The Complete Roderick (30 page)

‘Good
to see you, Pa, looking better eh? Good, good. Any more trouble from the old, eh? No? Good, good. Now let’s just listen to the, ah.
Very
good. Just wish all my patients your age had half as much, er. ahm. Eh?’

Pa said, ‘Well this cough is worse, and I can’t seem to sleep, doc. Them pills you prescribed seem to –’

‘Uh-oh? Side-effects! Still, not abnormal in these cases. Thanodorm often starts off like that, supposed to make you sleep only at first keeps you wide awake, eh? But it’s working, it’s just taking hold.’

‘Fine, only it ain’t Thanodorm, it’s Toxidol. That’s what it says on the bottle.’

‘You give it another week, then if you don’t sleep like a baby, okay fine, I’ll try Toxidol. Didn’t know you were familiar with that, Pa, hardly ever use it myself.’ Dr Welby beamed over his platinum-rimmed glasses. ‘Gets so a doctor has a heck of a time keeping up with his patients, eh?’

‘No but doc, I’m taking Toxidol right now. You were the one who –’

Welby stopped smiling and pushed a button on his desk. ‘Pa, just ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”’

A woman in white rushed in. Dr Welby said: ‘Jean, Mr Wood has just admitted to me that he’s taking medication not prescribed by me. Toxidont, make a note of it.’

‘Toxidol,’ said Pa.

‘Make a note of that, too. Can’t be too careful in case of any malpractice hassles later, eh?’ The woman rushed out.

‘Malp – no, doc, listen I –’

More beaming over the platinum. ‘Pa, do yourself a big favour, eh? Just stop. Throw away this medication wherever you got it, throw it out. Otherwise I’ll just have to call it quits. Will you promise to throw it out?’

‘Sure, but –’

‘No buts. Just promise me. Hell man, you don’t know what you might be taking there, this Taxiderm could be
lethal.
I kid you not.’

‘I – I promise.’

‘Gooood.
Good.
Knew I could depend on you. Together, Pa, we’ll lick this condition of yours – the haemorrhaging, the dandruff, the works – eh? Just throw away all the junk you’re taking, the Taxicob and all the rest of it – and stick to the stuff I gave you. And Pa? Trust me.’

They went out on Main Street, where the recorded carollers were just finishing ‘Noël Noël Noël Noël, Get an extra six-pack ’cause you never can tell …’ and into Joradsen’s Drug where old Mr Joradsen said:

‘Merry Christmas, Pa. But get that thing out of here, no pets.’

‘Well he –’

‘No pets! Not my rule, it’s the law!’

So Roderick waited outside, listening to a local version of Handel’s
Messiah
and to the comments of passing shoppers.

‘Never oughta allow a thing like that out in public!’

‘… and not even tied up …’

‘Makes you sick just to look …’

The sky seemed to be pressing down on the low roofs of Main Street. Handel without words without meaning. Okay, it worked, it might work if the knife lost its blade and you put on a new one, and then it lost its handle – but suppose you had two knives and you switched handles, were they still the same? Or did whatever it was that made them themselves go with the handles? Do you switch handles or switch blades?

‘Hey Rick boy, you nuts or something? Standing here talking to yourself about switchblades …’

‘Oh hi, Chaunce. No I just, I was just thinking out loud.’

‘My old man would buy me a switchblade any time I asked him, you know? Like two feet long! Hey you know you really blasted that old school computer boy, they can’t even take roll any more. No tests, no nothin’, it’s great. I owe you one, pal.’

But when his gang showed up a minute later, Chauncey seemed to change his mind.

Pa found Roderick lying in front of Virgil’s Hometown Hardware, one of his new legs broken.

‘Scrapping again? My boy –’

‘I’m sorry, Pa. We were playing
Ratstar,
you know like the movie, and I was the alien see, Mung Fungal –’

‘Okay, okay.’ Pa lifted him up so that he could see the display in Virgil’s window: axes, hunting knives, hammers and handguns arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree, with a tinsel message hanging above:
TO MEN OF GOOD WILL.

‘Reminds me,’ Pa chuckled. ‘Gotta see Swann about makin’ my will.’

SOME LAWS OF ROBOTICS
(II)

Robots can think and smell and hear and talk.

They’ve got metal minds.

My robot is a lady companion robot and it’s a maid
and it goes out and does the shopping for a man.

My robot is an electric robot and it exterminates
people. A robot is a man’s companion. They keep
their master company and take orders from him.

