to kill a rat
by James Moody
Daddy never did like to be bothered too much. “I stand on my feet ten hours a day,” he’d say. “When I come home all I want to do is take it easy!” After supper, he’d go to his big easy chair and “easy” would take him into its arms of rest. It wouldn’t be long before his snores would echo from the den throughout the house, all the while the TV’s salesmen blaring their messages to deaf ears.
“But Daddy,” I said to him one night before he could get to his pre-dinner snooze, “there’s a rat that’s been nibblin’ at the floorboards back where the washin’ machine is. I can’t sleep at nights. That thing scares me.”
“Boy, you scare too easy for a ten-year-old!” he instructed. “You can’t let a little thing like a rat scare you outta your sleep. Why, I can sleep through a hurricane. In fact, I have slept through a hurricane. I remember back in nineteen fifty…”
Mama broke into the conversation before he could tell us his Hurricane Hazel story…again. “Henry, you’ve got to do something about those rats. It’s not just Robbie’s sleep that’s a problem, but they’re starting to gnaw a hole in the floorboards the size of a watermelon. You’ve got to get them out somehow or we’re gonna be invaded by rats.”
The Pearson household was use to this kind of excitement and activity. My daddy, though he liked to sleep, always did manage to bring some purpose to our lives.
“Okay, Honey. I’ll see what I can do after supper. By the way, what are we eatin’ tonight? Fried rat tails and rodent jowls?” He laughed a big one and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, Son. We’ll get those lousy rats outta here. There ain’t a Pearson around that lets a beady-eyed little varmint take up homemakin’ in his castle.”
No matter what she was talking about, Mama’s tone was always as sugary and mellow as a pitcher full of sweet iced tea. Daddy, on the other hand, had all the grace of an elephant with a trumpet blast to match.
At the supper table my older sister, Jenny, sat with her boyfriend, Billy Bunkum. Mama told her that he could eat supper with us tonight since school was about to start again and we might not have time for these kinds of get-togethers in the near-to-distant future. At least, that was what Mama hoped. She didn’t quite like the looks of Billy, but as she told daddy oftentimes, she just couldn’t “put her finger on him.”
“Have some more chicken legs there, Billy,” my daddy said to him while holding out the plate. “You look like you could use a few pounds there, Son.”
“Thanks, Mr. Pearson. I sure do appreciate y’all lettin’ me come tonight. I know school is starting next week, and I’ll be real busy with studying and all. I don’t ‘spose I’ll be able to get ‘round much. And of course, Jenny’ll be real busy too, I know.”
“You’re gettin’ pretty close to graduatin’ age, ain’t ya, Billy?” Mama questioned him. “What do you plan on doing after you leave high school?”
“Oh, yes ma’am. I’ll be out….uh…I mean finishin’ up real soon. I’m gonna apply to lots of colleges, Mrs. Pearson. I’ve even had one or two of ‘em looking at me for a baseball scholarship. I hope I can get into a good one and get a good degree in business or somethin’—you know, somethin’ to fall back on if the athletic side don’t quite work out.”
“Sounds like a wise plan to me,” Daddy said.
“Billy might even play baseball at East Carolina University nearby,” Jenny added.
“E.C.U., huh? Well, that sounds mighty promisin’. You got some good prospects there, Son,” Daddy offered. Billy smiled and kept eating.
I decided to join the conversation. “Do you plan on marryin’ my sister?” I said sincerely and innocently enough. I didn't get the answer I expected, though.
“Boy, you keep your nose outta your sister’s business, you hear me?” Daddy rebuked me. Evidently, my question did not fit into the flow of dinner talk. Jenny turned her eyes down toward her lap and Billy muttered something unintelligible and stuck some more chicken in his mouth.
Mama jumped in faster than you can slap a tick. “You don’t ask those kinds of questions, Robbie,” she explained. “Besides, that ain’t somethin’ that’s nowhere near ready to be talked about, right Billy?” Billy stuck some more chicken in his mouth.
After our usual dessert of vanilla ice cream and pecan pie, Jenny and Billy walked out to the front porch to swing. Mama cleared away the dishes, and Daddy and I began our rat-hunting safari. It was a hot August night and most of the windows in the house were open. Even though the sun could fry an egg on the sidewalk this time of year, a coolish breeze fluttered the drapes hanging open at the windows. The sun was just setting and the blaze of the day was just starting to dissipate. I could hear the whisper of pines out back as the wind blew through them. Daddy went to his TV room to get his shotgun. Mama saw him taking it down from over the fireplace.
