Mike Nelson's Death Rat!

by Michael J. Nelson

  “Yup,” he said, scribbling his signature.

  “When do you think you’re going to do something new, like not Dogwood?” she asked. “I’d buy anything you write.”

  He’d handed her book back without answering, of course, and her comment had caused him enough stress to throw him pretty badly off a very good signing pace (he was nearing the record clip he’d managed at Atlanta’s H. Thomas Booksellers in ’96).

  Write something new? he thought now as he lay rolling slightly in his bed, kicking his legs and rubbing his stomach. No. Make me, lady.

  Besides, each Dogwood book was nothing if not new. Each word was hand-selected from the hundreds of thousands of words available at any given time. Its placement in the Dogwood firmament was not fickle, not based on past successes, not put there by rote experience. It was selected fresh, each and every time, you hockey-loving rube! What do you want from me, stark Russian novels set in gulags? Moist Southern gothic? Military techno-fiction, like that idiot Bunt Casey? Bunt Casey who, when he dons one of those ridiculous—and too tight, mind you—flight suits, actually stuffs to his advantage, the poor, insecure, underendowed idiot!

  No, Mrs. Sweatpants. You’ll get Dogwood and like it, do you hear?

  AS HE CRUISED past the timidly seedy shops of East Lake Street, Jack Ryback wrestled with his conflicting emotions. In part he was ecstatic over the sale of his book, yet he was also severely apprehensive over the fact that when he’d called Ponty to tell him the news, Ponty had cut him off abruptly, then given him an unknown address and told him to show up there at two o’clock the next afternoon. He was to ask for “Earl.” Jack was not used to going to mysterious addresses on East Lake Street and asking for unknown people by name. Earls in general, he felt, were not to be trusted. Those lurking about at the old buildings and shops across 35W at two in the afternoon waiting to be asked for by name were especially suspect.

  He parked his Buick Somerset on a side street, found the address he needed, and entered the narrow building, a pool hall called The Rack, situated between a massage parlor disguised as the “Utopia Health Club” and a store selling military memorabilia. Inside, there were three people: a middle-aged woman behind a counter reading a book, a man in a dirty T-shirt lining up a rail shot, and, sitting on a bench along the wall with his hands on his knees, Ponty, inexplicably decked out in a pair of stiff new blue jeans, cowboy boots, an embroidered gabardine western shirt with pearl snap buttons, and, pasted on his upper lip, a large, crepe-hair, “cookie duster”–style mustache. Jack wondered briefly if there were any conceivable way that Ponty could look more uncomfortable and out of place, but his effort yielded no fruit. He strode up to him.

  “Ah, good, you’ve gone mad,” he said.

  “Quiet. Sit down.”

  “Earl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ponty, why are you Earl?”

  “Sit down.”

  Jack sat down next to him.

  “Well?” Ponty asked.

  “Death Rat . . . is officially sold,” Jack said, patting the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “Yes!”

  They embraced briefly and clumsily, simultaneously hopping excitedly up and down on their bench, before parting just as clumsily. The man in the dirty T-shirt looked over at them.

  “For the amount we discussed?” Ponty asked, his voice quite low.

  “What?” Jack whispered.

  “The amount? For the amount we discussed?”

  Jack narrowed his eyes in thought. “I don’t remember what that was the last time we talked.”

  “It was—” Ponty began, before stopping himself and looking around the pool hall with great suspicion. Then, with some difficulty, due to the snug fit and fresh-off-the-rack stiffness of his boot-cut jeans, he reached into his back pocket and fished out his wallet. He produced a short stack of business cards from a subpocket of the wallet and shuffled through them, peering at each side, dismissing one, then moving to the next, finally finding one that seemed to satisfy him. Jack looked on in confusion as Ponty then patted his chest, produced a ballpoint pen from his right breast pocket, and leaned over to write on the card. Ponty could get nothing from his pen, so he shook it, tried again, and, when it failed, touched the tip to his tongue and tried again. It would not write. He held up his finger in a “hang on a second” gesture and was standing up when Jack yanked him back down.

  “Would you just tell me the amount, Ponty? I just don’t remember the amount.”

  Ponty whispered in Jack’s ear.

