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"Rats!"
That's what was on Ira's mind when the stranger limped into the Blue Ox. He was a queer one, that one. It was the dust that set him off. Covered him all over---on his hat, his shoes, in his pockets, dust in the wrinkles of his pants, and even dust on the knotty old pine stick he used for a cane. --- Dust in his eyes --- not dust that could be blinked away or flushed out with water, but dust deep behind them. Dust so deep, so lonely, so empty --- it filled him up.
Ira stopped short when the stranger sat down, but Ira's not one to miss when it comes to a man that needs a drink, and that man, he was thirsty for sure.
"What'll you have?" Ira threw his towel over his shoulder. "A beer?"
The stranger nodded.
"Well, I want you to know you're gettin' the best in six counties. Some say there's none better on this earth."
Ira was proud of his beer. Had every right to be. He watched to make sure the stranger's first pull was long and deep but he didn't really have his mind on his beer. Ira could be ten times prouder when he put his mind to it.
"Rats!" That's what he said when he got over to Gray and Hank's table. "I swear I never seen 'em so bad. You know that cat you gave me Gray? Won't set a paw inside this place. One night and those rats chased it right out. I don't know what to do. Tried traps and poison. The other night they gnawed a hole right through a barrel of Three Clovers. Tapped it and had themselves a party. You'd think a rat'd be easier to catch drunk than sober, but not these. Drunk or sober they're slicker than rain on a window pane. I tell you, good beer spilled out all over the floor. Has to be something that'll get rid of them."
Ira had a problem, that's for certain. And what's worse, if those rats took to having themselves a party every night they'd be liable to drink the whole town dry. Looked like things might get serious.
"Damn 'em." Ira flipped his towel in disgust. "Look! Just up there. That one's got so cock sure of himself he's ready to mingle with the regulars."
Sure enough, right up in the rafters there was a rat, come out before closing time.
"Does look like you got a problem here." Gray scratched his ear. "Say they chased old Herman out? Best mouser I ever had."
"What about Willie's cat?" Hank twisted around to get a good look at the rafters. "Hear once it licked a bulldog."
Ira threw his towel down. "That isn't any bulldog! Look at the size of that thing!"
Gray nodded his head. "Reckon that's the biggest rat I ever saw."
"Just don't know what to do. If they keep gettin' into the beer I'm out of business. Look! There it goes!" Ira pointed up as the rat scooted off into the wall. "Damn'dest rat I've ever seen. Well Mister, have you ever seen a bigger rat that that?"
"It's big enough." The stranger leaned back and stared out past Ira with those dusty eyes of his. "Another beer."
"Sure enough." Ira was hoping the stranger'd elaborate, but he just stared into the corner, not seeing the corner but some other place, some other time, some other world.
"Hey Ira," Sandyman yelled out across the room. "You want Clay and me should get rid of 'em for you?"
"Sure enough Sandy, I do. Just how do you figure to do it?"
"Why put another beer in us and we figure we might just play those rats away."
The stranger looked up.
"You do that. Drive us out too." Ira fetched them each a beer. He was desperate.
Why those two cut loose like they were past the end of the world and the harps'd been flung out of heaven. They played sweet and they played sour. They played every way that can, will, or ever could be played. Hank, he got to dancing with Chester, and Gray, he did a two step with a chair, and the chair took the lead. Pretty soon every man in that room, excepting the stranger, was up and moving. But whirling and swirling those rats just didn't seem to have any use for the jug and the fiddle. Even the glasses off of the shelf were up and jumping and those rats still didn't care to dance. Only but one even poked his nose out to see what was the commotion, cocked his ear, then went back to his nest to find some earplugs. Legs get tired, and feet get sore, and a man can't dance forever, not when a rat comes out and takes a drink right out of his glass. Sandyman and Clay stopped. Never was a set of glummer faces.
"Reckon they might get into the beer again tonight?" Hank stirred his finger in his glass.
Ira wiped the bar. "Reckon they might. Can't figure there any way to stop them."
"It could be gettin' real dry real soon." Gray stared into his drink.
"Listen!" Ira held his hand up. "Nothin'. Thought I heard squeaking. Look at me now. It's got so that if I hear something that even resembles a rat my heart takes off like a cannon battery swatting at a mosquito."
There was a scrape at the door.
"There now. What's that?"
The door opened.
Nobody in his life, not in his wildest fevered dream, ever saw a stranger figure than walked in through that door. Yellow and red coat, all checkerboarded like a quilt. Amie Lou Johnson never painted her lips half that red and Mary Sue never did have a canary a quarter that yellow. That two-tone coat stretched right from the heels of two yellow shoes to a clump of redder than red hair on the back of a long freckled neck, and that was quite a stretch to stretch. Tall and skinny, like a reflection in a bent pane of glass. Sharp blue eyes with a smile even bigger than the one on the lips --- or were they green? Makes no matter. Those eyes, they were alive. Everybody just sat and stared. It was a sight to see.
What a man that was, if it was a man. Took him just two steps to reach the front of the bar.
