Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

It was.

The 1971 Volkswagen sat in the middle of the highway. The riffs and bio’s that passed him were yelling at him to move and get off the song. But he wasn’t moving — his face was dusked and he was completely still.

MASTER CYLINDER

I got out of the riff and ran over to my son. I screamed his name. “No,” I sang, repeating the note over and over.

The VW didn’t look like my son. He was retrofitted with tin language wings welded above the rear wheels, a shark-like fin fastened to the roof, and two external engines — one above each rear wheel. Smoke shouted from the engine compartment and my eyes whined from the smell of burnt words.

I opened the driver’s side door and tried to start the car. There was no sign of life — the steering wheel was freezing cold, the dashboard completely dark. There were words everywhere . Every light and signal was at rest. I switched to another transmission and tried again to start it.

Nothing.

I checked his pulse. His engineheart was still beating.

My mind was a siren. First, I opened my power and looked through it for stories. The only one I had was a fragment, a crumble about a sveltbelt in the Land of Spelt who runs for local office on a campaign of dancing, and dances his way right onto the Board of Selectmen, and goes on to turn Spelton into the steppiest, most dancingest town in the Middle Way.

The story was flat and broken, but it was all I had and there wasn’t time to book a new one. And it didn’t matter anyway — I knew, even as I fed it to the VW, that his scanner wouldn’t work.

“VW!” I screamed into the dark car. “Story!”

Nothing.

I grabbed a flashlight from the glovebox and got out of the car. The night roared in my ears and notes stung my face. I cut my shin on one of the tin wings as I sprinted around to the back of the car, and I shouted out into the song. Then I saw how complicated the new modifications were: He’d not only added engines, but two homemade translators as well. It was clear that one or both of them had overflowed or malfunctioned — the whole apparatus was covered with wordoil. And the wings and fin, I could see now, were connected to the new engines with flimsy midday cables. What was the VW thinking — that he could cut through musical resistance? Or that he’d fly ? Did the VW expect less friction in the air of the song?

I opened the engine compartment. It was the inside of a diner now, but everyone inside the diner had been shot. The register drawer was hanging open and all of the blood from the victims’ bodies was running together.

I closed the lid. The moon was dead, the mountain notes lying benignly on their sides and the stars sick to their stomachs, moaning and vomiting into the sky.

There was nothing more I could do here — I had no stories, no ideas — so I picked the VW up like I had when he was a newborn. With his wings and three engines, he was terribly heavy. I struggled to carry him to the idling riff; as I approached, the bass got out to help me. We put the VW in the back seat and I jumped into the riff beside him and said, “Go.”

The piano pulled the riff back onto the roadsong while the drums and bass leaned forward to look at my son. His eyes were empty, his mouth was wide open and his skin had started turning grey.

“Is he — OK?” the bass said.

“Are those wings ?” said the piano.

“Domino,” the drums said, “that car isn’t breathing.”

“He has a pulse — his heart’s still beating,” I said. Then I tapped the piano on the shoulder. “Please just take us home,” I pleaded. “57 Crescent Street, Northampton.”

“We’re on our way,” the piano said.

I looked through the book of power, found a quick story, and tried again to scan it.

“I’m sure he’s going to be OK,” the bass told me.

“VW!” I shouted at him. “Story!”

“Can you connect the power directly?” the piano asked.

“Not without another morning cable,” I said.

The drums sat back in his seat. “You know why he can’t scan the story?” he whispered to the bass. “Because he’s dead. ”

“No he isn’t,” I said.

Then the night said something, so I rolled down my window. “What?” I yelled to the sky.

“The percussion’s got it right,” said the night.

“His heart’s still beating!” I yelled back.

“So what?” she shot back.

“So he can’t be dead!”

“Would I lie to you about this?”

“You’ve lied to me plenty of times before,” I sang.

“That was different — I was kidding with you then,” said the night. “But your son is dead, _____. And your father, too.”

NINE-HEADED DRAGON RIVER

The piano drove us off the song and towards home. When we hit King Street the drums told the piano to slow the riff down. “There’s an oil-changery up ahead,” he said. “Shouldn’t we stop there?”

I shook my head. “That guy only works on bio’s,” I said. “I’m the only one who can save the Volkswagen.”

“And why is that?” said the drums.

“Because he runs on words ,” I spat.

The drums huffed and looked out the window.

The piano steered the riff up Crescent Street and parked outside the house, and I got out of the car and picked the VW up. Then I stood beside the idling riff and I thanked the three of them for their help. “I’d still be running on the sidesong if it weren’t for you guys,” I told them.

“You sure there isn’t anything else that we can do?” said the bass. “We can stay, and then if you decide you want to drive the VW to a mechanic—”

“He just said no to that idea,” said the drums. Then he smiled at me curtly. “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.”

I ignored him. “The only thing that’s going to save this car now is a good story,” I said. “And I’m the one who’s going to have to write it.” The VW was getting heavy. I said, “I’m sorry for all the trouble we caused you.”

“It wasn’t any trouble at all,” said the piano.

“Songs don’t end,” said the teary-eyed bass. “They don’t ever end.”

“And you?” I said to the drums. “Can go fuck yourself. The Volkswagen will live. ”

“The last note has rung, my friend,” said the drums.

The riff pulled away and I walked into the house. Then I put the VW down, dried off the noted power, and started looking through the pages for a relevant how-to. I flipped past “Custom Modifications,” “Runaway?” and “Word Breakaparts.” Then I found the story I was looking for.

RESURRECTING YOUR VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

CONDITION

The Volkswagen is dead.

TOOLS

One charged book of power

Spare morning cables, fresh and tested

At least three plots

PROCEDURE

A lot of masks will tell you that the secret to the Volkswagen Resurrection has to do with the engine—with draining the sufferoil, finding the heartand reigniting it. That autologic is backwards, in my opinion; stories don’t run on the heart, but vice versa. My theory on resurrections, therefore, is simple: You have to writeyour car back to life.

Every component has to do with motion — with converting stillness to change. If your car is dead, it’s probably not a mechanical issue; it’s more likely that the car is overwhelmed by something — by age, by sadness, by the noise of the road or the shouting from the city. It’s this sense of being overwhelmed which leads to stasis.

The solution, then, is to tell a story which somehow maps a way through those obstacles — which clears a mental/physical path for the Volkswagen, and encourages him to believe that there is life, and not death, ahead.