Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories (9781101600665) (10 page)

My daddy—not Doc, my real one—I never knew. But he was no dummy. And according to Mama, he had some real talent. Before I was born he taught a cat to walk backwards. That's what she told me, showed me a picture of it, a black-and-white snapshot of a cat. But it's hard to tell in a photo if something is walking backwards. But I believe it was. Once I asked Sister if she thought he really taught a cat to walk backwards. She didn't think so. She thought it was an idea Mama got from watching TV.

I remember those things too. Commercials they had for cat food with this snappy-looking cat walking forwards, then backing away, back and forth, faster and faster. Of course it could of got achieved by a technical trick, but so what? I stood up and tried it, watching myself in the mirror. A few steps forwards, then a few steps back. Faster and faster, I turned it into a little dance.

A
white rat is running. Running away from a grim building on a moonless night. Avoiding the gutter, the curb, and the street, he sticks close to the shuttered storefronts. He is terrified, and his destination is vague.

Later he will say, There's a place you can't get to, no matter how fast you go, and I have the feeling it's the same place I'm running from. And Jim will say, Me?

Anybody! Ratty will exclaim. The man will admit he doesn't get it. And Ratty will say, All we can do is try, Jim. And Jim will say, I like it when you call me Big Jim. Me too, Big Jim, Ratty will say. Then Jim will say, Should I kill you now?

But right now, Ratty is in the street. He has no plan, except to get away from where he was and keep it that way. He has a picture in his mind of where he needs to be; he saw it in a magazine. A safe, caring place he never had called home. A double-page spread on shiny paper that he stood on, slept on, on the floor of his cage, which he tried not to shit and piss on. But finally he gave in, the picture was ruined and removed, then replaced with want ads or sometimes the funnies, which he loved. Sooner or later, though, he spoiled them all. But in a kitchen, like the one in the picture, was where he wanted to be.

He is afraid to be alone. He's never been alone, yet he'd rather be alone than with who he was with. The doctors. The other animals.

J. The hope is, is that we get to learn something, and I think I might know what that is.

R. What might that be, Jim?

J. That we shouldn't take any of it seriously.

R. You mean anything that you and I, as in we, have done, and are doing right now or about to do?

J. Anything, anytime, all the time.

R. Jesus, Jim! I mean, Big Jim. That sounds like heaven.

What follows wouldn't have occurred if the rat had stayed behind the base of the sink when Big Jim came in to piss. He didn't know where to run. There were places to hide, he could feel it, but lacked the experience. Jim, standing in the doorway in his socks and underwear, a big man with a hairy belly, almost bald, except for the ponytail.

Ratty leaps, he's flying through the air, so fast Jim doesn't see it, but knows it happened. He heard the splash. Jim slams down the lid. Silence. Ratty up to his chest, holding his breath, peering at the crescent of light that circles the seat. Jim flushes the toilet. Then lifts the lid. Ratty scrambling to keep clear of the thrash and bob of the roiling water.

Faced with the size and menace of the man, Ratty shrinks back, his little mouth quivering, trying to form sounds. Not squeaks, but words, English words.

J. What?!

R. I know I don't belong here, but I got no place else to go.

Jim's scowling down at the white, pink-eyed Ratty, the nails of his paws scratching at the slippery porcelain.

R. Would you give me a hand, please?

No, Jim is not about to do that.

R. Right.

J. How come you can talk?

R. Can I call you Jim?

J. How come you know my name?

R. Because before she went to bed I heard your wife say it—your name. Heard you say hers too. Those are good names. Penny and Jim. The answer to your question, Jim—can I call you Big Jim?

J. Why?

R. I don't know, it just seems right. Okay! I'll tell you. I'm a lab rat.
Was
a lab rat. Lots of things I had to learn. Talking was one of 'em, for whatever good it did me.

Ratty loved to talk, couldn't help it, even in his sleep. One might say he'd been wired for it. Indeed he had been. In the lab they did a lot of that. It makes Jim nervous talking to a rat, but he'd be a fool to forego what might be an opportunity. “Big Jim and his talking rat”? Although he won't think of that till later, whereas Ratty is already thinking ahead.

For Ratty there is the possibility that Jim could be a sanctuary, at least an accommodation, if he plays it right. And Ratty is fast, it is his only strength, but one thing he knows is not to make the mistake of impudence. It's gotten him into trouble before. It's already clear that he's an object of disgust.

