He packed them in in Shankton. He packed them in in West Lindell. It’s true a lot of people came to see Gibney the Magician. Maybe East Lindell was a little slow for a town of eight thousand, but nobody was moping around the hall either.
Word spread about the man who knew everything about something that nobody knew anything about: Rat Talk.
22
“Gis-ka’-tca-te.” Good evening, folks.
“Ki’-ch-ja.” Welcome to my lecture.
There must have been one hundred people at the VFW Saturday night, seats for forty-seven. It was hot outside and hotter inside. Vandals stole the screens from the downstairs windows, and the sweaty janitor refused to open the windows because of the moths. No air-conditioning, and the fans were locked in the basement and the janitor couldn’t find the key.
A sign on the wall next to the window said No Smoking, but the smokers ignored it and smoked away. The sweaty janitor didn’t care. He stood on a tiny platform they called a stage, and smoked a fat cigar.
Gibney the Magician was scheduled to go on after my Uncle. He was the featured performer and they all came to see him. Little kids and their big brothers watched the magic man practice simple card tricks in the back of the room.
Uncle Brucker told me to check out the place, so I left my Identifiers in the Ram and tried to blend in and not look suspicious.
The key to blending in is looking like you belong. And belong is another word for familiar. One sure way to look like you belong and the place looks familiar is swing your legs in a lazy way when you walk.
So I swung my legs across the lecture hall and through the kitchen in a lazy way, acting like I’d been there many times before.
Remember, you’re looking for something suspicious, but you can’t look suspicious yourself. It takes practice, you’ll make mistakes. You learn how to do that, nobody will bug you and you can snoop around anywhere you want.
The audience was becoming impatient but Uncle Brucker had a lot to say. He knew it was just human nature, but learning Rat Talk was important and he hung in there just to increase their awareness.
“. . . Ca-ta-shoes. I like shoes. Here’s another example. No word for basketball in Rat Talk. No word for court either. That’s right, you use the English fill-ins once again. Therefore basketball court in rat talk is . . . basketball court.”
Then a man in the back of the room stood up and said, “I’ll give you ten bucks if you shut up.”
The man was dressed in black motorcycle leather and he wore a black helmet with red lightning bolts on the sides. All eyes turned to the man of leather and those fiery bolts.
“Take the cash,” someone said.
“Don’t go home empty-handed,” said the sweaty janitor.
“Hey, mister!” Uncle Brucker pointed to the man in the motorcycle helmet. “Take off that helmet, mister. I don’t trust nobody hidin’ his face. Take that helmet off and show me what I’m lookin’ at.”
“I ain’t takin’ it off. I ain’t answerin’ no questions,” the motorcycle man said. “I ain’t doin’ anythin’ you say unless I’m already plannin’ on doin’ it. Make that twenty and that’s my top offer.”
The man in the helmet waved a newly printed twenty above his head.
Uncle Brucker watched the bill go around and around, and he considered the offer. He had been offered ten dollars to shut up on several occasions and once he collected fifteen and change for gas and tolls, but no one had offered him twenty bucks to shut up until now.
The door opened and an old man entered the lodge. The audience spread apart as he made his way to the stage. Over his shoulder he carried a burlap sack with a rodent inside.
23
The old man held the burlap sack in one hand. He wiped his nose with the other as he walked to the stage. He was old, older than Uncle Brucker, older than anybody, and he was dirty, wrinkled, and bald. He had more teeth in his mouth than hair on his head, if you count the rotten ones.
The old man held the sack at arms length as he looked up at the man on the stage.
“If it ain’t my old friend Pete,” Uncle Brucker said.
“No, it’s Pete,” he said.
“Watcha got in that sack there, Pete?”
