Mike Nelson's Death Rat!

by Michael J. Nelson

“Uh-huh. Thanks.”

  “Everything all right at home?”

  Mr. Blanding need not have worried. Ponty knew then how to tailor his writing to Mr. Blanding’s tastes, yet somehow, as he’d grown and found his interests in history and honed the discipline his chosen field required, he’d forgotten that he once knew very well how to give the public what they wanted. He was now rediscovering the skill.

  Spurred on by some encouraging early chapters, his dwindling supply of cash, and the life-threatening heat, Ponty began to make accelerated progress on the book. His lack of money was of special concern, for he felt certain that when fall came, his roommates would be looking for someone else who shared more of their interests. Someone nicknamed “Moose” or “Hud.” Someone who knew the rules to drinking games and had never written a book on Senator Carter Glass.

  After three weeks of labor, he took dinner with his roommates, and they grilled him on his progress.

  “That book of yours?” asked Scotty. “How’s it coming?”

  “Well, I think it’s coming along quite well,” Ponty said mysteriously.

  “What’s it about?” asked Sags.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep that a secret,” Ponty said, pointing at Sags with a fish stick.

  “Is it about hutias?” Phil asked. He had on yet another T-shirt with a puzzling slogan: AIN’T NO CRIME IN THAT, it said above a silhouette of what appeared to be a conventional Old West cowboy. He was committing no crime that Ponty could see, which in his mind made the slogan unnecessary.

  “No. No, it’s a short history of . . . of the covered wagon,” he offered weakly.

  “What’s a hutia?” Beater asked.

  “It’s a Cuban rat,” said Phil. “Ponty there seemed pretty engrossed by ’em one day when I saw him.”

  “Why you readin’ about Cuban rats?” asked Scotty.

  “I wasn’t reading about Cuban rats,” Ponty said defensively. “I was reading about capybaras.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Phil, through a mouthful of potatoes.

  “What’s a capybara?” asked Sags.

  “It’s a . . . well, it’s a large South American rat,” Ponty conceded.

  “Your book’s about rats?” accused Beater.

  “Well, no,” said Ponty, “it’s about intolerance and man’s arrogant disbelief of . . .” Ponty was about to add “anything that intrudes on his natural reality,” but he could not. In his nervousness he had been careless with the mastication of his fish stick and had allowed an oversize bit of crunchy coating to slide into his windpipe. He coughed violently for nearly a minute while Phil and Beater took turns pounding on his back. Finally, when his eyes had stopped watering enough that he could see, he continued. “It’s about adventure and mysticism, a monumental clash between two men of strong will. . . . Let’s see, it’s got strong elements of history, and ultimately, I suppose, it’s about faith and deliverance.”

  “And there’s a large South American rat in it?” asked Beater.

  “No, no, no, no,” Ponty said firmly. “He’s not South American, my rat. He’s just a rat.” Ponty took a sip of milk. “Just a regular old six-foot-long rat.”

  CHAPTER 4

  In a newly clear-cut swath of woods eighty-five feet above St. Paul’s locks on the Mississippi River, Ross Barnier stood staring in stunned amazement as a monstrous structure was being made even more monstrous by a legion of workers and a fleet of heavy machinery.

  “It’s starting to look like a high-rise log cabin,” he shouted over the din of a backhoe.

  “It sure is!” Gus Bromstad shouted with obvious pride. He was standing in a construction area and was required by law to wear a hard hat, but because he refused to take off his Greek fisherman’s cap, he was using both hands to hold the hard hat several inches above his head.

  “How big is it going to get?” Ross shouted.

  “Bigger than any log cabin you’ve ever seen, or these guys are all fired,” Gus shouted back. “Those big logs there?” he said, gesturing with a tilt of his head.

  “Gus, they’re all big logs.”

  “Those along that wall there?” Gus held his hard hat with one hand so he could point. “Those are flaming red birch, three hundred years old.”

  “Where do you get three-hundred-year-old birch logs?”

