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(Continued)
The hideous machine under it turned out to be an old
Gestetner. Way back in the 1880s, when people were still transcribing documents like monks of the Middle Ages, David Gestetner invented the first in-house stencil duplicator. I think Savin bought the company out years ago, but what Ruthie had located was like finding a complete dinosaur fossil.
Two days later three guys from my crew and I rented a U-Haul and brought it back to my place. We got it up the stairs and into the spare room with minimal damage to the woodwork. Ruthie and I spent five years surfing for parts on e-Bay and me using vacation time to drive all over creation for others and then restoring it to mint, working condition. We called it our baby.
Ruthie and I never married. We talked about it over and over again. Her mother was the biggest problem. I guess we both secretly hoped that she might give up the ghost but that wasn’t to be. In 2001 Ruthie began to look the worse for wear, weight loss, constantly tired, not her usual, cheerful self. By the time we found out it was pancreatic cancer it was way too late; she was dead by Christmas.
I’d actually never formally met her mother face to face if you can believe it. I’d heard her commands and ultimatums from the bedroom and peeked at her through the door, but Ruthie had to be coy whenever she snuck me into her home, as her mother could throw a fit quicker than a rabid fox.
A lot of people from McComb Insurance showed up at the funeral. Very few knew that we’d ever been a couple. In their eyes I was just the copier guy paying my respects to get a leg up on selling a few more machines. Her obituary listed her being survived by her mother, a few cousins and me, her companion and soul mate of many years. I cried like a baby when I read that, knowing she had taken the time before she went to make sure I knew how she felt about me.
After she went, the life pretty much drained out of me too. I took part time work for a year and then walked away cold turkey. Copier repair isn’t what it once was anyway. Speed, speed, speed--paper spewing like a severed artery is what the public wants. And why? Ten copies a minute or fifty--what do they do with the extra time? Listen to their hip-hop music, surf the web for porn or buy up other companies? And the new
techies? All they need to do is read whatever the computer chip tells them is wrong, slide out one module and slap in another. It’s no harder than a three year old putting together a ten-piece picture puzzle. Where’s the analysis, the skill in that?
I was thinking of writing a book on the history of copiers, but I really don’t know how to write. I started taking an adult education course about composition but dropped out. I’ve talked to a few people about ghost writing. I’d supply anecdotal material about how the industry has changed since I started way back when.
Most of the time I walk around Boston. I never did spring for a car as garaging costs as much as a small apartment. Once a week or so I take a cab out to visit Ruthie. Her mother died two months after she did and is buried next to her.
A couple of years ago I read a piece in my dentist’s office about a man who was buried in a 1954 Mercury coupe. I’ve worked it out that, when I go, the Gestetner Ruthie and I shared putting together is going into the ground with me. There are no plots open around her but for $15,000 I bought two spaces on the west side. It was as close as I could get and still be in the same cemetery. It’s not been much of a life, but I never expected even half as much. So there you go.
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D. E. FREDD has been published in several journals and reviews. He just received the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for the best short story (2005), given by the Southern Humanities Council at Auburn University. A novel will debut in December 2006. He lived in Amsterdam until he was hit by a bicycle. That event taught him not to daydream.
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