“You don’t have a choice,” I said.
“No more fightin’ till I know why we’re fightin’,” he said. “It’s dumb fightin’ somebody you don’t know what for.”
“My Uncle’s War Medal, that’s why. You were lookin’ at it at the party and I want it back.”
“Lookin’ ain’t no crime.”
“You were lookin’ to steal,” I said. “Hand it over.”
“Listen, dude. If I took that Medal I’d get up and punch your creepy face in. But I don’t see no point in fightin’ over somethin’ I didn’t do. You wanna fight, find out who took it. Or come at me for what I did do.”
I let Kip go and we got up on our feet. He was breathing hard, making wheezing noises as he tried to catch his breath.
He sat on the fender of a silver Accord and wheezed and looked me over.
“You put up a good fight for a little guy,” he said with a smile.
“I ain’t little, I just look little. Man, I’m hungry.”
“You ain’t hungry like me.”
“I could eat a medium pie with extra cheese,” I said.
“Dogs are good too,” he said.
Around the corner, we ate Texas footlongs at Scotty’s Dog House. I dumped on a heap of kraut and squeezed out lots of mustard. It’s the way I like it. Kip squirted mustard on his dog and he put ketchup on it too. I never heard of ketchup on a dog before, but Kip got around. He was an OK guy and no longer a suspect. Last year he went to Paris with his parents for two weeks and he got to know the country. Ketchup and mustard, it’s how they eat their dogs in France.
What happened to my Uncle’s Medal? He didn’t know, so quit asking. But he knew someone who’ll help me out and ten bucks an hour ain’t a lot to ask.
65
Ron-Dell’s Cleaning Service used to charge ten dollars an hour, but that was years ago, the woman on the phone told me. Now it was up to twenty on weekdays. It was twenty-four dollars an hour on the weekends. But she said she’d give me Monday’s rate on Saturday if I paid her in cash today.
It would have cost ninety-six bucks to vacuum and dust the whole house, upstairs and down, which was more than I could spend. So I told her fifty dollars was clean enough.The cleaning lady’s name was Distilda. She was about forty. She wore two earrings in each ear and she had extra holes for more. She told me she used to live in the city where she cleaned the penthouses of playboys.
Distilda came over Saturday at ten, took a break at twelve and worked until two. Before she went home she gave me a shopping bag with some things she found. I was hoping for about a hundred in cash, a couple of gold rings, two wrist watches, a stuffed wallet and Uncle Brucker’s Medal. But all she had was two-forty in change and an old cigarette case she said might be worth something. No gold rings, no Medal.
“Are you sure?” I asked her. “About this big, says SECOND UPRISING, BATTLE OF THE BYPASS.”
“Didn’t see nuthin’ like that around here,” she said, thinking back. “But come to think of it, I saw one that might fit that description in a house I cleaned last week. Up at the Heights.”
“Brown house on the corner, circular driveway?”
“That’s the one. He asked me if I did yard work. You know anybody does yard work?”
“Who asked you? Guy with a bad leg?”
“He walked a limp, if that’s what you mean.”
Corner house up at the Heights. Circular driveway. Guy walks with a limp. It all added up. It was Renata’s house, and he was her father.
Uncle Brucker was right. I should have kept my big mouth shut.
66
After Uncle Brucker escaped from the Rat Factory, he wandered through the crooked alleys of Rat Land.
It was total amnesia every step of the way. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where he was going. He figured if he walked far enough he’d get to a place he knew. Then, once he knew where he was, he could figure out who he was. In that manner he would find his way back to himself.
It’s one thing being lost in your own dimension—then at least you have a home base. Try getting lost in another dimension where you’ve never been before and then throw in amnesia as an extra.
He was lost, totally lost, inside and out.
Rats can’t build a damn thing, but they are real good at renovating. That’s why they live in abandoned dimensions. Only their way of renovating is moving in and destroying. Put one rat hole in the basement, it’s no big deal. Put ten, twenty, your house begins to crumble. They already wrecked one dimension and now they’re looking toward ours.
