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Bob's Cell Phone
part of the BobsWorld universe
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: I do not own Bob the Builder. I just love
him a whole lot and want him to be happy – isn’t that how fic usually
happens?
About BobsWorld: The BobsWorld universe is based on the
premise that the Bob the Builder characters are real people, living in a
real world. To find out more about BobsWorld, please go here.
It was a beautiful day in Sunflower Valley. The
sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Bob the Builder was ahead of
schedule on his day’s list of Things to be Fixed. His next stop, in
fact, wasn’t even on his list. Farmer Pickles had stopped by Bob’s
next to last job and asked if Bob could possibly spare a few minutes to
look at a rusty rain gutter on Pickles’ house. The gutter was
leaking, spilling orange-tinted water down the side of a window frame and
consequently streaking the white paint with the same unpleasant
color. Since this had been happening all around the house, mainly due
to old birds’ nests blocking the flow of water and thus causing the rust to
form, the farmer wanted Bob’s opinion on how they could keep birds from
nesting there in the first place. Bob didn’t have to actually do
anything about the problem today, he just needed to take a look and come up
with some ideas. Farmer Pickles wasn’t going to be there himself, but
he was leaving a ladder propped up under the offending gutter and had said
he’d find Bob sometime later in the week to discuss the problem further.
That was just fine with Bob. He was in the area
anyway, so he’d decided to swing by the farm to have a look at the gutter
on his way to another job. He also wanted to put the ladder up before
anyone – anyone being Pickles’ scarecrow, Spud – got someone hurt by
playing around with it. In fact, Bob was surprised to see the ladder
still standing where it was supposed to be standing when he arrived, given
how Spud couldn’t seem to leave anything alone. That wasn’t Spud’s
fault, of course; the scarecrow had been an experiment to try to extend the
same AI used in the machines to a more manlike form, and unfortunately for
everyone the logic network the AI relied upon for ‘normal’ development had
failed to develop the way it was supposed to within the new matrix.
Spud was self-aware like the machines, he could be useful in certain
situations…but his behavior left a lot to be desired, and he didn’t seem to
be capable of learning from his mistakes. Spud was never going to
mature mentally much past the stage he was in, which meant that someone was
always, always going to have to watch out for him.
Today, that person was Bob. He didn’t mind; he
couldn’t actually say he liked Spud, because Spud tended to upset his
machines, but when he wasn’t upsetting them Spud could be a playful friend
for them as well so it usually balanced out. Usually. Today
when Scoop, Bob’s backhoe, had pulled up to the farmhouse, Spud had leapt
out and tried to frighten him. Unfortunately for Spud, Scoop hadn’t
been all that frightened and one sharp blast of his horn had sent the
scarecrow running for the fields as fast as he could go. Scoop and
Bob had gotten a good laugh out of that. And the ladder was still
where it belonged, right in front of a trickle of orange washing down the
white window frame, which meant Bob could just have his look at the gutter
and then be on his way to the next job on the list.
Bob sent Scoop to the other side of the farmhouse to
keep an eye out for Spud and then started up the ladder. It wobbled
dangerously when he stepped onto the second rung; he stopped moving, and it
steadied. He started up again, more carefully this time, and the
wobble decreased. “Uneven ground,” he said to himself. “Not a
very good place to stand a ladder. Lucky thing this gutter isn’t up
any higher, or I’d have to come back another time when someone is here to
hold the ladder steady for me.” With that in mind, he stopped
climbing three rungs up, just high enough to peer over the edge of the
gutter.
A sizeable wad of muddy twigs was just visible, wedged
into the joint where the gutter turned a corner and fed into the drainpipe,
and Bob sighed. He couldn’t leave it like that, but when he mucked it
out the muddy mess was going to get all over him – and he wouldn’t have
time to go back to the yard to shower and change, he had too many other
jobs to finish. Resigning himself to spending the rest of the day
filthy, he grabbed a handful of twigs and pulled.
They didn’t budge. Great, just great. He
went up another rung, grabbing hold of the gutter with his left hand to
steady the resultant wobble – Bob knew the gutters were sturdy, he’d put
them on himself. He took a better look at the twigs and frowned; it
wasn’t all twigs. Something was knotted in and around it, maybe some
kind of vine…or was that a rope? Whatever it was, it looked like part
of it might be running down the drainpipe. He rubbed at it, scrubbing
off mud with his fingers, and found white nylon with a colorful stripe; a
piece of a jump rope, then.
Bob had to smile. Even the birds on the island, it
seemed, knew the value of recycling. But then he supposed birds
always had, since they routinely built their nests out of whatever was
lying around. Pity it was so much more difficult for people to do
that, although he did try his best to incorporate recycled materials into
his work whenever he could. He worked his fingers under a loop of the
rope and started loosening the knot, prying through the packed mud to shift
trapped twigs. A few came out, and then his fingers got stuck; Bob
considered for a moment, then adjusted his balance on the ladder so he
could lean over the gutter and rest his elbow on the edge of the
roof. Chicken wire, he thought to himself, getting his other hand dug
into the mud and prying at the rope. Chicken wire across the tops of
the house gutters should keep the birds out, if he used the right size
mesh. He could make a sort of lid out of it, the way people did on
aquariums to keep rodents and lizards, and fit the lid tightly over the top
of the gutter. If he shaped it just right, the wind shouldn’t be able
to blow the wire covers off but they would still be removable to allow the
gutters to be cleaned. And if he coated the covers with metal paint,
they wouldn’t rust…
The knot gave way, and Bob suddenly found himself with a
double handful of twigs and mud while a trickle of stagnant water ran under
his knuckles and followed the jump rope down the drainpipe. He
decided to leave the rope alone for the moment, since it wasn’t impeding
the flow of water…but that still left him with his hands full of muck that
really couldn’t go down the pipe unless he wanted to be taking the whole
thing down and cleaning it out. Which he didn’t. Bob pushed the
mud mess against the inside of the gutter and held it out of the water with
his left hand, then started tossing handfuls of it out with his right while
trying to ignore the splatters of mud that were getting all over him.
