The path twisted and turned and rose and fell, and the poor old Hoover became very tired indeed. Even with the power from the battery it was no easy task making its way over such a rugged terrain, especially with the added burden of the office chair and its four riders. But except for its rumbling a little more loudly than usual the old vacuum cleaner did its job without a complaint. What a lesson for us all!
As for the rest of them, they were in the highest spirits. The lamp craned its long neck every which way, exclaiming over the views, and even the blanket soon forgot its fears and joined in the general spirit of holiday adventuring. The toaster’s coils were in a continual tingle of excitement. It was all so strange and interesting and full of new information!
“Isn’t it wonderful!” exclaimed the radio. “Listen! Do you hear them? Birds!” It did an imitation of the song it had just heard—not one that would have fooled any of the actual birds there in the forest, for in truth it sounded more like a clarinet than a bird. Even so, a thrush, a wood pigeon, and several chickadees did come fluttering down from their roosts and perches high above to cock their heads and listen. But only a moment. After a twitter or two of polite approval they returned to the trees. Birds are like that. They’ll pay attention to you for a minute or two and then go right back to being birds.
The radio pretended not to feel slighted, but he soon left off doing imitations and recited, instead, some of his favorite ads, the beautiful songs about Coca-Cola and Esso and a long comic jingle about Barney’s Hi-Styles for Guys and Gals. There’s nothing that so instantly civilizes a forest as the sound of a familiar advertisement, and soon they were all feeling a lot more confident and cheerful.
As the day wore on, the Hoover was obliged to stop for a rest more and more frequently—ostensibly to empty its dustbag. “Can you believe,” it grieved, shaking a last moldering leaf from the bag, “how filthy this forest is?”
“On the contrary,” the blanket declared, “It’s thoroughly agreeable. The air’s so fresh, and just feel the breeze! I feel renewed, as if I’d just come out of my original box. Oh, why, why, why don’t they ever take electric blankets on picnics? It isn’t fair!”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddo,” said the radio ominously. “According to the latest Weather and Traffic Roundup, we’re in for rain.”
“Won’t the trees work like a roof?” asked the lamp. “They keep the sunlight out well enough.”
None of them knew the answer to the lamp’s question, but as it happens, trees do not work like a roof. They all got more or less wet, and the poor blanket was drenched through and through. Fortunately the storm did not last long and the sun came out immediately afterwards. The wet appliances trudged on along the muddy path, which led them, after a little while, to a clearing in the wood. There in a glade full of sunshine and flowers the blanket was able to spread itself out on the grass and begin to get dry.
The afternoon was wearing on, and the toaster had begun to feel, as all of us do at times, a definite need for solitude. Much as it liked its fellow appliances, it wasn’t used to spending the entire day socializing. It longed to be off by itself a moment to be private and think its own thoughts. So, without saying anything to the others, it made its way to the farthest corner of the meadow and began to toast an imaginary muffin. That was always the best way to unwind when things got to be too much for it.
The imaginary muffin had scarcely begun to warm before the toaster’s reveries were interrupted by the gentlest of interrogatories.
“Charming flower, tell me, do,
What genera and species you
Belong to. I, as may be seen
At once, am just a daisy, green
Of leaf and white of petal. You
Are neither green nor white nor blue
Nor any color I have known.
In what Eden have you grown?
Sprang you from earth or sky above?
In either case, accept my love.”
“Why, thank you,” the toaster replied, addressing the daisy that was pressing its petaled face close to the toaster’s gleaming chrome. “It’s kind of you to ask, but in fact I’m not a flower at all. I’m an electric toaster.”
“Flower, forebear! You can’t deceive
The being that adores you. Weave
Your thick black root with mine.
O beautiful! O half-divine!”
These fervent declarations so embarrassed the toaster that for a moment it was at a loss for words. It had never heard flowers speaking in their own language and didn’t realize how they would say any absurd thing that would help them to a rhyme. Flowers, as botanists well know, can only speak in verse. Daisies, being among the simpler flowers, characteristically employ a rough sort of octosyllabic doggerel, but more evolved species, especially those in the tropics, can produce sestinas, rondeaux, and villanelles of the highest order.
The daisy was not, however, simply snared in its own rhyme scheme. It had genuinely fallen in love with the toaster—or, rather, with its own reflection in the toaster’s side. Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love. The daisy writhed on its stem and fluttered its white petals as though in the grip of cyclone winds.
The toaster, thoroughly alarmed by such immoderate behavior, said that it really was time to be getting back to its friends on the other side of the meadow.
“Oh, stay, beloved blossom, stay!
They say our lives are but a day:
If that be true, how shall I bear
To spend that brief day anywhere
Except with you? You are my light,
My soil, my air. Stay but one night
Beside me here—I ask no more.
Stay, lovely bloom—let me adore
Those polished petals bright as the dew
When dawn attempts to rival you,
That single perfect coiling root—
Imperishable! Absolute!
O beautiful! O half-divine!
Weave your thick black root with mine.”
