Mike Nelson's Death Rat!

by Michael J. Nelson

  “Ponty, how long have you lived in this state? Yes, there are bears around here. Black bears.”

  “Well, how come he looks gray?”

  “He didn’t use Grecian Formula—I don’t know.”

  “Well, I think it’s odd. I don’t know. It just seems like it must be a sign,” said Ponty, affecting a look of intense, almost rapturous depth.

  Jack finished, or rather half finished, chewing. “Ponty, there’s a bearskin on the wall of every tavern from here to Mankato,” he said as chunks of congealed taco meat rolled down the back of his hand, leaving red-brown slug trails of grease. “It’s a sign that you don’t get out much, is all it is.”

  “Maybe,” said Ponty, disappearing into his own thoughts.

  WHEN RALPH ARRIVED and took over bartending duties, Sandi led Jack and Ponty back to her office, the storeroom of the bar. They pulled up two gray metal office chairs in front of her gray metal desk, and, amid #10 cans of wax beans and plastic pails of dill pickles—sliced—they got to their official business.

  “I understand there was a gold mine here at one time, is that correct?” asked Ponty.

  “Yes, it’s still there, just outside of town,” Sandi answered.

  Ponty scribbled silly unintelligible lines into a notebook. “Mmm-hmm, mm-hmm, still there, I see,” he said. “And, and . . . did it yield a lot of gold?”

  “I don’t believe so, no. I think the rock they were trying to extract it from was too hard.” She shifted forward. “Say, what is this for anyway? Why are you writing about Holey?”

  “Well, I think it has a fascinating history,” Ponty said, and, out of nervousness, he pretended to write another note on his pad. “The discovery of gold right here in Minnesota.”

  “Yes, but there sure wasn’t much to it. The way I understand it, they were here in 1865 and by the next year the whole thing was kaput. All they had to show for it was some broken mining equipment.”

  “Kaput. You used the word ‘kaput.’ Are you German?”

  “No, my grandmother was. You?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

  “My father. My mother was Irish, mostly,” he said, his fingers nearly twiddling.

  “Ponty is such an unusual name. Is it short for something?”

  “Yes, Pontius, as in Pilate. My father was always intrigued by Pilate’s ambiguity, his helplessness. I guess when I was born, he saw that in me, so he named me Pontius.”

  “Well, if there’s any ambiguity to you, I’m sure the majority of it is on the good side,” she said, smiling. “What are some of the books you’ve written so far?”

  Ponty sat up straight to look more important. “Well, perhaps you’ve heard of Worse than Her Bite: The FBI’s Vilification of Ma Barker?”

  “I haven’t, but that sounds fascinating. Is your wife a writer as well?”

  “I’m not married, actually. What about your partner, Ralph, is he a writer?”

  “Well . . . no, he’s a bartender.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “We own this place together. We’re not . . .”

  “Oooh. I’m sorry. In the Twin Cities, ‘partner’ means . . . I’m sorry.” Ponty began fidgeting and blushing, so Jack threw in.

  “Wasn’t there some weird story about a guy who fell into a mine and was attacked by a giant rat?” he asked. Ponty stopped fidgeting and sat up straight, looking at Jack with alarm.

  “I’m sorry, a giant rat?” Sandi asked.

  “Yeah, we were doing some research and came upon the story of some guy—don’t remember his name—was attacked by a rat in the gold mine.”

  “Um, no, not that I ever heard,” she said, raising her eyebrows, looking uncertain as to whether he was having her on.

  “Ah, but you don’t know that this didn’t happen, do you?”

  “I’m pretty sure it didn’t,” she said, laughing.

  “Well, there are a lot of weird and unexplained things in this world. It would be pretty arrogant of us to rule out this giantrat thing just because—”

  “Jack,” said Ponty.

  “There is starting to be a lot of evidence about capybaras now that is blowing to smithereens basically everything that scientists had ever known about rodentia. Why do—”

  “I think we ought to just go ahead and be straight with her,” Ponty said.

  Jack considered this. “I thought we agreed not to be straight about this?”

  “When?”

  “In the Tempo,” Jack said in a stage whisper. “Look, can’t we—you know,” he said, tossing his head toward Sandi.