  “Stop spitting. I can’t hear you.”

  Ponty tried again.

  “Yes, exactly. That was the amount, exactly. I signed the contract a few days ago,” Jack said. “Fetters took his share and cut me a check yesterday. And don’t forget the back end!”

  “Yes!” said Ponty triumphantly.

  They celebrated again in a more muted fashion, Jack more so than Ponty because he was now slightly frightened by both the elder man’s behavior and his tight-fitting trucker’s outfit. When they’d settled down again, Jack gave Ponty a look of distaste mixed with pity.

  “Ponty, what is this? The jeans and the ‘Earl’ and the mustache? What’s happened to you? You’re not line-dancing are you?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m just trying to be careful. My picture was in the paper after my . . . accident, so I’m known all over town. And besides, these past few weeks I’ve had dreams. I never have dreams.”

  “I agree—we do have to be careful, but there have got to be better ways to go about it than dressing up like Richard Farnsworth.”

  “You laugh. Go get a rack, will you, before we start to look conspicuous.”

  Jack returned with a tray of balls and racked them. Ponty broke, the cue ball glancing off the side of the rack gently, freeing up exactly two balls.

  Looking at the floor Ponty half mumbled, “Oh, I’m going to need a few percentages of your share to buy off my roommates. It’s in our best interest.”

  “What?” said Jack, standing up straight. “You told them about this?”

  “Well, they know enough about the plot that when it comes out, they’ll know I wrote it. It won’t take much. They’re good guys. They understand the drill, and they’re not going to get in our way. I just need to give them a good-faith bribe.”

  “I can’t believe you told them about it.”

  “I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be its author. It’s just two percent.”

  “Man,” said Jack, “I liked my percentage the way it was. It was so symmetrical. It hadn’t been pecked at by roommates.” He waved away the issue with his hand. “Fine. Have your stinkin’ little two percent back.”

  “You’re a pal. Okay, so tell me how it went down.”

  “Well,” said Jack, expertly sinking one of the freed balls, taking the cue ball off the railing, and breaking up the rack, “there’s not much to tell. Fetters took it right away, and, like I told you, there was interest within the week.” He sank another while simultaneously looking over his shoulder at Ponty, “He told me he sold it at auction.”

  “Auction? Hm, sounds a little farm implement–y to me. But whatever works.”

  “Yup. Can’t argue with the results,” Jack agreed, using the bridge to put one in the side and one in the corner with one shot. “He said they were all blown away by the fact that it was a true story. He warned that with a nonfiction book like this we have to be pretty hush-hush to the press, because another publisher can pay some other hack journalist to whip one up, and they’ll rush into print before we get ours out.” He sank a long rail shot and pointed at it in a playfully self-satisfied manner.

  Ponty blacked out for an instant, and when he woke, he was in the exact same spot watching Jack line up a shot. He shook his head.

  “Jack, what are you talking about?” he said, his voice trembling.

  “Yeah, I guess it can happen. There was another book about that moose deal—you remember that?—but it got to market
a little late and didn’t do much. This is going off the rail into the side, Ponty.”

  “Jack. You said ‘nonfiction.’ What book were you talking about when you said nonfiction?”

  “Ponty, are you getting a little too into the Earl thing? I’m talking about Death Rat. Our book—your book.” He took his shot, finally missing. Ponty blacked out again. He awoke to see the rubber end of a cue stick several inches from his face. “Your shot there, Earl,” Jack said.

  “Jack. I need to ask you a very important question now: You didn’t read the book, did you?” Ponty said quietly.

  Jack removed the stick from in front of Ponty’s face. “What? Ponty, I read it. It was really, really good.” Ponty stared at him. “I leafed here and there, might have missed some of the subtler character shading. Perhaps the smaller subplots escaped me. Why?”

  “Give me a rough outline of Death Rat, Jack.”

  “True-life adventure of . . . oh, what’s his name . . . falls into a mine. A gold mine. Minnesota had a gold rush—1865. That’s the gist of it anyway. I’m sure I missed something.” Ponty stared at him. He was trembling. Jack set down his cue. “Look, Ponty,” he said, “don’t be hurt—I’m not much of a reader. When I’m in a play, it’s everything I can do to read the thing.”

