Clockwork #2
My parents were already old when they had me.
My mother was in her forties, my father almost fifteen years older than her, eyeing his retirement.
I don’t think they wanted a child, although they never spoke those words aloud.
Certainly, my father never showed me any warmth, and my mother lived in perpetual fear of his moods and his bursts of anger, which came without warning or provocation.
I only saw him hit her two or three times, but one of my earliest memories is of a crude trail of bruises up her arm.
She always wore long sleeves when we were out of the house, even in the middle of summer.
Her death felt long and drawn out, but in reality, it took a little less than a year from diagnosis to funeral.
I was only eleven years old at the time, so living with it felt like an eternity.
As her cough worsened, the fits spasming her body for minutes at a time, I imagined I could see the life being expelled from her mouth, each cloud of tiny particles whittling her away a little more.
I was the one who found her when it finally happened.
Father was out somewhere, I don’t know where, and I returned from school to discover her body stick-thin and lifeless under a pile of blankets.
The skin had drawn back so much on her face that I remember thinking she looked like a skeleton already, as if someone had dug her up, several years from now, and traveled back in time to place her in the bed as a prank.
It took only a year or two for my father to find a new punching bag.
He was careful to restrain himself to body blows only, at least while I was still in school.
If the teachers had any idea, they never mentioned it.
You had to allow a widower his grief. Back then, things stayed behind closed doors.
When I dropped out of school at sixteen to care for him, I told myself it would only be for a year or two.
He was showing signs of early onset dementia, and his body was wasting away, as if he was determined to outdo my mother in his race to the grave.
If I’d known it would take another ten years for him to die, I’d have abandoned him there and then. Let him fester, and molder, and rot.
But I didn’t, and I lost those ten years to a man who never loved me. It’s remarkable how much damage a soul can endure.
* * *
It took me a few days to identify those who could help me, and those who were nothing more than eager enthusiasts.
I pruned my contacts in the AmateurAutomata forum until only three remained, and then I set them to work.
I snapped a total of twenty-six photos of the cogs and other machinery I had uncovered in the garden, then I shared them with the group, asking them to piece my jigsaw back together, to reassemble my automaton.
The key cogs and springs were in place after five days, cleaned and greased, dirtying what used to be the kitchen counter.
I would wind them up and let them whirr; and there it sat, the living, beating heart of this new man.
I felt I should chant incantations over it, paint it with sacrificial blood, but I had nothing of the sort.
In the end, after a bottle of wine one evening, I staggered in with the plastic tub of my father’s ashes and sprinkled them over it, anointing it with a cloud of grit that had once contained a life.
Then I licked my fingers clean and went to bed.
I was a better machinist than expected, and mostly I took to the work with enthusiasm and determination.
I had never anticipated that I might be good at something, and the dexterity and confidence with which I slotted tooth into groove caught me by surprise.
All those years cutting my father’s toenails and trimming his thinning hair held me in good stead.
Even the group seemed surprised by my success when I shared the work in progress with them.
TheRealSpalanzani sent a short message of congratulations:
I don’t know if you’re attempting what I think you are, but if you are, ALL THE LUCK IN THE WORLD. Hopla! Hopla!
While not exactly a standing ovation, it was the first time I could remember being praised for something I had done. Beneath the streaks of grease and dirt, I blushed.
Ten days after I began, the work was finished.
I lifted the automaton down from the counter, his feet clunking on the tiles.
He was lighter than I expected, this man of steel and clay.
We stood there for a moment, two dancing partners, his pale, cracked head only reaching up to my chin, so it looked as if he was staring at my chest. I steadied us for a minute, letting him find his center of gravity. Then I let go.
He teetered, rocking on the balls of his artificial feet.
I imagined him crashing to the floor, the mask splitting into hundreds of tiny shards this time, an injury beyond repair.
But he didn’t. He stood there facing me, this thing I had made, and I smiled.
I reached out a tentative hand and flipped the switch.
With a flutter and a whirr, the machinery came alive.
He lifted his left hand, gradually, holding it up in front of his unseeing face.
Then the right, and he looked from one to the other, as if surveying them for the first time.
Apparently satisfied, he lowered them to his sides and took a slow, graceless step forward, his foot never leaving the floor but sliding along it, the clay block tracing a pale scar on the tiles.
Then the other foot, so he stood nearer to me now, close enough that I could smell the grease warming in his chest.
There was a heavy clunk that startled me as he raised his left hand again; then, his right. Hand down; left foot, right foot.
Clunk.
Hand.
Hand.
Feet.
Clunk.
It didn’t take long for his faltering rhythm to bore me. I’d seen what he could do, and it amounted to little more than a toddler’s first steps. But still the fact remained: I had made a man.
* * *
Father’s clothes fit the automaton remarkably well.
In his final years he had been little more than a bundle of skin and bones.
The shirt was easy to get on, buttoning up the front of the mechanism, hiding the magic away.
With my teeth I tore a small hole in the back, so that the switch might poke through.
His trousers were more difficult, its legs stiff and unwieldy, the clay feet snagging on the fabric and tearing it in a couple of places.
Once they were on, I fastened them with Father’s belt.
I was pleased to see that it tightened to the same notch he had used, the hole slightly wider than the rest.
His shoes were too big, so I tugged four pairs of socks onto the clay feet. They still smelled of my father, a rancid milky odor that made my nose wrinkle. Once the shoes were laced up it stood a little steadier.
I stood back to admire my handiwork. A dark stain ran down the shoulder of the shirt, the cotton crusty and stiff. There were four marks on the leg of the trousers too; evenly spaced, like fingerprints. Had he touched his head as he bled out? I couldn’t remember. Maybe the fingerprints were mine.
