Tanglefoot

Page 3

“First I want to go show Mrs. Williams.”
Mrs. Criddle shook her head. “Oh no, dear. I think you’d better not. She’s upstairs, with the other boys and girls, and well, I suppose you know. I think you’re better off down with Dr. Smeeks.”
Edwin sighed. “If I take him upstairs, they’ll only break him, won’t they?”
“I think they’re likely to try.”
“All right,” he agreed, and gathered Ted up under his arm.
“Come back in another hour, will you? You can get your own supper and carry the doctor’s while you’re at it.”
“Yes ma’am. I will.”
He retreated back down the pristine corridors and dodged between two empty gurneys, back down the stairs that would return him to the safety of the doctor, the laboratory, and his own cot. He made his descent quietly, so as not to disturb the doctor in case he was still working.
When Edwin peeked around the bottom corner, he saw the old scientist sitting on his stool once more, a wadded piece of linen paper crushed in his fist. A spilled test tube leaked runny gray liquid across the counter’s top, and made a dark stain across the doctor’s pants.
Over and over to himself he mumbled, “Wasn’t the lavender. Wasn’t the…it was only the…I saw the. I don’t…I can’t…where was the paper? Where were the plans? What was the plan? What?”
The shadow of Edwin’s head crept across the wall and when the doctor spotted it, he stopped himself and sat up straighter. “Parker, I’ve had a little bit of an accident. I’ve made a little bit of a mess.”
“Do you need any help, sir?”
“Help? I suppose I don’t. If I only knew…if I could only remember.” The doctor slid down off the stool, stumbling as his foot clipped the seat’s bottom rung. “Parker? Where’s the window? Didn’t we have a window?”
“Sir,” Edwin said, taking the old man’s arm and guiding him over to his bed, in a nook at the far end of the laboratory. “Sir, I think you should lie down. Mrs. Criddle says supper comes in an hour. You just lie down, and I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready.”
“Supper?” The many-lensed goggles he wore atop his head slid, and their strap came down over his left eye.
He sat Dr. Smeeks on the edge of his bed and removed the man’s shoes, then his eyewear. He placed everything neatly beside the feather mattress and pulled the doctor’s pillow to meet his downward-drooping head.
Edwin repeated, “I’ll bring you supper when it’s ready,” but Dr. Smeeks was already asleep.
And in the laboratory, over by the stairs, the whirring and clicking of a clockwork boy was clattering itself in circles, or so Edwin assumed. He couldn’t remember, had he left Ted on the stairs? He could’ve sworn he’d pressed the switch to deactivate his friend. But perhaps he hadn’t.
Regardless, he didn’t want the machine bounding clumsily around in the laboratory–not in that cluttered place piled with glass and gadgets.
Over his shoulder Edwin glanced, and saw the doctor snoozing lightly in his nook; and out in the laboratory, knocking its jar-lid knees against the bottom step, Ted had gone nowhere, and harmed nothing. Edwin picked Ted up and held the creation to his face, gazing into the glass badger eyes as if they might blink back at him.
He said, “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Everybody makes friends. I just made you for real.”
Ted’s jaw creaked down, opening its mouth so that Edwin could stare straight inside, at the springs and levers that made the toy boy move. Then its jaw retracted, and without a word, Ted had said its piece.
After supper, which Dr. Smeeks scarcely touched, and after an hour spent in the laundry room sharing Ted with Mrs. Williams, Edwin retreated to his cot and blew out the candle beside it. The cot wasn’t wide enough for Edwin and Ted to rest side-by-side, but Ted fit snugly between the wall and the bedding and Edwin left the machine there, to pass the night.
But the night did not pass fitfully.
First Edwin awakened to hear the doctor snuffling in his sleep, muttering about the peril of inadequate testing; and when the old man finally sank back into a fuller sleep, Edwin nearly followed him. Down in the basement there were no lights except for the dim, bioluminescent glow of living solutions in blown-glass beakers–and the simmering wick of a hurricane lamp turned down low, but left alight enough for the boy to see his way to the privy if the urge struck him before dawn.
Here and there the bubble of an abandoned mixture seeped fizzily through a tube, and when Dr. Smeeks slept deeply enough to cease his ramblings, there was little noise to disturb anyone.
Even upstairs, when the wee hours came, most of the inmates and patients of the sanitarium were quiet–if not by their own cycles, then by the laudanum spooned down their throats before the shades were drawn.
