Nathaniel's Got the Blues

by David L Heaney

  Copyright © David Heaney, 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

  ISBN 978-0-9600593-3-1

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Author’s Note on Rats

  Misunderstood and maligned, rats have had a bad rap for a very long time. From their ugly tails to bearing the blame for the bubonic plague, to the horror movie Willard, rats evoke cringes and disgust. One evening, while waiting for the Tube on the London Underground, I watched a group of commuters observe several rats running among the tracks. Comments from those who watched included words like dirty, disease, and disgusting. I admit I was no fan of rats for the longest time. My kids were and had several pet rats, which included a well-endowed white-and-gray male they named Popeye, who, when viewed from behind, dragged a magnificent pair of gonads that presaged the birth and growth of the village known as Ratville.

  At this point in my professional life, I was busy, busy, busy. As a young minister, I was busy responding to most anyone’s needs other than my own family’s: I was busy being important, busy with an unending string of meetings, busy writing profound sermons. I was too busy to notice that two rats became eight, and soon sixteen, and so on. Ultimately, over forty rats lived in cages scattered through the house and backyard.

  My children and their mother thought it best not to mention the growing collection, until one day I came home early and witnessed my kids and their mom in the backyard, calling the rats as if they were calling children for dinner. The rats, to my horror, were all out of their cages and roaming freely about the backyard. My jaw dropped when the rats responded to being called. “Here, ratty, ratty, ratty!” they called. And just as if they possessed the flute of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the rats gathered around their feet, waiting for what was next.

  My family had created a playground for the rats, using a child’s hard-plastic pool, a massive carpeted cat’s scratch post with little boxes to hide in, which one of them had found in the trash, and a long plank of wood that served as a ramp from one structure to the other. This architectural marvel had been branded Ratville, and the rats frolicked around the structure, running between the pool and the carpeted boxes on the scratch post, appearing to enjoy themselves and their freedom.

  It reminded me a little of watching an ant farm, except with rats. If this wasn’t enough of a sight to behold, when the call went out that playtime was over, “Here, ratty, ratty, ratty!”—yep, you’ve guessed it—they all came and gathered around their keepers’ feet. My family knew all the rats by name, and each one was accounted for before it was lights out. They simply did not run away. And why would they? Life was good in Ratville.

  Yes, it was crazy, but I gained a new appreciation for the intelligence of rats and their capacity and desire for companionship. Over time, it was understood that there was a population issue that was very much out of control, and the sexes were separated. Ratville diminished in population, ultimately becoming a ghost town.

  Over the years, I have shared the story of Ratville many times with listeners who cringe and screw up their faces into expressions of terror, disgust, incredulity, and often sympathy as they consider forty or so rats running around the yard freely. I get that! But if you could have seen it … how they all came running when called … it was weird but amazing.

  With that said, I invite you to meet, or perhaps reacquaint yourself with, Nathaniel, a rat who appeared in my first book, A Yorkie’s Tale: Lessons from a Life Well Lived. Back then Nathaniel went on something of a quest with his pal Niles, a Yorkshire terrier, to attempt to learn how one should live a good life, given their alarming discovery that life does not go on forever, as they had always believed. They learned a lot on that journey about what was important and what was perhaps not so important. But alas, with the passage of time, the lessons we all learn often fade, and what seemed profound way back when now seems rather mundane. And it appears Nathaniel, who is now old, is engaged in yet another existential crisis, wondering if there really is anything more to learn as he wanders rather aimlessly through the winter of his life.

  I do hope you enjoy!

  David L. Heaney

  April 2020

  For

  my children,

  Shannon, Matthew, Kaitlin, and Patrick

  Sometimes a man stands up during supper

  and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

  because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

  And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

  And another man, who remains inside his own house,

  stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

  so that his children have to go far out into the world

  toward that same church, which he forgot.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke

  To everything there is a season, and a time to every

  purpose under the heaven.

  —Ecclesiastes 3:1

  You won’t tell me where you been

  Whiskey running all down your chin

  I smell a rat, baby

  I smell a rat, baby

  —Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton

  1

  Nathaniel stirred lazily. The rustling noise of leaves and newspaper scraps, of which his bed was constructed, was intended to signal Birgit that her husband was awake. As he lay there, he did what he did each morning after he woke: Nathaniel reviewed the growing inventory he was assembling of the reasons he was discontent. In the unlikely case Birgit was not aware that he was no longer sleeping, he indicated once again that he was up, only this time with a loud, deep sigh that devolved into an agonizing existential groan, rising up from that vault where he stored his litany of grievances and mounting despair.

  He opened his eyes and surveyed the darkened loft where he and Birgit had made their home nearly two years ago. He studied her, silhouetted against the diffuse morning light, as she sat staring out the entrance to their nest. Nathaniel had created a home for them under the eaves of a house rented by an old Guatemalan widower named Salvador Ochoa.

