Rat Chili

They started calling it Rat Chili. The once proud, four-time winner of the county chili cook off, Sharon Spooner, held her head a little lower when she walked down the sidewalks lining the shops in town. Served her right. She had no right boasting about her cooking when she used margarine instead of Mrs. Ruben’s home-churned butter like everyone else. Thought she was better than us.

It wasn’t as if rats were completely unheard of in our town. The little buggers could shimmy their way in through any crack and it’d be nearly impossible to catch them. No self respecting wife would use poison in her kitchen; even buying the stuff would be a scandal. Nor would she think of inviting the neighbors over for dinner if she’d even caught a whiff of rat droppings. So when it came out that Sharon Spooner had a rat infestation in her kitchen none of the judges could bring themselves to even taste the chili much less give it the blue ribbon. Poor thing. It wasn’t half bad tasting chili. After that even her children wouldn’t eat it.

Sharon still showed up at the sewing bee but she didn’t talk about her chili, or any of her other dishes since the topic of food would bring up a chorus of soft ‘tut tut’s and the dead end of the conversation. No one talked about it in front of her, of course, but she knew. She knew we knew. At some point one of the wives couldn’t help but see her reaction when she found out we knew. Probably Polly Schneider.

Sharon wouldn’t deign to explain or deny about the rats so the subject just hung silently in the air. We all pictured the dreadful things scurrying across that ghastly yellow polished linoleum floor of hers and no one set foot in her kitchen anymore.

After several months the scandal was beginning to fade just a little but anytime Sharon stopped by the bakery to pick up fresh dinner rolls the only thing we could think about was Rat Chili and a few muffled chuckles would erupt as she reached the far exit. She always ignored them. What else was she going to do?

I’d never had rats in my kitchen. And my chili was better than hers. It always had been. Everyone who’d tasted it had told me I deserved to win. ‘She probably bribes the judges’ they’d say. No bribe would withstand rats, though. Of course when I took home the blue ribbon, no one was surprised. So what if she grew Red Russian garlic for her chili? Allan’s regular garlic was just fine. And besides, too much strong garlic could throw off the delicate composition of the whole pot, everyone knew that.

It wasn’t my fault that no one voted her back in as treasurer at the town hall. Who could trust a woman who couldn’t keep rats out of her kitchen? So naturally it fell to me to take over the position. I was better with numbers. Besides, maybe she’d needed the time to clean up her rat problem.

There was that business with her son and my daughter. Well it sure made a lot more sense once we knew what kind of a house she kept. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been taught proper values and ended up on the far end of town alone in a car with my Sophie. The poor girl couldn’t drive herself home after all. No, nothing that happened was really beyond what that woman deserved, raising a son like that.

Her husband couldn’t play soft ball to save his life and everyone knew it. Those short little legs and that belly of his, the team simply made him the first baseman to make him feel included. My Jerry had been the pitcher for years and he’d done a fine job. Everyone knew that. Sophie and he would play in the backyard for hours while I watched through the back window, drying the dishes. But then, not everyone could be so lucky and the team needed players after all, so Geoffrey Spooner had to be put somewhere on the field. His son wasn’t much better. The handful of home runs he’d had were simply luck. The boy probably learned from his dad, poor kid.

And that dress, the green one. Sharon sewed that neckline intentionally. She was asking for gossip, I’m sure of it. She had no business wearing that to the town social last July. No married woman has a right to flaunt her cleavage in the faces of all the men in town. She was practically naked and she knew it. I wasn’t the only one who noticed that. When she didn’t show up at the next sewing bee, had caught a cold, poor thing, I wasn’t the first one to bring up that dress of hers. The subject barely held out the five minutes it took us to get our sewing started. Soon we were parroting each other with big eyes, enthusiastic nods, dramatic head shakes. She knew what she was doing that night.

I mean, she wasn’t awful or anything. A good woman really. Her cooking was decent. Played piano at church. Fine looking boy. It’s just such a shame about those rats. They really are a pain.

It was just a little whisper at first, an idea. A question. A hint. Before you know it a ‘you didn’t hear this from me’ here and there and right onwards until the words ‘complete infestation’ made their way into conversation, agreed upon with nods and statements of confirmation. It picked up speed and got bigger like a snowball rolling down a hill and before we knew it a common topic of discussion in the diner or the barber shop was Sharon and her major infestation of rats. ‘…the damn things are taking up sleeping quarters in the pantry. Rat droppings in everything, don’t you know...’ Then always, on to the obligatory show of verbal disapproval for the rat itself, creepy little rodent. Ruins everything. Saw one the size of a cat once.

I don’t have a real clear memory of the rats in her kitchen, exactly. I can picture their beady little eyes, scratchy toes, their quick scampers across her ample wood-framed pantry and it probably was true. If I hadn’t said something someone else would have. Secrets like that have way of coming out. As soon as it was out of my mouth I was sure it was true. Somehow I’ve always known it and when Nicole Periwinkle and Tanya Silversmith both gasped, wide-eyed, and nodded it only confirmed my conviction. She’d probably been feeding the dreadful things. No wonder she was looking thinner. They’d probably gobbled her pantry through, poor thing. 

Well, what can you do? I’m certainly not going to her annual Christmas party. Maybe it’s time Jerry and I held the party at our house. God knows we’ve got the room.