The Complete Roderick (16 page)

‘But listen, yesterday she told me they’re adopting a robot! A robot!’

‘Oughta be locked up,’ he said, staring at his hands, which were blushing deep pink. ‘Look, just thinking about them starts off the old allergy again. It’s not enough I gotta wash my hands fifty times a day and stick ’em in every filthy mouth in town, we had to pick a house next door to –’

‘You’ll feel better after dinner. Get Judy and wash, I mean –’

He switched on the TV to catch the news-scan, but saw nothing but a list of names:

This page is dedicated to all the gang down at Macs:
Jil, Meri, Su, Jacqui, Teri, An, Ileen, John, Lu, Judi, Jak, Hari, Lynda, Raelene, Luci, Toni, Allyn, Jazon, Cay, Edd, Fredd, Nik, Carolle, Hanc, Jayne, Kae, Lusi,
…

‘I had the strangest dream,’ said Ma, dishing up chicken and dumplings. ‘I dreamed I was lost in this waxworks, and everyone I asked for directions was just wax. I came up to this dummy of Ed (“Kookie”) Byrnes and I thought, maybe if I touch him he’ll come to life, so I did and he just stayed wax, only somehow I cut myself on this metal comb he had in his hand – what do you suppose that means?’

Pa, who was wondering if you could preserve food by stopping time, said: ‘Delicious, delicious.’

‘You weren’t listening.’

‘Well no. I’m sorry.’

‘You can’t help it, forty years of Muse-suck and noisy machines – but I hope you heard me when I said he’s coming tomorrow. Because he is.’

‘Who? Oh, him?’ He grinned with Dr Smith’s teeth. ‘Well now, there’s something. Life ain’t so bad, eh Mary?’

‘Who said life was bad? And if it is it’s only because you can’t behave like any normal retired senior whatsit and go root for the softball team or something, go work in the garden or, or just sit on the park bench in front of the post office with the other old seniors and talk about the state of the nation.’

He speared a dumpling. ‘More like the state of their bowels. Horse-shoes, you forgot playing horse-shoes. Yep, pinochle, pool, beer, TV – the choice is endless. Only I’m too busy.’

‘
Busy.
’

‘Anyway, what about you? Shouldn’t you be crocheting covers for the telephone and the toilet-roll and every other blessed thing that looks like it might embarrass people? Or else TV, you ought to be watching some ads for freezer boxes and electric beet-dicers, and the stuff they squeeze in between the ads too, what is it?
Dorinda’s Destiny?
Instead you just lounge around, writing stuff you
never show anybody, painting pictures you keep hidden – no wonder everybody thinks we’re nuts.’ After another dumpling he said, ‘We are, I guess, but no need for them to say so. This adoption business, you know what they’ll say? “The crazy Woodses is at it again.”’

‘If they do, it’s only because you go out of your way to be –
eccentric
. I remember nineteen fifty-two or was it three, just when everybody was watching Joe MacCarthy on TV –’

‘Don’t you mean Charlie McCarthy?’

‘When they were hanging on every word, you had to go telling everybody that you were a card-carrying communist, remember? “Hundred per cent Red,” you used to say, “and damned proud of it.” Had the boys at the Idle Hour talking about tar and feathers before we heard the end of it.’

‘Come on, you enjoyed every minute of it, you even made up that little card for me, remember? On one side it said, “I am a communist”, and on the other, “Communists always think they’re cards.”’

She sniffed. ‘I had to join the Ladies’ Guild to smooth that over.’

‘Yes, I seem to remember you getting them all around here for a seance, wasn’t it? Getting in touch with a flying saucer, don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that. Working away on the old ouija-board and all the time –’

‘Just a few lines of Apollinaire, to perk them up,’ she said. ‘For their own good, really.’ She sat back in her chair until the noonday sun caught her white hair and gleamed on the green scalp beneath.

From the red to the green all the yellow dies

When the macaws are calling in their native forests

Slaughter of pi-hi’s

There is a poem to be written about the bird which has only one wing

We had better send it in the form of a telephone message

Gigantic state of

‘Enough of that,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I’ve got a million things to do. He’s coming tomorrow and I haven’t even cleaned
the house or changed the sheets on the spare bed or baked cookies or anything.’

‘But he’s a robot, Mary. He doesn’t sleep in a bed or eat –’

‘Oh I know. To you little Roderick is just a chess-player.’

