Oh, Rats!

by Tor Seidler

  Lucy gave her a paw, and the other rats sang them off with a rousing chorus of “For she’s a jolly good pack rat!” Once Mrs. P. was settled on her cushion in her parlor, Lucy offered to get her a snack from the fromagerie, but Mrs. P. shook her head, eyeing the Mini Babybel in her lap.

  “I do hope you move in, dearie,” she said. “It’s a little lonely here.”

  Lucy immediately went off to enlist Phoenix and her brother to help her move their things to Mrs. P.’s upstairs, but when she stepped back outside, Augustus was giving another stump speech—or cleat speech, since he’d climbed onto the cleat. When the latest blackout had hit, Augustus had given up hunting for his mustardy admirer in Battery Park and wound his way back to the pier, figuring there might be hope for it yet. He’d loitered in the shadows, and as soon as he’d heard Mrs. P. declare her intention to retire as interim mayor, he’d naturally sprung into action. He was now heaping praise on Phoenix, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Our debt to this resourceful squirrel is vaster than this mighty river,” Augustus proclaimed, sweeping his sword from Phoenix to the Hudson. “I honestly thought our only chance would be to take up arms against the humans. That’s why I went to Battery Park—to recruit reinforcements for the battle. But I had very little luck. The rats down there are a craven bunch, only interested in feeding and breeding. So I returned on my own, reckoning I would lead the charge when the time came. But no, this remarkable squirrel has spared me—spared all of us. If only he were a rat, I would nominate him to stand for mayor. As it is, it would be an honor to have him as my special advisor.”

  “How can he be your special advisor when you’re not even mayor yet?” a rat asked.

  Augustus covered his annoyance with a smile. “You make a good point. We must put the matter to a vote. No time like the present. We’re all here.”

  Lucy raised a paw.

  “Yes?” Augustus said.

  “Mrs. P. isn’t here,” she pointed out.

  Augustus wasn’t overly fond of Lucy, and he was leery of Mrs. P., who had a disconcerting way of speaking her mind. But again he smiled his ready smile.

  “And we owe her a deep debt of gratitude as well. But she’s old—extremely old—and I fear her duties have worn her out. The humane thing to do, I think, is to let her rest. Any other objections to taking a vote?”

  There was an edge to the way he said “objections” that daunted most of the crowd. But Phoenix lifted a paw. He was becoming more and more intrigued by wharf rat society, which seemed so much more developed than the tree squirrel society he came from.

  “Yes, my friend?” Augustus said.

  “I was just wondering. When you rats hold elections, don’t you need more than one candidate?”

  “Ah, you want to put yourself forward,” said Augustus, making the common mistake of applying his own way of thinking to another. “As I said, were you only a rat, that would be—”

  “I don’t want to run for anything,” Phoenix broke in. “I was just curious about your system.”

  “Ah. Well, often there is more than one candidate. Is there anyone who would like to nominate him or herself?”

  There was an edge to the way Augustus said this, too, and again the only one to speak up was Phoenix.

  “What about Beckett?” he suggested.

  “A bright young rat indeed,” Augustus said without missing a beat. “You and he could both be my special advisors.”

  “I mean, for mayor. Wouldn’t it be advantageous to have one who can read and write?”

  This was too much for Augustus, even from the savior of the pier. “A mayor has to be able to make himself heard,” he snapped.

  “Quite right,” Beckett said. “I’m not the kind of rat who’s cut out for public life.”

  “I think you’d make a fine mayor, Beck,” Lucy said.

  After their great triumph the wharf rats felt no qualms about lingering in front of the pier building in broad daylight—or even about making a racket arguing the merits of the two mayoral candidates. Beckett did his best to convince rats not to vote for him, but Lucy and Phoenix counteracted him, drumming up support by reminding everyone of the crucial role Beckett’s messages had played in saving their home. Not liking the look of this, Augustus hopped down from the cleat and dragged Beckett back onto it with him, allowing the voters to see how dangerously young and pathetically scrawny Beckett was in comparison to him.

  “Those in favor of me, Augustus, as your next mayor, please stand over here,” Augustus said, sweeping his sword to his left—the safer side, nearer the pier door. With a slight downturn of his lips he pointed the other way. “Those in favor of the youngster, over there.”