"Gentlemen," he says. "I got a way about me no other man on this whole earth has got. It's a charm, a trick,--- a bamboozlement that gives me the power, when I see fit, to draw anything I want right along after me. Makes no matter whether it crawls or swims, hops or flies, or even if it's not built to move at all. If I got my mind made up on it there's no way out for it but to follow right after me, wherever I please. I can draw a river off its course. I can lead the wind and herd a cloud. I can take the sunshine and lead it from day into night. When the urge strikes me I can rope a sigh, hogtie a whisper, or call the stars right out of the sky and make them sit still and quiet in the palm of my hand.
"But mostly I use my charm to rid people of pests: flies,snakes, mosquitos, rats. People, they call me the Pied Piper."
He smiled. They could see he had a string around his neck, red and yellow, and from that string hung a sort of flute. His fingers were always twitching, itching to get at that pipe.
"Don't trust him." It was the dusty stranger.
"Don't reckon I have much choice." Ira looked the Piper square in the eye. "I got some rats right here that've been drivin' me out of my mind. Could you get rid of 'em?"
Piper's wink of his eye said, "Yes I could."
Sandyman yelled out across the room. "How do you figure to do it?"
The Piper touched his pipe.
"I heard you playing," he says, "and you got the right idea. Music's the charm. But you've got to have a pipe, and fingers like mine to play it."
"Will you do it?" Ira was eager.
Piper stroked his long chin. "If the money's right."
"Don't trust him." The stranger begged Ira. His whole face was tight. "It's a trick."
"I don't have much," Ira stepped over to the end of the bar, "only what's in this drawer and a little more I got upstairs. I can make it up to you in drinks."
The Piper leaned over to look in the drawer. "That'll do just fine. Never ask a man to pay more than he can afford. A man like me don't need much. But poor as I am I've seen some great places. In Tartary I did the Cham a favor by driving out a swarm of gnats, and in Asia I got rid of some bats for the Nizam, and in Hamelin..." The Piper's and the stranger's eyes touched. "What I did in Hamelin there are others can say better than I." Piper turned his head away. "Now let's get on with it!"
He stepped into the middle of the room and smiled a little smile, like he knew a secret nobody could ever guess at. Then he put his lips to his pipe, his eyes twinkling green and blue like a candle flame that's had salt sprinkled into it. Then he began to blow. Before but three notes sprung out of that pipe there was a scuffling in the walls, a rumbling in the ceiling, and a grumbling in the floor. Then out of everywhere came the rats. Big rats, small rats, brown rats, and gray rats. Rats with whiskers, and rats with tails. First cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles, and even long time friends of the family. Out they poured. They rushed out of holes in the rafters and cracks in the floor. They slid out of gnawed out table legs and chewed out chairs. They came out of everywhere. One even jumped out of the cuff in Ira's pant leg. Wasn't two minutes before each and every rat in the Blue Ox, excepting one that was deaf, was out in the middle of the floor around the Piper. He stepped to the door with all the rats crowding up behind him and flung out one quick question.
"You got a creek or a ditch near here?"
Ira pointed south. One short trill and the Piper was gone, and all the rats after him.
Gray shook his head. "If that don't beat all."
There was quiet. Then the stranger stood up.
"You better make sure you pay him."
Sandyman got up. "And what if he don't? The rats are already gone, ain't they? Gone to be drowned in the creek. Can't bring 'em back can he?"
"Don't listen to him." The stranger's eyes were wild, like the sky before a dust storm. "You got to pay him. Listen to me. You got to."
Sandyman sat down. Nobody moved. Ira started wiping the bar by his money drawer, looking down into it.
"Pay him. You got to pay him."
Ira started to open his mouth but just then the door flew open and in came the Piper.
"Well, it's done. Now..." He let the word hang in the air.
The stranger stared over at Ira, his eyes begging him to take good account of what he'd said. The Piper looked back and forth between them and bounced his pipe on his closed lips.
Ira laughed. "Money? Is that what's on your mind? How much do you want? Take all I've got. Take a collection. Pass a hat and I'll guarantee we'll fill it full or there won't be a drop passes anybody's lips in this place for a month and a half. It's worth every penny of it. I'd've been ratted out of business in a week and a half if you hadn't walked through that door." Ira reached in and pulled all the money out of the drawer. "There it is. You want more?"
The stranger let out a big breath.
"No. Fair is fair and you've been fair enough." The Piper slipped his pipe back into his coat.
"How about a drink?" Ira watched the Piper pick up the money and drop it into a pocket.
"No. Thankyou. It's time for me to move on. There's a world of rats out there."
"Where you headed?"
"South." The Piper pointed off towards Gower's place.
"Nice country out there." Ira picked up a glass to dry. "Thankyou. Those rats. I wouldn't have believed it."
"Anytime." The Piper grinned and the door swung shut behind him.
The stranger picked up his stick and got set to go.
"Where are you off to?" Ira started cleaning off the tables.
The stranger stopped as he opened the door and looked out after the Piper going down the road. Dust in his eyes. He turned and limped out.
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...the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say, all? No! One was lame... ---------------------------Robert Browning "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" |
Gregg Writes
Blue Ox Stories
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