Christmas Eve: a Ratfink Story

(My children will remember many a bedtime Ratfink story I would share with them.  They are no longer at a bedtime story age.  Occasional nostalgia attacks make a parent miss those times.  But maybe we can gather around the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and revisit our Ratfink.)

It was Christmas Eve, and Ratfink was home all by himself.

Ratfink had always lived alone, ever since he had run away at age 16.

But he couldn’t run away from the world, though he had wanted to.

Instead he lived in a simple cabin, close to the woods.

It was quiet there and private, a place where he could be himself: a loner with a chip on his shoulder.

Except that a month ago, his private domain had been invaded by another loner.

A big burly bearded brute of a man with one eye and a bad limp had set a little old house-trailer only 200 yards away from him.

One-eyed Sam had a terrible temper, especially when he was drunk, and that was nearly every day.

One early evening he had been roaring and raging around his place when he spotted Ratfink coming out of his cabin. 

He had come swaying toward Ratfink, cursing and threatening to skin him alive if he set one step on his yard.  Then he sicced his pit bull on Ratfink, and the big dog had come flying, fangs bared and the kill-look in his eyes.

Ratfink had just managed to get back inside his cabin and slammed the door shut when the dog had thrown his full weight against it. 

But the door was sturdy and had held. 

More fury than fear had made Ratfink shake.

His whole body shook, and his hands rolled into fists.

Nothing could make him more incensed than to be cursed and yelled at as if he were a stupid cow.

It’s what he had tried to escape, and now the worst of all plagues had moved next to him.

Now it was Christmas Eve, and Ratfink sat close to his woodstove, cleaning his gun, the gun he used now and then for hunting in the woods. 

The gun he intended to use on his neighbor’s dog, should he ever be threatened again.

He cleaned and polished in the light of the kerosene lamp he had placed close to him.

Then he heard a fierce barking, coming closer, closer, then right at his cabin’s front door.

The rage rose in Ratfink again. 

He quickly re-assembled his gun, slid a bullet in the chamber, and cautiously advanced toward the door.

But the barking had now changed to whining and whimpering. 

The dog was scratching on the door, as if begging for someone’s attention.

Ratfink paused, puzzled.  He wondered if it was Sam’s dog and what it was trying to do.

The dog’s whimpering and scratching was becoming more urgent.  When it barked, there was no threat in it.

Ratfink opened the door just a tad, his gun at the ready still, his rage now mixed with curiosity.

He saw the hated pit bull now in the moonlight reflecting off the snow.

The dog did not attack but turned toward the trailer, barked, turned his head toward Ratfink, as if pleading him to follow, then ran ahead a ways before stopping again, waiting for Ratfink to come.

And Ratfink did come, his gun cradled in his arm. 

He did not want to come. 

He hated that dog and he hated one-eyed Sam even more.

He’d just as soon shoot both and have them out of his life for good.

Yet he followed the dog to that dilapidated trailer, as if compelled by another force that negated his will.

The pit bull led him to the trailer’s open door.

Ratfink paused there, wondering if he was walking into a trap.

He remembered Sam’s threat of skinning him alive if he set foot near his place.

Now he was about to go inside, and he held his gun in firing position, just in case.

The dog had preceded him and now stood whimpering by his master’s body, slumped on the floor near his chair, a handgun and an empty whiskey bottle few feet away.

Ratfink took in the gory scene and hesitated.

He could just leave and pretend he knew nothing.

Sam would die, or maybe he was dead already, and that would be that: good riddance.

He half turned to follow the impulse, but the dog was already at the door, barring the way.

Then this other force, so strange, seemed to surge deep inside again.

He bent over wild Sam, checked for a pulse, found a faint one, and saw the blood oozing from his chest.

Now the other force took over fully: Ratfink took out his pocket knife, cut away the shirt, uncovered the wound, cut a strip of shirt, placed it over the bullet hole, took off his own flannel shirt, folded it several times into a narrow band and bound it tightly over the wound and around Sam’s chest.

There was no telephone; and there were no other neighbors.

Sam was too heavy to carry; only one thing to do, and that was to drag him.

Ratfink grabbed a blanket off the nearby bed, rolled Sam onto it, and began to drag him toward the door.

Then he ran to get his pickup, backed it up to the trailer, and somehow wrestled Sam onto the flatbed where he covered him with all the blankets and burlap bags he could find.

When the pit bull had jumped in too, he raised and locked the gate in place.

The nearest hospital was 17 miles away.

He had no idea he would make it in time.

Before jumping in the cab, Ratfink got an impulse to look up to the clear star-lit sky.

One star, directly overhead, seemed to glitter more brightly than the others.

For the first time in a long time, Ratfink felt clean and good.

He almost smiled when he remembered it was Christmas Eve.