Luckily he didn’t have any in-house jobs today, or he would have had to go
home, schedule or no schedule. Still, though, if he just pressed a
little bit harder against the inside of the gutter, he might be able to
keep more of the water out of his pile of mud.
It was the combination of pressing and scooping that did
it; the gutter yawned away from the roof in apparent slow motion, but still
too quickly for Bob to free his hands and grab something, anything, that
would keep he and the ladder upright. Too late he saw the empty holes
that had been obscured by the mud, daylight poking through instead of the
screws that should have filled them. He was going to fall. Not
too badly, though, it was straight back onto flat, grassy turf, he should
be all right…and then the loose section of gutter twisted suddenly, caught
by the sturdy screws and brackets that still connected the rest of its
length to the roof, and Bob went from falling to flying with only enough time
to hope he didn’t land in Farmer Pickles’ flower bed with its sharp support
stakes rising a good two feet into the air.
Luck was with him, but only partially; he landed to one
side of the small plot, missing the stakes but unfortunately finding the decorative
brick edging instead. Bob heard the bone snap before he felt it, and
he bit his tongue hard to keep from yelling out a word that Scoop wouldn’t
understand and Spud would repeat as he rolled onto the grass. He
wound up on his back, staring up into the sky. The sky was a very
nice blue today, he noticed, about the same color as Wendy’s eyes…but he
wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. Wincing, he pushed himself
up on his elbows and forced himself to look at the affected leg. No
blood, good – not only because that meant it was a less severe break, but
because the sight of blood would doubtless have sent Scoop into a
panic. Panic was something they needed to avoid. Bob focused on
his leg, trying to feel how bad it might be. Didn’t doctors always
ask people to wiggle their toes? He shifted his focus a little lower
and tried it, and had to suck in a deep breath and hold it to keep from
screaming as the world flickered around him. Screaming would be even
worse than swearing, the sound of him screaming would probably panic Scoop
into a blind rampage right across Sunflower Valley.
No, panic must be avoided at all costs. He had to
think this through, fast. Bob shifted his weight, panting through the
pain, until he was sitting mostly upright. Farmer Pickles was at some
livestock show on the mainland, he wouldn’t be back for at least another
day. And Kenny, his nearest neighbor, wouldn’t be over to look after
the stock until just before dark tonight. Bob knew he couldn’t – not
to mention shouldn’t – wait that long to get help. He also knew there
was no way he was going to be able to get inside Pickles’ house to use the
phone, not when just trying to wiggle his toes had almost made him pass
out. And Spud was prevented from going inside the house by a
complicated electronic barrier system, so even if the scarecrow hadn’t run
off he wouldn’t have been able to help.
Not that Bob wanted Spud there right now anyway, since
he had a pretty good idea what had happened to the missing screws.
But that wasn’t important right now, what was important was getting out of
this and getting some help. Bob took a deep breath. “Scoop!” he
called out, wincing when just using his voice made pain flare in his
leg. “Scoop, I need you to come here!”
A motor rumbled to life, and the ground vibrated as
heavy tires jerked into motion on hard-packed earth. Bob set his jaw
and tried to look like nothing was wrong. The backhoe could read his
facial expressions and to a certain extent his body language, but Scoop wouldn’t
automatically assign the right meaning to signs that would tell another
human Bob was hurt, like seeing him shaking or turning pale.
Scoop rounded the corner smiling, but when he saw Bob
sitting on the ground a puzzled look appeared on his face; Bob could almost
see the logic processes in the machine’s ‘brain’ trying to process the
situation, trying to make sense out of it. “Bob, why are you sitting
on the ground?”
Bob took another deep breath. “I hurt my leg,” he
said. He saw the backhoe’s eyes flicker over to the house, saw them
take in the fallen ladder and the connect that with what he’d just
said. When those eyes swung back to him, comprehension showing in
them, Bob nodded. “Yes, that was it,” he confirmed. “I was standing
on it, it fell, and then I fell. And now I need your help.”
Scoop rolled closer, pleased and worried at the same
time. “Should I go get Wendy?”
“No, that would…take too long.” Bob gestured up to
Scoop’s front bucket, which the backhoe was holding up over his head so
that he could see Bob on the ground. “What I need you to do is put
your bucket down, right down on the ground, and get as close to me as you
can with it.” More confusion, and Bob thought frantically for
something to connect his idea with so the machine would understand.
He grabbed at an incident from a few months before. “Remember that
time we couldn’t find Pilchard, and then we found her asleep in your
bucket?” He waited until the bucket bobbed a nod. “Pilchard was
riding in your bucket, all the way back home to the yard. That’s what
I’m going to do. You’re going to pick me up in your front bucket and
we’re going to go home.”
Scoop processed that, and then the bucket bobbed again
before lowering slowly to the ground. Bob both heard and felt the
backhoe’s engine throttle down into low gear, and then the big tires began
to inch forward to push the bucket toward him. This was the dangerous
part, he knew; Scoop couldn’t see him, and the bucket was solid steel that
was more than heavy enough to crush him. Bob needed the bucket to be
moving, needed it to move under his leg since he couldn’t move his leg
himself, and he needed to not scream when it did. Because if he screamed,
a broken leg was going to be the least of his problems.
