The Brave Little Toaster

afraid of ghosts. And so we’re going to pretend to be one.”

“How?” asked the Hoover skeptically.

“Let me show you. Stoop down. Lower. Wrap your cord around my cord. Now—lift me up…”

After an hour’s practice of pretending to be a ghost, they decided they were ready. Carefully, so that the other appliances wouldn’t fall off, the old Hoover trundled toward the window of the shack. The toaster, where it was balanced atop the handle of the vacuum, was just able to see inside. There on a table between a stack of unwashed dishes and the pirate’s ring of keys was the poor captive radio, and there, in dirty striped pajamas, getting ready to go to bed, was the pirate.

“Ready?” the toaster whispered.

The blanket, which was draped over the vacuum in a roughly ghostlike shape with a kind of hood at the top through which the toaster was able to peer out, adjusted its folds one last time. “Ready,” the blanket replied.

“Ready?” the toaster asked again.

For just a moment the lamp, where it was hidden halfway down the handle of the Hoover, turned itself on and then, quickly off. The bulb it had taken from the socket in the ceiling of the pickup truck had only half the wattage it was used to, and so its beam of light was noticeably dimmer—just enough to make the blanket give off the faintest yellowish glow.

“Then let’s start haunting,” said the toaster.

That was the signal the Hoover had been waiting for.

“Whoo!” groaned the Hoover in its deepest, most quivery voice. “Whoo!”

The pirate looked up with alarm. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

“Whoo—oo!” the Hoover continued.

“Whoever you are, you’d better go away.”

“Whoo—oo—oo!”

Cautiously the pirate approached the window from which the groaning seemed to issue.

Upon receiving a secret electric signal from the toaster, the vacuum crept quietly alongside the shack to where they would be out of sight from the window.

“Whoo…” breathed the Hoover in the barest of whispers. “Whoo… Whoo—oo…”

“Who’s out there?” the pirate demanded, pressing his nose against the pane of glass and peering into the outer darkness. “You’d better answer me. Do you hear?”

In answer the Hoover made a strangling, gurgling, gaspy sound that sounded frightening even if you knew it was only the Hoover doing it. By now the pirate, who didn’t have any idea what this mysterious groaning might be, had got into a considerable state of nerves. When you live all alone in the City Dump you don’t expect to hear strange noises just outside your window in the middle of the night. And if you were also a bit superstitious, as pirates tend to be…

“All right then—if you won’t say who you are, I’m going to come out there and find out!” He lingered yet a while before the window, but at last, when no reply was forthcoming, the pirate pulled on his pants and then got into his boots. “I’m warning you!” he called out, though not in a tone that could be called threatening.

Still there was no reply. The pirate took up his key ring from where it lay on the table beside the radio. He went to the door.

He opened it.

“Now!” said the toaster, signaling secretly to the blanket along its electric cord.

“I can’t,” said the blanket, all atremble. “I’m too afraid.”

“You must!”

“I mustn’t: it’s against the rules.”

“We discussed all that before, and you promised. Now hurry—before he gets here!”

With a shudder of trepidation the blanket did as it was bidden. There was a rent in its side where it had been pierced by a branch on the night it was blown up into the tree. The lamp was hiding just behind this rent. As the pirate appeared around the corner of the shack, the blanket twitched the torn fabric aside.

The pirate stopped short in his tracks when he saw the shrouded figure before him.

“Whoo—oo!” groaned the Hoover one last time.

At this cue the lamp turned itself on. Its beam slanted up through the hole in the blanket right into the pirate’s face.

When the lamp lit up, the pirate stared at the figure before him with the utmost horror. What he saw that was so frightening was the same thing the daisy had seen, the same thing Harold and Marjorie had seen, as well—he saw his own features reflected in the toaster’s mottled chrome. And as he had been a very wicked person from his earliest youth, his face had taken on that special kind of ugliness that only very evil people’s faces acquire. Seeing such a face grimacing at him from this strange hooded figure, what was the pirate to suppose but that he had come upon the most dangerous kind of ghost, the kind that understands exactly who we are and knows all the wrong things we’ve done and intends to punish us for them. From such ghosts even grown-up pirates will flee in terror. Which is exactly what the pirate did.

As soon as he was gone, the appliances rushed into the pirate’s shack and rescued the joyful radio. Then before the pirate could return they scrambled into the baby buggy, and the old Hoover drove off with them as fast as its wheels would revolve.

As luck would have it, they didn’t have much farther to go: where the master lived on Newton Avenue was only a mile or so from City Dump. They reached his apartment building early in the morning before a single milk truck had appeared on the street.

“You see,” said the toaster cheerfully, “in the end everything really does work out for the best.”

Alas, the toaster had spoken too soon. Their tribulations were not yet at an end, and not everything would work out for the best, as they were shortly to discover.

The Hoover, which had an instinctive knack for such things, buzzed the street door open and summoned the automatic elevator. When the elevator door slid open, it wheeled the pram in and pressed the button for the 14th floor.

“It’s changed so,” said the tensor lamp, as the Hoover pushed the pram out of the elevator and down the corridor. “The wallpaper used to be green squiggles and white blobs, and now it’s crisscross lines.”

“It’s we who’ve changed,” said the blanket miserably.

“Hush,” said the Hoover sternly. “Remember the rules!” It pressed the doorbell beside the door to the master’s apartment.

All the appliances kept perfectly still.

No one came to the door.

“Maybe he’s asleep,” said the alarm clock/radio.

“Maybe he’s not home,” said the Hoover. “I’ll see.” It rang the doorbell again, but in a different way so that only the appliances in the apartment would be able to hear it ring.

In only a moment a Singer sewing machine answered the door. “Yes?” said the sewing machine in a tone of polite curiosity. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, excuse me, I seem to have made a mistake.” The Hoover looked at the number on the door, then at the name on the brass panel over the bell. It was the right number, the right name. But… a sewing machine?

“Is that… ?” said a familiar voice within the apartment. “Why, it is! It’s the old Hoover! How are you? Come in! Come in!”

The Hoover wheeled the pram into the apartment and over the deep-piled carpet toward the friendly old TV.

The blanket peeked out shyly over the side of the pram.

“And who’s that with you? Come out—don’t be shy. My goodness, what a treat this is.”

The blanket crawled out of the pram, taking care to keep the worst effects of the journey folded up out of sight. It was followed by the radio, the lamp, and, last of all, the toaster.

The TV, which knew all five of them from the time it had spent with the master at the summer cottage, introduced them to the many appliances from all over the apartment which had begun to gather in the living room.