R. Lots of things I had to learn. Learned to talk, tried to master penmanship, the old Palmer method. I love them all, but I can't do 'em. You pick up a pencil without a thought, Jim. That would be deliverance for me. I can pick one up, but can't use it to write . . .

Ratty has just leveraged himself out of the toilet. He lands on the floor, shakes himself off. Jim steps back, repulsed. Ratty looks up, ready to collaborate.

R. I miss being an animal.

J. You are an animal.

R. Not a pure animal. I been compromised. If I hadn't learned to talk, I wouldn't be ashamed. I'd be what I was, be what I'd been, if the lab hadn't of got me. No guilt, no shame. Like Popeye.

J. What?

R. Never guilty 'cause he never does anything wrong.

J. You're not making sense.

R. I'm too nervous to formulate, Jim. It's the language, trying to understand each other, the chimera of interpretation.

J. The what?

R. When I was a rat—

J. You're still a rat.

R.—if I ran away from something I wasn't a coward, I was just a rat running from something.

Ratty glances at the door. Jim pushes it shut.

R. How smart does a rat have to be before killing him constitutes murder?

J. Murder?

Ratty senses the advantage, but a touch of defiance is needed.

R. That's right, pal, murder. Is that what this is coming to?

Jim is not sure what it's coming to, he's not on solid ground.

R. Feels like we could be on the brink of something important here, Big Jim.

And maybe they were, but neither of them understood exactly what it was. Yet each felt the excitement, the promise of it. Ratty more than Jim. Ratty has done a lot of reading. In the lab library he gleaned information on the history of his kind and in hopes of impressing his host:

R. They can scale vertical walls with no surface to purchase, swim nonstop for six to ten miles, tread water for three to four days, gnaw through lead pipes and cinder blocks . . .

J. Who do you mean, “they”?

R. I mean, we, us, them, me! Exert twenty-four hundred pounds of pressure per square inch in each of our teeth. Plus the willpower to shut the lid on temptation if it puts us at risk.

He waits for a comment, but Jim offers him nothing.

R. In 1946, when a team of scientists surveyed the island of Dumi Bardo in the South Pacific for the effects of radiation caused by the atomic bomb, they found it to be the only creature surviving. The rat, I mean. The island abounded with them; none were maimed or genetically deformed. Those guys were in top shape. Robust is how they put it. Thriving.

Facts like these gave R-63YU, informally known as Ratty, the courage, the confidence, to escape, and from that unlovely building where he was imprisoned and trained, on a warm moonless night, he set out to change his fate. But Jim is no pushover.

J. So how did they live, these atomic rats of Dumi Bardo? Ate each other?

R. Good question, Jim. Take my case, for instance. What did I eat? I didn't, is what. Starved myself.

J. Why should it make a difference to me if you did or you didn't?

R. Because it goes to the heart of the whole predicament. I'm talking about the tetrachlorodibenzodioxin they slipped in my bowl. But who ate it? Not me. No sir, in preparation for my big escape, I didn't eat for a week.

Ratty pauses for breath, has to gather his thoughts, assess how things are going, knows he'll have to be prudent, but his nerves won't cooperate. He's malnourished, confused; his ideas keep jumping the track.

R. Alien intruders is the last thing you need around here. I know, I'm not your problem, Jim. But for me it's either back to the lab or the gutter. I won't be a burden to you, I swear. Maybe I can even help you out a little.

J. Help me out a little with what?

R. Solidarity! Collaboration and the benefits of doubt—pluralism is the water that puts out the fires of dogma.

Suddenly Ratty falls to the floor, rolls around squealing, holding his head. Comes out of it twitching, disoriented, backs away from Jim. Jim's never seen a rat slam out.

J. You don't have rabies, do you?

R. God no, that's a dog disease.

J. Yeah, and they get it from rodents.

R. Mole rats, maybe, reckless squirrels. I'll be okay.

J. You want some water?

R. No! No water! Don't put the water on me! Ask me another question. First thing that comes to mind. Help straighten me out.

Jim just stares at him, doesn't ask anything.

R. Probably lots of people don't think this, but sometimes I do . . .

J. Do what?

R. Think that people, some people, don't like rats because they don't like themselves.

J. What the hell would anybody think that for?

R. Because rats and people have a lot in common. We're the only two animals that attack and kill their own kind. An alligator doesn't give a shit about his kids, but a rat does, he makes a good father, looks after his own. Just like a man.

