The Brave Little Toaster tblt-1

by Thomas M. Disch

  “What the deuce is all this racket about?” Harold demanded imperiously, stepping forth from his nest high in the trunk of the oak. “Do you have any idea what time it is? Squirrels are trying to sleep.”

  The radio apologized to Harold and then explained the cause of the commotion. Like most squirrels, Harold was essentially kind-hearted, and when he saw what had happened to the blanket, he immediately offered his assistance. First he went into his nest and woke his wife. Then together the two squirrels began to help the blanket to loosen itself from where it had been snared. It was a long and—to judge by the blanket’s cries—painful process, but at last it was done, and with the squirrels’ help the liberated blanket made its way, slowly and carefully, down the trunk of the tree.

  The appliances gathered round their friend, commiserating over his many injuries and rejoicing at his rescue.

  “How shall we ever be able to repay you?” said the toaster warmly, turning to Harold and Marjorie. “You’ve saved our friend from a fate too terrible to imagine. We’re so grateful.”

  “Well,” said Marjorie cagily, “I can’t remember whether or not you said you had any nuts with you. But if you do…”

  “Believe me,” said the Hoover, “if we did, you would have them all. But you can see for yourselves that my bag contains nothing but dust and dirt.” Whereupon it opened its dustbag and a thick brown sludge of rain-sodden topsoil oozed forth.

  “Though we don’t have nuts,” said the toaster to the disconsolate squirrels, “perhaps there is something I could do for you. That is, if you like roasted nuts.”

  “Indeed, yes,” said Harold. “Any kind will do.”

  “Then if you can provide me with some nuts, I shall roast them. As many as you like.”

  Harold narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You mean you want us to give you the nuts we’ve been storing up all this summer?”

  “If you’d like me to roast them,” answered the toaster brightly.

  “Oh, darling, do,” Marjorie urged. “I don’t know what he means to do, but he seems to. And we might like it.”

  “I think it’s a trick,” said Harold.

  “Just two or three of the ones that are left from last year. Please?”

  “Oh, very well.”

  Harold scampered up the tree trunk to his nest and returned with four acorns stuffed in the pouches of his cheeks. At the toaster’s bidding Harold and Marjorie cracked them open, and then Harold placed them carefully on the thin strips of metal that went up and down inside the toaster’s slots. As these strips were meant to accommodate large slices of bread, it had to be very careful lest the tiny round acorns should roll off as it lowered them into itself. When this was done it turned on its coils and commenced toasting them. When the acorns were starting to turn a crispy brown, the toaster lifted them up gently as far as it could, turned off its coils, and (when it judged the squirrels would not burn their paws by reaching in) bade them take out the roasted nuts and taste them.

  “Delicious!” Marjorie declared.

  “Exquisite!” Harold agreed.

  As soon as the squirrels had eaten the first four acorns, they returned to their nest for more, and when those were gone still more, and then again some more after that. Marjorie, especially, was insatiable. She urged the toaster to remain in the forest as their guest. It could stay in their own nest, where it would always be dry and cozy, and she would introduce it to all their friends.

  “I’d love to be able to accept,” said the toaster, from a sense not only of politeness but of deep obligation as well, “but it really isn’t possible. Once I’ve roasted your nuts for you—would you like some more?—we must be on our way to the city where our master lives.”

  While the toaster roasted some more acorns, the radio explained to the squirrels the important reason for their journey. It also demonstrated its own capacities as a utensil and persuaded the other appliances to do the same. The poor Hoover was scarcely able to function from having been clogged with mud, and the squirrels, in any case, could not see the point of sweeping up dirt from one place and putting it somewhere else. Nor did the lamp’s beams or the radio’s music excite their admiration. However, they were both very taken with the electric blanket, which, damp as it was, had plugged itself into the battery strapped under the office chair and was glowing warmly. Marjorie renewed her invitation to the toaster and extended it to the blanket as well. “Until,” she explained, “you’re quite well again.”

  “That’s very kind,” said the blanket, “and of course I’m so grateful for all you’ve done. But we must be on our way. Truly.”

  Marjorie sighed resignedly. “At least,” she said, “keep your tail tucked into that black thing that makes the furry part of you so delightfully hot. Until you have to leave. The warmth is so pleasant. Isn’t it, my dear?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Harold, who was busy shelling acorns. “Most agreeable.”

  The Hoover ventured a mild protest, for it feared that with both the toaster and the blanket working so hard the battery would be worn down needlessly. But really what else could they do but comply with the squirrels’ request? Besides, quite apart from their debt of gratitude, it felt so good to be useful again! The toaster would have gone on gladly roasting acorns all morning and all afternoon, and the squirrels seemed of much the same disposition.

  “It’s strange,” said Harold complacently, while he stroked the toaster’s side (now sadly streaked with raindrop patterns like the outside of a window), “it’s more than strange that you should maintain you have no sex, when it’s very clear to me that you’re male.” He studied his own face in the mottled chromium. “You have a man’s whiskers and a man’s front teeth.”

  “Nonsense, darling,” said his wife, who was lying on the other side of the toaster. “Now that I look carefully, I can see her whiskers are most definitely a woman’s whiskers and teeth as well.”