The lower edge of the bucket inched up to him, and he
braced his good leg against the side of his bad one and then reached up to
grab the upper edge of the bucket and hang on for dear life – he knew Scoop
could see his hand, which would ease the backhoe’s mind. Bob was just
glad Scoop couldn’t see the rest of him when the bucket started to slide
under his leg, since he was pretty sure the expression he had on his face
would have been a panic-inducing one. He could actually feel the
broken ends of the bone grinding against each other…and then he was inside
and pushing himself down into the bucket’s curve, away from the edge.
He forced his voice to work, hoping the roughness of it would be masked by
the distorting echo of the metal surrounding him. “Okay, Scoop,
stop!” He panted for a moment while the engine throttled down to
idling, then gathered his voice again. “Now raise your bucket until I
tell you to stop.”
He let the bucket get up about halfway, low enough so he
wasn’t afraid of falling out but high enough so that Scoop could see the
road, and then told the backhoe to head for home. Bob braced his good
leg against the opposite end of the bucket, adjusted his hold on the upper
edge, and with his free hand fished a handkerchief out of his pocket which
he twisted enough to bite down on. Screaming still wasn’t an
option…and the empty country roads out Farmer Pickles’ way were bumpy and
rutted all the way back to town.
Bob thought he might have passed out a few times on the
way back to the yard, but he was awake when they reached it – or at least,
he woke up when Scoop started yelling for Wendy. Bob pulled the
handkerchief out of his mouth and stuck it down out of sight, and what
seemed like seconds later Wendy was standing there looking down at him with
an expression of absolute horror on her face. “Oh Bob…!”
He tried to reassure her, hoping she hadn’t seen the
handkerchief. “I know, I’m a mess,” he quipped, but the strain even
he could hear in his voice only made things worse. Bob pulled on the
upper edge of the bucket again, trying to straighten up a little, but Wendy
reached out and stopped him before he could move very much. He
sighed. “I don’t suppose you could go call Dr. Johnson, could
you? I can fix a lot of things, but a broken leg isn’t one of them.”
Wendy bit her lip, but she nodded. “Don’t move,”
she told him. “Just…don’t move. Scoop, stay right where you
are, and the rest of you keep back. I just have to go call…”
She ran back to the office, and Bob used the opportunity
to pull up again. It was harder than he’d thought it would be, but
once he’d gotten a little more upright some of the pressure left his leg
and some of the pain left with it. He wasn’t sure when he’d slid down
so far, and he really didn’t want to think too much about the long ride
home anyway. Bob leaned his head against the cool steel and shut his
eyes. “You did great, Scoop,” he told the backhoe, hoping the echo
would carry his voice since he didn’t seem to be able to get it very loud
this time. “Thanks for the ride.”
A worried little rumble came from the machine’s
engine. “Do you want me to let you down now, Bob?”
Bob opened one eye and checked the position of the
bucket; it was about three feet off the ground. Scoop must have
lowered it for Wendy’s benefit, he decided, and hoped again that she hadn’t
seen the handkerchief. “No,” he told the backhoe. “No, just
leave it right here, please. I don’t want Wendy to have to get down
on the ground to talk to me.”
Another rumble. “Don’t you want to get out?”
This time Bob opened both eyes, feeling a shiver passing
through the metal that was supporting him. Scoop was getting agitated
again, possibly having expected Bob to jump out of the bucket the minute
they arrived back at the yard. “I’m…going to need some help to do
that, Scoop,” Bob told him in the most natural tone he could manage.
He pulled up a little more, biting his lip, in hopes that if he were
sitting taller Scoop would be able to see enough of his yellow hard hat to
differentiate it from the yellow-painted bucket. “If I get down now,
I could hurt my leg even more.”
“He has to wait for the doctor, Scoop.” Wendy was
back. She still looked wide-eyed with worry, but her voice was even –
just like Bob, she knew they couldn’t afford to have the machines become
too agitated. “Dr. Johnson said for you to stay right where you are,
Bob, he’s on his way. Oh, and he asked if you could wiggle your
toes.”
Bob couldn’t help it, even though it hurt; he laughed
out loud.
The machines were still milling around worriedly in the
yard when Wendy and Dr. Johnson brought Bob back home a few hours later,
and they immediately clustered around to watch as he was helped out of the
doctor’s truck. He smiled at them and gave a little wave. “Hi
guys, I’m home!” he called out, sounding very happy about it. “See my
cast?”
The cast looked like a big white boot that went from
just below Bob’s knee to almost the end of his foot, and his coverall had
been ripped on one side almost all the way up his leg to make room for
it. The tips of his toes were sticking out the end of the cast,
looking red and swollen. Dizzy got as close as she could,
staring. “What’s it for, Bob?”
“It’s to keep his leg still so it will get better,” Dr.
Johnson told them. He was a tall, thin man with a high forehead and
silvering light brown hair, and his amber-colored eyes crinkled when he
smiled. He was smiling now, although he hadn’t been when he’d come to
get Bob earlier. “Now everyone get back, we need to get Bob into the
house and into bed. You can all talk to him later.”
The machines obediently backed off, watching while Wendy
and the doctor supported Bob between them into the house. Bob
apparently thought something about that was very funny, because they could
hear him giggling right up until the door closed.
Wendy came back out with Dr. Johnson about half an hour
later, and after seeing the doctor off she walked over to the shed end of
the yard where the five machines were still clustered. “I am very
proud of you, Scoop,” she told the backhoe. “You really helped Bob
when he needed you today.”
“What happened?” Muck wanted to know. “Scoop said
that Bob said he hurt his leg, so he had to ride home in Scoop’s
bucket. How did Bob hurt his leg?”
