The Brave Little Toaster
( The Brave Little Toaster - 1 )
Thomas M. Disch
Thomas M. Disch is a long-time F&SF contributor whose stories have been included in several of these collections. His latest story (which made the final Hugo and Nebula ballot as best novella of 1980) is about the adventures of five electrical appliances. They are minor appliances, which implies a degree of innocence, loyalty, and dependability often missing from, say, a TV or a washing machine. We venture to say that it has been a long time since such a cheerful and diverting group appeared in the pages of any magazine or book, and we guarantee that all of you will be charmed.
The Brave Little Toaster
A Bedtime Story for Small Appliances
by Thomas M. Disch
By the time the air conditioner had come to live in the summer cottage it was already wheezing and whining and going on about being old and useless and out-of-date. The other appliances had felt sorry and concerned, but when it finally did stop working altogether, they also felt a distinct relief. In all its time there it had never really been friendly—never really.
There were five appliances left in the cottage. The vacuum cleaner, being the oldest and a steady, dependable type besides (it was a Hoover), was their leader, insofar as they could be said to have one. Then there was an off-white plastic alarm clock/radio (AM only), a cheerful yellow electric blanket, and a tensor lamp who had come from a savings bank and would sometimes get to speculating, late at night, whether that made him better than ordinary store-bought appliances or worse. Finally, there was the toaster, a bright little Sunbeam. It was the youngest member of the little clan, and the only one of them who had lived all its life there at the cottage, the other four having come with the master from the city years and years and years ago.
It was a pleasant cottage—quite cold in the winter, of course, but appliances don’t mind that. It stood on the northernmost edge of an immense forest, miles from any neighbors and so far from the nearest highway that nothing was audible, day or night, but the peculiar hoots and rustlings of the forest and the reassuring sounds of the cottage itself—the creak of the timbers or the pattering of rain on windowpanes. They had grown set in their countrified ways and loved the little cottage dearly. Even if the chance had been offered them, which it wasn’t, they wouldn’t have wanted to be taken back to the city every year on Labor Day, the way that certain other appliances were, like the blender and the TV and the Water Pik. They were devoted to their master (that was just in their nature as appliances), but living so long in the woods had changed them in some nice, indefinable way that made the thought of any alternate life-style pretty nearly unthinkable.
The toaster was a special case. It had come straight to the cottage from a mail-order house, which tended to make it a little more curious about urban life than the other four. Often, left to itself, it would wonder what kind of toaster the master had in his city apartment, and it was privately of the opinion that whatever the brand of that other toaster it couldn’t have made more perfect toast than the toaster made itself. Not too dark, not too light, but always the same uniform crunchy golden brown! However, it didn’t come right out and say this in front of the others, since each of them was subject to periods of morbid misgivings as to its real utility. The old Hoover could maunder on for hours about the new breeds of vacuums with their low chassis, their long snaky hoses, and their disposable dustbags. The radio regretted that it couldn’t receive FM. The blanket felt it needed a dry cleaning, and the lamp could never regard an ordinary 100-watt bulb without a twinge of envy.
But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn’t think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it’s quality that matters, not quantity: that was the toaster’s credo.
Living in such a comfy cottage, surrounded by the strange and beautiful woods, you would have thought that the appliances would have had nothing to complain of, nothing to worry about. Alas, that was not the case. They were all quite wretched and fretful and in a quandary as to what to do—for the poor appliances had been abandoned.
“And the worst of it,” said the radio, “is not knowing why.”
“The worst of it,” the tensor lamp agreed, “is being left in the dark this way. Without an explanation. Not knowing what may have become of the master.”
“Two years,” sighed the blanket, who had once been so bright and gay and was now so melancholy.
“It’s more nearly two and a half,” the radio pointed out. Being a clock as well as a radio, it had a keen sense of the passing time. “The master left on the 25th of September, 1973. Today is March 8, 1976. That’s two years, five months, and thirteen days.”
“Do you suppose,” said the toaster, naming the secret dread none of them dared to speak aloud before, “that he knew, when he left, that he wouldn’t be coming back? That he knew he was leaving us… and was afraid to say so? Is that possible?”
“No,” declared the faithful old Hoover, “it is not! I can say quite confidently that our master would not have left a cottage full of serviceable appliances to… to rust!”
The blanket, lamp, and radio all hastened to agree that their master could never have dealt with them so uncaringly. Something had happened to him—an accident, an emergency.
“In that case,” said the toaster, “we must just be patient and behave as though nothing unusual has happened. I’m sure that’s what the master is counting on us to do.”
And that is what they did. Every day, all through that spring and summer they kept to their appointed tasks. The radio/alarm would go off each morning at seven-thirty sharp, and while it played some easy-listening music, the toaster (lacking real bread) would pretend to make two crispy slices of toast. Or, if the day seemed special in some way, it would toast an imaginary English muffin. Muffins of whatever sort have to be sliced very carefully if they’re to fit into a toaster’s slots. Otherwise, when they’re done, they may not pop out easily. Generally it’s wiser to do them under a broiler. However, there wasn’t a broiler in the cottage, nothing but an old-fashioned gas ring, and so the toaster did the best it could. In any case, muffins that are only imaginary aren’t liable to get stuck.
