Bob's Machine

So, you’re thinking about working for Mr. Bob Hensham, huh? Think he’s the cat’s pajamas or something? Think his business is going places, but you’re wondering, why am I going around town telling people that he’s the Devil?

I’m really glad you asked me that. Settle down, thanks for the beer, and open them big old ears of yours, and I’ll tell you why I quit working for him.

I started out with Bob Hensham back in ninety-four. Did a fair stint in his scrapyard, breaking cars, washing machines, industrial equipment, that kind of thing. Bob was pretty much willing to take on any kind of junk if he could smell a profit in it. And to his credit, he had a nose on him. He could smell cash in the wind, he’d tell me and there was nothing he did in those first years that would have convinced me otherwise.

He made money when times were good, he made more money when times were hard. Oh yeah, when times were hard, old Bob really raked it in.

His yard kept on growing, and he found more and more people willing to put up with his shitty rates of pay, folk just looking to be able to make ends meet. This went on for a few years, and the yard was doing well enough for him to look to buy out his competitors.

Bob’s main rival was our neighbor—another breakers yard—run by a good old boy by the name of Stanley Evershall. He was a decent man, always willing to give good prices for people’s scrap. Not a man you’d want to cross exactly, but none of them scrap-men were, not back then. Not now either, come to think of it.

Bob got on all right with Stan in the early years, Stan didn’t seem to mind there being a friendly bit of rivalry between them, if you could call that kind of thing friendly. But then there was Stan’s watchdog. Big Mastiff called Doug. If you didn’t know him, you’d be right to be scared of him, and he put the shits up most of the men who worked around there. But if you took the time to get to know him, he was okay. He knew who was boss, and that was Stan. Most of the day he stayed in the shed in the front of the yard, but at night he had free run of the place.

Now, one thing you should know about Bob is that he has a mortal fear of dogs. He told me about it, once. When he was a kid his big brother, Arthur, came across this mongrel. He brought it home, gave it a bath, hid it from their folks in the bedroom he shared with his brother. When Bob turned in for the night, the first thing he knew was this poor animal barking up a storm, mad that this stranger had invaded his space. He needed inches of stitches on his face, you can still see them scars today, and rabies shots on top. Arthur ran away that night, having half the county out looking for him. They found him, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. And things were never the same between the brothers, but I’ll come back to that.

So, Bob hated Doug with a passion, top of the list of many things he hated. But his fear was stronger. It was a weakness in him, and he despised that even more.

One morning, about ten years ago, Doug got loose and wandered into Bob’s yard without being noticed. Bob did a walk around first thing with this travel cup of coffee his wife made for him every morning, without fail, and he was out there come rain or shine, working things out.

That morning, he was mid-sip of his coffee when there’s this growl from under one of the stacks of crushed cars. Bob just froze in place, face white as a corpse, even pissed himself at one point. Doug came out and sniffed at Bob, fur bristling. But Bob didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Damn animal planted himself not two feet from Bob and just growled at him now and again. Bob must have stank of fear. That and piss, I guess.

By then Stan had worked out where his guard dog had gone and hurried over, saw what was going on and called Doug back. Stan’s all apologetic, embarrassed all to hell. Said he’d chain him up at night so he couldn’t escape again.

Bob tells him it’s fine, don’t worry about it, these things happen, trying to regain his composure. He’s not a forgiving man, old Bob, and I could see it seething inside of him for the next few months. He threw everything he had into buying Old Stan out, and he used every trick in the book to cause him problems. Nothing seriously illegal, he didn’t do that kind of thing back then, but harassment, phone calls at all hours, sending Stan’s collection people on wild goose chases. And he became more generous in trade deals than Stan could afford.

I heard him talking to his favorite goons about it. They were laughing as morons do, but Bob wasn’t laughing. Bob was razor focused.

Then one night, a couple of months later, there was an accident. I can’t prove otherwise. It seemed as though one of the stacks in Stan’s yard had been overbalanced. Right onto where Doug had been chained up. Bob made sure he was there when they lifted the last of the cars off. Stan took one look at what was left and burst into tears on the spot.

Bob says to him, These things happen, and walks away.

Well, that had been the final straw for Stan, and he sold out to Bob. We tore down the fence between the two yards, and he was the king of shit. I was promoted to foreman, had a bit more cash in my pocket. Thoughts of making my girl an honest woman. Things were looking up.

Then he found the Machine, and things began to change.

We never knew who built it. It was hidden in a shack right at the back of Stan’s yard. Must have been there for years, decades even. Forgotten, ignored, cold. It had to have weighed about two tons, an immense furnace, made out of unfinished cast-iron so rough you could skin your palm off it. Covered in soot and cobwebs and dried bird shit. But what really caught the eye was these huge steel interlocking rollers, the teeth sharp as the devil’s kiss. Now, these things it appeared were designed to go only in one direction, so if you got anything caught between them, best cut yourself free because there was no way in hell you were getting that back. It was designed to rip up anything you fed it and incinerate what was left.

One poor fool called Mitch found that out the hard way. He’d pulled the tarp that was covering it away, and just stared like it was some kind of predator looking right back at him. He was just some dumb rabbit, caught in the headlights. I sent another guy back to tell Bob that we’d found something—I had no idea what we’d found at the time, but I knew straight away it was important.

Then Mitch called for me, and I found he’d pushed his gloved fingers through the rollers. God knows why he did it—even he couldn’t say. While we were working on how to get him out, that poor bastard slipped. He tried to steady himself on the rollers and his arm slid in deeper—almost to his elbow.

Never heard a man scream like that before, but I’ve heard it in my nightmares ever since. There was this sound, like rain on a tin roof. It was his blood, running down into the furnace, a constant pitter-patter as his life ran away.

The fire department turned up, as did an ambulance. None of us could work out how to free Mitch. The structure was too big to dismantle, and we couldn’t get equipment into where it was. The ruined mess of his arm was bleeding non-stop, so they made the only choice they had.

They first tried to cut below his elbow, but somehow, and I know you won’t believe me, the shredder seemed to move on its own, and poor Mitch was dragged in up to his bicep. He was out of screaming by then. His face had taken on this waxy pallor, and I was sure I was looking at a dead man.

They repositioned and thankfully made it look easy, cut the arm off right by the metal roller’s edge. Once he was free, the machine moved again, and we could hear the wet thump when his severed, splintered limb landed in the bed of the furnace.

Mitch made it. But he never came back to work. Bob paid a few people and the problem kind of went away. I only saw Mitch once more, years after that, in a way that changed a lot of things for me.

If Bob loved anything in his nasty little life he loved the Machine, the very first second he saw it. Its position meant it couldn’t be lifted by any of the equipment we had, so he got us all together and made us drag that thing out to where the cranes could reach.

Swear to God, it made me think of ancient Egypt, dragging stone blocks to build the pharaoh’s tomb. The men walked away with rope burns and fat wallets, which worked out fine for all concerned.

Bob spent real money refurbishing the goddamned thing. Replacing the motors on the mouth of death. We watched him testing it out; feeding timber to it, pieces of cars, bikes, anything that came to hand. There was this high pitched squeal as the jaws ran, put an edge on your teeth and we had to wear ear protection or else you’d walk out with a migraine after half an hour.

Bob fucking loved that. And he was on cloud nine when the furnace was reconditioned. The heat in there could melt lead. Nothing that went in would come out.

Then Bob started his medical disposal company.