Every smile was a gift, every laugh was a lift, up up we will drift, and there seemed to be no end of choruses to this one.
Pa began to wonder if this radio would ever wear out, so he could make out his report and be done with it. Funny, them giving him a radio to test on his last day at the factory. And what had Mr Danton said? Something about brightening the long hours of, of leisure activity? Whatever that meant. He knew they really wanted him to test the radio because they’d given him a key at the same time, so he could get back into the factory with his report.
For forty years Pa Wood had worked at Slumbertite, fixing first the assembly-line, then later on the machines that worked the assembly-line, and finally just the machines that fixed the machines. At the last there was no one in the place but him, and Mr Danton upstairs in the office with his part-time secretary. And now, so he heard, they were gone too, the factory rumbling on by itself. Probably have to get a machine to read his report, if this damn radio didn’t outlive him. How could he work on his inventions with all that easy listenin’ racket?
Everyone else in Newer, Nebraska, worked to music. The boys at Clem’s Body Shop hammered away to the Top Twenty; the girls at the Newer Cafe fried burgers to sad Western songs about drinking too much and losing custody of the children; Dr Smith the dentist had pulled all of Pa’s teeth out to the taped rhythms of his (Dr Smith’s) favourite Latin-American selections; even at the Slumbertite factory the machines worked to a kind of aggravating murmur from hidden speakers that Pa called Muse-suck. The stuff, whatever it was, had probably been turned on to entertain the workers years ago; neither Pa nor anyone else had been able to find out how to turn it off.
‘That’s the third time I’ve called you to dinner,’ said Ma, coming into the workshop. ‘What are you inventing out here?’
He started. ‘Oh, uh, well I’m not sure what it is until it’s finished. Might turn out to be a puzzle that nobody can take apart.’ He turned the gadget over, frowning down at it. ‘Or it might be the start of something really big — a tap-dancing shoe that knows all the steps — or even a car that runs on scrap metal.’ He put it down and stared up at something on the wall, a key, a gold-plated key hanging on a nail. ‘Do you suppose they meant that to be a kind of retirement present?’
‘I told you they did, and the radio too. It’s you that keeps insisting they want you to test it. Turn the blamed thing off!’
He reached up to the shelf and hesitated. ‘Seems a shame to get this far and not go on with it. Must be near done now, then I can have some peace and quiet. I’ll just leave it a bit… now what was I going to do?’
‘Dinner,’ she said, and led him into the house.
Mrs Smith let the curtain fall. ‘There they go, a coupla real characters,’ she said, expressing the opinion of half the town. ‘I don’t know who’s the biggest character, him or her. Yesterday she told me—’
‘They oughta be locked up, both of them,’ said her husband, speaking for the other half of town. ‘Putting a thing like that in their back yard where every kid can see it!’ He lifted the curtain and glared at the giant toilet bowl, large enough to accommodate a ten-yard width of rump. ‘And remember the time she shaved her head and painted it green? Holy cow, trying to raise kids in this — I mean what the hell are they, atheists or—’
‘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:
‘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.’
‘
‘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?
‘If they do, it’s only because you go out of your way to be —
‘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.
