Jimmy left his parents’ house, got back into his car, and drove aimlessly.
He started out driving with both hands, but after a while, he took the artificial left hand off the wheel and let it rest idly in his lap. “This is my car,” he said aloud.
Jimmy drove down familiar streets, feeling strangely like a visitor. He thought of heading up into the mountains, to one of his favorite drives. But there were only a couple of hours of daylight left. It seemed pointless to go to the mountains if he wouldn’t be able to see the scenery he had loved all his life.
He decided to drive downtown instead. He would park and walk around a bit. Maybe he’d run into some old friends. Maybe that would make him feel like part of the town again, instead of an outsider.
As he drove, he pondered his financial situation.
His military pay hadn’t been much, but he had saved almost all of it for four years. As a result, he had a tidy sum in the bank.
He had no car payments. With his father’s help, while he was still in high school, he had bought a barely running used car for next to nothing. He had fixed it up so that it was better than new, and for the last four years, he had driven it only when home on leave.
As long as he lived with his parents, he didn’t have to worry about rent or paying for food.
That thought, though, brought back his uncle’s words, and he squirmed at the memory.
What if he moved out? Rent and food would eat up his savings quickly. Even without that, he still had to pay for insurance for his car, as well as license renewal and registration fees. And gas, of course.
Uncle Carl was right, and Jimmy knew it — had known it even while the man was talking. He couldn’t just drift along. He had to get a job.
He realized that there were two hands on the wheel again, his own and the artificial arm’s hand.
I got so distracted thinking about this job shit, he thought, that I’m just acting automatically.
Once again, he made the new hand let go of the wheel, and he lowered it into his lap.
“Stay there,” he said. “My real left hand helped fix this car up. It had a right to touch the steering wheel. You don’t.”
There wasn’t much to downtown. There wasn’t much to the traffic there, either, even though he encountered what passed for the evening rush hour.
He parked on Main Street and put a quarter in the meter. That would buy him an hour. By the time that hour was up, it would be after 6:00 p.m., when parking became free.
It dribbles away, he thought. Even if it’s a quarter at a time, the money goes. I need a job.
He strolled along the sidewalk, looking into shop windows, right hand in his pocket and the left arm hanging loosely by his side. Nothing had changed since he had been here last, on leave a few months before, and yet everything seemed oddly strange and foreign, as if he were in a town he’d never visited before.
Without consciously thinking about it, he turned into Martinson’s Hardware Store. He had worked there for a couple of summers during high school and had pleasant memories of the storeroom and the small room in the back where he had spent his breaks.
Joe Martinson was inside, beginning to close up for the day. He turned at the sound of the door, and his face lit up with a smile.
“Jimmy! I heard you were in town.” He stepped forward, his right hand held out, and the two men shook hands. “I also heard you got hurt pretty bad,” Martinson said. “You look okay.”
“Yeah. They fixed me up. Better than new, they said.” One of their many lies, he thought.
“That’s good. When are you getting out for good?”
“I just did. I’m a free man again.”
“Well, now, that’s really good news. So, what are your plans? Going back to school?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Actually, I’ve been thinking about getting a job.”
“That’s good, that’s good. I remember when you worked here. You were a good worker. Of course, you wanted a car.” He laughed. “That’ll motivate a boy.”
“It worked for me. I want a bit more than a car, now. I’d like to get a place of my own, you know?”
Martinson nodded. “Of course. Good idea. So, what do you have in mind?”
“I was wondering if you needed any help here, Joe. Mr. Martinson. Like what I used to do.”
Martinson frowned. “I’ve been doing everything myself lately. Money’s tight. Still, it would be nice not to have to do all of that lifting. Gets harder every year. You sure you’d be satisfied with that? The pay wouldn’t be any better than it was before.”
“Anything would help. Lifting’s no problem.”
“Sure. Of course not.” He hesitated, then said, “It was your arm that was hurt, right? You shook hands okay.”
“It was the other arm. But it’s okay now. Look.” Jimmy raised the arm and waved it around. Rather, he tried to raise it and wave it around. The arm wouldn’t move.