He learned things as he wandered. What he had mistaken for a rat festival was actually a daily celebration—it’s how they live their carefree lives. No rent. No taxes. Slobbering down rat juice. Fat rats peddling stew and selling trinkets, humping in the corners and celebrating. Hemp rats toking up.
He wandered through the alleys and down the hill to Boone’s Dockand the rotting pier. He walked past the dock house and out on the crooked pier where the rats lay around. Here he sat among the lazy wharf rats, and he felt that he belonged.
“Hello, impostor,” the wharf rat said. He was licking stew from a filthy stew pot.
“Hello.”
“Hungry?” asked the wharf rat.
“Don’t I look it?”
“Next lick’s for you, impostor.”
From step to step he changed inside, switching from man to rat and back again. One step man, next step rat. He walked through dirty back alleys, between the ugly rat hole buildings, everything crooked, foul smell in the air. Next step the alley is clean and straight and the air is sweet because that’s how it smells to the rat in him. Now he was beginning to feel the effect of the rat cakes he’d eaten. His follow-up thoughts, his rat thoughts, came on strong.
Look at things the rat way. Rats didn’t wreck this dimension; it was in bad shape when they got here. They fixed things up and made them better. The holes they sleep in are not simply “dug” or “burrowed.” They’re intricate rat hotels with rooms on many levels. Rats are as good at fixing as men are at making, but you have to be a rat to notice.
He sat on the dirty/clean curb in the shadows of the crooked/ straight buildings, inhaling the fresh/musty air of a place called Rat Land.
Sunlight poked through the rat holes in the buildings behind him, spotting up the alley. As the sun came up, the spots crisscrossed in front of him. Those spots were heading somewhere he wanted to go. He moved his hand in and out of one bright circle and his hand glowed yellow in the sun. He wished he could sail off with that warm yellow spot to the other side of here.
He had been wandering for nearly a week and he still didn’t know who he was. You could say he was exhausted, but the rat in him was always eager to get up and go.
He sat on the curb with his knees together, resting as best as he could under the circumstances. And for a moment, just one moment, the pulling stopped. One knee got a little jittery, but if that’s all, he’s doing pretty good.
Relax, Uncle Brucker. Don’t try to get up. You must rest between steps. Stay there for a count of one hundred, at least. That’s a minute and a half, counting slow. Back again, it’s three. And keep your knees together.
The sun came up behind the tall impostor, but he hardly knew it. He sat on the curb and his shadow slowly came out in front of him. He got up and walked up the hill as the sun rose and his shadow came up fast. Now his great impostor shadow stretched out far in front of him on the sidewalk, bent across the alley and climbed up the rat hole buildings.
Even the shadows are crooked in Rat Land.
67
Night time in Rat Land. Uncle Brucker sat on the edge of the wharf, eating and generally minding his own business.
Eating? You can call it eating. With his finger he scraped the bottom of a filthy stew bowl. Licking that little bit of food off his bony finger had all his attention. He looked down into that filthy bowl. There were still a few licks left.
The tide went out three days ago and finally came in that evening. Driftwood floated to the shore, crates and trash all beaten by the sea. Scrawny ship rats jumped onto the dock and scrambled up the mooring lines. The lazy fog rose up slowly and hung around the bulkhead. In the sky above the dark water, a half moon hung exactly where it had hung the night before. It looked like it was pasted to a thick black curtain by the rats.
A couple of wharf rats ran over to him. They weren’t so stinky any more.
“Come on, impostor!” said a wharfie.
“Whatcha sittin’ here for?” said another.
He couldn’t think of a good reason, so he followed the wharf rats down the pier. The rotting pier creaked and bobbed with each step, and the sand crabs scattered underneath. Farther down, rats sold potent rat juice and shined up trinkets for sale. Fat rats sat at crate tables and played a card game called Flippo.
At the far end of the pier a crowd had gathered under the tall dock light.
A wrestling match!
The tall impostor watched from the edge of the crowd.
