The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  The sheriff’s head appeared around the door. ‘Did I hear somebody mention the good old sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? Used to be my favourite, doggone it, with the old isolation booth and the – No? Don’t neither of you boys like game shows? If you do, speak up – I can always bring the TV in here and let you watch with me. Just let me know.’ The head vanished.

  ‘It’s not red, Doc.’

  ‘Funny, it feels … and my pulse is slightly elevated too … I wonder …’

  ‘Doc, do you think that mob will break in here and drag us out and hang us?’

  But by now the doctor was listening to his own heart. ‘I know I ought to get out more, jog a little, get plenty of exercise. But somehow … last time I went out was with this priest, Father O’Bride, kept calling me a natural until I started missing easy shots, you know? Guy’s kinda weird anyway, kept telling me about this idea of his for a fourteen-hole golf course with every hole a Station of the Cross – what do you mean, hang us?’

  ‘Well you know, hang us.’

  ‘Not a chance. You’ve been seeing too many movies again, sport. Old movies. People just don’t hang people any more. A necktie party in modern dress? A lynching in the post-literate electronic age, the global village? Klan vengeance, in these days of low-lipid diets and consumer awareness? String us up, just when civilization is hitting its stride with, with male contraceptive pills and Mickey Mouse telephones? With giggling gingerbread and soul-searching politicians and reconstituted gratification? Not a chance, sport.’

  After a moment, he added, ‘What an admission of failure! To turn their backs on, on the great American menu of therapies, and just go sneaking off in the night with a rope – impossible!’

  After another moment, ‘Improbable, anyway.’

  Roderick said, ‘I just hope when they come for us, Sheriff Benson will get out there with a shotgun on the front steps and tell them all about, uh, justice, uh, how the foundering fathers brought forth a nation where liberty and just –’

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it any more, okay? God, it isn’t as if I haven’t got enough to worry about! Heading for a major health crisis just when I need all my strength for a long court battle over this gingerbread business, not to mention this little smear campaign, trying to discredit me before I blow the whistle on their dirty little operation.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kratt Enterprises, that’s who. Or I guess they now call it KUR Industries, might as well call it Mass Poisoners Incorporated, what with their – well I’d better not talk about it off the record, but their day is coming.’

  ‘You mean they made the gingerbread boys that made all those kids sick?’

  ‘Yeah, and just wait. This is just the chance I needed, to carve out a reputation in the public service, lay down a solid career foundation –’

  ‘Not to mention saving a lot more kids from –’

  ‘Sure that too, but from there I could springboard right into some prestigious drug firm, they’re always on the look-out for young crusaders, names that look good on the letter-head – and let’s face it, integrity is all I’ve got to sell.’

  Roderick scratched his head. ‘But wouldn’t it be better if you kept finding out about mass poisoners and helped save other –?’

  The door banged open and Sheriff Benson came in, dragging the TV set. ‘Hate to think of you boys sitting in here with nothing to do, so I thought I’d come in here and let you watch the shows with me. Anyways that mob out front is making too much racket, I can’t hardly hear the questions.’

  They watched The Big Score, Ripoff, Pick a Winner, Two for the Top, Lucky Break, Pile It Up, Family Spree, Play or Pay, Big Bingo, Make or Break, Guess It Rich, Spoil Yourself, Great Expectations, Gold or Fold, Grab Bag and Money Talks, and during the commercial breaks the sheriff described other games.

  ‘Too bad you boys missed that new one, Double Your Social Security Check. Real good, see, they get these old folks to put their check in this glass box, then they gotta answer three questions. Well see they might be easy ones like name a pro football linebacker with two Z’s in his name, you know? Other times they get trickier, like name five countries in Europe – anyway see, every time the old codger gets a right answer, they put another check in the box, keep on doubling up see? But if they miss one –’ The sheriffs chair creaked with laughter, ‘The damn check burns up in the box, right before their eyes! Boy O boy, there was one old guy – oops, they’re back –’

  The TV figure welcomed them back to the next round of Money Talks. ‘Well, Mrs Pearson? Will YOU talk for money? Will YOU step into our special Acorn United Company bank vault, filled with ONE MILLION crisp new dollar bills, and talk for five minutes?’

