Oh, Rats!

by Tor Seidler

  Lucy and Beckett liked to visit her even when they were feeling fine, and pick her brain about rat history. Mrs. P. wasn’t as familiar with Junior, however, so Lucy had him wait outside with the patient while she went in alone. The impressively plump rat was ensconced on the most cheese-stained of her cushions, a chunk of cheddar in one paw.

  “Hullo, dearie,” she said, her broad, gray face lighting up.

  “Hi, Mrs. P.,” Lucy said. “I brought someone to see you, though I’m afraid he’s not in very good shape.”

  Lucy ducked back out the door, and she and Junior lugged in Phoenix.

  “Mercy!” Mrs. P. exclaimed. “He looks as if he’s been in a torture chamber.”

  Woozy as he was, Phoenix liked the huge rat instantly. That was just how he felt.

  “Is he even a rat?” Junior asked.

  Mrs. P. leaned over the shoe to examine Phoenix more closely. The amulet she wore around her neck hit his nose, and cheddar crumbs fell from her whiskers.

  “He’s so badly burned, it’s hard to tell,” she said, peering closer still. “But my guess would be squirrel.”

  “I’ve seen squirrels,” Junior said doubtfully. “They’re weird-looking, but nothing like this.”

  “Can you help him, Mrs. P.?” Lucy asked.

  Mrs. P. wasn’t hopeful but vowed to do her best. She waddled into the crate behind her parlor, which served as an infirmary and dispensary, and Lucy and Junior followed with the shoe. The infirmary was dimmer than the parlor, with an array of bottles and jars and canisters lined against the back wall. In one corner sat a kerosene stove; in another, an oven mitt. Lucy and Junior transferred Phoenix onto the oven mitt and moved the shoe out of the room. Mrs. P. examined Phoenix from head to tail, clucking her tongue as she poked and prodded him.

  “What on earth happened to you?” she asked.

  Phoenix would have liked to tell someone about his nightmarish adventures, but at this point he was barely conscious, and the best he could do was groan. All it took was Mrs. P. touching his wounded shoulder to make him pass out.

  “Would you like me to sit with him?” Lucy asked, sticking her head back into the infirmary.

  “I suspect he’ll be out a long while, child,” Mrs. P. said. “Maybe forever.” Seeing the horrified look on Lucy’s face, Mrs. P. added, “Are you friends?”

  “Well, no,” Lucy said. “But . . . can’t you save him?”

  Mrs. P. couldn’t make any promises, but she worked on Phoenix well into the night. He never came to. She was dozing on a spool of white bandaging tape at his bedside when Lucy stopped by the next morning.

  “Good grief,” Lucy said.

  The squirrel looked even more grotesque this morning. He was coated with a glistening ointment, and there was one bandage on his shoulder, another on his tail. Except for the slight rising and falling of his chest he could have been dead.

  “Ah, dearie, I’m glad you came,” Mrs. P. said, rousing herself. “My eyes aren’t what they were. I washed his feet, but I was hoping you could do the splinters. My tweezers seem to have disappeared, so you might have to use your teeth.”

  This was an unappealing idea. Rats worry about germs like everyone else. But Lucy knew that splinters can fester, and that it would be best to get at them while he was still unconscious, since the extractions were bound to be painful. So she set to work.

  She was on the third splinter of four when Phoenix moaned. A terrible pain was pulling him out of his coma. He opened an eye—and saw a rat gnawing on him!

  “Hold still,” Mrs. P. said as he howled and jerked his hind paw away. “Lucy’s almost finished.”

  Phoenix looked in horror from the massive figure at the head of the bed to the cannibal at the foot of it.

  “She’s on the last splinter,” Mrs. P. explained.

  As it dawned on him what was going on, Phoenix calmed down and let Lucy, the young female rat from yesterday, turn back to his hind paw. As Mrs. P. waddled over to the stove, Phoenix gritted his teeth and focused on a little silver thing—a harness bell from a Christmas decoration—that Lucy wore on a bit of shoelace around her neck. He yelped when she yanked out the splinter, but the pain soon subsided, and odd as it was to be thanking a rat, he felt he should thank this one. First she’d pulled him out of the river, and now she’d pulled out his splinters.

