Tribb's Trouble (4 page)

The next morning, while Linda and Suzy slept in, Tribb made himself coffee. He sat at the kitchen
table and thought about what to do. Before his wife and daughter came downstairs, he got in the car and drove to Home Depot. One or two clerks nodded at him; he seemed to be a regular customer. Tribb charged past them, filled with purpose.

No more playing around with new ideas in mousetraps. He was getting the old-fashioned kind. The tried-and-true kind. He was buying wood-and-wire traps. They worked a hundred years ago, Tribb said to himself, and they'll work today!

When he got to the mousetrap section of the store, he looked down to the bottom. The last time he'd been to the store, he'd seen at least fifty wooden snap traps hanging there.

The traps were gone.

Tribb stared at the empty spaces in the display as if his eyes were playing a trick on him. As if all he had to do was wait, and the packages would appear, like magic. But they didn't.

Only one small package, with two little traps, hung from a wire arm. The rest of the spaces, where big packages of wood traps had hung, were empty. Tribb looked around the mousetrap section, trying to be hopeful. Maybe someone had moved the traps. But no. He could have as many new plastic
traps as he wanted. He could load his arms up with sticky pads and poison if he cared to. But simple, honest, tried-and-true wooden traps? He was out of luck.

Tribb was starting to think the world was against him. Despair washed over him. He was about to close his eyes and let out a roar of frustration. Then another customer came around the corner. Tribb snapped out of his mood. He grabbed the last pack of wooden traps before it was too late.

Two middle-aged women in orange shirts stood behind the customer service counter. One of the ladies had a name badge that said “Carol.” She wore glasses and had her straight brown hair tucked behind her ears. The other lady wore a badge with the name “Joan.” She seemed older and had curly hair, dyed blond. Joan also wore bright red lipstick. This was a woman who cared about her looks, thought Tribb. He wondered if he should say something nice to her. Maybe the store kept some of the traps that he needed in the back, saved for special customers. Maybe if he paid Joan a compliment she would give him some.

Tribb held up the package in his hand for the woman to see, and he smiled at her.

“You look nice today,” he said.

Joan looked up sharply at Tribb. He thought she frowned. “You sound surprised,” she said. “Are you saying I don't look nice other days?”

Tribb took a half step away from the counter, as if it was hot. “No, oh no. I'm not saying that at all. I don't know what you look like other days.”

“I look like this,” said Joan. She glanced over at Carol and back at Tribb. She seemed hurt. Tribb tried to figure out how he had upset the woman by giving her a compliment.

“She
always
looks nice,” said dark-haired Carol. She seemed confused, as if she wondered why Tribb would say such a
strange thing.

“And why'd you just say that to
me
,” said Joan. She pointed to the dark-haired woman. “Doesn't Carol look nice, too?”

Tribb felt his face getting hot. “She looks all right,” he said.

“All right?”
said Carol.

Tribb wished he were anywhere else but at that counter. Anywhere. The North Pole in a blizzard— that would be a better place to be than this. He waved the package in his hand. “I'm just looking to buy some more of these traps,” he said.

“Oh,” said Carol, all huffy. “Now you want
service.”

“You can't be rude to people and expect service,” said Joan. “Didn't your mother teach you that?”

Tribb just stared helplessly at the women.

Suddenly, Joan grinned. “We're just teasing you, hon.”

“We're just joking!” said Carol. She now had a big smile on her face. “You looked like you could use a little fun in your life!” She turned to her co-worker. “I think we upset him,” she said.

Joan leaned forward on the counter, as if she was concerned. “Did we upset you?”

“Well,” said Tribb. “I was a bit confused.”

“I
know,”
said Joan. “That's how we entertain ourselves.”

“It breaks up the day,” said Carol.

“Now,” said Joan as she straightened. “How can we help you?”

Tribb asked if the store had any more wooden snap traps. “Maybe in the back?” he suggested.

The women just shook their heads. There'd been a run on those traps. Everyone was buying them.

“It's that time of year,” said Joan.

“We had some last week,” said Carol. “You should have come in then.”

“I did,” said Tribb. “I thought the new traps would be better.”

Carol gave him a sad look. “That's what you thought, eh?” she said.

The two women glanced at each other, then back at Tribb.

“Do you do a lot of this sort of thinking?” asked Joan.

Tribb sighed. “Too much.”

Tribb drove around for an hour looking for wooden traps, but every store was sold out of them. When he got home with his little pack of two, Linda and Suzy were gone. For a moment he thought the worst. Then he remembered it was Sunday. The two of them were probably swimming at the indoor pool at the community centre. Linda liked to swim on her days off, to relieve the stress of her nursing job.

Tribb thought back to when he and Linda first got married. Sometimes they went swimming together. In those days, Linda looked so beautiful in her swim suit, the sight of her made Tribb grin. Then, after Suzy was born, swimming was just a thing they did as parents. It was a way to entertain
their toddler and get her tired enough to sleep through the night. Tribb figured that's when he stopped noticing how Linda looked in her swim suit. Not because she didn't look good, but because he was a dad now. He thought he should be paying attention to other things.

Here and now, in the kitchen, Tribb started to think that maybe he'd made a mistake. Something told him he'd been dumb not to enjoy seeing his wife in a swim suit. It was important in a way he couldn't quite name.

Tribb ripped open the plastic packaging and took out the wood snap traps. Now this was how a mousetrap should look. Everything about the design said, “You know me. I work.” The wood base. The striker bar that you had to pull back. The wire hold-down rod that went over the bar. The catch that kept the bar in place. The little trigger plate that held the bait.

