Vinnie the Rat
Chapter 6
The kids rode in mob formation down a beaten-up old road on the far side of Montvale. Herbert, Esther and Marian felt out of their element, unaware this part of Happy Valley even existed. But enough kids knew about it. Children, younger and older, rode bicycles up and down the sinkhole-ridden street, racing one another down the big hills, cruising with no hands, and popping wheelies. Broken pieces of rock, dirt, and gravel scattered across the worn out road, crunching under their wheels. An older kid sailed off the back of a piece of plywood propped up on a pair of paint cans before his back wheel came from underneath and threw him into the asphalt. His body rolled along the rocky ground and slid into the rhododendron. Marian’s mouth dropped; Esther cringed; Herbert closed his eyes.
“Nice landing, ya acorn cracker!” Aaron yelled as they passed by.
A couple of kids laughed as they helped the fallen comrade up. He winced in pain when he saw his bloody forearm. The Dolor children refused to dally and stayed with Aaron.
“Why do you call him Vinnie the Rat?” Marian asked.
“Is he an actual rat?” Herbert guessed.
“Is his dad an exterminator?” Esther inquired.
Aaron shook his head. “How should I oughta know?”
“Isn’t he your cousin?”
“Don’t mean I knowed ‘im,” Aaron winded round an intersection. “His momma and daddy don’t live round ‘ere. This i’ his grannie’s house. He’s here aryday, op’ratin’ his store on’er front porch. I knowed him just ’swell as ary other kid you just seed ridin’.”
The children stopped their bicycles at the end of a cul-de-sac and approached a cute white cottage.
“While back, Vinnie start sellin’ his toys off, and not abody knowed why. We-all thought Vinnie ain’t got sense enough to poke acorns down a peckerwood hole. But then he start buying and trading. Next thing—he gotta ton of them-there items arybody want. He sells most for songs—unless he knowed you bad sick for it.”
Aaron opened a screened porch door and held it behind him a second longer than normal for the Dolors to enter. “Vinnie!” He cheerfully hollered with a tinge of spite.
A frail boy wearing round-wired silver glasses and a bowtie sat in a rocking chair with a concise dictionary on his lap; his hair was greased and parted down the middle like mothers make their boys for picture day. He looked up from the dictionary and his eyes narrowed when he saw Aaron. Marian recognized him at once from her class; he sat near the front and didn’t talk much.
“Open for business,” he recited, and Esther giggled at his nasally voice, wondering if it was the cause of his nickname.
“Whar lookin’ for a book, Vinnie,” Aaron began.
“A journal!” Esther interjected. “That belonged to David Crockett!”
Aaron made a sullen shocked face at her like he didn’t want her to speak.
“A journal?” Vinnie responded, staring at the metal porch roof.
“We think—well, it should tell us about what he was doing in the Smoky’s,” Marian added.
Vinnie the Rat jumped from his seat. He was short, about the size of little Esther, but walked around with the pomp of a grown-up aristocrat. “I suppose I know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Shet it, Rat,” Aaron said. “We-all knowed ye’ns got it from yer grannie and she-un got it from my Paw-Paw.”
Vinnie smiled.
“I will give it to you,” said Vinnie. “But—it’s going to cost you.”
Aaron sighed gruffly. “What-all ye’ns want, Rat?”
“How much you got?”
The kids each thought of what they considered valuable; Marian’s fish Sparkles; Esther’s lizard Lemon; Herbert’s Allosaurus claw replica. But none of them could imagine parting with them, and anyway, they were sure Vinnie wouldn’t regard with as much admiration as they.
Marian looked at the frail, pompous boy. She had assumed Vinnie was a sweet, quiet boy in class; but now thought otherwise. She feared they would never get what they needed to help her father.
“Hi, Vinnie,” Marian said. “I’m Marian. We are in the same class.” Vinnie looked her up and down, well aware of who she was and the odd rumors about her and her siblings. “It’s very important that we find this journal. We are trying to help my parents and our town. I know you don’t really know us—but whatever you can do to help—please, we need your help finding this book.”
Vinnie pushed the glasses up his nose and sniffed snidely.
“C’mon, Vinnie,” Aaron said. “Hep us out.”
