The sign outside the tailor’s hole is correct. In two minutes they had a perfect fit.
“He’s a big rat,” said the rat tailor. “I charge extra for materials.”
Outside, Uncle Brucker stood at the store front, admiring his new suit in the mirrors. Two silver mirrors stood side by side. The mirror on the right was broken. He saw the reflection of a man in the left mirror. In the cracked mirror on the right he saw the reflection of a rat. Man, rat, man, rat, and on and on.
Rat Land was a strange and beautiful place to Uncle Brucker. Beautiful to the rat in him and strange to the man in him.
70
I didn’t know what to say to Renata. It’s been four long days since I talked to her. She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. Will somebody please tell me what I should do? It’s bad enough when a stranger steals from you, but when the evidence points to your girlfriend’s father it’s got to be worse.
Around eight I drove up to her house on the heights. It was already dark. I figured I’d park down the block and sit for a while until the lights went on, then I’d sneak to the side window. Who knows, maybe I’d get a look at the War Medal sitting up on a shelf.
If the front door is unlocked I’ll run in, grab it, and return the Medal to its proper place.
The lights went on in the living room, then in the kitchen around back. But I couldn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t move from the seat. I just didn’t want to find out what I might find out. I was stuck there for thirty-eight minutes before I broke free and drove away.
On the way back I stopped at Tuskies.
I had made up my mind again—I’d go in, find Renata, go for a ride and we’d talk it over. By the end of the night I’ll have that Medal back on the shelf where it belongs.
But when I tried to get out of the car I ran into the same problem. I couldn’t move. My mind wanted to go but my body wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t do anything except drive away.
When I should have done something, anything, I drove home and did nothing at all.
71
With eyes closed I walk from the Eagle to the back door of the old house. I hoped to find the Ram back in its spot when I opened them.
Halfway down the driveway, I open my eyes.
No Ram. I guess it doesn’t work out that way.
Then I thought maybe he’s at the kitchen table, drinking his Boomers and eating a raisin cake. The Ram broke down and he got a ride from Keith or Reed Weir. That’s why the Ram’s not in the driveway.
“Yeah, yeah I know. I shouldn’t be drivin’,” I’ll tell him. “But I fixed the headlights and I had to test them out,” I’ll tell him when I see him in the kitchen.
But he’s not in the kitchen. He ain’t in the pantry or out back in the hammock either. He’s probably upstairs, dead asleep face down on the bed.
But I never got a single ticket and I never dented a fender or chipped the paint of the Eagle or any other car.
“Well, shit,” I’ll say. “Back already?”
But he doesn’t hear me because he’s not here. Can’t talk to a guy who’s not here.
I know it’s just a game and leave me the fuck alone.
72
I was running out of money fast. I spent a lot on the party and I didn’t keep track of the rest. Uncle Brucker left a note: money in the drawer, so I checked every drawer in the house. I found 26 dollars and change in the kitchen drawers. Upstairs in his dresser I found 37 more. The kitchen money I saved for pizza. The upstairs money I used for gas.
In the afternoon I searched through the cabinet that was hidden behind boxes of old newspapers and magazines he stored in the hall. I found his two thought-up books in one of the drawers. True Rat Tales From Around The World and The Specialized Rat Encyclopedia.
I call them books but they’re not books yet. Handwritten pages mixed in with typed pages, numbered but in no particular order. The Specialized Rat Encyclopedia Vol. #1 had only 26 entries, one for each letter of the alphabet. Most of those pages were typed. True Rat Stories From Around The World was all jumbled up, some pages typed, some pages written.
In the bottom drawer of the dresser I found the coins. He said it was his coin collection. Now I realized what he meant. No snap-in coin books, just loose coins. What sort of collection was this? I counted it upstairs. $110.78 total. I was ready to spend it.
In bed that night I figured it out, and I got out of bed and went downstairs and emptied the drawer out on the kitchen table to test my theory. I sorted the coins by year, and that’s when I realized why it was a collection.
