Revenge of the Rat
My brother, John, was four years older than I. In his teenage years, he could be an absolute jerk.
Our bedrooms were next to each other — the former master bedroom had been split in two by a 10-foothigh divider. John had to go through my room to enter or leave his. He thought nothing of coming home late, banging around and waking me up, even if we both had school the next day.
One day, John brought home a pet rat. He built a two-story wooden cage with a screen front and set it in the corner of the bathroom. My mother was not pleased. As with all his projects, John soon tired of the critter. The rat would have gone on its way, except that my father made it his own pet.
Rats are smart. The rat knew that our father had the key to the cornucopia. Dad would take the rat out of the cage and let it cruise around his stuffed rocker as he read the paper or listened to the radio. When Dad came home from a railroad run, his first words were, “Where is my honeybun?” The rat knew his voice and came scrambling to the front of its cage.
If you wanted to please Dad, just find a fat potato bug or juicy, leaf-gnawing worm, then join the expedition to the cage as he fed the wriggling critter to the rat.
Dad normally cleaned the cage early in the morning. When he did that chore, the rat was free to roam. It ventured through the kitchen into the living room. My bedroom door was there. I left it closed. Sometimes Dad would open it — for the rat! I might wake up with a rat’s whiskers in my face … or the other end.
The rat knew the floor plan: if he headed into the living room and steered left, the path traversed the hall, the bathroom, through my bedroom to John’s door. My brother always left his door closed.
One night John came home late and was particularly disruptive and rude. He got no sympathy from anyone. The next morning, Dad got up early and began cleaning the rat’s cage. I could hear him crumpling the newspaper bedding.
Ten minutes later, John woke with an explosion of expletives. “That blankety-blank rat!” he yelled. “How did that d . . n rat get in my room?!” It was music to my ears. My father quietly opened my bedroom door, ignored my brother’s ranting, and called for the honeybun. There went the rat, motoring by my bed back to its buddy.
I often wondered whether it was whiskers in John’s face or a urinesoaked tail that had done the trick. Of course, I had no idea how the rat had ventured into my brother’s sanctum.
Mary McCutcheon reminisces in Eureka.
