He cornered the attendant by the cash register. “Look,” he said. “What, ah, would happen if you just let it run out of gas? The Toddler, I mean?”
The man looked at him and put a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “It would scream, buddy,” he said. “The main motors run off an atomic battery. The gas engine’s just for a sideshow and for having breakdowns.”
“Breakdowns? Oh, my God! How do you fix a breakdown?”
“The best way ‘you can,” the man said. “And buddy, when you burp it, watch out for the fumes. I’ve seen some ugly explosions . . .”
They stopped at five more filling stations along the way when the Toddler wanted gas.
“It’ll be better-behaved when it’s used to the house,” said Mrs. McCardle apprehensively as she carried it over the threshold.
“Put it down and let’s see what happens,” said George.
The Toddler toddled happily to the coffee table, picked up a large bronze ashtray, moved to the picture window and heaved the ashtray through it. It gurgled happily at the crash.
“You little—!” George roared, making for the Toddler with his hands clawed before him.
“George!” Mrs. McCardle screamed, snatching the Toddler away. “It’s only a machine!”
The machine began to shriek.
They tried gasoline, oil, wiping with a clean lint-free rag, putting it down, picking it up and finally banging their heads together. It continued to scream until it was ready to stop screaming, and then it stopped and gave them an enchanting grin.
“Time to put it to—away for the night?” asked George.
It permitted itself to be put away for the night.
From his pillow George said later: “Think we did pretty well today. Three months? Pah!”
Mrs. McCardle said: “You were wonderful, George.”
He knew that tone. “My Tigress,” he said.
Ten minutes later, at the most inconvenient time in the
world, bar none, the Toddler began its ripsaw screaming.
Cursing, they went to find out what it wanted. They found out. What it wanted was to laugh in their faces.
(The professor explained: “Indubitably, sadism is at work here, but harnessed in the service of humanity. Better a brutal and concentrated attack such as we have been witnessing than long-drawn-out torments.” The class nodded respectfully.)
Mr. and Mrs. McCardle managed to pull themselves together for another try, and there was an exact repeat. Apparently the Toddler sensed something in the air.
“Three months,” said George, with haunted eyes,
“You’E live,” his wife snapped.
“May I ask just what kind of a crack that was supposed to be?”
“If the shoe fits, my good man—”
So a fine sex quarrel ended the day.
Within a week the house looked as if it had been liberated by a Mississippi National Guard division. George had lost ten pounds because he couldn’t digest anything, not even if he seasoned his food with powdered Equanil instead of salt. Mrs. McCardle had gained fifteen pounds by nervous gobbling during the moments when the Toddler left her unoccupied. The picture window was boarded up. On George’s salary, and with glaziers’ wages what they were, he couldn’t have it replaced twice a day.
Not unnaturally, he met his next-door neighbor, Jacques Truro, in a bar.
Truro was rye and soda, he was dry martini; otherwise they were identical.
“It’s the little whimper first that gets me, when you know the big screaming’s going to come next. I could jump out of my skin when I hear that whimper.”
“Yeah. The waiting. Sometimes one second, sometimes five. I count.”
“I forced myself to stop. I was throwing up.”
“Yeah. Me too. And nervous diarrhea?”
“All the time. Between me and that goddam thing the house is awash. Cheers.” They drank and shared hollow laughter.
“My stamp collection. Down the toilet.”
“My fishing pole. Three clean breaks and peanut butter in the reel.”
“One thing I’ll never understand, Truro. What decided you two to have a baby?”
“Wait a minute, McCardle,” Truro said. “Marguerite told me that you were going to have one, so she had to have one—”
They looked at each other in shared horror.
“Suckered,” said McCardle in an awed voice.
“Women,” breathed Truro.
They drank a grim toast and went home.