by Brian Hodge
“But I’m not the waffle iron. And now that I know, it’ll go away. Right?”
“Nah. You have to work through it.”
“How do I do that?”
“Don’t know.”
“But you’re the professor.”
“Well, I call myself that. But this, this is up to you, Little Bill. You have to sort of cinch up the old transmission and deal with it. And yes, knowing the source. That will help. You must overcome your fears, and when you do, the dreams will stop.”
Professor Zoob turned and rumpled away on his treads. Gabe said, “See, told ya he could help you… How about thad? Yer a sissy cause ya got a mashed waffle iron inside ya. Ain’t thad some shit? I’m glad I was made from good metal. Well, going to gid a lube job, if you know what I mean, so, hang tight, kid, and good luck.”
“Thanks, Gabe, I think,” Bill said, and Gabe went away.
Sitting alone in the corner, his shovel dipped, his head beams to the wall, Bill was surprised to feel a soft metallic touch. He turned, and there was Maudie.
“I know you were embarrassed today, Bill, but I want you to know, it’s only natural. A lot of fluid in the system, exertion. I wouldn’t feel too bad.”
“Well, I do… And you were laughing.”
“Yeah. Well, it was funny. On the outside, anyway. From your point of view, not so funny. It was just so loud and long, and that look on your face… I wasn’t laughing because I think you’re a loser. I mean, a fart like that, it kind of embarrasses everyone, and you’re always glad it’s the other guy, but, don’t feel too bad. I puked once. Oil all over the place, and there was a big chunk of rust in it. I was so humiliated.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Was it before I came here?”
“I was here a few days before you, and yes, it was.”
“Did everyone see it?”
“No. Only me, but I was still embarrassed.”
“That’s not exactly the same.”
“No. Yours was more humiliating, I admit, but, still, I was embarrassed, if just to myself. I mean yours was right out in front of God and everybody…”
“Yes. I know. Maudie, I’m going to go right to it. Is there anyway, you and me could get together?”
“You mean, together together?”
“I just want to get to know you. I like you. I’m not a bad guy…”
“I like you too.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Everyone in the barn, except Butch says you’re nice.”
“No, shit?”
“No, shit.”
“Well, that’s swell, Maudie. Maybe, you know, sometime, after work, we could get together in the far corner of the garage. Maybe get our oil changed or something. Watch a little TV in the rec room afterwards. There’s a car chase movie on, the big new one about car wrecks and the fire department, LOTS OF CARS AND A DOZEN HOSES.”
“Oh, those cars. I’ve seen previews. They’re so sexy. So are the fire trucks. That’s some metal the cars are built from, isn’t it?”
“Actually, I don’t know cars and steam shovels go together—”
“Ah, jealous already and we haven’t even had our first date.”
“I guess… A little. I mean, how do you compete with movie cars?”
“That’s cute… Long as it doesn’t get out of hand. And listen, those movie cars, they’re always being remade and rebuffed and they don’t really run as fast as they show in the movie. I’m looking for the real deal, and you’re the real deal, I think. I’d sure like to find out for sure.”
“Gee, Maudie. That’s swell.”
“Remember, about the tree. That was a big one. It would take someone like Butch to push it over. For heaven’s sake, Bill, he’s three times your size. It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right.”
“You might want to drink a little less transmission fluid, though, you’re gonna be straining that hard. I mean… You know?”
“Sure. Of course. Good advice.”
“See you later.”
“Tomorrow? After work?”
“It’s a date.”
That night Bill slept and he dreamed, but it was not the dream about falling. Zoob had really helped him, and probably had no idea how much. In his dream he thought of Maudie. And it was a good dream, and they were warm and close and friendly, and spent quality time together, watching TV, having their oil changed, and, in the end, he mounted her like he was climbing an incline to a Rocky Mountain trailer park entrance.
But just as he was about to finish, he cut another one.
He awoke in a sweat.
