“Let’s go!”
I pushed open the iron door.
A huge mean-looking grizzly stood before us. Muscles bulged all over his hard body, a yellow stripe ran down his nose. He must have weighed eighty pounds or more. The stripe means he’s a member of the Elite Guard. It also means he doesn’t back down.
But his attitude changed when he saw our impressive name tags. His mean look softened. He smiled like a chipmunk and held the door as we went through. You have to be special if you wear a name tag like this.
The wind blew our hair and tugged our name tags as we held onto the rail. Renata closed her eyes as tight as she could. The whistling wind howled. Her hair flew back like a movie star in the best film of the year.
Next stop: Rat Land.
“Remember, I gotta be home by ten,” Renata said.
85
Uncle Brucker awoke to a different Thursday.
It was a difference so familiar he couldn’t see it at first, as strange as a memory that was new to him. It took him all evening to piece it together and he came to the conclusion that the difference was inside him. Everything around him was exactly the same, therefore he must be different.
He didn’t tell Scratch, but three days ago he had eaten his last rat cake. He had made up his mind he would never eat another one. Scratch gave him a bag full of cakes every morning and Uncle Brucker fed them to the crabs and seagulls. Each day he went without, another foggy layer peeled off his mind and it became clear there was somebody else underneath.
He didn’t know how he got into this mess, but he had to find a way out of it. But before he could get out he had to figure out who he was.
When all the layers were peeled off and he could finally see himself, who would he see?
He wheel-barrowed Scratch down the crowded alley. Grudge Match at 8:00.
“I’m done with sleepin’ in rat holes and crawlin’ around in the dirt,” Uncle Brucker told Scratch. “And as far as my contract goes, we gotta renegotiate.”
“Renegotiate? There ain’t no such thing. What’s done is done and it can’t be redone. Turn me right.”
The night was cool and quiet. The breeze took the evening off and mulled around offshore. The fog gathered in the distance and waited for a cue, while the mist scouted through the alleys. The street lights came on at sundown and the rats left their holes in the twilight. Polished by the misty air, everything was shiny. A good night for snooping around. A special night.
The flying rats circled overhead, too excited to land. The squawky gulls saw their chance and swooped down at the sand crabs. The curious moon came in for a closer look and pulled the tide over the pier and all the way up to the dock house. And the filthy ship rats stepped off the driftwood and tiptoed onto the shore. They were heading to the Grudge Match.
The rotten pier groaned under the weight of the huge crowd. Beyond the old storm drains, decorated with streamers and lights, a special wrestling ring had been built on solid ground. A magnificent banner stretched from building to building high above the alley: GRUDGE VS THE INCREDIBLE IMPOSTOR.
“That banner is my partner’s idea,” said Scratch. “Gotta admit, it draws a big crowd.” Scratch turned to the skinny rat who stood next to him. “Right, partner?”
Uncle Brucker didn’t recognize the skinny rat until he turned around.
“That’s right, partner,” said the Inspector. “Thump him in three.”
86
“I want to go home,” Renata said.
The rats crawled out of their holes and headed down to the docks and the wrestling ring. They hissed and snapped and fought to get ahead, and they scrambled through the crooked buildings and down into the crooked alleys and spread out onto the crooked streets of Rat Land.
Dirt-nose tunnel rats left their holes for the first time in years, joined by poor dump rats who had saved for months to buy just one ticket. Slick dandies walked with their spouses, who wore fancy trinkets and displayed their shiniest pins for the occasion.
The elder rats crawled out of their sleep holes on scrawny legs, and they all went down to the docks and the wrestling ring where the Grudge Match will soon begin.
Renata and I backed into an abandoned storefront next to a pile of crate wood. The rats were not interested in Renata and me. We were just a couple of impostors and our fancy name tags were beautiful.
I had my arms around her and she held onto me just as tight as she could.
Rat Land isn’t all that bad if you have a girl like Renata with you.
Renata trembled.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I don’t want to be here.”
“We’ll go back after we do what we came to do,” I said.