  Salvador, an immigrant from Central America, grew fruit with a green thumb. His orchard was prolific, making this an ideal location for the fruit-loving rat couple. Nathaniel never worried that their presence was upsetting to Salvador, because when caught in the act of munching on fallen fruit, the worst they heard from him was “Oye, Chico y Gordita! Not too much now, eh!”

  Nathaniel noted that sometimes Salvador collected the fruit, plucking it from the trees, stuffing mangoes and peaches in baskets, which he displayed on a stand in front of the house. Over the course of the day, people came and went in their cars, helping themselves to a basket and tossing coins, which jingled in the glass jar sitting on the stand counter.

  The thought of fresh fruit was making Nathaniel hungry, but he lay there searching for greater motivation to get out of bed. Finally, stretching first one way, then the other, he
winced as a sharp pain shot down his back to his leg, causing his foot to twitch as if he had stepped on a live wire.

  “OW! Jeez!” he yelled, loud enough to be sure his wife heard his cry, which, of course, would have been impossible to ignore unless she were stone-cold deaf. “Argh! I feel worse every morning,” he grumbled to himself. “I am too damned old,” he muttered, just loud enough for Birgit to hear. Then, in a loud voice, he hollered, “How long are rats supposed to live, Birgit?”

  She did not respond. It had become something of a daily ritual for Nathaniel to complain about things only he could address. His wife, he noted, nimbly swatted away his gripes like so many pesky gnats.

  Nathaniel, it seemed, had descended into a pit of chronic ailments and complaints, which, to be completely honest, both Birgit and he found wearisome. He went through the standard stipulations that supported the case for contentment. “I have a loving and faithful wife, Birgit, my partner since I was a young rat. We have many children, for which I am grateful. There are so many reasons why I should be content with my life, and yet … I am not. It’s not my wife, not my kids, not because I lack anything that someone else has.” He paused to think for a moment about how to precisely articulate his problem. “I’m all used up. That’s it. I’m all used up, and I am not happy, and I am OLD! And there is no escaping it!” Nathaniel bellowed.

  Every morning was the same. He opened his imaginary ledger, where he tallied up the reasons to be miserable on one side and the reasons to be happy on the other. “There is no escaping it! Happiness loses day after day!” he grumbled again, capping his feelings with the words “I will die this way … used up and unhappy … and that is the unhappy truth of my life!”

  “No escaping what?” Birgit called to him from the entrance to their nesting area. “I know there’s apparently no escaping your morning announcement regarding every little ache or pain you may have suffered in the previous twenty-four hours.”

  Nathaniel limped over to join Birgit under the eaves, where they looked out over the property. From their vantage point, they towered over the peach, plum, mango, orange, and loquat trees that covered Salvador’s large backyard. And there were the avocado trees, which always reminded Nathaniel of his old buddy Niles, a Yorkshire terrier who loved avocados.

  They sat quietly together, taking in what they could of the orchard, since the fog was especially dense this morning. Nathaniel momentarily wondered if perhaps it was the weather that was getting him down. But just like every other day, the sun would be shining by noon, after it burned off the daily morning fog. He considered it was perhaps Birgit, again. But he could hardly blame his wife, since he loved her very much, even though he might sometimes think she could lose a little weight.

  Birgit was considerably larger than he due to her Norwegian bloodline. Norwegian rats were larger than fruit rats, and she insisted that Nathaniel factor this into his thinking before he opened his mouth to make any comments about her. But lately she seemed to be expanding, requiring Nathaniel to gnaw back the edges of the entrance to their nest to accommodate her sizable girth. No matter, he loved her just the same. Yes, her auburn coat of soft fur had lost a bit of its sheen, her tail seemed to have shrunk somewhat, and she sagged here and there, but, c’mon, who didn’t?

  Nathaniel knew Birgit had never been very skilled at climbing, which he knew explained why she had fiercely rejected his desire to take up residence in the roof of Salvador’s home. But he knew food was her greatest temptation, and so she had acquiesced after he promised to fetch her dinner and bring it to their nest “from this day forward.” He had not kept his promise, of course, and Birgit was forced to lumber up and down the branches of the tall shrubs that grew along the side of the house, reaching up to the eaves. Every time he watched her struggle up the branches to their nest, he averted his eyes from her own, since he felt her look communicated her disappointment at his broken promise. He felt especially guilty when he was alerted to her arrival home by the flap-flap-flap sound her bad foot made when it struck the surface on which she walked.

  Birgit’s flapping foot had been caused by some sort of childhood injury, in which a large section of her foot was actually severed from the remainder. Nathaniel, however, could not recall the details of her story, and the disability itself, he regarded with indifference. Indeed, he found her distinctive walk rather endearing and useful as a vivid alert to her approaching presence.

