THE BOG
Jordan tore one of the T-shirts into strips. He used the other to wipe down the long trough urinal. Then he balled it up and plugged the drain. He opened the spigot all the way. Looked like it would take ten to fifteen minutes to fill. He checked to make sure the door was locked, then let the rat out of its box. He let it wander the floor freely as he bit little pieces off the apple and arranged them around himself on the floor. He watched the rat as it first circumnavigated the latrine, hugging the cement wall and sniffing the air.
After a couple minutes the rat came back to where Jordan and Feda sat on the dirt floor. It took a piece of apple and ate it. It was remarkably unconcerned, Jordan thought. The sound of the water running into the trough had changed as the bottom became completely submerged. It had lost its percussive quality and become more of a constant drone. Jordan offered a piece of apple from his hand and the rat took it. As it chewed, Jordan reached out and touched his back. The rat pulled back with a scrabbling of claws on dirt but didn’t go far and momentarily returned to take another piece of fruit.
Jordan tried a new tack. He held out a piece of apple, but when the rat tried to take it he held on so the rodent was obliged to eat out of his hand. Then he touched it again while it ate. It flinched but allowed the contact. Jordan stroked the back of its head and then ran a finger down its back. The rat’s fur felt oily and thick and there was a spongy layer of fat above the muscle and bone.
“Check the water level,” he asked Feda.
Feda slowly stood, keeping a wary eye on the rat. “It’s about this deep,” he said, holding his hands about six inches apart.
“Okay, almost there. Are you ready? I’m going to need a little help in a minute.” Feda nodded uncertainly, his eyes wide.
“Don’t worry,” Jordan said, keeping his voice low and even. “It’s going to be all right.”
He laid out several strips of the torn T-shirt on the ground like stripes on a flag and gently led the rat over them. When he was satisfied with the rat’s position he slowly lowered his right hand onto its back, talking all the while in gentle reassuring tones, and then, without warning, he slammed the hand down, pinning the animal against the floor. The rat twisted its neck around, frantically trying to bite, its eyes rolled back in fear and fury, tail lashing and twisting around Jordan’s forearm. He used his first two fingers to prevent the head from lifting.
“Quickly, tie him to my hand,” Jordan said through clenched teeth. He hadn’t been prepared for the ferocity of the rat’s response. It took all of his strength to keep the creature pinned down. He could tell if it got its legs under it again, he’d lose it.
Feda, pale but determined, tied the strips of T-shirt tightly around the back of Jordan’s hand. When five strips were tied, pressing the rat’s back into his palm, Jordan felt it suddenly go limp. He could feel the animal’s heart pounding, its sides heaving.
“Okay, okay,” he said. He was panting, too, and his forehead shone with sweat. With some effort he slowed his breathing and blinked the sweat out of his eyes.
“Turn off the water,” he said. Feda did. It was suddenly deathly quiet. Jordan’s breathing seemed to reverberate off the cement and he could hear a ratcheting sound, almost like a cat’s purr, from the rat, and the odd drip of water into the trough.
“Knife.” Feda handed it to him. Fear, awe and confusion fought for the upper hand on his face. Jordan looked at the rat’s hind leg. The fleshiest part was high up, almost on its back, a round soft-looking ball of muscle. He took one more deep breath to steady himself, whispering, “Here we go,” under his breath, and cut.
The cut was about an inch long and almost as deep. He made it with the point of the blade in one quick stroke. The rat screamed. It sounded like a small child. The shrieks echoed in the close space. Jordan stood up. With its legs no longer pinned to the ground the frantic animal twisted and flailed, trying to turn its body over so it could get a purchase on Jordan’s arm. He plunged his hand into the trough. Blood bloomed from the rat’s hind leg like crimson smoke in the water. He pressed the rat against the bottom, the claws grated over the metal. He pushed down hard to keep the hand still. With the tip of the knife he lightly traced the scar from where the Angel had been put in and then he cut it open.