“I liked climbin’ up and gettin’ here. But now we’re here we ain’t goin’ up no more. There’s too many rats around here.”
“Listen!”
A rat orchestra started up somewhere down the alley. The rat trumpeters attempted a tune while the rat cellists searched for a note. A marching band appeared from around the corner, and Renata’s mood quickly changed.
“Look, Walt! It’s a parade, Walt! A parade!”
Rats love a parade almost as much as a wrestling match. When you combine the two it adds up to one hell of an event. The rats waited to buy premium bench-seat tickets. A heap of money will be made at the betting booths and the card tables. The Promoter was going to make a killing tonight.
From the top of a dirt mound we watched the parade go by. An orchestra of 100 instruments came down the alley. Bongo beaters marched out of sync with the horn blowers. Twenty-one hum drummers drummed and harmonized to the backbeat. An Old Guinea King rat plucked a three–string junkyard banjo. The drunken cellists tripped on their instruments and fought with the bony flutists, and the hemp rats grabbed the penny whistles and blew a note.
Next, after the orchestra, 101 high-stepping dandies marched down the alley, spinning ragged top hats on bushstick canes. And then came twenty-two tunnel rats with jingling silver bells tied to their pointed tails, followed by fifty-five tap-dancing sewer rats with crowns of red roses.
No rat in Rat Land had seen a parade like this before. Little rats and their mothers and their grandmothers came out too, and they watched with eyes wide and mouths open.
And their eyes grew bigger and their mouths opened wider when they saw what came next.
Pulled by teams of thick-necked wharf rats with ropes tied on their backs, Grudge and the Incredible Impostor arrived, each on their own rolling platform. Grudge was first, flexing his muscles and posing like he’s the the big winner.
Next, the Incredible Impostor, fan favorite. He stood on the platform with his shoulders sagging and his head down. The front wheels of the platform hit a bump. The platform shifted. He lost his balance and almost fell over. The crowd gasped, then cheered. The banner flapped in the wind.
It was an even match before the game, but the odds changed when everyone saw the sad-looking impostor. Now the bookmakers favored Grudge five to one.
But where was Renata?
“Look at these bracelets!” she said.
Renata forgot all about the rat parade when she found what she really came for. She was going through a box of colorful bracelets a little dockside vendor had opened up for her.
“Come on, Renata. We gotta tell my Uncle I’m here.”
“What’s the rat sayin’?”
“He’s says take the whole box, he’ll give you a deal. Let’s go!”
“How much?”
“Two and a half cents each for a beautiful impostor like you, he says.”
“Ask him if he’ll go down to two.”
The platform carrying Uncle Brucker passed before us. I shouted out in Rat Talk but he couldn’t hear me above the crowd. The drummers pounded on their patched-up drums. The junkyard banjo player found the string and plucked it, and the parade continued down the alley under the street banner to the wrestling ring.
Uncle Brucker was getting away.
> “I came here to get my Uncle, and that’s what I’m gonna do,” I told Renata. And I left her at the trinket vendor and made my way to the wrestling ring by myself.
87
Round One:
“Who’s havin’ a go at me?” Grudge asked the crowd.
And the crowd replied, “The Incredible Impostor!”
Grudge had changed his image. Now he wore a new black wrestling suit with Grudge printed in gold on the front and back. He had been working out lately, drinking less. He had filed his teeth down and they were razor-sharp. His neck was as thick as a truck tire, legs like a tiny rhino. He looked like he was made of a harder material.
He circled around Uncle Brucker, hunched down low and ready to spring. Uncle Brucker just stood there with his arms folded at his chest. For a second Grudge hesitated—this could be a trick—then he turned around and knocked Uncle Brucker down with a double back kick.
Uncle Brucker got up and brushed himself off. There was something important he had to remember, of the highest priority. It was coming back to him now, words written on a box.
“Give me m-more!” he said.
And Grudge gave him more. He came at him with a right leg head kick, and then another back kick, and with each kick another piece of Uncle Brucker’s memory came loose.
