The Complete Roderick

Dr Smith cursed and yelled incoherently for a moment, then left, carrying before him his swollen, pink, capable hands. The sheriff remained behind a moment.

‘Real sorry about this, folks. Doc’ll pay for the door and all but — well, might be better to make sure we don’t get any more false alarms, okay?’

Pa said, ‘Keep him away from Judy Smith, you mean?’

‘I mean, keep him chained up. Seems to me if he ain’t a boy or a girl and he ain’t exactly a machine, he must be a pet. You get a good strong chain tomorrow, and chain him up.’

Ma shrieked. Pa turned pinker than a dentist’s hands. ‘What the hell, here, Sheriff, look at all these papers — we’re trying to adopt him. He’s our son. You can’t ask us to chain up our own—’

‘I can and I do. You adopt him, maybe we can forget the chain. Until then — that’s an order of my office, chain him up — or else. I catch him loose on the street, takin’ him in to the pound in Belmontane. They might even destroy him.’

Pa and Ma sat up fretting most of the night, but in the morning there was nothing else to do: Pa went to Sam’s Newer Hardware and bought a twenty-foot chain and a padlock. Ma sat weeping by her African violets. ‘Fetters on a baby!’ she said. ‘Paul, how can we do this to him?’

‘At least he’ll be where we can keep an eye on him. He’ll be safe.’

‘Or she will,’ said Ma, blowing her nose. ‘Couldn’t we just let him or her have one last taste of freedom in the front yard? A minute? Half a minute?’

‘Okay, Mary.’ They let him out, watched him gambol (more or less) and then went to fetch the chain. They returned to see a tattooed arm drag him into a car, which slammed its door and screeched its tyres and shot out of sight.

‘Nobody in town’s got a car like that, all colourless,’ said Pa, when he could get his breath. ‘And the licence plate all dusty.’

‘I was afraid of this,’ Ma said. ‘The gipsies have got him.’

V

The big woman with the wrinkled face kept saying, ‘Jeep, you ain’t got the sense of a dehorn, takin’ some kid’s toy like this.’

Roderick was wedged in the back seat between her and Jeep, the man with pictures all over his arms. There were other people wedged in around them. He could see half an ear wearing an earring, a hand holding a guitar, the bald spot of someone who was snoring, a baby’s foot.

‘Jeep, you ain’t got—’

‘Come on, Zip, how’d I know? It looked like a lawn-mower to me.’

Roderick said, ‘I’m not a lawn-mower, I’m a robot. My name is Roderick Wood—’

‘Told you: a toy. A damned toy.’

‘—and I live at 614 Sycamore Aven—’

‘Osiris!’ someone shouted. ‘This thing’s security-wired! We better stop and dump—’

‘Stop nothing.’ Zip composed her wrinkles. ‘You know the rule: when in doubt, keep going.’

The bald spot turned away and a watery eye took its place. ‘Oh fine. You know how these rubes are about toys. They get ten times as excited over some fool toy ripoff as they do over a car. And if we get pinched — well, there goes my nomination for Gipsy Good Neighbour of the Year.’

Jeep held up a screwdriver. ‘Okay okay I’ll strip this thing down now and we can sell the parts in Gallonville. Any objections?’

Roderick said, ‘Well I—’

‘Mommy, mommy,’ said a voice from the front.

The earring moved. ‘Not now, Chepette.’

‘Strip and sell, that’s the rule,’ said the old woman. ‘Only maybe this little gizmo’s worth more on the hoof, eh? Lemme think a minute.’

‘Mommy, can me and Jepper have a toy?’

‘You go and play with that pop-bottle, it’s down there somewhere…’

‘But Jepper’s peeing in it. Mommy couldn’t we have a real toy like on

Roderick watched the screwdriver. ‘Hey can I say something?’

‘See what I mean, Jeep, a talk-back toy. Must be worth a buck or two…’

The conversation went on without him, stopping only now and then when the baby’s pink foot became entangled in the hoop of the earring, when the guitar got into the watery eye, or when a tiny voice announced that Jepper was drinking from the pop-bottle. Roderick waited, studying the skin-pictures on the arm next to him.

A snake crawling out of the armpit is marked DON’T READ ON ME. It devours or disgorges an eagle holding a cane in one claw, a string of wienies in the other, and in its beak the Ace of Spades inscribed THEM. The wienies coiled around a heart, pierced by a two-ended sword. The man wielding it has one eye and wears a snail-shell on his head. At his feet is a broken anchor. He stands beneath a tree on which small skulls hang like fruit. The tree is on fire; out of the flames rises a mallard holding one end of a long scroll on whose folds are these letters:

t s eliot lived on top a sleek bard

The opposite end thickens into a giant hand grasping a dolphin which waves a Confederate flag; one of its stars has shot into the sky to threaten a kite. The kite string is held by a naked woman who crushes a scorpion underfoot. The scorpion grips a key, while the full moon above features a keyhole. From it an eye observes a mer- cupid armed with an oilcan, sprinkling oil upon a crowd of 13 crowned men. Though blindfolded they follow a tank along the road to a distant tower. The tank insignia is a rose inscribed FAI HOP CHAR. Its gun turret fires dice down the wrist, past a parachute…

Jeep reached up to pick his teeth and the picture changed:

Now a snake from a distant tower disgorges dice. An Ace of Spades is the insignia of a tank (FAITH HOPE CHARM) extending its chain of wienies to capture 13 blind kings. The fishtailed kite oils a flaming tree beneath which the one-eyed man embraces nakedness while the scorpion attacks a broken anchor. One sword-blade stabs the moon while along it charges a snail waving a flag, towards the point where the two ends of the scroll meet (beneath a winged umbrella) held by a single penguin.

Roderick tried reading the scroll forwards and backwards. It made no more sense than anything else about this mad, bad family. What was a drab, anyway? What was keeling a pot? Why did they want to destroy him before he could even find out stuff like that?

As he climbed up to the back window for a last look at the world, the invisible child started up again:

‘Mommy Jepper says he wants to have toys and live in a house with lots and lots of toys where you don’t have to pee in a pop-bottle and you get TV and real strong aluminium foil and pizza-burger mix and doesn’t just hide odours, can we huh?’

‘Be still now—’

‘And TV and microsnax and Uncle Whiskers Oldie Tymie — Owl It wasn’t me Mommy it was Jepper he — Ow!’

It seemed a good opening. ‘This,’ said Roderick clearly, ‘is lots better than a house. I like living here.’

None of the adults spoke. Then, ‘Yeah but they got TV and—’

‘Listen, TV ain’t much. All they got on TV is stories about people driving around in cars. Sometimes not even people, just the cars, this car drives down a street and then on a freeway and then on a bridge, then this other car sees it and starts chasing it, they both have to jump over a lot of bumps and then one of ’em smashes up, The End. Heck, what do you want that stuff for, here you got a real car. You even got another real