“When the ladder fell at Farmer Pickles’ house, Bob fell
down on top of some bricks and two bones in his leg broke,” Wendy
explained. “That’s how he hurt it, and that’s why he had to ride home
in the bucket instead of standing on Scoop’s platform.”
Roley peered at her. “Did Dr. Johnson fix
it?” From the top of his cab, Bird tooted. “Bird wants to know
too.”
“Is that why Bob thought it was funny, because Dr.
Johnson fixed it?” Dizzy asked before Wendy could answer Roley.
“He was laughing so much when you took him to bed!”
Wendy didn’t quite wince. “Yes, Dr. Johnson fixed
Bob’s leg, and he put the cast on it to keep it fixed,” she answered
Roley. “But he wasn’t laughing because it was funny, he was laughing
because the medicine Dr. Johnson gave him made him feel…silly.” It
had actually made him more than silly, and Wendy sincerely hoped he didn’t
remember half of what he’d said after it had kicked in or he’d probably be
blushing for the rest of his life. “The medicine makes it so his leg
doesn’t hurt.”
Scoop tilted his cab to the side, frowning. “But
if his leg doesn’t hurt any more, why did he have to go to bed? He
has medicine and a cast, and we need to go fix things!”
Wendy had known she was going to have to explain
further, even though she’d wished she wouldn’t. “That kind of
medicine also makes people sleepy,” she told them. “Bob is going to
have to take it for a few days until his leg starts to get better and
doesn’t hurt so much, so he’ll be sleeping a lot.”
Dizzy was immediately alarmed. “But if he’s
sleeping, he won’t be able to fix things for people!”
“No, he won’t,” Wendy told her. “If something has
to be fixed and can’t wait, I’ll go fix it. But only if it can’t
wait.” She answered the next question she knew was coming while the
little cement mixer was still spinning in agitation at the idea that
something would have to wait to be fixed, and before Roley could stammer it
out. “If we have to go fix something, someone else will stay here to
take care of Bob. We won’t leave him alone.”
She meant they didn’t dare leave him alone, but couldn’t
say so; the machines wouldn’t understand that after a few days Bob, left on
his own in the house with only Pilchard and the TV, would drag himself out
to his workshop at his first unsupervised opportunity and start doing
things he wasn’t supposed to. Wendy didn’t plan to give him that
opportunity for at least a week if she could help it.
Scoop was looking unhappy, and she closed in on
him. “Scoop, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Bob is going to be
okay, and we’ll make sure everything that needs to get done is taken care
of.”
The yellow backhoe looked up at her, and Wendy saw a
shiver run over his frame. “His face was white, and his voice was
funny like he’d been running, but he hadn’t been. Was that because
his leg hurt?” She nodded, and Scoop shivered again. “Why
didn’t he tell me?”
“He didn’t want to frighten you, Scoop,” she told him,
rubbing her hand over the spot on his cab where Bob usually held on when
they were going somewhere together. She chose her words
carefully. “It does hurt when a person breaks a bone, it hurts a
lot. But Bob knew you’d be scared if you saw how much it was hurting
him, he thought you might even be too scared to let him get into your
bucket so you could bring him home. So he couldn’t yell or cry or do
anything people usually do when they’re hurt. He waited to do that
until you were home and he was with the doctor.”
Lofty’s eyes widened with shock. “Bob cried?”
Wendy nodded, not trusting her voice for a moment; she’d
stayed with Bob, holding his hand, while the doctor set the broken bones
and put on the cast. Bob had done his best to distract her, had tried
to make her laugh…but when he’d finally lost control, she had too.
“Everybody cries, Lofty.”
She suddenly found herself being closely scrutinized by
all five machines; Dizzy even rolled closer and stood up on her back wheels
to see better. “You cried!” the little cement mixer exclaimed,
somewhere between dismayed and shocked. “I can see!”
“Red, around your eyes. And they got shiny when I
asked if Bob cried.” Scoop would have been nodding if he could, but
instead his bucket bobbed up and down. “You wanted to cry. But
you’re not hurt...”
Roley was peering at her again, squinting a little, and
Wendy wondered for a moment if he was just a bit nearsighted. “Bob
was hurt; Wendy cried because Bob cried, because he was hurt,” he
observed. “I can see it too. Red around eyes, and shiny.”
He peered around Wendy at Scoop. “I don’t want Wendy to have red
eyes.”
Scoop bobbed his bucket again. “I don’t want Bob
to have to take sleepy-medicine and not be able to fix things. Bob
won’t be happy if he can’t fix things.”
Dizzy had dropped back down to all four wheels and done
a short run around Scoop’s bucket, ending up leaning against Muck’s
shovel. “I don’t want Bob to be hurt.” She didn’t quite
sniff. “I want Bob to be not hurt again.”
Wendy decided she’d better take control of the
conversation back before the machines got any more agitated. “Bob
won’t be hurt any more once his leg heals, in about eight weeks it will be
just as good as new,” she told them. That garnered her a set of
confused looks, and she didn’t quite sigh. She hadn’t been sure if
the machines had ever been told about people being hurt, and if they hadn’t
they’d have no frame of reference for understanding it; the machines were
self-aware, but not self-repairing. “In a person, or even in an
animal like Bird or Pilchard or Scrufty, broken bones grow back together
after the doctor fixes them,” she explained. “That’s what a cast is
for, to keep the broken parts together so they heal just like new.
And that’s part of what the sleepy medicine is for too, because the bones
grow faster and better if a person rests and doesn’t feel the hurt.”
That gave her an idea. “Come here, all of you, and I’ll show you.”
