Mike Nelson's Death Rat! (7 page)

“Hey, Ponty, that guy is here for you,” he said unconvincingly.

“What's that?”

“That guy,” Scotty said again.

“Oh, say, Thad, I've got to go. Craig is here to go over that thing. I'll call you real soon.”

“Well, all right. You sure you don't want me to come?”

“Positive. I'll call you later.”

Scotty smiled smugly at Ponty and gave him the thumbs-up before sitting back down to watch a documentary on sand crabs.

The next afternoon Ponty sat in the 17B commuter bus trying to ignore the rattling of the windows and the jarring to his kidneys. A portly man wearing a short-sleeved shirt bearing a pattern often seen on tablecloths in low-rent Italian eateries sat down heavily next to him.

“Haven't seen you on this route before,” the man said, and then he exhaled heavily.

“I'm a little late today,” Ponty admitted.

“Hey, I
hear
you,” said the man with unwarranted enthusiasm. He produced a book from the filthy green backpack he had deposited on the floor of the bus and turned it over in his hands. It seemed to Ponty that the man was doing it for his benefit. “Man, you read this?” the guy said loudly.

“What's that?” asked Ponty dutifully.

“White Pyramid of Doom?”

“No, no. Haven't read it yet.”

“It's
awesome
.” The man hefted the book slightly, to show how awesome it was.

“Well, good. Have you read
In the Belly of the Moose
?” “No, is it good?” the man fairly shouted.

“I don't know. I bought it, but I haven't read it yet,” said Ponty.

“If I see you on this route again, you can tell me about it,” the man suggested.

“Sure, sure.”

The man turned his attention back to his book. He smiled admiringly and turned it over to gaze at the author's picture on the dust jacket. Ponty saw again the unsmiling, somewhat grim and rugged face he had seen in the bookstore.

“It's amazing. This guy retraced the steps of that expedition up Nanga Parbat. Got into a bit of a scrape himself. But he looks like he can handle himself all right.”

“He sure does,” agreed Ponty.

T
HE NEXT DAY
Jack slid his long body into a booth at the Gopher Café, where bad coffee and Ponty sat waiting for him.

“You do any mountain climbing, Jack?”

“Me? No, no. Had a friend who injured himself on the rocks in the St. Croix Valley, and that kind of put me off it. Course, he was drunk, so I suppose it isn't all the rocks' fault. Why, you want to go sometime?”

“No, no. It's just . . . I couldn't help but notice that you're a pretty rugged guy, Jack.”

Jack stared at him.

“Look at you. You're a heck of a guy,” he said, holding his hands apart to approximate the span of Jack's shoulders. “Are you married, Jack?”

“Where are you going with this?” Jack asked flatly.

“Did you ever read
In the Belly of the Moose
?” Ponty asked, leaning toward Jack intently. Jack in turn leaned back to preserve the amount of space between them. “It's the one about the guy who survives by living in the body cavity of a moose.”

“While it's still alive?” Jack asked with a look of distaste.

“I really don't think you could live inside of a moose that's still alive. I mean, he's bound to object.”

“Okay, I see that now,” Jack said, holding up a conciliatory hand and then sipping some coffee.

“Anyway, what about
Sailors Take Warning
, the book about that shipwreck where the survivors killed each other fighting over a sea tortoise?”

“I heard about that. Didn't read it. Sounds kind of grim.”

“I guess. I didn't read it either. But—but you must have read
Hell, Oh, Copter
about that crash in Uruguay?”

“Saw the movie. Never read the book.”

“Well, there's one thing all these books have in common, Jack. Do you know what that is?”

“Ponty, I didn't read them.”

“They were all extremely popular, and each one of the authors looked remarkably like you.”

“Really?”

“Big, tall guys with big handsome heads. Fisherman sweaters. Rugged jaws. Broad shoulders.”

“Ponty, please stop that.”

“Now, take me, Jack. I am not a handsome man. I do not inspire a sense of strength and ruggedness. At best I inspire vague, disinterested pity. I look like a sloppy caricature of Gorbachev without the wine stain.”

“No . . .”

“Yes. My point is, I think you should write a book. Or rather be an author.”

Jack poured himself more coffee from the brown plastic pot. “Well, now I really don't follow you, Ponty.”

“I guess I'm talking about kind of an odd acting job. This is gonna sound pretty strange, but you see, I've written a sort of rugged adventure story that I can't possibly sell. You
look
like
you've written a rugged adventure story, so you take my book and sell it as your own, and we split the profits.”