Such was the morning agenda. In the afternoon, if it were a Tuesday or a Friday, the old Hoover would rumble about the cottage vacuuming up every scrap of lint and speck of dust. This involved little actual picking up, as it was rather a small cottage, and was sealed very tight; so the dust and dirt had no way of getting inside, except on the days when the vacuum cleaner itself would trundle outdoors to empty a smidgen of dust at the edge of the forest.
At duck the tensor lamp would switch its switch to the ON position, and all five appliances would sit about in the kitchen area of the single downstairs room, talking or listening to the day’s news or just staring out the windows into the gloomy solitude of the forest. Then, when it was time for the other appliances to turn themselves off, the electric blanket would crawl up the stairs to the little sleeping loft, where, since the nights were usually quite chilly, even in midsummer, it would radiate a gentle warmth. How the master would have appreciated the blanket on those cold nights! How safe and cozy he’d have felt beneath its soft yellow wool and electric coils! If only he’d been there.
At last, one sultry day toward the end of July, when the satisfactions of this dutiful and well-regulated life where beginning to wear thin, the little toaster spoke up again.
“We can’t go on like this,” it declared. “It isn’t natural
for appliances to live all by themselves. We need people to take care of, and we need people to take care of us. Soon, one by one, we’ll all wear out, like the poor air conditioner. And no one will fix us, because no one will know what has happened.”
“I daresay we’re all of us sturdier than any air conditioner,” said the blanket, trying to be brave. (Also, it is true, the blanket had never shown much fellow feeling for the air conditioner or any other appliances whose function was to make things cooler.)
“That’s all very well for you to say,” the tensor lamp retorted. “You’ll go on for years, I suppose, but what will come of me when my bulb burns out? What will become of the radio when his tubes start to go?”
The radio made a dismal, staticky groan.
“The toaster is right,” the old Hoover said. “Something must be done. Something definitely must be done. Do any of you have a suggestion?”
“If we could telephone the master,” said the toaster, thinking aloud, “the radio could simply ask him outright. He’d know what we should do. But the telephone has been disconnected for nearly three years.”
“Two years, ten months, and three days, to be exact,” said the radio/alarm.
“Then there’s nothing else for us to do but to find the master ourselves.”
The other four appliances looked at the toaster in mute amazement.
“It isn’t unheard of,” the toaster insisted. “Don’t you remember—only last week there was a story that the radio was telling us, about a dear little fox terrier who’d been accidentally left behind, like us, at a summer cottage. What was his name?”
“Grover,” said the radio. “We heard it on the Early Morning Roundup.”
“Right. And Grover found his way to his master, hundreds of miles away in a city somewhere in Canada.”
“Winnipeg, as I recall,” said the radio.
“Right. And to get there he had to cross swamps and mountains and face all sorts of dangers, but he finally did find his way. So, if one silly dog can do all that, think what five sensible appliances, working together, should be able to accomplish.”
“Dogs have legs,” the blanket objected.
“Oh, don’t be a wet blanket,” the toaster replied in a bantering way.
It should have known better. The blanket, who didn’t have much of a sense of humor and whose feelings were therefore easily hurt, began to whimper and complain that it was time for it to go to bed. Nothing would serve, finally, but that the toaster should make a formal apology, which it did.
“Besides,” said the blanket, mollified, “dogs have noses. That’s how they find their way.”
“As to that,” said the old Hoover, “I’d like to see the nose that functions better than mine.” And to demonstrate its capabilities it turned itself on and gave a deep, rumbling snuffle up and down the rug.
“Splendid!” declared the toaster. “The vacuum shall be our nose—and our legs as well.”
The Hoover turned itself off and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I meant to say our wheels. Wheels, as I’m sure everyone knows by now, are really more efficient than legs.”
“What about the rest of us,” the blanket demanded, “who don’t have wheels or legs? What shall we do? I can’t crawl all the way to wherever it is, and if I tried to, I’d soon be shredded to rags.”
The blanket was certainly in a fretful state, but the toaster was a born diplomat, answering every objection in a tone of sweet, unswervable logic.
“You’re entirely right; and the radio and I would be in an even sorrier state if we tired to travel such a distance on our own. But that isn’t necessary. Because we’ll borrow some wheels…”
The tensor lamp lighted up. “And build a kind of carriage!”
“And ride all the way there,” said the radio, “in comfort and luxury.” It sounded, at such moments, exactly like the announcer in an advertisement.
“Well, I’m not sure,” said the blanket. “I might be able to do that.”
“The question is,” said the toaster, turning to the Hoover, “will you be able to?”
Deep in its motor the vacuum cleaner rumbled a rumble of quiet confidence.
