The Complete Roderick (46 page)

‘Look, no offence, manner of speakin’, okay? Okay? I’m entitled to my opinion too, you know, it’s a free fuckin’ country.’

‘All right, all –’

‘Just because I work for a livin’ don’t mean I’m shit, okay?’

‘All right!’

‘Okay, just wanted to get that straight.’ The chauffeur twitched his shoulders, shrugging off any yoke of oppression Ben might care to impose, and sat forward: a free man in a free country, watching a free show.

Ben reached for the phone, hesitated, gnawed his knuckles for a while, and finally tried waking Mr Kratt.

‘Wha? Whoza?’

‘There’s a lynching going on, sir. Right over there. Shouldn’t we – call the highway patrol?’

‘Outa your head, bub. Word gets out I’m nosing around down here we’ll have every yak-head in the State tryina buy in on this land deal. Jesus, might as well take a full-page ad in the paper, announce a gold rush – use your head, for Christ’s –’ and he was asleep again.

Ben looked away from the execution into darkness. Toys. A show. Revenge of the common man upon the common object, wasn’t that it? Because it wouldn’t do, it had never done, to think of the object of their cruelty as fully human. So the effigy created by Albertus Magnus (smashed down by Aquinas) turns up as Friar Bacon’s talking head (to be smashed by a servant) and again as the automaton of Descartes (‘ma fille Francine’, flung into the sea by yet another fearful soul) even while dummies of Guido Fawkes began to burn in the streets of London for the pleasure of children. Common children, always more ready than even their parents to punish the presumption of a servant.

Well yes, he might work that up into an article, why not?
The Common Man and His Image?
‘Fascination with clockwork in the 17th cent. coincides with idea of commonwealth, all part of same big movement,’ he wrote, turning the notebook to the light. ‘Clock explained all, from Newton’s heaven to Malynes’s laws of economics – Huygens creating clockwork artisans for the King of
France even while (after?) Mechanic Philosophers promoted a new democratic religion among the living artisans. Groups naming themselves by function – Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers – as though describing their work within the great timepiece.’ What was the point of all this? What was it?

‘Christ, said the chauffeur. ‘Christ! Looka that.’

‘Shut up, will you?’

‘Who you tellin’ to shut up, listen fuckhead, I –’

‘Sorry.
Sorry.’
Revolution, that was the point. ‘Jacquard loom working a genuine revolution behind the scenes – Mme DeF. – In 1791 (?) Godwin wrote: “A servant who –“’ What was the quote? While he waited for it, the chauffeur said:

‘Hey look, uh, Mr Frankelin, I think we got trouble with the right rear tyre, hey?’ ‘What?’

‘Right rear tyre, I think it’s down. Your side, you mind gettin’ out and look at it?’

Still frowning at the notebook he climbed out.

‘Have a nice night, Mr Frankelin.’

‘What? Oh – hey what –?’

And he hardly heard the screams (‘God! His head come off!’) so intent was he suddenly on the sound of the automatic door-closer, the click of the automatic lock, the sight of the chauffeur giving him the finger as the limousine glided away into the night.

Yet the old myth dies hard. We are still tempted to argue that if the clown’s antics exhibit carefulness, judgement, wit, and appreciation of the moods of his spectators, there must be occurring in the clown’s head a counterpart performance to that which is taking place on the sawdust. If he is thinking what he is doing, there must be occurring behind his painted face a cognitive shadow-operation which we do not witness, tallying with, and controlling, the bodily contortions which we do witness.

Gilbert Ryle,
The Concept of Mind

One record finished, and in the interval a shrill voice said: ‘Well we’re practically related. My ex married his ex’s first husband’s widow – only I guess they split up lass week …’

One of the groom’s coarse cousins, naturally; there was relief among the bride’s friends when the disc-jockey slipped another record into the silence.

One or two couples started dancing on the patio; Allbright and Dora waltzed smoothly into the library and out again, their steps not noticeably slowed by the added weight of several first editions.

‘Hey Allbright!’ It was Lyle Tate, keeping his birthmark in shadow as he came past the disc-jockey’s glass booth. ‘Jeez, and Dora – you two are the only people I know here. Who is this mob? Who is everybody?’

Allbright shrugged, shifting books. ‘Everybody.’

‘No but I mean Jane Hannah’s not here, Jack Tarr’s not here –’

‘Tarr? I thought you hated his guts.’