  “I won’t argue, my love, about anything so patently obvious as whether or not a man is a man, for it’s evident that he is!”

  It suddenly dawned on the toaster how the squirrels—and the daisy the day before—had come by their confusions. They were seeing themselves in his sides! Living in the wild as they did, where there are no bathroom mirrors, they were unacquainted with the principle of reflectivity. It considered trying to explain their error to them, but what would be the use? They would only go away with hurt feelings. You can’t always expect people, or squirrels, to be rational. Appliances, yes—appliances have to be rational, because they’re built that way.

  To Harold the toaster explained, under seal of strictest secrecy, that it was indeed, just as he had supposed, a man; and to Marjorie it confided, under a similar pact of trust, that it was a woman. It hoped they were both true to their promises. If not, their argument would be fated to continue for a long, long while.

  With its coils turned to HIGH, the blanket was soon quite dry, and so, after a final round of roast acorns, the appliances said good-bye to Harold and Marjorie and continued on their way.

  And what a long and weary way it was! The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next—trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it’s probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in. At this stage of their journey, however, the appliances had lost sight of this important truth, and they were very bored and impatient, in addition simply to being worn to a frazzle. Rust spots had begun to develop alarmingly on the unchromed bottom of the toaster and inside it as well. The stiffness that the vacuum and lamp complained of each morning on rising no longer vanished with a bit of exercise but persisted through the day. As for the blanket, it was almo
st in tatters, poor thing. Alone of the appliances, the radio seemed not to have suffered damage from the demands of the trip.

  The toaster began to worry that when they did at last arrive at the master’s apartment they would be in such raggle-taggle condition that he would have no further use for them. They’d be put on the scrap heap, and all their efforts to reach him would have been in vain! What a dreadful reward for so much loyalty and devotion! But it is a rare human being who will be swayed by considerations of the heart in his dealings with appliances, and the master, as the toaster well knew, was not notable for his tender conscience. Its own predecessor at the cottage had still been quite serviceable when it had been sent to the dump, its only faults having been that its chrome had been worn away in patches and that its sense of timing was sometimes erratic. In its youth the toaster had thought these sufficient grounds for the older appliance’s replacement, but now…

  Now it was better not to think about such matters. Better simply to pursue one’s duty wherever it led, along the path through the forest.

  Until, at the bank of a wide river, that path finally came to an end.

  They were all, at first sight of that broad impassable expanse of water, utterly cast-down and despairing, none more so than the Hoover, which became almost incoherent in its distress. “No!” it roared aloud. “I refuse! Never! Oh! Stop, turn me off, empty my bag, leave me alone, go away!” It began to choke and sputter, and then ran over its own cord and started chewing on it. Only the toaster had enough presence of mind to wrest the cord from the vacuum’s powerful suction grip. Then, to calm it down, it led the Hoover back and forth across the grassy bank of the river in regular, carpet-sweeping swathes.

  At last these habitual motions brought the Hoover round to a more reasonable frame of mind, and it was able to account for its extraordinary alarm. It was not only the sight of this new obstacle that had distressed it so, but, as well, its certainty that the battery was now too rundown for them to be able to return to the cottage by its power. They could not go forward and they could not turn back. They were marooned! Marooned in the middle of the forest, and soon it would be fall and they would have no shelter from the inclemencies of the autumn weather, and then it would be winter and they’d be buried in the snow. Their metal parts would corrode. The Hoover’s rubber belt would crack. They would be powerless to resist the forces that would slowly but surely debilitate and destroy them, and in only a few months—or even weeks—they would all be unable to work.

  No wonder the Hoover, foreseeing this inevitable progression of events, had been beside itself. What were they to do? the toaster asked itself.

  There was no answer immediately forthcoming.

  Toward evening the radio announced that it was receiving interference from a source quite nearby. “A power drill, by the feel of it. Just on the other side of the river.”

  Where there was a power drill there were bound to be power lines as well! New hope poured into the appliances like a sudden surge of current.

  “Let’s look at the map again,” said the lamp. “Maybe we can figure out exactly where we are.”

  Following the lamp’s suggestion, they unfolded the road map and looked very carefully at all the dots and squiggles between the spot (marked with a Magic Marker) along the highway where the cottage was situated and the little patch of pink representing the city they were bound for. At last, only a quarter-inch from the pink patch of the city, they found the wavery blue line that had to be the river they’d come to, since there were no other blue lines anywhere between the cottage and the city, and this river was much too big for the mapmakers to have forgotten all about it.

  “We’re almost there!” the radio trumpeted. “We’ll make it! Everything will be all right! Hurrah!”

  “Hurrah!” the other appliances agreed, except for the Hoover, who wasn’t so easily convinced that all would now be well. But when the lamp pointed out four distinct places where the river was traversed by highways, even the Hoover had to admit that there was cause to cheer up, though he still wouldn’t go so far as to say “Hurrah.”

  “We only have to follow the river,” said the toaster, who did like to give instructions, even when it was obvious what had to be done, “either to the left or the right, and eventually it must lead us to one of those bridges. Then, when it’s very late and there’s no traffic, we can make a dash for it!”

