The Complete Roderick (29 page)

And that was all. A lot of perfectly blank pages followed. Roderick flipped through them again and again, until finally a minute slip of paper fell out.

The publisher regrets that, due to unforeseen technical problems, the last chapter of this book has been lost. However, the publisher is willing to offer the sum of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) to the first person coming forward with the correct solution to
Die Die Your Lordship.
The clues are all there, it’s up to you. Send solutions to the address below:

What a cheat. Roderick set to work and solved the mystery that evening, wrote out his answer and explanation (which appears on
page 339
below) and signed Louie’s name. Boy, wouldn’t Louie be surprised when he got all that money! Half a million, he could afford to hire a real detective – or a real teacher.

Next day he was at the corner mailbox, trying to reach the envelope up to the slot, when Louie came skipping along on one leg.

‘Here, chief, lemme help ya.’ Louie popped the envelope inside and clanged the door. ‘There. That’s my good deed, Roddy. Ain’t it?’

Roderick wished he could grin.

‘Love?’ Pa was so startled that he scratched his head with the hand holding the soldering iron. Later on he said: ‘Well I don’t know, some people say it’s everything, some say it doesn’t exist, some say it’s just using a fabric conditioner to make your family’s clothes soft or pouring some breakfast food in their trough every morning. Some say it’s the secret of the universe, some say you can buy it in any massage parlour, some say it’s priceless, some say it’s a lot of trouble and to hell with it.’

‘Yeah, but what do you say?’

‘Ask your Ma.’

Ma was working on her greatest project so far,
File
: drawings of all drawable nouns to be filed alphabetically in one cabinet and cross-indexed by shape. She was now up to claviers, claymores and clepsydras. ‘Have you asked Pa?’

‘He said ask you. See I been reading these stories and it’s always got hearts in it, love is always a heart thing, like in the Constant Tin Soldier see, where he loves this paper girl and when she falls in the fire he throws himself in after her, and he melts down into a little heart. And then like in this Wizard story –’

‘The Wizard of Oz,
you’re reading that?’

‘Yeah and it says “The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment. Then he said: ‘Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?’” See because he can’t love this girl he’s supposed to love. So like you can’t have a love situation I guess without a heart thing.’

Ma sketched a clam. ‘Then you’ve been poking around up in the attic?’

‘Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of these Wizard I mean these Oz books, and lots of old clothes and other junk. I found this old picture of somebody getting married, it kinda looked like you and Pa only it wasn’t. Was it?’

Her cheeks were pink. ‘No, I think … must be my cousin’s wedding …’

‘And I found this here box of joke cards, pictures of hearts and stuff, and little people with tabs on ’em you wiggle ’em and they move.’

‘Valentines …’

‘Yeah, like one’s got this dog with a heart in his mouth, you wiggle the tab and he jumps up and down it says, “I’ll bark and whine Valentine and dog your footsteps till you say you’re mine”.’

She seemed lost in a dream. ‘Pa gave me one once, nothing but a slip of paper with a formula, a cardioid …’

‘Hey this heart thing do you think if maybe I got one of them mechanical hearts like I could do these easy payments do you think …?’

‘Pa, it looks like there’s some big story you know? Behind all these little stories.’

Pa had just come in from the snow, coughing and cursing as he emptied out his sack of junk on the work-bench. He could not answer until he’d sat down, unbuckled his over-shoes, and wheezed a while. ‘What big story, son?’

‘I don’t know, but like I can’t pledge allegiance because I ain’t got no heart, any heart, and this Tin Woodman in Oz can’t marry this girl too because for the same reason. And in this other Oz story there’s this Tin Soldier without a heart too, and in this
other
story this Tin Soldier melts into a heart, I mean who wants to marry an old flag but all the same if I had a heart –’

‘Slow down, slow down. Been thinking myself about what you need. It’s not a heart, it’s legs. This is no good, you staying in every time it snows like this.’ Pa got his coat off and rolled up his sleeves carefully. ‘Anyway, I gotta try something, rig some –’

‘Pa were you ever in Oz?’

‘Nope. Why?’

‘Well because I worked out here, P is the letter after O, and A is the letter after Z, so I thought maybe somehow you changed it – and then you got this box I seen it somewhere it says Tin Soldier on it, so I just –’

‘Tin –? Tin
solder,
boy, not soldier. No
i
in it.’

‘Yeah but it melts down just like – anyway your name is Wood, you can’t … Wood, that must mean
something.’

Pa stared at him and started to grin. ‘Well I’ll be God damned! Codes and secret – at your age! Well, doesn’t that just take me back, must be years since I dazzled my own brains with – Hah!’

‘Yeah well there’s more. See, I worked out where this Oz must be, because see at school I learned Pennsylvania is PA and New York is NY see Oz goes right in between,’ and he sketched it on the wooden work-bench:

‘See, there must be this place between New York and Pennsylvania this Oz-zone. I thought maybe I oughta go there because I’m the tin Wood boy because I could see this Wizard –’

‘But there isn’t any wizard.’

Roderick thought for a moment. ‘Okay, then I could see this Mr Baum that wrote the story, I looked up his name and it means Wood too, boy, you can’t tell me all that doesn’t mean nothing, anything!’

Pa made sure he was not holding a soldering iron before scratching his head. ‘Well, son you see if you look hard enough, you can prove just about anything. Now take this L. Frank Baum, okay his last name means tree, just about the same as Wood, so what? What about the rest of his name. Frank could mean French, does that mean your Oz is in France?’

‘Yeah but it could mean
honest,
then it has to be true.’

‘But stories are never honest, are they? That’s the point. Anyway the man’s first name is Lyman.’