Jack distractedly poured some half-and-half into his coffee and, without stirring it, took a sip. “Wait, your acting job is you want me to go around pretending I wrote your book?”

“Well, you don't just walk up to people and pretend you wrote it—you try to sell it,” Ponty said with strained mirth in his voice.

“Because you can't sell?”

“Right.”

Jack held his cup several inches from his face and stared into it. “Is it a good book?” he asked.

“Well, that's hardly the point, but, yes, I think it is, in a kind of overwrought fashion.”

“What's this book called, Ponty?”

Ponty cleared his throat and lowered his voice.
“Death Rat,”
he said.

“Deaf Rat?”
Jack said, putting the emphasis on “rat.”

“There are no deaf rats anywhere near this book. The hearing of my rat is impeccable.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.
Death Rat,
” Jack said, testing it out.
“Death Rat,”
he repeated just as the waiter approached.

“Deaf rat?” said the waiter. “You guys must be having fun over here.”

Ponty gave him a pained smile and nodded slightly.

“I'll get you some more coffee,” he said, taking the pot and withdrawing.

“So what do you think?” asked Ponty.

“Now, wait a minute. You see, Ponty, the thing is I'm not an author, and . . . well, I don't know—it doesn't seem right.”

“Doesn't—doesn't seem right? But you've already done it. With your paper.”

“Oh, come on. That's low. That was a long time ago. I used to tip over vending machines and steal Twix bars, but that doesn't mean I still do. So—if you couldn't sell this
Death Rat
thing, then maybe it just isn't very good.”

Ponty's face reddened slightly. “It
is
good,” he said firmly. “It
is
. But I'm just old, and . . . well, to sell a book nowadays, you need the whole package. You, you're the whole package. Well, besides the book, but I've got that covered for you.”

Jack shook his head and stabbed a few strawberries with his fork. “Boy, I don't know.”

Ponty seemed slightly deflated, but he rallied. “Look, Jack, half the books out there are ghost-written. Think of this as a ghost-written book, nothing more.”

“Ha!” said Jack, making his voice go high. “That's possibly the weakest argument I have ever heard in defense of anything in my entire life.”

“Oh, come on.
Profiles in Courage
. Extremely ghostwritten.”

Jack considered this for a moment. “Well, it sounds like you need a U.S. president to be your front man. Thanks anyway, but I'm gonna say no.”

“Maybe you want to think it over? You're still suffering the effects of a full shift at Medieval Burger.”

Jack repeated it, with finality: “No. Thanks anyway, Ponty.”

“Oh, please, Jack! I need the money. You need the money. And it will work, you know.”

“No.”

Ponty pouted briefly and then dug into his pocket. “Well,”
he said, laying down some change for his coffee, “I can't get too full of caffeine or they won't buy my plasma. I'll see you tomorrow, Jack.”

A
MID THE DROWSY
bustle of the evening crowd, Ponty morosely wandered the sidewalks near his home, lost in thought. As he strolled the tree-lined boulevards, he noticed with umbrage the spectacular beauty of the flame-orange leaves fringing the smaller maples, for all he could see in them was the long, unendurable death march of winter ahead. He saw shovels and mukluks, mittens and gigantic bags of ice-melt, oil-saturated slush thrown from passing trucks hitting him in the ear. And he saw himself, in the packaged-food aisle of Betsy's Quik Mart trying to decide if he should buy the Our Family brand of macaroni and cheese and walk home, or leave it on the shelf and take the bus.

Was it really wrong, what he was suggesting to Jack? When a film is projected, it is not explicitly stated that the skin tone Bruce Willis is presenting to the world is actually makeup master Ben Nye's, and is that wrong? Is it wrong that a toaster is marketed and sold under one name when it was in fact the product of a great number of people, and not someone named General Electric? When a team of dolphins makes a synchronized leap into the air to ring bells simultaneously, does it matter that the maneuver was invented by trainers and not the dolphins themselves? (Ponty made a mental note not to lead with this particular argument.)

No, it was not wrong, he concluded—not when compared to the many horrible things he could potentially be doing, like carjacking or arson. Though it was true that these would not be
easily accessible occupations, given the circles he usually ran in, he had no doubt he could find that kind of work within a couple of weeks. But he chose not to do these things, even though they were perfectly viable options, given the two- to three-week period of searching. No, it was, if not exactly right, then not wrong. Especially when one considered that the alternative was a retirement spent dispensing sauces from a caulking gun.

