Tanglefoot

by Cherie Priest

Page 2

 

  So if Dr. Smeeks wanted to call Edwin “Parker” once in awhile, that was fine. Like Parker himself, Edwin was also thin, with a face marked by worry beyond his years; and Edwin was also handy with pencils, screwdrivers, and wrenches. The boy figured that the misunderstanding was understandable, if unfortunate, and he learned to answer to the other name when it was used to call him.

  He took his old bolts back to his cot and picked up a tiny triangle of sandpaper.

  Beside him, at the foot of his cot underneath the wool blanket, lay a lump in the shape of a boy perhaps half Edwin’s size. The lump was not a doll but an automaton, ready to wind, but not wound yet–not until it had a proper face, with a proper jaw.

  When the bolts were as clean as the day they were cast, Edwin placed them gently on his pillow and reached inside the hatbox Mrs. Williams had given him. He withdrew the steel jawbone and examined it, comparing it against the bolts and deciding that the fit was satisfactory; and then he uncovered the boy-shaped lump.

  “Good heavens, Edwin. What have you got there?”

  Edwin jumped. The old scientist could be uncannily quiet, and he could not always be trusted to stick to his own business. Nervously, as if the automaton were something to be ashamed of, the boy said, “Sir, it’s…a machine. I made a machine, I think. It’s not a doll,” he clarified.

  And Dr. Smeeks said, “I can see that it’s not a doll. You made this?”

  “Yes sir. Just with odds and ends–things you weren’t using. I hope you don’t mind. ”

  “Mind? No. I don’t mind. Dear boy, it’s exceptional!” he said with what sounded like honest wonder and appreciation. It also sounded lucid, and focused, and Edwin was charmed to hear it.

  The boy asked, “You think it’s good?”

  “I think it must be. How does it work? Do you crank it, or–”

  “It winds up. ” He rolled the automaton over onto its back and pointed at a hole that was barely large enough to hold a pencil. “One of your old hex wrenches will do it. ”

  Dr. Smeeks turned the small machine over again, looking into the tangle of gears and loosely fixed coils where the brains would be. He touched its oiled joints and the clever little pistons that must surely work for muscles. He asked, “When you wind it, what does it do?”

  Edwin faltered. “Sir, I…I don’t know. I haven’t wound him yet. ”

  “Haven’t wound him–well, I suppose that’s excuse enough. I see that you’ve taken my jar-lids for kneecaps, and that’s well and good. It’s a good fit. He’s made to walk a bit, isn’t he?”

  “He ought to be able to walk, but I don’t think he can climb stairs. I haven’t tested him. I was waiting until I finished his face. ” He held up the metal jawbone in one hand and the two shiny bolts in the other. “I’m almost done. ”

  “Do it then!” Dr. Smeeks exclaimed. He clapped his hands together and said, “How exciting! It’s your first invention, isn’t it?”

  “Yes sir,” Edwin fibbed. He neglected to remind the doctor of his work on the Picky Boy Plate with a secret chamber to hide unwanted and uneaten food until it was safe to discreetly dispose of it. He did not mention his tireless pursuit and eventual production of the Automatic Expanding Shoe, for use by quickly growing children whose parents were too poor to routinely purchase more footwear.

  “Go on,” the doctor urged. “Do you mind if I observe? I’m always happy to watch the success of a fellow colleague. ”

  Edwin blushed warmly across the back of his neck. He said, “No sir, and thank you. Here, if you could hold him for me–like that, on your legs, yes. I’ll take the bolts and…” with trembling fingers he fastened the final hardware and dabbed the creases with oil from a half-empty can.

  And he was finished.

  Edwin took the automaton from Dr. Smeeks and stood it upright on the floor, where the machine did not wobble or topple, but stood fast and gazed blankly wherever its face was pointed.

  The doctor said, “It’s a handsome machine you’ve made. What does it do again? I think you said, but I don’t recall. ”

  “I still need to wind it,” Edwin told him. “I need an L-shaped key. Do you have one?”

  Dr. Smeeks jammed his hands into the baggy depths of his pockets and a great jangling noise declared the assorted contents. After a few seconds of fishing he withdrew a hex, but seeing that it was too large, he tossed it aside and dug for another one. “Will this work?”

  “It ought to. Let me see. ”

  Edwin inserted the newer, smaller stick into the hole and gave it a twist. Within, the automaton springs tightened, coils contracted, and gears clicked together. Encouraged, the boy gave the wrench another turn, and then another. It felt as if he’d spent forever winding, when finally he could twist no further. The automaton’s internal workings resisted, and could not be persuaded to wind another inch.