“Ain’t that a little extreme, Henry?” she asked. “Do you have to use that to kill ‘em with? Can’t you use a big stick or somethin’?”
“You want the rat out. Right, Doris? You want to get rid of ‘em? You don’t want our boy here to be wakin’ up in the middle of the night with a rat nibblin’ at his toes, huh? You got to deal with him hard. You got to make sure to send an unmistakable message to those rats. There ain’t no little sneaky critters gonna take over our house. I’ll show ‘em what happens to ‘em when they try!”
Daddy did nothing by half measures that’s for sure. When he set to work on a task he was going see it through to the end no matter where that end might lead.
He stood in the back room, one hand grasping the shotgun, the other hand waving in the air to accompany his instructions: “Now the first thing, Son, is to get ‘em outta that hole. We got to get that rat and whatever friends he has to show his head. Now, I want you to go around under the front porch and shine that there flashlight toward the back of the house. And throw a couple of tiny rocks back this way to make some noise to scare ‘em out.”
“Okay, Daddy.” I ran out the back door and around the house with all the mercurial haste and seriousness I could muster. I was on a mission. Our adventure had truly begun. I arrived at the front of the house where the lattice work wrapped around the bottom of the porch. On one end the lattice opened like a gate. I quietly pulled it open and crawled underneath the porch to carry out my assigned tasks. I tried to keep the noise down so as not to disturb Jenny and Billy Bunkum. I shined my light underneath the house back toward where the interlopers had invaded our abode. As I did so, I heard Billy talking about Daddy.
“Your old man is so gullible, ain’t he, Jenny? I mean, does he really think I could get into a college and get a baseball scholarship so easy?”
“But you are applying to go to college aren’t you, Billy?”
“Yeah, yeah, but I don’t think that’s what I want to do really. I’d rather spend some time down at Wrightsville Beach, maybe enter a few surfing contests and, who knows, maybe even get on the pro circuit. That would be the life, don’t you think, Jenny?”
“Well, I don’t suppose it sounds too bad,” she said slowly and rather unconvinced.
“Anyway, your dad and mom are pretty easy to fool. We can stay together whatever happens, right? It doesn’t matter where I am. We can always tell ‘em I’m away at college. How will they find out any different? And if worse comes to worse, we could elope. Would you do that, Jenny? Would you marry me and go away with me to live at the beach?”
My ten-year-old vocabulary had not expanded enough to include the definition of “elope” at that point in my academic career; I did, nevertheless, understand the words “marry” and “go away.” I also understood something else about Billy after overhearing that brief conversation.
I had shined my light under the house. I had thrown the few stones I’d picked up from the driveway. Having overheard the conversation between my sister and her future prospect I decided to reveal my presence. I came out from under the porch and jumped up to where the two sat swinging.
“You can’t talk about my daddy like that!” I yelled at Billy. “You were lyin’ all the time. I’m gonna tell my daddy on you!”
“Robbie, you shouldn’t eavesdrop on people like that,” my sister screamed.
“I’m not dropping e’s, and I don’t care if I was! I’m gonna tell Daddy,” I screamed back.
Billy piped in, “You come back here you little pipsqueak. If you breathe a word of this, I’ll squash you flatter than a dead possum lyin’ on Highway Sixty-Four!”
His words addressed the breezy night air, for I had already jumped down from the porch and had begun to run as fast as I could toward the back door of the house. I ran in the door where the washing machine had been moved away from the wall and the varmint-infested hole had been exposed.
“Daddy, I got to tell you something,” I exhaled.
“Not now, Son. We’ve just about got ‘em. He just popped his weasely little head outta that hole there. The next time he does, he’s mine!”
“But Daddy, it’s about Billy. He’s not really gonna play baseball and...”
“Not now, Robbie. I’m busy.” His eyes never left the target. “Aha! There he is,” he said with a smile on his face as wide as the Mississippi River while pointing the barrel of his gun toward the hole.