She led the five of them around the side of Bob’s house,
to the window that looked out of his small spare room – getting him up the
stairs to his bedroom hadn’t been an option. The shade was up, and
Wendy gestured for the machines to come closer so they could see
inside. “Look, see? Pilchard is in there looking after him.”
As though hearing her name – which it was possible she
had – the gray-striped tabby raised her head and blinked at them, then lay
back down and closed her eyes again. She was curled up on top of the
colorful quilt that was covering Bob, who was sound asleep with his leg in
its new white cast propped up on several pillows. Bob looked warm and
comfortable, and even seemed to be smiling slightly in his sleep.
Wendy smiled herself when the machines all relaxed with audible sighs of
relief. They’d just needed to see that Bob was really all right for
themselves. And now that they had, they would be all right –
and she’d keep an eye on them to make sure they stayed that way.
A slight frown crossed Wendy’s face as an unpleasant
thought struck her. How were they going to make sure Bob
stayed that way? Not because of the broken leg and the coming
boredom, although she and Dr. Johnson were already trying to think of ways
to get him around that, but because this time they’d been lucky.
Lucky because Bob hadn’t been hurt that badly, lucky because Scoop had been
able to bring him home to get help…but so terribly unlucky in ways Wendy
had never worried about until now. She’d never worried about Bob
heading off with one of the machines to fix something that was broken or
build something for someone that needed it, never worried that something
might go wrong and the people he was building and fixing for might not be
around to help him. She’d never worried about Bob just not making it
home at the end of the day and no one having the faintest idea of where to
find him.
Because Bob, used to working alone, wasn’t always the
greatest about checking in, and if he wasn’t near a phone…
But what if they could make sure he was always
near a phone? Wendy smiled, knowing she’d just come up with the
answer. She shooed the machines back to their shed for the night,
then went in the house and got comfortable in Bob’s chair to wait for Mr.
Dixon, the postmaster, to show up. He was going to stay the night
with Bob, and once he was there Wendy was going to go home and get
online. She had some shopping to do.
Just over a week later, Bob was quietly driving himself
crazy. He had crutches for moving around inside the house and he’d
managed to get himself out to his workshop on them once already, but
because his hands were holding the crutches he couldn’t hold anything else
and therefore couldn’t actually do anything in the workshop except
stand in the middle of it and look around. Daytime television had
nothing he wanted to watch, he was already sick of reading, and Wendy kept
getting called out to fix things. Today she was out with Scoop and
Lofty moving some sort of obstruction that had backed up a creek.
That was the real problem Bob was having with his
situation. Wendy, out fixing something, by herself. He thought
maybe his accident had made him paranoid. He’d never really worried
about Wendy getting hurt on the job before, no more than he’d worried about
it happening to himself; safety was a priority for both of them, they were
always careful. Now, though, every time Wendy left the yard Bob
couldn’t seem to stop thinking about what could happen to her. He
fell asleep in his chair thinking about it. He lay awake in bed
thinking about it. He thought about it every time the phone rang.
Bob had never paid attention to how often his phone
actually did ring….until it stopped. Dr. Johnson, Mr. Dixon and Wendy
had made sure everyone in town knew he’d broken his leg, so nobody called
unless they knew Wendy was there. Or unless they just wanted to check
on him because they knew Wendy wasn’t there. Mrs. Lykins had
called during his frustrating trip out to the workshop, and by the time Bob
had started back to the house she’d been dashing into the yard with three
other women in tow and they’d scolded and fussed over him and refused to
leave until Wendy had come back.
Wendy had laughed at him all through supper. Bob
had laughed right along with her…but he’d still worried, even then.
And he was worrying now, because Wendy was late getting home.
He tried to reason with himself. The job might
have taken longer than expected. It wasn’t easy to work in water, or
in the muck the water made out of the dark, heavy soil that covered so much
of the valley. Wendy might have gone back to her house first to wash
off the mud – she couldn’t shower at Bob’s because of the decency
clause. Or someone might have stopped her on her way back, to talk or
to ask her to do something for them. Wendy might be standing by the
road right now, leaning on Scoop and talking to some well-meaning person
who wanted to know how Bob was doing.
Or Wendy might have slipped off the bank into the
water. She might be hurt and laying in the creek right now with the
machines panicking all over the slippery bank, or even worse with them out
in a field somewhere sleeping or playing because they didn’t know she was
in trouble. Wendy might need help, and Bob was sitting here in his
chair with his leg in a cast, not able to do anything.
He got up when the frustration started to overwhelm him,
balanced himself on his crutches and hobbled to the door…and opened it to
see Wendy just coming into the yard. She looked happy, but her smile
faded when she got close enough to see his face. She hurried over to
the house. “Bob, what’s wrong?”
“You were late,” he blurted out, and then winced; that
had even sounded pathetic to him. He shifted his weight on the
crutches, and blushed his way through a small, self-conscious smile.
“I was…I got worried. Isn’t that silly?”
Wendy shook her head. “I’ve been worried
too.” Her smile came back. “But I came up with a way to fix it
– a way to fix a few things, as a matter of fact. Do you want to come
the rest of the way out, or do you want us to come inside with you?”
“Us?” Bob looked past her and was surprised to see
not just the machines but also Dr. Johnson, Mr. Dixon, and Farmer
Pickles. He started to take a step forward, forgetting the porch
step, and might have fallen right off his crutches if Wendy hadn’t been
quick to steady him. Blushing again, he rebalanced and lifted one
hand in a wave. “Hi, guys. What’s going on?”
“We’re helping Wendy fix things,” Dr. Johnson answered
him. He was carrying something bulky and strange over one arm.