  ‘This ain’t no good,’ said the sheriff, touching a button. ‘We’ll try Take the Plunge.’

  ‘… member, if you push the right button, you’ll be able to Take the Plunge right into our gold-plated swimming pool, filled to the brim with shiny new silver dollars. You could just dive in and keep every dollar you throw up, okay? How’s that sound, eh? Good? Great! Now, that’s if you push the right button. If you push the wrong button, Doris, the pool might be filled with something … we-e-ell … not so nice. MOLASSES, for instance? Ha ha ha, or maybe JELLO? Or how about DIRTY SOCKS? Okay then, here goes …’

  Roderick watched the poor woman on the screen, her face slack but smiling. Almost like a dog waiting for a kick, hoping for a pat. She pushed the button and the great gold lame curtains swished open to show a swimming pool filled with –

  ‘TYRES!’ screamed the MC over audience laughter. ‘Oh my goodness, TYRES! That’s right, Doris, you have just won a plunge into this pool filled with old rubber tyres! Ah ha ha, and you – ha ha – yes you can keep every one you throw up –’

  Suddenly the entire brilliant studio, with the purple walls, gold curtains, the MC in his scarlet coat and the contestant’s green face, shrank to a dot and vanished. The plug had been kicked out of its socket by one of the stumbling men, each wearing a pillowcase over his head, coming for the prisoners.

  The tall building of rusty corrugated iron was Bangfield’s Grain Elevator, just one of the forgotten buildings at the forgotten end of town. A few cars and pickups had been parked to shine their headlights on the action: a rope being passed over a pulley and tied into a noose.

  ‘I guess they mean it,’ said Dr De’Ath. ‘I just hope they’ve got enough sense to do this right. They ought to drop us from enough height to fracture the fourth cervical vertebra, a quick snap and we’re finished.’

  ‘Sure.’ All Roderick could think of was getting out of it, somehow, working some brilliant psychological trick that would make the pillow-heads give up.

  ‘Listen fellows,’ he said. ‘Our foundering fathers brought –’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’ said a head with a border of marigolds. Another, in a pillowcase dotted with fleur-de-lis grabbed Dr De’Ath and shoved him towards the noose.

  ‘Hold on, we’re not ready yet,’ said a pillowcase edged with the Campbell tartan. ‘Keep him back there.’

  ‘Snap,’ said Dr De’Ath bitterly. ‘Not a chance with these yahoos. They’ll probably give us slow asphyxiation by ligatation, fracturing the hyoid so we end up with our tongues sticking out and messing our pants. Talk about an admission of failure! And loose bowels are one thing I haven’t been troubled with lately, kind of ironic …’

  ‘I was just wondering if my whole life would flash before me,’ Roderick muttered. ‘I mean my whole life. Because if it did, there’d have to be a moment when I relived the present moment, wouldn’t there? When I started reliving my whole life again? And in that life I’d get to the same moment, and start reliving –’

  ‘Just shut up, will you?’ said the marigolds. ‘Why make this any tougher than it is? Just relax.’

  ‘Relax?’ Dr De’Ath chortled. ‘I’ve got a migraine now, on top of everything else, this yahoo wants me to relax.’

  ‘All set,’ the tartan called out.


  Dr De’Ath said, ‘Look Rod, how about you going first? See I’d like to try a little gargle first – oh I know it sounds silly, but I really hate to die without at least trying to clear up this sore throat of mine – okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Roderick stepped forward and turned to face the lights. Someone slipped a noose over his head. He saw a pillowcase printed with sea-horses, read the tag on its hem: hand-hot wash, drip-dry, do not spin. Will this be my last memory? No, better to try thinking of something interesting, how about the paradox of the unexpected hanging?

  A judge tells a man he’ll be hanged one day next week, but not on any day he’s expecting it. The man reasons that he cannot be hanged on the Saturday, since he’d certainly expect it if he survived the other six days. So the hanging had to happen between Sunday and Friday. But then it couldn’t be Friday, either, by the same reasoning. That left Sunday till Thursday, only in that case Thursday too was out. And so on, until he eliminated every day but Sunday. So he expected to be hanged on Sunday. So he couldn’t be hanged on Sunday. So he couldn’t be hanged at all!