  “What happens when he falls into the mine, Jack?” Ponty asked, his voice quiet and scratchy.

  Jack made vague gestures with his left hand. “He battles the odds. He fights a cruel, indifferent nature and eventually triumphs.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Jack. It’s something like that. Actually, he’s attacked by a giant, intelligent rat.”

  “Really? How big?”

  “Six feet.” Ponty now had his head in his hands and was pressing on his skull.

  “Rats can’t get that big, can they?” Jack asked himself, leaning on his cue stick. “Well, now, capybaras can get to be pretty good-sized, can’t they? But in Minnesota, with its short growing seasons, I wouldn’t think—”

  “No, they can’t get that big, you idiot!” he shrieked. His mustache rustled in rhythm with his labored breathing. The man playing at a table by himself stopped and looked over at them.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Jack, giving him a friendly wave. “Just practicing for a play, thanks.”

  Ponty charged on. “They can’t get to be giant and intelligent and malevolent like my rat either.”

  “Yeah, I know. So how do you explain how one got up there in Holey anyway?”

  “It didn’t! It didn’t happen, okay? I made it up.”

  Jack put his hands on his hips. His face blanched.

  “Death Rat is a novel, Jack,” Ponty said quietly. “A silly novel about a giant rat.”

  Jack paced back and forth for a second as Ponty buried his head in his hands and shifted around to relieve the itchiness of his new jeans.

  “We’re ruined,” Ponty said.

  Jack stopped pacing. “You’re sure it’s not true?” he asked.

  “Yes I’m sure it’s not true, you moron! I wrote it.”

  “Please, I get very uncomfortable when I’m called a moron. I don’t know what it is. You notice the idiot thing didn’t bother me? There’s something about ‘moron.’”

  “Why didn’t you read the book? You told me you read it, you, you . . .” He trailed off.

  Jack pointed at him accusingly. “You know, if anyone here has cause to blame, it’s me. You don’t write novels, Ponty. You should have told me this was a novel. I should be yelling at you.”

  “Oh, oh, oh! We’re ruined,” Ponty said again, softly.

  Jack lowered his pointed finger and relaxed his stance.

  “Well, we can’t really be ruined, ’cause we don’t have much. Except all this money.”

  Ponty looked up at him, eyes rimmed with tears. “Why didn’t you just read the book?”

  “I kind of got busy with other things.” Jack tried to be cheerful. “Well, not a big deal, but what happens after he battles the rat anyway?”

  Ponty sat up with a spasm and sighed deliberately. “He—” Involuntarily, a strangled cry interrupted his words. “Oh,” he said with bottomless misery.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Jack offered.

  “He’s cornered by the rat. It’s closing in. It’s going to kill him. He says a prayer. He passes out. He wakes up—oh!” Tears fell from his eyes. He covered his face.

  “Ponty, really. I can read it later.”

  Ponty rubbed his face, shook his head, and went on. “He wakes up and he’s outside the mine. Someone or something saved him. He thinks it’s God.” He delivered every point automatically, but with great apparent strain. “He goes into town, to the local tavern, he tells his story, how God saved him. They think he’s crazy. Suddenly the rat itself busts open the tavern door. Lynch battles it, kills it. Skins it in the street. He and the preacher reconcile. Lynch becomes a town legend. The rat pelt hangs there to this very day— Look, what did you tell Fetters when he asked you about the book?”

  “Well, we didn’t talk much about it. We kind of started talking about squash.” Jack made half a motion to line up another shot but apparently thought better of it and instead sat on the edge of the table.

  “Squash? What—what does squash have to do with anything?”

  “The game. He plays squash, and so do I. It was fun. Anyway, he didn’t ask. I just told him it was an amazing story, and when he asked if it was nonfiction I said yes, and then I handed him the manuscript. He said he’d have Petra read it and give him a summary. Then we talked a little about boast shots and nick-kills. He called me later in the week and said he’d read it—I thought he meant the book. Hm, he must have meant Petra’s summary. Anyway, he said it was fantastic and that he’d sent it on to a friend of his at P. Dingman Press, and he loved it—must have meant the summary again. I guess he played it off a few of his contacts and they all loved it, and I guess P. Dingman won the auction, and here we are.”

