Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer

by Leslie Peter Wulff

  He touched the cold spike and the pain went out of him. It left his body and went back into the rusty spike where it came from.

  Up ahead, the entrance to the Portal. The rats had planted bushes and trees for camouflage, but they didn’t water them so the camouflage died off. The entrance ramp went down into the tunnel, and the tunnel went deep underground and ended in a wall of nothing. But Uncle Brucker knew it really didn’t end, it matched up with the bridge back home in the other dimension.

  A few scraggly rats hung around the entrance and drank and toasted the Return. Across the alley a young rat sang slow, tear-filled songs while the other rats dreamed on. As the Incredible Impostor walked past they watched him with misty eyes.

  “Te’-ta-Asteroid!” said Uncle Brucker.

  “Te’-ta.”

  He entered the dark tunnel. The fog followed, hoping to find a way out. The tunnel angled down and the fog rolled back and took the warmth from the air. Water dripped from the ceiling to the slick floor, and the tunnel grew darker.

  He was hungry, cold and tired, and the tunnel was filled with what if’s. What if Grudge lied? What if the tunnel doesn’t match up with the bridge? What if it leads deep into the hollowed-out earth instead? What will happen if he is trapped in Rat Land forever?

  Maybe he should turn back.

  Turn back! Turn back!

  Then he felt it . . . a breeze. No, more than a breeze—a wind.

  And he heard it too. That was no ordinary wind. It’s the Whistling Wind! The Portal had to be up ahead where the crosswinds meet and the wind whistles. He rushed forward and the tune changed. Now it was a sour rat tune, and the drumbeat of footsteps joined in.

  Someone had followed him into the tunnel.

  Uncle Brucker backed against the wet wall. The footsteps came closer, and a fat rat stepped out of the dark.

  “Hello there, Drag,” said Uncle Brucker.

  Drag stopped short.

  “Well, hello there!” Drag said.

  “Surprise, surprise. It gets me thinkin’ you might be followin’ me.”

  “No, sir. I got my own way a goin’ wherever I go. I don’t follow nobody, and when I get where I’m goin’, I go back my own way.”

  “Sure looks like you’re followin’. I mean anyone would think.”

  “I ain’t denyin’ what it looks like. I got no time for definitions, and I can’t help what you think. After all, we are walkin’ in the same general area, goin’ in a similar direction. But that ain’t the same as followin’.”

  “It’s damn close.”

  “But even if I was followin’ I’d be done with it now, wouldn’t I? Here I am, and now that I’m here it’s time to do what I come to do.”

  The fat rich rat looked Uncle Brucker in the eye. My Uncle caught that look and threw it back. He didn’t scare my Uncle.

  “Let me guess,” said Uncle Brucker, scratching his bearded chin.

  “You came here to kill the man who spared your life. And only then will you be happy. Think that’ll work out for you, ratso?”

  “I got nuthin’ else worth tryin’,” said the rat.

  The rich rat rose up on his rear legs. And as he rose he let out a powerful roar that spread through all the tunnels in Rat Land.

  Drag pounced on Uncle Brucker. With his two front claws he grabbed him by the neck. He threw him against the tunnel wall. He pinned him to the ground. He picked him up and threw him against the wall again. Uncle Brucker was taking a beating, but he wouldn’t lift a hand to fight back. Uncle Brucker just wouldn’t give in. He fought back by not fighting back.

  A few yards away, in the dark of the tunnel, someone watched the rat and the man fight. It was a person with determination and fortitude, someone who had come a long way for a good reason. It was someone from another dimension who couldn’t let Drag hurt the Uncle he loved.

  Out of the dark, I said, “Get your claws off my Uncle, you dirty stinkin’ rat!”

  And I grabbed Drag by his tail and I spun him around and around until my Uncle said, “Let the rat go, Walt!”

  “But I got him good! I’ll break his legs for ya, Unc!”

