I didn’t say anything—I just stared out at the half-built face, all traces of the farmstand quickly being erased. The Memory of My Father flickered through the scenery—one moment dressed in tired winter clothes, the next leaning back in a wooden chair in the café area—but I couldn’t keep him there.
“Dad?” the VW said.
I couldn’t answer him—I was held in the draft of what had happened here, how much I’d lost at this place.
“Aren’t you going to write down all your gripes?”
“It’s all gone,” I skiffed.
“What’s gone?”
“Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Dad, what the hell?” The VW put down his clipboard. “I thought we were going to have a Clipboard Meeting.”
I was silent.
“Did it die? Is that what happened?”
“Did what die?”
“The farm,” the VW dented. “Or change its mind?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
My dumb, still heart was a requiem.
“Why don’t you just tell me the story?” said the VW.
I guess I’d known all along that I would tell him. How could I not? After all, this was a Clipboard Meeting, where everything was true. And why shouldn’t the VW know what happened to his grandfather?
“Listen,” I said. I took a breath and let it out. Then I pointed to the spot where the wide smile was smiling. “I told you that my father and I met here every Sunday?”
“Yeah. You said that already.”
“Well on this particular Sunday,” I said, “I was late.” I started telling the VW about that day—about the table where we sat, the Tree’s attack and the hijacking. I described what happened when I arrived, what I saw and what I was told by the Dogs. I told him every theory I’d heard, every note I’d sent.
What I’m saying is, I conveyed the power’s first chapter as best as I could using the imperfect and dilapidated vehicle of narrative.
As soon as I’d finished, though, I realized I’d made a mistake. I read the VW’s face: It was too much, too soon. He was only a few months old! His engine was racing and his eyes were flickering. When he finally spoke, he did so with a quiet intensity. “How long ago did this happen?”
I had to think about it—sometimes money slipped through my ears. “Two months ago,” I said.
“And I was born right afterwards?”
I nodded. “Just a few days.”
The VW looked out the window. “You must miss him.”
“I do,” I said.
“Does it make you cry?”
“The missing? When I can’t meet it, sure,” I said.
The VW didn’t say anything—neither of us did. We just sat there in the empty lot, watching the face assemble itself.
• • •
The silence was everest. Then the VW said, “Where is he right now?”
“Who?”
“Your Dad. Is he with the Tree?”
“I told you,” I said, sanding down the edges of my words. “Before the Tree stole the farm he—split him in two. He’s dead.”
“He’s dead?”
“The Tree killed him.”
“Wait. That can’t be right,” the VW said.
“No, it is.”
The VW furrowed his brow. Then he said, “But it’s your story.”
“It’s not my story—it’s the only story.”
“But can’t you just change it so—”
“What do you mean, change it?” I said.
“Change it.”
“Look,” I said. “See that face?” I pointed across the parking lot, to the expression-in-the-making.
“Yes,” said the VW.
“This just isn’t Atkin’s Farm anymore,” I said.
“But—”
“It’s a face, whether or not I want it to be.”
“But Dad, wait a second. Think about your options here. If you just try—”
“Try what?” I said. “Try what?”
“Try feeding me a different story—one that ends well for a change?”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“No, what is it?” said the VW.
I turned to face him. “Kiddo,” I said, “these are the only stories I know.”
HOW TO DRIVE A VOLKSWAGEN
CONDITION
Here we go!
TOOLS AND SPARE PARTS
At least two free Sundays
One coil of memorywire
A reading-speed meter
Skip-awareness
A peaceful set of pliers
PROCEDURE
As I’ve said, driving a Beetle is an act of reading: You are seeing a story (the road) and you are responding (narrative pedal, scene clutch, pagewheel). If you’re doing it right, you are determining your speed, direction and attitude. Your job is to mind the rules of the road (the signs), and to stay clear as to where you are and where you hope to get to.
In some ways, driving the Volkswagen is not so different from driving a VeggieCar. As always, you’re pursuing sound—only moreso in the Beetle. The controls in the VW are mostly the same, too, save for some dashboard gauges and the pedals at your feet. Most modern-day VeggieCars have eight petals, but the Volkswagen has nineteen: six for motion, two for shifting, one for chai, one for connecting, one for marginalia and mountains, two for mothersides and one for letting go. The sequence is not always the same from Volkswagen to Volkswagen, but there should be a chart underneath the dashboard that tells you which pedal is which. And if you lose it or can’t see it, you can either ask your Beetle or make a chart by following each pedal-cable to its source.
The steering controls are pretty self-explanatory, as there are only a few directions to choose from: Turn the page to the right to move forward, to the left to move backwards. Notice, too, the switch for the eyelights to the left.
If you’re used to driving VeggieCars, you might expect your dashboard to tell you about cropping, rot rate, nutrient levels and so forth. But the VW’s dash is different. It’s made from the wood of old trees, first, with needle- and text-gauges carved into the wood.
