Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer

by Leslie Peter Wulff

  The exterior of the Camaro looked great. That’s my specialty. The interior is clean and the body looks great. At every stop sign and traffic light people looked over and admired the detail. Yes, I fixed it up myself. Yes, the original 327. Shined it up last week. You can smell the sweet wax two lanes over, down the block and across the street.

  The Camaro ran beautifully with the silver balls hanging from the rearview and Renata’s blue bracelet around the ignition. Charlee saw it hanging. She tickled it.

  “Engaged?” she said.

  “You can put it in the glovebox if you want.”

  I leaned over and opened the glovebox but it was stuck and I couldn’t open it.

  “I don’t care where you put Renata’s cheap bracelet,” she said.

  “How do you know it’s hers?”

  “How do I know anything I know? Your elbow looks like Jaws got it.”

  “I fell, that’s all.”

  We stopped at RightWay Drugs, and Charlee went in and bought a bottle of spring water from South Dakota and box of Bandaids while I watched for cops and worried about my Uncle. No cops. Where the hell is my Uncle? Charlee got a variety box of Bandaids because they didn’t have large. She took the bandaids out and peeled off the paper and stuck them in a row on the console.

  She had make-up around her eyes that I didn’t notice. Not dark and slinky like Renata but nice, and she wore lipstick too.

  I had kissed her in the Monte Carlo and we made out in the Eagle, and now I kissed her in the Camaro but we didn’t have the time to make out. I held my arm up and she took the Bandaids from the console and stuck them on my elbow and smoothed them out, and she made a real nice pinwheel bandage on my elbow.

  Charlee knew how to get around Buckston because she had relatives there, and she gave me directions to 357 Holster Street. Along the way she showed me a bakery that made great cupcakes. She also showed me Indian Rock. We made a lot of turns on the way.

  “Next house on the left,” she said.

  357 Holster Street used to be a place where people lived until last year or the year before. Now it’s not even a location. Who knows why it burned down, but the fire had a great time when it burned off the roof and most of the second floor.

  The front doorway still has the number 357 at the top.

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  On the way back home we drove past the bakery Charlee said has great cupcakes, and again we saw Indian Rock. Charlee got the radio working and tuned in Classic Rock for me because I was bummed out. She tried to cheer me up with her positive attitude. Don’t jump to any conclusions, she said, and she was still trying when we drove down Meridian and stopped for the light at Holmes.

  A car pulled up next to us in the left lane.

  The muffler played a serious tune. The driver revved the engine and revved it again. The first rev was a greeting. The second was a challenge.

  I kept my cool and stared straight ahead and accepted the challenge with a rev of my own.

  The light turned yellow on the cross street.

  Charlee and I looked to the left lane.

  It was Cooter’s Cougar!

  Cooter’s metallic burgundy Mercury Cougar with the white racing stripe and 20 inch alloys is a super-fast turbocharged dream machine. Those alloy wheels cost a fortune. The front spoiler locked the front end to the ground. Sway bars front and rear and adjustable shocks, of course. But you’ll find it in another guy’s dream, not mine.

  “It don’t look so fast to me,” I said.

  The light turned green. I stepped on the gas. My tires spun and squealed. The Cougar with those 20’s pulled ahead. I caught up with it a block later at Constant Value, and just past Billy’s Bargain the Cougar slowed down, pulled over, and stopped at GasMart.

  “Cooter’s takin’ a rest,” I said.

  We parked at the curb, and when we looked back the Cougar’s emergency flashers went on.

  Charlee and I got out and she took my hand and we walked back to Cooter’s Cougar. I walked slowly and kept my cool because the Cougar was nothing special to me, just another car that’s not a Camaro. Up close I caught a glimpse into the dim interior. The red lights on the radar detector blinked on top of the dash. A dancing skunk air refresher dangled from the rearview, and that’s all I saw through the blackout windows.

  Charlee squeezed my hand and whispered, “Nobody knows who Cooter is. Nobody’s seen him. From now on they’ll have to consult us. We are the experts.”

