The Man Who Looked Like Edison
I
Ernie Budder was a leading member of a profession not always given its just due—that is to say, he was an expert washer of automobiles. You have seen his like in your own service-station, garbed in rubber boots and rubber apron, a long-handled soapy brush in one hand, and the ragged end of a line of hose without a nozzle in the other. But unless you have attempted on your own account the task he so expeditiously performs, you have never properly appreciated this man. By the time you have run water over your car, only to find that it dries in muddy spots upon the varnished surface; by the time you have wet it again and wiped it hurriedly, and found the result suggestive of the protective coloration of a zebra; by the time you have for a third time applied the hose, and scrubbed with the sponge, and wiped with the chamois, and picked off with your fingernails the lint and dust that still persist in sticking, you will have begun to value at their true worth such men as Ernie Budder.
Ernie could and did wash and polish a car an hour, with monotonous regularity, all day long. For this work he was paid a dollar an hour, which seems munificent until you have tried it, and until you stop to consider that, for the work he has done, you paid his employer three dollars, and until you remember the cost of living and such matters not easy to forget.
He was a fixture at my particular service-station, where his abilities were recognized by the powers that were. If you ran your car in and said confidentially to Forgan, the foreman: “Give her an extra good going-over, will you? I’ve been out on some muddy roads, and she needs it,” then Forgan would nod, and promise reassuringly, “I’ll see to it that Ernie does her himself, boss.” Upon which, if you knew Ernie and trusted Forgan, you went away completely at your ease.
Ernie was not a young man, in spite of his youthful appellation. I suppose his name had once been Ernest. He was past middle life—how far past it was hard to guess. His hair was snow-white, and his square shoulders were a little stooped, but his hands were vigorous and his eye was mild and clear. There was a diffident affability about him, an amiability like that of a puppy which is afraid of being misunderstood; and, as a result of this quality, it is probable that he was somewhat put upon by the more aggressive characters among whom his lines were laid. My acquaintance with him was a matter of slow growth over a period of years. What might be called our friendship dated from the day when Ernie whispered to me that there had been a small leak in my radiator. I nodded abstractedly.
“Thanks,” I told him. “I’ll run her in to-morrow and let them patch it up.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t need to,” he told me. “I stuck a drop of solder on her to-day. Gave it a lick of enamel. You’ll never notice the place at all.”
I stifled my natural suspicion—for I did not know the man—and pulled out a bill; but Ernie smiled and backed away.
“No, no,” he said pleasantly. “No; I like to tinker. Don’t let Forgan know. That’s all.”
I was a little dazed, would have insisted. But in the face of his persistent, good-natured refusal, I perceived that I had been mistaken. The man was not a type; he was an individual. And thereafter we became, as I have suggested, friends. If there was a grease-cup missing when he washed the car, I was sure to find it replaced. If my brakes needed adjusting, he found time to attend to them. A surface-cut on a tire that passed under his hands was apt to be filled with cement and composition and firmly closed. I eventually discovered that this habit was no secret to Forgan.
“He thinks we ain’t wise,” the foreman said to me. “But I’ve spotted him at it. Long as he does them things on his own time, why should we kick? We don’t want to soak our customers. We’re human, ain’t we? Besides, it makes ’em good-natured. And Ernie likes to think he’s putting something over. So I don’t let on.”
But it was not that Ernie liked to think he was putting something over; it was simply, as the man had told me, that he liked to tinker. I was not alone in his favor. Others also benefited. He was a friend of all the world.
II
I missed him one day when I drove in and left the car. Forgan laughed at my question.
“Yep,” he said. “Gone. Got a vacation. Guy came in here—one of these movie men. Spotted Ernie, and said he wanted him for a picture. Said he looked the part. He’ll be back in a month or so. ’Less he gets the bug.”
I was interested, and a little amused at the thought of Ernie on the film; and I hoped he would come back at the end of the stipulated month, hoped he would, in fact, escape the bug.
As matters chanced, it was two weeks over the allotted month before I had occasion to take my car to the service-station. I drove in on my way to town in the morning, and Forgan slid back the doors for me, and Ernie’s familiar smile, a little more alert than of old, greeted me from the washing-floor.
“Just a wash and a polish,” I told Forgan, as I rolled past him at the door; and he nodded and said,
“Give her to Ernie.”
I maneuvered in the narrow passage and headed in to the washing-floor; but Ernie held up a warning hand, smiling and nodding.
“Cut her,” he called. “Over this side.”
And as I obeyed, wondering what it was all about, I saw that he cocked a wise eye toward the ceiling. Under his guidance, I brought the car into the position he desired, and then alighted and asked:
“What’s the idea, Ernie! Used to be any old place would do.”
Ernie chuckled.
“Look a’ there,” he admonished, and pointed upward. “There’s an arrangement I’ve fixed up. Just shut up your windows and you’ll see.”
