Rats squeeze through gaps in the mortar or rusty chinks in the metal to live in the grain warehouses, under the floor boards, and in dumpsters where coffee drips over chunks of rotting hamburg; they scuttle through sewers, along copper pipes and up aluminum vents, along dark and busy underground passages. Once, they were shy and cautious animals, active mainly at night. But widespread food storage in grocery stockrooms, restaurant kitchens and alley garbage cans has encouraged them to scavenge aggressively by day; in some urban areas, they squeal plaintively from the bases of sunwarmed buildings and stare vigilently from abandonned doorways. Such infestation spreads disease and mars the street aesthetically; that's when you need an expert exterminator, such as myself, for rats are wiley and soon learn to sniff out the tainted meat. Sometimes they know they've swallowed the poisoned bait, but too late to regurgitate it; they creep into the passages to die, retreat to the underground. If you follow, you'll detect only what they've left behind, their droppings; in the blackness just beyond the grease stained walls and the stench of urine, they've fallen.
I'm a modern Pied Piper in a city swarming with rats.
Each Saturday, I make my rounds. I push my cart up Monroe Ave, up Adams, up Randolf; I never walk the same street twice, but I push past Michigan Avenue, past State Street, past Dearborn, westward until the ground population has thinned to nonexistent. If the white powder tastes bitter, the mustard in the sandwhiches will mask this. The white powder looks just like the artificial dry cream that I shake into each cup of coffee on the tray.
"Off helping the neighborhood again, Mr. Smith?", a pedestrian who's passed me on a parellel street on some prior Saturday, asks. I nod, even though my name isn't Mr. Smith, doesn't sound at all like "Mr. Smith", is "Mr. Smith" only when I'm costumed for service. My toupe is grayish brown, topped by a ski cap. The beard is gray and the hornrim glasses sit snugly on my nose. When not in service, I'm bald, clean shaven and blond; I've never needed glasses.
On these cold blustery days, the ground population huddles near walls or over the heating grates built into the sidewalks. The pidgeons cluster on the sunny side, on the few inches of walkway next to the brick or marble, where a bit of building heat seeps out and the ice melts first. After gathering warmth and courage, some pidgeons rustle their ashen wings and fly to third storey window sills and roof ledges; windows let out even more heat and the sill perch offers a bird's eye view of the city.
The ground population which lacks wings sees a rat's eye view of the city. Most of them slump against buildings, like bags of discarded rags; they tuck their chins in for warmth and cast their eyes down from shame or exhaustion. Their's is a world without eye contact, where faces and a world above the kneecaps remains invisible; when one sees a face, it is the face of a rat, a face from the ground population. Occasionally, a pair of downcast eyes spots a face from the higher levels, scrubbed and purposeful, reflected in a grimy puddle. Alert eyes might learn to identify frequent passers by the unique way the tie their Nike laces, a scuff mark on the back of a black left heel, or the way the left foot turns inward during a stroll but not a stride. Some may learn how to guess age and occupation by footwear and stockings: This one with a tarnishd ankle bracelet and a tattoed rose on the other calf is under twenty-five; those exotically colored socks with triangular patterns belong either to a student or a worker trying for something dapper beneath the laboratory uniform. Some only know their own feet, every ridge in the thick toenail protruding between flaps of fake leather, stitched together with a row of rusting safety pins.
They smell the coffee but they don't glance up. They smell the mustard but their eyes don't move. They are slow, maybe sickly, maybe bringers of disease; healthy rats look up when they sniff food and their eyes jitter with excitement.
On my rounds, I demand that they look up before I give service. My feet aren't interesting, their feet aren't interesting. Eye contact means that they acknowledge my presence, acknowledge that I'm giving to them. Eye contact is a kind of thanks.
"Give me, give me, give me," their reaching, cluching, stretching, grimy hands shout. "I want, I want, I want". And you shall have.
The grit-creased knuckles grip a styrofoam cup, the fingers with jagged dark nails snatch a sandwhich, the dirt-grayed throats rise and fall spasmodically as they gulp down the bread, the coffee and the white powder. They taste nothing, for they've been hungry too long. They stare at the passing shoes and pidgeons, the city of the ground population. If one looks up, my cart and I are already gone, bumping over a curb for service to the ground population on another block.
Last week, I served on Adams Street; a few days ago, when I was out of disguise, I overheard a Starbucks cashier remark how so many of the homeless had disappeared from Adams. She speculated that the city may have opened a new shelter; the customer guessed that the city had bused them to Miami. A Tribune article described the disappearance of the homeless from the southern part of the city, the streets where I have already served.
Today I serve on Randolf Street. Tomarrow, the homeless will be gone from Randolf.
They will have gone underground.
They are too hungry to be wiley and sense tainted meat. To the famished, white powder is flour or sugar, even though hardware stores and garden supply houses sell many other white powders - cleanser, pesticides that make the nerves burn and seize, or the pale dust that induces hemorraghing in animals of any size. They swallow, they feel full. When they feel the pangs, it's too late to regurgitate; they would only vomit blood, they've already absorbed the essence of the gift.
Then they retreat to the dark warren under the city. If I followed, I smell the lingering fumes of old gin and feces along the subway stairs, spot an armless coat dropped on the platform. I could follow the trail of dribbled urine to an unlit door just beyond the station and down stairs to a passage below the subway. In this maze of corridors, an underground below the underground, electric wires cross and hissing hot pipes send heat to the stations above. Here beneath the humming wires and clanking metal, the city's strays find each other by smell; the underground population buries into this blackness to hide and die.
If I go down there tomarrow, I will smell where the Randolf Street homeless have gone; I will not need a flashlight to know that rat poison kills.
I wheel my cart to my next stop. On the last block, a pedestrian watched my ministrations and called me a saint.