  Roderick felt pain in his neck as he was hoisted aloft. Looking down, he could see the whole miserable little crowd of pillow-heads, the parked cars beyond them, and further. There was Ma, lurking in the background and biting his nails. There was the limousine that had been parked up at the factory, now it was stopping in a shadow while the chauffeur got out and – what was he doing – taking pictures.

  The pain got sharper, and Roderick thought he heard a rivet shearing in his neck. Better finish:

  … couldn’t be hanged at all! So the man thought, being perfectly logical. So he wasn’t expecting it the day they hanged him …

  ‘Jus’ one more picture, boss?’ said the chauffeur. ‘Cause I know the kids would love to see –’

  ‘Get back in the car. Now!’ Ben Franklin pushed the snoring weight of Mr Kratt off his shoulder and leaned forward. ‘If you don’t get back behind that wheel right now, I’ll have you fired.’

  The chauffeur shrugged, folded his camera and climbed in. ‘’Kay, take it easy. Maybe you seen a lot of lynchin’s, I ain’t.’

  Ben looked at the sleeping figure. It had stopped snoring and was now muttering, ‘Pleassssure. Pleassssure.’

  ‘Just start the car and drive.’

  ‘You crazy? Through that buncha –’

  ‘Then turn around and drive the other way, let’s just get out of here.’

  ‘Yeah but like I said we can’t go nowhere this way, like I said when we come off at the wrong exit – didn’t I tell you it was the wrong exit? – all we can do now is stay on this here highway 811 until we hit the old Interstate and then cut back –’

  ‘All right, just – just a minute, let me think.’

  ‘Some thinker,’ said the chauffeur, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. ‘Look buddy we’re stuck here, why doncha just sit back and watch the show?’

  ‘Show? Is that all it is to you, a show? You don’t care do you, people committing murder – like that? It’s just something on TV, that it?’

  ‘Look, no offence, manner of speakin’, okay? Okay? I’m entitled to my opinion too, you know, it’s a free fuckin’ country.’

  ‘All right, all –’

  ‘Just because I work for a livin’ don’t mean I’m shit, okay?’

  ‘All right!’

  ‘Okay, just wanted to get that straight.’ The chauffeur twitched his shoulders, shrugging off any yoke of oppression Ben might care to impose, and sat forward: a free man in a free country, watching a free show.

  Ben reached for the phone, hesitated, gnawed his knuckles for a while, and finally tried waking Mr Kratt.

  ‘Wha? Whoza?’

  ‘There’s a lynching going on, sir. Right over there. Shouldn’t we – call the highway patrol?’

  ‘Outa your head, bub. Word gets out I’m nosing around down here we’ll have every yak-head in the State tryina buy in on this land deal. Jesus, might as well take a full-page ad in the paper, announce a gold rush – use your head, for Christ’s –’ and he was asleep again.

  Ben looked away from the execution into darkness. Toys. A show. Revenge of the common man upon the common object, wasn’t that it? Because it wouldn’t do, it had never done, to think of the object of their cruelty as fully human. So the effigy created by Albertus Magnus (smashed down by Aquinas) turns up as Friar Bacon’s talking head (to be smashed by a servant) and again as the automaton of Descartes (‘ma fille Francine’, flung into the sea by yet another fearful soul) even while dummies of Guido Fawkes began to burn in the streets of London for the pleasure of children. Common children, always more ready than even their parents to punish the presumption of a servant.

  Well yes, he might work that up into an article, why not? The Common Man and His Image? ‘Fascination with clockwork in the 17th cent. coincides with idea of commonwealth, all part of same big movement,’ he wrote, turning the notebook to the light. ‘Clock explained all, from Newton’s heaven to Malynes’s laws of economics – Huygens creating clockwork artisans for the King of France even while (after?) Mechanic Philosophers promoted a new democratic religion among the living artisans. Groups naming themselves by function – Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers – as though describing their work within the great timepiece.’ What was the point of all this? What was it?