He had swapped one bad dream for another.
He wasn’t falling anymore, but now he was afraid he was going to cut a big one at an inopportune moment.
But, hell, he had about as much chance of mounting Maudie, having any kind of relationship with her, as a bird had of finding a tree in a Taco Bell parking lot.
Morning came, and Bill tried to put a good face on it, smiled his rubber bumpers wide when he saw the beautiful Maudie being driven out of the barn. She waved her radio antennae at him, and he waved his back, and she was gone, out into the sunlight.
For a long moment, Bill feared he was not going to get another chance. Steam shovel after steam shovel was rolled outside, and still he set. No Dave to drive him.
But then, finally, his Dave showed up.
Dave came and climbed up on him. Bill cranked the engine without giving Dave time to do it.
“Wow, you’re raring to go,” Dave said. “Sorry, I was late. Wife felt frisky. Since that happens about once every six months, had to take advantage of it.”
They rolled outside and the sun was bright against the concrete. The team of shovels went past where they had worked before, started motoring along the road, puffing steam, cracking gravel under their treads.
They rolled along until the road rose up and the mountains gathered around them, and still they went up. Bill felt a strain in his motor, and he took a deep breath of steam, squirted it out, hunkered down and dug in with his treads. Up he went, carrying his Dave high and deep into the mountains along the concrete road. Bill tried not to look to his right, toward the edge of the road and the great fall that was there. The feelings he had in the dreams came back when he did. His insides trembled like a piston was blown. His nuclear pellets, his gas and oil engine, his back up steam engine, all seemed to miss a beat as he went up. And up. And up.
The road narrowed, and finally they came to where the road turned to clay, then ended up against the mountain.
Bill realized this was a spot where other shovels had been working. It was wide here. You could put four steam shovels across, digging. Digging open the mountain so the road could keep going up and Daves and their Sallys could ride in their cars carrying all their little Daves and Sallys.
Bill was not first in line, but well behind the first four that went to work, Butch and Maudie among them. Dave pulled him in line with three other shovels, and killed his motor. Bill watched Maudie as she worked, the way the sun hit the metal of her shiny ass, the way her tail pipe wiggled, and he was amazed and grateful for her fine construction.
He watched Butch dig and toss the dirt, and was impressed in spite of himself. What a powerful machine. He liked the way the cables rolled under his metal skin and the way he could lay back on the rear of his treads and lift himself up. And he liked the way Butch cussed as he worked, digging, insulting the mountain.
He looked around him and saw Gabe working alongside the road, on little jobs, like making the road wider for more concrete to be laid. He thought of Zoob, back in the barn. Did he wish he was out here, digging?
Most likely.
It was the dream of every good construction shovel.
The digging went on and the day got hotter. His metal grew warm and he could feel the oils, the liquids inside of him, starting to grow warm and loose. He lifted his head beams and looked at the sky. A s
ingle bird soared against it, and the blue of the sky faded as a cloud of pollution, the sign of progress, rolled across it, gray as cobwebbed garage corner. He thought: If I could shoot a rifle, like a Dave, I bet I could pop that goddamn bird.
Then Dave started his motor again.
Now Bill and three others took the place of the four who had been in line. As Maudie rolled past him, she winked a headlight. Then Butch rolled past him, said, “You just a Tinker Toy.”
Bill gritted his gears and went up against the mountain with the other three, and he began to dig. He thought: Dig, boy, dig. And don’t cut one. Die before you do that. Dig. Dig this mountain down. Dig like you want to flatten the entire earth. Which, actually, seemed like a fairly noble ambition. Making all the world flat and covered in concrete.
But then what would he do?
Why, tear up the concrete, of course. Like Gabe had said. It had to wear out, crack and buckle. Tear it up and scrape it into piles and let them put down more concrete. Oh, yes, Gabe was right. This was the life. Fuck the earth. Fuck the wildlife. Fuck it all. To dig was to live.
