The Mechanical Revenge of Jeffrey Morrison

I find my dad, like most mornings in that sweltering summer, banging on some incomprehensible machine in our old family barn. The barn’s walls, muted red with sagging beams and chipping paint, shudder with groaning beams as Dad’s tools construct more and more unknowable machine parts, made from scraps of metal he had collected from junk heaps and whatnot. The entire barn, from the corners of its walls, across the whole dirt floor, even up in the empty hay loft, lie dozens upon dozens of machines, linked together by spiderwebs of wires and tubes. Metal joints and beams connect from one machine to the next, like a skeleton.

“Dad, what are you doing?” I’ve asked him this question every day for the past two months.

“Engineering the means of my revenge,” he replies. This was the exact same reply he’d given ever since he started. To be honest, I don’t even know why I still ask. Today, he’s working on a peculiar steel joint, like it was the elbow to some mechanical creature. He screws the nuts tight onto the ball joint, his ratchet wrench clicking endlessly. All around the ground in the barn, pieces of scrap metal, PVC pipe, wires, and electronics sit in perfectly-aligned rows and columns, as if it were a phalanx of metal. I don’t dare to step on any of the parts, or disturb the placements of the tools. My dad is the type who abhorred disorganization more than anything else.

“Hand me the Phillips head screwdriver, sweetie,” he commands, pointing absentmindedly, hand dripping with sweat, to the tool’s approximate location in the grid. I find it after a few seconds, in between a spark plug and an exhaust pipe, both from the old family tractor. That was one of the first pieces of machinery Dad had dismantled when he began this project. Of course, we didn’t need it much anymore. I pick up the screwdriver, stepping gingerly through the grid of parts and place it into his waiting hand. He mumbles a quiet “thank-you,” and resumes work, not even turning his head to meet my eyes. I fully expected him not to look at me, but it still sends a small twinge of pain through my body. With a sigh, I turn around and exit the barn, collecting the remains of his half-eaten TV dinner on the workbench, the one I’d brought him last night, on my way out.

Back in the house, my bare feet slap on the polished wooden floors as I make my way to the kitchen, where two furry faces greet me with barks and whines. Bucky and Barley, my dad’s twin German Shepherds, want their breakfast. I barge my way through their frantic attempts to lick my face and scoop cupfuls of dog food into their bowls. Barley immediately begins growling at Bucky, not wanting him to steal her food. Bucky seems not to notice, too busy with eating his own food to even acknowledge her hostility. I sigh and move Barley’s bowl further away, at the other end of the back window door, so that she would shut up. With that over with, I move over to the kitchen sink, where my black tabby, Loki, sits in the windowsill, green eyes warily regarding me. His narrow-slit pupils dilate when I pick him up, triggering a storm of purrs as he nestles into my chest. With my favorite cuddling buddy with me, I sit at the circular wooden table, angling the floor fan so that I could catch the lukewarm winds, a veritable respite from the humid summer haze. Loki continues to purr in my sweaty embrace, leaving plenty of shed hair on my black tank top, as I sort through the mountain of unpaid bills and junk mail that had piled up over the last few months. Mom would usually be the one to do this, but she moved to Aunt Lily’s place after the first few weeks of Dad’s new project. She couldn’t take the singular minded attitude that Dad adopted, that honed in on that pile of machinery and circuits with laser focus, but ignored everything else. I think she shouldn’t have left so quickly, but what kinda advice can I give? It’s not like I’ve ever been married. I can’t even get a boy to look my way, really.

A small, torn letter catches my eye, buried beneath credit card bills and a bland offer for satellite Internet. Digging out the cream-white envelope from the pile of papers, I notice it’s from Mayor Thornside’s office, judging from the high-quality paper and the legitimate melted wax seal on the envelope, impressed with a bull amidst lush fields, the official seal of our county. The letter is shredded into pieces, but the few scraps I can find give me a rough picture of the situation.

Dear Mr. Morrison...

With great regret...