“Well, Killer,” Pete said, “that’s what I come here to ask ya. It’s some sorta rat, but I never seen such like it before. Got it right here in this sack. It’s a good sack. On the way over I says, I says, ‘Pete, that Rat Killer fella’s gonna be pleased and surprised when he opens this sack.’ Been carryin’ it all day lookin’ for ya. I ain’t askin’ nuthin’ in return, just a buck for my travels and a ride back to town. It ain’t the best sack, but it’s a good sack, and I couldn’t find no other.”
He handed the sack to my Uncle who held it in his fist. Old Pete folded his arms at his chest and stepped back and watched. Uncle Brucker put the sack down on the floor.
The rat clawed at the bottom of the sack and chewed at the top but he couldn’t get out. And then, quiet.
The rat had calmed down. No one said a word as Uncle Brucker took out his leather gloves and pulled them on, first his left glove then his right. They say you can hear a pin drop. Maybe if you’re close enough you can see it drop too, but I didn’t have one to find out.
“I’m about to untie this sack, if I got no objections,” he said. He spoke up so all could hear. “I don’t hear no objections,” he said, “so I’ll begin after I do my flexin’. Please step back while I’m flexin’.”
Uncle Brucker took a moment to flex his arm and leg muscles and get his circulation going.
Then, his blood revved up and speeding throughout his body, he bent down and untied the rat sack.
What Old Pete said was true. This strange dark gray rat looked like no other rat I’d ever seen, either. King-size claws with long curled nails and a twisted nicked-up nose. In many ways it didn’t look like a rat at all.
The rat stood frozen for a second or two and then it sprung to life. The people of Wrentham jumped back and knocked into each other. A pretty young lady in the front row turned pale and tilted backwards. Gibney caught her in his arms before she hit the ground.
That rat was quick, but my Uncle was lightning-quick. In an instant his left rat-grabbing hand held the varmint by the neck. With the index finger of his right poking hand he tapped the rat’s most sensitive area, between the eyes, and the rat was out cold. It all went so quickly. The audience applauded for a long time after they figured out what my Uncle did.
Uncle Brucker opened the rat sack. He poked the rat between the eyes once again, put it in the open sack and tied it tight. Now it was Gibney the Magician’s turn on stage. Uncle Brucker smoked a cigarette in the back of the room and we watched the show.
Later, when the show was over, we hung around and talked, and Uncle Brucker gave out autographs. And the people of Wrentham smiled and shook my Uncle’s hand and thanked him for a great evening and for taming that nasty rat.
The lady who had fallen into Gibney’s arms rested in her chair. Gibney the handsome magician pulled a cigarette from her ear, and she giggled like a pretty school girl on the way out.
The motorcycle man left a twenty on top of the sack for the Rat Killer. He held the helmet in his left hand. The sweaty janitor watched the Man put the bill down. Later on I looked for it but I didn’t find it. The janitor took the twenty when we weren’t looking and it’s in his wallet by now.
The VFW in Wrentham invited my Uncle to come back in two months for another great show.
We threw the rat sack in the back of the Ram. Uncle Brucker gave Old Pete a buck for hauling the rat around and another buck because my Uncle was a good guy and he felt sorry for his old friend Pete.
He promised to drop Pete off in town, so we all got in the Ram. I got the window seat. Old Pete sat in the middle.
“You smell like piss,” I told him on the way home.
“Bite me,” he said.
24
Uncle Brucker’s mind never quit. Ideas for
med and thoughts connected 24 hours a day. He never gave his mind a moment’s rest. There was always something going on inside his head. As far as I know he never took one day off from thinking.
Uncle Brucker got a wooden cage from out back and put it on the workbench in the barn. Above the workbench, the fluorescent light hummed and blinked. That bulb was older than McDermott’s cat and Uncle Brucker never replaced it.
He sat on a high stool at the workbench and examined the rat.
“What we have here,” he said, “is exactly what I figured.