Mine is a sedan; I obediently closed windows and doors.
“Rigged her myself,” Ernie repeated. “Just three-four lengths of pipe and a punch. Works great on a closed car.” And he yanked at the long wooden pole which opened the water-valve against the ceiling.
That which Ernie had indicated so pridefully was a rectangle of two-inch pipe, hung in such position that it was just above the roof of the car. When the valve was opened, from this pipe through numberless orifices descended a veritable water-curtain composed of many tiny streams. The water struck upon the top of the car and flowed down over front and rear and sides in sheets.
“Wets her and rinses her all at once,” Ernie pointed out to me. “Saves a lot of time, and does a sight better job. I rigged her.”
He was, as I have said, immensely proud—proud as a child. The idea was undoubtedly ingenious, and I told him so.
“I got a lot of ideas,” he assured me. “I’m figuring on them.”
I nodded.
“How’d you like the movies?” I asked.
“Great!” he said. “Say, I want to tell you—”
But I was already overdue at the office, and I made my excuses to the old man. Another time, I said, would do. He agreed, as he always agreed, and I left him at work upon the car. Forgan, at the door, winked in his direction as I passed, and asked,
“Do you make him?”
“Why?” I inquired. “What do you mean?”
“You watch the old coot,” Forgan admonished me. “He’s a new man.”
III
I heard from Ernie, and in fragmentary snatches, the story of his moving-picture experience. There was a studio in one of the more remote suburbs, the plant of a fly-by-night company of none too good repute. The director of this company it was who had enticed Ernie away.
“They wanted me,” he told me seriously one day, “because I looked so much like Tom Edison. Didn’t you ever notice that?”
I did not smile, for Ernie was perfectly sober. But that this washer of automobiles was even remotely like the great inventor seemed to me a ridiculous suggestion. It was true that Ernie had white hair, had a round and placid face; but there was in his countenance none of that strength which is so evident in the other’s. I told myself that it was possible the picture-people were wiser than I, that under the lights and with a touch of makeup here and there—
“A war-film, it was,” Ernie assured me. “I was the big man in it.”
“So?” I prompted.
“Yeah. Inventor. Working on a new torpedo thing. Spies after it, trying to get it from me. They had me working in a shop with barred windows and a steel door and a guard outside. Had a bed there. Slept there. In the picture, you understand. Ate there and everything. People’d come to see me, and I’d show ’em how the thing worked. I was the big man in that picture, I’ll tell you.”
“That must have been an interesting experience,” I suggested.
He nodded, started to speak, but an expression curiously and almost ludicrously secretive crossed his countenance. He held his tongue, turned back to his task in a manner almost curt.
I drove out, and just outside the door—this was in January, and there was snow upon the streets—one of my chains flipped off. Forgan’s hail of warning stopped me, and he shut the door and came out to help me adjust the chain.
“I see Ernie telling you about his movie,” he said, as we worked. And I was surprised, for the man’s tone was perfectly respectful.
“Yes,” I replied. “He seems to take it seriously.”
“Well, now, you know,” Forgan told me, “it’s made a big change in Ernie.”
“Change?” I blew upon my cold fingers and fumbled at the chains.
“Yes. He never had much git-up to him before. But now he’s full of ideas. Rigged that water-curtain to wash the cars. Things like that. Good ideas, too.”
My interest was caught.
“A real inventor?”
“You’d be surprised. He took him two of these here electric pads that you sleep on when you got the lumbago, and made a bag of them, just right to fit round the carbureter and the manifold of his old flivver; and he keeps her all warm at night from the light-socket. No heat in his garage. No starter on his car; but he says she starts at the first whirl now.”
“That’s pretty good,” I agreed. “More power to him. I’ve no heat, either. Use one of those electric things under the hood; but Ernie’s notion is better.”
“Get him to make you one,” Forgan advised. And, the chain adjusted, I stepped in and drove away.
I was able, thus prompted by Forgan, to mark the development in Ernie during the succeeding weeks. He became steadily more alert of eye, and at the same time more confident of his own powers. One day in early spring I drove in and remarked that I had dropped a grease-cup off the forward right-hand spring.
“I’ll stick one on,” he promised. “One around here somewheres.” And added, “You won’t be using them things any more in a year or two.”
“I suppose you’re right. They’ll do away with them somehow,” I agreed.
“They won’t,” said Ernie. “But I will.”
“You’ve got a scheme? Automatic lubrication?”
“Better than that,” he told me.
“Better?”
“I’ll show you one o’ these days,” he promised. But would say no more.
IV
It was not till early May that I was shown, and, as the thing chanced, it was Forgan who then showed me.
I happened to come in when Ernie was not there. We spoke of him, and Forgan said,
“You know what that old guy’s done?” I shook my head. “Company’s backing him,” said Forgan. “He’s got a great thing. You come down-stairs.”
