Scotty Green's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

For three days the mechanical pup ran to Papa Ward's shed and back. Each trip it dragged home cogs and springs for Scotty's bench. The line below the water tower shrank. Then, on the fourth morning, the little white dog came back empty. It circled the hatch and whined. Scotty wound its key and sent it again. It returned with nothing but a bent screw clamped in its jaw. "The shed's running dry," Scotty said. He set the screw down. "Pops warned me. Thirty years of picking. The good scrap's near gone." He looked at the row of broken clocks and toys still waiting. Every one needed a fine brass gear he didn't have. Amanda climbed through the hatch with her own toolbox. She set it down and listened to the bare bench. "You're stuck," she said. Not a question. "The dog finds parts. There are no parts left to find." Scotty rubbed his face. "I need a new source, or the whole workshop stalls." Amanda knelt by the pup. She ran one finger along the gears at its collar. "These toys," she said. "How many are broken for good?" "A few. Cracked plates. Stripped frames. Can't save them." "Then stop saving them." She picked up a dead clockwork toy from the scrap pile. She popped its back panel with a flat blade. Inside sat a clean brass gear, the exact kind Scotty needed. "The broken ones are the source. You've been chasing the shed. The shed's in this room." Scotty stared at her. He grabbed the pile of ruined toys he'd set aside as hopeless. One had a good spring. Another held three fine gears. A third gave him a brass plate he could cut down. The parts had been there all week. "The dog can't smell these," Amanda said. "They're already here. You don't need it for this." She handed him the gear. "You need your hands." He fit the gear into the first waiting clock. He wound it. The hands moved. He gutted a second dead toy and used its spring on the next job. By dusk he'd cleared six repairs using nothing but parts pulled from the broken. But the scrap pile was small. Scotty counted what was left. A dozen dead toys, maybe less. He could strip them for a week. Then they'd be gone too, and so would the shed. "This buys me time," he said. "Not forever." "No," Amanda agreed. She closed her toolbox. "You'll run out of dead ones. Then you'll have to make parts, not find them." Scotty looked at his tools. He'd never cut a gear from raw brass. He'd only ever replaced them. The pup sat at his feet, useless for this new problem. To keep his free workshop open, he'd have to learn to build parts himself, from nothing but stock and a file.