Round Two:
A few more flips. Another kick. Two more. The wrestling ring sailed over his head and my Uncle landed on his back. His memory loosened up—but only for a few seconds—then it jammed again.
One more kick, Uncle Brucker thought, looking up at banner and the spinning night sky. One more kick should do it. Then I’ll get my memory back. Then I’ll fight back and win.
Round Three:
“Hit me harder!” he told Grudge.
Uncle Brucker was losing the match, but he was winning his memory back.
“That ain’t hard enough!” he told Grudge.
Grudge leaned back against the ropes and studied his opponent. The crowd knew what was coming next.
Running head kick!
As Uncle Brucker sailed backwards through the air, thoughts spun around inside his head, all broken up, daring him to put them together.
The Factory. The rat cakes. The Professor. An address. A package. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Now the White House spun by. The President stood at the front door! What’s that in his hand? A Rat Cake!
Uncle Brucker hit the ground, bounced once, twice. Grudge walked over to him as he lay face-up on the mat. And as Grudge walked toward him he looked up and read the banner for the first time, and he knew who he was and he made the connection.
He was the Rat Killer and the Professor had shipped Rat Cakes to the White House!
And now it all came back to my Uncle. He knew exactly who he was and he knew where he had to go and he knew what he must do.
He was Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer, and he was tired and he was losing and the rats were eyeing me and becoming suspicious and I realized my name tag was missing.
There was only one thing I could think of that might save my Uncle, only one thing left to say. I had held it in reserve. Now it was time to bring it out.
“Look out!” I yelled to the crowd. I yelled like never before. “Look out! Up there, in the sky! The Asteroid is cummin’!”
88
For a moment, time froze. The mist stopped short in the alleys and the waves lined up offshore. The squawky gulls quit squawking and the rats held their breath. Then, in a single movement, the rats looked to the night sky.
“The Asteroid? Where?” Grudge asked.
“Over there!” The Incredible Impostor crawled out from under the big rat. “Don’t you see it?”
“I’m lookin’,” said Grudge.
“It’s stuck in the clouds!” said a rat.
“It’s hidin’ behind the moon!” said another.
“It won’t be long now!”
“Te’-ta Asteroid! It’s the One Big Night!”
The bar holes filled up in minutes. Fat-gut barkeeps mixed their drinks and nosed them across the bar. Chipped glasses clinked against lick-off plates as ten thousand rats toasted the Asteroid. The barkeeps poured one more for themselves, and the Flippo cards were dealt. The hum drummers drummed and hummed. Folk rats strummed their patched-up guitars and played the bongos to a happy beat. Dandy rats waltzed around the rims of their sleep holes and they invited the tunnel rats to join in. Even the little hemp rats got up on their feet and danced a jig, but they couldn’t keep up with the dandies.
Alley vendors who had waited all their lives for the One Big Night set up shop and sold Asteroid trinkets for big bucks, and they didn’t have to shine them up.
Every rat lost interest in the wrestling match, including Grudge.
“This is it, the night we been waitin’ for,” Grudge said. “Easy now, fella. Hope I didn’t do any permanent damage. Come on, I’m buyin’.”
With a warm smile and steady claw he helped the Incredible Impostor to his feet, and they headed to the nearest bar hole.
“What did I tell ya?” Scratch said, slapping five with his partner, the Inspector. The Inspector exhaled like it had been a long day, week, month, year. Scratch smiled so wide his fangs popped out. It was a record-breaking crowd. They had surely made a bundle. “Some night, eh? So, what are your plans, Inspector?”
The Inspector leaned back against the ring ropes, scratched his ear, gazed up at the stars.
“You know,” he said. “I’ve thought and thought about it over the years. We all knew this night was cummin’, but now that it’s here, I still don’t have a clue. . . . What will you do now that every-thin’s changed?”
Scratch yawned and sniffed the air for an answer.