Setting it down, he flipped two catches and pushed, and the thing expanded
into a wheelchair. “I’m fixing it so one of my patients can stay off
his broken leg and not go crazy from boredom. You can use this chair
when you want to do something in the yard or your workshop, and when you’re
not using it you can fold it up and stick it in a corner.” He looked
Bob up and down and raised an eyebrow. “You know, Bob, that isn’t a
walking cast – I only gave you the crutches so you could get around inside
your house. Why don’t we try out the chair now, get you off that
leg?”
Bob looked where the doctor had been looking and saw the
scuff marks on his cast – scuff marks that obviously hadn’t come from the
carpeted path between his bedroom and his favorite chair. And his
toes sticking out the end of the cast looked a little swollen, doubtless
because he’d been up and down to the door several times and hadn’t been
keeping his leg propped up like he was supposed to. He was still
looking a little ashamed of himself when Wendy and the doctor got him
settled in the wheelchair, but he couldn’t keep from closing his eyes and
sighing with relief once he was sitting down and the footrest had been
adjusted to elevate his leg. “Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you
so much, Dr. Johnson.”
The doctor chuckled. “You’re welcome – and I think
you’re the only patient I have who thanks me for scolding him. Wendy,
it’s your turn now.”
Bob opened his eyes…and jumped, startled, when he found
himself looking at Dizzy from a distance of not more than a few inches
away. The little mixer was studying him very intently, but the jump
jarred his leg and made him wince again and she immediately backed
off. “Sorry Bob,” she said, swinging her bucket from side to side in
agitation. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I’m okay, you just startled me,” he reassured
her. He smiled, patting the wheels of his chair. “See, now I
have wheels just like all of you.”
“Saw them.” Dizzy examined the wheels again,
though, before spinning her way around the chair and ending up between
Scoop and Muck. “No red, Scoop!”
“No red,” Scoop echoed, obviously agreeing with
her. He sounded relieved. “It doesn’t hurt now, right Bob?”
Bob was confused, but he shook his head. “It hurts
a little,” he said. “But not so much now that I’m not standing
up.” He looked up at Wendy. “Red?”
“I’ll explain later,” she told him. “But right
now, we have more to show you.” She waved Mr. Dixon over, and Bob saw
that he was carrying a box. “This is how we’re going to fix that
worrying problem.”
“You aren’t the only one who’s been having that one,”
the postmaster told him with a grin and a wink, putting the box down in his
lap. “Go ahead, have a look.”
Bob opened up the box, not sure what to expect, and his
jaw dropped when he saw the contents. He pulled the cell phone out
and stared at it. “But this is…we aren’t…”
“We are now,” Wendy told him. “I talked to
Charlie, and so did Dr. Johnson and Farmer Pickles. Once we all
explained to him about what had happened, he decided to make an exception
to the ‘no cell phones on the island’ rule.”
“Used to be that emergency workers and such had their
own radio frequency to use. They got special equipment no one else
had, because they needed it,” Farmer Pickles said. He pulled out a
cell phone identical to the one Bob had and held it up. “Some of us
need it too, he just hadn’t realized it.”
Mr. Dixon patted his breast pocket, where a short
antenna could be seen sticking out. “These are waterproof, dust proof
and vibration proof; they can take all the abuse you can dish out,” he
explained. “And the signal is bouncing off a ground station, not a
satellite, so you’ll be able to reach anyone anyplace on the island no
matter what. Even if bad weather takes the regular phone lines down, we’ll
be able to communicate if we need to.”
“Everyone who goes out and about around the island is
getting one,” Dr. Johnson added. He, too, had an antenna
showing. “Those of us who can’t always be sure of being in town or
near a phone have to have some way to call for help if we need it.”
He winked at Bob. “Charlie felt pretty bad when we told him what
happened. He sends his apologies for not thinking of this sooner.”
Bob looked up at Wendy…and saw an antenna. He
clutched his own phone tightly, his vision blurring as relief crashed down
on him. If she needed help, she could call for it. If she was
late, he could call her. No more wondering, no more worrying.
“When you fix something, you go all the way,” he choked out. “This
is…this is really wonderful, the best idea ever.”
Wendy looked a little misty-eyed herself, and the three
older men exchanged amused, knowing glances. The machines were
looking on in some confusion, and then Dizzy shrieked. “Red!
Red and shiny!”
Scoop rumbled closer, looking frightened. “Bob’s
leg hurts again! Somebody fix it!”
Bob made the connection before Wendy could say anything;
one of the reasons he was so good with the machines was that he could think
like them when he needed to. “Scoop! Dizzy! It’s okay!”
he called over the noise they were making. He locked eyes with the
yellow backhoe, then very deliberately lifted his free hand and wiped his
eyes. “People don’t always cry because they’re sad or in pain,
Scoop. Sometimes people cry because they’re very, very happy.”
He dropped the phone back in its box and rolled his chair over as close as
he could get to the agitated machine. Leaning forward and reaching up
as high as he could, he rubbed the yellow frame soothingly. “It’s
okay, Scoop. It’s okay.”
The backhoe’s engine gradually ratcheted down to its
usual muted rumble. “You’re happy?”
“I’m happy,” Bob assured him. “Dizzy?”
She wheeled up to him, peering into his face.
“Okay…but now your face is white.”
“Because he’s leaning forward and hurting his leg,” Dr.
Johnson told her. He walked up behind the chair and pulled Bob back
in it again. “Very good, Dizzy. If you see his face turn white
like that, it means he’s doing something that hurts – and Bob isn’t
supposed to be doing things that hurt if he wants his leg to get better.”
Dizzy spun her bucket and frowned. “Bad Bob.