  Charlee learned how to build suspense in school last month when she gave her report on Vesuvius and Pompeii.

  The window went all the way down and a gray-haired lady looked out from behind the wheel. She wore a white nurse’s uniform with white gloves but she also wore a white scarf around her neck. She look like everybody’s favorite aunt.

  “Flo Rizotti, nurse practitioner,” she said. She had a soft, clear voice. “Call me Dr. Flo.”

  Charlee said, “Hello, Dr. Flo,” and I said, “Good afternoon,” at the same time.

  “Generally, I’m a happy person,” Dr. Flo went on softly. “By that I mean ninety-nine percent of the time. Unfortunately, you caught me on a one percent day. If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d like to discuss the source of my unhappiness, which is this damn car, and what I can do about it. Do you mind?”

  Charlee and I looked at each other. We had a few minutes. Of course we didn’t mind.

  The Cougar wasn’t her car, it’s her son’s car. He took off a while ago with her Civic and it’s the only car she has. She’s already a day late for an operation in Saint Paul because of the Cougar, and the patient can’t hold on much longer. She hates the damn car. The accelerator sticks and the clutch jumps out at her. The car zooms along like a strip racer, and she can’t control it. She’d appreciate it if we’d inform everyone that the Cougar’s not her car and she’s no strip racer. In the meantime can we help her at the pump? She suffers from a rare affliction called petrolphobia which means fear of gas pumps.

  “The tank’s runnin’ on empty and it’s a long way to Saint Paul,” she said.

  “Sure, we can help you out,” said Charlee.

  Dr. Flo drove the Cougar to the gas pump.

  She asked Charlee for another favor. If Charlee would use her charge card at the pump, she’d give her the cash—or else she’d have to walk all the way to the GasMart and pay at the register.

  It didn’t sound right to me, but it was Charlee’s money. She took out her card and swiped it. I punched 93 octane and Charlee handed the nozzle to me and I put the it in the tank. Dr. Flo rolled up the window. Before it went up I saw an expensive Swiss racing watch on her left wrist, the kind with the extra dials and a timer.

  I tapped on the window. Dr. Flo rolled it down. She had removed the watch from her wrist.

  “Cooter your son’s name?” I asked Dr. Flo.

  “No. He’s Earl,” Dr. Flo said.

  “Cooter his middle name?”

  “He doesn’t have a middle name.”

  “Wonder why they call it Cooter’s Cougar.”

  “Didn’t know they did.”

  “Your son buy it from a guy named Cooter?” I asked.

  “Are you sure you’re old enough to drive?” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. I turned around and cut her off at the pump. I put in 10.7 gallons but it would have been more. The gas cap closed automatically, and I returned the nozzle to the pump.

  Dr. Flo hit a button and the window shot up. At the same time she turned the ignition key. She put the shifter in first, revved it up to 6,000, let out the clutch, and with the stink of burning rubber and her white scarf hanging out the window, Dr. Flo took off down the road.

  “You don’t have to say it. I know I’ve been cheated,” said Charlee.

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  “She reminded me of my aunt,” she said.

  “She ain’t like no aunt a mine.”

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  Charlee went into the mart and bought a bottle of sprin
g water. The police GT came down the road while she waited at the register. The cop made a U-turn and parked past the pumps next to where I stood. The door opened and Trooper Ditton got out.

  “Bright Eyes!” he said. “How you been, my boy?”

  “About the same as I’ve always been,” I said.

  Trooper Ditton had a hard day. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead and sweat stained his hat on a cool afternoon. He patted his slick black hair and put his hat on and walked past me to the curb, and he came back with Dr. Flo’s white scarf in his hand.

  “You see a Cougar go by, Bright Eyes?”

  “I saw a Cougar with a nurse behind the wheel.”

  “That’s a nurse, I’ve got a dozen more in the trunk.”

  He opened the trunk of the police car and threw the scarf in with the other scarfs, wigs, and hats she left behind.