  For quite a while few rats moved. Not many actually bought Augustus’s story about trying to recruit rats in Battery Park, and the older ones found the idea of the lead candidate conducting the election most unorthodox. At the same time, while no one could deny that Beckett was one of their deliverers, Augustus certainly looked more mayoral. And Beckett was rather eccentric, to say the least. Most of the older rats began to drift to the right—Augustus’s left—while most of the younger rats, the same ones who’d mocked Beckett the last time he’d been on the cleat, drifted to his side. The three elders, as was the custom, abstained, remaining in the middle.

  “It appears to be quite close,” the middle elder noted. “I see there are, um, five of you left undecided. Now would be a good time to make a decision.”

  The five were an ancient rat with a cane, young Emily, Old Moberly’s niece, and, perhaps surprisingly, Augustus’s wife and son. The ancient rat was still sorting out the instructions, while Emily was waiting to see how Junior voted, and Old Moberly’s niece couldn’t stand to see her late uncle replaced by anyone. Junior was on the fence because he was still hurt by how his father had taken off after his failure at the substation, plus he didn’t want to alienate Lucy by voting against her brother. As for his mother, Helen couldn’t forgive her husband for leaving her behind the first time he absconded to Battery Park. But Augustus was giving her and Junior very meaningful looks, and in the end Junior knuckled under. Emily went with him, and in the end so did Helen, who figured she was too old at this point to find a new spouse. The old, deaf rat joined Lucy on Beckett’s side, for Lucy had helped him up to his second-story crate on more than one occasion. Old Moberly’s niece went for Beckett too, feeling that Augustus had pounced on the mayorship too quickly, before her uncle’s body could even have drifted out to sea. The elders then took a head count. It was so close that they decided they’d better retally the votes.

  As soon as Lucy had been counted a second time, she sprinted off into the pier and burst into Mrs. P.’s crate. Mrs. P. had fallen into a deep sleep—so deep that Lucy feared the Mini Babybel, which lay half-eaten in her lap, had been poisoned after all. But eventually Mrs. P. responded to Lucy’s shaking.

  “Why on earth would anyone vote for that deserter?” she said once Lucy explained the situation. “I’m all in for Beckett.”

  Lucy raced back just in time to hear the eldest elder declare that the confirmed result was a tie. She rushed over to him with her news.

  “It seems we have an absentee ballot,” the elder declared. “Beckett wins by one!”

  Up on the cleat Augustus looked as if he’d choked on a piece of moldy cheese. “Another recount!” he croaked.

  The elders shook their heads in unison. One recount was the limit.

  “But . . .” Augustus looked around desperately. “But the candidates haven’t voted yet! We’re allowed to vote.”

  “True enough,” the eldest elder said. “But it would hardly change the outcome.”

  This didn’t keep Augustus from hopping down to join his supporters. Lucy called out, “Come on, Beck!” but when Beckett climbed clumsily down from the cleat he joined Augustus’s side. This provoked cries of outrage from Lucy and the rest of her brother’s backers, but the truth was, Beckett was worried about sacrificing re
ading time for administrative duties.

  Augustus clasped Beckett as if he were a second son. “Well now, I believe that settles it,” Augustus said when the furor died down. “I win by one vote.”

  None of the elders could contradict him. Nor could Phoenix or Lucy, dismayed as they were. Augustus remounted the cleat and drew his sword again, thinking he would present it to his son as the new sergeant at arms, thereby cementing an Augustan dynasty. But before he could call Junior up, a strange metallic sound caused everyone to look around.

  “Father!” Lucy cried.

  Indeed, it was Mortimer, rolling an unopened can of New Amsterdam ale in their direction. The latest power outage had knocked out Clancy’s air-conditioning for the second time, and the place had become so stifling that Mortimer had decided to head back to the pier, where there might be the occasional breeze off the river. Rolling the heavy can was hard work, so as he neared the crowd, he wasn’t sorry for a rest.

  “Who died?” he asked once the can came to a stop. It seemed early in the day for a burial service, but he couldn’t think of any other explanation for all the rats being out here.