We’ll watch him, Dr. Johnson. And we’ll tell someone if he does
something he’s not supposed to.”
“I’m glad you’re going to help me, but he’s not being
bad,” the doctor said, smiling. He squeezed Bob’s shoulder.
“Think about how you would feel if something went wrong with one of your
wheels, so you couldn’t move around; that’s how Bob is feeling now.
And that’s why I brought him a wheelchair to use, because none of us want
him to feel that way any more than he has to.”
“No, we don’t,” Wendy seconded. “And we don’t want
him to worry because he can’t come fix things with us, either.” She
pulled out her cell phone and held it up so the machines could see
it. “This is a cell phone, it’s a special telephone that a person can
carry around with them, so they can call someone no matter where they
are. Bob and I each have one, and so do Dr. Johnson, Mr. Dixon,
Constable Rickey and Farmer Pickles.”
Scoop’s eyes widened. “So if something happens…you
can call for help?”
Bob twitched in a way that said he wanted to reach for
the backhoe’s frame again, but Dr. Johnson was still holding him back in
the chair. “Yes, exactly,” the doctor answered – and reached up to
pat the frame himself. “We were all scared when Bob got hurt,” he
said. “This way, we don’t ever have to be that scared again.”
“I don’t want to be that scared again,” the backhoe
agreed. “Don’t get hurt again, Bob.”
“I wish I could promise you that I wouldn’t,” Bob told
him carefully. “But accidents happen, and sometimes there isn’t
anything we can do about that.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
Wendy frown, and she immediately had his full attention. “Wendy?”
The frown disappeared, but she shook her head and didn’t
say anything. Dr. Johnson had been trading a strange, frowning look
of his own with Farmer Pickles and Mr. Dixon, and then he shook his head
too and removed his hand from Scoop’s frame with one final pat. “We’d
better get Bob back inside now, everyone. He needs to rest.”
“All of you should probably get some rest too,” Wendy
added, speaking to the machines. “We had a long, busy day, and we’ll
probably have to go out again tomorrow. I’ll come out in a little
while to say goodnight to you, all right?”
There was a chorus of agreement, and then Dr. Johnson
turned Bob’s chair around and pushed it back toward the house. The
chair was too wide to go through the door, so Wendy and Farmer Pickles
helped Bob back up onto his crutches while Mr. Dixon folded the chair up
and looked for a corner to stash it in. He ended up putting it in the
office because there just wasn’t any other place it could go; Bob’s
living room was comfortable but on the small side, holding only his worn
overstuffed chair, a footstool, and a compact two-person sofa. Farmer
Pickles and Mr. Dixon took the sofa while Wendy brought out two kitchen
chairs for herself and Dr. Johnson, who was making sure Bob was settled
comfortably and getting his leg propped back up. Bob looked from one
serious face to another with mounting confusion. “What’s going on?”
he wanted to know. “Is something else wrong?”
Fred Pickles cleared his throat, leaning forward with
his elbows resting on his knees. “Bob, we need to talk about…what
happened.”
Confusion segued into wariness. “I don’t…”
“Oh yes you do,” the farmer interrupted him
implacably. “And so does everyone else in this room, because I told
them. Did you think I wouldn’t notice those missing screws?”
“Or that John and I wouldn’t realize you couldn’t
have broken your leg if you’d fallen the way you said you did?” Dr. Johnson
put in, plopping down on his chair with a frown. “We know that
farmyard almost as well as you do, Bob. You missed those support
stakes by what, eight inches? Less?”
“They’re gone now,” Pickles said, still frowning.
“The next day when I got home and saw where the scuff marks from Scoop’s
bucket were, I ripped out all the stakes and threw them in the scrap
heap. And then I found Spud and explained to him what he’d almost
done, and then I locked him in the shed for a while so he could think it
over.” Bob was looking upset now, and the farmer shook his
head. “He could’ve gotten you killed, he had to be punished – and I
had to make it good or he wouldn’t have remembered it at all. And
since I know that you know that, why don’t you explain to all of us why you
failed to say anything about the real cause of your ‘accident’.”
Bob had turned pale. “You didn’t report it, did
you? You didn’t…”
“They won’t turn him off,” Pickles told him. “He
didn’t directly harm you, and it wasn’t premeditated – he wanted the gutter
off because he was going to use it to make a sled or something.”
“No, I know they won’t turn him off.” Bob brushed
that idea away with a gesture, looking even more worried. “We can’t
let the machines find out what happened. Travis doesn’t know,
does he?”
The farmer stared at him, not understanding – and from
the looks he could see on everyone else’s face, they didn’t understand
either. “He was there,” Pickles said slowly. “I didn’t discuss
what happened with him, but he might have figured it out. Why?”
“Yes, why?” Dr. Johnson wanted to know. “Bob, why
does it matter if the machines find out or not? Spud is always doing
something, they’re used to it…”
“Yes, they are, but those ‘somethings’ have never gotten
anyone hurt before that they knew of – and until a week ago they didn’t
have a real understanding of what getting hurt meant anyway.” Bob saw
that they still didn’t understand and slumped back in his chair with a
frustrated sigh. “I spend more time with the machines than any of you
do, I can see the way they’re developing much better than you can. In
the eight months that I’ve lived here, I’ve seen them go from accepting
Spud’s pranks to anticipating them and trying to avoid them…to trying to
stop him in the last two months since Lofty’s been here.” He looked
from one face to another, practically begging them to get it. “Don’t
you understand? This time he hurt someone, more to the point he hurt me,
and now they know what that means. It scared them. What do you
think is going to happen if they find out that it was Spud’s fault?”
Pickles got it first, and his mouth dropped open.