“All the grown-ups and news keep talking about some strange creatures in our neighborhood,” he said. “Tsul ’Kalu, unicorns, maybe even the Wampus Cat and Bell Witch for all I know!”
The Dolors looked at each other like someone had caught them shop-lifting.
“I don’t know if I believe all of it,” Vinnie continued. “But I bet a lot of people would pay big money to prove something like that. Enough money someone could retire on. You get me a photo of one of those creatures they keep showing on the news—and I’ll get you your journal.”
“How in God’s-green-earth do ye’ns think we-all’s supposed to do that, Vinnie?” Aaron asked.
“The same way you expect me to hand over a two-hundred-year-old journal.” Vinnie replied. Clearing his throat, he leaned back in his rocking chair, picked the dictionary up, and continued reading.
***
The four children met under the tulip poplar at the Dolor house. The soft sunset turned their faces pink and orange. Marian turned her mother’s camera over in her hands while the others leaned on their bicycles in the lawn.
“Mom showed me how to use her camera,” Marian said. She examined the buttons and switches. “One of these is the shutter speed.” Marian clicked a button and heard a mechanism slide inside. “There—that should help with the lighting.”
“Are you sure she won’t get mad?” Esther asked.
Marian thought about it for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. This is serious business. It’s not like we are playing with it.”
Esther conceded and nodded.
“I reckon Pardo’s Stone is summen ‘at makes you amortal,” Aaron mused, with his arms draped across his bicycle’s handlebars. He stared at the tree line just before the open gate. “Summen from up in dem chuggy, huggy hills. I reckon thas what-all Crockett means whenever he says them woods ‘secure ‘ternity’s affair’. Summen in that there woods mean summen and it was worth the cost’ve his life fer. By juckies—think about getting it!” His eyes shimmered. “We-all’d be famous. And rich, twos.”
“Think about our dad who has a vampire for a boss!” Herbert blurted out and lowered his head between his shoulders when he saw Marian’s disapproving expression.
“Whut?”
Esther sighed. “We have a lot of reason to believe that something really bad came out of the forest,” she explained. “ A vampire.”
“And he became our Dad’s new boss!” Herbert shouted.
Aaron nodded quietly to himself and didn’t make eye contact with the others, flaming their curiosity.
“So who cares about fame right now?” Marian said.
“I does,” Aaron replied flatly, and then, “but I keer ‘bout changing all that-there wit yer daddy, twos.” He pointed up to the gate. “We-all seen the Cherokee Booger-Man near four weeks agun. And he did go up that away whenever he did.”
“And it had no problem jumping on the roof,” Herbert added.
“Ary picture of it out they’s sum blurry dark thing afoot in a field from afur.”
“You’re thinking of Bigfoot,” Esther said.
“Same difference, biddy-peck. I sez we-alls find a big open field and jist wait fur hem to walk throughs it.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” mocked Marian. “It could be anywhere—any field, any time, any day.”
“If we don’t know how to attract Tsul ’Kalu, should we go after the unicorn?” Esther added. “We can split up and go for both.”
“That’s not a bad idea, Ess,” Marian said.
“We-all can wharry ‘bout the unicorn later,” said Aaron. “We-all stick like molasses and put ourn intent into the big, nasty Booger-man. Arybody in town keep sezzin they-all sees hem puttin’ round late at night, hunting they livestock. Hawgs seems to be what hems after.”
“But it was carrying a deer when we saw it.”
“I’ll be dogged! I gots an ideer,” Aaron exclaimed and kicked his stand up, jubilantly. “I knows whut to get.”
“What about the unicorn?” Esther asked.
“Ye’ns figger out what-all to feed unicorns. I’ll go home and meet you-all back here ‘anight.” Before they could respond, he sped off down the road.
***
The girls waited an hour after bedtime before sneaking upstairs to Herbert’s room. They found him snoring in bed, and so deep in his sleep that they had to shove him onto the ground before he woke up.
Thud!
It didn’t make him cranky though, because he quickly remembered why they had come. The three Dolors crept downstairs; they went out the door at the end of the hall, beside the garage, because the patio door attached to the front would be too loud. Outside, they rounded the back of the house and sat in front of the patio, under the dark cover of the poplar and Esther’s favorite blanket, watching the lightning bugs flicker across the lawn.
“What time did he say he would show up?” Esther asked.
