Tin Man

In a bedroom hangs a framed picture of two men and a woman, all smiling. One of the men featured in the picture is now sleeping across the room. His name is Ellis Judd. The alarm clock wakes Ellis at five in the afternoon, just in time for him to prepare for his night shift at the Cowley Car Plant. As he bikes to his job, he wonders where the years went; he is now 45 and is still working the only job he has ever had. 

At one in the morning, Ellis gets his food from the canteen and sits with his coworkers, though he holds little affection for them. Afterwards, as he smokes, a young worker named Billy joins him to look at the stars. When Ellis leaves work at seven in the morning, he feels restless and bikes around town, waiting for the sun to rise. He hopes that the ride will let him clear his mind.

The next day, Ellis and Billy work on a car together. Billy tells Ellis that he has a date later, but that he thinks she is too good for him. He then asks whether Ellis has anyone special; Ellis explains that his wife, Annie, died a few years ago. Billy sympathizes with him, and Ellis is shocked by the 19-year-old’s grasp of the tragedy. When the horn blows and their shift ends, Billy asks Ellis to join him for a drink, but Ellis declines. Billy promises to drag him out for a drink one day. Ellis returns home, where he is surrounded by the emptiness of his life without Annie, his wife. He imagines her there with him, and as he drinks whisky to help him sleep, he remembers the first day he met her.

In December of 1976, Ellis delivered a Christmas tree to Annie’s house and helped her set it up. The two quickly took a liking to each other. Annie asked him what else he had to do that night, and Ellis assured her that she was his last delivery; he only needed to go back to the shop, where his friend Michael was waiting. She joined him, and the two raced through town back to the shop owned by Michael’s grandmother, Mabel. There, they found Michael, and the three of them spent the night together, drinking and joking.

The narrative returns to the present. The next day, Ellis wakes up in the afternoon and goes to work, though he feels a deep depression weighing him down. He sulks at work, and Billy warns everyone to give him space. On a break, Billy finds Ellis outside, crying. Ellis wants to tell Billy about his feelings, but he cannot bring himself to share his emotions; instead, he keeps them close, just as his own father, Leonard, would do. Instead of returning to work, Ellis leaves, riding away on his bike. Suddenly, he is hit by a car and falls, and he inexplicably feels as though the emotional pressure inside of him has been released.

Later, Ellis sits in bed with his arm in a cast, thinking of when he was a boy and looked up to his father with affection, believing Leonard to be gentle and special. One day, however, when Ellis expressed this by hugging his father, Leonard pushed the young Ellis away in disapproval. 

Now, Ellis listens as the music blasting next door is replaced by the sounds of sex. Through a haze of pain medication, he wonders why the whisky is in the bed with him. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up, he drinks more whisky and looks at the photo featuring him, Annie, and Michael. He remembers how much Annie liked to read, and of how he bought her a bookstore of her own, and Michael waiting inside with champagne when he brought her over for the surprise.

Ellis goes out into the garden, once beautiful but now overgrown. His neighbor, a student named Jamie, sees him and asks about his injuries. Ellis explains that he was in an accident, and Jamie brings him a mug of coffee. Ellis sips it and looks around the garden, disappointed about how he let it go after Annie died. Suddenly, his nose starts bleeding. When he runs inside to staunch the flow, he imagines Annie telling him that he is too distant and encouraging him to do the things he always wanted to do. “Go find him” (36), he imagines her saying.

Later that afternoon, Ellis goes for a walk, and when he passes Mabel’s shop, he looks in the window. It is now filled with junk, and he struggles to reconcile this sight with the shop of his childhood. 

Ellis contemplates the past, particularly one night in his childhood when Mabel asked Ellis to join her as she waited for her grandson, Michael, who had been recently orphaned after his mother left and his father died. When Michael arrived, he and Ellis took a liking to each other. On that first night, Ellis was surprised that Michael brought so many books with him. Michael, upon discovering that Ellis likes to draw, asked Ellis to draw him someday.

In the present, Ellis visits the house of his father, Leonard, and Leonard’s new partner Carol; Ellis wants to make sure that the pipes don’t freeze while they are away on vacation. He notices the absence of his mother’s Van Gogh painting and recalls the first time that Michael met Dora. The two liked each other instantly, as though Dora filled the role left open by Michael’s absent mother. The two discussed the painting and the life of Van Gogh. When Michael asked Dora if she would like to go to Arles, where Van Gogh painted, Dora told him that she wished she could go anywhere. She told the boys that it is fine for boys to express friendship, just like Van Gogh had when he had painted the sunflowers for his friend Gauguin. She also stressed that boys can make beautiful things. When Leonard returned home, Dora grew silent. A few days later, it snowed, and Dora brought the boys sledding. She told them to take in the view, and as they rushed down the hill, Michael and Ellis grew closer.