By Carol Thompson

 

Let me first explain that I came here for the light. Light is no small matter when one is trying to paint, and here in Southeastern Ohio where the wooded hills and the lush rivers combine to create a rainforest and its consequential cloud cover, good light - the kind that inspires painters to jump for joy and grab their brushes - is not always readily available.  The pursuit of same can lead the would-be artist to some strange places, and that is how I landed in Chauncey, a village peopled with such poverty, ignorance and addiction it perfectly exemplifies why The Jerry Springer Show hails from southern Ohio.

 

At the behest of my painting professor I carved out a small art studio in the southeast comer of a derelict building which had once been the local high school, circa 1916.  Or so it says on the arch above the door.  The building, purchased by an old Pakistani professor in 1981, has been so hacked up and jerry-rigged the inside ranges from ugly to downright dangerous.  The bottom floor is his print shop, housing semi-antiquated machines, reams of paper, chemicals, old rags, and junk which he guards jealously should anyone attempt a swipe at cleanliness.   It is a cold, smelly building on the highest hill in town, a veritable old queen who has seen better days, with wooden floors, high ceilings and magnificent light. That's the upside. The downside....oh, man, the downside......

 

The Hocking River wraps around Chauncey like a python and when it floods, which is frequently, the village is cut off from the modern world for days.  It's amazing how peaceful it then is, with no cars moving anywhere.  Floods in the summer are bad enough, but in winter they bring the additional joy of caked ice that’s here for long periods.  It's hell on wildlife … but that’s how I met Phinneas.   

 

It was after the first flood this winter that the refugees began to arrive.  At first, they were imperceptible, no fanfare, just strange items turning up missing.  My new cake of sandalwood soap, a tiny block of wood on which olive oil had been spilled, and finally, the first believable clue, an entire bowl of cooked cabbage left out overnight, wiped as clean as if it had never been.

 

I've lived alone a long time and these small details did not escape my attention. There was that moment of doubt, "Did I put that somewhere else and don't remember?" Nor could I blame these missing items on some forgetful spouse or guest.  In spite of the lack of eye- witness accounts, I knew I had night visitors.

 

The noise began.  Deep in the night it would wrestle me out of my dreams.  What was that sound?  By the time I was fully awake it was gone, only to return the next night.  A soft rustle, a little clank, a familiar rattle.  Ah yes, I knew something was climbing the gas pipe behind the old stove in the corner of what serves as a kitchen, but is really just a wall in the studio.  In daylight I checked the stove over a dozen times.  The oven doesn't work - never has.  But no vermin in there.  The broiler?  Nothing. No mouse droppings, no clues.  I decided to experiment. 

 

I started with an apple core left on the counter for bait, in an obvious place, but one not easily accessible.  Slick as a whistle, the next morning it was gone.  Had to be a rat.  Next went a piece of carrot, a potato peel, celery leaves.  So my rat liked fresh fruits and vegetables, not just soap and wood.  I was getting sucked in.  It seemed somehow more environmentally sound to feed my garbage to a living creature than to have it rotting in the dumpster.  I flashed on the Flintstones and their living garbage disposal under their prehistoric sink.  I started having fun.   Would he like rice?  Pasta?  How about a banana?  That took him three nights to get completely off the counter and into his rat hole from mine. 

 

I named him Phinneas Finn and laughed at night when I would hear him come up the gas pipe to the counter to get his treat.  He never left a mess, never went searching for more, but he did get bolder, making more noise. Now like a child at Christmas, the lights would barely be out at night when he would rush to retrieve his meal instead of timidly waiting until the middle of the night.  I think the highpoint of his little rat life was the evening I left him an entire piece of whole-grain bread, seeds and all.  From my bed, not fifteen feet away from the stove, I could hear him carry on with what 1 can only describe as jubilation.

 

Perhaps this was all imagination.  Do rats have joy?  When I told my mother over the phone what I thought was a funny story about Phinneas Finn, there ensued a long deadly silence on the other end of the line.  Had her daughter finally lost her mind altogether?  When she did speak it was crisply obvious that she was holding back many other things she would rather say than "If 1 knew there had been a rat on my kitchen counter, I would have to STERILIZE the entire area."  That seemed rather rude to say about my companion, rat or not.

 

But reality did, finally, set in.  Phinneas Finn would have to go.  But, then, the second flood arrived, and on its heels the freeze---bone chilling cold that froze all the pipes in the building and blocked the sewer line as well.  The beautiful antiquated windows that let in the light also let in the cold.  It was Hell frozen over.  I had to store drinking water.  I melted snow for household water, and ran to the sister schoolhouse next door for the toilet.  Fun, all righty.

 

That night there was a ruckus on the gas pipe. All night, rattle-rattle, up and down the gas pipe, rattle-rattle, keeping me awake.  Towards dawn I heard a squeak-one pathetic little cry that to my ears was a cry for mercy.  When I got up, the offered food had not been touched.   I suspected the answer.  Phinneas had company and they had been at war all night.  I surmised that if it wasn't the food they were after, then it had to be the warmth.  They had to be hiding in the stove, in the narrow space that houses the gas pilots for the burners.  I knew I had to open the top of the stove to find out.

 

As quietly as possible I dismantled the old gas burners and lifted the lid with my heart in my throat lest they jump out at me.  And there they were, nocturnal creatures, trying to sleep.  Phinneas, all big and fat and beautiful, a Norwegian river rat for sure, with a thick brown coat and a big head, and as far away as possible, on the other side of the stove, a smaller, thinner companion with a prettier face and a scarred body huddled next to the gas jet.  Ratso Rizzo had arrived. As the light flooded into their reality, they both hid their heads rather than deal with the intrusion. I put the lid down quietly.

 

I couldn't kill them. They were just two of God's creatures after all, hanging onto life, trying to stay warm, just like me.  Rats had undoubtedly lived here long before I did.  This place was just as much theirs as it was mine. But they had to move. Back into the wall, into the night from whence they came.  I couldn't trap them.  I wouldn't poison them.  I decided the answer had to be the light.

 

So I opened the stove back up and left it.  Phinneas already saw the writing on the wall, and with a look I can only describe as resentment, she sleepily climbed over the back of the stove and left.  I say 'she' because I got a look at her butt as she went over the wall.

 

Ratso was not as smart.  He refused to move.  I took a wooden spoon handle and poked him.  He would move half an inch and then snuggle down back to sleep.  I knew he was exhausted from his long night and was now enjoying a battle hard won in the face of a larger, smarter adversary. I poked him again. "Come on, get out of here," I insisted. Yet all the while I was thinking of that cry for mercy I had heard at dawn and how she had not actually harmed him and eventually at his insistence had let him into her secret space.  Ultimately however, the noise of their little war had cost them both the cushy life in my apartment.  Ratso fell to the floor and hid under the stove. I shook the stove. He ran out, around the comer, into the bathroom where he disappeared into a rathole behind the water heater out of my reach.

 

I cleaned out the stove with disinfectant, marveling at the surreptitious little home Phinneas had made for herself.  Two teabags, a piece of banana peel.  Droppings in the back corner only.  Her bed by the warm gas jet.  I found it somehow touching.

 

For three days and nights, I left the stovetop open with a spotlight glaring into it, hoping to get my message across and avoid harming the rats.  But it was unnecessary.  They never did return.