Edwin lay on his back, his eyes closed against the faint, blue and green glows from the laboratory, and he waited for slumber to call him again. He reached to his left, to the spot between his cot and the wall. He patted the small slip of space there, feeling for a manufactured arm or leg, and finding Ted’s cool, unmoving form. And although there was scarcely any room, he pulled Ted out of the slot and tugged the clockwork boy into the cot after all, because doll or no, Ted was a comforting thing to hold.
Part Two
Morning came, and the doctor was already awake when Edwin rose.
“Good morning sir.”
“Good morning, Edwin,” the doctor replied without looking over his shoulder. On their first exchange of the day, he’d remembered the right name. Edwin tried to take it as a sign that today would be a good day, and Dr. Smeeks would mostly remain Dr. Smeeks–without toppling into the befuddled tangle of fractured thoughts and faulty recollections.
He was standing by the hurricane lamp, with its wick trimmed higher so that he could read. An envelope was opened and discarded beside him.
“Is it a letter?” Edwin asked.
The doctor didn’t sound happy when he replied, “It’s a letter indeed.”
“Is something wrong?”
“It depends.” Dr. Smeeks folded the letter. “It’s a man who wants me to work for him.”
“That might be good,” Edwin said.
“No. Not from this man.”
The boy asked, “You know him?”
“I do. And I do not care for his aims. I will not help him,” he said firmly. “Not with his terrible quests for terrible weapons. I don’t do those things anymore. I haven’t done them for years.”
“You used to make weapons? Like guns, and cannons?”
Dr. Smeeks said, “Once upon a time.” And he said it sadly. “But no more. And if Ossian thinks he can bribe or bully me, he has another thing coming. Worst comes to worst, I suppose, I can plead a failing mind.”
Edwin felt like he ought to object as a matter of politeness, but when he said, “Sir,” the doctor waved his hand to stop whatever else the boy might add.
“Don’t, Parker. I know why I’m here. I know things, even when I can’t always quite remember them. But my old colleague says he intends to pay me a visit, and he can pay me all the visits he likes. He can offer to pay me all the Union money he likes, too–or Confederate money, or any other kind. I won’t make such terrible things, not anymore.”
He folded the letter in half and struck a match to light a candle. He held one corner of the letter over the candle and let it burn, until there was nothing left but the scrap between his fingertips–and then he released it, letting the smoldering flame turn even the last of the paper to ash.
“Perhaps he’ll catch me on a bad day, do you think? As likely as not, there will be no need for subterfuge.”
Edwin wanted to contribute, and he felt the drive to communicate with the doctor while communicating seemed possible. He said, “You should tell him to come in the afternoon. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, sir, but you seem much clearer in the mornings.”
“Is that a fact?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted aloft by genuine interest. “I’ll take your word for it, I suppose. Lord knows I’m in no position to argue. Is that…that noise…what’s that noise? It’s coming from your cot. Oh dear, I hope we haven’t got a rat.”
Edwin declared, “Oh no!” as a protest, not as an exclamation of worry. “No, sir. That’s just Ted. I must’ve switched him on when I got up.”
“Ted? What’s a Ted?”
“It’s my…” Edwin almost regretted what he’d said before, about mornings and clarity. “It’s my new friend. I made him.”
“There’s a friend in your bunk? That doesn’t seem too proper.”
“No, he’s…I’ll show you.”
And once again they played the scene of discovery together–the doctor clapping Edwin on the back and ruffling his hair, and announcing that the automaton was a fine invention indeed. Edwin worked very hard to disguise his disappointment.
Finally Dr. Smeeks suggested that Edwin run to the washrooms upstairs and freshen himself to begin the day, and Edwin agreed.
The boy took his spring-and-gear companion along as he navigated the corridors while the doctors and nurses made their morning rounds. Dr. Havisham paused to examine Ted and declare the creation “outstanding.” Dr. Martin did likewise, and Nurse Evelyn offered him a peppermint sweet for being such an innovative youngster who never made any trouble.
Edwin cleaned his hands and face in one of the cold white basins in the washroom, where staff members and some of the more stable patients were allowed to refresh themselves. He set Ted on the countertop and pressed the automaton’s switch. While Edwin cleaned the night off his skin, Ted’s legs kicked a friendly time against the counter and its jaw bobbed like it was singing or chatting, or imagining splashing its feet in the basin.
When he was clean, Edwin set Ted on the floor and decided that–rather than carrying the automaton–he would simply let it walk the corridor until they reached the stairs to the basement.