I looked into the abyss and saw a pair of dark red eyes attached to a whiskery nose. I scrambled up on top of the washing machine faster than bleach could get a mustard stain out of my Fruit of the Looms. I continued jumping up and down while screaming at the same time, “Kill ‘em, Daddy, kill ‘em!”
All the time this drama was playing out in the back of the house, every word, every scream, and every threatening sound could be heard on the front porch. After all, it was a warm August night and the Pearsons liked to feel the breeze blowing through the open windows.
“I’m gonna kill ‘em alright! You just stick your head out here a little more, you mangy mongoose and I’m gonna blow it to kingdom come. Come on you critter. Just one more inch, and I’ll...”
BOOOM! Daddy pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The acrid aroma of smoke filled the small room while the ringing of a church bell filled my head. I fell down on top of the washing machine in a small heap to escape any flying rat parts that might accompany the blast. After several seconds, the breeze blowing through the house had carried the smoke out the back door and we could finally see what Daddy had done. As a gaping hole in the wall appeared just above the hole in the floor, we saw nothing but pieces of plaster around us. No rat. In the very next second, a few tiny whiskers appeared coming up through the hole. Not only that, but the whole furry invader appeared out of his hiding place standing on all fours and facing us down, as if to say, “Missed me, missed me, now you gotta feed me!”
“Why you dagnabbit pesky little rodent! You see if I don’t send you into next week!” Daddy shouted, now as red in the face and as vocal as I had ever heard him. The rat turned and ran out the open door. Daddy followed.
“Get ‘em Daddy. Don’t let ‘em get away!” I screamed. I took up the chase as well. I jumped off the washing machine and followed Daddy out the back door as the rat scrambled around the foundation of the house toward the front yard.
BOOM! Another shot was fired. Daddy re-loaded his gun while running after the prey. He fumbled his flashlight, picked it up on the run, and shined it along the edge of the house following the rat all the way. They finally reached the front porch where the previous lovebirds had been swinging but were now nowhere to be found. I caught up with the hunter as he crouched upon the ground with his flashlight pointed under the porch.
“Shine this light right there, Robbie,” he said while handing it to me. “Let’s blind this little night-nibbler and make sure we get a good shot.” Daddy slowly lifted his barrels and put his finger on the trigger. I stood behind him with my flashlight aimed right at the center of the quarried catch. “Now, I got you, you little disturber of my peace!”
Daddy fired one last shot and it was all over. The hunt had come to an end and the rat--what was left of him--lay in the front yard. Much of the lattice underneath the porch was in a hundred pieces. Some of the neighbors sauntered onto their front porches to see what the commotion was all about, but they wandered back inside when they saw it was just the Pearsons again. Daddy shoveled up the pieces of rat he could find and put them into a garbage bag I got from Mama.
“Not gonna have a rat dirtying my front yard,” he said. We walked to the back yard, and he placed the remains in the garbage can. We marched triumphantly toward the house. “No more rat problems for us, Robbie Pearson,” he said victoriously. “No sir. The Pearsons don’t let any schemin’ invaders mess with them!” When we got to the back door he turned to me and said, “Now, what was it you were wantin’ to tell me, Son?”
Before I could get the first word out of my mouth, the noise from inside the house took our attention away. Jenny was crying in Mama’s arms. My news immediately became of secondary importance.
“It’s all his fault,” Jenny cried, pointing to Daddy. “It was Daddy’s fault, and now I don’t know what I’m gonna do. He’ll never come back!”
“What are you talkin’ about, girl? What is my fault? What did I do to you? I know we made a little bit of noise and mess here, but we can clean it all up!”
“No—it’s Billy!”
“What about Billy?”
“You scared him away! You scared him, and now he’ll never come back!” The crying continued to flow like the mighty Niagara.
“There, there, dear.” Mama comforted her while stroking her head. “Don’t worry about it now. He’s not the only boyfriend you’ll have. There’s more than one fish in the fryin’ pan, Honey.”
“What in tarnation is the girl talkin’ about, Doris? Scared him away? Why, I did no such thing. In fact, I kinda liked the boy—had potential, he did. I don’t know what in the blazes you mean! I didn’t scare him away. I just asked him if he wanted more chicken!” Daddy was confounded.