Rodentas Polaris, known also as the homin’ rat or tunnel rat. He’s a nasty rat, ugly too, but also very special. His sensitive nose is ideal for sniffin’ out the contact point where dimensions come together. A native of the rat dimension, and a frequent visitor to ours, he’s adaptable to any environment and will make himself at home anywhere. It don’t matter which way his nose is pointin’ when he falls asleep at night, because he wakes up every mornin’ pointin’ north.”
After the Second Uprising we pushed the rats back and they’ve been laying low since then. For six long years the rats have been gearing up, preparing, building the bridges and digging the tunnels that match up one dimension to the next.
Now they were gathering at the other side of the Portal.
A million rat army, waiting for the go code. . . .
But where was the Portal? Where were the rats coming through?
Uncle Brucker was determined to locate that damn Portal and find out for himself. But it wouldn’t be easy. All he had to do was what the entire US Army and all its Generals could not accomplish.
Uncle Brucker sat on the high stool out in the barn, and he smiled. It was a big smile on the outside but it was nothing compared to how he was smiling on the inside.
Uncle Brucker had found the answer.
25
Nine o’clock in the morning we were back in the Ram. I was driver man, Uncle Brucker rode shotgun. We threw the cage with the rat in the back. Uncle Brucker wouldn’t tell me the destination, he just gave directions. And he didn’t say street names. Top secret missions like this, you have to lay low and keep the lid on.
“All we gotta do is let the rat loose and follow him to the Portal. Right, Unc?”
“You’re right,” he said. “And you’re wrong. You’re right we’re gonna let him loose. Yes, you’re right on that. But we ain’t gonna follow him to no Portal cause that damn rat ain’t goin’ near the Portal. Old Pete ain’t workin’ for himself. Old Pete was sent by the rats to confuse us and find out how much we know. Pete says one thing, we gotta figure on another. Sharpen up your pencil, Walt, and grab a sheet a paper. If we want to find that Portal we gotta make a reverse map going in the opposite direction. And then we’ll know which way we don’t go.”
We parked at the edge of town where the sidewalk ends and the woods begin. We waited while a Miata passed followed by a Sunday driver, and then we let the homin’ rat out of the cage.
Again, the strange rat stood for a frozen moment. His nose moved left and right and did a nose dance.
The rat took off and we ran into the woods after him.
Uncle Brucker’s plan worked only if the rat thought we were following him. That way he’ll be sure to lead us in the opposite direction from the Portal.
So we stepped on all the branches we could find and called out and told bad jokes, and we made a lot of noise trampling through the woods so the rat would hear us coming.
Uncle Brucker followed the rat’s trail and I followed him and worked on the reverse map as I ran.
We turned east but on the map I drew an arrow to the west. North meant south, left, turn right. I am a reverse cartographer, a map maker just starting out. You can look around but you won’t find many like me.
I thought it was a good plan. It sure sounded good when Uncle Brucker explained it to me. But a plan only works when you follow through. I checked my map. It was a mess of squiggles and lines going nowhere. How can you follow through with something that makes no sense at all?
“Hey Unc, where are ya?”
No answer.
Somewhere along the trail I lost track of my Uncle. I made a wrong turn and went off course and now I was paying for it. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know how I got here, and I only had my map to get me out.
I put a big X on the map to mark where I stood, and then things happened that are hard to describe and impossible to explain.
I took a few steps and suddenly the world got wobbly like in a funhouse mirror, only there was no mirror. One moment it was ten o’clock. Then the sun dropped through a slot in the sky and came out at two o’clock. And it was a different sort of sun, a dim washed-out sun that didn’t know if it was rising or setting. A wind came out of nowhere, then turned around and went back because it couldn’t make up its mind. Everything was sort of in-between and not quite this and almost that, as if the rats had broken the dials on nature’s tuner and screwed up the settings. And the wind came out of nowhere again, so strong it pulled the coins from my pockets and ripped the leaves off the trees.
I didn’t like being stuck between dimensions. I didn’t want to go to some dimension I didn’t know about. I was used to living in my old dimension where all my friends live, and I like it here.
Then somebody grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
It was Uncle Brucker.