It took some effort to maneuver it to the top of the stairs.
Eventually, I dragged him by his armpits, his clay feet thumping against each step as we ascended.
I almost lost him halfway up, my grip slipping so that he slid down several steps.
When I managed to get him under control again, I heaved him up the rest of the stairs, scared of letting go and watching him thump down to the ground floor, nothing but a heap of cogs bundled inside some old rags. I had plans for him.
Once we were at the top, I balanced him back on his feet and caught my breath.
I should have been used to the exercise, after all the times I’d had to haul Father in and out of the bath, from the bedroom to the toilet in the middle of the night, but I was several weeks without him and my body had already become flabby and tired.
Too many takeaway pizzas, too much cheap wine.
We stood at the top of the stairs, the automaton and I.
He swayed slightly on his feet, and I placed my hands upon his shoulders, settled him where I wanted him; just so.
My hand reached around to his back, and with my fingertips I found the nub of the switch poking through his clothes.
As I flicked it on, I could hear the cogs stutter and whirr next to my ear, a first, ragged breath.
The brush of his hand as he raised it to his face.
Stepping back, I surveyed him from farther along the landing. I had been in the bathroom at the time, mopping up where Father had pissed all over the floor. I came out onto the landing, like this. My hands raised, so.
I screamed at the same time as I pushed the automaton in the chest, his body toppling backward in slow motion, wobbling on the brink before gravity took him and he fell, down, down, his back striking the wall halfway, his feet lifting into the air, his head cracking against the newel post. I stood, panting, at the top of the stairs, surveying my work.
The whirr of cogs as he tried to raise a hand. A click as something broke inside. The spasms of a program stuck on repeat, his hand lifting then lowering, lifting then lowering, over and over again.
I didn’t have to walk downstairs to see that he wasn’t right. The mask was still intact, the collision had barely damaged his limbs at all. The satisfaction I craved was missing.
He was not my father.
I would have to build him again.
* * *
The next time was better. It had taken me two days to correct the damage, to reset the cogs, realign the springs.
When I’d finished, he was like new—no, he was better than before.
I detected a vigor in his movements that was lacking in the first attempt, a violence that spoke of my father.
The hand moved sharply when he raised it, and I almost flinched. He was ready.
I found it easier to drag him up the stairs this time. There was an excitement within me, a hurricane in my blood. I knew what I wanted more clearly. Setting him on his feet, I smoothed his clothes down, brushed back nonexistent hair from his painted eyes.
I let him take two faltering steps forward before I ran at him, my arms outstretched again, palms thudding into his hollow chest. It felt better, but still not right.
He tumbled sideways halfway down the steps, the back of his head bumping off each stair as he fell, his feet hitting the ground first and his legs crumpling beneath him.
One of his feet twitched as I approached.
I watched him for a while before switching him off and carrying him back to the kitchen.
Third time’s the charm—isn’t that what they say?
I’d been drinking for most of the evening, but that hadn’t kept me from my work.
The damage to his internal workings was only minor, and it was easy enough to realign the slipped cogs, sliding tooth back into groove.
There was a slight tear to the sleeve of his shirt, which I mended inexpertly with needle and thread.
Standing at the top of the stairs, I felt unsteady on my feet.
The second bottle of wine had risen to my head.
I found myself leaning on him as much as he leaned on me, his body reassuringly solid beneath my arms. I don’t recall taking extra care setting him on his feet, but when I stepped back to survey my handiwork, he looked perfect; exactly the way I remembered Father looking that night.
My breath caught in my throat as his hand raised sharply up, as if he was about to slap me across the face, dig his cracked nails into the flesh of my arm.
He looked inhuman in a way that only my father could.
As he took that first step, I jumped forward like a released spring.
And in that moment, as he tottered toward me with outstretched hands, I saw not a manmade thing of steel and clay, but my father, the heartless shit who had raised me like a dog and then left me, parentless and adrift, in a world that cared for me no more than he did.
My hands collided so hard with his chest that it jarred my arms, and in that instant I was taken back to the night of the accident, the night I finally killed the man who had stolen the first thirty years of my life.
I watched, stunned, as he tumbled backward, his head cracking against the wall with a sickening wetness, his skeleton limbs pinwheeling as he crashed down to the ground floor and lay still.
I stood as I had that night, watching the blood pooling about his head, letting the life bleed from him until I was sure he was dead.
* * *
Before collapsing into bed, I took a few minutes to clean the automaton.
There was a new crack now, where its face had hit the wall; a second dark seam across its porcelain features.
I considered repairing the fracture, but decided against it.
It still held together despite the crack, and it gave it some character, some context. We all gather damage over time.
I’m not sure what made me take it into the bedroom with me.
It felt like the right thing to do, after everything I’d put it through.
Its shirt was still crusted with Father’s blood, but I didn’t care as I bundled it into my bed, too drunk and tired to mind the brown flakes molting onto my sheets.
I hauled its legs one by one onto the bed, then tugged the duvet up to cover its chest. There was still room for me, so I crawled in next to it, fully clothed, my head already beginning to pound with tomorrow morning’s hangover.
Despite the brain fog that was blowing in, I remained aware of the automaton lying beside me in the dark, creating its own gravity well in the mattress.
I was almost asleep when I heard it stir. Just a flutter of cogs, a faint smell of machine grease. Then a hand, cold and hard, resting gently on my shoulder, pulling me close to the machine that was not, and would never be, my father.