  ‘Christ, said the chauffeur. ‘Christ! Looka that.’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’

  ‘Who you tellin’ to shut up, listen fuckhead, I –’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Revolution, that was the point. ‘Jacquard loom working a genuine revolution behind the scenes – Mme DeF. – In 1791 (?) Godwin wrote: “A servant who –“’ What was the quote? While he waited for it, the chauffeur said:

  ‘Hey look, uh, Mr Frankelin, I think we got trouble with the right rear tyre, hey?’ ‘What?’

  ‘Right rear tyre, I think it’s down. Your side, you mind gettin’ out and look at it?’

  Still frowning at the notebook he climbed out.

  ‘Have a nice night, Mr Frankelin.’

  ‘What? Oh – hey what –?’

  And he hardly heard the screams (‘God! His head come off!’) so intent was he suddenly on the sound of the automatic door-closer, the click of the automatic lock, the sight of the chauffeur giving him the finger as the limousine glided away into the night.

  XXV

  Yet the old myth dies hard. We are still tempted to argue that if the clown’s antics exhibit carefulness, judgement, wit, and appreciation of the moods of his spectators, there must be occurring in the clown’s head a counterpart performance to that which is taking place on the sawdust. If he is thinking what he is doing, there must be occurring behind his painted face a cognitive shadow-operation which we do not witness, tallying with, and controlling, the bodily contortions which we do witness.

  Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind

  One record finished, and in the interval a shrill voice said: ‘Well we’re practically related. My ex married his ex’s first husband’s widow – only I guess they split up lass week …’

  One of the groom’s coarse cousins, naturally; there was relief among the bride’s friends when the disc-jockey slipped another record into the silence.

  One or two couples started dancing on the patio; Allbright and Dora waltzed smoothly into the library and out again, their steps not noticeably slowed by the added weight of several first editions.

  ‘Hey Allbright!’ It was Lyle Tate, keeping his birthmark in shadow as he came past the disc-jockey’s glass booth. ‘Jeez, and Dora – you two are the only people I know here. Who is this mob? Who is everybody?’

  Allbright shrugged, shifting books. ‘Everybody.’

  ‘No but I mean Jane Hannah’s not here, Jack Tarr’s not here –’

  ‘Tarr? I thought you hated his guts.’

  ‘Yeah but only when he was around. Guess he hasn’t got the guts to go anywhere today, there’s a story going around that he�
�s been cheating on some psychic research stuff. They say he got a pigeon to be clairvoyant something like a hundred times, pushing the right button in a Skinner box, you know? A hundred times. Only trouble was the pigeon was dead at the time, biggest damn miracle since Lazarus – speaking of which, Allbright you don’t look so great. What’s that, dried blood on your face, bruises or dirt?’

  ‘We fall over from time to time,’ Allbright said. ‘We fall. One of the privileges of the C-charged brain …’

  ‘We? You mean –?’ Lyle looked to Dora, who nodded.

  ‘Rodin,’ said a shrill voice somewhere. ‘Yas yas yas.’

  Dora said, ‘I guess I’m doomed anyway. Might as well go down the toilet with Allbright as by myself.’

  ‘Doomed, what do you mean doomed? Down the –?’

  ‘We’re all doomed,’ said Allbright. ‘Jesus it’s obvious enough; everybody goes around worrying about machines taking over, shit, they took over long ago, isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘But no, listen, what happened to your plan for –?’

  ‘Between computer poetry and vibrator love people don’t get a hell of a lot of room to manoeuvre, isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘No but your plan for ripping off bank computers, what happened to that? You said a friend in the nut-house steered you –’

  ‘The steersman, yes, aren’t we all – but you mean Dan, good old Dan. Well you know I went back to see him, tell him how great it was after they fry your brains, burn out a few pink and blue lights you feel a lot better. I did, I know. I did. I felt better. Not stupider, just happier, that’s what I told him.

  ‘Only for him it wasn’t like that. They had to burn out more pink and blue lights I guess. Jesus they fried him right back into diapers. I mean, whatever lights he had going for him, they sure as hell went out for good.’

  Someone proposed a toast to the happy couple; Jim and the Dean of Persons looked pleased and bashful. The toast was only slightly marred by a shrill voice saying, ‘Yas, Rodin. Don’t you just love his Thinker?’

  Lyle said, ‘Maybe he’ll get better, though. He won’t stay in diapers –’