It’s the climax to Of Mice and Men. Lenny is looking out across the swampy lake while George is wrestling with his decision to shoot Lenny before the lynch gang catches up to him. George wipes a tear from his eye, makes up his mind, and immediately gets to work on putting together a large anti-material rifle from various modular components.
Every time Lenny starts to turn around, George makes up more bullshit about the rabbits.
“No, Lenny, keep looking out across the way. Those fucking rabbits love that shit, man.”
All the while various sounds like clips being inserted, rifle pins being cleaned, and tripods getting assembled.
“Lenny, we’re going to have rabbits. And some of those rabbits will get pregnant. But not pregnant like normal, Lenny…pregnant like those pictures I found that one time when we were staying at that motel. Like Lola Bunny, Lenny…just like Lola. She’s waiting for you.”
Lenny starts getting more and more excited, like the end of the novel, when he unfortunately starts talking about his inflation fetish. When he excitedly blurts out that he wants to impregnate a blue hedgehog, George tragically pulls the trigger, freeing Lenny’s head and upper torso from the Buddhist prison of his body.
ACT II
Curly and the rest of the lynch gang arrive. George’s eyes darken, taking on that Vietnam-era 20,000 yard stare. Curly immediately clocks the rifle, holds up his one gloved hand to signal his boys to pause, and calls out,
“Show me his body, George, and we can all walk away peaceful-like. Because of that big bastard, mah wife’s dead, and I got no one to fingerblast with my soft hand anymore. See?”
At that moment Curly, for the first time in the entire novel, removes the oiled Vaseline-laden glove from the hand he had hitherto been preserving in oily stasis solely for the untold pleasures of his now-dead wife. He reveals a beautiful hand; if this was a different time and place Curly would certainly be a hand model for a magazine.
The boys in his lynch gang gasp and murmur, some completely silent but awestruck. George is unfazed and continues to stare down Curly without saying a word.
“Just show us the body, George! This doesn’t got to do nothing to do with you!”
George looks confused for a moment, then tightens his grim resolve as, unblinkingly, he cocks the rifle bolt, ejecting a Coke-can sized shell casing still steaming in the 98-degree summer heat. The boys behind Curly stumble back. Curly holds up his soft hand, but this time his voice is even softer.
“Just show us the body, George. That big donkey kong bastard gotta be dragged back into town so we can all take turns pissin’ on ’em.”
This time, through the gloom of the muggy Summer haze, George replies. Barely a whisper through gritted teeth, and snarled lips, he asks Curly:
“Did I ever tell you boys about the rabbits?”
A deafening concussive blast suddenly cuts through the wet low buzz of cicadas. Curly and his goons fall down like bowling pins as the single full metal jacket passes through them single-file style. George stands up, looks around, and with an emotionless expression on his face begins trudging beyond the shade of the weeping willows into sun-drenched farmland yonder. The scene fades to black. In large oozing lime green letters, “Written and directed by John Steinbeck” is superimposed on a black background as the credits roll.
EPILOGUE
An after credits scene plays where George is using Curly’s moisturized severed hand to gain fingerprint access to a state-of-the-art bank safety deposit box. Inside the box are tightly bound wads of money: 1 billion Korean won. He winks knowingly at the camera, as if this was the plan all along, before speeding off in a 1994 Buick Roadmaster to a small rabbit farm in Kentucky he paid for with $40,000 down on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 5.6%.