Rat-P.

A story from the hills of Pennsylvania

Mar 22, 2024

Set back from the road, there’s this banged-up graveyard down the valley not too far from me. That’s where I will be buried when I die. It is neither here nor there, but it is along a small brook that could pass for a crick at times. Especially in the spring when the runoff comes down off the rolling hills. I paid for my little plot and the headstone to go along with it here with some money I squirrel away over time. It’s loot from cutting grass across long summer days and from selling my tchotchkes at the private night market that happens in September and October way back in the forest. I figured that it would be a good thing, using that side cash to help alleviate the problem of what to do with me when I’m dead. My people, there aren’t many of them, but they matter to me. And I’ll be damned if they don’t need that kind of aggravation that comes along with losing a loved one. It’s bad enough as it is let alone having to worry about what the hell happens next.

Her and the kids, they’ll have better things to do with their time when the dust settles and my carcass is laying there in the front room/ sunlight girders ramming down through the windows/ sunshine splattering all over my pancake makeup. Even if my head got blown off, I want to be out there on display. I need to leave the living with one last trauma. I want to have the last laugh. I am a firm believer in the dead having the last laugh.

It’s only fair. It’s only right.

Even it’s just bits of my shattered skull sprinkled across a $120 XXL H&M suit, I don’t mind. I want the makeup anyway. I want my protruding neck bone all lathered up with mascara and lipstick like some bad tourist attraction totem pole.

_____

There’s a teenage kid who hangs out here among the old headstones. I’ve seen him a few times, longish hair flapping like a tattered flag in the chilly wind. I call him RTP. Rural Teenage Punk. Or Rat-P for short. He has stayed away from me until now. I mostly look around at the Civil War graves and Rat-P stays over by the rushing water, smoking cigarettes, hitting a one-hitter now and then.

Sometimes I can sense him watching me when I’m slow rolling, reading the faded inscriptions of the long dead. It’s a strange feeling, even downright creepy at times. Other days he isn’t around at all. And then some days I can tell he’s watching me but it feels alright, country satisfaction raining down on me. I don’t really understand it but who cares.

_____

Time is a construct but death isn’t. I wrestle with that one. It occurred to me during the pandemic/ and then again this past winter when I was down with bronchitis/ that death is everywhere all the time. Everybody’s just way too scared to admit it. Most people have this whole act going on that allows them to walk around with invincible airs. To me, it’s unappealing. I’ve never been into confidence, really. Swagger and big dick energy make me throw up a little in my mouth. I prefer quieter people, people who are giving off a vibe that’s maybe a bit more removed from the crowd, a bit more emo or goth than all of this full-on bro glow I seem to have waded waist deep into once upon a time when I wasn’t paying attention.

That’s my problem. I waste a lot of time when I could be living different. Always looking at Facebook. Staring at the TV, my mouth half open. Eating and reading the local paper standing up at the kitchen island, ignoring the dogs as they shark me for crumbs, reading about state cops hammering drivers with weed up on the interstate. I pass so much time wasting even more time that it’s a wonder I get anything done.

But truth be told: what could I even do differently? Admitting I’m a bit on the common side of pissing away my days is one thing, but what about the alternative? Is there even one? Are there people out there really truly living their best lives?

And if so, what on earth does that even look like?

____

I wave at Rat-P one day when I catch a whiff of his weed. The smoke must hop a breeze from way over across the graves to where I’m standing. I’m looking at the stone of some local soldier who died at the Battle of South Mountain in September of 1862. He was 19 when he went off to war. Two months later he was gone. He died on the day of the battle so he must have died fast, either right away or within a few hours of his wounding.

I wave at Rat-P and he sees me wave because I see him see me. He flips his hair back like Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club when he sees me do it. He never has anyone with him. He also never appears to be on his cell phone either, which is unheard of for a kid his age.

This afternoon he’s just sitting there on the bent nook of his old willow, super stoned out of his country gourd for all I can tell.

Fuck it, I figure.

I’ll wave.

And I do.

And like I said, he pretends he didn’t see it even when I saw him see it.

_____

We are talking now, me and Rat-P. I saw him see me wave at him and when he acted like he didn’t I kind of felt awkward. So I waited another couple minutes but it just became too much for me. There was this profound intensity building between us as I tried to concentrate on the graves over by my own plot. I couldn’t really focus though. Eventually I caught him looking at me and so I gave him the finger.

He smiled.