“Now really,” said the toaster in a tone of gentle reprimand, “there’s no cause to be carrying on like this. We scarcely know each other, and, what’s more, you seem to be under a misapprehension as to my nature. Can’t you see that what you call my root is an electric cord? As to petals, I can’t think what you may mean, for I simply don’t have any. Now—I really must go and join my friends, for we are journeying to our master’s apartment far, far away, and we shall never get there if we don’t get a move on.”
“Alas the day and woe is me!
I tremble in such misery
As never flower knew before.
If you must go, let me implore
One parting boon, one final gift:
Be merciful as you are swift
And pluck me from my native ground—
Pluck me and take me where you’re bound.
I cannot live without you here:
Then let your bosom be my bier.”
Feeling truly shocked by the daisy’s suggestion and seeing that the creature was deaf to reason, the toaster hastened to the other side of the meadow and began to urge his friends to set out at once on their journey. The blanket protested that it was still somewhat damp, the Hoover that it was still tired, and the lamp proposed that they spend the night there in the meadow.
And that is what they did. As soon as it grew dark the blanket folded itself into a kind of tent, and the others all crawled inside. The lamp turned itself on, and the radio played some easy-listening music—but very quietly, so as not to disturb other denizens of the forest who might already be asleep. Soon they were asleep themselves. Travel does take it out of you.
The alarm clock had set itself, as usual, for seven-thirty, but the appliances were awake well before that hour. The vacuum cleaner and the lamp both complained, on rising, of a certain stiffness in their joints. However, as soon as they were on t
heir way, the stiffness seemed to melt away.
In the morning light the forest appeared lovelier than ever. Cobwebs glistening with dew were strung like miniature power lines from bough to bough. Pretty mushrooms sprouted from fallen logs, looking for all the world like a string of frosted light bulbs. Leaves rustled. Birds chirped.
The radio was certain that it saw a real fox and wanted to go off after it. “Just to be sure, you know, that it is a fox.”
The blanket grew quite upset at this suggestion. It had already snagged itself once or twice on low-hanging branches. What ever would become of it, it wanted to know, if it were to venture from the path and into the dense tangle of the forest itself.
“But think,” the radio insisted. “—a fox! We’ll never have such a chance again.”
“I’d like to see it,” said the lamp.
The toaster, too, was terribly curious, but it could appreciate the blanket’s point of view, and so it urged them to continue along the path. “Because, don’t you see, we must reach the master as soon as we possibly can.”
This was so inarguably true that the radio and lamp readily assented, and they continued on their way. The sun rose in the sky until it had risen all it could, and the path stretched on and on. In the midafternoon there was another shower, after which they once again made camp. Not, this time, in a meadow, for the woods were now quite dense, and the only open places were those under the larger trees. So instead of sunning itself on the grass (for there was neither grass nor sunlight to be found) the blanket hung itself, with the Hoover’s help, from the lowest limb of an immense and ancient oak. In minutes it had flapped itself dry.
At twilight, just as the lamp was thinking of turning itself on, there was a stir among the leaves on the branch to the right of the branch from which the blanket was contentedly hanging.
“Hello!” said a squirrel, emerging from the clustered leaves. “I thought we had visitors.”
“Hello,” replied all the appliances together.
“Well, well, well!” The squirrel licked his whiskers. “What do you say then, eh?”
“About what?” asked the toaster, who was not being unfriendly, but who could be a little literal-minded at times, especially when it was tired.
The squirrel looked discountenanced. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Harold.” Having pronounced his name, his good humor seemed completely restored. “And this fair creature—”
Another squirrel dropped from a higher branch and lighted beside Harold.
“—is my wife Marjorie.”
“Now you must tell us your names,” said Marjorie, “since we’ve just told you ours.”
“We don’t have names, I’m afraid,” said the toaster. “You see, we’re appliances.”
“If you don’t have names,” Harold demanded, “how do you know which of you are men and which are women?”
“We aren’t either. We’re appliances.” The toaster turned to the Hoover for confirmation.
“Whatever that may mean,” said Marjorie brusquely. “It can’t alter a universal law. Everyone is either a man or a woman. Mice are. Birds are. Even, I’m given to understand, insects.” She held her paw up to her lips and tittered. “Do you like to eat insects?”
“No,” said the toaster. “Not at all.” It would have been more trouble than it was worth to explain to the squirrels that appliances didn’t eat anything.
“Neither do I, really,” said Marjorie. “But I love nuts. Do you have any with you? Possibly in that old sack?”
“No,” said the Hoover stiffly. “There is nothing in that old sack, as you call it, but dirt. About five pounds of dirt, I’d estimate.”
“And what is the use, pray, of saving dirt?” asked Harold. When no answer seemed forthcoming, he said, “I know what we’d all enjoy doing. We can tell jokes. You start.”
“I don’t think I know any jokes,” said the Hoover.
“Oh, I do,” said the radio. “You’re not Polish, are you?”
The squirrels shook their heads.
“Good. Tell me—why does it take three Poles to screw in a light bulb?”