  Uncle Brucker sat on the tunnel floor. He was beaten and bruised and he had a dizzying headache, but his Incredible Impostor suit still looked sharp.

  “I said let him go.”

  “I’ll pull off his tail! We can hang it up in the hall!”

  “You don’t want to kill him. You don’t even want to hurt him. I got somethin’ worse in mind.”

  “I know what’s cummin’,” said Drag. “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I’m gonna say it anyway,” said my Uncle. “Get up on your feet. Go home and be miserable. I just saved your life again.”

  Drag got up on his legs and stumbled along down the tunnel, a miserable broken rat. I thought he might try something sneaky. I was ready, but he didn’t.

  He looked back over his shoulder, and his beady rat eyes had tears in them when he said, “Ain’t there a limit to the misery one rat can take? I spent my whole life plannin’ my revenge. Only I didn’t realize I was plannin’ my revenge on me.”

  91

  Drag slowly went down the tunnel to the entrance hole. I sat down next to my Uncle. Our legs hung over the edge and dangled in the air.

  “There ain’t really no Asteroid, you know,” I told him.

  “I suspected.”

  “It was me who called it in.”

  “I figured.”

  “We fooled ‘em, Unc. We fooled ‘em good.”

  “It ain’t hard to fool a rat, Walt, so don’t pat yourself on the back too hard. We only fooled ‘em for a minute or two, and a minute ain’t long for foolin’.”

  “I guess we better get outta here. And we better get outta here fast,” I said.

  Uncle Brucker picked a nasty twig out of his beard and caught up with another he’d been looking for. I was ready to take him home to the old house with me. I had nursed him back before, and I’ll do it again. It won’t be long before we were home and he was the old Uncle Brucker again.

  “Listen to me, Walt,” he said. “There’s somethin’ I gotta tell ya. If you told me you was cummin’, I woulda said stay away.You see, I got my own special assignment, Walt. I took it upon myself cause it’s the utmost importance because it goes all the way to the top. I got me a brand new obligation to uphold, and if I don’t follow through I ain’t me. Now I gotta go. I’m sorry, but I can’t go back home with you tonight, son. See ya when the job is done.”

  Uncle Brucker stood on the platform at the end of the tunnel, one foot on the ground, one foot hanging off into nowhere.

  I sat around but not for too long. I had come a long way to do two things. (1) Help him out and (2) Bring him back. (1) I didn’t do and (2) I never accomplished.

  He stood there for so long he could be a statue.

  The wind whistled and the tunnel shuddered. He took a deep breath and stepped into nowhere, and I went back to get Renata.

  92

  I don’t know how long it took to walk back from the Portal, but it took a lot longer than going there. We took the tunnel to the stairs and went out the service door. The Portal was empty except for us and a few drunken dandies lying around on the stairs, reeking of liquor and smoking hemp. All the other rats were down at the wharves, drinking rat juice and celebrating the return of the Asteroid.

  Renata and I just shuffled along through the woods. I was about sixty percent tired and forty percent beat, but I didn’t let her know that.

  When she asked me how I was doing I said, “Fine.”

  “I’m fine too,” she said.

  Renata thanked me for a great time, and she put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek as we walked. Traveling back and forth between dimensions wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. But the rats belong in their dimension. We agreed we would never tell anybody we went there, not even for a special report on TV, and we’d never go back again.

  She had filled two shoe
boxes with trinkets and bracelets the rats left behind. Now she was going to make some money. We each carried a shoe box under our arm. With the other arm we held onto each other.

  Going into another dimension takes a lot out of you in ways you don’t expect. I don’t have the energy to go into it right now.

  Unless you’re set on repeating my experience, just take it from me and stay home.

  Time passes differently in the other dimension. It doesn’t line up exactly like it does here. It sort of slows down and jumps along. When Renata and I got back to the Eagle it was only 8:15, even though we’d been away for hours.