  “No one,” said the eldest elder. “We’ve been electing a new mayor.”

  “Your son lost by a whisker,” said the middle elder.

  “Beckett?” Mortimer said, genuinely surprised. “You’re pulling my tail.”

  The youngest elder shook her head. “He may be soft-spoken, but he fell only one vote short. His own, as it happens.”

  Mortimer had a thick hide, but “soft-spoken” got to him. When he’d throttled Beckett for rustling pages, he’d had a terrible hangover, but he hadn’t forgotten the incident. Nor had he forgotten Augustus’s bragging and bullying from the days of their youth. And when he squinted from the blowhard on the cleat to his son, he got a little shock. The full sunlight revealed something he’d never noticed before: that Beckett had Arabella’s eyes and chin.

  “You don’t mean to tell me you fell for that imposter?” he said, waving a contemptuous paw at Augustus.

  “We’ve elected our former sergeant at arms, if that’s what you mean,” said the eldest elder.

  “Fiddlesticks,” Mortimer said. “I vote for Beckett.”

  This caused quite a hubbub. While Beckett looked floored, even aghast, his backers whooped and slapped paws, and Lucy skirted the beer can to give her father a hug. A few of Augustus’s backers hissed, and Augustus himself declared indignantly that the polls had already closed. After a consultation the elders disagreed, whereupon Augustus argued that Mortimer didn’t even live on the pier anymore, so his vote shouldn’t count.

  “I’ve lived here my whole life,” Mortimer said. “If spending a night or two off-pier disqualifies you, then I’m afraid your vote wouldn’t count either, Augie.”

  Augustus detested that nickname, but he couldn’t contest Mortimer’s point. “In that case,” he said, “a tie surely goes to the older candidate.”

  The elders consulted again, and again they disappointed Augustus, declaring there was no such custom. When they asked Beckett to rejoin Augustus on the cleat, Phoenix and Lucy pushed the reluctant candidate up onto it.

  “In the case of a tie, voters are given a final chance to change their minds,” proclaimed the eldest elder. “If anyone is so inclined, now is definitely the time.”

  21

  MACADAMIA NUT

  THE VOTERS STARTED CHITTERING AMONG themselves, making so much noise that none of them heard the flapping sound overhead. But Phoenix did. Unlike the rats, he’d been lectured his whole life about watching out for birds of prey, and though he hadn’t done a very good job of it, his two lapses had at least taught him something. Unfortunately, he had nowhere to duck for cover. Hordes of rats hemmed him in on his left and right, while in front of him was a big cleat, and behind him, a beer can.

  In another instant the rats heard the wing beats too, and looked up to see a huge hawk descending on them. Most froze in terror—but not the two mayoral candidates. Augustus dropped his sword with a surprisingly high-pitched shriek, leaped off the cleat, raced right around his constituents, and dove under the pier door. Beckett jumped off the cleat and threw himself over his sister to shield her from the bird’s talons.

  But the talons didn’t grab him or Lucy or anyone else. With a great flapping of wings the bird settled on the vacated cleat. At that point most of the rats had recovered from their shock enough to start rushing toward the pier, and in the melee the eldest elder got knocked over. As his two fellow elders dragged him toward the pier door, Phoenix called out: “Don’t worry! He’s a friend of mine!”

  This had little effect on the fleeing rats. Phoenix gave a shrug and turned to the bird, the very red-tailed hawk who’d grabbed him twice in the past.

  “Morning, Walter,” he said.

  “Morning, Phoenix,” said Walter, rearranging his tail feathers so the missing ones were less noticeable.

  In his rush to protect Lucy, Beckett had knocked her over, and they lay tangled on the ground, while their father was pressed flat behind his beer can.

  “These are friends of mine,” Phoenix said as the three got shakily to their paws. “Lucy, and Beckett, and their father, Mortimer.”

  “Nice to meet you, rats,” Walter said with a slight inclination of his head.

  None of the three said a word. Face-to-face with a hawk, even Mortimer was struck dumb.

  “You really never cease to amaze,” Walter said, turning back to Phoenix. “When the whole city went dark on my way home the other night, I nearly fell out of the sky.”