  “No. Whatever we said in the Tempo is water under the bridge. I just can’t continue to lie anymore,” Ponty said, quickly adding, “to her, I mean.” He turned toward Sandi, who sat staring at them with a half-frightened, half-amused look, and told her everything about his writing, his decision to do a really stupid book, his inability to sell it, making his deal with Jack, and Jack’s tremendous blunder with the sale. The only thing he left out was the embarrassing incident in which he ran over the police officer, so Jack told her that.

  “Thank you, Jack,” Ponty said when he was done. “The upshot of all this—what we’re asking is, please, if anyone should ask, publishers, reporters . . . lawyers, or what have you, could you possibly just go ahead and tell them—Well, here, I’ve written it down.”

  He leafed through his notebook, found a typewritten sheet of paper, and handed it to her tentatively, as though she might slap his hand in the process. She studied the paper like a judge looking over a piece of evidence, read through it, mouthing a few words, saying a few out loud in a low voice: “. . . was named Lynch, and he . . . tracked the creature to a . . . eventually . . . battle with the giant rat . . .”

  When she was finished, she handed it back to Ponty, braced both hands against her desk, pursed her lips, and stared as if in deep thought.

  After a moment Jack shifted in his chair and asked her abruptly, “So? Will you do it?”

  She broke her reverie. “Sure,” she said, slapping the desk with both hands for emphasis. “For ten percent of everything the book makes.” She smiled pleasantly. Ponty and Jack stared at her for a moment. Then at each other. Then back at her.

  “Done,” they said in unison.

  “Good,” said Ponty, rising and handing her the sheet of paper. “You’ll probably want to keep that.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said pleasantly.

  “We’ll get you a copy of the book contract and sort out the details tomorrow. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect,” she said. “So where are you staying?”

  “Can you recommend a place?”

  “Yes. I would try the Bugling Moose Lodge. It’s the only place in town.”

  “Then that’s for us,” said Ponty. “Sounds nice.”

  “Their breakfasts are famous.”

  “I look forward to them,” said Ponty. They were about to leave when Ponty stopped and put a finger in the air. “Oh,” he said, “one more thing. As the mayor, do you think you could do us a favor and just tell everyone else in town to cover for us, too?”

  LATER THAT EVENING Jack, wearing a red union suit, leaned against the wall and stared out the sliding glass door of cabin number three at the Bugling Moose Lodge.

  “Wish we would have gotten a better lake view,” he said wistfully. “The one with the better lake view wasn’t winterized.”

  “This is never going to work. We’re going to jail,” Ponty said from a cocoon of quilts and wool blankets lumped atop his cot.

  “Are you kidding? I now have a high degree of confidence in our plan,” said Jack. He turned to look back out the window. “I want to drag me an eelpout out of that ice before we go back home.”

  “It’s not going to work,” said Ponty.

  “If we can get leeches, I don’t see why not.”

  “Not the—the plan. The plan isn’t going to work. We’re going to get caught,” Ponty said miserably. “And I’m going to freeze to death. Which is p
robably for the best,” he added.

  “No, no. You heard what Sandi said, right?” Jack turned to look at Ponty, but he was buried beneath his bedding and did not respond. “Ponty? Sandi, you know, your sweetheart?” He saw Ponty’s eyes peek out from under his quilt. “She got us the town meeting. We pitch it to the rest of this burg and see what happens. She thinks it’ll work.”

  “She smells the money,” Ponty’s muffled voice said.

  “Well, so will the rest of the town,” said Jack, turning away from the window and adjusting the seat of his union suit.

  “They’ll run us out on a rail. After they’ve tarred and feathered us. And I’m going to freeze to death tonight. Which is probably for the best,” Ponty added.

  “Just make it through till breakfast. They’re famous for their breakfasts,” said Jack, still looking out the window and thinking of eelpout.

  PONTY AND JACK sat in straight-backed chairs on the dais of the Holey Town Hall, feeling every bit like schoolboys about to do a recitation of “The Village Blacksmith” before the faculty. Jack was trying to disguise the fact that he was a bit logy, having consumed a four-egg venison omelette and a towering stack of buckwheat pancakes with wild blueberry syrup for breakfast. Standing at the podium, Sandi addressed nearly the entire town of Holey, most of whom had walked over to their mayor’s emergency meeting directly from church.