  I had something to say to Renata. I had thought about it for a while. It was important to get it out right, and I was thinking of the best way to say it.

  Renata knew something was coming her way. It’s hard to say what she said or did that tipped me off, but I could tell we were thinking in the same direction.

  As we drove home in the Eagle I was still trying to figure it out.

  She turned to me and said, “You got somethin’ to say, say it. I can’t stand it no more.”

  I had thought up a million ways to put it and I went over them in my head as we walked from the Portal, but driving home now in the Eagle I could think of only one.

  What I said was, “It’s about time you brought back my Uncle’s War Medal, Renata. Just give it to me and I’ll forget it ever happened. Fair enough?”

  She froze up when she heard that, stiff as a north pole icicle and she stared straight ahead. Last week I saw her stash a pair of earrings in her purse in Half Price Stores when she didn’t think I was looking. She also had a habit of taking money from the tips left on the tables at Tuskies. Yesterday I was sure her father stole the War Medal from the shelf in the living room. I’m not counting him out, but now I was leaning more toward Renata. Either way, I felt sure she had to know about it.

  It was just a hunch when I said it, but I knew by the way she reacted that I was right. “All I want is my Uncle’s Medal back,” I said.

  She kept her eyes away from me but I could see they were wet. She was almost crying. Almost, but she didn’t quite get there.

  “Want to go back to my house now?”

  “Take me home, please,” she said.

  “You don’t want to go back to my house?”

  “Take me home please. Now.”

  “Guess I’ll take you home,” I said.

  I dropped her off at the house on the heights. I figured she would go inside and get the Medal and bring it back to the car. She’d say she was sorry, and I’ll see her tomorrow at Tuskie’s pizza.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  She got out of the car quickly and carried her shoe boxes to the front door. I waited a while and when she didn’t come back to the car I took off and headed back to the old house.

  Every time I drove over a bump the passenger door rattled because Renata didn’t close it all the way. I was too tired to stop and fix it. The door rattled until I got to West Second street. About half way down I hit a bump just waiting for somebody like me to drive over it. The Eagle lurched forward and the suspension bottomed out. The door got stuck and I couldn’t pry it open, but I never heard that rattle again.

  93

  It was late afternoon when Uncle Brucker arrived in Washington, DC. He spent his last five on gas somewhere out on the highway and he drove into the city with the gauge on empty. On Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, people waited on line for the day’s last tour.

  No time to find a parking space. The guards were closing the gate!

  Uncle Brucker left the keys in the ignition and ran across the street and stood on the end of the tourist line.

  The White House has one bowling alley, two swimming pools, a barber shop and thirteen bathrooms named after the thirteen colonies. Uncle Brucker made a quick stop at the Pennsylvania bathroom, and he joined the group and learned a few interesting facts, but he wasn’t here for sightseeing.

  He had more important things on his mind.

  “I got information for the President,” he said, and he elbowed his way through the crowd.

  Down the hall from Uncle Brucker, the President walked with the VP. They had just been to a briefing and the President looked a little frustrated. Once again, he had asked his advisors: What are the rats working on now? Still, no answers. The President stopped at a vending machine outside the Oval Office.

  At times like this he needed a snack.

  “Who ordered these cup cakes?” the President asked, puzzled by the new selection.

  “Why, you did, Mr. President. Don’t you remember?” said the VP. He found four shiny new quarters in his pocket. “I got it covered.” He put the quarters in the slot and pushed the button.

  The cake slid down to the little door at the bottom of the machine.

  Uncle Brucker broke through the crowd and ran down the hall. With a force he did not know, he pushed a Marine guard out of the way. Another guard leaped out of nowhere, two more up ahead, but they could not bring him down.

  The President unwrapped what appeared to be a premium cup cake. It smelled so sweet and fresh. He brought the cake to his mouth, but before he could take a bite, Uncle Brucker cried, “Hold on, Mr. President! That’s a rat cake you’re eatin’!”

