Christopher Boucher - How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

Then, as automatic as his arrival, he pointed. “There,” he said. He was pointing down the road, at the entrance to Hampshire College. I took a right turn and went up the hill. “Take a right at the circle,” he said, and I did.

As we sunk deeper into the stomach of the campus, I felt a new approach to thinking and knowledge taking me over. “This drive is my education — I feel smarter already,” I said, and I laughed, but the bull didn’t seem to think that it was funny. He looked out the window with those bull’s eyes. Those eyes were like government checks, cold and blue.

Soon we were driving by the campus apartments. “I’m up here,” he said.

“You’re a student?”

“No, but the person I’m looking for is,” he said, and he cracked his knuckles.

I pulled over and he got out.

“Thanks,” he said. “I do hope you find your way — you know, back to Atkin’s.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Had I told him the story during the drive? Did my son say something about it? “OK,” I said.

“Don’t ever give up home ,” he said.

“Home?” I said.

“ ‘Hope,’ I said,” he said. “Don’t ever give up hope .”

“I won’t,” I told him.

He turned and carried his bottle of wine inside.

STREET WOMAN

I tell you, my hands would get so wet and tired when I booked that I often had to take them off and dry them out on the back porch. After a while I could only get one or two pages a day for them, and I was asked to do more than that at work alone!

Then, I was trying to change a time-action filter on the Volkswagen one afternoon when one of my hands, soggy and limp, got stuck between the theater’s asbestos firewall and curtain. They postponed the show scheduled for that night, and a crew of tiny men — fifteen or twenty of them — raised ladders and tried to help pull my hand out. But it just wasn’t budging.

Finally, I unscrewed the hand and left it there, and I went inside and called the Memory of My Father and told him the situation. He came barreling over in my father’s old Invisible Pickup Truck, looking like my Dad had when I was five: scraggly beard, a full head of wild, black hair, black square glasses, dark jeans and a button-down shirt.

The two of us got into my son and I drove down onto Route 9. I didn’t even have to ask where we were going; I knew the Memory of My Father was taking me to see the Junkman.

I love the Revision of Route 2 and the Route 5 Mango Punch (and of course I’m excited about the new melodies, when they appear), but my favorite road in all of western Massachusetts is Route 47—especially the stretch going from Hadley to Montague. Once you turn off 9 there is only one stop light; the rest of the road is winding and fast, with surprises on each side: beaming patches of land, gravesites, the Connecticut River, animals you might never have seen before. Once, I saw what looked like a horse with a harp for a rear end, grazing in one of the pastures. Another time, I saw a cow riding a sit-down lawnmower, a walkman over his ears and a plastic cup in his hand.

If you catch it right, Route 47 can get you anywhere you need to go. (I don’t know if it changes its mind in the night, or what!)

The VW roared through Hadley and Sunderland and into Montague — a small, no-cheese town. I didn’t even need to tell him where to turn. We pulled up beside the Junkman’s home — a collage of vinyl siding, shingles, cinder blocks and pieces of old cars. There was no one around, just some bicycles playing in the yard. I told the VW to introduce himself to the bikes and see if they might want to play, and the Memory of My Father and I walked around behind the Junkman’s house and looked out into the fields. It was spring, and the junkcrop was rising high: sprouts of old busses, ovens, bikes, toasters, VCRs, clothes, skiis.

Then, in the distance, I saw the Junkman trudging through the rows, his beard dangling to his knees. He saw us, waved and cupped his hand to his mouth. “What do you need?” he yelled.

We walked towards him, and the Memory of My Father shouted back, “Used hand for my son,” and pointed at me.

I raised my arm, sans hand, and waved it like a court.

• • •

The Junkman led us through the fields and towards an old bus in the distance, half-lodged in soil. As we walked, the Memory of My Father asked the Junkman how things were going. “Busy, goddamn busy,” he said. “People coming in every day, looking for cars, bikes, washers, dryers. They all want them to be like new, though,” he said, and when he smiled I saw that his teeth had been replaced with what looked like plastic pieces from board games. “I tell them, ‘I don’t know if it works or not — this is a junkfarm! You want something new, go to Thornes!’ ”

“Right,” the Memory of My Father said, shaking his head.

When we reached the bus, the Junkman opened the door and motioned for me to step inside. When I did I saw that the bus was filled with hands of every shape and size. The Memory of My Father stepped up behind me. “Je Cris,” he said.

The Junkman stepped up into the bus and smiled.

“Should I pick one, or two, or …?” I asked.

“Pick as many as you want,” the Junkman said. “Fifteen a piece.”

All afternoon, the Memory of My Father and I rummaged through hands. Finding the right one was not easy; some were threaded differently than my wrist, and others fit alright but were less responsive than my old hand. It was also hot and damp in the bus, and it smelled like some of the hands had rotted.

Finally, I found a hand that seemed to fit. It was a little stiff in the thumb, but I hoped that some oil might be able to loosen it up. Just to be safe, I bought another complete set; they didn’t fit as well, but they’d work as a backup in a jam.

We walked back through the fields in the late afternoon sun. As we rounded the corner I saw the VW, playing in the mud with an old laptop. “VW!” I yelled, and he looked over at me, his face a freezer.

“What?” he said.

“Look at you — you’re filthy,” I said.

He looked at his elbow. “I am not ,” he said.

The Junkman walked out from his house and pointed at the three hands that I was holding. “Find what you need?” he said.

The Memory of My Father took the hands from me and gave them to the Junkman, and he took a look at each one of them. Then he said, “All three, forty minutes.”

“Thanks,” the Memory of My Father said.

I paid the minutes and shook the Junkman’s hand with my one good hand, and then we got back into the VW. I put one hand on and put the spare hands in the trunk, and when I did I saw that the hood was covered with mud. I got in the car and we pulled onto Route 47. “VW,” I said. “What did I say about playing in the mud?”

“You never said anything about not playing in the mud,” the VW said.

“Did I, or did I not, tell you to make sure not to get dirty?”

“He was just playing,” the Memory of My Father said.

“I told you,” I said to the VW, “that I don’t have time to wash you every two seconds.”

“You said dirt . But you never said anything about mud,” the VW said.

I started to tell him that it was the same thing, but then I heard a violent crunch in the engine compartment. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw brown smoke. “What’s the matter?” I said to the VW.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something’s burning, I think.”

I pulled the car over, got out and opened up the engine compartment. When I did, I saw that my original hand — mangled and charred, and now missing a few fingers — had slipped out from between the firewall and the curtain, and was now caught in the flywheel. I reached my new hand in and pulled my old hand out. It was smoking, hot to the touch.