It was not as easy a matter as the toaster had supposed to find a serviceable set of wheels. Those he’d had in mind at first belonged to the lawnmower out in the lean-to shed, but the task of disconnecting them from the mower’s heavy blades was beyond the appliances’ limited know-how. So, unless the Hoover were willing to cut a swatch of lawn everywhere it went, which it wasn’t, the lawnmower’s sturdy rubber wheels had to be put out of mind.
The blanket, who was now full of the spirit of adventure, suggested that the bed in the sleeping loft might be used, since it had four castor-type wheels. However, the weight and unwieldiness of the bed were such as to rule out that notion as well. Even on a level road the Hoover would not have had the strength to draw such a load—much less across raw wilderness!
And that seemed to be that. There were no other wheels to be found anywhere about the cottage, unless one counted a tiny knife-sharpener that worked by being rolled along the counter top. The toaster racked its brains trying to turn the knife-sharpener to account, but what kind of carriage can you build with a single wheel that is one and a half inches in diameter?
Then, one Friday, as the Hoover was doing its chores, the idea the toaster had been waiting for finally arrived. The Hoover, as usual, had been grumbling about the old metal office chair that stood in front of the master’s desk. No amount of nudging and bumping would ever dislodge its tubular legs from where they bore down on the rug. As the vacuum became more and more fussed, the toaster realized that the chair would have moved very easily… if it had still possessed its original wheels!
It took the five appliances the better part of an afternoon to jack up the bed in the sleeping loft and remove the castors. But it was no trouble at all to put them on the chair. They slipped right into the tubular legs as though they’d been made for it. Interchangeable parts are such a blessing.
And there it was, their carriage, ready to roll. There was quite enough room on the padded seat for all four riders, and being so high it gave them a good view besides. They spent the rest of the day delightedly driving back and forth between the cottage’s overgrown flower beds and down the gravel drive to the mailbox. There, however, they had to stop, for that was as far as the Hoover could get, using every extension cord in the cottage.
“If only,” said the radio with a longing sigh, “I still had my old batteries…”
“Batteries?” inquired the toaster. “I didn’t know you had batteries.”
“It was before you joined us,” said the radio sadly. “When I was new. After my first batteries corroded, the master didn’t see fit to replace them. What need had I for batteries when I could always use the house current?”
“I don’t see what possible relevance your little volt-and-a-half batteries could have to my problem,” observed the Hoover testily.
The radio looked hurt. Usually the Hoover would never have made such an unkind and slighting remark, but the weeks of worry were having their effect on all of them.
“It’s our problem,” the toaster pointed out in a tone of mild reproof, “and the radio is right, you know. If we could find a large enough battery, we could strap it under the seat of the chair and set off this very afternoon.”
“If!” sniffed the Hoover scornfully. “If! If!”
“And I know where there may be a battery as big as we need!” the tensor lamp piped. “Have you ever looked inside that lean-to behind the cottage?”
“Into the tool shed!” said the blanket with a shudder of horror. “Certainly not! It’s dark and musty and filled with spiders.”
“Well, I was in it just yesterday, poking about, and there was something behind the broken rake and some old paint cans—a big, black, boxy thing. Of course it was nothing like your pretty red cylinders.” The tensor lamp tipped its hood towards the radio. “Bu
t now that I think of it, it may have been a kind of battery.”
The appliances all trooped out to the lean-to, and there in the darkest corner, just as the lamp had supposed, was the spare battery that had come from the master’s old Volkswagen. The battery had been brand-new at the time that he’d decided to trade in the VW on a yellow Saab, and so he’d replaced this one in the lean-to and then—wasn’t it just his way?—forgetting all about it.
Between them, the old Hoover and the toaster knew enough about the basic principles of electricity to be able, very quickly, to wire the battery so that it would serve their needs instead of an automobile’s. But before any of the small appliances who may be listening to this tale should begin to think that they might do the same thing, let them be warned: ELECTRICITY IS VERY DANGEROUS. Never play with old batteries! Never put your plug in a strange socket! And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.
And so they set off to find their master in the faraway city where he lived. Soon the dear little summer cottage was lost from sight behind the leaves and branches of the forest trees. Deeper and deeper they journeyed into the woods. Only the dimmest dapplings of sunlight penetrated through the dense tangle overhead to guide them on their way. The path wound round and twisted about with bewildering complexity. The road map they had brought with them proved quite useless.
It would have been ever so much easier, of course, to have followed the highway directly into the city, since that is where highways always go. Unfortunately that option was not open to them. Five such sturdy and functional appliances would certainly not have been able to escape the notice of human beings traveling along the same thoroughfare, and it is a rule, which all appliances must obey, that whenever human beings are observing them they must remain perfectly still. On a busy highway they would therefore have been immobilized most of the time. Besides, there was an even stronger reason for staying off the highway—the danger of pirates. But that’s a possibility so frightening and awful that we should all simply refuse to think any more about it. Anyhow who ever heard of pirates in the middle of the woods?
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