  94

  The President had a firm jaw that was pure leadership, and he had a trim moustache you don’t notice on TV. With a neatly folded handkerchief he brushed a few crumbs from his mouth.

  “So that’s what they’re working on,” he said. “The rat cake!”

  The President shook my Uncle’s hand. Out of the corner of his eye he took in the whole picture, and he noticed the worn-out pair of shoes my Uncle wore.

  “Come with me.” He spoke to the man who had saved his life. “I’ll introduce you to the Boss.”

  And together they rode the elevator down below the White House.

  Like all elevators in the White House, it doesn’t go straight up and down, it zigzags from floor to floor for security reasons. Uncle Brucker watched a spectacular display of lights and arrows on the control panel, and he thought of what he wanted to tell the President.

  The President answered three calls on his cell phone. Each time he apologized to my Uncle with a we’ll-talk-later wave of his hand. They zigzagged past a swimming pool and the bowling alley, and they stopped at a floor with no number that few people know about.

  The Boss is an unsmiling white-haired woman of few words who took charge of the floors beneath the white house. In a military uniform of no particular rank or service, she greeted them at the elevator. Other than the 9mm automatic and the Master Key, she carried two flashlights on her belt, one marked Boss and the other marked Emergency President. She had worked in the White House for ages and everyone called her the Boss.

  At the end of the hall, the Boss unlocked the door to a special room. Inside, shelves and shelves of shoes left behind by the Presidents throughout the years.

  “Find a pair that fits,” said the President. “The Boss will sign them over. It’s my way of saying thanks.”

  Uncle Bucker looked through the room of shoes while the Boss and the President waited outside. A few minutes later Uncle Brucker stepped into the elevator wearing a pair of brown wingtips with fancy stitching and old-fashioned leather heels.

  “Who do you think wore them?” he asked the President. “Could it be Roosevelt? Maybe Lincoln himself?”

  “Hell, I wouldn’t know,” said the President. “You have to match-up the sizes.”

  As it turned out, the President was a great guy who carried the burden of responsibility with total control, and he invited Uncle Brucker to stick around the White House for a few days as a Special Guest of The Administration or Special Advisor, he hadn’t decided which.

  Uncle Brucker was scheduled to attend the Awards Dinner on Thursday. No sense going home only to rush back. Meanwhile he’ll take it easy, walk in the garden, get to know the place. Who knows, if he feel
s confident, maybe he’ll get himself an official blue suit and a name badge and volunteer to give a few tours.

  And so he did.

  No house compares with the White House. In hospitality, heritage and accommodations, it has to be on top of the list. In a short time he built up confidence to spare, and he learned a lot of inside info that made for a great tour. And the tourists recognized his easy confidence as something special. Combine this with his insider insight, and you’ll see why his tours were popular from the start.

  Uncle Brucker bought a new blue tour suit. The White House barber trimmed my Uncle’s beard. Ten-dollar tie. Official Presidential shoes. The line of tourists stretched out the door and all the way across the lawn and through the gate and halfway down the street where the Ram had stalled.

  “The elevators zigzag for security reasons,” he told the crowd as they entered the lobby. His words bounced off the marble columns and came back as solid reminders. “And the Oval Office we know about isn’t the real Oval Office. The real Oval Office is on the other side of a hidden door, and that’s where the President does his thinkin’.”

  95

  The President rushed from briefing to briefing. Uncle Brucker led the tours. They passed each other in the halls of the White House. The President had no time for hello’s, only for advice. But Uncle Brucker said hello every time they passed, and he always had time to advise the President.

  “Hi, Mr. President!”

  “What do you think of my domestic agenda?”

  “Stick to it and don’t waver.”

  “Foreign?”

  “That’s their concern. But I got proposals to discuss with ya—when you got the time.”

  “How about now? I don’t have to rush to every briefing,” said the President.

  “In that case I’ve got some spare time too,” the VP said.