Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

Mom poked her head out the bedroom door. She looked exhausted but also like she had just woken up. “Boys, what’s that smell?”

“Just a little science homework,” Roman said. “Go back to bed.”

“Just be careful now,” Mom said and disappeared again.

Roman finished mixing up his bag and looked over at me. “Let’s pick it up.”

“When do you think mom is going to get better?” I asked. She just sort of vanished from us one day. That was the hardest part. Nothing specific seemed to trigger it. She just quit, which I think we both took to mean we did something wrong even if we wouldn’t admit it to each other.

Roman walked over to the sink to scrub his hands. “Never. But there’s nothing wrong with her in the first place.”

I didn’t agree with that, but Roman seemed so strong and mean right then that I didn’t want to say so.

“Fucked in the head. No fixing that.”

“Well, Dad thinks—”

“Dad’s on his own now.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Out of juice. Kaput. Car with a dead battery.”

None of it seemed right to me. What could make a person just quit like that?

We went out onto the fire escape again. Roman tossed the first bag over the rail, the one with the potassium permanganate. I was getting ready to toss my bag over when he grabbed my arm. “Be patient.”

The rats came. We couldn’t see them, too dark, but we could hear them tearing through the plastic bag, ruffling like it was caught up in the wind. And they chirruped their angry little mating chirrups while they ate the sausage slop and potassium permanganate. They really will eat anything.

We looked down, unblinking, even though there was nothing to see. It was like standing in the middle of a field when it’s blackout dark, no moon, and the wind is blowing. All that movement which seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. You feel this awesome sort of power the world has, which also makes you feel small and weak.

When the sound died down and Roman was satisfied that they’d eaten up the first batch, he pointed to me, and I tossed the second bag over. I don’t know what I expected, but time seemed to slow as we waited. The rats ate and chirruped, still as hungry and horny as ever. I could see small sliver of Roman’s face in that light, and he just stared, didn’t move or blink, just stared down at the alley. When the noise stopped again, nothing happened, and I was about to start asking him questions that were really more accusations, and that’s when the little poofs of fire started, and before long they were all over the alley, gliding around like a hundred Japanese lanterns. They squealed these pathetic little squeals, more distinct and pathetic than their usual chirrups. Nothing quite so helpless as an animal in pain, even a rat.

Roman laughed like a madman. “Burn harder, you rat-fucks! Welcome to the Bronx!”

And they did burn. They scampered and wailed and burned, and we watched, mouths open at what we had done, what we were now capable of, each of us feeling some new power that had not existed in the world until that moment, not for us anyway.

“Would’ve worked better,” Roman said, “if we added a third part, diesel fuel or kerosene, something like that to sustain the burn.” I hadn’t realized until that moment how much time Roman had spent researching.

Mom opened the window. She looked down into the alley with us, confused like she usually was, more probably, but then she said, “My God. It’s so pretty I could cry,” which was the strange sort of thing she was always saying. She hugged her body as if she was cold even though it was normal Bronx September, which meant everything felt like armpit.

Then she started talking. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “you know we lived over on Whittier Street, right next to that scrapyard. It was the dustiest, smelliest place I’ve ever been. They were supposed to stop working at ten p.m., but they never did. The owner installed these huge sodium lights, and they worked all night through. All the diesel fumes and rust smell. All that screeching metal and shouting. No quiet way to crush a car.”

Roman and I both turned to Mom, who hadn’t spoken so many words out loud in a year.

“ Those were rats,” she said, shaking her head at the memory. “We got them mixed up with cats a lot of times, that’s how big they were. Sunday nights, the owner would shut things down and send his workers on out to hunt with shotguns. They stalked around the scrapyard with these spotlights which caught the reflection of eyes, and all night we’d hear shotgun blasts and squeal with terror while we hid under the bed. In the morning, there’d be a pile of the carcasses by the entrance, and people had to drive past it to sell their scrap. Then the owner would douse that rat pile with diesel and burn them up, and that smoke drowned the whole neighborhood. Everyone had to close their windows. Then they all went back to work, and then Sunday night came around again, and they went out into the yard to hunt. It never ended.”

The alley had gone quiet, no more burning rats. They lay down there, charred up like potatoes tossed in a fire.

“When your father and I got married,” Mom said, “we were so happy to get out of that neighborhood and into this one.” With that, she turned and went back inside, and we didn’t see her again for almost a week. It wasn’t clear what she wanted us to take away from her story. That we were lucky? That she was sorry there were so many rats around? I think probably she was just talking, or trying to talk, the way people do sometimes.

“The fuck was that?” Roman said.

I shrugged.

When Mom left, this thick, suffocating silence draped itself over us. Nothing moved or squealed. No shuffling or scampering, no fire. I was suddenly desperate for the smallest squeak, the tiniest indication that perhaps two of the rats were still eating or still mating. It wasn’t guilt exactly but a strange hollow feeling, and the vast hush that hung over the alley magnified everything. When you live in the middle of the city, quiet isn’t a concept that ever occurs to you, it’s white noise and shouts and honks all the time, and right then was the first time I’d ever noticed the quiet.

I didn’t say much else to Roman after that. It was clear that he was satisfied, but something felt wrong to me, nagging like a stubbed toe. I collapsed onto our bed and closed my eyes and waited for the antenna in my brain to start picking up on the white noise of the city. It was there, but those screaming, burning rats toggled some switch, and I couldn’t hear any of it. Just dead silence that tried to swallow me in one huge gulp. Pretty soon, I would relax, find my regular breathing pattern, start hearing all shouts and honks, the vast hum of the city, and only then would it feel like things had slipped back to normal. Then I started hearing the rats again, their sad little cries, their claws on the asphalt, the same noises we’d dealt with for years, like my brain was punishing me for what we’d done.

Roman came into bed soon, still breathing hard. I’m not sure if he’d been running some victory lap or if it was just the adrenaline of a mission accomplished. “Pretty badass,” he said.

I pretended to be asleep, but he wasn’t buying it.

He stripped down to his underwear and lay down next to me. “Must have been at least three dozen. Could have been more, won’t know until tomorrow. But man, it worked, like really fucking worked.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s science.” All I could hear was the rats, louder than ever before. It’s an unmistakable sound.

Roman’s breaths seemed to get louder and louder, each one rocking the entire bed. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, but it bothered me.