The rats had thrown down hay and squared off the ring with rotten dock planks and hemp rope. A huge rat strutted into the ring, GRUDGE printed in black across his torn-up shirt. Black tail and stubby ears, close to 100 pounds, Grudge was an Old Guinea King Rat who finished off his opponents with a running head kick.
“Who’s havin’ a go at me? Who’ll be next?” Grudge challenged the crowd. “How about you?”
The crowd quickly made its choice—a little hemp rat hanging off the ropes. The little rat dropped down to the pier and tried to run off, but the crowd closed in and pushed him to the ring.
That poor little hemp rat didn’t want to wrestle Grudge. He shut his eyes. When he opened them he was in the ring. Grudge looked down at him and grinned, and that was the last thing the little rat saw.
The tall impostor hated the big rat. Grudge was all brag. Uncle Brucker once said, “I’m the best in the world at one thing (rat killing) but I never brag about it.” When you’re the best you don’t have to brag. Brag too much, you’ll never be best.
After the match, Grudge flipped to his front feet. He strutted around the ring upside down, showing off his sharp white teeth, and his upside down eyes were scary. He frightened the younger rats, and they ran to their sleep holes and didn’t come out for the rest of the night.
But in the back of the crowd someone snickered. It was my Uncle, the tall impostor!
“Who’s havin’ a go at me? How about you, impostor?”
The crowd cleared a path and the tall impostor quietly made his way to the ring. Grudge stood up on his rear legs, ready to make his move. At the ring ropes the tall impostor looked deep into the eyes of the big rat. He wasn’t trying to stare Grudge down, he was looking for insight.
The tall impostor didn’t speak right away. He took some time to think and more to calm down.
He cleared his throat and said, “First of all, let’s be sure what we’re talkin’ about here, cause I’ll admit right off I can’t beat you at every game. For instance, if it’s a reekin’ match, you got me beat. I’ll forfeit right now cause you’re stinkin’ up the whole wharf. Whew! And I’d lose to you in a boastin’ match too, cause I see you’re one of the best at that, and I just don’t have the experience. But we’re talkin’ about wrestlin’ here, and in any fair wrestlin’ match I’ll knock you down in the first round and I’ll beat you in the second. . . . So let’s have a go at it!”
68
The tall impostor hired a rat promoter for thirty-three percent and a sleep hole.
“Let’s see that hole,” said the tall impostor.
The promoter was an ancient gray rat with cloudy eyes and a skip limp that moved from leg to leg. He was so old he forgot his birth name but it didn’t matter. Everyone called him Scratch, and that’s who he was.
The tall impostor followed Scratch to the sleep hole. The old rat moved slowly and painfully. His left rear leg cramped up most of the time, but sometimes it skipped to the right, and he dragged his crippled leg around after him. He stopped every few yards to rest, and he looked at Uncle Brucker with sad eyes.
The old promoter had a pouch full of delicious rat cakes that the impostor favored. Each time they stopped he reached into his pouch and gave Uncle Brucker one more cake. Again and again Uncle Brucker straightened out the old rat’s legs. Finally he lifted the old rat by his rear legs and held him like a wheel-barrow.
The tall impostor wheel-barrowed the crippled old promoter down the alley.
“Turn me left. Turn me left!”
The tall impostor turned left, and they stopped at a busy drink hole.
Rats walked into the hole, rats crawled out on their fat bellies.
Inside, a dugout room with a dirt bar and dirt shelves.
They stepped up to the bar. On the dirt shelves, a collection of broken plates, glasses, bottles. Rats on their way to the uprising stopped here for one last drink at a dirt mound table where they played Flippo.
A couple of impostors sat around making jokes and trying to be the center of attention. They thought they were convincing until they saw who came in the door.
Scratch ordered two rat juice cocktails. He chose a lickoff plate. The tall impostor preferred a chipped beer bottle. The wetnose barkeep poured the drink. A clump of wet dirt fell from the ceiling onto Scratch’s lickoff plate. The barkeep spit on the plate and cleaned the dirt off, then he nosed it over to Scratch.
“To the Incredible Impostor,” said Scratch.
“Who?” Uncle Brucker looked around.
