‘Okay, Mary.’ They let him out, watched him gambol (more or less) and then went to fetch the chain. They returned to see a tattooed arm drag him into a car, which slammed its door and screeched its tyres and shot out of sight.
‘Nobody in town’s got a car like that, all colourless,’ said Pa, when he could get his breath. ‘And the licence plate all dusty.’
‘I was afraid of this,’ Ma said. ‘The gipsies have got him.’
V
The big woman with the wrinkled face kept saying, ‘Jeep, you ain’t got the sense of a dehorn, takin’ some kid’s toy like this.’
Roderick was wedged in the back seat between her and Jeep, the man with pictures all over his arms. There were other people wedged in around them. He could see half an ear wearing an earring, a hand holding a guitar, the bald spot of someone who was snoring, a baby’s foot.
‘Jeep, you ain’t got—’
‘Come on, Zip, how’d I know? It looked like a lawn-mower to me.’
Roderick said, ‘I’m not a lawn-mower, I’m a robot. My name is Roderick Wood—’
‘Told you: a toy. A damned toy.’
‘—and I live at 614 Sycamore Aven—’
‘Osiris!’ someone shouted. ‘This thing’s security-wired! We better stop and dump—’
‘Stop nothing.’ Zip composed her wrinkles. ‘You know the rule: when in doubt, keep going.’
The bald spot turned away and a watery eye took its place. ‘Oh fine. You know how these rubes are about toys. They get ten times as excited over some fool toy ripoff as they do over a car. And if we get pinched — well, there goes my nomination for Gipsy Good Neighbour of the Year.’
Jeep held up a screwdriver. ‘Okay okay I’ll strip this thing down now and we can sell the parts in Gallonville. Any objections?’
Roderick said, ‘Well I—’
‘Mommy, mommy,’ said a voice from the front.
The earring moved. ‘Not now, Chepette.’
‘Strip and sell, that’s the rule,’ said the old woman. ‘Only maybe this little gizmo’s worth more on the hoof, eh? Lemme think a minute.’
‘Mommy, can me and Jepper have a toy?’
‘You go and play with that pop-bottle, it’s down there somewhere…’
‘But Jepper’s peeing in it. Mommy couldn’t we have a real toy like on
Roderick watched the screwdriver. ‘Hey can I say something?’
‘See what I mean, Jeep, a talk-back toy. Must be worth a buck or two…’
The conversation went on without him, stopping only now and then when the baby’s pink foot became entangled in the hoop of the earring, when the guitar got into the watery eye, or when a tiny voice announced that Jepper was drinking from the pop-bottle. Roderick waited, studying the skin-pictures on the arm next to him.
A snake crawling out of the armpit is marked DON’T READ ON ME. It devours or disgorges an eagle holding a cane in one claw, a string of wienies in the other, and in its beak the Ace of Spades inscribed THEM. The wienies coiled around a heart, pierced by a two-ended sword. The man wielding it has one eye and wears a snail-shell on his head. At his feet is a broken anchor. He stands beneath a tree on which small skulls hang like fruit. The tree is on fire; out of the flames rises a mallard holding one end of a long scroll on whose folds are these letters:
The opposite end thickens into a giant hand grasping a dolphin which waves a Confederate flag; one of its stars has shot into the sky to threaten a kite. The kite string is held by a naked woman who crushes a scorpion underfoot. The scorpion grips a key, while the full moon above features a keyhole. From it an eye observes a mer-cupid armed with an oilcan, sprinkling oil upon a crowd of 13 crowned men. Though blindfolded they follow a tank along the road to a distant tower. The tank insignia is a rose inscribed FAI HOP CHAR. Its gun turret fires dice down the wrist, past a parachute…
Jeep reached up to pick his teeth and the picture changed:
Now a snake from a distant tower disgorges dice. An Ace of Spades is the insignia of a tank (FAITH HOPE CHARM) extending its chain of wienies to capture 13 blind kings. The fishtailed kite oils a flaming tree beneath which the one-eyed man embraces nakedness while the scorpion attacks a broken anchor. One sword-blade stabs the moon while along it charges a snail waving a flag, towards the point where the two ends of the scroll meet (beneath a winged umbrella) held by a single penguin.
Roderick tried reading the scroll forwards and backwards. It made no more sense than anything else about this mad, bad family. What was a drab, anyway? What was keeling a pot? Why did they want to destroy him before he could even find out stuff like that?
As he climbed up to the back window for a last look at the world, the invisible child started up again:
‘Mommy Jepper says he wants to have toys and live in a house with lots and lots of toys where you don’t have to pee in a pop-bottle and you get TV and real strong aluminium foil and pizza-burger mix and doesn’t just hide odours, can we huh?’
‘Be still now—’
‘And TV and microsnax and Uncle Whiskers Oldie Tymie — Owl It wasn’t me Mommy it was Jepper he — Ow!’
It seemed a good opening. ‘This,’ said Roderick clearly, ‘is lots better than a house. I like living here.’
None of the adults spoke. Then, ‘Yeah but they got TV and—’
‘Listen, TV ain’t much. All they got on TV is stories about people driving around in cars. Sometimes not even people, just the cars, this car drives down a street and then on a freeway and then on a bridge, then this other car sees it and starts chasing it, they both have to jump over a lot of bumps and then one of ’em smashes up, The End. Heck, what do you want that stuff for, here you got a real car. You even got another real car chasing you, look there.’
Jeep looked back. ‘Isis wept, wouldn’t you know it? Forget about ’em for one minute and the gashers is all over you. Chet, make tracks, boy!’
‘Hang on,’ said the driver. ‘I’m gonna try something.’
Roderick bounced up and down. ‘That’s just what they say on TV! And then everybody says Yahoo and Watch my dust and Wheels, do your stuff, and there’s a lot of banjo music and—’
‘Hush!’ Wrinkles frowned down at him.
‘But hey what’s Chet gonna try? Is he gonna race across the tracks right in front of this train? Or on this bridge that’s going up and he just makes it jumping the gap? Or, or maybe he just pulls off the road and hides in bushes and the cop car is so dumb it goes right on by, is that what he’s gonna—’
Old Zip clamped her hand firmly over his speaker and kept it there. What Chet tried was pulling over and stopping, getting out to talk to the patrolman for a few minutes, and finally handing over some money.
‘Thanks,’ said the officer. ‘Don’t see much real money these days, not out here. Everybody’s so scared of hijackers they only carry cards, hell, all they can offer me is a free motel room or maybe a free meal in some Interstate joint, BLT and a malt, you call that a decent bribe? I mean the food’s all plastic and full of preservatives and chemicals you get a bad stomach just looking at—’
Chet showed some gold teeth. ‘Yep, well, we gotta get moving.’