And so he dug and he dug, then, suddenly, Dave was wheeling him about. He thought at first he had done something wrong, but realized he was growing low on power. That he had to pull back, like the first four. Maybe get a new pellet to refire the steam. That was it. He had done fine.
He smiled as he clattered tiredly back through the line and another four moved up.
So the day went, three rows of four, taking turns, twelve steam shovels working against the mountain, and Gabe working the side of the road. And finally, mid-day, the Daves pulled back all the shovels and stopped, had them set alongside the road.
The Daves went about checking oil and fluids and such, and old Gabe, he was sent up to the front to shovel the bits of dirt that remained, scraping it down to the clay, which was a job that made him happy.
Then, the mountain came down.
It came down with a slight rumble, then a big rumble, and Bill looked up and saw Gabe look up, and the mountain went over Gabe and Bill could hear the sound of metal bending, then there was nothing but a great dust cloud.
Butch, who was behind him now, rolled forward suddenly, without benefit of his Dave, said, “Man, did you see that shit there. Old Gabe, he done fucked now. One less old geezer in the garage. And that ain’t bad.”
Bill wheeled. He swung his shovel and hit Butch with everything he had. And Butch, well, it didn’t bother him much.
Butch swung his shovel too, and just as it hit Bill, making Bill slide back on his treads, Bill heard Maudie’s voice.
“You got to get Gabe out from under there, boys. You got to.”
“Ain’t gonna dig him out unless I got to,” said Butch. “He nothing to me, he ain’t.”
“You’re right, Maudie,” said Bill, and he hummed up his engine and rolled forward. His Dave tried to work the controls, to make Bill do what he wanted, but Bill ignored him. I got free will, he thought. I can do what I want, and he went at the dirt and began to dig. He dug and he dug, and eventually he saw a bit of scarred metal, and he dug faster, and finally, finally, there was Gabe.
Or what was left of him. He was squashed and his old shovel had been knocked completely off. Oil dribbled all over the earth.
“Gabe!” Bill said.
Weak as a busted oil line, Gabe said, “Thanks, boy. But ain’t no use. I’m a goner. Fugged from bucket to ass end.”
And he was.
They brought in a wrecker and took Gabe away, down the hill. That night when they rolled back in the garage, Bill found that Gabe had been dismantled and stacked. Tomorrow, he would go to the furnace to be melted down, and reformed.
“It’s another life,” Maudie said. “He’ll be melted into some other kind of machinery. It’s not over for him.”
“It won’t be him,” Bill said.
“And there’s his soul, it’s gone to the sky. That can’t be changed. Can’t be taken away from him. A residue remains. Isn’t it in the manual that residuals can remain?”
Bill thought about the ghost inside him, the residual of the waffle iron. And then he thought about heaven.
“What’s heaven like, Maudie? What do you think it’s like?”
“Flat. Lots of concrete. But every day, new hills pop up, and new trees, and they have to be taken down. And we’ll be there, just like all the others that have gone before us and will come after us.”
“Will Butch be there?”
“I don’t think so. I think he gets the other place.”
“Gabe was just an old guy,” Bill said. “A good old guy.”
“I know. Don’t look at him anymore.”
Zoob rolled up. He said, “I am sorry, Bill. He was good, he was. I miss him already.”
“Me too,” Bill said.
“I wish you the best of a night you could have,” Zoob said. “Gabe, he is all through with the pain. The ache in the bolts and the hinges. Maybe he’s lucky. I think maybe I could wish it was me, you see.”
“No way,” Bill said.
“Thank you. And I wish you, and the lady, good night.”
“Goodnight,” Bill and Maudie said in unison.
They rolled away together, went to the dark shadows on the far side of the garage. Maudie swung her shovel so that it draped over Bill’s back. Her bumper parted and pressed to his, and they kissed. And kissed again. Soon they were holding each other, stroking metal, and then, heaven above and flatten all earth, he was behind her, and down came the oil stick, and then came the loving.
