“I was talkin’ to the President,” Uncle Brucker told him.
96
In the real Oval Office, the President and Uncle Brucker sat in soft leather chairs and discussed a few prime proposals. The President smiled and said it wasn’t his department, he would see what he could do. He answered one cell call, one slight wave of his hand. After that he let the phone ring and they discussed everything from rat tracking to politics.
The President thought he’d be a bad rat tracker. He just didn’t understand the nuances. Uncle Brucker smiled and said you’ll be surprised what you’re good at. Keep your eyes on the big things, don’t worry about the nuances. Beneath it all, Uncle Brucker and the President were very much alike.
He noticed that the President and the VP were so different. The President could communicate so much through a simple gesture. The VP will talk for hours and not be understood. The President had the light bouncy walk of a tennis pro. He didn’t play tennis, it came naturally to him, and the President had an agenda. The VP stumbled from briefing to briefing. He never seemed to go anywhere in particular, and he was sneaky.
Uncle Brucker moved his chair close to the President, and he told the President what he thought of the VP.
“I got my suspicions, Mr. President.”
“Shhhh! He’s standing outside the door.”
Uncle Brucker whispered, “I’m not sayin’ I know everythin’, but what I don’t know is pretty easy to figure out.”
“No, you can’t know everything,” said the President. “But there’s lots of stuff you can skip.”
“I’m not callin’ him a rat, but he does have certain ambitions I don’t have to mention. Everybody wants to be President, Mr. President.”
Elbows resting on soft leather, fingers curled under his chin, the President was deep in thought, also a little tired. To Uncle Brucker he looked like a sleepy addition to Mount Rushmore.
“The VP ordered the rat cakes,” the President recalled. “He ordered the cakes, not me.”
“You’d a remembered, right?”
“And he had a pocketful of change, as I recall.”
“So’s I noticed. . . . And that gun under his jacket.”
“Pistol?”
“Automatic.”
“No!”
“I seen it bulgin’!”
“He knows I won’t tolerate that! I put signs up accordingly!”
“Signs?” Uncle Brucker stood up and took the signs from his pants pockets. Front pocket, PRESIDENT ONLY. Left rear, No GUNS ALLOWED. Right rear, No VENDING. The sneaky VP had stashed the signs behind a radiator in the Vermont bathroom. “Signs! You’re trustin’ him with signs?”
The President sprung from the chair like a man on fire. You could see his mustache clearly when he got mad, and his eyebrows looked a little like a mustache too.
“That settles it,” he said. “The bastard’s been hanging on my coattails for four long years. Come November I’m showing him the door! That means there’ll be an opening for the Number Two spot pretty damn soon. But before I make my move I’d like to know I got my replacement. A Washington outsider, somebody who’s easy and confident. . . . Yes, Brucker, I‘ve seen your tours, and I’ve noticed how the people respond. Just give me the word. I’m proud to have you on the team.”
It was a lot to spring on my Uncle, but at this point in his life he was prepared for just about anything. He didn’t have to think-about it for long. He made his decisions quickly and he stuck by them.
“I appreciate the offer, Mr. President, but I’m tellin’ ya I can’t accept. Another place, another time maybe, but offhand I can’t tell you where or if ever. I got a serious affliction that’s draggin’ me down, my two-week assignment’s takin’ about a month longer than expected, and I got a boy at home could be starvin’ on my account. But I can recommend someone just as good, and he’s got the experience.”
97
The next VP presided at the Awards Dinner in the main dining room of he White House on Thursday.
Arriving early, Uncle Brucker found his table in the back of the room. He thought he knew everything about the White House, but he did not know the dining room expanded as the guests arrived. Curtains spread apart, walls retracted, Starburst chandeliers hung from the ceiling. An eight-piece ensemble performed on a slide-out stage. Two hundred tables. Eight hundred guests.
After the intro, the next VP sat at the table with Uncle Brucker. The VP was General Hardesty.
