Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

The Sergeant leaned over the bed. “Mr. Dickinson?” he said.

The hospital opened his eyes. When he saw me, he raised a frail hallway and pointed it at me.

“Mr. Dickinson, this is—”

But the hospital dropped the hallway, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

• • •

While we sat in the waiting room the VW pressed me to speculate. “He must know where the Tree is, right?”

I shrugged.

“And the farm?”

“I don’t know, kiddo,” I said.

“When he tells me where that fucking Heart Attacker is—”

“Whoa — take it easy.”

“I’m going to track him down and kick his ass. ”

“No you are not ,” I said.

“I am — I am,” he said. As he spoke, I saw that the VW was shivering. “I’m going to make him pay— ”

“VW — are you cold?”

“No,” he umped. “You’re shivering.”

“I am not.”

“Kiddo, I can see—”

“I’m fine, Dad!”

Then the second Dog stuck his nose into the waiting room. “He’s awake,” he said.

We walked down the hall and into the hospital’s room. The SergeantDog nodded at me. “Mr. Dickinson,” he said, “this is—”

The hospital mouthed a phrase I couldn’t catch.

“I’m sorry?” said the Sergeant.

“_____,” the hospital gasped.

“Yes,” the Sergeant said. “_____, and his son, the nineteen seventy-one Volkswagen Beetle.”

“I met you once before,” I speckled. “Your surgery saved me, actually. You might not remember—”

“Mr. Dickinson,” the Sergeant said, “we brought _____here because his father was thought to have been with you when the tree—”

The hospital nodded and gestured towards the pencil and pad on the table next to the bed, and the second Dog reached for it. The hospital took the pad in his cement hands and wrote something down. Then he turned to show us. The pad read:

find him!

“Find him?” I said.

“Find who?” the VW said.

The hospital wrote, sent songs .

“Find the Tree?” I said.

“Mr. Dickinson,” said the Sergeant, “where is the Tree now?”

The hospital wrote, WAS alive .

“The Tree was alive?” I said.

“Or my grandfather?” the VW said. “Was my grandfather alive?”

The hospital pointed to the VW, then wrote, WAS. now?

tree fed stories. we all dd, tried .

“The Heart Attack Tree fed my father stories?”

The hospital nodded and scratched madly into the pad. apple stories, pastry stories, pasture narativs .

but NOW — no more stories, anywhere on the farm. why I ran away!

dying .

“Mr. Dickinson, where is the Tree now?” the Sergeant Dog repeated.

have to FIND THEM

“But where?” the VW asked. “Where are they?”

The hospital closed his eyes, let the pad fall onto his chest and lay still for a minute or two. We all stared at him. For a moment I thought he’d fallen asleep again. Then he opened his eyes and picked up the pad. He wrote, here!

“Here where ?” I said.

noho, florence. whatly hatfield. right here!

“This morning he told us that the Tree had been hiding the farm at Northampton-area trailer parks, dead-end streets and abandoned wooded areas,” the Sergeant said. “We’re checking those now.”

laying lo, stealing hearts

“Are you kidding me?” the VW said. “He’s been this fucking close the whole time?”

“VW — language! What did I say about that word?”

last I heard, went west. thru Greenfld? to S — F?

“What’s SF?” the second Dog asked.

I thought about it. “Shelburne Falls?”

The hospital pointed at me. Then he wrote, Tr. parkd farm outside grocery story — ran in for some milk .

I tk my chance, ran for it .

The VW turned to me. “We’re going there — right Dad? We’re going after him.”

“No we aren’t,” I said.

The SergeantDog extended his paws. “Let’s take one step at a time here,” he said.

The hospital started writing furiously.

“The first thing is get you healthy,” the Sergeant told the hospital. “Then we’ll resume our search for the farm.”

The hospital threw the pad down and pointed at me. His eyes met mine. “Your dad is sitting there — waiting for you,” he gasped. “He — needs stories.”

“I realize that,” I said. “But I just can’t—”

“Now!” said the hospital. His voice was faint and hoarse, but his eyes were bullets. “Before it’s too late!”

RAP ON OIL

If the green light on your VW’s dash goes on, it’s time to change your car’s sufferoil. Sufferoil licks the engine of the Volkswagen and collects in a sufferpanunderneath the engine at the rear of the car. Sometimes the gasket that connects the sufferpan to the rest of the car can split or leak, and then it’s necessary to change that entire gasket, or perhaps even the pan itself. Otherwise, though, changing the sufferoil is a simple Q and A. Q: The oil and the filter? A: Yes!

And while it is simple, it’s also incredibly important. The sufferoil holds those moments in the VW’s experiences that are too cold, bright or sharp. These experiences turn over and over in the Volkswagen’s muscles and limbs if you don’t regularly change the oil and clean them out. Is your Volkswagen depressed? Is he or she driving slower and more sluggish than usual, or crying at the storypump? Maybe he or she is carrying around some heavy western masses — a death, a bad interaction with a tractor trailer, maybe even the sight of roadkill or a family of lost, hungry soda cans wandering down the side of Route 5 near the center of Greenfield. Whatever the case, it’s your job as a parent to remove these moments and sketches before they seep into the memory coil and become fixed. There are experiences to hold onto, but you must let go of others or else they’ll damage your VW permanently. Therefore, change your car’s oil every fifty pages. Take out all of those heavy words, drop the storyfilter and change out any moments that are overly-sad or lonely. Let him or her feel new again. I’ve taken out whole characters (the Lady from the Land of the Beans), cut complete narratives short because they felt sluggish and mean, and you’d be amazed at how much lighter and faster my son could move after such changes.

Here’s a stepper for how to do it:

Step 1. Use a non-emotional wrench to loosen and remove the six sufferboltslocated in the bottom center of the car. As their name suggests, these bolts may have wars in their bellies and may therefore be tough to turn. This is why it’s so essential that you use a confident, no-bullshit wrench; if a look-away gets ahold of these coats, and either smells the suffering in the gasket or talks about it with the bolts, the wrench is liable to give up or feign a great struggle. Remember that these bolts already have enough to worry about, as they’re the keeper of secret, pressure-filled narratives, stories with depression turns and lost acres, burdens in their own right.

Step 2. Once you’ve removed the plugs, let the oil drain into a pan. Be aware: This oil is dangerous stuff, as it not only holds a local history of suffering — a collage of moments experienced by the Volkswagen and those who have ridden in him (this means you), and all those he’s come into contact with since his last oil change — but also select moments of common suffering: hungry children farming VeggieCar fields, graves filled with murdered sneakers, mandolins clawing at the windows of moustached, sour-faced trains, Conceivable Beards sad in their graves. This is another reason to change the oil frequently (and thus, flush those tales out of the Volkswagen), and to avoid getting any of this oil — any of these stories — on your hands . Once my hand slipped while I was draining the sufferoil in my Volkswagen, and I was infected with the story of a Smith College student who drowned herself in a public fountain. It took twenty-four hours for that story to clear from my blood, and those hours were some of the most difficult I’d ever encountered — every word was a prison, every note the same.