by Drew Perry
He stands in the dark of his house, waits. Hears it again. The scratching. He’s pretty sure it’s in the closet, whatever it is. He stands still to make sure he’s right. Yes. The closet. He walks over there, carefully, don’t creak the floorboards, turns the knob as slowly as possible, opens the door. The sound stops, starts again. Jack reaches up for the pull chain for the light. He pulls it and squints in the sudden brightness and the noise stops altogether. Jack waits, counts to ten. To fifty. And the noise starts back up. It’s down in the corner, by the baseboard. He moves a box. The noise stops, starts. And then he sees it: Two paws hanging over the top of the baseboard, a nose sticking up over the top of a chewed hole that runs between the baseboard and the bottom of the wall. It’s a rat. There is a goddamned rat in his house. Furry, pink nose. Like a pet store rat. Chewing on his house. Right at first he can’t quite process it. He stands there and watches it chew. There’d been noises in the attic last month, Beth after him: What if it’s a raccoon? she’d said. Or a possum? I don’t want a possum in my house.
It isn’t a raccoon. Or a possum.
How do you know?
It’d be heavier.
How much heavier?
Heavier. It’s squirrels or something, in through the roof vents, probably. No big deal. I’ll set a trap up there.
She’d looked at him like he would never set a trap. He never set a trap. And now it isn’t squirrels. It’s a rat. Can you even have one rat? It’s probably seventeen. A rat in his closet chewing a hole in his house, and sixteen more in the attic, down through the walls, cheering him on. Go for it! Let us know what it’s like on the inside! Jack stands there in his hallway and tries to figure out what to do. The house is still except for the chewing, the ceiling fan, a few other creaks and groans as it settles down and down into its foundation. The whole place will fall in on them in the morning. He picks up the first heavy thing he can find, the wok that’s in the closet now, along with most of the pots and pans, because of his fine work on the kitchen. He takes the top off of the wok—thinks it through enough to get the top off—and gets a good hold on the handle with his right hand, grabs the edge of the rim with his left, leans into the closet and just starts banging away at the wall, at the rat. It makes a hell of a noise, the wok ringing like a bell against the wall and the wood floor. He hits again and again, grunting each time with the effort. The rat disappears and Jack stops, stays like he is for a minute, peering down into the hole. It’s pitch black in there. The closet light throws out weird shadows all around him. He is naked and tilted headfirst into a closet, looking into a hole that leads into the crawlspace, hitting a rat with a wok. He stands back up. His hurt toe is throbbing, maybe broken. But the rat’s gone. He has run the rat off. He’s a conquering hero. And then there’s Beth, standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing a long T-shirt, his, something she’s pulled on. She folds her arms. “What are you doing?” she asks him.
Jack does try to guess at what she sees. Her naked husband, wok in one hand and rubbing at his face with the other, two weeks without shaving, half-assed beard coming in around his jaw. He sucks his stomach in. He’s not fat. He’s just not twenty-one. He stands straighter, squares his shoulders. Here stands the brave warrior, etcetera.
“What are you doing?” she says again.
“There was a rat,” he says, pointing at the closet with the wok.
“A rat?”
“Yes.”
“A rat.”
“In there,” he says.
“In the house?”
“In the closet.” It seems like an important distinction.
“Great,” she says. “Perfect.” She looks at Hen’s doorway. “He didn’t wake up, right?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“I mean, while you were dealing with the rat in our house. In our closet.”
“I got rid of it,” he tells her. “It left.”
“You used that?”
“It was what I could find.”
“You’re going to wash it, right?”
“Sure,” he says.
“Jesus Christ, Jack,” she says. She pulls at her hair, at a knot. “I mean, this is just like you, isn’t it?” She turns around, heads back for their bedroom. “This is just exactly like you.”
He stands there in the hall after she closes the door. He turns around and puts the wok back on its shelf, turns out the light, scratches himself. She’s right, is the thing. She always is.