Marjorie giggled expectantly. “I don’t know—why?”
“One to hold the light bulb, and the other two to turn the ladder around.”
The squirels looked at each other with bewilderment.
“Explain it,” said Harold. “Which are the men and which are the women?”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re just very stupid. That’s the whole idea of Polish jokes, that Poles are supposed to be so stupid that no matter what they try and do they misfunction. Of course, it’s not fair to Poles, who are probably as bright as anyone else, but they are funny jokes. I know hundreds more.”
“Well, if that was a fair sample, I can’t say I’m very keen to hear the rest,” said Marjorie. “Harold, you tell him—”
“It,” the radio corrected. “We’re all it’s.”
“Tell them,” Majorie continued, “the one about the three squirrels out in the snow.” She turned to the lamp confidingly. “This will lay you out. Believe me.”
As Harold told the joke about the three squirrels in the snow, the appliances exchanged glances of guarded disapproval. It wasn’t just that they disapproved of dirty jokes (especially the old Hoover); in addition, they didn’t find such jokes amusing. Gender and the complications it gives rise to simply aren’t relevant to the lives appliances lead.
Harold finished his joke, and Marjorie laughed loyally, but none of the appliances cracked a smile.
“Well,” said Harold, miffed, “I hope you enjoy your stay under our oak.”
With which, and a flick of their big furry tails, the two squirrels scampered up the trunk and out of sight.
In the small hours of the night the toaster woke from a terrible nightmare in which it had been about to fall into a bathtub full of water to discover itself in a plight almost as terrible. Thunder was thundering, and lightning was streaking the sky, and rain was pelting it mercilessly. At first the toaster couldn’t remember where it was or why it was there, and when it did remember, it realized with dismay that the electric blanket, which ought to have been spread out and sheltering the other four appliances, had disappeared! And the rest of them? They were still here, thank heaven, though in a state of fearful apprehension, each one of them.
“Oh dear,” groaned the Hoover, “I should have known, I should have known! We never, never should have left our home.”
The lamp in an extremity of speechless agitation was twisting its head rapidly from side to side, casting its little beam of light across the gnarled roots of the oak, while the radio’s alarm had gone off and would not stop ringing. Finally the toaster went over to the radio and turned the alarm off itself.
“Oh, thank you,” said the radio, its voice blurry with static. “Thank you so much.”
“Where is the blanket?” the toaster demanded apprehensively.
“Blown away!” said the radio. “Blown off to the far end of the forest, where we shall never be able to find it!”
“Oh, I should have known!” groaned the Hoover. “I should have known!”
“It’s not your fault,” the toaster assured the vacuum, but it only groaned the louder.
Seeing that it could not be of any help to the vacuum, the toaster went over to the lamp and tried to calm it down. Once its beam was steady, the toaster suggested that it be directed into the branches above them, on the chance that the blanket, when it was blown away, might have been snagged on one of them. The lamp did so, but it was a very faint light and a very tall oak and a very dark night, and the blanket, if it were up there, was not to be seen.
All of a sudden there was a flash of lightning. The radio’s alarm went off again, and the lamp shrieked and folded itself up as small as could be. Of course it’s silly to be afraid of lightning, since it’s only another form of electricity. But such a large form—and so uncontrolled! If you were a person, instead of an appliance, and you encountere
d a berserk giant many times larger than yourself, you’d have some idea how the average electric appliance feels about lightning.
In the brief moment that the lightning was lighting everything up, the toaster, who had been peering up into the oak, was able to make out a shape—all twisted about—that might have been the blanket. The toaster waited until there was another lightning flash; and, yes, definitely, it was the yellow blanket, which had indeed become snagged on one of the highest branches of the tree.
Once they all knew that the blanket was nearby, even though they still had no idea how they’d be able to get it down, the storm ceased to seem quite so scary. The rain made them quite miserable, as rain will do, but their worst anxieties were over. Even the occasional bolt of lightning was now something to be wished for rather than dreaded, since by its brightness they could glimpse their companion high above them, clutching to the limb of the oak and flailing in the ceaseless winds. How could they feel afraid, or even sorry for themselves, when they considered the terrors the poor blanket must be experiencing?
By morning the storm had abated. The radio, at top volume, called up to the blanket, but the blanket made no response. For one horrible moment the toaster thought its friend might have stopped working altogether. But the radio kept on calling to the blanket, and after a time it made a feeble reply, waving one wet bedraggled corner at its friends.
“YOU CAN COME DOWN NOW,” the radio shouted. “THE STORM IS OVER.”
“I can’t,” said the blanket with a whimper. “I’m stuck. I can’t get down.”
“You must try,” the toaster urged.
“What’s that?” said the blanket.
“THE TOASTER SAYS YOU MUST TRY!”
“But I told you—I’m stuck. And there’s a great rip right through the center of me. And another by my hem. And I hurt.” The blanket began to wring itself convulsively, and a steady patter of droplets fell from its rain-soaked wool into the puddles below.
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