After waiting ten minutes in gloomy silence, the kids heard the rattle of bicycle spokes and an unfamiliar ringing like metal tapping against metal. Then, a spring slapping open, and they imagined Aaron leaning his bike on its kickstand.
“Dagnabit!” Aaron cried. “Stoopid animal!” There was a scuffle and the yelp of a small animal. The kids’ peered intently into the darkness until Aaron came into view, bumbling up the lawn with a small, irate mammal scurrying around his ankles.
“Did you bring a pig for Tsul ‘Kalu to eat?” Herbert asked him excitedly.
“I ain’t catchen no hawg! Whatch ye’ns think I am, an idjit?” Aaron hollered. His harsh voice frightened the Dolors, concerned their parents might hear. “But it ain’t a big deal,” Aaron continued. “I bring my older sester’s chihuahua.”
The children, at last, recognized the pitiful little silhouette of a leashed dog next to Aaron’s feet; he tied it around the base of the poplar and emptied a pocketful of blueberries next to it before finding his place with to the Dolor children on the back porch. “I heared blueberry patches’ve been gettin’ snatched lately, so I figger’d hem may wanna eat them, twos.”
It wasn’t long into the night before the children felt the tug of fatigue. Hunting for animals, whether to shoot with a gun or camera, can take a very long time; the conditions must be just right, and even then, it’s always up to chance. Soon enough, the chihuahua was deep in sleep under the poplar, ants busily devoured the blueberries, and Esther and Herbert slept on top of one another.
Marian turned to Aaron, who seemed to be wide awake and staring at the still dog.
“Do you think it will come?” She asked.
“Hesh,” Aaron whispered. “I told ye’ns huntin’s all ‘bout bean quat and steel.”
Marian pursed her lips and half-rolled her eyes.
“Iffen hem don’t,” Aaron whispered, “we-all may hafta take matters to ourn own hands. And iffen hem do, we-all needs to be ready to ruen. Iffen this-here thing don’t rightly like its picture tooken, hem could become vi’lent.”
Marian didn’t know what to think of that. Her imagination trailed off, and she thought about the first time she saw an alligator; Mr. Dolor and she had hiked through Tosohatchee when she was little. They had come upon a small lake, and Marian went too close to the water. Mr. Dolor scooped her up in his arms before a big splash erupted right next to her. She never even saw the ten-foot alligator; but Dad did. It was frightening and exhilarating, but Dad was completely calm. He put her on his knee and called the gator back with a special noise, mimicking a baby alligator. It scared her, but she knew she was safe with her father watching it.
Nothing made sense at this new house; his new job and trying to “make a difference” consumed Dad. Marian always thought they had lots of money; but apparently not enough to satisfy her father. The two of them hadn’t hiked in years.
She remembered her task again and shook herself awake. It hadn’t crossed her mind until then, if they captured a good photo, their parents would have to believe them; the children wouldn’t even need Vinnie or the journal. Their parents could call the right people, get it in the News, and tell the police; someone older and more experienced could take care of it. Maybe Dad and she would even go for a hike in the forest before sealing it up! She wouldn’t be alone; things would be like they used to be again. And maybe she would get on the News like that weird guy and old lady talking about the elk.
Marian’s imagination faded when she heard the rupture of a loud snore beside her; Aaron’s head leaned against the house, and his chest rose and fell with each noisy cackle. Defeat dropped her head between her shoulders. There wouldn’t be any photo that evening, just as she knew inside all along.
She leaned over and pushed Aaron; he jolted awake and became cranky. Without anything more than indiscernible grunts and groans, the two understood they needed to give up. Aaron stood and stumbled toward the tree; his sister’s chihuahua sat up eager, ready for a walk. Aaron tied the leash around his bicycle handlebar and wobbled down the dark, glistening road under the moonlight.
“Esther, Herbert,” Marian whispered, and tapped their shoulders.
The two peaked their eyes and shrugged their shoulders.
“Where’s Aaron?” Esther asked.
“Did we get the photo?” Herbert yawned, not really caring for the answer.
“It’s really late,” Marian said. She led her brother and sister inside to their beds before crawling into her own. The thought flashed across her mind again; her parents might believe her if she had that photo. She frowned, shook her head, and closed her eyes; before she knew it, she was asleep.
Keith G. Alderman 