The coins went back fifty-eight years. That was the year Uncle Brucker was born. He had saved a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar and silver dollar from every year of his life. $1.91 per year for fifty-eight years. Uncle Brucker was $110.78 old when he went off on his special assignment.
That was Uncle Brucker’s coin collection, and I would never take a penny. I put it all back in the drawer where I found it, every cent. When Uncle Brucker finally comes back from his two week assignment it will all be there.
If I run real low I might take out twenty silver dollars and replace it with a bill.
The next evening around eight I filled my pockets with coins, and I drove to Tuskies, no freezing up. I had a lot to talk to Renata about and that kept me moving along.
I parked the Eagle out front, left my Identifiers in the glove-box, walked in, and sat at the counter and ate a slice with mushrooms. Then I sat in a booth and ate another slice, extra cheese. All the while I’m on the lookout for Renata. I saw a couple of her girlfriends but she’s not here.
When I got back to the Eagle, Dwight was hiding in the back seat.
“You call that hidin’?”
“They’re after me!”
“Who’s after you?”
“It don’t matter who. They find me, my face won’t look the same. Just get in and drive me home, I’ll fix that old TV your Uncle gave you. Deal?”
I took the back streets through town. I drove slow and made easy turns so I wouldn’t turn any heads. Dwight sat low in back. I checked the rearview, but nobody followed us from what I could see.
“I seen you drivin’ by the house,” he said. “Coupla times.”
“Your sister been lookin’ for me?”
“Not her style. She don’t have to look.”
“We got an expert on girls in the back seat today.”
“I just know about my sister. And I know if she ain’t home or in school, she’s hangin’ down at Tuskies. You don’t see her because she don’t want you to.”
73
After I dropped Dwight off at his house, I drove straight to Tuskies. Renata didn’t expect me to come in twice in one night and she wasn’t on the lookout. I saw her the second I opened the door and walked in. She was sitting at the last table with her back to me. Her long hair fell over the back of the chair. She didn’t see me walk in, but her girlfriends did.
By the time I got to the table, they had all cleared out and it was just me and Renata.
“My father’s a good man,” she said. “He won’t do nuthin’ wrong he knows about. He’s got a bad knee he can’t ever get fixed. He’s a good man with a bad knee and he don’t have your Uncle’s Medal.”
“I ain’t sayin’ he took it,” I told her. “I’m just lookin’ for someone who might know where it is.”
“He’s the the best man I know. He says they hold it against him. People see you got a bad knee and you stumble around, they think you’re lazy and stupid. But what they’re thinkin’ ain’t true. You can bet they don’t treat you like that on the planet Jupiter.”
“Renata, they’re ain’t nobody been to Jupiter.”
“What are they waitin’ for?” she said. “It ain’t gonna come over here.”
The dark-eyed slinky girl settled in her chair, and there was a sadness in her face and that made me sad too. She sipped her soda but the bottle was empty. She sipped and there was nothing left. I got up and came
back in a minute with another bottle from the cooler, and I twisted off the cap and gave the bottle to her.
Her eyes were brown, dark brown, and her hair was black with reddish brown streaks going through it. She had the kind of mouth where her front teeth always show a little. She didn’t have one freckle.
I didn’t expect her to cry.
She took a little silver case out of her purse and flipped it open with her black nail thumb. There was a mirror inside. Her eye makeup trickled down her cheeks. I gave her a napkin to wipe her eyes and cheeks. She took the napkin but she didn’t wipe, she dabbed. She looked at herself in the little mirror and dabbed. I gave her another napkin and she looked in the mirror and dabbed with the new napkin.
“You really come down here lookin’ for me ten times?” she asked.
“Eleven.”
“You ain’t eaten lunch yet?”
“I don’t care how long it takes, I ain’t eatin’ lunch until I get that Medal back. Until then I eat early dinners.”