“Follow me, Walt,” he said. “And please, don’t dally.”
26
I was lucky Uncle Brucker caught up to me when he did or I’d be stuck between dimensions, and not just for a day or two, but for the rest on my life.
He pulled me along with my left hand and with the right I held onto the reverse map. It had a big X to mark the crack. It was here, right here on this spot, where the army will build a Portal to the next dimension and sneak up on the rats.
This is important information, and we must get it to General Hardesty immediately so he could start construction right away.
Back on C-Street we got in the Ram and Uncle Brucker drove off before I could close the door.
There’s only one person set up with a direct phone line to the General, and that was the Local Liaison. Uncle Brucker could phone him, but he wasn’t authorized to use the number, and that meant we had to bring the LL the info in person. For that job we needed somebody who is reliable and ready to go, and I nominated me.
“Tell me where and I’m there, Unc.”
“I want to be sure you understand what it all means, Walt. The army gets this information it won’t sit on it. Maybe you ain’t aimin’ the gun, Walt, but your finger’s on the trigger, if you get what I mean. The moment the General gets this info, the war begins.”
“We’re losin’ time, Unc. I’ll never get it to the LL if you don’t tell me where to go!”
“You already know where to go, Walt. You’ve been there before with me.”
Mrs. Hobbs met me in the driveway of her house on South First Street. Today she wore a green skirt with a yellow apron and a red wig. I guess the colors were some kind of signal for those in the know, but she looked like a traffic light to me.
“Walt Thompson?” she asked with a pleasant smile.
“How do you know my name?” I said, and her eyes fired up, and I couldn’t speak.
“I asked if you’re Walt Thompson,” she said, but not right away. “I ask a question, you get the answer or we end it right here,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes ma’am what?”
“Yes ma’am, I am Walt Thompson.”
“This way, Walt,” she said, and her eyes lost their fire, and she was smiling like a sweet old lady once again.
I don’t know how she knew my name, but it didn’t stop there. She probably knew a lot of other stuff about me too.
I followed her around back to the little window under the kitchen. Mrs. Hobbs unlocked the window with a key. She opened it up and I got down on my knees and crawled in. On the other side of that w
indow, a crawlspace led to the Mobile Control Pod and her husband. Down there in the Communications Room of the Control Pod, a dedicated phone line connected Mr. Hobbs directly to General Hardesty and no one else.
Mr. Hobbs was’t stuck under there. That was a cover story, and Uncle Brucker didn’t come all the way out here every day just to have a smoke and talk about the weather. Mr. Hobbs was the LL to General Hardesty. For security reasons and for the General’s peace of mind, all communication with the General must be cleared with him.
Mr. Hobbs was a pale man with pale eyes that hadn’t seen the sun for a while. His thick glasses gave him frog’s eyes.
I didn’t waste time with words. He was no word waster either. Nothing said, I gave him the reverse map and a note from my Uncle and crawled under the house and out again. I’m not permitted to describe the room under the house or its contents for security reasons, but I can make a list (table, telephone, computer, folding bed, hot plate, TV, dehumidifier, refrigerator, recliner) and you can put it in the room any way you like.
On the way out I thought of what Uncle Brucker said about the rat war. I had handed in the info. It starts right now with me.
I listened but I couldn’t hear any gun shots or sirens go off in the distance. No ambulances screaming down the street. That night before I went to bed I checked all the TV news channels but I couldn’t find one special report and I didn’t see one headline in the papers the next day.
Like Uncle Brucker said, sometimes the less you hear the more is going on.
If that’s true I must have started something really big.
27
Uncle Brucker expected an official call Friday night or Saturday morning, Sunday at the latest. It was OK’d ahead of time by the LL and the General.
Thursday evening after we watched Cole’s Law, Uncle Brucker took me aside in the hall where the neighbors couldn’t see us and the postman couldn’t hear us and nobody would plant a microphone.
Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer Page 6