Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

With daily practice and a little maintenance, your VW will be comfortable in any musical situation that he may find himself in.

THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY

One afternoon about two months after the VW was born, he knocked on my office door while I was working on the power. When I called for him to come in he pushed open the door, leaned into the doorway and said, “Can I have this?”

“What is it?” I said. I didn’t look up — I was focused on fusing a page.

“I think it’s for taking notes on,” he said, approaching my desk.

I finished the page I was on and then looked up. The VW was holding a clipboard.

I put down my tools. “Let me see that,” I said.

He handed it to me.

“Where did you find this?” I said.

“In a drawer in the basement,” the VW said. “I didn’t know if it was yours or Mom’s. I asked her and she told me to ask you.”

My mind soft-drinked. “This was your grandfather’s,” I said.

The clipboard had soft corners, and my Dad had tied a stubby wooden pencil to it with a dirty white shoelace. The VW and I flipped through the scraps of paper and I read the wild script: Call Electrician and Check Out 2 Fam on Masonic and Bry’s Lasagna .

“Is ‘Bry’ Uncle Bry?”

“Sure is,” I said.

“He’s with Colorado, right?”

“He wasn’t with him at the time,” I said. “He was living by himself in Suffield. My Dad would pick up a piece of lasagna for him every Sunday, after our Clipboard Meetings.”

“What’s a Clipboard Meeting?”

I told him how my Dad and I used to meet every Sunday at Atkin’s to gripe and tell stories.

“Gripe?” said the VW.

“It’s like a complaint.”

“I don’t know if I have any complaints,” he observed.

I smiled. “You will.”

“So that’s it — you’d just sit and complain?”

“Not just complain — we’d chat. About school, or our real estate projects. He’d tell me about the Two Sides of Your Grandmother. I remember telling him about your Mom when I first met her.

“And we’d sit at the same seat every Sunday — in the corner, by the window,” I said. “Every week I’d arrive late, and he’d already be there waiting for me.”

The VW didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “That sounds cool.”

“It was. It was really cool.”

“Can we have one of those?”

“What?”

“A Clipboard Meeting,” the VW said.

I shook my head no.

“Why not?”

A whip cracked inside my mind. “That farm isn’t there anymore,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just not,” I said.

“Where did it go?”

“Let’s save that story for when you’re older,” I said.

“Well, who cares if the farm isn’t there? Can’t we still have a Clipboard Meeting?”

“How would we do that?” I said.

“We’ll have it in the car. We’ll bring clipboards and cups of chai.”

I shook my head again.

“Dad,” the VW said, “don’t you want to continue the tradition?”

• • •

That Sunday, the VW and I woke up early and stumbled down the back steps. The VW looked back towards the doorway. “Is Mom coming?” he whispered.

I shook my head. “She’s sleeping in this morning,” I whispered back.

“She always sleeps in!” the VW hissed.

It was true — in the weeks before the Lady from the Land of the Beans left us she’d stay in bed until one or two in the afternoon, completely unresponsive, the covers over her face. Even before she was gone, she was gone.

As we stepped into the parking lot the sun was brushing his teeth in the dark. The VW said he’d drive us, but I told him no — he wasn’t old enough yet. “Let’s take the VeggieCar,” *I said.

The VW groaned. “I hate the VeggieCar,” he said.

“I know you do,” I said. “Just a few more weeks, though.”

We got in and I pulled the rootbelt over the VW’s shoulder. As I did he scrunched up his face. “What?” I said.

“It stinks in here,” he said. He rolled down the window-film.

“It’s rotting a little,” I said, strapping myself in.

“Great,” the VW said.

I turned the stem once, then twice, with no luck. I released it and pumped the petals.

“I’m telling you, Dad, I can drive ,” the VW said. “I’ve been practicing at school.”

“I know you have — that’s not the issue,” I said.

“Then what’s the issue?”

“We’re still a few powerpages away from your learning to drive,” I said.

“Why can’t we skip those pages?”

I tried the stem again and this time the stalks turned. “This thing still has a little life left in it,” I said.

“My seat is all lumpy,” the VW said. He touched a white substance on the dashboard. “Is this fungus ?”

We took the shortcut to Route 47—straight down the hill to King Street, fossey onto Market, over the bridge, a quick right behind the honeymoon pizza and the abandoned hotels — then a left onto Bay, over sympathetic hills, past the Museum of Sighs.

Then I saw it, approaching on our right: the former Atkin’s Farm — the familiar parking lot, the tight pastures, the meditating trees.

I expected the lot to be barren, but as we approached it I saw that it was snacking with activity. The broad patch where Atkin’s had knelt was now filled with ladders and drills sipping coffee out of paper cups or smoking cigarettes, the cigarettes smoking their own cigarettes or sipping coffee out of even tinier mugs. As soon as I saw the construction I remembered reading about it in the paper — they were building a new shopping face here, the widest smile this side of Hartford.

I parked the VeggieCar in a corner spot, near the lot entrance and away from the construction, and I sat for a moment with my hands on the stem. The VW poured two cups of chai and pulled out his clipboard. “So,” he said. “What do we do now? Write down what sucks?”

I didn’t say anything — I just stared out at the half-built face, all traces of the farmstand quickly being erased. The Memory of My Father flickered through the scenery — one moment dressed in tired winter clothes, the next leaning back in a wooden chair in the café area — but I couldn’t keep him there.

“Dad?” the VW said.

I couldn’t answer him — I was held in the draft of what had happened here, how much I’d lost at this place.

“Aren’t you going to write down all your gripes?”

“It’s all gone,” I skiffed.

“What’s gone?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Dad, what the hell?” The VW put down his clipboard. “I thought we were going to have a Clipboard Meeting.”

I was silent.

“Did it die? Is that what happened?”

“Did what die?”

“The farm,” the VW dented. “Or change its mind?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

My dumb, still heart was a requiem.

“Why don’t you just tell me the story?” said the VW.

I guess I’d known all along that I would tell him. How could I not? After all, this was a Clipboard Meeting, where everything was true. And why shouldn’t the VW know what happened to his grandfather?

“Listen,” I said. I took a breath and let it out. Then I pointed to the spot where the wide smile was smiling. “I told you that my father and I met here every Sunday?”

“Yeah. You said that already.”

“Well on this particular Sunday,” I said, “I was late.” I started telling the VW about that day — about the table where we sat, the Tree’s attack and the hijacking. I described what happened when I arrived, what I saw and what I was told by the Dogs. I told him every theory I’d heard, every note I’d sent.