  Just to be clear though, while unwilling to be overly critical of any of his wife’s shortcomings, it was not out of kindness but more because his shortcomings were even more apparent than hers. Nathaniel’s aches, pains, and limitations reminded him daily that age had taken its toll on him too. His eyes had clouded with ripening cataracts. The skin around his eyes sagged at the outer corners, causing him to appear perpetually tired. His head angled to the right because of an annoying and apparently chronic condition in his right ear. His bones ached, and small patches of his silver, black, and brown fur had fallen out due to some sort of miserable skin condition that caused him to itch all the time. But he most keenly observed the impact aging had on how he felt emotionally. And these feelings were harder for him to endure than all of the aches and pains combined. Yet the physical problems were easier to articulate than the ambiguous and conflicting feelings that raged within. How did he feel? Depressed, useless, tired, bored. Yes, that was all true but not exactly precise. What was that word he had heard someone use recently? It was right on the tip of his tongue … He felt … mel … melan … melanchol …

  “No escaping what?” Birgit’s face alarmingly appeared only inches from his own, causing him to lose the word he had been searching for.

  “Yes?” Nathaniel backed up, looking at her after reclaiming the comfortable distance between their two faces he required for personal space.

  “You were complaining that there was no escaping something. What are you trying to escape, Nathaniel?”

  “Oh … right.” Smiling sheepishly, he paused briefly. Then, smiling triumphantly, he sat back on his haunches and jabbed his paw forward as he proclaimed, “Melancholy.” He punctuated the proclamation of the word with a definitive nod, stating the word once again. “Melancholy!”

  “Nathaniel, what are you talking about? There’s no escaping what? Melancholy?” Birgit stared tentatively at Nathaniel.

  “No. I just remembered the word. It was the word I was trying to remember when you stuck your face in mine. I was trying to find a word that captured exactly how I have been feeling. I think melancholy might be a good word. Or maybe it’s something else. I don’t know,” he said, quickly growing bored with the conversation. Then suddenly his interest in the subject was revived as another word seemed to rest on his tongue. “Wait, maybe, um … maybe blue is a better word. Yes, blue is quite accurate. I’m thinking of a dark blue. Oh, never mind. What was it you wanted, Birgit? Something about escaping?”

  “You said there is no escaping it. But you seem to be paying me no attention, so never—”

  “Ah! Escaping. As to no escaping … why, I know precisely what I’m speaking of. Regrettably, you were not listening! There’s no escaping … well, there’s no escaping that I am all used up! That’s it. Used up. Nothing left to give. Nothing left to learn. Nothing more to do but the same thing I did yesterday and the day before that and so on and so on. And it leaves me feeling, yes, melancholy. It leaves me feeling blue … very, very blue. This, Birgit, is how I would sum up the state of my soul. It’s blue. Like a big ugly bruise. There is no escaping this feeling of melancholy … this feeling of blue, blueness, uh … bluishness!”

  Staring past his wife, he rambled on in a way that even he had to admit was as foggy as the weather outside their nest.

  “Oh, there are the children,” he went on, “and the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren, and of course, their children, whose names I can’t remember. But that’s because I never see them.”

&nb
sp; “You don’t want to see them, Nathaniel. You seem to cherish your unhappy solitude.”

  “That’s because I’m all used up, Birgit. I feel as if I have nothing more to give … nothing more to learn, nothing more to contribute. Everyone just wants to pick my bones.” Nathaniel then stopped, a look of surprise spread across his face. As if he had suddenly awoken from a nap, he scanned his surrounds and whispered conspiratorially, “And you know what, Birgit? I’m kinda mad about it! Yeah … really, I am. I feel angry. I feel bored. No one cares about the big lessons I learned as a young rat. It’s old news, and honestly, I don’t even care and hardly remember what I learned. So I learned we don’t live forever.” He laughed and turned to Birgit, cocking his head to the left, then wincing because it hurt his ear. “And what has that done for me except to make me anxious that time is running out to discover how to be rid of this melancholy … how to be done with these blues?” Nathaniel nonsensically chattered on, aware that he was not speaking to anyone except himself.

  When he noticed Birgit staring at him, her gaping mouth betrayed how taken aback she was by the intensity of his blathering. It must have been a terrible shock for her, he considered. He was well aware that he had always been such an easygoing rat. So he did feel sorry for all his complaining, as she seemed uncharacteristically unsure about how to respond to his mood changes. Still, he saw no need to apologize, since these were his feelings, which he had always been told were neither right nor wrong. They just were. Wasn’t that how he’d heard it? Nathaniel had always celebrated his wife’s stability. She was his rock, not at all prone to emotional lows herself. Indeed, he supposed she must have been completely baffled, having never experienced anything like he described. She simply didn’t seem to know what to say.