The Christmas Rat (6 page)

Standing there on the freezing street I decided it wasn't just that I didn't like Anje, I didn't want that rat killed. After all, it
was
Christmas. . . . People were supposed to be happy, full of life and love. Know what I mean? But this . . . all of sudden I had to do something.

I wheeled around and, walking fast, I went back to the basement. I gathered up all the cups and dumped them—along with the poison pellets—into one of those ash cans.

Only then did I go to the arcade. I loved that place. Bright, flashing lights. Sounds of explosions, shots, crashes. Like being inside a cartoon action show. I was feeling so good I stretched out my ten bucks for two and half hours of play. Awesome! Even better, in Time Crisis, I came in with one of highest scores, second only to Angel One.

A little after four that afternoon, I was home watching television, stretched out on the couch munching chips or something, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Eric?”

“Yeah?”

“Anje. The exterminator. Hey, bud, you mess around with those poison cups?”

I sat up fast. “Well . . .”

“Did you?”

“What do you . . . mean?”

“I put down some poison cups in your basement. The Eden Apartments. Do I have that right? Did you touch them?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

He didn't say anything. The silence went on for such a long time I wasn't sure he was still there.

But he was.

“Listen up, dude,” he said, his voice hard. “Listen up
good
. I've got a job to do and I intend to do it. That rat is going to die. Don't interfere. Don't get in the way. Don't mess with me. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm going down into the basement. I want you there.”

I swallowed hard. “Why?”

“Be there!”

“Yes, sir.”

Anje was waiting for me when I stepped out of the elevator.

He glared at me. His mustache made him look so fierce. It caught the light. “I just like to look a traitor in the eye,” he said. “Now get out of here and let me do my work,” he snapped. “And dude . . .”

I turned.

“Just so's you don't misunderstand, the only thing I hate more than rats is traitors.”

I turned away.

“And another thing,” he called.

I looked back.

“You made a deal.”

“I did?”

“Think about it.”

I retreated into the elevator. As the door slid shut, I could feel Anje's eyes on me. Man, I felt like crying. I was ashamed of myself. Only I was scared, too. And angry. All at once. I also felt I had to do
something
. But I didn't know what.

With a jab of my finger I punched the
LOBBY
button. When I got there I went to check the mailbox. We had some mail, but the only keys I had in my pocket were for the apartment and the storage bay. There was nothing I could do about it. But instead of going back up, I waited where I was.

When I heard the elevator open, and boots clumping away, I peeked around the corner. It was the exterminator leaving the building.

Soon as he was gone, I went back to the basement. Just as I had guessed, there were new cups. I scooped them up—along with the new poison pellets—and dumped them all into an ash can.

I was still angry, still scared, and pretty glad when I got back to our apartment. I double-bolted the door shut. But I had made up my mind. I didn't care what happened: I wasn't going to let that rat be killed.

“All this hanging around with nothing to do,” my mother said to me. “I think you're getting depressed.” She was smiling, trying to be kind. She and I were eating dinner alone because my father had to stay late at his store.

“Did you get out at all?” she asked.

“Went to the arcade.”

“Have fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Good! Just three more days,” she said, smiling. “Crazy Christmas will be over.”

“It's not just that,” I said.

“Oh, what is it?”

“It's . . . there's no one to hang around with.”

“No one?”

I explained the friend situation again.

“I'm sorry. Do you want to come to work with me tomorrow? You'll probably be bored there, too. But maybe not. . . .”

“I'll be okay,” I insisted. “But I was thinking, maybe I could get a model. Something to work on . . . I have some money.”

“Happy to help,” she said, patting my hand. “Oh, we got some Christmas cards. From your father's Aunt Becky, and the Fosters. The church too, I guess, though it wasn't signed. But it's not the one they usually send.”

After dinner I looked at the cards. The one from our church had a picture of the stained-glass window I liked, you know, Mary and the angel. The printed message inside read:

May the Message of Christmas Be with You!

At about eight there was a long-distance call from Aunt Thelma. Knowing that my mother would be talking for a long time, I grabbed the flashlight and slipped out of the apartment and went down to the basement.

It was dark, but there were no new cups.

At first I was puzzled. Maybe Anje had given up. That didn't seem like him. So I walked around looking for some clue about what he might have left instead. Sure enough, I found more pellets. They were hidden in odd, out-of-the-way places.

I gathered up as many as I could find—maybe fifty—and stuffed them into my pockets. I emptied them all into an ash can. But I didn't doubt he would bring more.

It occurred to me that there was no real garbage in the basement. I was pretty sure they incinerated everything. So I figured there was no food for the rat. My idea was, if I could leave some, maybe it would keep him from touching any of the poison I missed.

In the apartment, my mother was still on the phone.

I washed my hands, then collected some dinner scraps from the garbage pail, wrapped them in foil, and sneaked them back to the basement. I left the scraps near the place where I'd seen the rat digging a hole.

At the elevator, just before stepping into it, I called out, “Don't worry. I'll protect you!”

If I could keep the rat alive until Christmas I figured he'd be all right. The cold snap was supposed to lift. Then the rat could go away. It was only a matter of time. And holding off Anje.

As I slept that night I was disturbed briefly by the phone ringing. A glance at the clock by my bed told me it was two o'clock in the morning. When the ringing stopped I rolled over and slept, but not very well.

I
only woke when
my father sat on my bed.

“Eric?”

“Yeah . . .”

“You up?”

My eyes were barely open. “I think so.”

“Eric, I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“We got a call last night. Two o'clock in the morning.”

