Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

I could hear the balloon’s stories churning as he studied the part. “Remind me where this goes on your car,” he said.

“It connects one of the transmissions to the storypump,” I said.

The balloon looked up at me and his face turned a corner. “The transmission — to the what?” he said.

* Cimarron Ash, “Nutrition and the Heart Attack Tree,” The Journal of Arboreta Craveotus 6, no. 1 (1980): 65.

* Red D. Cedar, Paper for Breakfast: A Survivor’s Story (New York: Daisy Press, 1994), 23.

* In Massachusetts, the word for a hoagie or sub sandwich.

BREAK IT DOWN

CONDITION

Breakdown.

TOOLS AND MATERIALS

One young, faulty 1971 Volkswagen Beetle

A good-to-go gertrude

Questionboats, at least two or three

One poor booker

WHERE & WHEN

On the way to school

By Cooper’s Corner in Florence Center

On South Street, by the Northampton-Easthampton Q

En route to a Sunderlandian

On Market Street, outside Joe’s

Outside the Pleasant Street Theater

Voking up Gothic

Driving past the Northampton Airport

Prasking towards a story in Leverett

On the Northampton-Amherst Rail Trail

Everywhere! After only a few months on the road, the kid was breaking down everywhere.

PROCEDURE (I)

We were driving down 63 in Leverett when the VW slowed to a stop and I got out. “What’s the story?” I said.

“You tell me,” said the VW, coughing and shaking his head. “A syllabus ?”

In those days my writing was dischordant, every note flat. I said, “So what?”

“A syllabus is not a story.”

“Well, it’s all I can come up with right now,” I said.

“But I can’t run on it.”

“You can if you scan it right,” I said.

“It’s just a list, Dad — there’s no Procedure, even! It’s just a bunch of cheap words—”

“These words work fine.”

“Not for me they don’t,” said the VW.

I threw my hands. “What do you want me to do?”

“Write!”

“Right here?” I said. “On the side of the road?”

The VW blinked.

“It’ll take hours ,” I said.

“I don’t care how long it takes,” the VW said.

I custom-swore, grabbed my power from the front seat and sat down on the curb. “You like to make my life difficult, don’t you?”

“How hard is it to write fuel?” the VW said. “All I need is a freaking A-to-B. A character, something!”

I tried. I put my hands on the keys. After a minute or so I said, “I can’t think of anything!”

“Start with a conflict, how about,” the VW said.

“Like what?”

“A problem — any problem.”

“Here’s a problem — I want to go home, but my son won’t move.”

“Fine — start there, then!” the VW said.

PROCEDURE (II)

Then there was the time we were daytripping towards the Quabbin and the VW started complaining about being tired. “Can we stop and rest for a second?” he asked.

“We’re almost there — let’s stop when we get there, OK?”

“How about a quick nap?”

“We’re like five miles away!”

A mile or two later, though, the VW stalled. “What’s happening, kiddo?” I said.

The VW didn’t answer me.

“Hey!” I said. I hit the breaks, steered us into the breakdown lane and got out of the car.

The kid was fast asleep.

PROCEDURE (III)

Just a few miles past the Café Evolution, veeping onto Elm, the VW shouted a custom-made and coasted to a stop. I said, “Ey — what’s happening?”

He mumbled an answer.

“What?” I said.

He was speaking too quietly for me to hear him — all I heard was “wrong road.”

I got out of the car and went around to the front. The VW was studying the pavement. “What’s the problem?” I said.

“This is the wrong version,” he said. “There’s a history here.”

“A what?”

“Listen.” The VW put his ear to the asphalt. “There was a stadium right here — a huge baseball field with rows of seats. This is where Northampton’s team, the Words and Pictures, used to play.”

“It was?” I said.

“Right here! I was the shortstop.”

I put my hands on my hips, suddenly realizing what was happening. “VW—”

“We were the best team in western Massachusetts. I remember ol’ Glue Stevenson, who played third—”

“There wasn’t ever a stadium here, kiddo,” I said. “You’re having problems with your memory coil is all.”

“—was at the plate this one night, against a mean, cantered industrial grill—”

“This is all just a bad coil-wrap.”

“And that grill had the best continue-pitch in the league.”

“OK. You can tell me this story at home, alright?”

“You mean keep going? No way,” said the VW.

“What? Why not?”

“Dad, this spot is historical for me. How can you expect me to just drive over the field’s Memory as if it wasn’t ever here?”

“Because it wasn’t,” I said.

“It was — you just don’t remember it,” the VW said.

“Can we please go home now?”

The VW shook his head. “I’m staying right here.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“I’m not kidding at all,” the VW said.

And he wasn’t. I pleaded with the VW to let the “memory” go, but he wouldn’t move. I had to call a tow truck to get us both home.

PROCEDURE (IV)

The VW would start to lurch and sputter, and then he’d stop running altogether. I’d get out of the car and open the engine compartment. When I did I’d find:

A landfill

A candy store

A factory of some sort

I don’t know, but something took my picture

An old woman, pointing her finger at me and shaking her head

“What do you see?” the VW’d say.

I’d tell him.

“Can you fix it?” he’d ask.

Hardly ever!

“Of course I can,” I’d say.

VALVE ADJUSTMENT

There was the half-faced woman and the Scientist, and then there was the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass, who lived and worked at the Don Muller Gallery in Northampton. I really came close to loving this woman; she was bright and creative, an artist, and I could spend a good deal of money with her without feeling the draw of the power. She was also the one who told me about the village of Shelburne Falls, incidentally, because she was born there — forged by a mother (raw sand) and a father (a glass-blowing factory film) out on the scene of the body of glacier-pockmarked stone called the Potholes.

I met the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass at the Paradise City Arts Festival, where she was selling handmade moods. Each one was completely unique, and it came with its own case and certificate of authenticity. I was supposed to be there to write a story for the Wheel , but as we were browsing the tables the VW became fascinated by one of these moods — a new sort of skepticism — and he wouldn’t put it down.

“How did you get the happiness in there?” the VW asked the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass, who stood behind her table in a simple black dress.

“I work with a microscope,” she explained. “I fused the happiness with a steady disbelief.”

“Jeez. It must have taken so much money ,” the VW said.

“It did—”

“It’s beautiful ,” the VW said. “It’s a beautiful mood.”

“Thanks, man,” she said. “It’s cool that you like it so much.”