It must be an awful life being a robot because all
you do is take orders.

Robots are always men … If I had a robot I wouldn’t
even have to think because he would do everything for me.

Pupils at Rhyl Primary School, London

‘EEEEEEP!’

‘Hold it a minute, son.’ Pa made an adjustment with a screwdriver. ‘Now try.’

Roderick moved his hand once more into the candle-flame.
‘Eeep.
Blip.’ He jerked it back. ‘Pa, I don’t think I like this pain stuff. I know you said it was for my own protection and all but – ouch! – I still don’t – ow! – don’t like it.’

‘You’ll learn how to handle it, Roddy. Everybody does. Or maybe they don’t, who knows? All I know is, we gotta find some way of keeping you out of fights. You don’t understand now, but you will.’

Ma came in wearing one purple glove. ‘Ready, son? We’re going to see your new school.’

‘Aw gee.’ Roderick slid down off the work-bench, feeling the thump when his feet hit the floor. ‘Ow, I mean how come I gotta go to Holy Trinity? That’s where all the catlicker kids go. Chauncey says they all got webbed feet!’

‘They don’t,’ said Ma. ‘Chauncey Bangfield told you a lot of things that weren’t true, didn’t he?’

‘S’pose so.’

‘He told you his father was a famous astronaut, instead of a fat bald real estate agent.’

He decided to repeat no more of Chaunce’s dark warnings. Holy Trinity School was an old brick building next to the cemetery, where every Saturday they put up a sign, Nearly New Sale, Bargains Galore, Bring the Family. Chaunce said the sisters went out every night and robbed the graves to get bones for their weird rituals, ‘mass’ and all that. Everybody knew there were mass graves, like the ones on the news in Ruritania.

Roderick said nothing more until they were standing before the dark building. ‘Wow!’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘Chauncey
said
they had a guy nailed to the wall – wow!’

‘It’s just an emblem,’ she said. ‘Kind of a well, a good-luck charm. Come on.’

The school was dark inside and smelled of floor-wax. A frail old woman in black got up from her knees with difficulty to greet them. ‘I’m. Sister. Mary. Martha,’ she said, wheezing. ‘You. must. be. Mrs. Wood. You’ll be. wanting Fath. er O’Bride.’ She directed them upstairs to a door with another strange emblem: a white-and-red circular picture of a satanic tiger, with the name ‘Holy Trinity Hellcats.’

Roderick had seen Fathers in movies before: they wore long black gowns and white collars, and when they weren’t singing ‘Going My Way’ they were taking cigarettes away from kids and saying God’s an all-right guy who’s on the level.

Father O’Bride wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off, a fishing hat covered with hooks, bright plaid trousers. His feet, in sneakers, were on the desk, waggling as he talked on the phone. His free hand twitched a fishing-rod.

‘Oh uh sit down, sit down. With you in a minute. Yeah, Charlie, I’m still here. And I still don’t like the sound of that price. Listen, I know wholesale on basketball jerseys, and I know a fat markup when I … Overheads for, cripes,
what
overheads? The things are seconds, you and I know the factory practically pays you to haul … yeah well don’t talk to me about middlemen, I still
work it out at two-twenty-four less discount, yeah okay, plus state tax … yah?’

He looked down the long office to a filing cabinet on top of which rested a biretta. With a flick of the rod, he sent a hook flying down to snag the hat’s pompon. ‘Have a heart, Charlie, we don’t have a big fat State budget behind us … okay but does two-thirty-one include the name or … okay and get it right this time?
H-E-L-L-C-A-T-S,
one word? Not like those baseball uniforms you picked up from, Korea was it? I mean it didn’t exactly do the old team spirit a heck of a lot of good being Holy Trinity Hub Caps all season, know what I mean? Point oh seven one, how’dya like that for a percentage, bottom of the league, even Saint Peter shut us out, we spanked Saint Theresa but then Saint Bart massacred us, Cosmos & Damien took a double-header, we got singed by St Joan and slaughtered by Holy Inno’s, Pete decked us again and then a no-hitter surprise from St Sebastian – well, it’s the old story. Let me get back to you Charlie …’

He hung up and went to retrieve the fly from his biretta. ‘Sorry about that folks, kinda busy here … well. So this is little Roderick! How ya doin’, fella?’ He shook hands with the robot.