‘In a way. I mean, robots are terrific at chess, they say. Wonder if I shouldn’t go down in the basement and dig out a few old magazines with problems –’

‘Fine. While you’re down there, dig out our carpet-beater and use it. Understand?’

‘Maybe I could invent you a carpet-beating ma –’

‘
Understand
? Roderick is our son (or daughter) and I want to have everything ready for him. I want this to be a place he’ll be proud to live in, and it wouldn’t matter if he was a – a gingerbread boy (or girl). Understand? We have to start right.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘And if it just so happens that he’s not hungry and doesn’t want a cookie, fine. Or if he’s excited about his new home and doesn’t feel like sleeping right away, fine …’

Jake McIlvaney lay back in Dr Smith’s chair, exposing his large Adam’s apple. When he talked, which he did incessantly, it bobbed up and down disgustingly. Dr Smith could hardly turn his eyes to the man’s filthy mouth.

‘How did this happen, Jake?’

‘Well, this morning I did a favour for Matt Gomper and fetched these here packages from the bus station – two big packages on the same day, Matt says he never seen nothing like it, and one of ’em has to go clear over to Clyde Honks, you know the old Ezra place, that’s what we always called it even though Hal Ezra never actually bought it, let’s see the bank owned it and then Don Jeepers, you know, married that gal from Belmontane and now Clyde owns it well what it was was a milk analyser, I knew he was talking about gettin’ one but I never knew he’d really buy one because you know he was thinking of gettin’ rid of them cows last year – and anyways Matt’s missus is sick again, so I said sure I’d handle these here deliveries, so I got rid of that one and started back because the other package was for Ma and Pa Wood, am I talking too much here, doc?’

‘Ahmmmm.’

‘So I started back, the missus says I talk too much says I should of been a barber, anyway I must of been doing about fifty on that gravel shortcut past Theron Walker’s place, hear he’s gonna sell out and move to California, makes you wonder if it’s true, all them stories about his missus and Gordy Balsh – anyways all of a sudden I hear funny noises coming out of this here package. Like voices, like a voice, maybe a talking doll or one a them talkback computers, you never know what them crazy Woodses might get up to next, coupla real characters – so I stopped and listened real close only I couldn’t make out nothing. So then I recollected that Doc Savage was in that neck of the woods, artificial inseminationing Gary Doody’s herd, so I went over to Gary’s place and we took Doc’s stethescope and you know it sounded just like they had some kid boxed up there. I mean it kept talking to somebody called Dan, if you knocked on top it said, “Dan, somebody’s knocking, is that you?” And if you turned it over it said, “Dan, I think I’m upside down.” Damnedest thing I ever seen –’

‘The teeth are okay, Jake, nothing busted but the bridge.’

‘So anyways I fetched it over to the Woodses, thought I’d sorta hang around to see ’em open it. Real characters, ain’t they? Remember back in fifty-six was it, must of been before you come to Newer, maybe fifty-seven, remember Ma Wood one day she takes her vacuum out and starts vacuuming the street! No foolin’, vacuuming the street. That ain’t all, she, then she gets Pa up a ladder washing the trees too, never did figure them two.’

‘Oughta be locked up,’ said Dr Smith, washing his hands. ‘Adopting a robot –’

‘Well to cut a long story, that’s what it was. A little gadget like a robot only looks more like a bitty tank. Kind of a let-down, thought maybe somebody was shipping a kid to them or, anyway, while I was waiting, that’s when it happened. Ma had this plate of chocolate-chip cookies setting there. I just sort of helped myself and that’s when my bridge –’

‘What, nutshells or –?’

‘Hee hee, no that’s the funny thing. Nuts and bolts! Them cookies was just chock full of nuts and bolts! I swear!’

‘You oughta sue ’em. They oughta be locked –’

‘My own fault, hee hee, I mean Ma never told me to dig in – nuts and bolts! Thought I’d seen everything, but nuts and –’

*

The first day was one problem after another. The boy (or girl, Ma insisted) had been chirping away to itself inside the box, but once they brought it out it shut up for the rest of the day. Oh, it might make a sort of frightened whimper, say when they showed it the chess-board, or say when Pa took it in the workshop and tried to get it interested in hammering.

Finally they put it to bed, Ma told it a story and they plugged it in for its evening recharge and tiptoed downstairs.

‘There’s some instructions in the box,’ Ma said. ‘Maybe we need to read up on him (or her). Maybe we’ve been going at this all wrong.’

‘He’s in bad shape, I know that.’

