No wonder the Hoover, foreseeing this inevitable progression of events, had been beside itself. What were they to do? the toaster asked itself.
There was no answer immediately forthcoming.
Toward evening the radio announced that it was receiving interference from a source quite nearby. “A power drill, by the feel of it. Just on the other side of the river.”
Where there was a power drill there were bound to be power lines as well! New hope poured into the appliances like a sudden surge of current.
“Let’s look at the map again,” said the lamp. “Maybe we can figure out exactly where we are.”
Following the lamp’s suggestion, they unfolded the road map and looked very carefully at all the dots and squiggles between the spot (marked with a Magic Marker) along the highway where the cottage was situated and the little patch of pink representing the city they were bound for. At last, only a quarter-inch from the pink patch of the city, they found the wavery blue line that had to be the river they’d come to, since there were no other blue lines anywhere between the cottage and the city, and this river was much too big for the mapmakers to have forgotten all about it.
“We’re almost there!” the radio trumpeted. “We’ll make it! Everything will be all right! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” the other appliances agreed, except for the Hoover, who wasn’t so easily convinced that all would now be well. But when the lamp pointed out four distinct places where the river was traversed by highways, even the Hoover had to admit that there was cause to cheer up, though he still wouldn’t go so far as to say “Hurrah.”
“We only have to follow the river,” said the toaster, who did like to give instructions, even when it was obvious what had to be done, “either to the left or the right, and eventually it must lead us to one of those bridges. Then, when it’s very late and there’s no traffic, we can make a dash for it!”
So once again they set off with courage renewed and determination strengthened. It was not so light a task as the toaster had made it sound, for there was no longer a clear path to follow. Sometimes the bank of the river lay flat as a carpet, but elsewhere the ground got quite bumpy or—what was worse—quaggy and soft. Once, avoiding a rock, the Hoover took a sharp turn; and the office chair, getting a leg mired in an unremarked patch of mud, was overturned, and the four appliances riding on it tumbled off the plastic seat into a thorough slough. They emerged smirched and spattered, and were obliged to become dirtier still in the process of retrieving the castor wheel that had come off the chair and was lost in the mud.
The blanket, naturally, was exempted from this task, and while the four others delved for the lost wheel, it betook itself down the water’s edge and attempted to wash away the signs of its spill. Lacking any cloth or sponge, the blanket only succeeded, sad to say, in spreading the stains over a larger area. So preoccupied was the blanket with its hopeless task that it almost failed to notice—
“A boat!” the blanket cried out. “All of you, come here! I’ve found a boat!”
Even the toaster, with no experience at all in nautical matters, could see that the boat the blanket had discovered was not of the first quality. Its wood had the weather-beaten look of the clapboard at the back of the summer cottage that the master had always been meaning to replace, or at least repaint, and its bottom must be leaky for it was filled with one big puddle of green mush. Nevertheless, it must have been basically serviceable, since a Chriscraft outboard motor was mounted on the blunt back-end, and who would put an expensive motor on a boat that couldn’t at least stay afloat?
“How providential,” said the Hoover.
“You don’t intend for us to use this boat, do you?” asked the toaster.
“Of course we shall,” replied the vacuum. “Who knows how far it may be to a bridge? This will take us across the river directly. You’re not afraid to ride in it, are you?”
“Afraid? Certainly not!”
“Well, then?”
“It doesn’t belong to us, if we were to take it, we’d be no better than… than pirates!”
Pirates, as even the newest of my listeners will have been informed, are people who take things that belong to other people. They are the bane of an appliance’s existence, since once an appliance has been spirited away by a pirate, it has no choice but to serve its bidding just as though it were that appliance’s legitimate master. A bitter disgrace, such servitude—and one that few appliances can hope to escape once it has fallen to their lot. Truly, there is no fate, even obsolescence, so terrible as falling into the hands of pirates.
“Pirates!” exclaimed the Hoover. “Us? What nonsense? Who ever heard of an appliance that was a pirate?”
“But if we took the boat—” the toaster insisted.
“We wouldn’t keep it,” said the Hoover brusquely. “We’d just borrow it a little while to cross the river and leave it on the other side. Its owner would get it back soon enough.”
“How long we’d have it for doesn’t matter. It’s the principle of the thing. Taking what isn’t yours is piracy.”
“Oh, as for principles,” said the radio lightly, “there’s a well-known saying: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ Which means, as far as I can see, that someone who makes use of his abilities should get to use a boat when he or it needs to cross a river and the boat is just sitting there waiting.” With which, and a little chuckle besides, the radio hopped onto the foremost seat of the rowboat.
Following the radio’s example, the Hoover heaved the office chair into the back of the boat and then got in itself. The boat settled deep in the water.
Avoiding the toaster’s accusing look, the blanket took a seat beside the radio.
The lamp seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. Then it too entered the boat.
“Well?” said the Hoover gruffly. “We’re waiting.”
Reluctantly the toaster prepared to board the boat. But then, inexplicably, something made it stop. What’s happening? it wondered—though it could not say the words aloud, for the same force preventing it from moving prevented its speech as well.
The four appliances in the boat had been similarly incapacitated. What had happened, of course, was that the owner of the boat had returned and seen the appliances. “Why, what’s this?” he exclaimed, stepping from behind a willow tree with a fishing rod in one hand and a string of sunfish in the other. “It seems we’ve had some visitors!”
He said much more than this, but in a manner so rough and ill-mannered that it were better not to repeat his words verbatim. The sum of it was this—that he believed the owner of the appliances had been about to steal his boat, and so he intended, by way of retaliation, to steal the appliances!
He took the toaster from where it sat spellbound on the grassy riverbank and set it in the rowboat beside the blanket, lamp and radio. Then, unfastening the battery from the office chair, he threw the latter end-over-end high up into the air. It came down—Splash!—in the middle of the river and sank down to the muddy bottom, nevermore to be seen.