You worthless piece of shit, he thought. Don’t stop working now.
“It’s okay. Really.”
He tried again, but the arm hung limp by his side.
Bastard, he thought.
“I’m sorry, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.”
Jimmy walked out of the store feeling detached from reality. The arm hung heavily from him. This is worse than having just the stump, he thought.
Outside, he stood on the sidewalk wondering what to do next. He could try other stores in town, but all he was qualified for was the kind of labor that required two arms. Factory work was out of the question for the same reason.
Hell, he thought, I couldn’t even be a janitor. Maybe a security guard or night watchman. No, this useless thing makes those impossible, too.
I’m glad I didn’t run into any old friends, he thought. I’m not going to belong in this place again, not ever.
“Jimmy!”
He turned at the sound of his name. It was Ken Fineman, a friend from high school.
It’s like fucking magic, Jimmy thought. I don’t want to see them, and so they show up. “Ken. It’s great to see you again.”
They shook hands and exchanged meaningless small talk for a few minutes. A teenage boy accompanied Ken. The boy stared off into space, uninterested in the conversation. Jimmy wondered if he should know the kid. Finally, Ken said, “You remember my kid brother, Tommy, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure. Hi, Tommy.” He shook hands with the boy. He didn’t remember that Ken had a kid brother.
“Back home on leave?” Ken asked. “I heard you got blown up over there, or something like that.”
Suddenly the kid brother was interested.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“But you’re okay, right? You look great.”
“The human part of me is fine.”
“What?”
“They attached mechanical parts to me. That’s how they fixed me up.”
“Cool!” Tommy, the kid brother, said. “I’m gonna enlist in a couple of years, when I turn 18. Mom and Dad don’t want me to, but I won’t need their permission then.”
“Don’t,” Jimmy said.
Ken was looking at Jimmy carefully in the fading light. “Which part of you is mechanical? Are you some kind of super stud now?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m a real robot lover. Women keep attacking me.”
“You’re still with Terrie, right?” Ken asked. “I saw her the other day, and she said something about you and her getting married as soon as you were out of the Army.”
“I haven’t seen her yet. I haven’t been home for long.” It had been a week. “How about you?”
Ken grinned. “Married. One kid. I work for my dad. Life’s good.”
“Sounds like it.” A wife, a kid, a job, and two real arms. That’s the life I was supposed to have, Jimmy thought. Damn.
“Why shouldn’t I enlist?” Tommy asked.
“The food’s bad, the weather’s terrible, and there are people trying to kill you. If you’re
lucky, they fail. Or they only kill part of you, like they did with me.”
“But you look fine,” the boy said.
Jimmy balled his right hand into a fist and punched the arm hanging at his left side. “This is the machine part,” he said. “And it doesn’t even work. It quit a couple of hours ago. It’s dead.”
The arm’s hand clenched into a fist and then opened up again, one finger at a time. The elbow bent. The hand rose until it was in front of Jimmy’s face. He felt frozen in place.
Ken and Tommy stared silently, open mouthed.
Self–testing procedure, Jimmy thought. Same thing it did in the hospital. Punching it got it going again.
The arm straightened and once again hung limply by Jimmy’s side.
“That’s really cool,” Tommy said. “What’s it look like? Roll your sleeve up, so I can see.”
Ken sensed Jimmy’s growing discomfort. “Be quiet, Tommy. You got any plans, Jimmy? Maybe we could go out for a drink. I’ll arrange it with my wife.”
“Sure.” They exchanged telephone numbers and said goodbye. Jimmy returned to his car with a sense of relief, certain he’d never see or hear from Ken again. That was fine with him.
He headed back toward his parents’ house. On the way, he tried repeatedly to lift the arm, to make it move again. It worked intermittently. Most of the time, it hung down limply, the hand resting on the seat next to his left leg.
“You piece of shit,” he said to it. “They must have made you out of old tin cans. I was better off with just my stump. You’re less than nothing.”
* * * * *