  “I just hope you get better,” she said. “What’s your name anyway?”

  As luck would have it, Junior and Beckett walked in just as Phoenix told her.

  “Phoenix?” Junior said. “Isn’t that a girl’s name?”

  “This is an infirmary,” Mrs. P. said, glancing over her shoulder, “not a convention hall.”

  “I was looking for Lucy,” Junior explained.

  “Just curious if our flotsam survived the night,” said Beckett.

  While Phoenix was wondering what “flotsam” meant, Mrs. P. came back to the oven mitt and handed him a steaming cup.

  “Drink,” she said.

  Phoenix had never drunk anything hot before. When he tried it, he yelped again.

  “I burned my tongue!”

  “Now it matches the rest of you,” Beckett couldn’t resist pointing out.

  Mrs. P. blew on the broth to cool it and coaxed Phoenix to try again.

  “What’s in it?” Phoenix asked.

  “This and that,” Mrs. P. said.

  The broth was pretty tasteless, but Phoenix was too hungry to reject it.

  “Do you have any nuts?” he asked when the cup was drained.

  “Nuts?” said Junior. “Are you nuts?” He laughed, realizing he’d made a sort of joke.

  “Such a wit,” Beckett murmured.

  After forcing another cup of broth on Phoenix, Mrs. P. announced that he needed bed rest. The three young rats cleared out, and Mrs. P. tucked a handkerchief around her patient. Phoenix actually did feel drowsy again, but before he could doze off another young rat slipped into the infirmary, this one smaller than the others, with oily, black fur and yellow eyes.

  “Ah, Oscar,” Mrs. P. said. “Are you busy?”

  “Not if you need something, ma’am,” Oscar said with a little bow.

  “I could use a carrot for his soup, if you could scrounge one up.”

  Oscar’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He’s not a relative, is he?”

  “Lord, no.”

  “A carrot it is.”

  When Mrs. P. and Phoenix were alone again, she explained that she’d found Oscar in a dumpster, the only survivor in an abandoned litter of sewer rats. “My own kids were gone, so I adopted him,” she said. “Oscar’s been a blessing. A born scrounger, and very attentive. Even empties the privies now that it’s hard for me to get out.”

  “What’s a privy?” Phoenix asked.

  Instead of answering, Mrs. P. peeled back the bandage on his shoulder. The wound had too much puss. While she went off to make a poultice, the hot soup knocked Phoenix out.

  When he woke up, he was alone. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, but there was something soft and moist on his shoulder that looked like a gob of chewed up leaves or grass. Though he still ached all over, he was feeling slightly better, and for the first time since Walter grabbed him, he wondered if he might somehow be able to get home. Giselle would have told his parents what had happened, so they would assume he was dead. His poor mother!

  He thought of the bridges Walter had mentioned. When Mrs. P. waddled in, he asked if there was a bridge that went to New Jersey.

  “I think there’s one, a ways north of here,” she said.

  She heated him up another cup of broth. This time he had the strength to blow on it himself. He asked what time of day it was, since it was impossible to know with so little light leaking in between the crate’s slats.

  “Evening,” she said.

  “Do rats all live in wooden boxes?” he asked.

  “No, no,” she said, settling on the spool. “Just wharf rats.”

  “Someone said you’re
a pack rat.”

  Mrs. P.’s belly quivered with amusement. “There used to be wharf rats who looked down their snouts at us pack rats. But that all changed when a great-uncle of mine helped save the piers.”

  Long ago, she told him, the piers in this part of the city had been alive with human commerce. But when the great shipping lines had fallen on hard times, the piers became empty and derelict, and rats colonized them.

  “Our golden age,” she said. “It lasted generations. Such character the old piers had! Then came a terrible calamity.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Gentrification. Now most of the piers have either been torn down or spiffed up so you wouldn’t recognize them.”

  “I guess it’s lucky you have this one,” Phoenix said.

