... from Sybil Bruncheon's “EASTER EGGS-traordinaries”… Greggy Horbinger…
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Greggy Horbinger was NOT a very nice child. He started bullying his classmates even in nursery school! Imagine! At 4 years of age, he managed to black the eye of Stevey Whiteford… who considered Greggy his “very bestest friend”… well, until he blacked his eye. The Whitefords were terrified that Stevey might even lose the eye for about a week. Thank goodness Dr. Chaka had been so vigilant, thorough, and comforting. And discerning too. He warned the Whitefords that they should steer Stevey away from the Horbinger boy, even when Mr. Whiteford was in a forgiving mood with his “boys will be boys” nonsense (as Mrs. Whiteford called it). Dr. Chaka was Greggy’s pediatrician too, and he had already noticed… “unsettling things” about Greggy almost from birth. Greggy played too rough with the puppy his father had given him for his second Christmas, and by that July, the Hornbingers had given the puppy (fortunately!) a new home with a loving neighbor lady. Who knows how that might have turned out?...
Suffice it to say that with Greggy being so aggressive and belligerent at 4, he could only accelerate and intensify his malignant energy. Toys were broken and stolen from other unwary children. Acts of vandalism started out small and repairable enough but escalated into serious and often heartbreaking acts of damage and loss… and finally the police had to be involved… and Children’s Court. The Horbingers remained indignant about Greggy’s behavior, making excuses about the school board and its teachers being somehow whimsically and unfairly against “our little Greggy”. They claimed all sorts of conspiracies and plots surrounded their special child and never admitted or took responsibility for the shambles that he was leaving in his wake. Other mothers avoided Mrs. Horbinger in the grocery store or at the gardening center. Mr. Horbinger was no longer included in golf or tennis games at the club.
And then came that particular Easter celebration in the town square open to all the children of the community. The school bands competed in the beautiful gazebo in Mendelsohn Park by the huge fountain. There was the annual bake sale and contest for best cakes, best pies, best jellies & jams, best cookies and tarts. And of course there were the three-legged race, the sack race, the egg-carry on spoons race, and the Easter Egg Hunt… with a grand prize of a brand new bicycle for the child who found the most eggs!
It was during the award and ribbon presentation ceremonies at dusk, right before the fireworks, that someone screamed!… over by the chicks and bunnies cages! A terrifying and terrified scream… by a child. It was little Helen McGormley, just 8, who shrieked and pointed at Greggy Horbinger, now also 8, as he dangled a squealing and writhing baby bunny by its ears. Dozens of frantic people, adults and children alike, raced to the screaming and continuing to scream and now crying Helen and follow her accusing finger to the reason… Greggy, smirking and beginning to wave the terrified bunny back and forth, challenging everyone, anyone to stop him. It was Officer Gladys Baker coming up behind him at full speed who both saved the bunny before it could be injured (or killed !) with one hand, and yanked the brat by the hair with her other and tossed him eight feet or so across the lawn. He landed with a scream and a heavy thud flat on his face in an inconvenient pile of trampled mud from the heavy Spring rains the night before. Except that most of the people were still shaken by Helen’s terror and the violence of Greggy’s treatment of the little bunny, Greggy’s smashed-in mud-face looking like a chocolate cream pie-fight triggered wild mocking laughter, finger-pointing, and hurled insults as the Horbinger adults rushed up. They were met with derisive and even angry insults, and not very veiled threats… so much so that the police, and Officer Gladys took charge and hustled all three of the Horbingers quickly to the parking lot, the filthy and bellowing Greggy literally lifted by his mud-drenched jumper by one of the burlier cops, none-too-gently. The bunny meanwhile was taken to the waiting and loving arms of little Helen to be consoled and consoling.
Imagine the entire town’s response to the news on Monday morning. As if the gossip and eye-witness reports weren’t enough to fill the coffee shops, the hair salons, the office elevators and water-cooler areas, the grocery store check-out lines with feverish versions of what had happened, and what always happened whenever “that Greggy Horbinger” was involved. No! There was more! Actually more. For the police had been called at dawn, presumably by the parents, the horrified and incoherent parents when they found their son. Dead. His face snarling like it often did, but now frozen in its familiar snarl… the face of a child who had somehow died not from any obvious violence, but was dead just the same. And more terrifying of all, that he had been stuffed into some hacked apart cushions and throw pillows from the wrap-around modular sofa… and fashioned, if that’s what it could be called, into an… Easter Bunny. A huge department store Easter Bunny… the kind you might see in Pinkleton’s holiday window display, surrounded by giant chocolate eggs covered in pastillage flowers and ribbons, loaded into dozens of festive baskets stuffed with colored grass nestling toys and treats, marshmallow peeps, and chocolate Easter bunnies…
But there were no treats or Easter cheer for the police this grey morning. Just overturned furniture and torn and scattered cushions stuffed with the dismembered corpse of an inveterately rotten and irredeemable child. And as they stepped through the wreckage, Gladys Baker was heard to whisper to the coroner, “oh well…”…
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