THE CHIPMUNK RAT
  By Patricia Fish

  “I’ve never got over. . .what happened,” Joana said, reintroducing that 
  subject and opening old wounds that never heal. How can they? Joana picks the 
  scab every Father’s Day, and every Father’s Day we endure another day of 
  angst, as Joana begins her suffering rant.
  “If I’d only known. I thought it was a rat, Mare. The thing looked like a rat 
  to me.”
  I knew it had looked like a rat. It’s not as if Joana hadn’t patiently 
  explained this to me every single year for the last seventeen. I sighed and 
  resigned myself to the annual re-hash. We visit our father’s grave every 
  Father’s Day. We visit because it is Father’s Day and because he was killed by 
  Joana on Father’s Day. Shot by his own rifle because my sister thought he was 
  a rat.
  Which he was.
  Only, of course, this is not quite what Joana means.
  She was shooting at a chipmunk that she thought was a rat. Only she hit our 
  father directly in the head. Bent over his vegetable garden the way he was, 
  with his mop of copper hair the only thing visible from the porch, he could 
  well have looked like what Joana called a rat. But it was a chipmunk she was 
  shooting at, that she thought was a rat. My father’s hair, reddish and 
  streaked blonde from is many hours in the garden, looked very much like a 
  chipmunk, all down close to the ground as he was and pulling weeds.
  It gets a bit confusing.
  Then Joana was only eleven at the time. We’d only lived on that tiny lot at 
  the foot of the Appalachian Mountains for a year. It was a lovely place, 
  situated directly on a sparkling lake. The lot sloped down to the water in a 
  gentle manner that caused the land to bow slightly to the morning sun. The 
  vegetables liked this. Our father liked that.
  That first year was spent in a fury of construction and repair activity. The 
  slope of the lot was of first concern, because erosion was a continual 
  problem. All of our neighbors had shored up the land by a series of concrete 
  sidewalks, bulkheads, and berms. My father spent the better part of that year 
  doing the same.
  We came from the city, our family. My father announced we would be moving and 
  within the week, we were.
  It was an abrupt environmental change for both Joana and myself. I was just 
  about to enter high school. My heart was crushed when I had to move so many 
  miles from the friends I had made and had hoped to graduate with. Joana was 
  less upset than me.
  First, she had me. I had always been her protector and confidante. It didn’t 
  matter if we lived in a tiny row home behind some smelly grocery store, or 
  there, on that sloping lot directly on a lake, where my father was killed 
  because Joana thought he was a rat.
  You’ve got to know something about rats. They’re scary. In fact, Joana and I 
  did live in a tiny row home behind a smelly grocery store just before we moved 
  out to Cumberland. We had plenty of rats, thanks to “George’s Grocery,” 
  adjacent to an alley that separated our house from the back of the store.
  The employees of George’s Grocery regularly, in those days of environmental 
  unconcern, tossed the store’s retail garbage behind the store and in that 
  shared alley.
  “It’s a rat! He’s just sitting there!”
  Joana came running from the kitchen early that morning and declared the 
  presence of a rat. My mother, frightened more than us of the vermin, 
  immediately hopped onto the back of a chair in our living room.
  Joana jumped onto my lap and we both huddled in terror on the couch.
  The house had a “railroad” architecture design, in that each room was directly 
  behind the other. We’d enter the house through the living room, then the 
  dining room, then the kitchen. The upstairs bedrooms were “stacked” in much 
  the same manner. The rat of our torment was in the kitchen that horrible day. 
  It was apparently very sick. My father regularly left out rat poison and this 
  rat had evidently consumed some.
  “If you see a rat moving slow and acting strange, get the hell out of there,” 
  my father had warned Joana and me. “Rats don’t like to be cornered and if the 
  poison hasn’t killed them yet, they’re liable to attack you in desperation. It 
  a rat can’t run, it goes for your throat.”
  So when Joana saw the half-dead rat moving slowly across the kitchen floor, 
  she followed our father’s advice. We all did.
  My mother sat on the back of the living room chair, hugging her knees and 
  sobbing. Joana and I held onto each other.
  “Mom, we should try to get to the phone. Call Dad or something.”
  My mother continued to sob quietly.
  “Well if you’re not going to do anything, I’ll go into the kitchen and call 
  for help. We just can't sit here all day.”
  My mother's sobs filled the room.
  She just couldn’t take it, our mother. She was a good woman. She packed our 
  lunches, made our dinners. She loved Joana and me.
  But she never protected us. She never protected herself.
  We were all, two sisters and a weak mother, unsafe from the man in our lives.
  “Remember you ran into the kitchen that day, all brave?” Joana asked to shake 
  me from my reverie.
  “Mom wasn’t doing much good. Some protector she was,” I said. We had returned 
  to my house after our annual cemetery visit. Joana’s daughter, Rudy, was out 
  playing in my yard.
  “We were just so scared of the rats,” Joana whispered. I clunked ice in tall 
  glasses and tried to drown her out.
  “I’d never seen a chipmunk before, Mare. How’d I know that’s what it was?”
  I squinted into the bowels of my refrigerator, plotting how to extract a 
  pitcher of iced tea by moving the fewest objects.