“It must have been something else, Jenny,” Mama explained. “Baby, you know your daddy would never scare away your boyfriends. Why, your daddy wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“No,” I said to myself as I stood watching this scene. “He wouldn’t hurt a flea, but he’d kill a rat!”
“But Daddy,” I said to him one night before he could get to his pre-dinner snooze, “there’s a rat that’s been nibblin’ at the floorboards back where the washin’ machine is. I can’t sleep at nights. That thing scares me.”
“Boy, you scare too easy for a ten-year-old!” he instructed. “You can’t let a little thing like a rat scare you outta your sleep. Why, I can sleep through a hurricane. In fact, I have slept through a hurricane. I remember back in nineteen fifty…”
Mama broke into the conversation before he could tell us his Hurricane Hazel story…again. “Henry, you’ve got to do something about those rats. It’s not just Robbie’s sleep that’s a problem, but they’re starting to gnaw a hole in the floorboards the size of a watermelon. You’ve got to get them out somehow or we’re gonna be invaded by rats.”
The Pearson household was use to this kind of excitement and activity. My daddy, though he liked to sleep, always did manage to bring some purpose to our lives.
“Okay, Honey. I’ll see what I can do after supper. By the way, what are we eatin’ tonight? Fried rat tails and rodent jowls?” He laughed a big one and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, Son. We’ll get those lousy rats outta here. There ain’t a Pearson around that lets a beady-eyed little varmint take up homemakin’ in his castle.”
No matter what she was talking about, Mama’s tone was always as sugary and mellow as a pitcher full of sweet iced tea. Daddy, on the other hand, had all the grace of an elephant with a trumpet blast to match.
At the supper table my older sister, Jenny, sat with her boyfriend, Billy Bunkum. Mama told her that he could eat supper with us tonight since school was about to start again and we might not have time for these kinds of get-togethers in the near-to-distant future. At least, that was what Mama hoped. She didn’t quite like the looks of Billy, but as she told daddy oftentimes, she just couldn’t “put her finger on him.”
“Have some more chicken legs there, Billy,” my daddy said to him while holding out the plate. “You look like you could use a few pounds there, Son.”
“Thanks, Mr. Pearson. I sure do appreciate y’all lettin’ me come tonight. I know school is starting next week, and I’ll be real busy with studying and all. I don’t ‘spose I’ll be able to get ‘round much. And of course, Jenny’ll be real busy too, I know.”
“You’re gettin’ pretty close to graduatin’ age, ain’t ya, Billy?” Mama questioned him. “What do you plan on doing after you leave high school?”
“Oh, yes ma’am. I’ll be out….uh…I mean finishin’ up real soon. I’m gonna apply to lots of colleges, Mrs. Pearson. I’ve even had one or two of ‘em looking at me for a baseball scholarship. I hope I can get into a good one and get a good degree in business or somethin’—you know, somethin’ to fall back on if the athletic side don’t quite work out.”
“Sounds like a wise plan to me,” Daddy said.
“Billy might even play baseball at East Carolina University nearby,” Jenny added.
“E.C.U., huh? Well, that sounds mighty promisin’. You got some good prospects there, Son,” Daddy offered. Billy smiled and kept eating.
I decided to join the conversation. “Do you plan on marryin’ my sister?” I said sincerely and innocently enough. I didn't get the answer I expected, though.
“Boy, you keep your nose outta your sister’s business, you hear me?” Daddy rebuked me. Evidently, my question did not fit into the flow of dinner talk. Jenny turned her eyes down toward her lap and Billy muttered something unintelligible and stuck some more chicken in his mouth.
Mama jumped in faster than you can slap a tick. “You don’t ask those kinds of questions, Robbie,” she explained. “Besides, that ain’t somethin’ that’s nowhere near ready to be talked about, right Billy?” Billy stuck some more chicken in his mouth.
After our usual dessert of vanilla ice cream and pecan pie, Jenny and Billy walked out to the front porch to swing. Mama cleared away the dishes, and Daddy and I began our rat-hunting safari. It was a hot August night and most of the windows in the house were open. Even though the sun could fry an egg on the sidewalk this time of year, a coolish breeze fluttered the drapes hanging open at the windows. The sun was just setting and the blaze of the day was just starting to dissipate. I could hear the whisper of pines out back as the wind blew through them. Daddy went to his TV room to get his shotgun. Mama saw him taking it down from over the fireplace.
