THE RAT’S HALO

Plock. Plock. Tennis shoes made plock sounds. kids ran through the swollen gutters unaware of the rat in the storm drain. Not a bad place to be he thought. Not bad. For the three months he lived on second street the only thing to come down the gutter that was even slightly alarming were bicycles. he didn’t like bicycles. They were quiet. Their silence reminded him of the smug solitude that people, two legged people, seemed to carry about them. They didn’t talk he thought, they just hum. A weird sing-songy hum that was mesmerizing, deceptive. Their achievements must be a bi-product of some telepathic form of talking. He despised their silence, their ways. They wear their smug telepathic smiles like pretty halos.
Like the pretty halos that he once saw as a child, young, virginal, glowing yellow, gold gilted heroes frozen in a stance of pious humility and strength. He had walked hand in hand with his father down the cathedral hallway leading towards the altar, his father with a finger put to his lips and a shush not quite escaping his pursed lips. He walked neck craned upwards and he heard the strains of choirs, an organ moving upward the sounds seemed to travel to space, like the launch of the Sputnik rocket he had watched on tv, but instead of the roar and exploding destroying rush of combusting liquid oxygen careening downwards in scarlet clouds (he imagined, for the tv was a black and white set, the clouds were grey like the clouds of his dreams) but instead of the rocket plumes he now imagined the high low rumbling filling his ears propelled by the gold of haloes, concentric circles each emanating from one another spiraling downwards to the altar.
Too bad that was all over. I had moved on, moved away, went back home to see little Ricky. Oh ricky, poor little kid. After the accident I couldn’t bear to look at his face, his bandages, his scars, those awful dark hollows of his eyes, like that kid on the subway I saw with no eyes, just smooth skin where his eyes should have been. Yeah, I could ha, yeah I gave him a dollar, but ricky, for fucks sake, that was my flesh and blood. I gave him more than a dollar, sometimes. Most of the time I just gave him the back of my hand. And that two dollar whore who claimed I was his father, who knows, fucked my share of women. Ricky could’ve been the bastard child of more than a dozen men. me and my old man could both be the brat’s father, that would’ve been the only thing we had in common.
I remember a little talk, that’s what the old pervy called them, from my youth:
“Quit slouching stand up stand up you sad sacked shadow of a man. Let me tell you a little something. I want you to stop stuffing those little faggot cadburys into your portly sinning little slack mouth!”
I stared at the brass buttons on his uniform. crunchies.
“I’ll have you know that they were analyzed, son. They were analyzed- chemically, and it’s common knowledge among politicos and scientists that cadbury chocolate has been specifically and ingeniously engineered to turn people into fags. If you don’t believe me, go ask an Englishman.”
I almost choked on my can of Tab- did he know?
The French Revolution made strange dead bed fellows, after all, it was a long time ago. He knew, and he always knew for he was my ghostly doppelganger. I called him ‘Geoerg.’ On that day I dropped my can of saccharin beverage when I realised that Georg, that filthy rat had been skulking about in the gutter, the deep filled curb of my mind...AGAIN. We go back, way back. In 1805, I was a statue maker trying to make it into the big time of Parisian Craft society. The trick, the big splash into the upper echelon of this life was in defeating the impossible. Impossibility in my trade was the halo. you see, the halo was the one component of the angelic sculpture genre that has mystified the artisan and annoyed the patron. It never looked and still doesn’t look right. It’s that stupid stem. The suspension of disbelief fails at that point. Geoerg. Geoerg Pschorr was a hack Germanian bowl maker and seven years old. He does, as he did in the past steal. He brewed beer for awhile but was such an ultra-nationalist that his countrymen killed him. He lives life now as a ghost, sometimes as a seven year old ghost, but still a ghost. In his time he has robbed me of ideas, secrets, aged friends, every fifth beer from the six-pack. he is a rat, a dirty child, a dead rat.
A sudden clatter of wood against a linoleum floor. Clack. He paused. Stopped in his tracks. The sound of chainsaws reverberated off the aluminum of the trailer walls. While his father was out running a skidder for the pulp mill he was home alone. Now eight was not young for being home alone watching the on again, off again reception of the tv, its static bouncing like a nervous fly off a lamp shade in the living room, being only eight was at a point in his life that being alone gave him a deja-vu feeling sitting on the threadbare sea-green carpet that made him need to visit the bathroom often.
He was padding down the hallway of the trailer when he heard the clack of wood. it was like someone had slapped the end of a two by four against the floor. His father? Too early for him to be home yet. He ran back to the kitchen. looked up at the clock. 11.42. In the A.M.
He slowly walked back, bare footed, to the hallway. Again. It came from the far end of the hallway. he had to pee. He ignored it. Walked past the bathroom. Walked past his father’s bedroom. The door was closed. The clatter came again as though someone had thrown dominoes upon the floor, like the old man down at Dailey’s one day before he arose unsteadily from his chair and began to curse at first slowly and then increasingly incoherently in another language. The dominoes lay at his feet like dead insects, feet up, scrambling like hands to heaven asking, pleading.
He pushed open the door. It was light, made of plywood. A deer’s head hung on the wall. Glass eyes. The clatter came from the corner, behind the dresser. he pressed his hand on the upper drawer and looked around its corner.
A rat trap. A rat, neck crushed in the steel bar. Glass eyes. Blood spittling in the corners of its mouth. bright red. Spittle. Yellow haloes appearing over its head, struggling, clattering, wood on linoleum.
Poor fucking rodent, fucking rodent, little rat, harbinger of death, furry grey sewer rat. No sense, no thought, dying on my tiles and all I can think of is you, uh, your innocence, and yet, there you are. I’m drinking the last of my montezuma tequila, gotta go to the liquor store. Ray should be there tonight. Ray back in the day we’d sit for hours in the jungle waiting, wit, waiting for the ambush that never came, off in the copter to safety. I never saw combat, saw men better than me have their limbs blown off. Kerplow... Blood and they had the honor. I had the story to tell, while they went home to distant, apathetic families. Yeah so, this rat, this nothing, I can’t stand to see think anymore, grey greasy. I’m eating sausage and this rat trapped, neck snapped, glassy-eyed, tongue protruding, invading my senses. I’ve had enough, too much of the sauce, too much of this small town, so rat, you’re lucky, even though you can’t see it... Blood on the floor, bitch Yvonne is gonna kill me. “Can’t do anything, good for nothing.” yeah, I’m a fucking neer do weelll, neerdowell, naarwaal. arctic one horned fish.
lazy whore.
And that’s pretty much and more or less what it’s all about isn’t it? Fishing nets and the carving of live tuna. sorry charlie. we needed a scapegoat.
I could say that I’m sorry, but I’d be lying. You will be known as a sad fuck who couldn’t grasp the difference between ‘I’ and ‘me.’ Dative and nominative. I’m a native. sssad fucker. hahahahahahahaha. heheheheheeee. you and me. he and she. I will head home and lie. know one will know. I alone will smile and dine upon the image of you panting and bubbling blood from your blowhole. I lick, I’m thirsty. Sometimes I’m sad. No one will know, or estimate the gnawing of conscience that may eventually put me down. disguise the limit.
sorry charlie.
we neededs
we need ed
we needed a scapegoat.
it’s sunny outside in hel l.