“I couldn’t ask for a better recommendation,” he said.
“There ain’t nobody better to recommend,” Uncle Brucker replied.
Soup. Salad. Entree. Dinner was nearly done. When would they present him with his award?
He had prepared an important speech. He would accept not for himself but for his men. For Ex-Lieutenant Willett, the Doc, Duffy, Midnight and Downie, for how they suffered and what they gave. It was all thought-out in his speech. The Boss let him practice that afternoon downstairs in the Guest Speaker’s Room.
But after a while Uncle Brucker realized he wouldn’t get a chance to give his speech. The meal was over and they didn’t seem to be handing out any awards. Three Martinis, one more beer. Cigars were lit around the table: the VP, a scientist, and a diplomat.
Uncle Brucker stood up. “Hey, where’s my award? I mean, for my squad. For my squad! I got a speech prepared for the occasion.” He was loud.
The violin stalled on a low note and the music faded out. Somewhere in the kitchen a busboy dropped a plate. Everybody looked toward my Uncle. General Hardesty realized my Uncle was upset. He put his arm around his old friend and drew him close.
As the music started up again he said, “The President doesn’t give out awards anymore, or even citations. Sometimes it’s just the meal. Your choice of dessert.”
Uncle Brucker only told me part of his speech and I have nothing to go by for filling in the rest.
But I know where to go if you want to check it out.
The entire speech is available on disc in the Guest Speaker’s Room on an unmarked floor somewhere beneath the White House. Public access, private booths. You can go there and listen Monday through Friday. First I’d check the hours.
Just take the zigzagging elevator down to the floor nobody knows about. At the end of the hallway there’s a door without a sign. The Boss is the old woman with the keys on her belt and no name tag. She’ll look you over without a smile, but don’t let it bother you. If the door is locked she’ll let you in.
98
Uncle Brucker finally made it home early Friday morning before I went to school. His two-week assignment had lasted thirty-six days.
I got out of bed and went to the window when I heard the President’s Limousine pull into the driveway. The Ram pulled in behind it.
The door swung open and the President got out the back with a coffee mug in his hand. Uncle Brucker followed. One secret service man came out the passenger side and another climbed out of the Ram. They stood by the limo in the shade of the willow and drank their coffee and talked.
The President drank from a mug marked President. The license plate on the limo also said President. My Uncle drank from a paper cup with a cardboard sleeve. The Secret Service men used plain, sleeveless, unmarked cups.
I didn’t know how he met the President or why he came home with him until later, but I figured correctly it was all about his Special Assignment. Somewhere along the way my Uncle took a bath and cleaned himself up. He looked a lot better than last time I saw him in the tunnel, that’s for sure.
Before the President returned to the limo, he shook my Uncle’s hand warmly, and he thanked him for saving his life and helping out around the White House, if only for a little while.
“Now that you’re gone,” said the President, “the White House just isn’t the same. I think I’ll relocate.”
“But you’re the President and the President lives in the White House.”
“The President lives where he wants. It’s in the contract. Keep a
bed ready for me, Brucker,” he said.
“Always.”
“Feather pillows?”
“You bet.”
And then the President and the Secret Service men got back in the limo and backed out of the driveway, and I saw it all from the bedroom window in the old house.
99
Uncle Brucker went directly to the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Boomers and popped it open with his thumb before the refrigerator door closed. Next he took the beer into the bathroom and stayed there for two flushes. He came out with a cigarette in his mouth and sat at the kitchen table and went through the mail and drank and smoked.
With eyes half shut he checked out the kitchen, and everything was the way he left it. The pile of mail on the kitchen floor by the closet. The ceiling tiles hanging down over the refrigerator, the water stains on the floor from when the pipes burst, the Heritage Mugs on top of the fridge.
