Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

“What should I do?” I asked it.

“Just keep going,” the house said.

I pressed the pedal and we pushed forward on the sea. I took every turn that it asked me to. Soon it began to squeal with pain. “Just hold on,” I said. “I’ll get you there.”

But I didn’t even know where there was. I have never known.

And then there was another time, when I was driving with the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass and we put the VW on autopilot and went into the back seat, took off our clothes and made faith. And I’m trying to remember now if that was on the high seas as well, or if it was in the air, hovering oven-like over Northampton. But it’s not clear in my mind anymore. People speak about memories as constant, as fixed, but my memories are films and the films keep changing. I’ve told lots of stories in which I’m driving somewhere with a girlfriend or family member in the passenger seat next to me, and even one or two where the car was filled with my friends. But in every one of those stories I knew — I have always known — that I was alone here. That I am the only one in this car. That the car itself will abandon me — that everything, eventually, will turn against me.

But you can know something — see it clearly, hear it highwaying all around you — and still not live it.

And I suppose that’s what happened that day — that day on the sea with the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass. I feared into her, or killed her, and the sea responded, tearing into us. After a while, the turbulence became too much for the VW, and he became frightened and asked for help. The endless waves had nothing against my son or my girlfriend, but they — like the leaf, Bingo, and so many other Northamptonites — were relentless in their bookish hate for me.

So I climbed into the front seat and took the wheel, steering left and right, trying desperately to move us forward and to stay on course, one foot on the brake, the other shifting scenes, the VW swapping at the rain with the windshield wipers as the sea closed its fist around us.

There was still one procedure I hadn’t tried yet. It was called “Jumpstarting the Volkswagen Beetle.”

JUMPSTARTING THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

CONDITION

Despite stories and swordfish, the Volkswagen is dead.

TOOLS

A new believer

At least one week

One City of Northampton, including:

One Crescent Street, sunsung

A decemberchord Main Street

One chai-stocked Haymarket Café

A park for Pulaski

The museum dedicated to sequential art

The Revenge of the Fire and Water Cafe

One pleasant Pleasant Street

PROCEDURE

You’re here because you can’t start your Volkswagen Beetle — because, at the end of every chapter, the disease of writing-in-the-blood won’t bring him or her back to life. This is why many recommend the writing removal procedure; writing can be instructional, but it’s not the end or the be. All it does is make time — and I say that as an author, as someone who makes a living with words!

In any case, the condition is: The Volkswagen is very dead. If so, the answer to bringing them back to life — the last and best option, in my opinion — is to jumpstart them. There are storysongs out there about jumpstarting with electricity — even transplanting the electricity from another car —but this is nonsound. If you were to really try that? You’d probably kill both cars and yourself in the process. Every car’s language is different, so the translation would have to be exactly right, and it almost never is. Something is always lost or changed.

So I suggest a safer route: jumpstarting the car with Northampton itself . This is your book, after all, and all song long you’ve been traveling through a very particular set of cities and towns. We don’t need a logic sweater to know that, if life itself is the problem, the energy and motivation needed can be found in those very cities and towns. See for yourself! Stand outside the BayState on a Saturday afternoon and watch all of the motion: the veggies and bio’s traveling to Main and King, the joking sidewalks, the easthamptons and amhersts. All you need to do is create a situation in which your Volkswagen can capture some of that energy. There are stories and there is experience — there is the page and there is life —so I say, ward off Memory and jumpstart the Volkswagen with the effervescent rhythms of western Massachusetts.

How? Simple. Carry the Volkswagen down Main Street, Northampton, and let them smell the chai and remember the scones. Buy the VW a cup of coffee at Jake’s, or a breakfast sandwich at Sylvester’s. Your Volkswagen will remember that life is where it’s at! And soon, he or she will decide to return. Because that’s all living is: a decision. Breathing is a choice. Opening your eyes is an act of will — so is driving along Route 63, and taking a sudden turn onto 47!

And you never know when the VW will make that decision — when they’ll choose Northampton. It might be on the bike path bridge, or at the China House. Your Volkswagen might be sitting there at the Florence Diner, perfectly dead, and then suddenly open his eyes and order a peanut butter and bacon sandwich.

I followed those procedures to the letter. The day after I read that how-to, I carried the VW down to Northampton Center and into the Haymarket Café. I ordered a cup of chai and set it on the table in front of him, hoping that the smell of ginger would revive him. When the chai grew cold, I carried him over to Kathy’s for some eggs.

We were sitting there in the booths, though, when I heard the sound of a familiar engine outside. I looked through the window and saw a Volkswagen — the same Volkswagen I’d seen that day on Route 91—parallel parking outside the diner. I hadn’t recognized him on the highway but now I knew who he was. I left the VW in the booth and I huffed out to the street. “Don’t even bother parking,” I shouted.

The Memory of the Volkswagen turned to face me. Its eyes were punchlines.

“Go — get out of here,” I told it. “Go away and don’t come back. This is not your home.”

It silently sulked away.

When I got back inside our food had arrived. “Mmm!” I said to the dead car, “Eggs over-easy. That looks good, VW!”

But the VW would not eat, would not speak.

I continued carrying him around Northampton, to every place I thought might jumpstart him: the China House, Words and Pictures, Look Park, the Lord Jeff in Amherst, the Northampton Brewery, JavaNet. Everywhere it was the same — the same post-life quiet, the same stares from pedestrians, who were probably wondering why I was carrying a dead car in my arms, ordering it a salad or asking it questions.

As the days passed, I saw the Memory of the Volkswagen more and more. One day I took the VW to the Academy of Music to see a film and I spotted The Memory of the Volkswagen sitting in an adjacent seat. Another time, I was carrying the VW to Rao’s Coffee in Amherst when I saw the reflection of a Volkswagen in a store window and realized that The Memory of the Volkswagen was following us.

I stopped walking and turned to face the Memory. “Stop following us,” I told it. “Shoo. You’re not supposed to be here.” Then I turned and kept walking.

But the Memory of the Volkswagen followed us right to the door of Rao’s and stared at us through the window as we stood in line for coffee. I ignored him and found an empty table. When I looked out the window ten minutes later, the Memory was gone.

After a few weeks of trying to jumpstart the VW, I lost one of the external engines one day while we were walking down the bike path in Northampton. I don’t even know where I lost it — I just noticed that it was gone when we got back to the apartment.