“That’s you. It’s your wrestlin’ name. I thunk it up right now.”
The barkeep pushed two drinks across the bar.
“To the Asteroid,” Scratch said. “May it crash tonight!”
Scratch licked the last of his plate.
“Rat-o-rat that’s good juice!” he said.
There was something about the old rat that the Incredible Impostor couldn’t figure out. . . . White whiskers. Cloudy eyes. When his eyes got used to the dark he realized what it was: the old rat was blind.
“You can’t see a damn thing, can you?” Uncle Brucker said.
Scratch took a wrestling contract out of a pouch strapped to his waist.
“Don’t have to see it when I can hear it. Every wrestler’s got his own thump, I’ve heard it all before. I can tell by the thump, and you got a winner’s thump. I tell you which round, you thump ‘em in that round. You think you can do that? Sign here and drink up on me.”
The Incredible Impostor looked at the contract, which was a filthy page ripped from a notebook. The nose writing was too smudged to read. He signed it anyway.
A wanted poster hung on the dirt wall opposite the bar. On the poster was a sketch of a man. The man had great powerful arms with huge muscles. He held a pistol in one hand and a big league bat in the other. He was as tall as the sky, broader than a building, and he straddled a wide open rat hole.
The caption said, WANTED, THE BAD MAN.
The man looked familiar to the Incredible Impostor.
“Who’s the man on the poster?” the Incredible Impostor asked Scratch.
“That man? I don’t know what they call him where you’re from. We call him the Bad Man around here. He’s the bastard that started it. Kilt sixty-three rats just hangin’ around. Poor little critters, shot them in the butt for no reason. And that’s how The Uprisin’ started.”
The barkeep poured another drink for each of them and two more to go.
“To the sixty-three!” Scratch said.
“This one’s on the hole,” said the barkeep, and he nosed two drinks across the bar.
69
“I’m only blind lookin’ frontways,” Scratch said on their way to the tailor. “My sideways vision’s OK. I can’t see where I’m goin’, but I know where I’m at.”
Scratch was a cranky old rat who hissed and snapped at everyone, but that was just his way. He told the Incredible I
mpostor he was the oldest rat in Rat City. In fact he may be the oldest rat in Rat Land. He started counting the years when he became Scratch and stopped when he reached 120, but he didn’t know how long ago that was. He thought that he would probably live forever, so why count?
On a busy alley corner Scratch opened up his rat pouch and they drank the juice to go. Scratch drank it down quickly, then crawled off to a humping hole on the corner. By the time the Incredible Impostor finished his drink, Scratch visited two more humping holes and came back with a smile.
“To the tailor hole,” said Scratch. “You got a name, now you need a suit. There’s nuthin’ like seein’ ya win in a good suit.”
A sign in the dirt wall above the hole said, STAR TAILOR WRESTLING SUITS—TWO MINNET FIT.
The Incredible Impostor would soon find out that rats are excellent stitchers as well as cutters.
The chief tailor greeted them at the entrance. He wore a torn-off piece of measuring tape around his neck. Through narrowed eyes he examined the Incredible Impostor, and he sniffed him up, down and sideways. On a piece of cardboard, the tailor rat drew a wet nose sketch of a costume. Scratch hissed dissatisfaction at him, then out of his pack he took the sketch of his own. They borrowed from one sketch, added to the other. In that manner they created the costume for the Incredible Impostor.
THE IMPOSTOR, it said, big gold letters on the front and on the back.
Scratch took two steps back and studied it.
“That ain’t right,” said Scratch.
From a storage hole the chief tailor dragged out a can of gold paint and he opened the paint can and added another word to the costume. He took his time and he used a lot of paint. Finished, he stepped back and now it said THE INCREDIBLE IMPOSTOR.
The tailor stuck the design on the dirt wall.
He scratched the dirt floor and six gray rats came out of another hole, spools of black thread stuck around their sharp tails. They shuttled up and down, back and forth, crisscrossing the tall impostor. They sewed the costume right on him using their needle tails.
Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer Page 13