  She congratulated him on his attitude, telling him that patients who look on the bright side of things are the ones most likely to recover. And over the next few days Phoenix did continue to get better, though all he ate was the tasteless broth. The dim room encouraged sleeping, and he slept more than when he was a kit, even if there were times when Mrs. P.’s snoring woke him in the middle of the night. He learned how to maneuver himself onto the privy she put by his bed. Oscar, who had the job of emptying it into a storm sewer, called it “the can,” and it actually was one, formerly meant for condensed milk. Mrs. P. applied the glistening ointment and changed Phoenix’s poultice daily. Even in the dimness he noticed that what should have been fine white fur on his belly was still black and patchy, but Mrs. P. would pull the handkerchief back up and tell him not to fret about it. Lucy dropped by often, sometimes with Junior in tow, sometimes with Beckett, sometimes by herself. She usually brought a chunk of cheese, which Phoenix would thank her for and hide under the blanket. When she came alone, she perched on the spool and asked him about himself. It was a relief to tell someone about his horrific experience, and rather nice to see how impressed she was by his description of flying up the coast of New Jersey in the claws of a hawk.

  “We rats are not at all fond of heights,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to open my eyes.”

  Phoenix implied that squirrels weren’t a bit afraid of heights, glossing over the fact that he’d kept his eyes shut for 99 percent of the flight. She was amazed by his landing, too, saying she could just picture the close call with a steamroller. Unlike many wharf rats, Lucy had crossed the West Side Highway numerous times—to hunt down her father after he stayed out all night—and she’d witnessed some of the repaving that was going on in the gentrifying neighborhood over there. She was also curious about where Phoenix came from, and talking about the woods made him so homesick he sometimes had to fight back tears. Noticing this, she would promise to help him get across the bridge to New Jersey once he’d recuperated. After she left, he would toss the cheese into the privy.

  One night when Mrs. P. was rattling the crate walls with her snores, Phoenix got himself out of his bed and onto his feet. His footpads were tender, his hind legs pathetically weak, but he managed to wobble to the parlor doorway. After taking a breather he made it over to Mrs. P., who was asleep on her back on her favorite cushion. When he nudged her, she rolled over and quit snoring. He staggered back to the oven mitt.

  The next time he woke up, he heard Mrs. P. talking with Lucy out in the parlor and decided to give them a surprise. He faltered over to the doorway, took a couple of deep breaths, and stepped through.

  “Sakes alive!” cried Mrs. P.

  “Phoenix!” cried Lucy.

  Junior, who was there too, wrinkled his snout as Lucy helped Phoenix over to one of Mrs. P.’s cushions. Mrs. P. offered Phoenix a piece of the cheddar she’d been nibbling on, but he politely declined.

  “It’s so good to see you out of bed,” said Lucy, sitting beside him.

  Junior sniffed and drifted into the gallery. Like the parlor, the gallery got a fair amount of morning light through the chinks, and the sight of all the treasures there turned Junior’s annoyance to awe. Sorted in separate jars were bottle caps, corks, coins, washers, screws, campaign buttons, rubber bands, paper clips, and popsicle sticks. There were combs with missing teeth, brushes with missing bristles, barrettes, hair bands, scrunchies, hair ties, and bobby pins. A drinking glass was stuffed with pencils, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, felt pens, and Sharpies. There were keys, candle stubs, pairs of reading glasses, old cell phones, compacts, a shoe horn, a pocket calculator, and a fishing reel. There was a thick glass lockbox with bronze fittings full of precious items—lost earrings, wedding rings, engagement rings, pinkie rings, watches, charms, brooches. What most enticed Junior, however, was one of the compacts. It was open, revealing a mirror, and as he inched closer, he could see his reflection. But even though his gray coat had a nice gloss, his heart sank. By this summer he was supposed to be full grown, and even standing ramrod-straight he could tell he still wasn’t close to his father’s height. His father was his idol. Not only was he the pier’s sergeant at arms, he was the longest and most muscular rat in the whole community.

  So Junior was feeling a little dissatisfied with himself when he drifted back into the parlor and heard Lucy tell Phoenix that he was looking much better than a few days ago.

  “Give me a break,” Junior scoffed. “He looks like roadkill.”

  Phoenix asked what that meant.

  “Come here, I’ll show you,” Junior said.

