by Dan Robson
My favourite book as a boy was Roald Dahl’s Danny, the Champion of the World, about a young boy who lives in a trailer with his father, next to the mechanic shop he runs. The story follows the father and son as they embark on a scheme to poach pheasants from a rich villain who owns the land around them. In Dahl’s tale, Danny is enthralled by his dad’s imaginative stories and enchanting personality. I devoured Dahl’s adventure, captivated by the journey Danny and his father took together. He viewed his father as a larger-than-life hero, even though he was just an impoverished widower, trying to hold the world together for his son. Even with his father’s flaws, the son saw the man guiding him as a heroic figure.
“What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvellous and exciting father any boy ever had,” Danny tells the reader in the last chapter of the book.
Even though it had been years since I’d sat down and read about the champion of the world, those words rushed back.
I wasn’t able, or perhaps ready, to grasp the lore I’d built up around my dad when I was young, beyond this feeling that he too did marvellous things. Even as an adult it was hard to place the appreciation. But within those first days after he was gone, within the constant ache of that finality, it became clear. In my mind, he’d created magical works of art. From houses to high-rises and from gas stations to schools. My father built things that are so indispensable we don’t even see them.
I’d hear his clock beeping every day at five a.m. and the thud of his hand hushing it. After his alarm woke me, I’d hear the creak when his feet hit the floor and the soft squeak of the bedsprings as he pushed himself up from the bed. He must have been exhausted all those dark, lonely mornings while the world was still. He seemed to walk softly across the carpet and into the bathroom, because the next thing I’d hear was the water rushing through the pipes and then a quick, sharp squeal as it hit the shower head. He’d pull the pin and I could almost feel the warmth of the hot water. He’d removed the water saver that came with the shower, because there is nothing more disappointing than weak pressure when it’s five a.m.
I’d felt some sort of comfort lying there in the dark, listening to Dad’s day begin.
After about five minutes of melody in the rushing water, crackling on the shower floor, it’d stop with an abrupt thud—and the metallic scratch of the shower curtains opening and his footsteps on the linoleum. At some point I’d drift back to sleep, until a quiet creak in my bedroom door woke me again. He’d peek his head in to each of our rooms, just for a few seconds. I don’t know his motivation behind that morning glimpse, but I can guess it was a quick check to make sure we were still there, or still breathing, or perhaps just for a quick reminder of why on earth he had to lug himself out of bed before the sun every day.
He’d creak down the stairs, followed by the scratch of paws as our golden retriever leapt off the couch at the sound of him. From my room at the top of the stairs I could hear the clack-clack-clack of the garage door opening. And he’d drive off to build the world as I knew it.
This was how I’d viewed the second half of the man.
The other, first half was still unknown, and rarely considered. He was that young man standing with friends I’d never known, in white shorts and aviators at a distant cottage in the past. I’d seen other versions of him in old photographs. Standing proudly beside his Land Cruiser. Or sitting at the kitchen table in his parents’ house with his long seventies rock hair. Photos of him looking very much like an alternative, cooler version of me.
He’d told me some stories about that guy. While his path to practical employment remained in construction, here on earth his dreams were up in the sky. When he was young he’d wanted to become an airline pilot, flying above the clouds; he was enamoured with the physics of flight. So in his early twenties he saved up his money and joined the Brampton Flying Club, just a few kilometres north of where the school he’d one day build would be. After long days as a crew member on construction sites, he’d drive out to the flying club to climb into a Cessna and log some extra time in the clouds. He needed to put in the hours towards advancing in his flight training.
It’s near dusk on the day of the memorial, and I walk out the back doors of the old school to take a moment away from the crowd still gathering inside. I find a basketball that’s fallen into a ditch by the playground and swings. A net hangs next to the red-brick wall of the school. Still wearing my suit and tie, I dribble over to take a shot. As I raise the ball, I notice the roof of the wing he constructed peeking out just behind the gym where he’d show up for every high school basketball game I played. I think about standing in the same spot way back when it was still just a wooden frame I bragged about to my middle-school friends.
As my jumpshot arcs towards the rim I spot a small plane flying low beneath pink clouds. I think of time folding over, of my father gliding through a blue sky with everything yet undone. I see him weaving between the scattered clouds, looking down through his gold aviators on what would be the rest of his life. He wouldn’t know what lay ahead of him then. He wouldn’t know that he’d soon meet a girl, settle down, and have three kids who’d adore him. And as he flew, he wouldn’t yet know that those kids would grow up at the red-brick school in one of those fields beneath him. He’d take a deep breath. Admire the view. And when it was finally time for him to come in from the clouds, he’d navigate the wind and glide back to earth, softly, to live it all again.
4
As a boy, I had this recurring dream that my family and I lived inside an invincible vehicle on an endless journey to everywhere and nowhere in particular.
The truck was made of impenetrable steel and had special guards that lowered to the ground to cover the wheels and any other external vulnerabilities that our enemies might use to blow us up. With a push of a button, steel panels would also cover the windows and the windshield. We’d monitor the outside threat—usually some sort of angry evil gang with immense weapons—through a camera we dispatched overhead so that it would hover above us.