“Ain’t that a little extreme, Henry?” she asked. “Do you have to use that to kill ‘em with? Can’t you use a big stick or somethin’?”
“You want the rat out. Right, Doris? You want to get rid of ‘em? You don’t want our boy here to be wakin’ up in the middle of the night with a rat nibblin’ at his toes, huh? You got to deal with him hard. You got to make sure to send an unmistakable message to those rats. There ain’t no little sneaky critters gonna take over our house. I’ll show ‘em what happens to ‘em when they try!”
Daddy did nothing by half measures that’s for sure. When he set to work on a task he was going see it through to the end no matter where that end might lead.
He stood in the back room, one hand grasping the shotgun, the other hand waving in the air to accompany his instructions: “Now the first thing, Son, is to get ‘em outta that hole. We got to get that rat and whatever friends he has to show his head. Now, I want you to go around under the front porch and shine that there flashlight toward the back of the house. And throw a couple of tiny rocks back this way to make some noise to scare ‘em out.”
“Okay, Daddy.” I ran out the back door and around the house with all the mercurial haste and seriousness I could muster. I was on a mission. Our adventure had truly begun. I arrived at the front of the house where the lattice work wrapped around the bottom of the porch. On one end the lattice opened like a gate. I quietly pulled it open and crawled underneath the porch to carry out my assigned tasks. I tried to keep the noise down so as not to disturb Jenny and Billy Bunkum. I shined my light underneath the house back toward where the interlopers had invaded our abode. As I did so, I heard Billy talking about Daddy.
“Your old man is so gullible, ain’t he, Jenny? I mean, does he really think I could get into a college and get a baseball scholarship so easy?”
“But you are applying to go to college aren’t you, Billy?”
“Yeah, yeah, but I don’t think that’s what I want to do really. I’d rather spend some time down at Wrightsville Beach, maybe enter a few surfing contests and, who knows, maybe even get on the pro circuit. That would be the life, don’t you think, Jenny?”
“Well, I don’t suppose it sounds too bad,” she said slowly and rather unconvinced.
“Anyway, your dad and mom are pretty easy to fool. We can stay together whatever happens, right? It doesn’t matter where I am. We can always tell ‘em I’m away at college. How will they find out any different? And if worse comes to worse, we could elope. Would you do that, Jenny? Would you marry me and go away with me to live at the beach?”
My ten-year-old vocabulary had not expanded enough to include the definition of “elope” at that point in my academic career; I did, nevertheless, understand the words “marry” and “go away.” I also understood something else about Billy after overhearing that brief conversation.
I had shined my light under the house. I had thrown the few stones I’d picked up from the driveway. Having overheard the conversation between my sister and her future prospect I decided to reveal my presence. I came out from under the porch and jumped up to where the two sat swinging.
“You can’t talk about my daddy like that!” I yelled at Billy. “You were lyin’ all the time. I’m gonna tell my daddy on you!”
“Robbie, you shouldn’t eavesdrop on people like that,” my sister screamed.
“I’m not dropping e’s, and I don’t care if I was! I’m gonna tell Daddy,” I screamed back.
Billy piped in, “You come back here you little pipsqueak. If you breathe a word of this, I’ll squash you flatter than a dead possum lyin’ on Highway Sixty-Four!”
His words addressed the breezy night air, for I had already jumped down from the porch and had begun to run as fast as I could toward the back door of the house. I ran in the door where the washing machine had been moved away from the wall and the varmint-infested hole had been exposed.
“Daddy, I got to tell you something,” I exhaled.
“Not now, Son. We’ve just about got ‘em. He just popped his weasely little head outta that hole there. The next time he does, he’s mine!”
“But Daddy, it’s about Billy. He’s not really gonna play baseball and...”
“Not now, Robbie. I’m busy.” His eyes never left the target. “Aha! There he is,” he said with a smile on his face as wide as the Mississippi River while pointing the barrel of his gun toward the hole.
I looked into the abyss and saw a pair of dark red eyes attached to a whiskery nose. I scrambled up on top of the washing machine faster than bleach could get a mustard stain out of my Fruit of the Looms. I continued jumping up and down while screaming at the same time, “Kill ‘em, Daddy, kill ‘em!”
