Higher Power

You don’t expect all the machines and wooden boards to suddenly come alive and try to kill you in a modest Home Depot, I bet, but tell that to Tasha Wooding and she may beg to differ. She went there, alone, with the kiddos at home with Amanda the Protestant babysitter, for a simple, ordinary screwdriver. That’s it. Nothing else. Jordan’s helicopter needed a screw put back in it, and he wouldn’t be satiated until it was mended. Tasha was more amazed than angry at herself for not having a screwdriver in her whole house, which she scoured and swept—wondering how the heck they had made it three years and four months in this abode without mankind’s essential tool. She didn’t know. Nothing had broken yet that duct tape couldn’t fix, so maybe the lack of the basic household apparatus was simply an occasion for pride. But at Home Depot, there was no pride. There was only desolation and terror of a primeval sort, dressed up as technologically advanced hardware. Sound like something a crazy person might report? To be clear, Tasha Wooding was an ordinary single mother who worked as a dental hygienist at Happy Teeth down on Wayward Avenue, and hadn’t had a date with a man since her days with Phil. (as in the Philips screwdriver, for context) She knew how to drill teeth out and poke needles into people’s mouths, and was attractive enough to gain the attention of her dentist boss Dr. Byopmor, who hailed from the Slavs and had no teeth himself. She loved her three kiddos and considered them the totality of her life’s meaning. She was sad most of the time, but distractions helped. And she had no past record of hallucinatory experiences. See? A completely normal human. So, going out to get a basic screwdriver was no hard task—she had never done it before, sure, but what could go wrong? She thought maybe Home Depot would be out of screwdrivers and she would have to go to Lowe’s, or check out the Auto Zone on her way home just to see if the car people had any basic screwdrivers in stock. She was competent. She had a plan B. She had plans A-Z, because that’s what America is all about, right? Backup plans, open ended options, infinite resources.

 A clean-shaven man of sixty named Harold assailed her as soon as she stepped afoot the marble floors and was confronted with the smell of hardware novelty: fresh wood, rubber products, paint, and ambiguous chemicals.

            “I need a screwdriver,” Tasha said.

            “Ah! No problem ma’am,” said Harold. “Just talk to Zoe. She’s that chica down yonder and can get you fixed up no problem!”

            “Thanks.”

            But Zoe knew nothing of screwdrivers. She told her through chewing gum and the kind of eye shadow that’s meant to intimidate and not attract that screwdrivers were in Jimmy’s department and that she was busy replenishing a certain beige paint to the home décor shelves.

            “Okay. Who’s Jimmy?”

            Zoe let her head roll down aisle five. Jimmy, she saw, was a skeletal college student who by the looks of him probably designed toy trains and created Morbius figurines in his spare time.

            “Excuse me,” said Tasha. “I was handed off to you. Looking for screwdrivers.”

            “Screwdrivers are down aisle eight,” the kid responded robotically, not even bothering to give her eye contact. “They come in all shapes and sizes. Flat head, Milwaukee square drive, megapro multi-bit, Pittsburgh magnetic, T5 Torx, Philips classic, Robertson twelve-set, the Frearson, the Clutch head, etc. etc.” (And he actually said “e” “t” and “c”) “Now the flathead is a pretty standard screwdriver and is a go to for those customers of ours with pretty basic screwdriver needs, you know…we’re talking tables, chairs and bookshelves, we’re talking loose bike parts and etc and etc, we’re talkin’ all that stuff! Now the Philips is gonna be noticeable by the “t” shape on the screw itself. You’re gonna need a Philips for any “t” shaped screws. Let me repeat. Your screwdriving needs will not be automatically satisfied if you purchase anything BUT” (finger raised and bloodshot eye aimed at the floor) “the Philips screwdriver. I hope I make myself a hundred percent clear because you would not BELIEVE all the idiots who come in, buy the wrong thing, and then blame ME that their precious screwdriving needs were not sufficiently met!” Here Jimmy hoarsely drew a deep breath, blinked a couple of times, and went on, “So you know I try to stay up on it. I make hardware my study. My science. This here is my crib, where I get down! I guarantee the transfer of information. I promise our customers will be serviced. I soldier on night and day to remain constantly updated on every screwdriver detail that surfaces on the internet. And let me tell you, you may not think there’s much of a Reddit strand on screwdrivers, but you’d be shocked! More popular than porn!” (This was a lie, of course. There are very few syndicated screwdriver affiliates in the internet ether and most of them are run by retired mechanics from Detroit.)

Tasha observed the screwdriver specialist with a knitted brow and wasn’t sure whether to praise the eager fool for his expertise or demand he eternally be silent. But turned out she didn’t need to do anything. Jimmy stopped talking and looked absently at a blinking fluorescent light panel above him, muttering to himself, “A bird nest.” Tasha hesitantly headed down aisle eight, wondering what the heck had just happened, although she wanted to see the birds.

It was a screwdriver, nothing special. The choices of this modern world, though! Choice, choice, choice, nothing but choice! Jimmy’s spiel reminded her of the latest dating app she had downloaded. The whole concept was choice. If Jimmy were it’s digital personality, he would say, “You want a man? We got ‘em! Tall, short, skinny, wide, Democrat, slick, effeminate and nice, macho, complementarian Baptist with special interest in hay-baling, blonde, black, Asian, Asian-American, Pacific-Islander, Jews who Nascar, etc etc etc!” She expected the choices to be of little consequence. After she and Phil had split, she assumed meeting people would be the easiest thing in the world. How do you meet people, anyway? You bump into them in Home Depot aisles, maybe, or sit in the same Unitarian church pew singing about collective divinity, OR, you scroll, scroll, scroll through all the choices, choices, choices….infinite aisles of men and screwdrivers for her to parse through at her leisure, unbound from fidelity!  