  “They’re not cheap, I won’t kid you. They come off the bottom of Lake Superior. They either fell off of chain-boomed rafts or just got waterlogged during floats and sank to the bottom. There’s a salvage company that hauls them up and sells them.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Who’s gonna stop ’em? The beams along the third story there are walnut, not nearly as old, only about two hundred years, but I had to make some compromises. The hardest thing is going to be prewiring it for my stereo system. Apparently there are some major fire concerns, and I had to spread the money around pretty—”

  “Gus,” Ross interrupted, motioning for Gus to step farther away from the cranes. “Gus, let me ask you something: Do you have any budgetary concerns?”

  Bromstad frowned. He stopped holding the hard hat above him and with his right hand let it drop to his side. He tugged on his lip with his left hand.

  “No,” he said finally, shaking his head.

  “But, Gus, this . . . this thing is massive. It’s a fortune. You don’t want to be house-poor, do you? Sitting in your grand home, not able to afford a nice night out because of a big, clunky mortgage—ow!” he concluded, as Gus had just given him a sharp rap upside the head with his hard hat.

  “Hey. Hey! This is practically a wash. This location, everybody can see it. Right on the Mississippi—who doesn’t love the Mississippi? The Mississippi is my river. It’s like an advertisement for my books.”

  “Ow. You hit me,” Ross whined, daubing the side of his head to check for blood.

  “You’re not bleeding, Ross. Hard hats aren’t very sharp. Now, listen. I’ve got another Dogwood book in the can. A single Dogwood book is like a money press, Ross, you know that. Now, stop raining on my . . . my, house.”

  “Okay. Okay. You’re right. You’ve worked hard. You deserve a high-rise log cabin, Gus.”

  “That’s right. If I don’t, who does?”

  “No one, Gus.”

  They stood for a moment in silence watching a thirty-five-foot preserved cherry log being set into the gable of Gus’s new home.

  “Bow down before me, St. Paul,” said Gus quietly.

  “Ow,” said Ross.

  DEATH RAT WORKS on a number of levels: On the one hand it is high adventure, man against nature, the elements gone wild. Yet on another level it slowly lays bare the emptiness and futility of man’s—and in this case, a man’s—hubris,” Ponty said while swabbing his face with a three percent hydrogen peroxide solution. He squinted into the bathroom mirror. “This is not to say that there isn’t something very cinematic about its story arc, if that’s what you’re asking.” The weather had remained unbearably hot for three weeks now, parching the lawns and heating Ponty’s attic writing space to a temperature beyond belief. This was not a worry, for Ponty and Death Rat were ready to go to market.

  “Mister Feeb, I need the check for your part of the cable, or Beater says you can’t come in his room to watch it anymore, okay?” Scotty shouted from outside the door.

  “Oh, right. Scotty, I hate to be a bother, but do you think you could cover me just for a week or two?”

  He heard a huge sigh outside the door.

  “Fine.”

  Ponty donned his best dun-colored wool/poly-blend slacks and a pale yellow cotton/poly-blend short-sleeved, button-collar business shirt. Because Ponty’s license was still suspended, Sags drove. Soon both he and Ponty were sitting in the spacious lobby of Todd Fetters, Literary Agent, in the magnificently restored Pork Exchange Building in downtown Minneapolis, being offered water by Mr. Fetters’s model-thin assistant, Petra.

  “And, sir, would you like a water?” she asked Sags timidly,
unsure exactly who or what Sags was supposed to be.

  “No thanks.”

  Ponty looked past her at the walls, clutching Death Rat to his chest.

  “Um, I’m sorry,” Petra said looking at Sags, “but are there going to be two of you for the meeting?”

  “No,” Ponty broke in. “He’s my ride.”

  “He hit a cop and lost his license,” Sags informed Petra.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Not in the face, or anything like that. With his car. It was—”

  “Thank you, Sags,” Ponty said.

  “Is it okay if I sit out here?” Sags asked.

  “Oh, of course,” she said, though clearly it was not. She sat back down behind her desk and emanated disapproval.

  “Nervous?” asked Sags.

  “No, not really,” answered Ponty.