Now we are talking. He tells me things that are hard to comprehend. He explains that he’s the ghost of a kid who was killed in a car crash up the valley a few miles back. It happened in the 1970’s, he says. That’s why he doesn’t have a phone, he says.

I try to meet his eyes when he reveals the ghost thing to me. I can see that he has scars up and down his arms. Burn scars. He also has scattershot scars around his eyes and cheeks. He avoids my eyes mostly but he must sense me looking at his skin.

They’re from smashing through the windshield, he says.

It was a dynamite car, he says.

I ask him what kind of car but he ignores that question too. This is when I notice a couple little trout sipping blue wings off the creek surface.

You see those trout a lot? I ask, pointing at the fading rings on the water.

This time he considers my voice, turns to watch the flow, then turns back in my general direction. He closes his eyes and takes a deep drag off his cigarette, which I never saw him light. It was just there, it was just lit.

The moment hangs in a holding pattern. I’m starting to understand something too. Rat-P is not going to be answering any of my questions directly. His eyes are clenched closed.

Get me some beer, mister? he says without opening them.

Beer? I say.

How come you want beer?

He keeps his eyes closed. The late afternoon sun laces lit fingers through his curls. He doesn’t answer my question.

He doesn’t even hear me, I tell myself.

_____

Weeks later, I’m at home with my family looking for a movie to watch when Rat-P comes out of the kitchen holding a burning candle. I brought him home with me a couple nights after I brought him a six pack of Buds. My wife took it in stride as far as those kinds of things go, but my kids were a little perplexed.

Understandable.

I tell them that this kid’s name is Walt.

I lie through my teeth about Rat-P.

I tell the kids he’s a distant cousin from out of state who needs to stay with us for a while.

I say he’s probably autistic when the kids started noticing that he’s more than distant to their questions. It’s as if he doesn’t even hear them. Or see them in front of him. If they ask him to hang out in the yard or whatever, he just flat-out ignores them. Kids don’t take so well to other kids waving them off like that, I guess.

My wife? I tell her what Rat-P told me, that he was the ghost of some car crash boy from a long time ago. She laughed when I said that, but after a while she came around to the possibilities. Listening to the young man blurt out his random words and all, she began to sense what I had sensed from that first conversation: that there was something other worldly about this kid. He was, I told her one night in bed, not something we were bound to understand through any kind of learning that we had ever been exposed to.

_____

_____

Rat-P holds the candle in front of him, one of our Walmart candles that smells of chemical forest, and he is looking at the TV but not watching it like a normal person. My kids, they’re all taking him in now. My wife and me are too. When he starts talking I pause the show.

It’s a tight race I’m in tonight, he blurts.

I look at my wife.

She rolls her eyes, smirks.

Who you racing, Walt? she says.

He offers no response, of course. He just keeps talking his jive.

In the woods you can help me find the keys because thats where I lost them! he hoots. It’s alarming. The kids look bewildered. It’s understandable.

Some big banana is gonna get his skin peeled is all I know!, hollers Rat-P.

I’ve been up and down these damn roads all night and no one has a goddamn thing left for me no more!

My oldest son gets up and walks his ice cream bowl towards the kitchen. I hear him sigh as he goes. It’s dawning on me that I have made a mistake bringing Rat-P back here to the house. I wonder what I was thinking. I guess I was trying to do a good thing but it isn’t going that way now. Rat-P doesn’t seem to know or care about much at all. Truth is, I had imagined keeping a ghost boy around might make things interesting for a while.

I can see now that I was a little selfish in all of this, huh?

______

Walt, would you like some popcorn? my wife asks.

No use.

Walt, Rat-P, he hardly ever wants anything. He doesn’t eat. He smokes in the house. He wants to be free, I suspect. Maybe he wants to rip one of us open and inhabit our skin or something. It is impossible to tell. It’s puzzling, what this ghost is all about. I’m telling you. Young buck ghost with a car wreck past. That’s just a bad deal all around.

I know I’m going to have to haul him back up to the graveyard.

_____

I stand up and put my arms around Rat-P’s shoulders and he comes along easy, just like when I’d brought him home. I can feel his strength and his body. I can feel his flannel shirt fuzz beneath my fingers. Underneath that I can feel his busted body, his broken bones and his unhinged muscles sliding up and down when he moves with me.

