Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

The Chest nodded and raised his fist. “I shall pray for it, _____,” he said.

By that time we were in view of the plateau at the top of the mountain and the Summit House, a museum dedicated to height and vision. With its wide decks and clean histories, the Summit House loomed over us, its cool breath on our shoulders, western Massachusetts flapping its gaze on all sides.

I set the VW down and he ran to the stairs and started hopping up them — one at a time, then two. “Dad!” he said.

“Easy, kiddo,” I said.

“Two at a time!” the VW said.

“Yup, I see,” I said. The Chest and I walked up the steps, around the VW and onto the deck.

“I’m doing it,” he said. “Look. See?”

“I see it, buddy,” I said.

Then all three of us leaned against the deck railing and peered out at western Massachusetts — which, at that moment, looked almost real. Sure, there were wires, but most of it was grass and wood, with actual pavement along the roads and literal houses and rivers. I think back on this and wonder: Was there any hint of grey smoke in the air? Was there scenery, or anything in the margins? I can’t say. My memory keeps this scene clear, and gives it sunlight and honest-to-rivet clouds.

But I do remember the VW pointing out a virus of red and grey buildings in the distance and asking me what it was. “Is that a disease? Is the land sick?” he suggested.

“Sick?” the Chest of Drawers said. “No it’s not sick—”

“Well, that depends—” I said.

“That’s Northampton U,” said the Chest.

“That’s a school, buddy,” I said.

“I used to teach there, VW,” the Chest said. The VW nodded, then started running his hand along the bars of the railing. I could tell that the Chest of Drawers would have liked to have told the VW more about his career, but the VW turned and skipped along the veranda.

I sat down on one of the benches and stared out at the expanse. “That’s about as honest a view of things as I have ever seen,” I steined.

The Chest didn’t say anything. He just sat very still on the bench, looking at the view, his eyes beginning to trade.

“Chest — what,” I said to him.

“I’m sorry?” the Chest said, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“The expression on your face is a China House,” I said.

The Chest smiled. “I’m just listening,” he said.

I looked out at the green fields, the tiny bioleggers on the road below. “To what?” I said.

“You don’t hear that?” he said.

“Hear what ?”

“That sound? The pasture-chord?”

I listened. “No,” I said. “I don’t hear anything but wind.”

“It’s a song — it’s being sent from over there, I think,” the Chest said, pointing west.

“I can’t hear it.”

The Chest grimaced and shook his head. “I would share it with you if I could,” he said.

• • •

A few minutes later the three of us started our walk down the mountain. I didn’t carry the VW this time; I just tried to keep an eye on him. When he’d stop too long to smell or touch something — funky-shaped leaves, animal poop, paths that intersected ours — I’d call his name sternly and he’d come running.

As we continued, though, the Chest and I became engrossed in a conversation — we were talking about a mutual friend, Dancing Fingers, who the Chest told me had recently died. I was stunned — this woman was my age, and she lived less than a mile away from me in Northampton. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about that?” I said.

“She was sick for a while,” the Chest said.

I shook my head. “I had no idea.”

Fingers had been a peer of mine and the Lady from the Land of the Beans’s back in college, and as far as I knew the two of them continued to speak once a month or so by phone. I wondered why the Lady from the Land of the Beans hadn’t called me or told me, or told the Volkswagen to tell me.

“It was a stomach condition,” the Chest said. “Her stomach wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t cooperate.”

“Wouldn’t cooperate ?”

The Chest shook his head. “The stomach had its own ideas about what it wanted to be.”

“What did it want to be?”

“A scholar.”

“Of what?”

“Of gastrointestinal studies ,” the Chest flacked, as if I should have known better than to ask.

We walked on without saying anything. Then I said, “Was there a funeral?”

The Chest nodded.

“Was it a small one?”

“No, there were a lot of people there. Didn’t you read the obituary in the Wheel ?”

“I don’t know how I missed it,” I said.

I was lost in a regretfog for the next few minutes of the hike, and I only came out of it because I realized that I didn’t know where my son was. I stopped and looked around. “Wait a minute,” I said to the Chest. “Where’s the VW?”

He stopped and turned around. “VW?” he called out.

There was no response.

The Chest of Drawers and I walked back up the hill, calling his name. We found him a few hundred feet up the trail; he was just standing there and staring into the woods. “Hey,” I said, grabbing his shoulder. “What did I say about staying close?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Hey—” I said again, but then the Chest of Drawers said my name.

I turned.

“Look,” the Chest said, and he pointed off the path.

I peered into the green rage, and after a moment I saw what had stopped the VW: About a hundred feet away, a bank and a pinball machine were intertwined and faithing against a tree, their backpacks on the ground beside them.

I crouched down next to my son.

“What are they doing?” he whispered.

The pinball machine’s scoreboard was full, the bank’s windows fogged. They were so involved — so cofaithed — that they didn’t even know we were there.

“Come on — let’s go,” I said to the VW.

The VW’s face joined. “Are they hurting each other?”

I took a breath. “There’s risk involved, because of what they can’t see,” I told him. “Plus the risk of trust. But no — they’re not hurting each other.”

The bank whispered something in the pinball machine’s ear and the pinball machine giggled.

“What are they saying to each other?” the VW said.

“They’re expressing their faith, VW — sharing it,” the Chest of Drawers said.

I couldn’t help but stare — I was mesmerized by their faith-in-progress. My stomach began hitchhiking its way through my body, looking for beans.

Then I stood up. “Let’s leave them be,” I said.

“Where does the faith come from?” said the VW.

Or was it a pinball machine and a French horn fearing?

I guess it doesn’t really matter.

“And what’s the point of it?” the VW said.

I didn’t know what to say to that, either. I tried to form an answer.

Just then I heard a rustle, soft at first and then louder. I looked to my left and I saw a leaf floating off the ground.

I stood up.

Another leaf floated upwards, then another.

“Oh no,” I said loudly.

The bank/French horn and the pinball machine heard me, stopped their faith and froze. They studied us for a moment. Then they grabbed their clothes and bags and ran deep into the trees.

But I was no longer concerned with them — I was focused on the leaves. I pointed to one. “Don’t you see it?” I said to the Chest of Drawers.

He just stared at me. “What — the wind?” he said.

“Look!” I said. Leaves were floating upwards all around us now.

Distracted by other things — the VW, the faith in the trees — I had forgotten to keep the mountain straight in my mind. I had let it go, and now it was changing, reversing itself, growing young: The leaves, as they floated back up towards the branches they’d fallen from, were turning from brown back to green.