I hadn\u2019t seen my great-uncle in about eleven years.<\/p>\n
I hadn’t even remembered that I had a great-uncle until my mother asked me to drive out to his house and, quote, \u201ccheck up on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was guarded. Her words had the same tone of voice as when she broached the subject of putting down the family dog. Same tone as the time she explained what a divorce was.<\/p>\n
My great-uncle, Martin, lived alone in a slowly sagging, off-white farmhouse two counties over. The plot of land it sat on was surrounded by dead fields, home to spars monuments in the form of rusted farm equipment.<\/p>\n
I didn’t remember him as I’d last seen him. My mind instantly pictured the relative I knew from childhood. A tall and lanky man with a nicotine-yellowed teeth and skin like cracked leather.<\/p>\n
The thing I remembered most was that he would bring up the idea of helping around the farm at every given opportunity. He’d offer to pay in milk, eggs, and vegetables if I did a good job tending to livestock and the crops. Though my parents, still together at the time, thought it sounded like a good deal, it was something I was in no way interested in. So I found awkward, childish ways around the requests, often just running off to pet one of the smaller animals as if I hadn’t heard the request.<\/p>\n
Speaking of small animals, that was where I saw a rat for the first time. By which I mean ever, in any form. I was very young at the time and they don’t usually include vermin in happy little picture books.<\/p>\n
The problem with this particular core memory wasn’t the fact I was looking at a wild, feral rodent. It was the trap clasped around its throat, pressing hard as its body jolted and spasmed in what I prefer to consider involuntary post-death movements.<\/p>\n
“Looks like we got one.” Great-Uncle Martin said flatly, his voice gravelly and less than soothing, “Gotta trap the little monsters, or they’ll take over soon enough.”<\/p>\n
I could only turn away from the sight in horror.<\/p>\n
“Hey, if you don’t catch ’em once in a while, you’re just feeding ’em.” he unhelpfully explained.<\/p>\n
I pulled up to the farm house a couple hours before sunset, sure this would be a quick and simple trip. Pop in, see if Martin still had at least half of his marbles left, go back and report everything to mom like a private detective. I was used to it – countless questions about my time spent at dad’s place, how the apartment was kept, who he was seeing, etc.<\/p>\n
I found Great-Uncle Martin out by a barn that had half-collapsed. It still served as workable shelter for a few grungy-looking sheep, who emerged as he ran a hose into an old trough.<\/p>\n
Gone was the image of him from my memory, replaced by a hunched, gnarled, limping old man who moved as slowly and as cautiously as the farm animals did in my unexpected presence.<\/p>\n
“Finally here to work?” he chuckled, barely croaking out raspy sounds that reasonably passed for words, followed by a bitter chuckle.<\/p>\n
I mentioned that I had just come by to see him, check on how he’s doing and if he needed anything in particular. He definitely wouldn’t believe that story, so I didn’t put much effort into selling it.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, well, still got my faculties.” He explained as I followed him around the property like a circling vulture, “Strong as I ever was. I ever tell you about that mare I rassled to the dirt, once? She was mad as all Hell.”<\/p>\n
He had. Multiple times across past years.<\/p>\n
We talked about the weather, what little crops there were to speak of, and how he bought a few young turkeys once, only to get them home and watch them fly away, never to be seen again. He told that one twice in about twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
I had in fact heard all his stories before, and he wasn’t exactly making new ones those days.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until we were inside the house that he actually had something new to say.<\/p>\n
He sat down – fell, really – into a dusty old recliner and pulled a hand-rigged cord to lift the bult-in footrest. The actual lever must’ve broken off long ago.<\/p>\n
“You were mighty scared of that rat, weren’t ya?” he mused to himself, staring at a boxy television with a cable box that was broken open, re-soldered, and spliced to Hell. I think the news was on, but the picture was dim and the volume was off.<\/p>\n
“Not scared, necessarily,” I answered, feeling defensive for some reason, “Just not used to the idea of rat traps, I guess. I’m surprised you remember that.”<\/p>\n
He drew in a whistling breath, let it out, and let that sit for a moment.<\/p>\n
“Are you, now?” he asked in a highly loaded fashion.<\/p>\n
I asked him a few more prodding questions, but kept things friendly. When was the last time he had a meal, what did he have, how long was it since he had been to town, and so on. I would’ve found a way to ask what year it was, but he had an accurate, albeit lurid, pin-up calendar hanging just next to him.<\/p>\n
“I ever tell you about Ol’ Ratbag?” he asked, almost absently as if it was just some random thought that had come to mind, “You know, on account of the rat and all.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t think so, no.” I moved from the door frame of the living room and, surveying the disheveled and cobwebbed guest furniture, opted to sit on the edge of his coffee table.<\/p>\n