‘Or she is.’

‘Dents in his head, scotch tape around his neck – and his treads are all full of dirt. Think I’ll fix him up tomorrow.’

They spread the instructions on the dining table and tried to read them. After some time Pa started working his jaw, settling his teeth the way he always did when he was perplexed.

‘You’re tired,’ she suggested.

‘All this stuff about buses and data highways, contented addresses is it? Makes it sound like a traffic report.’ He looked up. ‘Awful quiet in here.’

‘Listen, what counts is that little Roderick or Roderica is ours, our own child.’

‘Fine, only what do we know about children? Here everybody in town’s been calling us Ma and Pa for years, bet most of ’em don’t even remember it’s short for Paul and Mary, that we never had a child. Do you think –?’

‘No more thinking tonight, okay?’

‘No but do you think we’re doing the right thing here? Maybe we’re too old for adopting a –’

‘Too old! Why the Queen of Spain was adopted by fairies fifty thousand years older than the world!’

‘That a fact.’

Upstairs, Roderick began to scream.

Suffering Cats, the numbers were after him, barbed 1 and hooked 2 and 3 clattering its pincers before 4’s fork and 5’s terrible sickle
with 6 the noose swinging around for 9 beyond the deadly hammer and the handcuff … ‘That’s right, Rod, will you keep all the money you’ve won so far or move up to the Hundred-Dollar Questions? Fine, pick a number from 1 to 10, you picked 3 so here goes: Alamagordo is in New Mexico, right? And the Alhambra is in Spain, right? Now, for one hundred dollars, tell me: Just how did you kill Hank?’

‘That’s easy. Alcatraz is a former island prison, Al Capone is a former gangster, why is everybody looking at me like that? It was self-defence, you all saw him go for his gun first, I mean when he missed me with his 7 (I guess I was just lucky that one didn’t have my number on it) and his head was right there in reach I guess I just automatically pasted him with this wrench youda done the same, everybody’s got a right to protect his own property – I was just protecting Hank’s property, judge.’

Without even waiting to hear how he’d made his getaway (climbing into a crate and nailing down the lid from inside) the judge ordered him hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead, 3 times 6 maybe but still ends up as nothing, the dot o in the middle of the screen o when they turn you off by remote control in the middle of the most important message of your life: ‘Where is that Roderick? Where is that dad-blamed Roderick?’

‘Heads,’ said Pa, ‘are wonderful things. Nobody should be without one.’ He brought down the hammer on Roderick’s head, with a sound that carried out of the garage and over to Dr Smith’s house, where the pink hands of the dentist made a convulsive movement and changed TV channels.

Roderick stood on Pa’s work-bench, watching the old man bash dents into smoothness. ‘My head gets dents.’

‘All the same, heads are wonderful things. Do you know, you can get almost anything into a head. You can think about a house in Chicago – though no one ever did – and at the same time you can think about thinking about that house. “Here I am,” your head says, “thinking a thought about a house. And thinking a thought about a thought, and so on.” And even while your head thinks that, you see, it’s giving the old thought-handle another turn … dents, eh? Dents. Yes, well you know the way we take out a dent? We put one in the other side. We dent the dent. Then if it still ain’t smooth, we dent that dent too, and so on. Seems like so much of life is just denting the dents in the dents …’

He stopped hammering and sat down. ‘Not so young any more, Roderick. You can only dent so many dents and the metal gets tired, you know that? People get tired just the same, hammering away, trying to smooth out the world you might say. Well no, you wouldn’t say that, but I might.’

The room was full of Mayflies this morning. Roderick watched one land on Pa’s hand and sit quietly until Pa picked it up and held it to the light. ‘Too tired, see? This one won’t make it.’

He moved it close to Roderick’s eyes. ‘Wings like little lenses, see? Like for reading fine print. Funny thing about these Mayflies, they only live about a day, but they have thousands and thousands of children. See, they have children inside them when
they’re born. And those children have other children inside them, and –’

‘And so on?’

‘Good boy.’

While Pa rested, Roderick thought about Mayflies, thought about thinking about Mayflies. The radio was advising them to fill up that shoeshine balloon, but he hardly noticed.

‘It’s like half-ies,’ he said finally.

‘Like what, son?’

‘A game I play sometimes. In the dark. You take half of it, and then half of a half, and then half of the half of the half and and and, and so on. To see how close you get to nothing. To zilch. To Maggie’s drawers.’