  Lucy wondered if this was the same hawk she and Beckett had seen from the pier roof, flying north with empty talons. But when she tried to ask, nothing came out.

  “Inexcusable of me to dump you and fly off that way,” Walter went on. “It’s been eating at me.”

  “Don’t give it another thought,” Phoenix said. “Without you I could never have gotten above that cornice. You were instrumental in saving our—their home.”

  As rats inside the pier caught the tenor of the conversation, some began to venture back out, though not very far.

  “Glad to hear it,” Walter said. “But when I think what that jet engine would have done to me . . .” A shudder rippled his feathers. “Anyway, I stopped by to offer you a lift.”

  “A lift?” Phoenix said.

  “I owe my old mother another visit. I’d be more than happy to drop you in Manahawkin.”

  “What’s Manahawkin?” Lucy asked, finally finding her voice.

  “Where I’m from in New Jersey,” Phoenix said.

  “I’ll take you right back to that pretty little pond,” Walter offered. “Maybe that pretty little squirrel will still be there waiting for you.”

  Giselle! Phoenix hadn’t thought of her in days. He wondered if she’d gone back to the pond from time to time to think about him. It didn’t seem likely. She’d switched from Tyrone to him so easily, she would probably have switched to another squirrel by now. Though she had seemed to like him. You have a wonderful tail, she’d said. In the sunlight you can see a little auburn in it. Aware of the sun on his tail now, he glanced around at it and almost gagged. Giselle would take one look at him and run!

  And yet, monstrous as he was, most of these rats were looking at him with admiration. Lucy especially.

  “Don’t go, Mr. Phoenix!” said the young rat who’d chased the foil ball.

  This ignited an outcry against his leaving. When one rat shouted, “Phoenix forever!” it turned into a chant that would have gone on and on if Beckett hadn’t opened his mouth again to speak.

  “You know, Phoenix, you haven’t done so badly here,” Beckett said. “All those articles about you in the papers.”

  “Articles in the papers?” Walter said.

  “And photos!” another rat cried. “Phoenix is famous!”

  Hearing this ruffled Walter’s feathers a bit, reminding him of his celebrity cousin. He squinted up at the sun and commented th
at it was almost noon.

  “If I’m going to get all the way to Cape May today,” he said, “I better be taking off. Want to come along, squirrel?”

  As Phoenix glanced around, the wharf rats all shook their heads, silently coaxing him not to go—even Junior.

  “Don’t forget, Mrs. P. mixed up that pilatory for you,” Lucy said. “I bet it’ll bring your fur back.”

  “I was hoping you’d be staying with us at her place,” Beckett said. “It’s very spacious up there.”

  Lucy didn’t add anything to this, but the look on her face was quite eloquent, and when the young rat who’d kicked the foil ball took hold of his tail, Phoenix felt himself surrendering.

  “I appreciate the offer, Walter,” he said, “but I think I’ll stick around.”

  Rats applauded and high-fived as Lucy and Beckett beamed.

  “I wouldn’t have minded the company on the flight,” the hawk said, “but suit yourself.”

  “Would I be overstepping to ask you a favor, Walter?” Phoenix asked.

  “Of course not. You saved my life.”

  “Could I ask you one too, Beckett?”

  “Name it,” Beckett said. “You saved our home.”

  Phoenix scurried into the pier and fetched a scrap of paper and a pen from Lucy and Beckett’s crate. When he got back outside, he asked Beckett to write something for him. Beckett took up the pen, and Phoenix dictated his note:

  “Dear Mom and Dad, I wanted you to know I’m okay. I just relocated to Manhattan.”

  This was the one thing that was really bothering him about declining Walter’s offer: the thought of his poor parents mourning his death. Walter and Mortimer looked on in amazement as Beckett scrawled the message on the piece of paper. “Relocated” and “Manhattan” were tricky, but he managed them.

  “Anything else?” Beckett asked when he finished.

  Phoenix nodded. “Maybe you could put: I miss you. I’ll try to visit someday. Love, Phoenix.”

  Other than leaving the e out of Phoenix’s name, Beckett completed the note in style. “Can your parents read?” he asked, handing it over.