We went down to the machine shop under the receiving floor. Forgan unlocked the door, led me into a small room. On a bench was set up a tiny electric motor, harnessed to a wheel and connected with a simple bit of apparatus which had no meaning, at first sight, at all. But Forgan stopped the motor and made all clear to me. The power revolved a wooden spindle, which entered a hole in a steel block, whirling there. I could perceive no purpose in this, but Forgan said:
“It’s a test. It don’t do anything. Feel of it. Ain’t hot, is it?”
I touched the steel, touched the spindle that had been revolving so swiftly.
“No.”
“See if you can pull it out.” I tried, and failed. “Tight fit, you see,” Forgan told me. “But she’s been spinning in there for three days now, except when we stop her to measure once in a while. No oil, and no heat, and no wear.”
“But what’s it all about?” I asked.
“That’s an oilless bearing,” Forgan explained, a little disgusted with my stupidity. “Piece of hard wood, filled with oil. Use the stuff to make wrist-pins and all, and you’ll never have to oil your chassis at all.”
The thing broke upon me.
“But does it work?” I asked.
“You see it,” he said. “It works here. Well, it’ll work anywhere.”
“And Ernie figured that out?”
“He sure did.”
“Why, the man’s a genius!”
“Yeah. Ever since he went and got his picture took.”
“How does he make this, anyway—this bearing? Soak the wood in oil?”
Forgan laughed.
“Not as easy as that. He puts her in as hot as the devil, and under a lot of pressure. Don’t just know how. He won’t tell. He’s got a lay-off now to work it out. Figuring on cost. Cost’s too much now; but he’s going to figure to make it cheaper. He—”
Ernie himself came in just then. I hardly knew him. He had on a new suit of clothes; he was close-shaven, and his hair was trimmed. His bearing was that of a successful and confident man, and he nodded to the respectful Forgan as one nods to a chauffeur.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Cool as a cucumber,” Forgan assured him.
“Any wear?”
“I’ll see,” the foreman said with alacrity, and proceeded to dismantle the test-apparatus and apply a micrometer to the bearing. Ernie nodded to me, and I said,
“Seems like a fine thing.”
“It is,” he replied, positively and confidently, yet without a trace of arrogance or ugly pride. “Yes; it will do very well.”
“No wear at all,” Forgan reported, and Ernie nodded assent.
“Keep her going,” he directed.
While Forgan was setting the apparatus again in position, Ernie and I went up the stair together. He said, as we came to the main floor,
“By the way, that film, you know—”
“The one you were in—”
“Yes. It’s at the Globe next week.”
“I’ll surely go and see it,” I promised him.
We separated with a word, and I drove home, marveling at this new man that had been Ernie Budder—marveling at the power of suggestion. He had been told that he looked like a great inventor, and he had emerged from this experience stimulated, sure of himself, alert, and keen—a new man.
Such a slight fillip from the finger of Destiny to throw open before a man’s feet new and lofty ways—
V
Toward the end of the next week I went to the Globe, and so understood at last that what Destiny had brewed was tragedy. Ernie was in the film; so far he had been right. But in how different a rôle! I could understand how they had tricked him. An actor on the screen knows nothing, or may know nothing of scenes in which he does not himself appear. Ernie had no doubt been told that he was playing the part of a great inventor upon whom the hopes of the nation rested; he had accepted the explanation, had accepted the barred windows, the steel door, the guard outside, and the solicitous visitors.
But he had been deceived, perhaps because they feared he would not otherwise consent to play the part they assigned to him. For the Ernie in the films was no great inventor but an insane old man; the bars at his windows were the bars of a madman’s cell. Within, this madman pottered at his mad designs, and the guard at the door was not to keep others out but to keep him in; and the solicitous visitors paid him no respect but only humored his poor illusion. There were tears in my eyes before the thing was finished—tears of pity for Ernie, and tears of hot anger at the callous brutality of those who had contrived this thing. I thought of legal action on his behalf; but they had, no doubt, been wise enough to have him sign a release from all responsibility. There was nothing that could be done.
I avoided the service-station for the week thereafter; I could not bear to see Ernie. But at last it was necessary to go in. I planned to tell him, if he asked, that I had missed seeing the film. So much poor kindness I could do the man.
When I drove in, he was on the washing-floor, working about a limousine. The old, ragged hose was in his hand; the sprinkler he had designed was still attached to the ceiling, but unused. I parked my car in an empty space and walked across to him. He looked up with his old timidly amiable smile, and I saw that the alert confidence and the sense of power were utterly gone.
“There’s a grease-cup missing, Ernie, from the rear end,” I told him. “If you see one kicking around—”
“Why, yes; sure,” he promised me.
I hesitated, then said smilingly, “Won’t need to bother with them in a year or two—”
By his answer, I knew that the dreams were gone and the vision was fled.
“Oh, I guess we’ll have to keep puttering on in the same old ways,” said Ernie Budder hopelessly.