Afterward, they set low on their treads together in the shadows and slid open their side traps and dropped their oil tubes into a fine vat of thirty weight, sucked it up together.
“I… I don’t know what happened there…” Bill said.
“What happened was wonderful,” Maudie said. “I haven’t felt that good since… Well, I haven’t felt that good.”
“Neither have I,” he said.
That night, Bill did not have the bad dreams.
Next morning the Daves came and rolled out all the steam shovels, drove them back up into the mountains. Today, Bill was not as aware of the heights. He felt strong and wanted at the mountain.
They came to where they had stopped working, where Gabe had been crushed, and spread into groups of four. He was in the first group. To his left was Maudie, to her left, Glen, an older steam shovel. And to Bill’s right, Butch, who was next to the ledge that fell away into what seemed like eternity.
“I gonna show you how to work today, Tinker Toy,” said Butch. “Gabe, he done gone now. Ain’t here to take up for you. Not that it mattered none, but who wants to beat up an old steam shovel?”
“You don’t mind threatening to beat up a smaller shovel than you,” Bill said, with a kind of new found bravado, thinking, getting tail pipe made you crazy, made you brave. “I was your size, you might not be so tough.”
Butch narrowed his head lamps.
“You pushing, little Tinker Toy. I gonna show you how to work. And, I may show you a thing or two other than that, you hear me?”
“Like I give an oil squirt.”
Butch said, “I think maybe you been getting a little business, a little of the golden steam shovel’s tail business, and it’s making you think you a man, little Tinker Toy, you know what I mean? You ain’t no man. You just a Tinker Toy.”
Bill shoved Butch. It was sudden. Butch was actually knocked to the side a pace, near the mountains edge.
“Hey,” Butch said.
“Stop it,” Bill’s Dave said. “I came here to work. What are you shovels doing?”
“I remember that you did that, Tinker Toy,” Butch said.
“Hope you do,” Bill said.
They began to dig and everything went well. The mountain moved for them. The dirt was mounded to the side away from the ledge, and some of it was put behind them and carried down the hill and away by other shovels. Zoob was working the edges of the road, doing the soft jobs, the
way Gabe had been, though even more slowly.
They worked on and on and the sun rose high and grew hot and made their metal warm and finally very warm, and then hot as the top of a stove. Their metal shined like a newly minted coin in the sunlight, and their well-oiled shovels and treads worked beautifully and tore apart the mountain, and somewhere, inside the mountain, as if the mountain had had enough, a vein of rock that ran all the way to the summit quivered and quaked and let go, and the huge tip of the mountain, like a peaked hat knocked over by a high wind, tumbled down on the four working shovels below.
One moment there was the sun, then there was the darkness. Bill could feel the pressure of the dirt and the rocks pushing down on him. Then, below him the ground moved, and he went down into it. Amazingly, he slipped down at an angle, and down, down, down, as he slid into a weak place in the mountain, a natural tunnel filled with soft dirt. He began to slide back into that. And a rock, dislodged, shot out and stuck in front of him, stopped the progress of falling rock from above.
It gave Bill a bit of space.
He could move his shovel, like a Dave might move his elbow if he were inside a tow sack. He moved the shovel and some dirt shook. He began to move it back and forth. More dirt shifted. Finally he grabbed the great rock and gave it all he had. The rock moved and dirt came in, but Bill rocked back on his treads and the dirt flowed around him like black water.
He kept working that shovel, and it made a sound like it was trying to let go of clotted oil in the lines. Still, Bill shoveled, lifting it a bit up and down, a little from side to side. Finally, he had traction, and he was moving the dirt. And he was going up that incline, climbing it the way he’d climbed the sweet, golden Maudie the night before. He put that image in his head and kept at it, and pretty soon the image was as tight in his head as a screwed down bolt.
Up he went. Up. And finally there was light.