THE CREATION

With a click and a gush of steam, the mechanical man roared to life. The bent, old doctor stepped back, retracting his hand from the turnkey ignition embedded in his creation's chest. He was aghast that his life's work had actually been completed at long last.

"It's…alive?" he spoke in disbelief. Then, cackling with an aged, phlegmy laugh, cried, "It works! Ah ha! He lives!" He danced a little jig on the cobblestone, a light soft-shoe that kicked up dust and mortar that danced with him in motes on the air.

The thing's arm moved.

The doctor slowly ceased his dancing. He looked at the arm, thick and hollow, sheathed in the curved planks of a discarded barrel. He had caulked the seams with tar (and had done too poor a job, he thought, noticing the thin puffs of steam issuing from pin-size holes) and had nailed the planks together with bright copper nails. He had used barrels that had been filled with alcohols of different types in another time: oak whiskey barrels—charred black on the inside, but with a creamy tan exterior—and port wine casks—dark wood stained even darker and reddened by years of grape staining. This had given his creation a mottled, uneven look, though it was fitted together almost perfectly. A craftsman could not have done a finer job.

The arm moved again. The doctor could see the thing's clockwork innards whirring and spinning from between the chinks at its joints. Shiny bronze and brass cogs, sprockets, springs and flywheels all worked in tandem to the puff of the steam as it issued from a water-filled bladder sitting upon the robot's red-hot iron potbelly.

The robot turned its head—what passed for a head, really, for upon the mechanical man's wooden shoulders sat an upturned bucket, connected from within to its metal guts below. The head had no face. It was merely a bucket, scratched and dented from years of use moving grain, water, and household refuse.

Steam belched from a vent valve in the robot's back. It moved its head and arm, nearly in tandem. The head twisted to the right, toward the old doctor, and the arm flailed about. As its legs began to kick, the old man grasped the mechanical man's hand, lacing his fleshy fingers between the robot's wooden ones. He held the robot's hand against his chest.

"Everything's okay, my son. I'm here. We're going to be alright."


© 2007 Steve Gooch
( The Decemberists - The Crane Wife )