The Complete Roderick

‘Yes I know you’re having a little trouble remembering the number of your classroom, but I just know you’ll soon be back in the swim.’

At recess, Mr Goun was waiting for him again. He was always lurking somewhere, the droopy red moustache (normally pointing to 4:37) jumping to 3:42 in a rigid smile. He always asked the same questions: did Roderick’s parents work? Did they fight a lot? Did he blame them for his handicap? What did he dream of?

Roderick made up a dream or two that put the moustache to 5:32 (and the eyebrows to 12:55).

Today they stood by the trophy case. Roderick was just saying, ‘…then there was this big decigeon tree, with instead of apples hanging on there was skulls…’ when a big hand grabbed his arm.

‘Good work, Goun, we got him this time.’ Captain Fest gave the robot a shake. ‘Here’s the trophy case, busted open and empty, and here’s the culprit. You see any of his accomplices?’

‘No look, I don’t think Roger here could’ve—’

‘No? Just look at him, guilt written all over that tin face. Let me get him alone for a minute, I’ll find out where they hid the swag. Told Miss Borden this would happen but does she listen? No, and Ogilvy our so-called security man, always off somewhere pulling his pudding…’

‘Maybe we’d better just take him to the office, Fest, straighten out this whole, I’m sure there’s some mistake.’

‘And this little bastard made it. Okay you, MARCH!’

Mr Fest gripped his arm all the way to the office, where Miss Borden told them all to sit down and get calm.

‘Now Roger,’ she said, staring down into the glass depths of his eyes. ‘I want the truth. Have you seen our school trophies?’

‘Trophies?’ he said. ‘You mean like a thing with a little silver statue of a basketball player, seven inches high and made in Hong Kong? And a disc about four inches across, that says 3rd place state spelling contest 1961? And a gold football for the all-county champs 1974?’

‘Yes, have you seen them?’

‘Nope.’

‘Ma’am you just let me get him alone for a coupla minutes—’

Goun said, ‘Give him a chance, maybe he saw them in the case?’

Roderick shook his head. ‘Nope, I never saw them at all.’

Miss Borden’s colour scheme of buff and blue was momentarily spoiled by bright spots of colour in her pale buff cheeks. ‘Young man, this is serious! If you don’t come clean with us, you’ll have to talk to the sheriff. Reform school, is that what you want?’

‘Wants the buckle end of a belt laid across his backside if you ask me. Suppose he didn’t see my binocs, either!’

‘Or my book!’

The interrogation went on for an hour before Miss Borden called the sheriff. ‘Be right over,’ she said, putting the receiver down. ‘He’s watching some game show on TV. God I hate all this! Getting the juvenile authorities in on it, we’ll all end up spending hours filling out forms — please, Roger! Please confess!’

‘But I never saw them trophies.’

‘Jesus Christ, if you never saw them trophies how do you know exactly what they look like, even the engraving, even—?’

‘Oh, easy.’ Roderick laid a shiny little lump of metal on the desk. ‘I found this by the trophy case when I was talking to Mr Goun just now. It must of broken off one of them trophies, and see? It’s a foot wearing a basketball shoe. And it looks like silver, and if you look real close you can see it says Made in Hong Kong. And the statue must be about seven inches high, right?’

Goun nodded. ‘He did pick up something while we were talking.’

‘Okay,’ said Fest. ‘But how about the rest? The spelling medal for instance? You saw the engraving—’

‘Nope. What I saw was one of the kids in Mrs Dorano’s class this morning when we were drawing trees, one of the kids hid something under their drawing, only it came out on the paper when they rubbed a crayon over it. 3rd Place, State Spelling Contest, 1961.’

‘Which kid?’ said Fest.

‘Ask Miss Dorano which kid. I don’t fink.’

‘Okay how about a full-size gold football, you don’t tell me you never saw that?’

‘Nope, never did. But in the creative activities area there’s a picture on the wall of this football team with a banner, 1974 All-County Champs. And a guy in front is holding this gold-coloured thing looks like a football only shiny. So I figured—’

Miss Borden said, ‘Jesus Christ,’ and reached for the phone.

Chauncey and Billy were beating up some littler kid. Chauncey had the kid’s hair in both hands and was using it to bash his head against the kerb. Billy stood by, kicking at the kid’s feet.

‘Hey come on, Rick, let’s get this guy!’

‘Nope. It ain’t hero-ic, picking on a littler kid. Only villains do stuff like that.’

‘Piss on you then, this is fun!’

Roderick decided the really hero-ic thing to do would be to stop them. ‘Okay, stop you guys.’

‘Piss on — ow!’

Roderick shoved Chauncey hard, pushing him over sideways.

‘Ow, Christ I skint my knee!’ Chauncey started to cry. ‘You fuckin’ bully!’

‘Look, I’m sorry Chaunce, I—’ He forgot what he was about to say, for at that moment Billy smashed a brick into his eye.

‘Hey, look, you put his eye out, boy are you gonna get it, hey…’

‘I’m gettin’ the fuck outa here…’

‘Me too, wait up…’

When the vision in his remaining eye cleared, Roderick was alone with the littler kid, who had a bloody nose.

‘Are you a robot or what?’

‘That’s right, I’m Roderick the robot. You okay?’

‘Yeah, thanks. My name’s Nat. I thought they was gonna kill me or something. Boy, they’d be sorry if they did. They wouldn’t have Nat to kick around any more.’ Nat smiled at him. ‘Hey, you know what?’

‘What?’ Roderick knew the next line: You saved my life, pal He waited for it.

‘You look pretty fuckin’ dumb with one eye, you know?’

X

The mechanical clown creaked with senile laughter, every wave of creaks setting up sympathetic waves of nostalgia within Ben Franklin. It reminded him of all the carnivals of his childhood, the candy floss and aluminium ID bracelets engraved by shaky hands, the recorded calliope music fighting the recorded superlaughs from the Hall of Mirrors, the afternoons spent cranking away at a tiny crane ingeniously arranged to avoid gold cigarette-lighters and seize in its clamshell a single grain of popcorn.

Corn, that was the soul of it, and probably the soul of Mr Kratt too. Why else should an important businessman maintain his headquarters in a dirty little trailer in the midst of all this? Corny sentiment. Stuff of the common man, of Goodall Wetts III and God is Good Business, stuff of which fortunes are made. And what was wrong with it? Hadn’t it been said by Abraham Lincoln (if not by a bearded robot in Disneyland) that God must have loved the common man, because He made him so common? Don’t knock, Ben warned himself. For Christ’s sake, boost.

And yet he could not help following a critical line elsewhere. Noticing the irony of a white-faced robot clown whose make-up could be traced through real clowns back to Grimaldi — who wore it in La Statue Blanche where he played a man impersonating an automaton (each turn of the crank produced a new