We all walk together, the kids and my wife following behind me as I walk Rat-P gently out into the yard and over towards the driveway where my truck’s parked. It’s my work truck. Dynamo Concrete on the side. The kids and my wife fall back as I ease Rat-P up into the passenger seat. They’re all watching me now and it feels a lot like the old days, when this teenage kid would watch me from over by the graveyard crick. I shut his door and half run around to my side. I open it and wave at the kids and my wife and they are standing there a little stunned by the whole scenario going down. The past few days has been real peculiar. And I’m sure this closing scene they’re watching is so damn bizarre.

The second I pull my door shut and start the truck up, Rat-P is glaring straight ahead just sort of grinning as he takes a hit on his tiny one hitter. He holds the hit in as I put my truck in drive, and then exhales with a spastic hack. That’s followed by a genuine question for me, which is a welcomed surprise.

Where you taking me, amigo? he asks.

I can see he’s looking over at me now as well.

Bud, I’m taking you back to your peaceful graveyard, I answer.

He’s looking at me still, not saying anything. We are on the valley road now, whipping by the evening cows. They cast cooling shadows on the Earth.

I figured you’d be way more comfortable back in the place you know best, I tell him.

The sky is violet, smears of pink. Rat-P is looking out at it now, taking it all in. I notice that he is thumping on a lit cigarette, dropping ashes right down onto the floor of my truck. He doesn’t say a word for a while. He only peers out at the world, takes long pulls off his smoke.

_____

A mile or so before the graveyard, as we rumble up the same valley road that had once killed him, Rat-P speaks again.

You get one wish, amigo. For trying to help me out.

I miss a breath or two. It’s a heavy fragile gift balanced out there on the edge of everything.

A wish? I ask him.

A wish, he repeats. One wish.

Anything? I insist.

He doesn’t answer that. He looks at me and I look at him and it’s the first time since that last day in the graveyard that we actually meet eyes, lock in. I see a lot of living in his, worlds that no one could ever understand. He’s just a kid. And I’d messed with him by stealing him and now here I was taking him back like a pair of jeans that don’t fit.

Any kind of wish? I try again.

He ignores me.

I pull us into the old graveyard, just as the sun lowers down behind the western ridge. As I ease my truck into park, I turn to look at Rat-P. He is roughly handsome even with that scar’d-up face. His ratty hair that he’s been blowing back with the corner of his mouth all aimed up and puckered out like it was meant to do that one job and nothing else. He flips his head to complete the task. When his face is clear I see he has been crying a bit.

I wish… I start saying.

But I pause, unsure where I’m even going with it.

He is grinning shyly now, dirty tears track down his cheeks.

In the clear light I see where the windshield had sliced his neck clear open. I give myself over to his endless loss. I feel real empathy for him.

I return the smile.

I wish I could bring you back to life so you could experience everything you missed.

I speak it in a rush but as soon as I do he is opening the truck door/ sliding out of the seat/ down to the grass. He slams the passenger door harder than he needs to and slaps my hood twice, two swift pops I understand. Two quick metallic claps. Thank you and We’ll be seeing you, both at once.

I watch him then. He ambles over towards the crick, no limp, no outward signs of injury as I put the truck in reverse. I see him standing there by his spot staring down into all of that rushing water that I do not see at all. Back out on the road, I pop the horn once but there’s no acknowledgement from the ghost.

By now it’s nearly dark and my poor heart is flapping so fast I think I could die.

____

I never see Rat-P again.

I made my wish to his face and after that I go back to the graveyard all the time. I stare at the crick, flip lit cigarettes down into the current. I put my fingers in the very dirt where he used to sit, hoping to paw a clue. I leave walnut sized sacks of dirt weed under rocks like a derelict, but when I come back to check on them they remain untouched.

A couple of times I drive out to the telephone pole where he crashed.

He’s never there.

There’s no plywood cross, no nothing.

He’s gone.

That boy is just nowhere to be found.

Things I Liked This Week.

I watched Anatomy of a Fall with Arle this past Friday. It was brilliant, I think. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s an anatomy of so much more than a fall.
I ran across this obituary in the New York Times a couple nights ago that really caught me off guard. It was so well-written and so unexpectedly profound that I had something like a hard time when it was over. I’m going to read more NYTimes obits from now on. It’s my thing from here on out.
In my car this evening I listened to a story from This American Life called Better Call Dave. It’s about a professional safecracker who was called on to unlock Prince’s impenetrable bank vault at Paisley Park after the Purple One had died. Like everything This American Life touches, this one’s worth every minute that you spend with it.
Southside Johnny (with Bruce Springsteen) - The Fever. The most rock/roll. The most soul. And the most everything else too.