‘Yeah but only when he was around. Guess he hasn’t got the guts to go anywhere today, there’s a story going around that he’s been cheating on some psychic research stuff. They say he got a pigeon to be clairvoyant something like a hundred times, pushing the right button in a Skinner box, you know? A hundred times.
Only trouble was the pigeon was dead at the time, biggest damn miracle since Lazarus – speaking of which, Allbright you don’t look so great. What’s that, dried blood on your face, bruises or dirt?’

‘We fall over from time to time,’ Allbright said. ‘We fall. One of the privileges of the C-charged brain …’

‘We? You mean –?’ Lyle looked to Dora, who nodded.

‘Rodin,’ said a shrill voice somewhere. ‘Yas yas yas.’

Dora said, ‘I guess I’m doomed anyway. Might as well go down the toilet with Allbright as by myself.’

‘Doomed, what do you mean doomed? Down the –?’

‘We’re all doomed,’ said Allbright. ‘Jesus it’s obvious enough; everybody goes around worrying about machines taking over, shit, they took over long ago, isn’t that obvious?’

‘But no, listen, what happened to your plan for –?’

‘Between computer poetry and vibrator love people don’t get a hell of a lot of room to manoeuvre, isn’t that obvious?’

‘No but your plan for ripping off bank computers, what happened to that? You said a friend in the nut-house steered you –’

‘The steersman, yes, aren’t we all – but you mean Dan, good old Dan. Well you know I went back to see him, tell him how great it was after they fry your brains, burn out a few pink and blue lights you feel a lot better. I did, I know. I did. I felt better. Not stupider, just happier, that’s what I told him.

‘Only for him it wasn’t like that. They had to burn out more pink and blue lights I guess. Jesus they fried him right back into diapers. I mean, whatever lights he had going for him, they sure as hell went out for good.’

Someone proposed a toast to the happy couple; Jim and the Dean of Persons looked pleased and bashful. The toast was only slightly marred by a shrill voice saying, ‘Yas, Rodin. Don’t you just love his Thinker?’

Lyle said, ‘Maybe he’ll get better, though. He won’t stay in diapers –’

‘Oh, he’s better already. They let him out weekends to work his job, even. Fact he’s right over there in that glass box, our esteemed disc-jockey.’

‘No kidding? That’s good, isn’t it? He can –’

‘He can find the hole in the middle of each record, sure. He can even talk, you notice? Every now and then he says, “Here’s another record.”’

Roderick awoke in jail again, watching Sheriff Benson watch
Top Dollar.
Dr De’Ath was sitting in a captain’s chair watching him. Ma was sitting in another watching everything.

‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ said the doctor. ‘Really amazing. Course, I nearly flunked medical electronics myself, never could learn to make a good solder joint – but this is really amazing. Mind if I test him?’

‘Ask him,’ Ma said. ‘Son, how are you?’

‘Fine I guess.’ Roderick allowed the doctor to look into his eyes and ears, to tap his knee and hold up fingers for him to count. ‘Guess you’re okay too, Doc?’

‘Shh!’ said the Sheriff. ‘Just gettin’ to the end of
The Marriage Stakes.
Already missed
Big Spender
and
Heap or Weep.’
When the commercial break came on, Dr De’Ath explained:

‘Pretty lucky there. After they hanged you some of the boys got so excited – well, Jake Mcllvaney shot himself in the foot. You know how Doc Welby is about coming out on call, so they had to let me take care of him. Got him in an intensive care unit now, over at Buford.’

‘Intensive care?’

‘Yup, and there he stays until he runs up a nice fat bill. Anyway I fooled around with him until the highway patrol came and broke things up.’

‘Lay it on the Line
is next,’ the sheriff explained. ‘But on Channel 18 they got
Big Game,
followed by
Grabopoly.
Kind of a hard choice there.’

‘They probably wouldn’t have done anything to me anyway,’ said the doctor, when he had swallowed a handful of bright pills. ‘Nope, not after you. Kinda put them off the whole idea, seeing your head come off like that.’

‘My head came off?’

Ma nodded. ‘I managed to get you home and fixed up.’

De’Ath said, ‘Amazing work. Boy if I could do that for a real patient – well, some day. Your Ma is a wonder, boy.’

Ma cleared his throat. ‘I did have some help. Er, asked one of the maintenance men from the factory to give me a hand with the tricky parts.’ He held up a mirror for Roderick. ‘What do you think?’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine, is that all?’