Jack and Rena eat what they can of the rest of the pizza and watch the girls sing songs for each other, for their skinny boyfriends, for Jeff and Aaron. Jeff and Aaron sing a few more by themselves. When Jack and Hen and Rena leave, the place is jammed full, more kids, more girls, plus a few older men, standing at the bar, leering at the girls, looking at their asses. These men sing, too, Jimmy Buffet songs, spill their beers on the ground in front of the microphones, down the fronts of their tucked-in golf shirts. Jack pays the bill, and they go out to the parking lot, where the noise is damped down to the dull thump of the bass line, muted screams when the crowd recognizes another song. Hen’s tired, a little overloaded, but he’s basically fine. Jack gets him belted into his booster seat. In the parking lot, under the green and red cursive Gubbio’s sign, under SATURDAY’S ARE KARAOKE NIGHT’S AT GUBBIO’S!, Rena pushes Jack up against the door of the truck, leans in, kisses him on the neck. He’s surprised enough, the requisite amount, the amount he’s always been when someone’s been willing to touch him on purpose. But what did he think they were doing, anyway? Pizza, karaoke, drinks in the new back yard, Take me to Gubbio’s—he’s let it happen, or asked for it, or both. He’s able to look behind her at the parking lot, at the cars all lined up, at cars running east and west out on the highway. The glow of the mall a half-mile up the road lights the horizon blue-white. Jack wonders if Hen’s watching, if anybody else is, what this looks like to somebody who isn’t him. She moves to his mouth. She smells like pizza. Even if he was aiming toward this, he knew, too, that she would have to be the one to come to him, knew he wasn’t capable of doing it. Rena pulls back from him, says, “You’re not kissing me back.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says.
“Kiss me back, you fucker,” she says, and he does what she asks. Her mouth is small. Her teeth click against his. She reaches behind his head, takes hold of his neck. She feels like something metal, something stretched, bent. She pulls away again, sniffs. She says, “I’m not crying.”
“I know,” he says.
“This is not good behavior,” she says. “This is not the behavior of model citizens.”
“I know,” he says. “But it’s OK.” He wants her to keep making decisions. More than anything, that’s what he wants.
“Take me to Mulch City,” she says. “Stop off somewhere and buy us something to drink and take us to Mulch City.”
“It’s not called that,” he says.
“I know,” she says. “Take us there anyway.”
He checks his watch. Not eleven yet. The Shell should still be open next door. He opens the door for her on her side, belts her in, too, and then walks around the front of the cab, running his hand along the hood. It’s a warm night. The weather pattern’s changed. Things have shifted. He’s kissed her back. He takes her to PM&T.
Here’s one set of things he knows for sure: Hardwood. And shredded pallets, red-dyed or black. The black isn’t quite black. It’s more dark brown. Pine nuggets, mini and regular. Cedar for dog runs, or for keeping the bugs down. Cypress won’t float. Wheat straw, pine straw. A live snake once came out of a bale Butner was pulling for delivery. He kicked it out of the truck with the toe of his boot, said, Goddamn snake in the pine straw. You see that son of a bitch? Ought to charge extra for the petting zoo. Top soil. Compost. Shredded leaves. Regular shredded, a composite mix of everything Canavan and all the other tree guys bring in. For general use. Gravel, river rock, stones, boulders. No rubber mulch. He’ll never carry it. The dyed shredded pallets look fake enough
. Rubber mulch is shit.
Here’s another: He knows, now, part of what must have been running through Beth’s mind when she drove to Canavan’s that night, rang his doorbell, stood out on his porch, waiting. He knows what Canavan must have thought when he opened the door and there she was, when he saw what kind of trouble he might be getting himself into. It doesn’t make anything any easier, doesn’t make it make any more sense, but now he knows.