 She expected lots of choices. She expected the choice of peanut butter and off brand Cap’n Crunch for Jordan and Sidney. For the kids, the criteria for choice was easy. What was sweetest? For her, the choices were nearly moral. Was the peanut butter a product of corporate power in America? What kind of carbon footprint was this plastic going to leave? Was the chicken ethically sourced, and were the coffee beans grown out of a vision to inspire low-income communities across the world? Did the C.E.O. of this certain brand of beans align with the latest political ballyhoo? If not, what message was she sending to the world if she bought them? Could she bear the guilt of a wrong decision? So, yes, she expected choice, and she furthermore expected the choices to somehow be weighed with eternal consequence. She was competent. She had experience with choice and expected it. What she didn’t expect, and what no person in her right mind would expect, mind you, was for these wondrous screwdrivers that Jimmy had so generously summoned to burst out of their plastic bondage and march military style against her, shanks forward. These bad boys actually marched in regiments, jumping off the shelves and forming their phalanxes under the apparent tutelage of a twelve-inch Philip screwdriver hopping around from the top of a service ladder. The Torx and multi-bits and Frearsons all meant serious business and looked particularly equipped, each in their own way, to bring destruction unto all in their path. Tasha blinked. What else was she to do? She laughed and waited to wake up. These trippy dreams haunted her from time to time. Whatever—she could deal with them, although waking up these days in an empty bed was a bit harder as opposed to waking with the body of a lover there, which used to be Phil, like the Philip’s screwdriver. But she kept viewing the amassing army at her feet, and now the electric drills were joining in on the march too, whizzing and whirring from behind like trolls banging the battle drums.

“What in the…”

“As you see we have many, many options,” said Jimmy over the clamor. “Etc!”

If summoning a heroic knight to the scene was an option, Tasha would have opted for it, but this onlooking Jimmy would have to do. She ran back to his side, wide eyed and pointing to the miniature brigade, but Jimmy’s eyes were glazed, still locked on the nest on the edge of the florescent lights. By now, the planks of wood from the lumber department apparently decided to join in on the crusade, forming lines at the head of the store and making concerted leaps and bounds like rigid giraffes intent on the kill. Somehow, they all shouted, “Pick a 2 by 4! 12 feet of lumber! For your home projects! For your chicken coops! For your patio and porch needs! For your building of bridges! For your this and that, etc etc!” Buckets of paint, including Zoe’s beige, sloshed in procession down aisle five chanting the same kind of salesmanship. Doorknobs rolled furiously, competing with one another to get at the front of the line. Paintbrushes dipped themselves in red paint and left gruesome trails. Look at that bloodlike texture! Where was Harold? Tasha slapped Jimmy in the face. “Ouchie,” he whispered, not moving.

She ran for aisle seven. Nope, because of the paint rollers rolling handles forward towards her on their sheepskin pads. She did need to  Aisle six? Another failure due to the uproarious collection of screws, which scintillated brightly in the fluorescent light and shouted in unison, “At her boys! At her!”

Tasha was cornered at all angles, virtually a woman about to be stoned for an ambiguous list of crimes she was only half aware of committing. She had made the step to fetch the screwdriver, hadn’t she? All for her poor son’s helicopter? Unto no avail! The hardware parts were on a vengeful kind. It was when the first Philip’s screwdriver started spinning against the surface of her ankle, demanding her purchase, her love, her life, that she cried to a Higher Power to help her and suddenly a great host of birds and flying squirrels poured in through the vents in the high ceiling, performing nose dives equitable to the Red Tails in World War I. What proceeded will surely go down in military history. How did these honorable faunae know that she loved things that breathed, flew, and fought, that she needed rescue? And how were they so good as to save her from an army of inanimate metals and gears? Gosh, did they let the screwdrivers have it, especially the leading Philips. “You leave the young lady alone, ya hear?” screamed a preeminent flying squirrel with a golden tail as he tackled the Philips and wrested it unconscious to the ground. “Die vainly, you fiends!”

The birds aimed themselves in flocks against the paint buckets and screws, and there were certainly some feathers lost and talons plucked in the ensuing melee, but the victory was swift and pronounced. The vile hardware parts were forced to limp in shame back to their shelves and reassume their posts as lifeless things created by manmade factories.

“Well,” said the golden tailed squirrel as Tasha scooted out from underneath a large boxing crate. “You’re safe, ma’am. It’s our duty to serve and protect and doggone it that’s what we aim to do in moments of trial.”

“Well…thank you,” Tasha said with all the birds, which were painted so many natural colors she couldn’t even hope to count them all. “I think you’ve all just saved my life.”

“Glad to do it, glad to do it!” they all chirped and chattered. And just as soon as they had come in, they all flew away, leaving the modest Home Depot in its same assortment of chemicals and machines and screwdrivers, with Jimmy the screwdriver extraordinaire still starting idly at the bird’s nest.

It later came to light that Harold, Zoe, and Jimmy were aliens from outer space with the diabolical power to raise inanimate objects to life and cause them to infiltrate people’s homes and sabotage many a renovation project. Apparently the same was happening in other sectors too. A whole terrifying ordeal. All the screwdrivers and parasitical paint buckets and warring drill machines had to be recalled and, in some cases, shot down by SWAT teams, and many apologies were sent from the CEO. There was a worldwide movement to build one’s own patios and meet one’s own spouses, and to go into a store with a single objective and to leave it having accomplished that single objective, without dilly dallying and despair. Tasha, as a plan B, dropped by Philip’s house after the Home Depot debacle to borrow a screwdriver. They had a long talk and Philip (as in Philips screwdriver for context) ended up going over to help Jordan with the helicopter himself, because apparently that’s what dads do.