Mike Nelson's Death Rat! Read Online Free Page B

Anyone? as thanks to the PederCo staff. Ron fetched a copy of it from a stack on the counter near the tortilla chips.
    Ms. Pedersen and the staff gathered around, ignoring the baseball game (which was going south for the Twins, as Baltimore’s shortstop had just hit a three-run shot), and Bromstad began reading from Chapter 6.

    â€œBip Stuyvesant called his brother Ewell at 10:00 A.M . every day of the week. ‘Ewell has his head in the clouds,’ Bip would say when people asked why. ‘He’s a dreamer, and someday he’s gonna dream hisself into a big load of trouble.’”

    Gus’s voice was in good form and as he affected Bip’s tone, and the people in the skybox noticeably relaxed, if only slightly.

    â€œIt was the Tuesday after the big Sugar Beet Daze parade when Bip called Ewell at the usual time and Ewell didn’t answer. Bip let the phone ring twenty-three times (he counted), figuring that Ewell might be down in his root cellar sorting tubers, but even those twenty-three rings weren’t enough to raise Ewell.”

    Bromstad was lost in his reading now, really warming to his own material. PederCo’s staff, witnessing Bromstad’s transformation from the odd, belligerent man who had oppressed the skybox into the warm, engaging, public Bromstad, began to loosen noticeably.

    â€œâ€˜Oh, Ewell,’ said Bip, crawling onto his Massey-Ferguson, turning it over and speeding down county Y the two miles to Ewell’s place. Pulling it up in front, he hopped from his seat and burst through the front door. There in the front room he found poor Ewell, passed out, buried under a large pile of frozen fish fillets, in the early stages of hypothermia.”

    Sensing that at last they were in good hands, the PederCo staff began to fall into the story, and Bromstad, who throughout his years had honed a keen sense of his audience, pushed his characterizations even more.

    â€œâ€˜Ewell! Oh, Ewell, what kind of a loony scheme are you up to?’ Bip cried as he pushed and clawed the fish fillets off his unconscious brother and scooped him up into his powerful arms. He mounted his Massey-Ferguson, pulled Ewell up onto his lap, and floored it speeding toward the Dogwood Downs Community Hospital. Bip paced the floor for two hours before he was allowed to see him.
    â€œâ€˜Ewell, you dreamer! What in the name of mercy were you up to?’ Bip asked.
    â€œâ€˜Oh, Bip,’ said Ewell weakly, ‘It ain’t what you think.’
    â€œâ€˜Well, it can’t be,’ said Bip. ‘’Cause I ain’t the foggiest what you were doin’ under those fillets.’
    â€œâ€˜Well, I was watching the Top of the Day program out of Duluth, when Tina starts a-talking about how if you got the dry skin, there’s a remedy you can do right at home, with ingredients you already got. Now, Bip, you know I got the dry skin.’
    â€œâ€˜I know,’ Bip said, tears in his eyes.
    â€œâ€˜Well, they says where if you make a paste of salmon, it was, and lemon juice and some other things I don’t remember and put it on your dry skin, it’d work wonders.’
    â€œâ€˜Oh, Ewell,’ said Bip, guessing what had happened.
    â€œâ€˜But I didn’t have no salmon, just those fifty pounds of perch fillets that Mr. Clousin give me after his trip to Lake of the Woods. So—’”

    At that moment Jennifer fairly burst through the door and announced triumphantly, “I have your drummies, Mr. Bromstad!”
    This interruption clearly upset Gus Bromstad considerably. His face darkened as he stared, eyes wide, at the poisonous intrusion. Jennifer immediately sensed that it was the wrong time to be cheerily presenting steaming trays of drummies.
    â€œWhoops,” she said quietly.
    Bromstad began by hurling the book at her, which missed by more than a dozen feet. Then he rose from his seat and, cursing most foully, made his