‘Lie-man? Aw gee, no fooling? Then it’s just nothing!’

‘Wouldn’t say that, son, thinking is a good way to spend your time even if –’ But the little machine had already buzzed out of the room. Pa could hear the whine of its motors all through the house, rising above the sound of Ma’s voice on the telephone.

‘Well I just figured with all the money we paid on that policy there’d be more … Yes, I said we’d take it, yes just send the cheque straight to the Frobisher Custom Electronic Specialties
Company of Omaha, yes all of it … No,
Frobisher.
Like the pirate, F-R-O …’

Old folks were real hard to get along with sometimes. Like they were all the time talking about money, getting out all these bills and spreading them over the dining-table just to look at them while they talked about money. What was he supposed to do all day? Sit around looking at their dumb wedding picture – it sure was Ma and Pa all right, but they must of changed a whole lot since then – or just listen to them talking about bills for electronic stuff and the adoption and Pa’s cough, and for all the special materials Ma needed for this ideal head, that wasn’t going to be no more use than the little legs Pa was making.

‘Go on, try ’em out, son.’

‘It feels pretty high, what if I fall over?’

He hated the little legs, all they were good for was stumping around in the snow until his battery went flat. But Pa was proud of them, and you had to humour old folks.

Roderick wore the new legs when Ma took him along to see Mr Swann.

‘My, haven’t we grown, heh heh, just take a seat there kid, read your comics while Mrs W. and I get down to business. Now Mrs W. you may recall I said this wouldn’t be easy, and it won’t be. Not much hope of finding a precedent, you see, not in the legal adoption of an artifactual, um, person.’

‘Sorry!’ Roderick’s feet made a loud clattering sound as he got down from his chair. ‘Sorry!’ He stumped over to the window.

‘In fact it er can’t really be considered a person at all, a person in law I mean, not as things stand. Better to just establish a trust, call it a pet and leave everything in the hands of trustees, funds delegated to the ah care and feeding and so on. But no, I see that doesn’t appeal to you, heh heh, we country attorneys get pretty good at reading faces, see the pet idea upsets you, right?’

The Christmas decorations were up all along Main Street. In fact they had been up since September and would remain until January 2, when the Easter stuff went up. People bustled back and forth across the street, loading their cars with presents and holly and squashed-down trees and cases of bottles. If Roderick put his head to the pane he could hear music.

‘So even if you don’t like the trust arrangement now, keep your
options open, Mrs W., keep it in the back of your mind because my guess is in the long run it’ll be the cheapest, most direct way. Of course the first thing there would be to establish ownership, right? You need your bill of sale or your deed of gift, otherwise the real beneficiary of the trust might turn out to be anyone who could establish prior ownership, prior to your possession through say loan or rental, they would of course be entitled to all monies accruing to their rightful property including any or all interest devolving upon it, from any trust or estate.’

O come all ye faithful!

Come to Fellstus Motors!

Trade-ins are guaranteed

You bet your life.

‘See you’re still not too stuck on the idea, so just let me point out to you a few of the substantial tax benefits, such as depreciation under the Class Life Asset Depreciation Range System, assuming Roddy here was put into service after January I, 1971 which of course it was, I can see by just looking that this is an expensive piece of machinery that – No, okay, right, I’ll stop trying to sell you on that idea.’

The cars were all caked with dried mud, the people all looked squashed down and, for all the bustle, no one was smiling.

Come in and see us

We can work out so-omething

‘Well the easiest way to make Roddy a person in law is to just incorporate it – him, I mean – under the laws of maybe the Virgin Islands, that way no need to go into his antecedents not in the Virgin – but no, I see you’re thinking of going all out and trying to prove it in court, that Roddy is albeit artifactual – a ward of court? Sure but first there’s this really tricky – this unprecedented – it’s like this: we can argue that its, his inventors began with a living body person in law and that it then underwent extensive replacements. Only one precedent there, case of a knife without a blade which had no handle if you know what I mean.’

O come let us advise you

O come let us surprise you

See what your money buys you

A price

you can

afford!

‘What do you mean?’ said Roderick. ‘A knife without a blade which had no handle?’

Mr Swann smiled at him but continued. ‘See, this Supreme Court case, St Filomena’s Hospital versus Mann. The Mann family contending that the hospital had replaced so much of their daughter’s body that she was no longer legally their daughter so they could refuse responsibility for the hospital bill. Plaintiff arguing though that the continuity of certain well-defined functions – anyway the case established the principle that with functional continuity, total cell replacement would be acceptable without jeopardizing legal identity, that is for insurance and tax purposes. So far of course we have no precedents regarding brain replacement, but if we argued that if it was replaced a bit at a time, say the right frontal lobe then the left then the right something else and so on, see the key is functional continence, continuance, continuity. So we say Roddy here is just some kid who’s undergone a whole-body prosthesis, more or less, and … but I ought to warn you, this could run into money.’

Ma stood up. ‘It already is, Mr Swann. Every time I come here you tell me some new complication, some new wrinkle – last time it was what if the court considered him an unauthorized data bank, publisher demanding payment every time he reads a library book, and would we be allowed to show him any copyright material without prior consent, was it?’

‘Hey, but mister what about that knife with –’

‘Very good, Mrs W., I did go into that but only in connection with the possibility of setting him up as a literary property like a comic book or a sheet of music, abandoned that avenue didn’t we on account of the fifty-year reversion to the public domain but don’t –’ He had to shout the last as she and Roderick left, ‘Don’t worry Mrs W., we’ll explore every possible ave –’

Roderick continued thinking about that knife.

*

He was still thinking about it a few days later when Pa took him along to Dr Welby’s office.