A photograph of Grandma and Grandpa Thompson hung between the windows on the kitchen wall. It was taken thirty-six years ago and Grandma and Grandpa were old even back then. They stood hand in hand in front of the barn like they were welcoming him back home.
“Welcome back from the Rat Wars,” Grandpa Thompson said. And Grandma Thompson, “Brucker, you look more like your dad every day!”
And it’s true, now that he is as old as Grandpa in the picture. Shave off his beard, and I bet you can’t tell them apart.
At this point I might have dozed off for few minutes, but when Uncle Brucker opened my bedroom door I was back in bed with the sheet over my head.
I pulled off the sheet and sat up.
“Hiya, Unc!”
He fell back and bumped into the dresser, terrified, and he put his arms up to shield his face.
“Don’t spring at me!” he said.
“Sorry, Unc.”
“I come home, first thing he does, he springs at me!”
I should have realized right off that something was wrong by the frightened look on his face. It was a good joke, we should be laughing, but he was just plain scared. I should have known it, but I was so happy to see him I didn’t give it much thought, and I let it slip away.
Breakfast: bacon and eggs and toast. Coffee? Ready in minutes, steaming in his World’s Greatest Uncle Cup. Milk, sugar, spoon, plenty of napkins.
“More sugar, Unc?”
“That’ll do.”
“Any time,” I said. And then I had to ask him. “Was that who I think it is in the driveway?”
Uncle Brucker didn’t answer. He put a finger to his lips instead, which meant it’s not my place to ask.
He drank and I watched. He was slow sipping the coffee, slow eating the raisin cake. His eyelids were wrinkled old blankets that covered his sleepy eyes. I thought of what he went through the last few weeks and I forgot for a minute that I was with him.
Then he noticed the empty shelf in the living room, the high shelf where the War Medal should be.
“How’s my War Medal?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Dust it?”
“I don’t go near it”
“Bring it here, let’s see.”
This morning before sunrise I heard footsteps on the porch. Through the window I saw somebody running under the willows. When I went outside I found a paper bag by the door. The War Medal was inside. I took it in but I didn’t put it on the shelf yet. I left it in the bag on the counter.
“I ain’t been dustin’ it,” I said. “I moved it to dust around it.”
I grabbed the bag and backed into the living room and quickly put it back on the high shelf where it belonged.
I poured another cup. He drank about half and in the middle of it his half-shut eyes closed all the way, and he tilted forward.
His two-week assignment was over. During that time he traveled to another dimension, fought the rats, wrestled a few, and he drove to Washington DC and met the President. Why shouldn’t he be tired? Sleep caught up with him, and he couldn’t stay awake any longer.
I caught his cup before it spilled and eased his head down on the table. I didn’t wake him up or try to move him. Instead I went to the living room and got a pillow from the couch and put it under his head.
And he slept in the kitchen with his head on the pillow all morning. All morning long he slept, and he was still asleep on the table when I got home from school at 3:15.
100
The Ram was steady on the highway, as solid as a tank, but the Eagle had its peculiarities. It stalled out if you wake it up too early. Just let it sleep until ten o’clock before you turn the key, and don’t pump it.
The distress calls had piled up while he was gone. We had a lot of stops to make. The rats were causing trouble, and my Uncle insisted we get out early Saturday and waste no time.
“The Eagle ain’t an early car,” I told him. “It ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘till ten.”
It was only 9:35.
He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it a few times but the engine didn’t catch. The battery wore down in no time and the engine flooded out. That’s when I noticed the fat cop driving down the road. A minute later, he pulled into the driveway.
“If we took the Ram we’d be out of here,” I said. “You had to take the Eagle and you flooded it. Meet Mr. Trooper.”
“What did you do that sent him here?”
“Didn’t do nuthin’.”
“Then sit up straight and look him in the eye.”
The fat cop got out of the Police GT and closed the door. Uncle Brucker walked over and they shook hands. The cop said a few words to Uncle Brucker. Uncle Brucker said a few words to the cop. The cop leaned back against his car. Uncle Brucker leaned back too. The name on his sheriff’s shield was Trooper L. Ditton.
