Before Bedtime

“Mommy, mommy?”

“Is that boy still awake? Damn it girl, I’ve had a long ass day”

“Oh, leave him alone, my poor baby doesn’t feel good. If you don’t stop it, you’re gonna have a long ass night all by yourself”

Tad was watching the Red Skelton Hour on Cyrus’s new Zenith color TV set before bedtime in mid-October 1966. Tired and slowly chewing his oatmeal raisin cookies with milk, his 5-year-old eyes were heavy and his body cold in his blue and white cowboy pajamas with brown horses and yellow lassos. The thermostat was set at a balmy 66 degrees as he lay on the carpet less floor. For an instant, Tad thought he saw something under the TV. Was it the ball he lost earlier? Or maybe it was the beat-up tin toy car with three wheels? He stared motionless as it slowly moved like an ooze across the stained burnished oak wood floor. It had a tail, a large shiny oily tail. Suddenly it ran against the back wall.

Tad let out a muffled scream, but his mother Virna couldn’t hear him over the volume and nervous laughter. Her cigarette smoke permeated the room as Tad couldn’t move his feet in his flannel footsies.

Sensing his fear, the rodent suddenly turned around and ran towards him. Tad froze. The pus-colored rat stopped two feet from Tad. He stared directly at his mouth as if he was ready to jump inside the poor boy’s stomach. Too sick and tired to move, his head went limp, he dropped his cookie and knocked over the milk.

His eyes glazed over as if he was watching the rat through a glass window. But there was no window. No barrier separated him from the carnivore. He smelled the rat’s breath. An odor like rotten meat and spoiled onions. The rat lapped up the milk next to Tad’s head and was only inches away.

“Tad, are you ok?” his mother yelled from the other room, while “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra played on the radio.

His mother Virna was in the kitchen with Cyrus, her on again off again sometimes boyfriend. He rented the apartment on the third floor of the brick building on the south side of town with no elevator that he called home.

“Awe c’mon Virna, put the kid to bed and let’s get this party started”

“Tad Honey? She hollered while she tried to escape Cyrus, like Persephone from Hades grasp.

There was no response, only laughter from the TV set and a commercial jingle blaring “No matter what shape your stomach’s in, when it gets out of shape take Alka-Seltzer”

“Now Cyrus, you know it’s a work night” Virna feigning opposition to his request.

“Honey…Tad baby is you there?”

“Virna, go get me a cold Colt 45 and come sit on my lap.”

“No Cy, get it yourself, I have to check on my baby boy, gimme a minute, hold my cigarette.”

“Now Virna get…”

“Stop it. Can't you turn that damn heat up? We're all gonna get sick. Oh Tad honey, it’s time for bed.”

Tad’s little head was spinning like a Tilt-A-Whirl carnival ride believing he saw more rats than he could count. He could barely stay awake, but by not moving and staying quiet he thought the intruders wouldn’t see him.

Virna walked into the mucilaginous thick-aired room and saw Tad on the floor, thinking he had fallen asleep. At that moment an uneasy feeling overcame her like a greyish-green fog. She saw something unnatural in the cold dark surroundings. The rat lifted its hairless head with milk and cookies covering its sticky whiskers as Virna let out a bloody scream.

“TAD, TAD!!” Cyrus ran out of the kitchen holding his beer while Tad stirred. Virna picked up the little boy and rocked him back in forth in her arms, sobbing, reassuring him it was all a bad dream. “I want that rat gone, dead, do you hear me? Cyrus! do you hear me?”

“Sure honey, whatever you want”

“I want that damn rat out of here or we’re leaving Cy.”

“I’ll take care of it tomorrow. I need to move my work truck off the street, so I don’t get a ticket.”

“Tomorrow? We’re leaving now!”

“Ok ok ok, I’ll take care of it now.”

“Damn right you will. What do think this is? This is my baby I’m talking about”

Virna caressed the little boy’s flushed reddened cheek, kissing his head over and over.

“Now baby we’re going to bed right now. Damn. You are burning up child.”

She put her baby down to get Tad a glass of water, half an aspirin and a cold compress for his forehead. He slowly lifted his head with the last strength he could muster and said, “Mommy look. The rats are going to sleep now too.”

She saw there were a couple of dead ones in the corner of the room.

“Oh, good heavens Cy, what on earth is going on here?”

“I put out some poison out earlier this morning, and dey musta eaten it. I’ll take care of it”

“C’mon baby. We’re leaving”

“Virna don’t go. Please stay, it’s late”

“If I see another mouse, let alone a rat, we’re leaving”

Virna put Tad in bed with an extra blanket while the Red Skelton show ended on T.V. with “Good Night and May God Bless”

Virna kissed her little boy goodnight on his cheek, but he had already fallen asleep. She left the lamp on and the door open and returned to clean up the spilled milk and cookies.

“Now you get going and do what you gots to do. I don’t know why on God’s green earth I put up with…”

“I will baby, I will. I’ll be right back”

As Virna rinsed the rags and washcloths in the sink, she looked up. On the yellow wall with peeling paint in the tiny kitchen was a print of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.

“Cy, I never noticed a dog in this picture before?”

“Dog? What dog?”

“Right there look, next to…Jesus!”

“That’s no dog! It’s a cockroach!” Cy smacks it with his shoe. “I’ll be right back”

“You do what’s you gots to do and so will we.”

Virna went and picked up little Tad in his blanket as Cyrus closed the apartment door behind him and got into his work truck, “Mice and Men Extermination Company”