Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

“That’s to be expected, I guess,” Colorado said.

The spider put my beerchai in front of me and I took a sip. It was watered down and needed more ginger, but I didn’t say anything. I looked into the beer and said, “I ought to debook you right here.”

Colorado smiled and shook his head. “Make your try, commander,” he said. “You’ve been getting your ass kicked the whole book — why stop now?”

I leaned towards him. “You think you can hurt me?” I said. “You could segment me, chew my face off, and I’ll come back in the next story re-assembled and fullfaced.”

“But still just as bald,” Colorado said.

“Fuck you,” I said.

The music in the Castaway was the sound of hammers being crucified, their lungs struggling to fill. We had to yell above it like a loan.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him, _____,” Colorado said. “I really never thought it’d go this way.”

“He called me from the hotel that night,” I said. “Told me every detail.”

Colorado shrugged his shoulders. “So what,” he said.

“Easy for you to say.”

“It doesn’t matter what he saw, or what he thinks he saw, _____. The truth is that I fell in love, OK?”

“My brother fell in love too, man,” I said. “With you.”

Colorado turned to me. “You don’t think I was committed to him?” There was something furry in his teeth. “But he changed , man. He did. He lost that carefree thing he had going for him. Something inside him shut down.”

“He was going through a lot. The Heart Attack Tree thing really un-wheeled him.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Colorado said. “I’m sorry about the trailer park, about the old closed-down mental hospital, about all of it. I wish things had gone better — for him and for you.”

“Please,” I said. “Spare me the pity fork, will you?”

Colorado shook his head and looked away, and I took my beer in my hands and stood up from my stool. When I did, Colorado turned back to me. “Listen,” he said. “Thanks for coming by. I mean it.” Then he nodded over to the corner, where my brother, the VW and the Memory of My Father were sitting at a table. “Should I go over there?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I think it might be good for him to work through this — to be in the same room as you and not have to be with you.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

I nodded. Then I said, “Good luck with the park.”

Colorado looked down into his lap. “Thanks,” he said.

I leaned towards him. “And just be thankful that I didn’t decide to rotate you,” I said.

He smiled sourly. “Sincerely? Fuck you, _____, from the bottom of my heart.”

I turned and walked away, over to the other side of the room, where the Memory of My Father, the Volkswagen and my brother were watching the wheelchair french a toaster. The Volkswagen was into it — he was standing on his chair, shaking his hips and yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”

The four of us watched for a while and sipped our beers. My brother seemed more relaxed by this point; he cradled his drink like a laptop and leaned lazily against the back of his chair. I was more relaxed, too. I was enjoying the rare opportunity to hang out with my brother and the Memory of My Father — the last one in the power, perhaps! — and the toaster’s shiny surface was giving me just the slightest bit of faith.

But then I saw someone approaching us out of the corner of my eye, and I turned and saw Colorado — his monstrous legs, his cut-off shorts. He was standing there with a mountainbeer in his hand like an offspring of some sort. “Bryan,” he said.

My brother turned and looked at him, and in that moment his face became an open dogma, a questionboat, a sorted screen of hope.

HI-PERFORMANCE MODIFICATIONS

I wrote for four days, with no sign of life from the Volkswagen. At the end of that time, when I had no more stories to tell, I brought my son to a bearded swordfish mechanic out by the state hospital. I hated the idea of consulting another mechanic, but I’d heard good things about this fish, that he was smarter than a lot of biofixers out there, that his time prices were reasonable, that he knew something about Volkswagens.

But when he opened up the VW’s engine compartment he shook his head and told me that my son couldn’t be saved. “This car is dead ,” he said.

“How can that be?” I said. “His heart still beats. ”

“Don’t matter,” said the fish, wiping grease from his fins.

“Doesn’t his heart still hold stories? VW’s run on stor—”

“Those Volksie hearts are sturdy as geese,” the fish mooned, “but the engineheart alone can’t keep the thing running. ‘Specially with these modifications. Do you see what he tried to do here?” He pointed to the third engine. “He tried to split the stories. To reburn them—”

“He might have read about that in a literary theory book.”

“It’s an old, outdated theory,” said the swordfish. “And see that translator? He was burning words in other languages.”

I studied one of the wordcorpses that was burned to the VW’s tire. “What language is that, anyway?”

The swordfish shrugged.

“Canadian French?” I suggested.

“Not to mention the fact?” said the fish. “That he’s all rusted through.”

“All what ?”

“Rusted.” The fish read my eyes. “Rust?” He pointed to my son’s skin.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what that word means.”

“Listen,” the swordfish said, crossing his arms. “I can’t use the heart or the momentpump, but I’ll give you thirty hours for the headlights.”

“Wait a second. What?”

The swordfish’s eyes were prairies.

“I’m not interested in selling the car for parts ,” I said. “I brought him here so you could save him. I’ll give you all the time of money I have,” I said.

“I told you, it’s not a question of stories — he cannot be saved.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Sir—”

“There are still procedures I haven’t tried yet.”

“What procedures?”

“In the book of power,” I said.

A wind blew across the grassy fields in his eyes.

“How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive.” I unhooked the power from my hip and showed it to the fish.

The fish flipped through the book and read one of the procedures. “You realize these procedures are stories — that they’re fictions — right?”

“ You’re a fiction,” I said. I took the book in one hand and the car in the other, and I walked out of that garage, down the hill, past the mental hospital where, before I was born, One Side of My Mother worked as a nurse. If people were confused or sad or frightened, she would help them.

She would help them!

PARAMEDIC

And then there was the time that I woke up tossing on the ocean. Somehow the Volkswagen had become seaworthy (with an outboard motor and everything), and I was now a captain, complete with hat. Where was the road? What changes had taken place to allow this to happen?

I have applied that question to several boats and frequent seas, but there are only so many words to choose from. Which ones shall I string together here ?

I wasn’t on the boat alone, of course — when I looked to my right I saw that there was a house in the seat next to me: a two-family, with yellow shingles and a bay window, on a quiet street near a crime-park. I knew this house well, could tell you every inch of it. At that moment, though, something was happening: Either the home was shot in the gut, or it was giving birth, or something — I couldn’t quite tell. There was wooden fluid coming out from under its shirt, though, and it was breathing fast, and its eyes told me that a great deal was at stake.