeping in the neuropsych ward at night, I sensed the presence of a very large rabbit under my bunk. A seven-foot rabbit with brown fur and skin sores, who took long, raking breaths. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to keep getting out of bed to look. Gothia, who never slept, finally came over and asked me what was the matter, and when I told him about the rabbit he chuckled sympathetically. “Hey, man, there’s no rabbit. Just take it easy and get some rest, baby. Can you dig it? Rabbit. Shit.” But by and by my compulsive rabbit checks got on his nerves, until one night he came over to my bed and said, “I told you there was no rabbit under the bed. If you don’t stop this shit, I am going to pinch you.” He said it louder than he meant to, and the corpsman on watch came over with his flashlight and told Gothia that if he didn’t get to bed he was going to write him up. I lay in the darkness and waited and listened to the rabbit breathe like an asthmatic until I had to check again, whereupon Gothia popped up in his bed and pointed his finger at me and shouted, “There ain’t no goddamn rabbit, goddamn it! Knock that shit off!”

I shouted back at him. “It’s that rabbit on the Br’er Rabbit molasses jar. That rabbit with buckles on his shoes! Bow tie. Yaller teeth! Yaller! Yaller!” For causing such a commotion we were both shot up, and put in isolation rooms. It was my first experience with a straitjacket, and I nearly lost it. I forced myself to lie still, and it seemed that my brain was filled with sawdust and that centipedes, roaches, and other insects were crawling through it. I could taste brown rabbit fur in my teeth. I had a horror that the rabbit would come in the room, lie on my face, and suffocate me.