George Higgins - The rat on fire

“I don’t see why the hell they lock dumps up at night,” Dannaher said. “They afraid somebody’ll steal something from them?”

“No,” Proctor said. “They lock up the dump road at night because they want to stop people from giving them things, such as whole messes of shit they will have to bury. They block the road in the middle of the night because they don’t want people coming in and throwing away all kinds of trees and rocks and shit like that. They don’t put a fence around the woods because they don’t care if people go in the dump and catch a few rats. What they care about is people that are working on construction and demolition and stuff, that don’t even live in the town, driving their trucks up and saving themselves a lot of money that they would have to pay to have the stuff carted away, and dumping the stuff in the town dump.”

“I don’t see why they care,” Dannaher said.

“All right,” Proctor said, “I was lying to you. The real reason is that snakes and skunks and rats always use the road when they try to get out of the dump. Every night the sun goes down and the guy that drives the bulldozer around goes hack to the shack and gets his jacket on and goes home for Miller Time. And on his way down the road in his pick-up truck, he stops and he gets out and he wraps the big chain through the posts and he takes the big padlock out of the truck and he locks the gate shut.

“Now,” Proctor said, “the snakes and the skunks and the rats are a long way away from this gate. They cannot hear whether the guy stops the truck and puts the chain and the lock on. So every night they wait until they think he is gone, and then they say to each other, ‘Maybe tonight he forgot.’ So all the snakes and the skunks and the rats get up and they go down the road to the gate and one of the snakes climbs it, climbs right up the fence, to see if the chain and the lock are on. And every night, they are.

“So the snake that does the inspection,” Proctor said, “he climbs back down again, all discouraged and everything, and he tells all the rest of the animals, ‘No use, fellas, the gate’s locked again. He didn’t forget tonight, either.’ Then they all go back up the road to the dump.

“See, Jimmy,” Proctor said, “snakes and skunks and rats are not very bright. It does not occur to them to go through the woods. If the gate is not open, they think they have to stay. The people who run the dump know this. They want all their rats and other animals to stay in the dump, because they are sort of like pets, you know? So they lock the gate, and the animals stay in the dump and eat dead meat and fruit and that stuff, and it keeps the place neat.

“Therefore,” Proctor said, “if you walk through those woods with me, Jimmy, around that gate and so forth, there is no chance in the world that you will step on one of those animals. You are as safe as you would be in church, because the animals do not use the woods. Okay? And in addition, you will get some money, so you can take care of your kids.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Dannaher said.

“Yes, you do,” Proctor said. “You and I are going to open up the back of this thing and we are going to take out three steel traps and three pounds of smelly old fish heads that I have in this plastic bag there. One of us is going to carry two traps and the other one is going to carry one trap and the fish. We are going to go through the woods and the guy in front is going to hold the flashlight so that the guy behind him can see where he is going. When we get around the gate, we can walk on the road because all the animals have gone to bed except for the rats, and they are watching the late news on their television sets. When we get to the actual dump we will put the fish in the traps and set the traps and then we will go a little ways away and we will wait until we hear that we have got a lot of rats in our three traps. Then we will come back to the trucks with our rats in our traps.”

“What about the fish?” Dannaher said.

“We will allow the rats to eat the fish,” Proctor said. “Believe me when I tell you, that as far as I am concerned, the rats are welcome to that fish, because it stinks. Besides, rats have to eat. We have work for those rats to do, and we want them nice and healthy and ready to run fast when we light them off, so we will transcend our own appetite for the fish and let them eat it.”

Carrying two steel cages, each about two feet long and one foot wide, in his left hand, and the flashlight in his right hand, Proctor led Dannaher through the underbrush on the northerly side of the gate, trampling the low, green, three-leafed plants. On the easterly side of the gate they stepped onto the gravel road and walked up a long hill. Now and then a trailer truck passed on Randolph Avenue behind them, the lights barely disturbing the darkness. The gravel crunched and the hill became steeper. Dannaher said, “Slow down, for Christ sake.”

“You’re outta shape, Jimma,” Proctor said. “See? Here’s another thing that I am doing for you. I am getting you some exercise so you don’t get yourself a heart attack when you are still a young man.”

“I think I’m getting one now,” Dannaher said.

Wilfrid Mack sat on the aluminium chair with the yellow plastic covering, in Mavis Davis’s kitchen at 25 Bristol Street. She was in her late forties. She wore a red jersey dress which showed that she had kept her figure, and an expression of weariness.

“Mister Mack,” she said, “it’s nice of you to come, and I appreciate it. But I don’t know what you or anybody else can do. You know it just as well as I do – Alfred goes off half-cocked. I’ve tried everything I could think of, to do with him. It didn’t work. His sister’s a fine lady and she works very hard. I get out of bed every morning and go down to the hospital and talk to the people all day on the telephone, the ones who haven’t paid their bills any more’n I have, and then I come home at night with a bag of groceries that I can’t afford and I cook dinner on a stove that doesn’t work right. Selene eats fast and goes to work, and if Alfred’s in the mood, he gets up and eats before he goes down to work for Walter all night long. The plumbing backs up and the owner won’t fix it. You can’t even get Mister Fein on the telephone. Two guys came over here the other day, one of the neighbours was telling me, and went into the cellar with a lot of tools, and then they went right out again. They didn’t do anything. If I fill that sink up with water right now, and you sit here and wait for it to go out, you won’t get anything done tomorrow.

“Just as soon,” she said, “just as soon as I start to think that I am making some progress and there must be some way that an apartment with three people in it, all of them working, can have something like a decent life for themselves and send their kids to school, or maybe just go out to a movie, something happens. We don’t have a car, but we do have lamps. They burn out bulbs. Last week, the summer here and everything, I figured Selene would be working full-time and lots of nights I could walk home or take the subway instead of spending all that money on cabs, and I went out and put thirty dollars down on an air conditioner.

“Mister Mack,” she said, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for that air conditioner. I just wanted one cool room and I put thirty dollars down, and this week I got a letter that the taxes went up and the heating oil went up and my share of those things is going to just wipe out my air conditioner.

“If you want to look out that window,” she said, “you can. This is the third floor and the back yard’s full of junk. You can pull that chair over there and look right out and see a yard that’s full of junk that people threw away but nobody ever bothered to pick up. You can even get a little breeze over there, if you can stand looking at the junk. But it’d be a good idea if you didn’t tilt too far back in the chair because the back legs’re a little shaky. And don’t lean on the table either. We don’t get good meat very often, but when we do it’s hell cutting it because the table’s so wobbly. I keep this stuff, Mister Mack, because I can’t afford anything better. I make twelve thousand dollars a year and both my kids work, but Alfred gives me nothing and Selene buys her own stuff. If I want an air conditioner, I have to eat on a wobbly table, and now I’m probably going to lose my thirty dollars that I put down on an air conditioner. You politicians. If you don’t mind me saying so, you make me sick.”