I don’t know if they were old friends, but you’d think so, the way they smiled and leaned and talked like they shared a lot of memories and hadn’t seen each other for a while.
Uncle Brucker had a way with cops. If they weren’t old friends already, they would be pretty soon.
As they talked Trooper Ditton glanced in my direction. His slicked-back hair looked like he just painted it on. He held his hat in his left hand and with his right he patted his hair to check if the paint was dry.
Then he put his hat back on and he walked over to the Eagle.
“This ain’t the first time I been here,” he said to me. “Out of the car, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
I’m in for it this time. He has something on me I didn’t know about, and it’s bad news. He going to arrest me for sure. The handcuffs hung from the Trooper Ditton’s belt. I got out of the car and put my hands out. Guilty.
But instead of cuffing me, he looked down at me with a toothy smile and said, “May I shake your hand, son?”
He held out his big, meaty hand, and I shook it.
“You must be proud of yourself,” said Trooper Ditton.
“Me? A little, I guess.”
“A little, he says a little.”
“I mean a lot.”
“Well, you should be.” He looked at me like I was a hero who just saved the town from giant killer insects. “And you’re . . . how old? Only sixteen?”
“Sixteen’s pretty old. I mean it’s old for me.”
“Smart for your age too, are ya? Readin’ on anuther level. I guess your education can wait a while, bein’ you’re advanced. But not for long or you got a weasel nippin’ at your ass. You know what I’m sayin’? Well, listen to me good, or you’ll find out first hand what you only want to hear about.”
Trooper Ditton’s front teeth stuck out on top and he had a goofy look on his face when he talked. He was a real friendly cop, the friendliest. He probably had a bunch of little troopers at home, and they loved him and he gave them bb guns and bikes for Christmas.
“You gotta stay educated no matter what,” I said. “Make up the time in night school. Or Saturday’s good.”
“Take all the equivalent courses you can,” said
Trooper Ditton, “It’ll add up in your favor. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I know you got the will. I can tell by your bright eyes. OK, I call you Bright Eyes? In the meantime keep up the good work. You hear me, Bright Eyes?”
“I hear you.”
“I know you hear me. What I’m askin’ is, you gonna keep up the good work?”
“You know I will.”
Trooper Ditton shook my hand again and said goodbye to his new old friend Uncle Brucker, and he took off his hat and tossed it on the front seat of the Police GT. The car sat kinda low with him in it. Better get new shocks. Try Koni adjustable. Or go on a diet.
Trooper Ditton started up his Town Car, and I went over and checked it out.
“What’s under the hood? A two-sixty-five, six?” I asked.
“Not any more. They put a three-twenty-four in last year.”
“Sure wish I could drive,” I said as he backed out of the driveway. “But I guess I gotta wait till I’m seventeen. Next year, I hope.”
Back in the Eagle. “What did you tell him, Unc?” I asked.
“Didn’t tell him nuthin’.”
“Did he say anythin’ to you? Why’s he lookin’ for me?”
“He didn’t bring up the subject and I didn’t ask him.”
“But you musta said somethin’.”
“There ain’t nuthin’ you can tell a cop. You can only imply. I don’t know what he got out of it, that’s up to him. All I can do is point him in the right direction. It’s a trick I’ll teach you sometime.”
“How about now?”
Then Uncle Brucker shut down again, just like before. Like somebody switched him off, he just shut down. Eyes shut, he opened his mouth and a word almost came out, but his head fell back against the headrest and a snore came out instead.
I’ll never know why that cop was looking for me, and there’s no way to find out. Unless somebody writes in.
I went inside the house and let him sleep. In a while I came out and then I went back in and let him sleep some more. Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer snored like a polar bear.
Uncle Brucker the Rat Killer Page 19