  “Aw, why should you be? He’s gonna love Death Rat.”

  “Thank you, Sags,” said Ponty, patting Sags’s knee.

  After a very long time they heard a burst of laughter from behind Fetters’s closed door, and a moment after it settled down, legendary local newscaster Daniel Turnbow emerged, followed by a sharply dressed young man that Ponty presumed was Todd Fetters.

  “Dan,” Fetters said, laughing, “you have to tell that story to McDonald when we go to New York.”

  Dan promised he would, and just the promise of it made Fetters laugh again. The fact that the pair was planning to go to New York at some future date and repeat jokes to someone named McDonald somehow made Ponty feel ashamed and unsure of himself.

  “Now, get out of here,” Fetters said. When the door had closed behind Turnbow and Fetters’s delight had faded almost entirely, he turned to Sags.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mister Fleeb,” he said.

  Sags, lost in a magazine article about a rare endangered parrot, said nothing. Ponty made vague gestures with his body to try to get Fetters’s attention. Fetters only stared at Sags, a smile frozen on his face.

  “Mister Fleeb?”

  “Um, Feeb,” said Ponty weakly, holding his hand up halfway like a schoolboy uncertain of his answer.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Fetters.

  Petra arose from her desk and interceded. “This is Mr. Pontius Feeb, sir,” she said, gesturing to Ponty.

  “Ah, nice to meet you, Mr. Feeb,” he said offering his hand.

  “Ponty, please.”

  “And you are?” Fetters asked Sags emphatically.

  “Hm? Oh! Jim Sagawski, sir,” he said politely, rising.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Fetters, making it obvious that it had so far, on the whole, not been all that nice to meet him. “Come on in, Ponty.”

  They moved into Fetters’s office, which Ponty complimented profusely even though he found it cold and uninviting.

  “Well,” said Todd Fetters after settling into his chromed steel and black leather chair and somehow managing to make it look comfortable, “I’m glad we were able to get you in today, Ponty. Normally we wouldn’t. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, as I think I explained to Petra on the phone, I’m an author.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve published eighteen books, all of them with Jack Pine Publications.”

  “Hm. I’m not familiar with that outfit.”

  This confession threw Ponty for a loop, as he felt it was the strongest point in his plus column. Because of that, he did not want to give up on it. “Their operation is right down the street—right there, in fact,” he said, nodding toward the window.

  “Hm. I don’t get down that way very often.”

  “Well, it’s not important where they were published, I suppose. The point is, I’ve got a track record.”

  “Hm.”

  “And now I have a new book. A book just packed with thrills, adventure, and taut mystery.” Fetters stared at him. “It’s a survival/adventure kind of thing. And I don’t have to tell you, they’re all the rage right now.”

  “Hm.”

  There was a pause, and then they both started to speak at the same time.

  “Would you like to—” Ponty began.

  “Why isn’t Jack Pine—”

  “I’m sorry,” Ponty said.

  “Why isn’t Jack Pine publishing this one?”

  “Well, they just sold their operation to some outfit out of Denver—you didn’t hear about this?”

  “I do most of my stuff with New York houses. The Denver publishing scene is off my radar.”

  “Well, anyway they sold, so that avenue is gone for me.”

  “Can I speak frankly, Ponty?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I like you. You’re a smart guy. You know the business. I have no doubt that your book is as taut and adventurous as you say. But—how can I say this?—you look about sixty, maybe sixty-three. Am I close?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I should have said that you’re pushing sixty.”

  “I know. I can’t help it.”

  “It’s not your fault, really. But in this business, sixty is old. And you’ll forgive me, but it’s always a plus if the author looks the part. Now, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground, but you don’t look like the adventurous type. Am I wrong? Are you the adventurous type?”

  “I have a yearly pass to the Larssen Mountain Ski Resort.”

  “Exactly. I knew you’d see my point. Besides, I’m not taking any new clients right now.”

  “Well, why did you take this meeting with me?”