In real life, by day, my father’s truck seemed like our spaceship. For all the indestructible, impossible technology my mind ascribed to the vehicle of my dreams, we could as well have been beaming through the galaxies on those long road trips we took. But we were here, on earth, driving through the days and nights of our lives together.
I remember feeling the warmth of our closeness in the cab as we journeyed through the dark. No matter what happened, we were safe inside that vessel. It seemed impenetrable, its hulking metal frame raised high off the ground so that you had to hop up to get inside. We could drive through snow squalls and thunderstorms, and the ship would cut through it all with unwavering ease. It could feel as though the world was crashing in around us, but the truck would refuse to bend or break. It contained and sustained our lives, together, protecting us from whatever untold, unseen evil was trying to tear it all apart.
For so much of my youth, as my dad and I travelled across those long stretches of bland Ontario highways to weeknight hockey games, the true joy—the warmth—wasn’t in the thrill of the sport but rather in the time and space between here and there. It was in those hours of nothing but us and the truck and the road. And as we drove, I’d watch the highway recede behind us in the side mirror—fading back into the distance, into the past, until it disappeared. And up ahead the edge of the sky looked just like the shoreline of a wide sea—always way out before us, always unreachable, always in a future we’d never touch. At night stars would shoot across the black sky as the truck carried us through the darkness. I’d close my eyes and wonder whether somewhere out there, somewhere far away, there was another version of us, circling a different sun, travelling a different terrain, on their own infinitesimally small voyage in the universe. My father would hum along to the radio beside me as we drove, glancing over at me and smiling. And I’d wonder if way out ther
e, in that great beyond, fathers and sons journeyed together too.
The truck carried us on, heading home. And it was just my dad and me facing that endless road ahead. And nothing—not bad weather, not space invaders, not life, not death—no, nothing could ever stop us.
But now his truck is gone. It’s been missing from the spot on the driveway where it always sat. The absence of it makes me feel weak. Physically incomplete. As though something wasn’t whole. I need to find it and bring it back to where it belongs.
I know that the transmission conked out a week before Dad died, and that he’d had it towed to a shop in hopes of having his company cough up the cash for the repair. One of his colleagues suggests I check out a mechanic shop not far from the head office of the engineering firm where my dad worked. Sometimes they had their vehicles serviced there.
I find the extra set of keys hanging on a hook by the front door of my parents’ house—or now, my mom’s house. A friend, Alex, offers to drive me to the shop where I’ve been told the truck might be. Alex is one of the handful of guys who spent most of their youth at my house, hanging out with my family. Our open-door policy meant that a lot of hungry teenagers wound up at our place, raiding our fridge, even when we weren’t home. I’d never known Alex’s father. We’d never talked about him. We’ve rarely discussed serious things, though I know he’s seen and dealt with much more in his life than I have. A frequent user of the eggplant emoji, Alex is the kind of guy who’s always ready to cut tension with an obscene joke—but also capable of carrying enormous responsibility. He never stops working, often holding several different gigs at a time. He manages first aid protocol for film sets in Toronto and security at local nightclubs. And he is tough as hell. I once watched him throw a guy who’d pulled a knife on him across a sidewalk, through a cluster of trash cans that fell like bowling pins. Dad had been a constant encouragement to Alex throughout his life. He was one of the few men who’d told him that he believed in him. I’d never seen tears in Alex’s eyes until he showed up at the hospital the day my father died.
Alex and I cross a highway overpass, next to one of the apartments Dad had let me explore as it was coming to life—riding up the temporary elevator together, passing the concrete floors that had no finished walls or windows, just the bones of what would be. His hard hat sat loose and tilted on my head. He kept me close as we reached our destination, where he’d check some overhead duct work or something else I didn’t understand. I looked out from the open edge into the clear blue, the skyline of Toronto laid out in the distance, birds flying by. It was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever seen. I pressed close to him as he chatted with the crew, holding his hand tight as we stood there in the sky.
Moving towards the edge of town, near the international airport, I know we’re getting close. I can feel it in my throat. The area near my father’s office is a maze of endless industrial complexes that all blend together. I’m not sure what we’ll find, if anything at all. But then we turn left off Torbram Road—and there it is. The blue nose peeks out from the edge of a lot at the far end of the block. It’s a dark-blue Ford F-150 and there are countless like it on the road. But this one is different. I recognize it right away. I know this truck. I’ve watched it pull up so many times that I’ve memorized its image—the crack in the windshield, the rust around the wheel well. But it’s even deeper, more instinctual than that. It’s the way you can spot a loved one in a large crowd. Or your pup in a dog park full of matching Doodles. The identical is decipherable to family.
My heart races as we slow and turn into the lot. I’m flooded with relief—as if I’ve found something that’s been searching for me just as much as I’ve searched for it. Something that was stolen or lost but is finally back where it belongs.