  “Thank you, everyone, let’s come to order. Bob,” she said to a man in the front row of folding chairs, “do we have a quorum?”

  Bob, a thin, nervous-looking man in his forties, stood up, his hat literally in hand. “Oh, yes, Mayor. There’s thirty-six of us here. Betty Leustek is visiting her daughter in Coon Rapids and . . . um, Gerry Iverson, I don’t think he got the message.” He shuffled even more nervously at having to report the news on Gerry Iverson. The crowd exchanged knowing glances.

  Jack leaned over to Ponty. “Gerry must be an alkie or something,” he said.

  “Shh.”

  Sandy continued. “As you all know, I haven’t called an emergency meeting for some time—in fact, when was that?” she asked, mostly to herself. An elderly woman near the back stood up.

  “It was year before last. The mayfly problem.”

  “Right,” said Sandi. “Well, the reason—”

  “Got so bad we needed to use money from the next year’s snowplowing budget to get ’em off the roads.”

  “Exactly. Thank you, Rose.”

  “Yup.”

  “The reason I called this one will become clear very shortly. I’m going to turn it over now to a writer from Minneapolis. He’s written, among other things, a book called—what is it called?” she said, turning away from the microphone and looking at Ponty.

  “Oh . . . um, Worse than Her Bite: The FBI’s Vilification of Ma Barker,” he answered.

  “Worse than Her Bite. The—what?” she stage-whispered to him.

  Ponty, who lately had had diminishing confidence in speaking his book titles out loud, now had none at all.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, smiling nervously at the town of Holey.

  “No, I want to get it right. Worse than Her Bite. Ma Barker’s Vilification.”

  “The FBI’s Vilification of Ma Barker,” he whispered frantically.

  “But there’s the Worse than Her Bite part, right?” she asked. “I liked it. That’s why I don’t want to mess it up.” The crowd was growing restless. She turned back to speak into the mike. “Anyway, he’s written a book called Worse than Her Bite: The Vilification— The FBI’s Vilification of Ma Barker. Please welcome Ponty Feeb.”

  The applause was at best light, the mood reserved.

  “Um, thank you,” he said. “We, my friend Jack Ryback and I, are here to ask a favor of you, the town of Holey. We—” Ponty was thrown suddenly when the appearance of a man in the front row caught his eye: He was wearing jeans, soiled work boots, and an extraordinarily dirty and frayed baseball cap. But it was the slogan on his black T-shirt that most arrested Ponty’s attention, and he took the time to read it. It read BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEER HOLDER and featured a cartoon drawing of a google-eyed man, gargantuan tongue hanging from a snaggletoothed mouth, looking lovingly at a stein of foamy beer. Ponty was amazed that this was the outfit he had chosen for a Sunday-morning meeting, and by the time he had finished reading the shirt and being amazed, he had completely taxed the slim reserves of patience the crowd had for him.

  “Well, get on with it,” called a voice.

  “Yes. Thank you. You see, I . . . we wrote a book about your town, Holey, and—”

  “Yeah, we know where we live,” called the woman sitting next to the BEER HOLDER man.

  “Of course,” he said as the crowd laughed halfheartedly. “Your town, as you well know, has a very old and fascinating history. Why, in 1865 there were more than two thousand people living in Holey, many of them in search of gold. Now, years later, there are thirty-eight of you—” Realizing how this might sound, he tried to tack on a more positive addendum. “Which is not a judgment. I’m sure you all had very good reasons for staying. Your families did, that is.” And again realizing he had not successfully patched it up, he tried again. “Or perhaps you or your families came long after that, and why not? It’s a lovely place, and I understand the fishing’s very good. Which leads me to the thrust of my speech,” he said quickly, abandoning a fair amount of prepared material to get to the thrust of his speech. “We, Jack and I”—he turned and gestured to Jack, who was slumped in his chair now, his eyes at half mast—“have written a book.”

  “Well hoo-ray,” someone said, and no one even laughed.

  “Yes, thank you. The book we wrote was a story about some citizens of your town, right after the gold rush. Anyway, there’s a small inaccuracy in the story, a mistake—I don’t want to say whose fault it is. What good is finger-pointing when it comes to minor mistakes of detail in history books, right?”