‘Well it’s – very symmetrical – aw heck, Ma, you know I don’t know how to talk about art. It’s – it’s a very symmetrical head. I like it fine.’

They sat and talked as the sky beyond the Venetian blinds began to turn grey, then orange, and as the sheriff watched
Beat the House, Chance in a Million, Take the Spoils, Up for Grabs
and
Cash or Crash.

‘Guess I’ll drive over to Buford and see my patient,’ said the doctor, after taking his own blood-pressure. ‘On my way home, anyway.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Got everything I need, now. Airtight case against Katrat Fun Foods. Well. Uh, good luck, boy.’ He offered Roderick his hand.

‘Good luck to you too, Doctor.’

‘I’m glad I did that, shook your hand. You know?’

Roderick didn’t know.

‘Well it’s just that I – last night when your head came off and I saw all the wires – I was really pissed off. The idea of being strung up in the company of a sonofabitching
machine –
I mean it just seemed like adding a last insult to a last – you know?’

Roderick nodded, feeling stiffness in his new neck. ‘That’s okay. See I’m not so crazy about human beings, either. But good luck anyway, Doc.’

‘Wish you boys would pipe down,’ said Benson. ‘This here is the one I been waiting for,
Bust the Bank.’
He watched that, and
Dig for Treasure, Wealthy and Wise, Family Fortune, Filthy Rich, Fakeout
and
Beggar Your Neighbor
before he was again interrupted, by a call from the highway patrol.

*

The two agents were driving very fast away from the burning wreck.

‘Can’t go back now, the highway patrol’s all over the place. If you had any doubts, why the hell didn’t you say something before we torched it?’

‘All I said was, he’s black. How come they never said he was black?’

‘What are you implying, we finalized the wrong guy? What, some black car-thief or what?’

‘I’m not implying nothing.’

‘Well you sure as hell sound like you’re implying something. Listen, you got his licence, is his name Death or isn’t it?’

‘Sure but –’

‘Is he an MD or isn’t he?’

‘Sure but –’

‘And did the receptionist at Buford City Hospital point him out to us as Dr Death or didn’t she?’

‘Sure. Sure.’

‘Well then what’s the prob? Study the orders, he has to be the asshole who invented this robot for testing artificial hearts. Dr Sheldon Death, right? The asshole Orinoco wants finalized, right?’

‘I don’t know. Because on the licence it says
DOG EASY APOSTROPHE ABLE
but on the orders we got
DOG APOSTROPHE EASY
–’

‘So?’

‘And he’s not Sheldon neither, he’s Samuel.’

After a silence. ‘So what are you implying? We finalized the wrong customer?’

‘I’m not implying nothing.’

Ma and Roderick sat thinking about Doc De’Ath while the sheriff settled down for
Royal Flush
and
Play for Keeps.
Finally Ma said, ‘So. You don’t like people much. I didn’t know.’

‘I like you and Pa.’ After a pause, he added, ‘And almost anybody else – only one at a time. But when you get them all together, people are so – weird, Ma.’

‘You’ll get used to them.’ He handed Roderick a ticket. ‘Now your bus leaves at three-twenty. So you be sure and be out front
of the Newer Home Cafe a little early. You need a recharge or anything before you go? Oil change?’

‘I just had one. Ma, don’t worry. I guess you got problems enough of your own.’

‘Pshaw! Your Pa and I will be all right. Of course they’re foreclosing on our home, and Mr Swann is suing us for his fees, not to mention Dr Welby and the others – but on the other hand, all the debts we owe are now in the hands of the Bangfield Trust Bank.’

‘Is that good?’

‘Good? It’s perfect, son. You see, the bank computer has been sabotaged. I don’t know how – guess someone somewhere phoned them up, drew out several million and then covered it by – I guess by changing all the plus signs to minus signs – something like that.’

‘So does that mean –?’

‘Bangfield Trust now owes us a whole lot of money.’ Ma winked. ‘Of course we won’t try to collect. Only numbers, after all. On the astral plane, pluses and minuses are all the same anyway. Now we can just settle down and live –’

‘But Ma! Isn’t Pa officially dead?’

‘Sure. And North America is officially a continent, and the Atlantic is officially an ocean, but so what? On the astral plane, it could all be switched around tomorrow, just like
that.’

Sheriff Benson cleared his throat. ‘You mind not snapping your fingers so loud there, Ma? I’m trying to concentrate on
Lucky Couple.
Heck of a big jackpot there, must be – oh, you leaving young feller?’