I was awake now, knowing what was coming. “You did?”

“A man said he was the exterminator in the building. Said you were interfering with his work. I told him he had a wrong number. But he insisted it was you. Knew your name. He was pretty angry.”

I stared at my father. “What did you say?”

“I told him he was nuts. The time and all. I told him to go away. That I would call the police.”

“What did he say?”

“He hung up.”

“Oh.”

“Eric, do you know anything about this?”

I thought for a bit and then I said, “Well . . . remember the exterminator that came?”

“No.”

“On Monday. Mom said he'd be coming.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said vaguely.

“Well . . . he wanted me to help him.”

“Help him with what?”

“Ah . . . extermination.”

“Hmmm. Not proper. Not at all.”

“I told him . . . no,” I lied.

“Good for you. That was the right answer. You have any idea what his name was?”

“Anje. Anjela Gabrail.”

“You sure that's it?”

“Yeah. There's a card he gave me in my pants pocket.” I pointed to the clothes that I had flung over a chair.

My father found the card and held it up. In the dim room its redness looked like a blood spot. “I don't want you to have anything to do with this guy,” he said to me. “I intend to call the company. I'll make sure he doesn't bother you.”

“I'll be all right.”

“I'm sure. But it's rather odd behavior. Two o'clock in the morning. Hey, but cheer up, fella. Only two more days to wait.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do for fun today?”

“Mom said I could build a model.”

“Great idea. Now get some more sleep. And make sure you don't let anyone in.”

I rolled over and closed my eyes.

When I finally got up I found a twenty-dollar bill on the kitchen table.
“Get a difficult model,”
the message read. My dad's handwriting.

I was surprised by the amount. It meant that he was worried about me.

After breakfast I turned on my computer and checked the local weather on the Internet. Not too good. A frigid Canadian air mass had simply stalled over our region. No letup in the cold. But relief would be on the way by Friday.

As I was using the computer, there was a beep, which meant I had some E-mail.

There was a message. It read:

Eric,

Don't mess with me!

Anje

I noticed his address. It was [email protected]. I deleted it fast then called Pete's, hoping his mother would be there. She wasn't, but this time their machine worked. I left a message, asking for his phone number in Florida.

I dressed for the cold, but before I went out I checked the basement. In the place where I had left the food, only a few crumbs remained. No foil either. Did that mean the rat had eaten it all, or had Anje taken it away? I didn't know.

I went outside.

Guess what? The cold was worse. I know that's what the weather people had said, but I hadn't really believed it. This was definitely worse than yesterday. People had scarfs around their noses and mouths. Walking fast. When they breathed it looked as if they were on fire. I tried running but it was hard with all the ice on the sidewalks.

The model store was part of a small shopping strip a few blocks from our street. I hadn't been in for a while, what with school and all. I thought about what I wanted to build. A car model? A plane? Maybe some fantasy or sci-fi thing. As long as it took a lot of time to make, I didn't really care. I wanted to keep busy, keep my mind off you-know-what.

When I reached the shop I stopped to look in the display window. Airplanes and rockets dangled in the air. A squadron of X-Wing Fighters seemed to be in a dogfight with multicolored World War I tri- and biplanes. On the bottom, an electric train went round and round a small oval of track. Tanks, armored vehicles, farm tractors, and sports cars were arranged here and there. Army figures and fantasy figures were ready to attack.

In the center of the railway oval was a Christmas scene. You know: Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus, along with the three kings and an angel who looked sort of like the stained-glass angel in our church. It was weird the way he kept popping up.

Around the infant Jesus were lots of animals and shepherds.

I studied the scene closely, but I didn't see a rat among the animals. Maybe rats weren't invited. Too ugly. And here I was, trying to save one. Too much.

To my surprise there were no customers in the store. I figured it was the cold. Behind a counter this guy was reading a magazine. He looked up, nodded to me, went back to his reading. For just a second I freaked. I mean, I thought he was Anje. But, of course, it wasn't. Couldn't be.

Anyway, the shelves were stuffed with boxes of models. There were racks of glue, paints, knives, and model magazines.

I walked around, looking at the pictures on the boxes, trying to decide what I wanted. It was hard to make up my mind.

The guy behind the counter looked up again. “How much you got to spend, dude?” he asked.

“Twenty and change.”

“That section over there,” he said, pointing toward the back of the store. “All twenty and under.”

I went where he told me and looked over the boxes, wondering if there was something I could get that would help protect the rat. You know, like a tank that really worked.

Then I saw these bags of plastic soldiers. They were dark green, maybe two inches tall. Each soldier was shooting a rifle. The bags had forty soldiers each and were only a dollar a bag. Made in China.

I did some quick figuring. Twenty bucks, twenty bags, times forty. Eight hundred soldiers! Totally awesome!

I bought them. The man behind the counter said, “War gamer, dude?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

I hurried back home, grabbed the white flashlight and went down to the basement. The lights were off. When I got to the place where I had seen the rat, I ripped open the bags and dumped the soldiers out. What I did was put the soldiers around the hole, guns pointing out. Like, see, they were defending the rat hole. It wasn't easy. Sometimes I knocked one down, which sent others over. Anyway, it took more than two hours to set the eight hundred up. A regular army. Awesome.

Of course, I knew perfectly well that there was no way in the world these plastic soldiers would help the rat, or hold back Anje. But, you know, I just wanted it to say, like, the rat wanted to be alive. I mean, Anje was in the army. He might get the point.

Up in the apartment I got some bread slices, then took them back with me and left them right by the hole. I figured my army wasn't just protecting the rat, but the food supply too.