74
Under the tall dock light, a wrestling match had just begun. The fog turned to rain all around the light. Salt water slapped against the bulkhead like big dogs licking. You can’t see the boats in that foggy rain, but you can hear the fog horns as the boats came close to shore. BLAAHHH! BLAAAHHH! Like that. The rotten bulkhead sagged under the weight of the huge crowd. The tide couldn’t decide whether to come in or go out. The cowardly sand crabs hid in the dark under the pier, and the squawky gulls circled high up over the bay. They never flew close to shore because of the flying rats.
First match: The Incredible Impostor vs the Squealer.
“Place your bets over here,” Scratch announced from the betting booth outside the ring.
The Squealer jumped into the ring. He was a beat-up old rat and a long-time wrestler, and he rarely lost a match. The scabs of a thousand wounds stuck to his fur. His upper lip had split apart, and most of the nails were missing from his broken, twisted claws.
“Thump ‘em in five,” Scratch whispered to the Incredible Impostor.
The Incredible Impostor thumped the Squealer in round five.
“You owe me for the suit,” Scratch said after a three straight wins.
“But you said it’s your expense.”
“To lay out. That don’t mean I pay for it. And there’s a small layin’ out charge.”
Scratch piled up the cash he had won that night, divided the pile in half, in half again, and now he had four smaller piles. The first three piles accounted for his percentage, the wrestling suit, and the laying out charge, and he gave the last pile to the Incredible Impostor.
The wrestling suit looked sharp and it felt sharp so he didn’t mind paying for the layout and the additional layout charges. It was his suit and he got to keep it.
The first time Scratch saw the Incredible Impostor wrestle he knew he was different. He carried his extra weight with no effort and he moved with ease for a big rat. He wrestled like no other rat that had ever entered the ring. The Incredible Impostor was merely a puzzle right now, but a puzzle can easily turn into a predicament. Who was this big rat that never lost a match?
As long as Scratch fed him the Rat Cakes he bought on the black market, the Incredible Impostor wrestled without complaint.
Rat brains are tiny compared to big-brain humans, which leaves little room for thinking. But that doesn’t give humans the edge. One thing rats learned over the years is think quickly. Old thoughts move on out and make room for what’s next. Quick-thinking rats give up and charge ahead while big brain humans stick around and figure it out. Humans have big brains, but they’re small minded, so what good is that?
Scratch learned this a long time ago: when you ask a question you better be ready for the answer. Be sure you’re ready or don’t ask.
The Incredible Impostor got Scratch thinking, but not for long.
Time to move along. Now you know how it is with rats. He had other things to think about right now, but he’ll be back.
Mountain rats, bull rats, grizzlies, elephant rats, Fat Rat, Mean Rat, Slim Deluxe, Bonko, Jynx, and the Blender.
The Incredible Impostor thumped them all.
75
Scratch was a show promoter all his life and he never saw anything like it. The rats traveled from the far corners of Rat Land to see the Incredible Impostor. Scratch’s pouches were not deep enough to hold all the cash.
Scratch didn’t trust bank holes and he hated the sneaky rats who worked there. He hid his money in hidey-holes instead. By the middle of next week attendance had doubled. Scratch didn’t give out numbers, but on Thursday he took in a hole and a half.
To make more money he had to spend money, and Scratch had money to spare. With leftover bricks and junkyard wood he built a new wrestling ring on the far end of the pier. Unemployed wharf rats worked for nothing and a promise. They climbed up the dock light pole and replaced the bulb in the dock light. A thin coat of leftover paint made the ringside benches look new from a distance, and that was good enough for Scratch.
Yes, life was fat, fat and smooth, very smooth for the wise old promoter. Life couldn’t be shinier. As long as the Incredible Impostor ate his daily dose of rat cakes, he was content.
Wealthy patrons who wore fine rags and expensive trinkets paid big bucks to sit on the ringside benches and drink watered down rat juice. Scratch doubled his stand-up fee and he added two more shows. Now there are wrestling matches on the first, third and last Thursday of the week.