  So once again they set off with courage renewed and determination strengthened. It was not so light a task as the toaster had made it sound, for there was no longer a clear path to follow. Sometimes the bank of the river lay flat as a carpet, but elsewhere the ground got quite bumpy or—what was worse—quaggy and soft. Once, avoiding a rock, the Hoover took a sharp turn; and the office chair, getting a leg mired in an unremarked patch of mud, was overturned, and the four appliances riding on it tumbled off the plastic seat into a thorough slough. They emerged smirched and spattered, and were obliged to become dirtier still in the process of retrieving the castor wheel that had come off the chair and was lost in the mud.

  The blanket, naturally, was exempted from this task, and while the four others delved for the lost wheel, it betook itself down the water’s edge and attempted to wash away the signs of its spill. Lacking any cloth or sponge, the blanket only succeeded, sad to say, in spreading the stains over a larger area. So preoccupied was the blanket with its hopeless task that it almost failed to notice—

  “A boat!” the blanket cried out. “All of you, come here! I’ve found a boat!”

  Even the toaster, with no experience at all in nautical matters, could see that the boat the blanket had discovered was not of the first quality. Its wood had the weather-beaten look of the clapboard at the back of the summer cottage that the master had always been meaning to replace, or at least repaint, and its bottom must be leaky for it was filled with one big puddle of green mush. Nevertheless, it must have been basically serviceable, since a Chriscraft outboard motor was mounted on the blunt back-end, and who would put an expensive motor on a boat that couldn’t at least stay afloat?

  “How providential,” said the Hoover.

  “You don’t intend for us to use this boat, do you?” asked the toaster.

  “Of course we shall,” replied the vacuum. “Who knows how far it may be to a bridge? This will take us across the river directly. You’re not afraid to ride in it, are you?”

  “Afraid? Certainly not!”

  “Well, then?”

  “It doesn’t belong to us, if we were to take it, we’d be no better than… than pirates!”

  Pirates, as even the newest of my listeners will have been informed, are people who take things that belong to other people. They are the bane of an appliance’s existence, since once an appliance has been spirited away by a pirate, it has no choice but to serve its bidding just as though it were that appliance’s legitimate master. A bitter disgrace, such servitude—and one that few appliances can hope to escape once it has fallen to their lot. Truly, there is no fate, even obsolescence, so terrible as falling into the hands of pirates.

  “Pirates!” exclaimed the Hoover. “Us? What nonsense? Who ever heard of an appliance that was a pirate?”

  “But if we took the boat—” the toaster insisted.

  “We wouldn’t keep it,” said the Hoover brusquely. “We’d just borrow it a little while to cross the river and leave it on the other side. Its owner would get it back soon enough.”

  “How long we’d have it for doesn’t matter. It’s the principle of the thing. Taking what isn’t yours is piracy.”

  “Oh, as for principles,” said the radio lightly, “there’s a well-known saying: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ Which means, as far as I can see, that someone who makes use of his abilities should get to use a boat when he or it needs to cross a river and the boat is just sitting there waiting.” With which, and a little chuckle besides, the radio hopped onto the foremost seat of the rowboat.

  Fol
lowing the radio’s example, the Hoover heaved the office chair into the back of the boat and then got in itself. The boat settled deep in the water.

  Avoiding the toaster’s accusing look, the blanket took a seat beside the radio.

  The lamp seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. Then it too entered the boat.

  “Well?” said the Hoover gruffly. “We’re waiting.”

  Reluctantly the toaster prepared to board the boat. But then, inexplicably, something made it stop. What’s happening? it wondered—though it could not say the words aloud, for the same force preventing it from moving prevented its speech as well.

  The four appliances in the boat had been similarly incapacitated. What had happened, of course, was that the owner of the boat had returned and seen the appliances. “Why, what’s this?” he exclaimed, stepping from behind a willow tree with a fishing rod in one hand and a string of sunfish in the other. “It seems we’ve had some visitors!”

  He said much more than this, but in a manner so rough and ill-mannered that it were better not to repeat his words verbatim. The sum of it was this—that he believed the owner of the appliances had been about to steal his boat, and so he intended, by way of retaliation, to steal the appliances!

  He took the toaster from where it sat spellbound on the grassy riverbank and set it in the rowboat beside the blanket, lamp and radio. Then, unfastening the battery from the office chair, he threw the latter end-over-end high up into the air. It came down—Splash!—in the middle of the river and sank down to the muddy bottom, nevermore to be seen.

  Then the pirate—for there could no longer be any doubt that such he was—started the Chriscraft motor and set off upstream with his five helpless captives.

  After mooring his boat alongside a ramshackle dock on the other side of the river, the pirate loaded the outboard motor and the appliances onto the wooden bed of a very dusty pickup truck—except for the radio, which he took with him into the front seat. As it drove off, the truck jolted and jounced and bolted and bounced so violently the toaster feared the ride would cost it every coil in its body. (For though toasters look quite sturdy, they are actually among the more delicate appliances and need to be handled accordingly.) But the blanket, realizing the danger the toaster was in, managed to slip underneath its old friend and cushion it from the worst shocks of the journey.