Setting up the traps was tricky. Tribb played with the first trap to get familiar with it. The catch was what they called a “hair trigger.” The slightest pressure from the mouse on the bait plate would release the catch. That would release the hold-down rod. Then the striker bar would slam down. The blow would break the mouse's neck. So the moment when you connected the hold-down rod to the bait plate was very … very … touchy.

“Shit!” shouted Tribb. The striker bar had slammed down onto his middle finger. The knuckle was red and throbbing. He sucked on his finger for a second and waved his hand in the air. Then he turned his attention to the bait.

He wasn't going anywhere near the cheese, that much was certain. He wasn't even going to look in the cheese drawer. But what could he use instead? He called Peter.

“I hear mice like bacon,” said Peter.

“We don't have any bacon,” said Tribb. “And if we did, I wouldn't be giving any to the mice. Gee, we've got some tomato and lettuce, too. Maybe you'd like me to make them a nice BLT sandwich.”

“What's got you so crabby?”

“Sorry,” said Tribb. “I'm just on edge. Linda's mad at me, for good reason. I broke her grandma's candy dish. I don't stare at her in her swim suit anymore. I haven't solved this mouse problem yet. And my finger hurts!”

“I'm coming over,” said Peter. “And I'm bringing beer.”

Peter arrived with a six-pack of beer. He eyed the traps on the kitchen table. “So you got the old wood ones, huh?” He picked one up and shook his head as if Tribb had made a big mistake. Then he saw Tribb was watching him. He put the trap down and shrugged. “Okay, I see two. Where are the others?”

“I only got the two,” said Tribb. Peter looked at him and nodded for a while. Tribb just waited for what was going to come next. Finally, Peter stopped nodding.

“You think two's enough?”

“No, I
don't
think two's enough!” yelled Tribb. “They're all the store had left. There has been a
run
on these traps.
Everybody
is buying them! I should have bought a bunch of them when I had the chance. Instead of listening to you.”

Peter put his hands up. “Hey, I didn't say don't buy them.”

“You said they were old technology,” said Tribb. “I was in the store and I heard your voice in my head:
old technology.
So then I bought a bunch of stupid traps that didn't work, and now my marriage is in trouble.”

“What?”
said Peter. “Your
marriage?”

Tribb took a deep breath. “I'm probably making too much of things. It's just been a stressful few days. Linda's mad at me. I didn't get any sleep. She has all this knitting to do still. People are coming over, and I wasn't supposed to eat the cheese. And the women at the store were very confusing.”

“You're
confusing,” said Peter. “I have no idea what you're talking about. What did you mean on the phone, about not staring at Linda in her swim suit?”

Tribb sighed and shook his head. “You ever think you might be taking your wife for granted?”

Peter wrinkled his forehead. “I don't know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”

“Yeah,” said Tribb. “That's the difference between you and me.”

The two men just stood quietly. Tribb looked at the floor with his hands on his hips. “You know, when you're married,” said Tribb, “you have to worry about more than yourself. You have to worry about what someone else wants, all the time.”

“Oh, like, she wants you to think she looks nice in a swim suit,” said Peter.

“Yeah,” said Tribb.

“And she wants you to get rid of the damn mice.”

“Yeah,” said Tribb. “And if you don't, you have a house with mice
and
an unhappy wife.”

Peter reached into his six-pack, pulled out two beers, and handed one to Tribb. The two friends drank in silence for a few minutes, staring at the wood mousetraps.

“Marriage is hard,” said Peter.

Tribb let out a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said, and took a gulp of beer.

A minute later, Tribb said, “Now I need to figure out what to use for bait.”

“And you won't use bacon,” said Peter.

“No.”

Peter put his hand to his chin for a moment. “I heard once that mice like dried fruit.”

Tribb told Peter that he hated dried fruit. As far as he knew, they had none.

Peter snapped his fingers. “Chocolate!” he said. “Mice like chocolate.”

“So does Linda,” said Tribb. “She's already stopped speaking to me. I'm not using her chocolate.”

Peter rubbed his chin some more. He stared at the kitchen cupboards, as if he was trying to
imagine what was inside them. Then his eyes opened wide. “I know,” he said. “Peanut butter!”

“Really?” said Tribb.

“Trust me,” said Peter.

Tribb gave him a sideways look. “Aren't you the guy who talked me out of getting wood traps?”

“I said they're old technology,” said Peter, and he grinned. “So's peanut butter.”

For the next few minutes, Tribb and Peter worked with the two mousetraps. They looked like soldiers setting bombs in a war zone. They put peanut butter on each bait plate, then carefully set the striker bars. After a few mistakes and cries of pain, they were ready. Tribb laid the two baited traps carefully in the hallway, against the wall.

“That's where I keep seeing the mice,” he said. “Might as well try there first.”

After that was done, the two men sat back down at the kitchen table. They talked about work and opened two more beers. They hadn't taken more than a few sips when they heard a loud
snap!
from the hallway. Tribb and Peter looked at each other for a moment, frozen. They knew what had just happened.

“It hasn't even been five minutes!” said Tribb.

Slowly the two men got up from the kitchen table and started toward the hall. Tribb went first, nervously, his heart beating hard. He peered around the frame of the doorway, into the hall.

And there it was.

A grey mouse about the size of his whole thumb lay caught in the first trap they'd put down. It had gone for the peanut butter, and the striker bar had slammed down onto the mouse's back. But when he and Peter stood over the mouse and stared down, Tribb was horrified.

“It's not dead,” said Tribb, almost in a whisper.