“Y’see… Ratbag, that’s what they call a crazy person. A fool. Someone useless to the community.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t think you’re crazy… or useless.” I interjected.<\/p>\n
He turned to me and grinned, a select few deep orange teeth still clinging to his gums.<\/p>\n
“Now, who said you did?”<\/p>\n
At that point, I shut my mouth.<\/p>\n
“Back when I was a young’un… about the same age as you were when you saw that rat in its struggle… there was an old drifter in town. No one knew his name. No one had reason to ask. They called him Ol’ Ratbag. Kicked him around some. Used to catch him begging on Center Street, right outside the liquor store. They were awful to him, knowing he couldn’t do a thing about it. Deputies were just as bad as the high schoolers. Wanted him out, made sure to tell him with their fists.”<\/p>\n
Great-Uncle Martin balled up a trembling, withered fist and let it drop to his armrest.<\/p>\n
“Sounds terrible.” I offered, “Lucky times have changed.”<\/p>\n
“I suppose they have. The words are softer, now, but the same intentions are hiding behind ’em.”<\/p>\n
Clearly flustered for a moment, Martin picked up a remote, one of several, and turned off the television as if it had been silently interfering with the conversation.<\/p>\n
“So did he leave town, then?” I probed, hoping to usher the story to its end.<\/p>\n
“He sure did. As it goes, Ol’ Ratbag there, he filled up a sack with old berries and rotten mash and whatnot. Leaves it out in the wilderness for a few nights until it fills up with ten, twenty, a hundred rats, half-drunk on the fermentation and outta their minds from the fungus. He grabs the bag up, rats and all, and slings it over his back.”<\/p>\n
The phone in my pocket let out a chime. Had to be a text from mom.<\/p>\n
Martin eyed my pocket, then glanced over at a wall clock.<\/p>\n
“Long story short,” he continued, “Ol’ Ratbag walks himself out of town one night, on his own accord, carrying a sack of varmints that’re plum insane and angry as all get-out. At the start of his trip, he cut out a lil hole near the top of the bag. By the end, they all done climbed up and scurried out, one by one, all throughout town.”<\/p>\n
He gestured to my pocket and shook his head.<\/p>\n
“Quite few people wound up sick, some dead, but I know you don’t got a stomach for that stuff. Answer your phone.”<\/p>\n
Out on the front porch, held up with cinderblocks and prayers, I read the text and, as it instructed, called my mom back.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, I mean… I’m not an expert by any means, but I think it’s probably time.” I noted.<\/p>\n
She asked a few questions about what he had done and said, and I repeated most everything back to her.<\/p>\n
“I saw a stack of unopened bills in the foyer. He said he’s been driving a riding lawnmower to the general store. They keep telling him not to, but they haven’t done anything about it so far.” I rationalized, trying to convince myself more than anyone else, “The animals aren’t in good shape, he’s barely keeping them watered. It’d be cruel to let this go on.”<\/p>\n
That night, mom and I sat at the kitchen table, going over everything.<\/p>\n
Apparently, she had been thinking about this for a while. Not only were there plans, there were documents. Filled out and ready to go, pending some signatures.<\/p>\n
“That land has a lot of potential,” she remarked, “It’s not a wasteland like people think. That’s just from poor upkeep. We’ll have to make sure the real estate people don’t try to talk us down or pull any tricks.”<\/p>\n
That conversation was when I, a fully-grown adult with a job and plenty of debt, realized my mom might not be the greatest person in the world.<\/p>\n
I was washing the dishes, staring absently out of the kitchen window, some time after our talk. A jumble of thoughts were spinning in my head, but no specific one took center stage. I thought about how I could just help Great-Uncle Martin take care of the property, and himself, but I was never a fan of that idea to begin with. We could hire help, but what at-home nurse would spread out chicken feed?<\/p>\n
The best thing was an assisted living facility.<\/p>\n
I knew that. It honestly was the best answer, all things considered, regardless of the intent hiding behind the soft words.<\/p>\n
That was when I saw motion just outside.<\/p>\n
Someone walking down the middle of the road in our idyllic little cookie-cutter community.<\/p>\n
I quickly switched off the lights and let my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness outdoors.<\/p>\n
A man, hunched over, thin and gnarled up, made a slow crawl down the street, wearing what looked like a tattered old robe and a strange headpiece made of a quilt of brown, bedraggled, sewn-together pelts. A headpiece that clearly resembled a rat.<\/p>\n
Slung over his shoulder, a tremendous burlap sack that writhed and rippled in the moonlight.<\/p>\n
“Hey, mom?” I called out, loudly.<\/p>\n
“What?” she called back from somewhere several rooms away.<\/p>\n
“Mom, I think we’re the ones who’re leaving.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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