Cherry, in the Shell, gives him a serious look when he buys the beer, a twelve pack, one of the long skinny boxes that’s supposed to fit in the refrigerator better. He also buys a bag of ice and a five-dollar Styrofoam cooler and a Junior Big Ol’ Bucks lottery ticket, which he scratches off right there. Nothing. By the time he gets back out to Rena, she’s found a few towels behind the seat of the truck, has made Hen a bed in the front seat. “He was freaking out a little bit,” she says. “He wanted to get down, so I let him, and all he did was run over there to the hose thing and touch his forehead to it a few times. Then he came right back.”
Jack says, “How’d you get him to lie down?” The cooler squeaks against his leg.
“I didn’t, really. He did it on his own. He’s got that tree book underneath him.”
“Good.” Jack puts the cooler on the hood of the truck, looks in at Hendrick, who’s not asleep. He’s lying on his side, eyes wide open, picking with one finger at the fabric of the seat.
“You know I’ve never actually been here?” says Rena. “I mean, I’ve driven by plenty of times, and I beep at you guys, but I’ve never actually been in here.” She looks around. “It’s kind of cool.”
“You’ve never come over with Canavan when he’s dropping shit off?”
She lets out a long breath. “You know what he smells like at the end of the day?”
“Basically,” he says, “I do.”
“Like gasoline,” she says. “Like a lawn mower, actually. Like my dad.” She’s got her back to him, arm on the hood. “He smells like my dad would smell Saturday afternoons when he cut the grass. We had a big lawn. He’d stop in the middle, have lunch, and make the whole kitchen smell like lawn mower and sweat. Then he’d come back in when he was done and drink a beer and sit in his chair and watch golf on TV. During the week, before he’d come home from work, I’d sit in that chair and smell him. I mean, I love that smell.” She kicks at the gravel. A big semi turns left through the traffic light, and then there’s quiet again. “Like that first week in spring when suddenly everything smells like cut grass and lawn mowers again? But it’s my dad’s smell. I don’t need my boyfriend smelling like that, too. So I wait for him to come home. I wait for him to shower.”
He wants her to tell him other things. He wants to know about her dance recitals, her failed tryouts for the soccer team and the school play, her broken arms. All of a sudden, he wants to know everything. He says, “How did you end up here, anyway?”
“Here where?”
“Here in North Carolina. At Kinnett. With Canavan.”
“We never told you guys any of that before?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Tell me again.”
“Can we go up on one of these piles first? I want to sit up there. It feels like we’re at some ancient ruins or something, all these mounds everywhere.”
“Sure,” he says.
She points at the pine bark. “How about that one?”
“Ants live in it,” he says. “Let’s do the cedar.”
“Ants?”
“They nest in it.”
“What do you tell people who buy it?”
“Wear gloves,” he says. “Plus it’s just black ants. It’s not fire ants or anything.” He walks over to the cedar, then up in it, carrying the cooler, his feet sinking in to the tops of his shoes. He makes it to the top, ten feet off the ground, and turns around to help Rena, who’s scrabbling up after him on all fours. She’s got another towel from the truck slung over her shoulder. They get set up, spread the towel out, and he gets beers for each of them.
“You can see a lot more from up here,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “The inside of the dump truck, the roof of the office, the satellite dish over there on the Shell—”
“I think it’s pretty up here. Don’t ruin it.”
“Who says I don’t like looking at the bed of the truck?”
“Just don’t fuck it up, OK?”
“I’m trying not to,” he says.
“Good,” she says. “Keep at that.”
From up here he can see Butner’s tomatoes all lit up by the light they’ve got hung up on the pole, their only security measure. It’s all an enormous tangle, vines on top of vines. There might be fruit in there already, little blotches of red in all that green. Soon enough they’ll get the tables set up out front, sell them for two bucks a pound. Drag the big plywood sign back out from behind the office: TOMS. Jack wonders how much Butner might have stashed away in coffee cans in his back yard, under his mattress. Thousands.
Rena says, “The market wasn’t great, and my research wasn’t great. And I didn’t care much about being at an R-1.”