J. Okay, I'll give you a question—you ever been chased by a cat?

R. Thankfully no. Never seen one. But I've seen pictures . . . You don't have one, do you?

J. I hate cats.

R. Right. That's great. I understand. Not an animal that inspires trust, the cat. Dogs, on the other hand . . .

J. Never mind about dogs.

R. Natural selection weeds out the incapable, Jim. The useless cat will be extinct in another few years. Dogs are another matter, they're useful, noble.

Ratty didn't have to be told that Jim was a professional dog man; he figured this out from a photo he found in the garage. A publicity shot. Jim in an anorak and goggles surrounded by an assortment of dogs, and over his head in print it said
BIG JIM AND HIS DANGEROUS DOGS
.

R. I could tell you were some kind of performer. You're tall and good-looking enough.

J. Had my own act. Traveled the country.

R. Wow! Bet you did. What kind of act was it?

J. Wild dog show.

R. Oh, my, that must have been something.

J. It wasn't your standard dog act. Not just dogs jumping through hoops and walkin' on their heinies.

R. You mean these were smart dogs.

J. These dogs were mean. Had bad tempers. I had to work 'em in the cage. Nothing people love better than a man with a wild animal act.

R. I can see you must have been popular—nothing people love better than a wild animal act. What happened to it?

J. My lead dog died and I got married.

R. A mature decision, a man has to consider his wife, Jim. Probably you're better off for it. Dogs can make trouble, chasing cars, biting people.

J. Rats bite people.

R. They don't chase cars. White ones don't bite people. Unless you sit on one. You could be in the presence of a rat without even knowing it. When you guys have a war, for instance? There's an inflation in the rat population. Lot of action at the seaports, poultry markets, slaughterhouses. Did you know that?

J. For a rat you know a lot of stuff.

R. It's all in the books, Jim.

J. How the hell you turn the pages?

R. No can do, but that's a good question, Jim! It's because of the keyboard; I'm hot with the keys. I grant you, before the computer revolution a rat that could read was a rarity. For the most part, in fact, it still is. You take a brown rat, he can't read shit. But you try and smack one with a stick? And he's cornered? He'll be going up your arm, then down, tear the nails right out of your fingers! But us little white rats, we're harmless, we're a horse of a different tail—I mean color! You know what I mean?

J. I don't know why you're telling me all this . . .

R. Hold on, I'm not done yet. Now, brown rats are mean rats and the black ones are worse. We're dipping into a contentious subject here, Jim. Animal awareness versus human perception. The insects, the amoebas—who knows? On the one glove you got the ones who think animals can't think, but on the other? You got the ones who are saying they do—making up situations to prove it. Controlled situations, behavior modification. Fucking anecdotes! They tried to kill me. You were doing it too, Jim.

J. I don't think I could kill you now.

R. Maybe if I went in there and jumped on Penny's eyes you could. Eh?

Ratty just made Jim laugh. Ratty's never heard Jim laugh; Ratty laughs too. Jim's never heard Ratty laugh; makes him laugh harder. They laugh so hard they run out of breath to laugh with. Then silence. Jim goes thoughtful.

J. I love my wife. I love my wife more than I love myself.

R. That's good, Jim.

J. How would you know? My wife is sick.

R. You're right. I mean, how would I know? What's wrong with her?

J. None of your business.

R. I've been in love. Once. Once with a doctor and once with a rat.

J. That's twice.

R. She bit me.

J. The doctor or the rat?

R. Right here. Look. The rat. She was a dwarf.

J. The doctor?

R. No, the rat. The doctor was a full-grown woman. Vicki, big Jewish girl. Smart, smart as hell, but boy, she was mean. Trying to overturn the stone of consciousness, see what's underneath it—she probed me, Jim!

J. You mean up your—

R. No, no, up here, my brain! Stuck needles in my head!

J. Shhhh! You're gonna wake up my wife.

R. Sorry! I just want you to know, whatever you decide to do with me can't be worse than what's already been done.

J. Okay, okay, calm down, I'm not doing anything. Have I done anything?

R. You threatened me!

J. That was an hour ago. Forget it.

R. I'm trying, but I almost died. You were gonna flush me down the toilet!

J. What the hell were you doing in there?

R. You know exactly what I was doing in there! Besides, I was thirsty, trying to get a drink, okay? (He's yelling again.) Sorry!