  “So no one read it? They bought a book they didn’t even read?” Ponty’s voice was shrill.

  “Well, in fairness, these are busy people. I know that—”

  “We’ve got to give the money back,” Ponty said. “And then I suppose we should turn ourselves in.”

  “Wha—? To who? The Library of Congress? We don’t know if what we’ve done is illegal, Ponty.” He got up off the pool table and sat down next to Ponty. “Yes, I should have read ‘my own’ book, but I didn’t. Next time I will.” Jack thought for a moment while Ponty mourned. “Here’s what I think we ought to do: I think we ought to just wait until someone actually reads the book—which is bound to happen—P. Dingman will be so embarrassed about the whole thing that they won’t want it to get out. So we just offer them the money back. Actually, I offer them the money back. No harm done. They never even have to know that you were involved.”

  “The money. I really could have used that money.”

  Jack put a hand on Ponty’s back. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s my fault. I pushed you into it.”

  “I know,” Jack said tenderly. “But I’ll fix it for you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  From the pungent acridity of the burned coffee, Timm Leint guessed that it was about 9:45 P.M. On any normal day he could have gone home at a reasonable 8:30, but the scuttlebutt was that she was prowling the halls at P. Dingman, and he didn’t want her to see his empty office. He wanted to appear as eager and productive as he could, so at 4:30, when he had finished his work for the day, he stayed at his desk and began the first of what would end up to be more than 226 games of Minesweeper. He had just resolved to shut down his computer and go home when something materialized in his doorway.

  “Leint?” said Kay Dingman-Mulch.

  “Indeed,” he said, springing up from his desk with the least amount of alarm he could manage.

  “I just had lunch with Bob Poston.” Leint was about to look at his watch and thought better of it. “He
told me that Williamson-Funk just secured a property about a safari where several people were mauled by hippopotami. Is this true?”

  “Um, yes, ma’am, I do believe I heard that, too.”

  “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

  “I was waiting for the right time.”

  “My door is always open,” she said accusingly.

  Leint mentally noted that though this was technically true, Kay Dingman-Mulch hadn’t been in the office for fourteen weeks.

  “What’s happening with that rat manuscript, the one by that large man from Kansas?” she asked, looking over the top of her glasses at him.

  “Ummmm . . . oh, you mean the one from that fellow in Minneapolis. I . . . um—”

  “I signed the check for that one, Leint. I think I know from where my rat-attack stories are coming, don’t you?”

  “Of course, ma’am. I think that one is in line to be fact-checked.”

  “What’s to check? There are rats. They attack. Some guy from Kansas writes it down. Rush it along, Leint. Get a piece on the author in one of the entertainment rags. He’s handsome, right? Rugged, well spoken?”

  Again Leint demurred. “Ruggedness is so subjective.” Dingman-Mulch frowned at him. “But, yes, I think he is rather on the rugged side, in a kind of long-limbed, midwestern way.”

  “Then what in the name of Samuel Taylor Coleridge are we waiting for? I want a big first run, and I want it out before the hippopotamus story hits. Frankly, I don’t believe for a minute that a bunch of goofy-looking zoo animals mauled anyone, but I’m not taking any chances. I want those hippos buried up to their ears in rats, okay?”

  JACK WAS FIDDLING the radio knob as Ponty drove, the dented grill of his Tempo pointed north, toward Holey, Minnesota, population thirty-eight.

  “Yes, I’m disturbed by the radio stations in northern Minnesota,” Jack declared, though he and Ponty had not been discussing it. He locked in a station playing Boz Scaggs’s “Lido Shuffle.” “There. Boz Scaggs. When was the last time you heard that song? Nothing at all wrong with it, it just isn’t played in the real world anymore. Next there’ll be a farm report, and then they’ll play, oh, say, ‘Bluer Than Blue’ by Michael Johnson. This is not normal behavior, playing Michael Johnson songs for others to hear. People got together a long time ago and agreed to stop doing that. Ponty, I’ll make you a bet that we hear ‘Wildfire,’ by . . . um, that guy who sang ‘Wildfire,’ at least three times on the way up and on the way back. Is it a bet? Ponty? ‘Wildfire’? Which side of the bet do you want?”