Searing pain shot up his whole arm. He almost blacked out. He leaned against the side of the trough, blinking himself back, breathing fast and loud through his nose. He heard Feda cry out in Pashtun, seemingly from far away. So much blood. His hand disappeared behind thick billows. He dragged the rat up the trough to the clear water. He had to work fast. With the end of the knife he tried to dig the tracer out. He could feel it hard against the tip but he couldn’t get any purchase on it.
The knife scraped against a tendon and Jordan cried out, a deep guttural involuntary groan. “Feda,” he cried, “you have to help me.”
The boy was sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees, tears running down his expressionless face, shaking his head.
Jordan dropped the knife. It hit the bottom of the trough with a ping. He couldn’t see it through the water now tinted red to the point of utter opacity. Screwing his eyes shut, he slid his thumb between the rat’s thrashing body and his palm. He pushed up with the thumb as hard as he could and shoved his ring finger into the fresh wound. He felt the glass chip, hard and smooth, unnatural. The middle finger of his right hand jerked spasmodically as he pushed against nerves and tendons. He got under the Angel with his fingernail and with a little sucking release it was free. He couldn’t see anything; the blood flow from his hand had redoubled and the efforts of the drowning rat were making a pink froth of the water.
For a second he had it as it floated free. Then it was gone. Frantically his left hand swished through the water. Nothing. The rat’s struggles had subsided. Just twitches of the forepaws.
Everything was quiet. Slow drips from the faucet. Jordan’s head sagged forward. The water sloshed gently down the trough in red waves. Then he felt it, something small and smooth brushed against his thumb as it rested on the bottom, clutching the rat. He swept the free hand in and there it was. Glass scraped against metal. He pinched the chip between his thumb and middle finger and swiftly slid it into the incision on the rat’s haunch, pushing it as deep as he could into the muscle. He ripped the rat out of the water. It was deadweight. The waterlogged carcass hung off his hand, heavy and dripping. It reminded Jordan of the dead squirrel he’d found in his gutter one year during the annual cleanout. He had been throwing handfuls of sodden dead leaves up onto the roof when the little body had rolled out, swollen and bloated.
“No,” he croaked. His voice was gone. He’d gotten this far. Not like this. He pressed the rat against the ground and pushed down sharply, compressing the rib cage. After the third compression a flood of pink water ran out of the rat’s mouth and it sputtered. Its tail snapped from side to side. “Quickly, Feda, needle and thread. You have to do this.”
The boy nodded grimly. Jordan showed him where to start stitching up the rat’s leg. “What about your hand?” Thick blood was pumping steadily out of the wound and running in rivulets down the side of his thumb and into the rat’s coat.
“Later. The rat.”
“What was in your hand, Amerikaayi?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Jordan heaved a great sigh of relief when, halfway through the stitching up, the rat seemed to come back to himself and succeeded in twisting around and biting Jordan’s finger and raking his forearm with the claws of its uninjured hind leg. The pain was nothing to the relief that the rat would apparently survive.
He pulled his hand out of the bloody harness and succeeded in getting the struggling rat back in the box. He wrapped a strip of shirt around his hand to slow the pulsing flow of thick blood. There was the sound of raised voices from outside and someone pulled on the locked door. Feda looked fearfully at Jordan and said, “We must hurry.” He pulled the balled shirt out of the trough and the bloody water started to twist down the drain with a metallic sucking sound. He put the wet T-shirt and the discarded strips in the box with the panting rat.
“Please put the kafiyah back on,” the boy said. Jordan loosely wrapped the scarf around his head with his good hand and Feda tugged the front of it down so it hid most of his face. Someone banged angrily on the door and Feda yelled something in Pashtun.
“Come, walk like you are sick,” he hissed. He opened the door and Jordan followed him outside, bent over with his bloody hand pressed to his belly. Two Arab men were arguing outside. One shot Jordan and Feda a filthy look and walked into the latrine. The other was a man from Feda’s tribe. He took Jordan’s elbow and guided him into the woods as Feda spoke to him quickly under his breath.