“Bob, you don’t mean to tell me you think the machines might try to get
Spud back for this, do you? They can’t…”
“They can’t hurt a person,” John Dixon said,
obviously not liking where this was going. “But Spud isn’t…Bob, do
you really think they’d try?”
“I’m afraid they might,” Bob told him. “They’re
getting to the point where they want to pay him back in-kind for the
pranks; how much of a jump do you really think it is from there to wanting
revenge?”
There was a moment of silence. Everyone but Bob
was thinking about the machines, most of which still weighed half a ton or
more each in spite of being scaled-down versions of standard non-sentient
heavy equipment. And they were thinking about what Bob meant to the
machines, even to the ones who didn’t work with him on a daily basis.
Bob wasn’t thinking about that; Bob was trying to figure
out if this was a situation he could fix. And since he wasn’t sure he
could, he was very obviously and visibly miserable.
That was what decided Wendy. She cleared her
throat, getting everyone’s attention. “Fred, can you find out from
Travis how much he knows?” she asked in a no-nonsense tone. “Because
if he doesn’t know anything, this isn’t a problem we have to worry about.”
Pickles nodded. “We’ll still have to worry about
Spud telling someone,” Dr. Johnson reminded her.
“No, we won’t,” Wendy and Bob both spoke at the same
time; they both blushed at the same time, too. “Spud won’t remember a week
from now, unless someone reminds him,” Bob continued. “That’s the
root of all his behavior problems, remember?”
“His AI is faulty when it comes to cause and effect
relationships,” Pickles explained to the mystified doctor. “He just
can’t process them. And even if he does, it won’t stick; the longest
his ‘brain’ can hold the pattern intact is about a week.”
“I didn’t know that,” Johnson mused, looking
thoughtful. “But it explains a lot. So putting him in the
shed…?”
“You weren’t just trying to imprint the punishment, you
were making sure he stayed put, weren’t you?” Dixon said, catching
on. “He hasn’t been in town since then, either. Did you tell
him he had to stay on the farm?”
“Yep.” Pickles shrugged. “I didn’t want him
to come down here and try to ‘help’ Bob.” He laughed, without much
humor. “I could just imagine how that would have gone – and now I’m
imagining it would have gone even worse.”
“It would have.” But Bob looked relieved – no
doubt because they’d listened to him, Wendy thought. “But if we can
verify that Travis doesn’t know, then problem solved.”
“Yes, problem solved,” Johnson agreed firmly, giving the
other two older men a warning look accompanied by an almost unnoticeable
shake of his head when it looked like they were ready to argue with that;
it was time to stop upsetting his patient for the day. He lounged
back in his chair and turned a smile on Bob. “Oh, and Fred brought
something to fix a problem for you too, just like John and I did. You
see, I told him there was no way I was going to let you ride over that potholed
road of his just to play poker.”
Pickles grinned, reached into the shirt pocket that
didn’t have a cell phone in it and pulled out a deck of cards. “Hope
you’ve got some candy, Bob. Oh, and we’ll get Lucas to deliver some
dinner in lieu of snacks.”
“Because I told everyone that if you’d done any baking I
was going to tie you to your bed – your upstairs bed – for the next
two weeks,” Johnson tacked on. “There had better not be cookies in
that kitchen, I mean it.”
“There are cookies,” Bob admitted. “But I didn’t
bake them. Mrs. Potts brought them over earlier today, I’ve been
trying to figure out what to do with them.”
“Edge a walkway?” Dixon suggested.
“Or shore up a dam,” came from Johnson. “Doesn’t
the Hoover have a crack in it?”
“Mrs. Potts is a lovely woman,” Pickles scolded
them. He winked at Wendy, who looked like she wasn’t sure what to
think about the direction the conversation had veered off in.
“Unfortunately, her baking is, well, pretty much on the inedible side.”
“Even Spud won’t eat Mrs. Potts’ cooking,” Bob
elaborated. “But she means well. We just have trouble disposing
of what she gives us, no one wants to hurt her feelings.”
“So far composting has worked,” the farmer said,
nodding. “But it’s slow. I’d really like to give that
wood-chipper idea a try someday.”
“You’d blunt the blades,” Dixon advised him. “They
don’t run hardwoods through a non-commercial chipper.”
“He’s right, they don’t,” Bob agreed. “But we
could get custom blades…”
“You all are just silly,” Wendy scolded them, but she
was smiling. She stood up. “All right, I’ll go get the candy,
and I guess we could drag the kitchen table in here for the night. If
that’s all right with you, Bob?”
Bob’s eyes rounded. “You…you’re playing with
us?” He immediately looked to the other men, tensing up again.
“We don’t have the shuffler…”
“Oh, we explained to her all about what a shark you
are,” Pickles said, winking at him. “And I think we’ll be okay with
two decks instead of our usual three. I can shuffle that if I’m
careful.”
The younger man wasn’t convinced. He looked back
up at his business partner, blushing when he saw her knowing smile.
“Um, they told you about…well, and you’re okay with it?”
“I’m okay with it; I know you don’t do it on purpose,”
Wendy reassured him, patting his hand before she went off to the kitchen to
find the candy and see about the inedible cookies. She was trying
very hard not to laugh. All of their teasing aside, what the three
older men had actually told her was that Bob was embarrassed by his
inadvertent ‘ability’ to count cards; they’d been warning her, protecting
him. Wendy was oh so very glad that Bob had such good friends.
She stuck her hand in her pocket, touching the handkerchief
she’d taken out of Scoop’s bucket that day just over a week ago, the one
Bob had been trying to hide from her. She was even more glad that she
and the machines had Bob.
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