  “I like these little meet-and-greets. They help me stay in touch. I want to know everyone and everything that’s going on in the publishing world. Good luck. Now, if you do sell your epic adventure, you give me a call, and we can talk about representing you on a trial basis—for that book only, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you like a water for the road?”

  Ponty accepted and was hustled out of the office.

  “Did you get a deal?” Sags asked expectantly as they walked to his car.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, I got a date with Petra,” Sags said.

  “She seemed nice,” Ponty said, his voice sounding dazed and defeated.

  PONTY LAY IN bed that night thinking over what Fetters had said. Am I really that old? he wondered? Sixty? Buckminster Fuller, he remembered hearing, had accomplished some of his greatest achievements when he was well into his sixties. And Grandma Moses, she was seventy before she even got out of the gate. Still, as he thought about it, he realized there were many more examples of those who had done their best work while young, and on the whole they were more convincing than either the guy who invented those weird-looking dome houses or some old lady who was famous for not painting very well. He also realized that the only time either of their names came up, it was in desperate defense of being old and worthless. And it was also true that there were plenty of examples of people who were dead by sixty. And still more who were alive but really just spent, burned out husks, barely recognizable as human beings.

  How ridiculous, he thought, to hang your hopes on a ridiculous, rat-based book. You are what you are—a dull, paunchy bachelor and the unattractive author of staggeringly unsuccessful books on crashingly boring subjects. You can no more change that than you can the fact that you have large pores.

  Also, you are broke. This, he thought, should be your most immediate concern. If you could just get some money, you could perhaps claw your way back to some semblance of self-respect and from there form a realistic plan for the reconstruction of your life and, most important, some decorum in your impending old age.

  After one stinging meeting, a deflated Pontius Feeb decided that night to abandon Death Rat and seek the reclamation of his dignity. The very next morning, with the help of a recommendation from Phil, he secured a position at the U of M branch of Medieval Burger.

  CHAPTER 5

  Here’s your time card. Do you know how to work these?” aske
d Ponty’s trainer, Suzanne.

  “You push it into the slot, right?”

  “Right. This end first. You take and push it into the slot like this.” She pushed a dummy card into the slot. “Just like that. Why don’t you take and grab this card and go ahead and try it?”

  Pontius took the dummy card from her, pushed it into the slot, and at that moment in his life achieved an unsurpassable, almost transcendent new low.

  “Let’s go get you a uniform.”

  The official Medieval Burger hat troubled Ponty a great deal. Six inches tall, constructed of some sort of synthetic mesh, puffy foam, and high-impact plastic, it was the first hat he’d ever worn to feature a battlement—or any kind of defensive structure, for that matter. Besides feeling that they were wholly incompatible with one’s inalienable right to dignity, Ponty simply could not believe that colorful hats were an effective tool for selling lunch items. More than that, he had strong reservations about the whole medieval theme. One didn’t have to be an expert in European history—and Ponty wasn’t—to know that medieval sanitary conditions were nothing to be admired or emulated. Sewage was disposed of openly, ditches flowed with filth, people relieved themselves out of windows, and there were few clean water sources. Plus, there were no such things as hamburgers, let alone Knave Burger Meal Combos. Still, his position there kept the wolves from the door, so he put his head down and did his job.

  He worked efficiently and stayed to himself, taking extra shifts when they were offered and squirreling away as much money as he could. He stitched a terry headband into the inside of his hat to prevent itching and chafing. If it was slowly eroding his soul to have to fill the drawbridge-shaped ketchup dispensers or wipe down the trompe l’oeil house depicting ancient masonry, he ignored it as best he was able.

  If not for his singular purpose of making a living, Ponty knew he would be lost. Where was he going with his life? Had Death Rat been some strange cul-de-sac along the road to his inevitable ruin? Would he spin out his golden years like Macbeth, his way of life fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf? Honor, love, obedience, troops of friends—should he expect to have none of these? Would he die alone in his shabby little room (assuming Sags was out when he passed), a tall foam novelty hat on his head, an unpublished rat novel tucked pathetically in his desk drawer? He had now fulfilled what he believed were his brother’s expectations by failing.