Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

As I was waiting at the café counter, though, I noticed a glass case in front of me with some bulges of plastic beneath it. When I looked closer I saw a purple organ with blue arteries beneath the plastic. These were actual fake hearts, I realized, and expensive ones, too — two hours a pop, according to the piece of paper next to them.

When I think now about what my father’s heart was worth — how many hours!

“Those hearts?” I asked the typewriter behind the counter.

He nodded. “Made by Pothole Pastries. They’re good.”

“They for trees?”

He nodded.

“Sell a lot of them?”

The typewriter shook his head. “Barely any. They’re big with some breeds, but we don’t get so many trees in here anymore. There used to be one, he’d come in almost every day on break.”

“He doesn’t buy them any more?”

“He doesn’t come by — he hasn’t been here in months,” the typewriter said.

As subtly as I could I reached into my bag, turned on my book of power and pushed the button for it to record. “How come?” I said.

The typewriter looked at me skeptically. “Can I get you a coffee or something?”

I reached into my wallet and slipped an hournote across the counter.

“What’s that?” the typewriter said.

“That’s time. For information about that tree.”

“What for?” the typewriter said.

I slipped another note to him. “Because I like trees.”

“There are plenty of—”

“I’m interested in this particular tree,” I said.

“Like I said, he doesn’t come in anymore. But he had lambchop sideburns. These heavy, drooping eyelids.”

“Did you ever see him driving a farm?”

The typewriter stared at me. “What?”

“A farm,” I said.

“I only ever saw him when he came in for coffee. I think he works at Fedora’s — sometimes he came in wearing an apron.”

I shook my head — I didn’t know the place.

“It’s a restaurant and bar. Right around the corner.”

“And he stopped coming by?”

The typewriter nodded. “A month or two ago, maybe.”

I made a note in my power: Fedora’s . “Anything else I should know about this sideburned tree?” I said.

The typewriter crossed his arms. “You aren’t going to hurt him, are you?”

I leaned against the glass case and studied the wrapped hearts. “Ever try one of those?” I asked.

“Me? No.”

I tapped my fingers on the glass. “Let me get one to go. And a medium chai.”

The typewriter took out a pair of tongs and pulled one heart out of the case. “That’ll be three hours.”

I looked deep into my wallet. I heard screams. I saw a tongue wagging. Finally, I saw four hours balled up in the corner. I handed them over and the typewriter put a paper cup on the counter and placed a heart in my hands.

Outside I met the VW and we sat down on an iron-wrought bench. “What took you so long?” the VW said.

I handed him his chai. “That café sells hearts,” I said.

The VW wrapped his hands around the cup and took a slow sip. “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, mama. Good old American chai ,” he smoothed.

I set the heart down on my lap and opened up the wrapping. Inside was a stack of paper, bloody and bound.

“What are you doing?” the VW said.

I sniffed the heart — it smelled sour, like blood.

“Dad — what are you doing?”

I shrugged. “I’m curious — aren’t you?”

“About what?” Then the VW’s face changed, and I could tell he realized what I meant. “Oh, Dad. Please. Don’t tell me.”

“Just a bite,” I said.

“Ugh,” the VW said, resting his cup of chai on the arm of the bench.

“Why not?” I said. “It’s not like it’s real — it’s manufactured.”

The heart was cold to my lips and it tasted like paper. I took a bite of it, swished it around in my mouth. It was freezing cold, and slippery. It had the texture of the sole of a shoe. It was very tough to chew and swallow, but I did my best.

The VW was obviously put off. He leaned back and his face lost its blue color. “Why in the world would you do that?” he said.

• • •

That whole experience turned out to be a wild tree chase, though. I spoke to Fedora’s and they told me that the tree was on leave, but after some additional elsing at the Wheel I found out why: He’d been admitted to Holyoke Hospital a month earlier. He had testicular cancer — a cyst in his right testicle, which he’d thought was benign, turned out to be a tumor. He went in to get it looked at, but by then it was too late.

FLAT TIRE!

PROCEDURE

Flat tires are perhaps one of the more serious emergencies that you’ll encounter with your VW. If your son or daughter gets one, the best thing to do is to pull them off of the road, sit cross-legged on the car and wait for help.

I have received countless letters asking whether fixing tires is something that one can do oneself, and the answer is NO! I have known vulcanizers to do it, but some of those same vulcanizers have crashed their children because their tires were running on voided, cancelled messages.

Tires are simple devices made out of rubber, with tubes inside filled with breath. But not just any breath. Volkswagen sends out nomads whose sole job is to find drivers/parents with flat tires, heal those tires and breathe them full. These are the people that you’re waiting for. You might sometimes see them walking alongside the road, their hands dirty and their feet rolled. I have known people who waited two days for one to arrive, but once they’re there they can fix the tire within three or four hours tops.

THE STORY

I have only had this happen to me once (thank god!), when I was lost with the VW in Wilbraham. The road happened to be taking a nap at the time. It turned over in its sleep and its fingernail punctured the right rear tire.

I heard the tire go and the VW said a custom-made swear. I pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car and debated whether to try and change the tire myself. But I didn’t know where to start — how to get the tire off the car, even.

So I did the only other thing I could: I climbed on the back of the VW and I sat there with my legs in an X. The sun beat down on me. I heard frequencies in the air — person-to-persons, distance jams, other books of power. I tried to be still.

Later that evening the Volkswagen nomad arrived. I saw her condensing down the road, her body like a game. Even from afar I could see her VW action suit, the insignia emblazoned on her chest. As she approached I saw that her hair extended to her ankles, and that half of it was natural and the other half mechanical. The mechanical strands moved on their own.

I hopped off the car and the nomad took the VW in her arms as if she were his mother. She held him and breathed into the flat tire. It only took a few minutes — only one or two continuous breaths, actually — to inflate the tire completely. I watched everything she did and I still have no idea how she did it. Before I knew it she was finished, and the VW was standing there ready to be driven.

This nomad’s face was beautiful, and my thoughts were grazing. I offered her time of money, but she must have seen a pause in my eyes because she held her hands up and refused. I tried to talk to her, to start a conversation, but I’m not sure that she’d been given a voice to respond with. If she did, she didn’t use it with me. I managed to thank her and that was it; as quickly as she arrived she was gone, walking down the side of the road as the hot sun ridiculed above, her long hair crinkling and chirping as she went.