The Brave Little Toaster

somehow never really believed in its existence. And now it was here, and nothing, not even the pirate’s stony gaze, could prevent its shudder of fear and wonder.

The pirate got out of the truck and took the radio, along with his fishing rod and his day’s catch, into the hovel where he lived. The appliances, left to themselves in the back of the truck, listened to the radio sing song after song with apparently indefatigable good cheer. Among them was the toaster’s own favorite melody, “I Whistle a Happy Tune.” The toaster was certain this couldn’t be a coincidence. The radio was trying to tell its friends that if they were brave and patient and cheerful, matters would work out for the best. Anyhow, whether that was the radio’s intention or just a program it had been tuned to, it was what the toaster firmly believed.

After he’d had his dinner the pirate came out of his shack to examine the other appliances. He fingered the Hoover’s mudstained dustbag and the frayed part of its cord where it had been chewing on itself. He lifted the blanket and shook his head in mute deprecation. He looked inside the lamp’s little hood and saw—which the lamp itself had not realized till now—that its tiny bulb was shattered. (It must have happened when the lamp had fallen off the office chair, just before they’d found the boat.)

Finally the pirate picked up the toaster—and made a scornful grimace. “Junk!” he said, depositing the toaster on a nearby scrap pile.

“Junk!” he repeated, dealing with the lamp in a similar fashion.

“Junk!” He hurled the poor blanket over the projecting, broken axle of a ‘57 Ford.

“Junk!” He set the Hoover down on the asphalt with a shattering thunk.

“All of it, just junk.” Having delivered this dismaying verdict, the pirate returned to his shack, where the radio had gone on singing in the liveliest manner all the while.

“Thank goodness,” said the toaster aloud, as soon as he was gone.

“Thank goodness?” the Hoover echoed in stricken tones. “How can you say ‘Thank goodness’ when you’ve just been called junk and thrown on a heap of scrap?”

“Because if he’d decided to take us into his shack and use us, we’d have become his, like the radio. This way we’ve got a chance to escape.”

The blanket, where it hung, limply, from the broken axle, began to whimper and whine. “No, no, it’s true. That’s all I am now—junk! Look at me—look at these tears, these snags, these stains. Junk! This is where I belong.”

The lamp’s grief was quieter but no less bitter. “Oh, my bulb,” it murmured, “oh, my poor poor bulb!”

The Hoover groaned.

“Pull yourselves together, all of you!” said the toaster, in what it hoped was a tone of stern command. “There’s nothing wrong with any of us that a bit of fixing-up won’t put right. You—” it addressed the blanket “—are still fundamentally sound. Your coils haven’t been hurt. After some sewing up and a visit to the dry cleaner you’ll be as good as new.”

It turned to the lamp. “And what nonsense—to fuss over a broken bulb! You’ve broken your bulb before and probably will many times again. What do you think replaceable parts are for?”

Finally the toaster directed its attention to the vacuum cleaner. “And you? You, who must be our leader! Who ought to inspire us with your own greater strength! For you to sit there groaning and helpless! And just because some old pirate who lives in a dump makes an unflattering remark. Why, he probably doesn’t even know how to use a vacuum cleaner—that’s the sort of person he is!”

“Do you think so?” said the Hoover.

“Of course I do, and so would you if you’d be rational. Now, for goodness’ sake, let’s all sit down together and figure out how we’re going to rescue the radio and escape from here.”

By midnight it was amazing how much they’d managed to accomplish. The Hoover had recharged the rundown battery from the battery in the pirate’s own truck. Meanwhile the lamp, in looking about for another doorway or gate than the one they’d come in by (there wasn’t any), had discovered a vehicle even better suited to their needs than the office chair the pirate had thrown in the river. This was a large vinyl perambulator, which is another word for pram, which is also known, in the appliances’ part of the world, as a baby buggy. By whatever name, it was in good working order—except for two minor faults. One fault was a squeak in the left front wheel, and the other was the way its folding visor was twisted out of shape so as to give the whole pram an air of lurching sideways when it was moving straight ahead. The squeak was fixed with a few drops of 3-in-1 Oil, but the visor resisted their most determined efforts to bend it back into true. But that didn’t matter, after all. What mattered was that it worked.

To think how many of the things consigned to this dump were still, like the pram (or themselves, for that matter) essentially serviceable! There were hair dryers and four-speed bicycles, water heaters and wind-up toys that would all have gone on working for years and years with just the slightest maintenance. Instead, they’d be sent to City Dump! You could hear the hopeless sighs and crazed murmurings rising from every dark mound round about, a ghastly medley that seemed to swell louder every moment as more and more of the forlorn, abandoned objects became conscious of the energetic new appliances in their midst.

“You will never, never, never get away,” whispered a mad old cassette player in a cracked voice. “No, never! You will stay here like all the rest of us and rust and crack and turn to dust. And never get away.”

“We will, though,” said the toaster. “Just you wait and see.”

But how? That was the problem the toaster had to solve without further delay.

Now the surest way to solve any problem is to think about it, and that’s just what the toaster did. It thought with the kind of total, all-out effort you have to give to get a bolt off that’s rusted onto a screw. At first the bolt won’t budge, not the least bit, and the wrench may slip loose, and you begin to doubt that any amount of trying is going to accomplish your purpose. But you keep at it, and use a dab of solvent if there’s any on hand, and eventually it starts to give. You’re not even sure but you think so. And then, what do you know, it’s off! You’ve done it! That’s the way the toaster thought, and at last, because he thought so hard, he thought of a way they could escape from the pirate and rescue the radio at the same time.

“Now here’s my plan,” said the toaster to the other appliances, which had gathered round him in the darkest corner of the dump. “We’ll frighten him, and that will make him run away, and when he’s gone we’ll go into his shack—”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” said the blanket with a shiver of dread.

“We’ll go into his shack,” the toaster insisted calmly, “and get the radio and put it inside the baby buggy and get in ourselves, all except the Hoover, of course, which will high-tail it out of this place just as fast as it can.”

“But won’t the gate be locked?” the lamp wanted to know. “It is now.”

“No, because the pirate will have to unlock it to get out himself, and he’ll be too frightened to remember to lock it behind him.”

“It’s a very good plan,” said the Hoover, “but what I don’t understand is—how are we going to frighten him?”

“Well, what are people afraid of the most?”

“Getting run over by a steam roller?” the Hoover guessed.

“No. Scarier than that.”

“Moths?” suggested the blanket.

“No.”

“The dark,” declared the lamp with conviction.

“That’s close,” said the toaster. “They’re afraid of ghosts.”

“What are ghosts?” demanded the Hoover.

“Ghosts are people who are dead, only they’re also sort of alive.”

“Don’t be silly,” said the lamp. “Either they are dead or they aren’t.”

“Yes,” the blanket agreed. “It’s as simple as ON and OFF. If you’re ON, you can’t be OFF, and vice versa.”

“I know that, and you know that, but people don’t seem to. People say they know that ghosts don’t exist but they’re afraid of them anyhow.”

“No one can be afraid of something that doesn’t exist,” the Hoover huffed.

“Don’t ask me how they do it,” said the toaster. “It’s what they call a paradox. The point is this—people are