  Phoenix followed Junior back into the gallery, where Junior guided him in front of the compact mirror. Phoenix shrank back in disgust from a particularly hideous rat looking back at him: dark and scabby with a terrible overbite. As he turned away from the repulsive creature, the rat turned too, showing its naked tail. Phoenix looked over his shoulder. His tail was furless, naked. As it dawned on him that he was looking into something like Giselle’s pond, something that gave back his reflection, he went hot all over, then icy cold, then collapsed on the floor.

  8

  DRAFT BEER

  WHEN PHOENIX CAME TO, HE was back on the oven mitt in the infirmary. The handkerchief was pulled up to his chin, and Lucy and Mrs. P. were hovering over him. He thought he’d had a grisly nightmare until he peeled back the handkerchief and pulled his tail into view. It was utterly furless. The revolting, ratlike creature really was him.

  “Don’t feel bad, Phoenix,” Lucy said. “It’s so muggy this time of year, you’re better off without much fur.”

  He groaned. His lustrous fur and bushy tail were mere memories! And his teeth! Since he’d been on an all-broth diet, with nothing to gnaw on, they’d grown to an absurd length. He wished he’d missed the sycamore and ended up splatted on the pavement like that raccoon on Hilliard Boulevard.

  Lucy coaxed him to get up and come for a little walk, but he barely heard her. Mrs. P. brought him a cup of broth, but he didn’t sit up to drink it.

  “He just needs time,” Mrs. P. said, leading Lucy out of the infirmary.

  Junior was waiting in the parlor. As soon as he and Lucy left the crate, she turned to him and said, “That was very mean of you—making Phoenix look in the mirror.”

  In fact, Junior felt a little guilty about it. But no one likes having his bad behavior pointed out, so he insisted he’d done Phoenix a favor. “You want him living in a dream world?”

  “But he’s been through so much already. You just made it worse.”

  “Why do you care about him? He’s not even a rat.”

  “He’s a fellow creature.”

  “So’s that,” Junior said, pointing at a cockroach nibbling on a discarded cheese rind. But after a moment he softened and apologized. “It’s going to be a real scorcher, Lulu,” he said, squinting up at the pier’s filmy, sun-glazed windows. “How about a swim?”

  She never much liked “Lulu,” but it truly was a scorcher, so she relented, and they spent much of the afternoon on the half-submerged dock along with most of the other young wharf rats.

  When she got back to her crate, Beckett was poring over a book. “No sign of Father?”
she said.

  “Just blessed peace and quiet,” Beckett said.

  Their father hadn’t made it home last night. Beckett was sure he was just sleeping it off somewhere, but Lucy went to look for him anyway. Once, when he’d staggered home alone after one of his binges, a cab on the West Side Highway had hit his tail, which was why half of it was missing.

  Lucy slipped out under the pier’s sliding door, darted across the jogging path, and waited for the traffic signal on the West Side Highway. She knew the neighborhood bars on the other side, as well as the alleys behind them where her father liked to drain the dregs from tossed-out beer and wine bottles. But this afternoon there was no sign of him in any of his usual haunts.

  On the way back from the last bar, a newly paved street made her think of Phoenix, so when she got back to the pier, she stopped to check on him. Mrs. P. was in the infirmary, but Phoenix wasn’t on the oven mitt. Lying there in his place was none other than Old Moberly, the pier’s well-fed, white-whiskered mayor. Two other rats lay passed out beside him on makeshift pallets.

  “Heatstroke, evidently,” Mrs. P. said.

  “Oh, dear,” Lucy said. “But what’s become of Phoenix?”

  “I had to move the poor creature to the fromagerie.”

  This was what Mrs. P. called the crate behind the gallery where she stored her cheese. It was mostly taken up by wheels of cheddar, though there was also a wedge of manchego, a goat cheese Mrs. P. saved for special occasions. Lucy found Phoenix lying on a folded piece of cheesecloth. Even for a cheese lover the smell in there was a little overpowering.

  “How are you feeling?” Lucy asked.

  Phoenix stared at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  “Can I get you something to eat or drink?” she offered. “I know you’re not crazy about cheese, but I could get you some soup.”