All the time this drama was playing out in the back of the house, every word, every scream, and every threatening sound could be heard on the front porch. After all, it was a warm August night and the Pearsons liked to feel the breeze blowing through the open windows.
“I’m gonna kill ‘em alright! You just stick your head out here a little more, you mangy mongoose and I’m gonna blow it to kingdom come. Come on you critter. Just one more inch, and I’ll...”
BOOOM! Daddy pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The acrid aroma of smoke filled the small room while the ringing of a church bell filled my head. I fell down on top of the washing machine in a small heap to escape any flying rat parts that might accompany the blast. After several seconds, the breeze blowing through the house had carried the smoke out the back door and we could finally see what Daddy had done. As a gaping hole in the wall appeared just above the hole in the floor, we saw nothing but pieces of plaster around us. No rat. In the very next second, a few tiny whiskers appeared coming up through the hole. Not only that, but the whole furry invader appeared out of his hiding place standing on all fours and facing us down, as if to say, “Missed me, missed me, now you gotta feed me!”
“Why you dagnabbit pesky little rodent! You see if I don’t send you into next week!” Daddy shouted, now as red in the face and as vocal as I had ever heard him. The rat turned and ran out the open door. Daddy followed.
“Get ‘em Daddy. Don’t let ‘em get away!” I screamed. I took up the chase as well. I jumped off the washing machine and followed Daddy out the back door as the rat scrambled around the foundation of the house toward the front yard.
BOOM! Another shot was fired. Daddy re-loaded his gun while running after the prey. He fumbled his flashlight, picked it up on the run, and shined it along the edge of the house following the rat all the way. They finally reached the front porch where the previous lovebirds had been swinging but were now nowhere to be found. I caught up with the hunter as he crouched upon the ground with his flashlight pointed under the porch.
“Shine this light right there, Robbie,” he said while handing it to me. “Let’s blind this little night-nibbler and make sure we get a good shot.” Daddy slowly lifted his barrels and put his finger on the trigger. I stood behind him with my flashlight aimed right at the center of the quarried catch. “Now, I got you, you little disturber of my peace!”
Daddy fired one last shot and it was all over. The hunt had come to an end and the rat--what was left of him--lay in the front yard. Much of the lattice underneath the porch was in a hundred pieces. Some of the neighbors sauntered onto their front porches to see what the commotion was all about, but they wandered back inside when they saw it was just the Pearsons again. Daddy shoveled up the pieces of rat he could find and put them into a garbage bag I got from Mama.
“Not gonna have a rat dirtying my front yard,” he said. We walked to the back yard, and he placed the remains in the garbage can. We marched triumphantly toward the house. “No more rat problems for us, Robbie Pearson,” he said victoriously. “No sir. The Pearsons don’t let any schemin’ invaders mess with them!” When we got to the back door he turned to me and said, “Now, what was it you were wantin’ to tell me, Son?”
Before I could get the first word out of my mouth, the noise from inside the house took our attention away. Jenny was crying in Mama’s arms. My news immediately became of secondary importance.
“It’s all his fault,” Jenny cried, pointing to Daddy. “It was Daddy’s fault, and now I don’t know what I’m gonna do. He’ll never come back!”
“What are you talkin’ about, girl? What is my fault? What did I do to you? I know we made a little bit of noise and mess here, but we can clean it all up!”
“No—it’s Billy!”
“What about Billy?”
“You scared him away! You scared him, and now he’ll never come back!” The crying continued to flow like the mighty Niagara.
“There, there, dear.” Mama comforted her while stroking her head. “Don’t worry about it now. He’s not the only boyfriend you’ll have. There’s more than one fish in the fryin’ pan, Honey.”
“What in tarnation is the girl talkin’ about, Doris? Scared him away? Why, I did no such thing. In fact, I kinda liked the boy—had potential, he did. I don’t know what in the blazes you mean! I didn’t scare him away. I just asked him if he wanted more chicken!” Daddy was confounded.
“It must have been something else, Jenny,” Mama explained. “Baby, you know your daddy would never scare away your boyfriends. Why, your daddy wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“No,” I said to myself as I stood watching this scene. “He wouldn’t hurt a flea, but he’d kill a rat!”