There was a rat in the pantry. Annie said it was just a mouse, but he could tell it was a fucking rat. The pantry was just there behind his rocking chair and Robert could hear it scurrying about so loud he couldn’t even hear his goddamned television program. If there was one thing he knew, that wasn’t just a mouse making that racket.

It was Friday, Annie’s son Fitz had gone camping for the weekend and they had the house to themselves. When Robert had gotten home from work they’d had sex right there in the bedroom with all the doors wide open. It had been nice, and when they were done Annie got dressed and went to go make them some dinner while Robert lay on the bed a little while longer.

For some reason he’d been reminded of an old girlfriend from high school, Callie Chambers, though why the memory of this particular girl should pop into his head just then was beyond him. He remembered she’d had the greatest tits he’d ever seen, and maybe that was it. Maybe that’s what had reminded him.

He’d gone behind her back and slept with some other girl, and she’d found out about it and then they’d broken up. It was all so long ago he hadn’t thought about it in years. There was nothing more selfish or self-indulgent he thought than thinking about the past and those mistakes you couldn’t take back even if you wanted to, yet there he was thinking about her all the same. She’d had the sweetest smile he’d ever seen, the sweetest face, and now he’d gone and led himself into a foul mood.

“Why don’t you do something about it?” said Annie. She was in the kitchen washing the dishes. The rat was still in the pantry. “Instead of sitting there complaining,” she said, “why don’t you get up and do something about it?”

He said, “Fine.” He said, “I will.” But you know he sat there a while longer and finished his drink, and then he got up and turned off the television and fixed himself another and went into the pantry. The scurrying stopped as soon as he opened the door. He could see the rat had gotten into a box of oatmeal on the middle shelf, and there were oats and little shreds of cardboard spilling out. He took another step inside and heard rice crunching underfoot.

“Fucking little bastard,” he muttered. That was his rice, his oatmeal. He had no patience for that kind of waste and destruction. A little nip here and there and now it all had to go in the trash. He wanted to get down on his hands and knees to look but he was sure the little bastard was diseased, so he grabbed the broom in the corner and started banging the handle back and forth along the baseboard, but that wasn’t working either. Then he got an idea.

He set down the drink and started taking all the cans and boxes and rolls and rolls of toilet paper off the shelves. Annie was always waiting on the Apocalypse, so there were a lot of supplies in there, but he took them all down. He took down the cans of beets and corn and the cases of bottled water, the sacks of rice the rat hadn’t gotten to yet and the beans and everything else and he stacked them all just outside the pantry.

Annie came out of the kitchen and saw the mess and shrieked, “What are you doing?” but he didn’t have the time to argue with her now. This was between him and the rat. “You’ve had enough,” she said. “I’m hiding it.” He didn’t say anything to this either; he knew where her hiding spots were.

Finally he had everything cleared out. Annie had gone to bed. She’d said she hoped he and the rat were very happy together. She’d said they were made for each other. He waited until he heard her finish up in the bathroom and then he checked out the hiding places. This time she’d stuck the bottle back behind the towels in the linen closet. He went and got his glass and filled it up right there in front of the linens, and then he stuck the bottle back where he’d found it to maintain the semblance of ignorance. Then he went back to the pantry to appraise the situation.

The problem was the rat was behind the wall. He could see the hole where he’d been coming through, but even plugging it up would only result in the rat making another. What he needed was some bait to draw him out. He went into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator and found some cold cuts, some roast beef and some cheddar cheese, and he put them on a plate. Then he looked under the sink for some rat poison, but it was all gone.

Then he remembered the air rifle he’d bought Fitz for his birthday a few years back. Robert had always wanted a rifle when he was Fitz’s age and he’d figured Fitz would be the same, but the boy took after his mother like that and he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. Robert went into the boy’s room and found it in back of the closet, still fresh with the scent of linseed oil. It didn’t look like it had ever been shot. He set his drink on top of the bureau and sat down on the boy’s bed and held the gun in his hands.

It was a fine machine. It had a solid, real wood stock with the old “Red Ryder” inlay, lever-action, and a nice solid barrel. There weren’t any fancy sights or gadgetry, but sometimes simplicity just worked the best, he thought. What adventures he could have had with that gun as a child! He found some pellets in the top drawer of Fitz’s bureau and loaded the gun, and then he was ready. He grabbed his drink and the rifle and turned off the light, and then he filled up his drink again just because who knew how long it’d be until he got another chance. He grabbed the little plate of cheese and roast beef, but you know he was hungry by then and damned if he was going to let some fine meat go to waste on a dirty little rat. He ate the roast beef right there off the plate.

Robert set down the cheese in front of the pantry door, just far enough so the rat would have to stick its head out to have a sniff. Then he turned the rocking chair around so it was facing the pantry and he sat down and watched the plate of cheese. He could hear the rat rustling. It knew something was coming. He pulled up the gun and set his sights on the cheese, and the instant he saw that rat, he was going to shoot it right in the fucking head.