“What?”
“You asked how I got here. I applied, and they hired me. Same as Beth.” She leans back on her elbows. Her shirt bunches up around her sides. “And as for Terry, we met in a plain, dumb way. Over sandwiches at this place that’s not even there any more. We were in line, ordered the same thing, and he asked if I wanted to share a table. He turned out to be funny. I’d given up on finding anybody at Kinnett. Everybody’s either already married, or they’re sociopaths. One of the two. Do you know Stephen Budbill, in Accounting?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“I dated Stephen Budbill for a few months. Then he wanted me to go on this trip with him, to Chattanooga, to some conference thing where people dress up like wizards and cast spells on each other and pretend to stab each other in the woods.” She shakes her head. “My boyfriend was a wizard. And not even. A pretend wizard. He had a purple cape. He showed it to me.”
“Did you go to Chattanooga?”
“No. But he made me go to some local thing in Raleigh one weekend. There were these guys there, in the parking lot of this branch library, hitting each other with swords. Real swords. And they’d made their own chain mail. Stephen knew them. After that I broke up with him. So Terry seemed—I don’t know. Normal. Not a wizard. That’s all I’m looking for, really,” she says. “Give me a guy who’s not a wizard, and I’m fine.”
“I’m not a wizard.”
“I know. I looked all over your house for the pointy hat.”
Moths are circling in the lights at the Shell. A car rides by on 61, music blaring out the windows, bass rattling the trunk. She yawns, and he watches her neck go tight, loosen again. “How long do you think this whole thing might go on?” he says. He’s asking her, he realizes, because he thinks she might know the answer.
“That depends on what you mean.”
“How long do you think Beth’ll live with Canavan?”
“I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t know whether him cutting his leg off will make this go on longer or not.” She picks at the cooler. “What about you? How long are you planning on living in your dollhouse?”
“I like it over there,” he says. “I like the lawn furniture.”
“That’s because you’re still just playing at it,” she says.
“Maybe so.”
“You want to be able to set your shit up wherever you decide.”
“I like sitting in the plastic chairs and watching TV,” he says.
“You seem to, anyway,” says Rena.
“How long are you going to stay in the condo?”
“At least as long as Beth’s living with Terry,” she says. “So we’re back to the beginning.”
“What the hell’s happening here?” he says.
She digs a toe into the cedar. “You ask too many questions.”
“Beth says the opposite.”
“I’m still not sad,” he says. “Just so you know.”
“Oh,” she says. “You’re sad. Look at your fucking house.”
“I don’t know,” he says.
A car pulls into the Shell, up to the air and vacuum. “Why’d you kiss Sarah Cody?” she asks.
A man gets out, puts money in the air machine. Jack can hear the coins landing in the bottom of the canister. The compressor kicks on, and he works on his left front tire. “I kissed Sarah Cody because she was cute, and because she kissed me.”
“So why’d you kiss me?” she asks him. “Same reason?”
“That,” he says, “and I enjoy your company.” And other reasons he’s having trouble naming.
The tire guy leaves, and the highway goes still. No cars, no trucks. She says, “Alright. Here’s what I propose we do.” It is hugely quiet. “We are going to sit up here and finish our beers,” she says. “And we’re going to wait until one more car comes into the gas station.” She sips, wipes her mouth. “And after that, I think I’m going to throw myself at you, and we’ll just see what it is that happens next.”
“That seems a little dramatic,” he says.
She holds up a handful of cedar. “I’m sitting on the world’s largest hamster cage,” she says. “My boyfriend tried to maim himself, and your wife is over there washing his socks. We have been to Gubbio’s. We are now right here at Mulch City. The situation calls for drama, Jack.”
“You think so.”
“I do think so,” she says.
Three cars go by, all in a row. None of them stop at the Shell. Jack drinks his beer, looks down at the dump truck. “Do you think he’s actually asleep in there?”