  “Dad never shoulda showed you that gun, that’s the problem Joana. We were city 
  kids. What did we know from guns?”
  “I shouldn’t have got it down. He told me not to. He told me to never play 
  with it.”
  I pulled my head from the refrigerator.
  “Well, Dad was no paragon of virtue,” I said quietly.
  Joana turned in her chair and regarded me soberly.
  He regularly beat our mother, dear old Dad; not that she wasn’t a perfect 
  punching bag. But he also did. . .other things. I’ve never asked Joana about 
  these other things, but I knew she would know.
  For several seconds Joana and I stared at each other through remarkably 
  similar blue eyes. Joana pulled away first.
  We never talked about the “other things.” We only talked about the rats.
  “I picked some flowers for you, Aunt Mary,” a gap-toothed Rudy said, and 
  extended a fistful of wilted dandelions. If I was going to have her giving me 
  dandelion bouquets I determined she would just have to suffer some auntly 
  kisses and hugs. I scooped her into my arms and proceeded to do such 
  administering, to her giggles and wiggles.
  She smelled like baby powder. I snuggled my nose deeper into her sweet neck. 
  She was my joy, this bad little niece of mine. She was the closest thing to a 
  child I would ever have.
  I couldn’t have children because of the “other things” my father did to me. 
  Thank goodness Joana didn’t suffer the same fate or we wouldn’t have this 
  precious little Rudy. Although I knew Joana had suffered something. Which is 
  why I helped her out that day she shot our father.
  Joana pulled Rudy from my grasp, gave her a swat on the behind and shooed her 
  outside to play. We both stood by the picture window, watching Rudy chase 
  butterflies and run with childish abandonment.
  “You weren’t shooting at rats that day, Joana. I know that.”
  I say this quietly, my comments directed to the surround.
  “I didn’t know they were chipmunks, Mare. They were running all around. I 
  thought they were rats.”
  Joana said this just as quietly, her comments also directed to the surround.
  “You’re a lousy shot, Joana. You were only eleven years old. Your bullet went 
  nowhere near Dad.”
  For a few seconds, Joana looked at me thoughtfully.
  “I saw you up there,” she said.
  “And I saw you down there.”
  Joana had been on the back porch; Dad’s rifle perched deliberately on her 
  shoulder. She was aiming at Dad’s head. I was supposed to be at school, but 
  had returned early after claiming sickness. I saw Joana. I knew what she was 
  doing. I grabbed the other rifle and positioned myself in the upper window. 
  When she shot, I decided I would shoot too. One of us would get him.
  “Is that why you switched the rifles?”
  I nodded yes, still watching Rudy at play.
  “For ballistics. I wanted you holding the rifle that really shot Dad.”
  “You wanted them to believe my story?”
  “You were a child. You thought the chipmunks were rats. You were scared of 
  rats. The chipmunks were all over the place. You panicked and grabbed the gun 
  your father taught you how to use. You accidentally shot him. It sounded 
good.”
  Rudy let out a scream. Joana and I rushed out to her aid.
  “It was some kind of furry thing! It ran right over my foot!”
  Joana was holding Rudy, who was semi-hysterical.
  “It was a chipmunk. See. There’s its hole.”
  I pointed out the burrow to my sobbing niece. She immediately quieted and 
  peered down from her mother’s arms, curiosity now overtaking fear. I pulled 
  her down from her mother’s arms and pushed my foot noisily in a brush pile. 
  The little striped guy came right out.
  Loudly enough for her mother to hear, I told Rudy to follow the chipmunk, see 
  how it runs.
  “Chipmunks will always run on the sidewalk,” I told Rudy, pointing at the 
  fleeing animal as it ran along my sidewalk, then hopped onto one of my 
  garden’s brick edgings. It continued to run across the brick until it found 
  the front sidewalk. Rudy watched in wonder.
  I sat Rudy down at her request. I stood up to stare directly into my sister’s 
  frightened eyes.
  “Suppose the police had known this?” she asked.
  “They didn’t,” I shrugged.
  “With all of those concrete sidewalks and all. No way I would be shooting at a 
  chipmunk where I was aiming. Dad was directly in the middle of that big 
  garden. A chipmunk wouldn’t have been running across it.”
  I lit a cigarette, blew a thoughtful smoke cloud, squinted to mind Rudy’s 
  wanderings, and nodded.
  “I was supposed to be shooting at chipmunks. But I hit my father’s head 
  instead. His head that was in the middle of the vegetable patch. A chipmunk 
  wouldn’t be where I was shooting. I told the police I though I was shooting a 
  rat.”
  I took another long puff, exhaled noisily, and turned to head back to the 
  house.
  “You did,” was all I said.
  __________________________________________________
  Pat Fish’s backyard has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as 
  a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. In addition, she has been certified as a Backyard 
  Wildlife Steward. This love for the critters of her eco-garden is reflected in 
  much of Pat’s writing. Pat writes about gardens, birds and politics. She also 
  can churn out a cozy mystery now and again.
  Download Pat’s e-book “Everything You Need to Know About Being a Woman Can Be 
  Learned in the Garden”
  http://dlsijpress.com/fish/index.shtml