The Incredible Impostor took his share and moved into a fancy new sleep hole. Scratch helped him find a luxury hole where the rich rats lived up on Cove Cliff. In the mornings before the Incredible Impostor went inside and fell asleep, he sat on a warm rock on the edge of the Cliff and munched on a rat cake Scratch brought over.
And so it went, Thursday after Thursday after Thursday. It felt like a lifetime had passed, but if you check the clock it was only a week. The flying rats slept in the trees and the gulls were very quiet. It was too early to squawk. If he listened carefully, he could hear the waves roll home to the shore. And beyond the foggy mist? A spectacular view of the sea, from Cliff Cove to the Rip Rocks on Craggy Shore.
Foreign memories, memories of some other time and a different place, stopped by and scratched on his door during these quiet times, but the old memories were not welcome. They didn’t fit in with what he is now, and so they moved on.
After Scratch returned from a match, he pulled up a sitting rock and drank potent rat juice with the neighbors, and they dealt him in for an ancient card game called “ta-ch’ti,” or Flippo.
The Incredible Impostor never quite got the hang of Flippo. Most of the hearts and diamonds were missing, and they started out with 32 spades and only 14 clubs. At the end of each hand the rats added up the cards and argued over the total.
When they chose a winner, they all jumped up and yelled Flippo! Then they ate the spades.
One night a little sweetie wandered over to the sitting rocks and moved a nice way. Her soft reddish whiskers curled without a tangle and she sure was sweet. She looked on quietly. She was not a chattery rat. The friendly card players of Cove Cliff pulled up a rock and invited her to sit in.
Soft hair, long red whiskers, starry eyes.
Her starry eyes fell on the Incredible Impostor. She walked the Cliff in the morning early, and he saw her from time to time once or twice. He recognized her from the wrestling matches, too, a familiar face beyond the ring ropes. She reminded him of an almost-remembered person who lived on the other side of a door he could not open. She played Flippo like a starry-eyed pro.
The Incredible Impostor never learned how to play that damn card game and he never found out why the rats jumped and cried “Flippo.” And he couldn’t understand why they ate the spades and left the hearts and diamonds uneaten.
He lost a lot of money and wanted to quit, but his neighbors would not have it. Hang in there, Impostor, they chimed in, your luck will change. You’ll come b
ack with a winning streak. You’ll see.
The sun came up over the Cliff and the friendly rats said good day to all, and they returned to their sleep holes for the day.
Except the sweet rat. She didn’t have a name. Her parents died when she was little and they never gave her a name, and she didn’t feel right about taking one.
She sat with the Incredible Impostor on the rocks of Cove Cliff. She didn’t say much, at first, and she kept to herself, for a while, except when he had a question.
“Nuther juice?” he asked.
“Make it double,” she answered.
“One more game?” he asked.
“Two’s better,” she answered.
The game went on and then without saying, she got up from her sitting rock and went off to gather sticks. She saw a big one over there, and she got it. She found another big stick but not as big, and she got it. She dragged the sticks to the edge of Cove Cliff where she kicked them over one by one and watched them tumble down. The sticks tumbled end over end and they rolled and tumbled off Cove Cliff.
She came back and told the Incredible Impostor what she thought of him.
“You sure know how to wrestle but you ain’t too good at Flippo and you got nice sticks,” she said.
76
Thursday morning at the wrestling ring. The sun came up quietly without a cloud, and the shadow of Cove Cliff spread over the Cove. The night’s final match is over and done. The Incredible Impostor won three in a row. Scratch totaled it up and put the score on the Big Board: 56 wins, 0 losses.
The vendors shut down and packed up, and the rats crawled through the alleys and went home to their sleep holes, and the hemp rats roamed the pier in search of lost trinkets. Two dandies fought over a leather wallet at the edge of the pier, cursing like wharfies. A fat gray rat joined in. Splash-splash. Splash! They were gone.
Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer Page 14
