Uncle Brucker expected an official call Friday night or Saturday morning, Sunday at the latest. It was OK’d ahead of time by the LL and the General.
Thursday evening after we watched Cole’s Law, Uncle Brucker took me aside in the hall where the neighbors couldn’t see us and the postman couldn’t hear us and nobody would plant a microphone.
“Keep your hands off the phone and stay out of the kitchen,” he said. “And tell your friends don’t call. Third ring I gotta answer or the the General will hang up.”
Friday. He moped around the house all morning, moving from room to room and chair to chair. He refused to eat his vitamin cereal and he didn’t want lunch. He drank only one beer and sat in front of the TV for a long time with the empty can in his hand. All day long he looked like he just got out of bed. His eyes were puffy. His hair was a squall.
Friday night. He sat in the kitchen, telephone on the table, waiting for the goddamn phone call. He had no appetite for the franks and beans I cooked for him. He read the paper twice, filled out eight words in the crossword puzzle, which I thought was pretty good. I got two more. Later I ate the beans. Saturday morning, still no phone call. I got up around ten and found him hunched over the phone at the kitchen table. He had stayed up most of the night but he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“You ain’t gonna last, Unc,” I told him.
“You wanna bet?” he said.
“What’s the point in bettin’? You won’t be around to pay up.”
At eleven o’clock the phone rang.
“That ain’t the call,” he said after only one ring.
I don’t know how he knew it, but he was right.
He handed me the phone. It was Leroy. I told him no calls until tomorrow, only official calls today, and I hung up.
At one o’clock the call finally came through. The phone rang like a bank alarm, so loud I jumped back. Uncle Brucker fell back too. He missed the first ring, then he grabbed the phone like it was trying to escape and put it to his ear.
“Good morning, General!” said Uncle Brucker, standing stiff at attention. “Yes, sir. Certainly, General, sir. You can count on me, sir. I always volunteer. That way you know you got an army without even askin’.”
He took the phone into the hall and I couldn’t hear him any more.
He hung up and came back.
“That was General Hardesty on the phone,” he said. “He promoted me to Top Man In The Field, and he personally volunteered for a special assignment, and you know I can’t talk about it until it’s over. All I can say is what everybody already knows. Uprisin’ Number Three is in progress and me and the army are goin’ on the offensive pretty damn soon. Got my squad cummin’ over tonight for orientation. Tomorrow mornin’, they’re leavin’ with or without me. It’s up to you to give me the go-ahead. No go-ahead, I stay home with you. Think about it while I’m packin’ up.”
Upstairs in the bedroom, he went through his sock drawer and chose only the best. He found three new-looking tee-shirts and some clean underwear too, and he stuffed them in his pack.
Then he emptied his wallet on the dresser and put back what was important to him. That included an old matchbook with the phone number for Dotty D in Buckston, scraps of paper with notes for True Rat Stories, and around forty dollars in cash.
“I’ll be gone two weeks, maybe more,” he said. “You’ll be on your own. Think you can handle it? Or do I have to unpack?”
“But I wanna go with you. I’m your right hand man, ain’t I?” I said.
“That’s a position the army don’t make a provision for,” he said. He found the keys to the Eagle and he dropped them in a bowl on top of the dresser just in case I needed them.
“OK. You got the go-ahead,” I said.
“How’s the rat list goin’?”
“I started a new page.”
“Keep it neat. The Government asks for it, we gotta turn it in.”
“I ain’t gonna keep it from them,” I said.
Next he went to his closet and took out a .22 rifle wrapped in a fuzzy gray cloth. He found two extra clips in the bottom of the closet, and a scope too. He unfolded the stock, screwed in the scope, locked in the clip, and it was a U.S. Army-Issue Rat Rifle Type B.
He thumbed a bullet out of the spare clip and held it in his hand.
“For me?” I said.
“It’s a good luck bullet,” he said. “Just don’t keep it in the pocket with the holes.”
“Don’t worry, I learned my lesson with the arrowhead.”
“And don’t shoot it, or you’ll be out a luck.”