“Tell you the truth, I figure it’s about time I got out of the wrestlin’ business.There’s a quiet country hole north of the tracks. I used to crawl around there when I was a pup. I’ll dig it out a bit more, find me a sweetie, make a little palace out of that hole. It’s a fine place to take it easy and wait out the cloud. I hear it gets pretty chilly durin’ the One Big Night, and the moon don’t light up a thing. . . . Or maybe I’ll stick around Rat City and work out a new line. Got one idea just now. The Asteroid is cummin’! Pick a time! Pick a place! Place your bets over here!”
Scratch looked down at his legs like they were up to something, and they were.
“Well if that don’t beat all. . . . My skip limp is gone!”
All the excitement had re-charged his muscles and brought his legs back to life, and now they moved on their own, picking up speed, taking giant steps, swinging his body around and around.
“I’m dancin’! I’m dancin’ like a dandy!”
And on his two back feet Scratch danced through the crowd.
“Win big in the Asteroid Lottery!” he cried. “Two chances to win. Pick a time, pick a place. Win big in the Asteroid Lottery. Place your bets over here!”
89
“Don’t get me wrong,” Grudge told Uncle Brucker as they left the busy bar hole. “I love wrestlin’, and I’m damn good at it, but my real expertise is dentistry. Filed these down myself.”
He grinned and exposed his needle-sharp teeth.
“Goes with the image,” said Uncle Brucker, tired but impressed.
Grudge grinned handsomely and eyed the crowd. Uncle Brucker got to know him over a few drinks, and Grudge wasn’t at all what he expected. His real name wasn’t Grudge. Everybody called him Snookie. He used Grudge for wrestling because Snookie didn’t fit. And he was a lover, not a fighter. He left his mean streak in the ring.
The rats carried their Asteroid trinkets down the alleys and headed to the wharves. Some mighty fine-looking rats, Grudge noticed. He loved the cute little ones with the soft whiskers. He loved them all.
“That Asteroid’s on its way,” he said. “Think I’ll stick around here and see what I can dig up. Remember what I told you? Just follow the map on your back,” Grudge reminded him, then he noticed a wild-eyed cutie walking his way. “Hey
, sweetie pie! I been waitin’ for you!” He whistled through his fine sharp teeth.
“There’s a map on your back,” Grudge had told him back in the drink hole. “Draw a line from cut to bruise, you’ll know how to get back to the Portal. That’s a curb stone made that long cut on your shoulder. That bruise underneath is from a sewer gratin’. And here’s where you crossed the rails, that welt right there on your spine. Bent spike did that. Sorry, didn’t mean to poke ya. Find that spike, you know you’re on the right track. So, you see, even though you got no memory of it, you always knew how to get where you came from. You got a built-in map on your back.”
Everywhere the rats had dragged him, it was all written on his back. After the rats caught him in the tunnel, they tied him up and dragged him down a dark alley and over the rails. They stopped at a drink hole, and they came out and dragged him over the chipped curb stones. All he had to do was find the sewer and work his way back to the rails. And when he got to the rails, the Portal couldn’t be far!
90
The fog spent the evening offshore, getting thick and lazy. Sometime around nine it finally wandered into town. It spread out from the wharves and squeezed through the alleys and traveled farther than ever before. A sea breeze rose up and pushed it even farther, and now it was stuck in the narrow alleys around the Portal and couldn’t find its way back to the sea.
Uncle Brucker pushed through the crowd of rats and spread the news.
“The Asteroid is cummin’! Out of your holes! The Asteroid is cummin’!”
He located the broken sewer grating and the chipped curb stones a few alleys back. Only the bent spike remained. The fog was so thick he could hardly see. As he made his way down the slippery alleys, he felt a pain in his back. He went a little farther and it faded. He backwalked and the pain got worse.
Follow the pain!
He turned left and it was like they were dragging him on his back again. A few more steps and it hurt so much he fell to his knees, and through the fog he saw it. The old railroad track! He brushed the fog out of the way and made his way forward. A few more yards and he came to the bent spike.
Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer Page 17