  “She’s a librarian on Mondays and a security guard on Tuesdays. This is Friday, she’s wearing her nurse’s uniform. She’s been runnin’ up and down the strip for years now. She thinks she’s tricked me but she don’t know I caught on. She dropped the scarf going north and that means she’s headin’ south.”

  “I saw her headin’ north, sir.”

  “She’ll slip up and I’ll catch her some day. But I can’t do nuthin’ if I can’t get behind her disguise. So I guess I’m headin’ south.”

  “She was headin’ north, sir,”

  He opened the driver’s door and started to take off his hat, but something caught his eye.

  “Sweet,” he said. “That’s what I call sweet.”

  “What’s so sweet?”

  “I’ll show you what’s sweet. A 327, dual carbs, fogs, vinyl top wrapped in a package called Camaro. That’s sweet.”

  He walked over and checked out the Camaro with the word Admiration painted all over his face. He’d checked out hundreds of Camaros during his years on the force, but I’m sure he never saw a Camaro like this one.

  What other Camaro has silver mud flaps, a vinyl top, light-up side view mirrors, fog lights, and a piston shift knob?

  Charlee came out of the mart with her bottle of spring water. I signaled to her, stay away from the Camaro. She got the idea and turned around.

  “You can tell a lot about people from their cars,” I said. “A Camaro clean as this, he’s gotta be a good man.”

  Trooper Ditton got back in his GT.

  “You’ll be here for a while, Bright Eyes? The owner comes back, tell him to come on down to the station and bring the Camaro. Will you do that for me, Bright Eyes?”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Meanwhile, I’m goin’ south.”

  “I saw her headin’ north, sir.”

  “Maybe, but she’s goin’ south on my map.”

  And he drove off in his GT, made a U-turn and headed south. I got back in the Camaro and Charlee came over and got in.

  “Spring water from Virginia,” Charlee said, and she wiped off the bottle and passed it to me.

  115

  He sat stretched-out in the double rocker, relaxing like he was on an overdue vacation. His long legs hung over the railing, his hands folded behind his head. He wore wraparound sunglasses with a backstrap.

  “Who are you?” I asked him.

  He looked at me like I’d broken an important rule.

  “I don’t give out names, and nobody’s authorized to give out my name,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “Cause anybody can scratch in a name or get a fake name tag. But I got an official card says where I’m from.”

  He took the card out of his shirt pocket and showed it to me: US Gov’t. Proposal Division. US Gov’t in big black letters on top. Proposal Division hand written underneath.

  “Ain’t scratched in, see? It’s written by officials at Division Headquarters,” he said.

  He put the card back in his shirt pocket and through his dark glasses he surveyed the yard. Mailbox, garbage cans, driveway, barn. When he got to the junked cars under the willows, he smiled like he finally understood something that had puzzled him for years.

  The morning sun broke through the willow branches, shining up the Camaro and the Monte Carlo until they hid again in the shade. Last winter a willow branch fell through the back window of the Impala. When spring came it had taken root in the back seat. Leroy and I shoveled in dirt and manure we got out back, and the branch grew and now it was a willow tree as tall as the barn.

  “Is Brucker Thompson at home?” he asked.

  “Why you askin?”

  “Might wanna talk to him if he’s home. . . . Somethin’ happen to your arm?”

  “Well it ain’t bandaged for nuthin’,” I said.

  “Could be for nuthin’. If you got extra bandages to use up, or if your arm is cold.”

  “Could be, but that ain’t for nuthin’,” I said.

  He leaned back and rocked and said, “When your proposal gets accepted, it’s a really big thing.”

  “My Uncle’s proposal was accepted? His government money’s cummin’ in?”

  “Now I didn’t say nuthin’ about money. I said I’m from Division is all, and I said really big thing. I can say there’s movement, without pointin’ in any direction, there’s movement. Consider that my final word on the subject.”

  “My Uncle ain’t home,” I told him. “I don’t know when or if he’s cummin’ back.”

  “Whatever. He ain’t home is why I’m sittin’ here. When you work for the government, you gotta do things the government way, even if it’s confusin’ and don’t seem right. My instructions is sit right here.”