  The boy removed the hex key and stood up straight. On the automaton’s back, behind the place where its left shoulder blade ought to be, there was a sliding switch. Edwin put his finger to it and gave the switch a tiny shove.

  Down in the machine’s belly, something small began to whir.

  Edwin and the doctor watched with delight as the clockwork boy’s arms lifted and went back down to its sides. One leg rose at a time, and each was returned to the floor in a charming parody of marching-in-place. Its bolt-work neck turned from left to right, causing its tinted glass eyes to sweep the room.

  “It works!” The doctor slapped Edwin on the back. “Parker, I swear–you’ve done a good thing. It’s a most excellent job, and with what? My leftovers, is that what you said?”

  “Yes sir, that’s what I said. You remembered!”

  “Of course I remembered. I remember you,” Dr. Smeeks said. “What will you call your new toy?”

  “He’s my new friend. And I’m going to call him…Ted. ”

  “Ted?”

  “Ted. ” He did not explain that he’d once had a baby brother named Theodore, or that Theodore had died before his first birthday. This was something different, and anyway it didn’t matter what he told Dr. Smeeks, who wouldn’t long recall it.

  “Well he’s very fine. Very fine indeed,” said the doctor. “You should take him upstairs and show him to Mrs. Criddle and Mrs. Williams. Oh–you should absolutely show him to your mother. I think she’ll be pleased. ”

  “Yes sir. I will, sir. ”

  “Your mother will be proud, and I will be proud. You’re learning so much, so fast. One day, I think, you should go to school. A bright boy like you shouldn’t hide in basements with old men like me. A head like yours is a commodity, son. It’s not a thing to be lightly wasted. ”

  To emphasize his point, he ruffled Edwin’s hair as he walked away.

  Edwin sat on the edge of his cot, which brought him to eye-level with his creation. He said, “Ted?”

  Ted’s jaw opened and closed with a metallic clack, but the mechanical child had no lungs, nor lips, and it did not speak.

  The flesh-and-blood boy picked up Ted and carried him carefully under his arm, up the stairs and into the main body of the Waverly Hills Sanitarium. The first floor offices and corridors were mostly safe, and mostly empty–or populated by the bustling, concentrating men with clipboards and glasses, and very bland smiles that recognized Edwin without caring that he was present.

  The sanitarium was very new. Some of its halls were freshly built and still stinking of mortar and the dust of construction. Its top floor rooms reeked faintly of paint and lead, as well as the medicines and bandages of the ill and the mad.

  Edwin avoided the top floors where the other children lived, and he avoided the wards of the men who were kept in jackets and chains. He also avoided the sick wards, where the mad men and women were tended to.

  Mrs. Criddle and Mrs. Williams worked in the kitchen and laundry, respectively; and they looked like sisters though they were not, in fact,
related. Both were women of a stout and purposeful build, with great tangles of graying hair tied up in buns and covered in sanitary hair caps; and both women were the mothering sort who were stern with patients, but kind to the hapless orphans who milled from floor to floor when they weren’t organized and contained on the roof.

  Edwin found Mrs. Criddle first, working a paddle through a metal vat of mashed potatoes that was large enough to hold the boy, Ted, and a third friend of comparable size. Her wide bottom rocked from side to side in time with the sweep of her elbows as she stirred the vat, humming to herself.

  “Mrs. Criddle?”

  She ceased her stirring. “Mm. Yes dear?”

  “It’s Edwin, ma’am. ”

  “Of course it is!” She leaned the paddle against the side of the vat and flipped a lever to lower the fire. “Hello there, boy. It’s not time for supper, but what have you got there?”

  He held Ted forward so she could inspect his new invention. “His name is Ted. I made him. ”

  “Ted, ah yes. Ted. That’s a good name for…for…a new friend. ”

  “That’s right!” Edwin brightened. “He’s my new friend. Watch, he can walk. Look at what he can do. ”

  He pressed the switch and the clockwork boy marched in place, and then staggered forward, catching itself with every step and clattering with every bend of its knees. Ted moved forward until it knocked its forehead on the leg of a counter, then stopped, and turned to the left to continue soldiering onward.

  “Would you look at that?” Mrs. Criddle said with the awe of a woman who had no notion of how her own stove worked, much less anything else. “That’s amazing, is what it is. He just turned around like that, just like he knew!”

  “He’s automatic,” Edwin said, as if this explained everything.

  “Automatic indeed. Very nice, love. But Mr. Bird and Miss Emmie will be here in a few minutes, and the kitchen will be a busy place for a boy and his new friend. You’d best take him back downstairs. ”