And his little brother: What would he think if Ponty bottomed out? If he were to be forced to fall back into Thad's safety net, he could not bear the shame.

The next day, his day off, he phoned Suzanne and told her that he needed Jack's home address so that he could return the work hat that he'd borrowed. Suzanne seemed especially pinched even over the phone, but after clicking her tongue and offering a terse lecture on keeping track of his property, she finally acquiesced.

Jack answered the door at his duplex in the bohemian Lyn-Lake area of Minneapolis wearing a faded green Henley shirt, tan cotton painter's pants, and worn brown work boots.

Ponty smiled at him. “Would you look at yourself? You look like you're ready to go live in a moose or go conquer a mountain.”

“Knock it off, will you?”

“What are you doing, can I ask? Are you building something?”

“I was just having some cereal. What do you want, Ponty?”

“Jack,” he began, “about yesterday. I feel like I should explain.”

“Yes?”

Ponty sighed. “I'll give you sixty percent of all profits from
Death Rat.
”

Jack shook his head and sighed. There was a pause. He fixed his eyes on Ponty “How much does that amount to?”

“I don't know. We haven't sold it yet.”

“What do you usually get for your books?”

“I got four thousand for my last one. But if you adjust for inflation—”

“Fine. I'll do it. I'm not crazy about it, but . . .”

“Okay! Okay, great. Fine.”

“Well, I suppose I ought to know what it's about?”

“Yeah, good idea. I didn't bring the manuscript with me, but . . . can I come in?”

“Yeah, get in here.” Jack ushered him into an unspectacular and very actorly living room, packed with bookcases, two darkly stained built-ins and several more made of medium-density fiberboard and laminated in white plastic. There was no art on the walls, only one cheap torchère lamp and one exercise bike sitting behind the heavy glass-and-wood door. Ponty noted approvingly that, in contrast to his own place, there were no dirty clothes or crumpled beer cans lying about.

“Why don't you take the chair,” Jack offered, referring to the only piece of furniture in the room, a worn, green-velour-covered recliner. Though it was in the middle of the room, it did not face a television but simply sat alone, as though it had become unmoored from purpose.

“Thank you,” said Ponty as he sank into it, stressing its already tired springs.

“If we sell your book, I'll be able to get a couch,” said Jack, sitting on the floor and leaning his back against his buffet.

“Oh, we'll sell it,” said Ponty, rubbing his palms together and looking around Jack's living room. “Nice place. Yes, indeed. But it'll be nicer after—”

“Ponty? Could you tell me what the book's about?”

“Yes. Yes I can,” said Ponty, leaning toward Jack, causing the recliner to tip dangerously on its base. He settled back a bit and continued. “The year is 1865. The place is a town up in northern Minnesota called Holey. Do you know it?”

“I've heard of it,” said Jack.

“In connection with the Lake Vermilion gold rush of 1865,” said Ponty, raising his eyebrows like a villain in a nickel melodrama.

“There was no gold rush in Minn—”

“Ah, but there was!” said Ponty, springing the trap. “Like so many things in Minnesota, it turned out to be not nearly as big a deal as the one in California. The gold was embedded in rock that was so hard it was shattering the equipment used to extract it. But there
was
a gold rush.” He waited for questions from Jack, but none came, so he continued. “During that year a lot of unsavory people had made their way up there. People from strange places like Illinois and Indiana, even New York. The town had become a hotbed of gambling and prostitution, not like San Francisco or anything, but for Minnesota it was pretty wild. So when a charismatic preacher named Isaiah Fuller rolled into town and kind of took control, the people really rallied around him. Though he didn't have much to do with it—it was the lack of gold that did it—the town returned to its quiet ways in just about a year, and Fuller became a powerful man. But there was one local, a man named Edward Lynch—sort of a wild character, a professed atheist, a guy who had never married, made strange inventions, built his own weapons, ate mostly pemmican and kept bees, lived in a one-room shack just outside of town—he butted heads with the parson, so Fuller
whipped up the town against this fellow, tried to drive him out. Well, Lynch would have none of it. He stayed put. Now and then he'd confront the Reverend Fuller in public, or it'd be the other way around, and they'd have words, but this went on for a couple of years. Then, in about 1868, some weird things started to happen around Holey.” He leaned forward with more care this time.