  “Government can’t put instructions on every little thing,” I said.

  “No, it can’t. You’re right about that.”

  “Government says sit down. That don’t mean you won’t get up again, does it?”

  “Maybe it does, maybe it don’t. Here is where I’m sittin’.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “Can I see that card again?” I asked him.

  He took the card out of his shirt pocket and he was going to hand it to me, then, on second thought, he put it back in his pocket.

  “It ain’t changed none,” he said.

  116

  The State Troopers out of Parville pulled Uncle Brucker from the Ram early Saturday morning. He lost control and went off the road sometime Friday night. North on 94, just south of Parville, the Ram swerved off the road and rolled over in a ditch. The Troopers said he must have blacked out. Uncle Brucker spent the night upside down in the Ram.

  No registration. No drivers license. No insurance. No charge cards. No identification at all. The police had no idea who the hell he was and they couldn’t understand a word he said. It was probably Rat Talk. They found in his wallet a torn off piece of paper with Keith’s name and phone number. An ambulance took my Uncle to Mercy Hospital in Dexter, and a wrecker took the Ram to Sturdevants in Crawley.

  The police called Keith and Keith called me.

  “He got through it with a headache and a couple of bruises, but the cause of it all was a stroke,” Keith said over the phone.

  I hung up and a minute later I was backing out of the driveway in the Camaro. Halfway down I stopped by the porch.

  The man with the official Government card sat in the rocker with his arms curled around his knees. His instructions were sit, and he sat. All night he sat. The strap around his neck kept his glasses from falling off. A burnt-out cigarette hung from his lip.

  I rolled down the window.

  “You want to snatch my Uncle and bring him back with you? Now’s your chance. Get in the car, please, Inspector.”

  117

  “You can only fool another rat with that fake scribbled-in card,” I told him on the way to the hospital. “Get yourself a Government hat, you’ll be more convincin’. But them shades you’re wearin’ are rat cool.”

  The words flew past the Inspector. Getting used to another dimension isn’t easy, and the strangeness of this ne
w world overwhelmed him. All the buidings here are straight and upright. It puts you off-balance. They lack the crookedness that makes everything firm.

  I asked him what’s it like being an Impostor. Like everything in life, he said, it has its advantages and disadvantages, but for him it’s only temporary. He was a shy kind of rat, sort of vaguely formed and rough around the edges and not how you might think an impostor would be.

  “Do you know the Wrestling Rat, by any chance?” I asked him.

  “Is heard about the same as knowin’?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Then I guess not,” he said.

  We were already out on the highway past Conklin. I stuck to the left lane all the way, passing an Accord and a new Explorer that sped up to seventy-five, passing everybody.

  Pressed against the door, the Inspector held onto the armrest.

  “I guess I wasn’t cut out for impostorin’.” He yawned a big one.

  “I don’t like bein’ what I’m not.” He played with his broken seatbelt, clicking it on and off again like it was a toy. “Stick to what you’re good at, is what I say to all.”

  “I’m a real good driver,” I said.

  “I got good ears,” he said. “I can hear the Whistlin’ Wind from two miles off. I been an Inspector most of my life, and I got my own code I never broke or strayed from. I’m good at lots of things, maybe one or two things I ain’t. And I know what’s fair and what’s close to it.”

  “I got an idea,” I said.

  And I told him how I had rescued Uncle Brucker from this same hospital once before, and this time the doctors will be watching and waiting for me to make my move.

  What the Wrestling Rat said made a lot of sense. I had to get Uncle Brucker back to the other dimension and make room for the rat within him or the rat would strangle him from the inside and they will both die. The Inspector had taken the job of escort, but he had no plan for busting my Uncle out. I had a plan but I couldn’t do it all myself. I needed the Inspector’s help, and he needed my help. He said he wasn’t opposed to helping a human if he wasn’t opposed to helping a rat. We had to do this together. For the good of my Uncle and for the rat inside him, the Inspector came to take my Uncle back.