For a brief moment I expect to see him open the door and climb out with a wide smile, as he’s done every time before. But it’s just a flash, a twitch in the muscle of my memory. The pain grows in my throat. The truck is dusty. It looks forgotten. Abandoned. As though it’s just been left there, waiting to rot away. I get out of Alex’s car and he waits as I walk up to the driver’s side door. I put my hand on the hot blue metal and brush away the dirt. I run my fingers along the numbered buttons beneath the door handle, ones that carry an unlock code that has been lost with him. I give it a shot—maybe we’d be in sync. I punch in 4-5-1-0, the first four digits in our home phone number. Nothing. I try 0-6-5-5, his birthday. Nothing. 5-5-0-6. No.
I look through the window into the empty cab, still littered with the receipts and papers that recorded his final journeys. I sigh, pushing the unlock button on the spare set of keys I’d found, hoping the battery still works. Thunk. The locks unbolt. I pull the door open and feel the sun’s heat rush past me with a familiar scent of dry mud and sawdust. I breathe deep, taking it in. The strips of duct tape he’d used to cover a rip in his seat wilt upwards, exposing the yellow foam beneath. The roll of tape in the side console, the cloth work gloves he kept handy, the coins in the cup holders, the screwdriver and tape measure between the seats, his workboots in the backseat—it’s all here, waiting for him.
I step up and slide behind the steering wheel, leaning back against the faded grey fabric. Just above the rear-view mirror I find his black Ray-Ban sunglasses and put them on. I rest my arm on the middle console and put my left hand on the steering wheel, the same position he took whenever we drove—left hand on the top of the wheel, right arm resting so that his shoulder leaned back, tilting slightly towards me.
It feels strange, sitting there in his space—in his place. The passenger seat is empty. My seat.
I turn the key—click, click, click…click, click, click. Lifeless. I try again, twisting hard, as though a little more force could will it back to life. But again, no reply. This vessel that carried us from adventure to adventure between the edges of sky is now nothing more than a hunk of rusting metal. The jolting halt to what had been the constant forward momentum of our lives.
I shake my head, looking over at my empty seat, and see myself sitting there, looking back through all our years. I picture him looking over at me and smiling softly, the way he always did. I can feel him there with me. I swear it. Ghosts are memories that you feel. And for the first time, it feels like he isn’t gone.
I need that feeling again. I want to live in it. There is no way, I think, no way it dies here.
It will cost thousands to fix something that—after more than a decade and some quarter-million kilometres—is barely worth that much alive and running. The rust around the wheels is spreading to the frame beneath the rear doors. The air conditioning conked out years ago.
I can see him telling me to just let it go. “It’s just a truck,” he’d say. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
The tow truck I’ve called arrives a few minutes later. It rigs up the truck, lifting its front wheels off the ground, and then pulls out towards the road. The frame is like a corpse being carted away. Alex and I follow behind in solemn procession until we reach a local mechanic shop where my father always took our cars to be fixed. When I called ahead, Dex, the owner, told me he’d start looking for used transmissions. It was likely going to be a couple thousand dollars. But he’d do his best to keep the costs down, he said, knowing why I was trying to fix it up.
“It’s such a shame. Your dad was a good man,” he said over the phone. “You just never know.”
The shop is closed when we get there, so the driver unhooks the truck in the back lot, next to a row of other dead vehicles awaiting revival—cars with bashed-in doors, shattered windows, and rusted- out frames, on the verge of being sent to the junkyard. Dad’s truck sat beside them, still dusty, still lifeless, but taller and prouder than the others.
* * *
—
Dex calls a couple of days later. I hold my breath, waiting for the diagnosis. He’s found a decent deal on a transmission that has a little more than ten thousand kilometres on i
t; it’ll cost about $2500. If we dropped it in, the truck would run great, he says. But—the inevitable bad news—the brake pads absolutely need to be replaced too. It’ll run me another grand.
After that, though, it’ll be almost perfect…aside from the rust, the cracked windshield, and the balding tires. Otherwise, good as new.
It’s been less than two weeks since my father died. The thought that I could bring our spaceship back to life gives me the feeling that I’m in control of something, finally, after being powerless to stop him from leaving. But there is no practical use for this truck in my life. I don’t have construction sites to visit. I don’t have lumber to pile in the back or tools to cart around. I don’t have a son or daughter to spend time with on the road.
It doesn’t matter. I want to feel the engine rumble to life beneath me. I want to decide what gets to survive. I want to sit in his seat, take the wheel, and steer our indestructible ride through the next leg of our never-ending journey. Because this is much more than an old truck. In my mangled grief—this twisting wreck of fear and pain—I’ve convinced myself that I need to fill the space he left behind.
So a few days later, I return to Dex and a massive bill. It’s more than I’ve ever spent to repair anything, but it’s the first time spending that much money has ever felt worth it. I pay the bill and take the keys. The truck sits in the parking lot. It seems brighter than it did those few days before. The blue paint sparkles in the sun.
I unlock the door and climb back into the driver’s side. I turn the ignition and feel the rumble. The truck’s low murmur, its vibration, is like a miracle. This thing was dead but now it is alive. It is defiance. It is resurrection. He’s here.