  There was no reaction to this, so he plowed forward.

  “But anyway, with a rather large first printing of the book about to come out, we’d like to pay you to back us up on this one little, really rather small inaccuracy in the text. If anyone should ask. And I can’t imagine they would. But if they do. That’s about all there is to it. Thank you.” He gave a tiny, nearly imperceptible bow toward the crowd. “Questions?”

  “What is it?”

  “What is it? Yes, good question. It’s a story about two men, essentially. A fellow named Edward Lynch and another named Isaiah Fuller—you know of them both, I would guess—well, it’s about the elemental clash of these two strong-willed men. And the history of the gold rush, too.”

  “I mean, what’s the inaccuracy?”

  Ponty inclined his head toward the crowd and put a cupped hand aside his ear in a theatrical gesture. “I’m sorry?”

  “The mistake? What’s the mistake you want us to lie about?” Ponty laughed nervously. “Well, it’s not lying so much as it is, I don’t know, covering up a mistake so that the true history of Holey can be told to the world.” He turned to look upstage. “Jack, wouldn’t you say that’s a good way of putting it?” Jack, arms crossed, long legs thrust straight out, gave Ponty an affirmative nod. “Yes, my partner agrees with me on that point.” Ponty swabbed his sweating forehead, which in the midday light looked fully and expertly greased, with the short sleeve of his pale yellow business shirt.

  Now the crowd worked itself up into an irritable buzz. A man in the second row, who Ponty thought resembled Robert Shaw enough to be disturbing, leaned forward and spoke up.

  “You still haven’t told us what we’re supposed to cover up for you,” he said, and the crowd murmured its approval of his analysis.

  Ponty put a hand to his chest coyly. “Didn’t I? Ah, well, it would probably do best for us to determine whether or not this was of interest to you, and what kind of fee you’d need, before we discussed what you would actually have to say.”

  “Well, that ain’t the way I see i
t!” the Robert Shaw simulacrum nearly shouted.

  “I don’t lie for authors unless I know what the lie is,” said a woman in the third row, stating a policy that seemed to be generally agreed upon by the crowd.

  “Yeah!” shouted many, and someone threw a projectile without much force, but it clunked near Ponty and frightened him.

  “Hey, now! Let’s settle down,” said Ponty, backing up from the podium. Sandi stood up and looked disapprovingly at the assembly.

  Ponty was surprised to see that something in this plea seemed to calm the crowd and was about to press this advantage to admonish them further when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Jack smiling benevolently at him.

  “Why don’t you grab a chair, there, Ponty,” he said smoothly. “Maybe I can explain it to them.”

  Ponty moved to his seat without turning his back on the crowd, a hurt look on his face.

  Jack began. “Now, you don’t know me from a hole in the ground, and what you’ve seen of Ponty, I gather you haven’t thought much of.”

  The crowd seemed to agree quite emphatically to this statement.

  “You know, that’s one of the problems right there,” he said thoughtfully, and then he stepped down off the dais with one lanky stride and approached the man with the beer shirt in the front row, his hand extended. “How are you, friend? Jack Ryback’s the name.” Ponty, who was slumped in his chair, breathing heavily from the emotion of his confrontation, now rolled his eyes at Jack’s ham-fisted approach.

  “Howdy,” the man said, and he shook Jack’s hand, nodding vague approval. Jack repeated the action with the rest of the front row before moving back to the second, shaking hands or just nodding his greeting to the people he couldn’t reach, until he had worked the whole crowd. When he was done, he strode back up onstage and reclaimed the podium.

  “That’s a little more like it. A fella can’t very well waltz into town and ask a favor of a stranger before he’s even had a chance to shake his—or her—hand.” A few people smiled at this. “Now, Ponty, he’s a nice enough guy once you get past all that bluster, and you won’t find smarter in all the world, but sometimes he can’t communicate worth sour owl guano, pardon my French,” Jack said, using the saltiest colloquialism he knew. “He’s a history author—what can you say? Sorry, Ponty, you know I love you,” he said, shaping his hand into a “gun” and pointing it at Ponty. It got a few laughs. Ponty, unable to come up with anything better on such short notice, rolled his eyes again.