‘Don’t be shy, kid, we’re all on the same team here. God’s team.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look, I know you probably feel awful about getting benched over at the public school, but we don’t hold that against you. Over here, nobody’s second-string, see? We’re all in there, giving it all we got. You play ball with God, and you can bet your a – your bottom dollar he’ll play ball with you.’

‘That figures,’ said Roderick. Ma seemed preoccupied with the view out of the window.

‘Ha ha, what I mean is, here at Holy Trin we’re like a team. Myself and the sisters are like coaches, you kids are the players. And all this –’ His gesture took in wall pennants, a tennis-racket in its stretcher, a bag of golf-clubs, skis. ‘All this is just a training camp, see? For the big game. The big game is when you leave here, my kid. The big game is life. You want to play to win, right?’

Roderick nodded.

‘Great! Now you run along while your mother and I talk over a
few details. Go out and look over the playground, we got the works: regulation baseball and softball diamonds, gridiron, tennis, lacrosse, … Now Mrs Wood, let me put you in the picture here, we don’t usually take kids in mid-season, term I mean, glad to make an exception if you can manage the full year’s tuition. I understand the boy’s not Catholic. No, well then if you want him kept out of religion classes there’s an exemption fee too. Then the fees for basic gym-gear, uniforms, locker, use of the field and gym-equipment, oh yeah and books. Now I’m talking in the neighbourhood of …’

Sister Olaf was a large woman with a face like a peeled potato. She put Roderick in the advanced reading and arithmetic classes, but rookie religion. Everything seemed easy until they came to the catechism.

‘Who made you?’ she asked James, the first boy in the row.

‘God made me.’

‘Why did God make you?’

‘To know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.’

‘Who made you?’ she asked Roberta, the next girl. Roberta answered in identical words, as did Anthony and Ursula.

‘Now Roderick: who made you?’

‘Me?’

‘Come on, you must know the answer by now. It’s right there in the book.’

‘Sure but I –’

‘What?’

‘Well I’m not sure.’

‘Well! Who made James and Roberta and Anthony and Ursula?’

‘God, I guess.’

‘Who made
you?’

Behind him, Catherine whispered, ‘God, stupid.’

Roderick turned round. ‘Well maybe God made you, but I’m pretty sure Dan Sonnenschein made me. Him and some other men in a laboratory. See they –’

‘That’s enough!’ The face became a creased sweet potato. ‘You may get away with disrupting classes over in the public school, but
not here. I want you to sit in that corner over there until you remember who made you?’ And though he sat in the corner for an hour (while Sister Olaf explained how Caesar Augustus was taxing the whole world …) he could not work out any other answer.

She sent him to see Father O’Bride.

‘Sit down, kid, just got this package to open – oh no. Will you look at that?’ He spread one of the white t-shirts over his desk. The red letters across the chest read, Holy Trinity Hellbats.

‘Last darned time I do business with that crook, with all his discount stuff from Iraq or is it Iran – I’ve had it. You know, ever since those Jesuits sank all that money in fake oil stock in Texas, everybody thinks we’re all suckers. Priests aren’t supposed to know the first thing about dollars and cents, I guess. Has he got a surprise coming, wait’ll I stop his darned cheque – Well now what is it, kid? Making trouble for Sister Olaf already are you?’

‘No sir I mean no Father, see it’s just this Baltimore catty kisum, like where they ask who made you. Sister thinks I oughta say God made me, all I said was maybe He made the people but he didn’t make the robots.’

‘Robots, eh?’ Father O’Bride had very pale eyes that didn’t blink much. ‘What’s this, something outa these crappy science fiction movies you been seeing? Boy, if you didn’t have this disability you’d be in the gym right now doing
fifty laps,
we’d find out who made you
if we had to take you apart.

‘But, you’re lucky. I’m giving you one more chance.’ He searched among the t-shirts and tattered copies of sports magazines until he found a catechism. ‘I’m giving you one more chance before I turn you over to – well, somebody else.’ He opened the book. ‘Now tell me: Who made you?’

‘Dan Sonnenschein and some other guys, in this lab –’

‘For Pete’s sake, who made this Dan whatsit?’

‘I don’t know – God?’

‘God. And if God made him and he made you, then he was just the instrument of God’s will, right? My mother and father brought me into this world too, but I still know God made me.’

‘Yeah but –’

‘No buts. Look, if a guy hits it out of the park nobody jumps up to cheer the bat, do they? Same thing, the bat is just an
instrument of the batter’s will. Get it? I mean who made the home run, the batter or the bat?’