...vital to our city’s prosperity…

...important to have a grocery franchise…

Despite your misgivings and protests…

...your produce farm is no longer sufficient…

....suggest you find a way to adapt...

I put down the letter scraps. Is that what’s going on? I set Loki down as I hurriedly put on my shoes and rushed out to the barn. I tear open the doors to find Dad sprawled on the dirt floor, panting with exhaustion. The grid of parts and tools is now gone, having seemingly disappeared, or eaten up by the surrounding machines that crowd the floor and are bolted to the barn’s very walls. I wasn’t even gone for that long, and he got all of that done?! That shouldn’t even be possible!

“June,” Dad pants. “Get me my water bottle, please.”

I nod and grab the blue bottle off the workbench, walking over and kneeling at his side. I tip the bottle down, letting him take rushed, greedy gulps from it, before pushing it away and returning to panting like a dog.

“Dad,” I say. “Your revenge. Is it the mayor?”

He turns and looks at me, glacial blue eyes betraying nothing, clear and unburdened after months of maddening haze and obsession.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I nod. “I understand.” And I did. Thornside had gone too far. He needed to be punished.

Dad smiles. “Wake up early tomorrow. You’ll want to see my handiwork firsthand.”

I awake to the sounds of grinding gears and the noxious smell of gasoline. I shoot up from my bed, scrambling to the window as I pull on a wrinkled t-shirt I picked off the floor. The barn outside is shuddering like crazy, groaning and whining as the timbers creak and snap. Before my eyes, the whole barn seems to raise up off its foundations, lifted up on two steel legs. The side walls snap away from the main building, folding and converging until they form wooden forearms, ending in mighty hands that look like pneumatic clamps. My jaw drops when the loft of the barn snaps open like a great maw, pushing a rough but undeniable robot head up through the jagged teeth of its snapped roof planks. Its eyes, which were undoubtedly what remained of the old tractor’s headlights, blaze into life, and the remaining walls of the barn compact and fold into its chest.

By the time I run outside into the yard, barely clothed but not wanting to miss this, the metal giant is bending down towards me. Gears in the face tumble and spin, and the mouth opens, revealing my Dad, sitting in a makeshift cockpit fashioned out of the tractor’s seat.

“What do you think?” He has to shout to be heard over the mech’s roaring engines and motors.

“It’s amazing!” I shout back.

He gives me a thumbs up. The mouth panels snap shut, and the mech rears up to its full height. The whine of a loudspeaker crackles over the engines. “I’m off to get my revenge, my little Junebug!” The mech’s knees bend with a groan, so much so that I feel like the whole thing will tip over. Then, just as I think it will topple to the ground, it shoots off with a mighty bound, the mech hurtling off into the distance with an earth-shaking leap. Dad’s mech shoots so high into the sky that I have to shield my eyes from the sun to keep watching. After a solid ten seconds of airtime, the metal giant comes careening back down to the earth, landing somewhere in Mrs. Lanyard’s yard a few blocks away with a rippling crash that sends tremors through the ground and up my legs.

Later that night, the results of Dad’s labor are all over the news. After several bounds and leaps through the farmlands, the mech eventually reached the town, making a beeline for the Mayor’s mansion. Supposedly my dad screamed at Mayor Thornside through the loudspeaker and forced him out of his home, then completely demolished it when Thornside ran outside to try and stop him. It took the entire county police force to convince my dad to power down his mech and surrender to them.

I can’t help but grin stupidly as I lay there on the couch watching the news footage on the TV, with Loki curled up on my lap. My phone rings, an unknown number on the caller ID. I answer it.

“Junebug?” It’s Dad. He’s probably calling from jail.

“I saw the news, Dad,” I answer back. “That was glorious.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” I hear a bit of hesitation on the line. “Well, I’m in jail right now, of course. When you get a chance, can you get your mother on the horn and have her look into hiring a lawyer for me?” He chuckles a bit. “I got so caught up in the whole revenge part of the plan that I forgot what came afterwards.”

“Sure thing Dad. Anything for my hero.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”