The standard Volkswagen dashboard layout starts, at the farmost left of the car, with a measurement for Read Speed (R/S)—how fast you’re moving forward. If you go too slow you risk stopping altogether or causing an accident with another driver. Going too fast, though, you risk injury and death. Ten thousand people die each year from driving too fast. I’ve had several accidents, and those experiences have convinced me that we all drive too fast. If we all read as if we were strapped to the front cover of our book, we’d be mindful of other readers and probably save a lot of lives. So I am saying, watch that R/S Gauge carefully.
Next to the R/S Gauge is the WMM—the Western Massachusetts Meter. In essence, this gauge measures friction (right—friction!)—the particular friction of that moment and the half mile or so ahead. How vivid is western Massachusetts at the moment, and what side is it showing you? It could be anything: a vending machine crossing the road; a bathtub opening its mouth and showing you the virus in its throatpipes. And keep in mind that the gauge is not specific—that it will tell you how clear the image is, but not what it is. Nevertheless, it’s very useful on the road. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the gauge hit a red four as we came around a corner, and how glad I was that I hit the breaks when I did.
Gauges Three, Seven, Eight, Thirteen, Fourteen and Nineteen, from left to right, show you the book of power How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, the stories within stories, what is dead and what is living and where we are at any given time. Note that each of these gauges lists a separate trajectory. Want to know where we are geographically? Take a look at Gauge Fourteen: It should say “Northampton.” How much do we know about the VW? Check Gauge Seven!
Occasionally, these gauges need t
o be reset—you’ll know it’s time when they start telling you that you know more or less than you actually do, that you’re in Athens when you’re really in Northampton, that someone is ill when they’re not. Hopefully, convincing the dashboard out and pressing the reset buttons—small memory-coiled flushes—will do the trick. If not, the problem is not the gauge but something else: the cable, the floater, the sensor itself.
Chai levels are reported on Gauges Four and Six. If you get too low, you have no choice but to turn around, wherever you are, and head back to the Haymarket.
Gauge Five measures your relationship to One Side of Your Mother, while Gauge Seventeen measures that to the Other Side of Your Mother.
Gauges Nine through Twelve tell you about the various fuels in the car—the stories in front of us and those we’ve already burned, the amount of stories filed away in the front trunk, the approximate mileage each page will get you. Note that these gauges do not measure the layers of skin, stress levels, or bone density of stories—they don’t tell you what we’re holding onto, what we’ve let go of, what we believe and what we can no longer accept, what our hopes are or where (in what town, with which character) our sympathies lie. For that information, refer to Gauges Fifteen and Sixteen.
Gauge Eighteen is the Castaway Meter. This tells you exactly how far in centimeters you are from the Castaway Lounge—the distance between you and those naked, dancing plots. Some models of the Volkswagen Beetle include a compass to direct you back there, but mine does not.
Right now? Only a few miles! Nude beliefs, here we come!
Love is measured in Gauge Twenty—specifically, love pressure (LP) in the surrounding area. It’s normal for the gauge to read anywhere from ten to twenty percent. If it drops below four percent, though, you may have trouble—the VW may get sad, slow down or even stop altogether. If this occurs, you have to immediately find/write a story that somehow convinces him that there is more love, caring or compassion in the area than he thinks there is. I can’t tell you how many times this has been a problem for us—how many trips were interrupted because I had to head into the nearest populated town to see if we could find some examples of kindness. Sometimes it just wasn’t there for us to find, and in those cases I’d have to sit down and try to write something—type into the book of power, print out the sheet, feed it manually. I don’t think that approach ever actually yielded more LP, but I just couldn’t think of anything else to do.
SIGNALS/DIRECTIONALS
Once you know the basics (how to accelerate, stop, steer) you can really go anywhere you want to: backwards, forwards, to one side or another. It’s important to remember, though, that you’re not the only car on the road, and that everyone around you—the other drivers, houses and businesses, streets and gutters, western Massachusetts itself!—needs to know which direction you’re heading. Are you vaulting back into what was? Turning to one future or another? Taking Memorial Drive? You can avoid costly book-benders and collisions by signaling your intent.
The good news, though, is that signaling is easy: Just hold out your left arm and point it skywards if you’re reading to the right, or straight out to the left if you’re reading to the left.
Let’s try it. First, decide which way you intend to read.
Now, signal with your left arm.
Raise your arm higher—I can barely see it.
Yes! Now I know: You’re reading to the right.
Remember, too, that you’re not the only one out there sending signals. Everyone and everything that you see is maintaining an image of some sort, some picture of themselves purveyed. Signaling, then, is not just choosing any old direction—it’s every message you send. It’s how you walk and how you look, and it’s choosing a face—the face of a quiet reader, the face of an angry son, the face of the Longmeadow Dump. Be mindful of the signal that you’re sending, and don’t be afraid to let it change as you change. It is meaningful to meet a tunnel, fall in love with it, take it home and faith. But remember that the tunnel—like you, like me—is actually a signal for something else. You might go to bed entrenched and wake up to a broom or a puddle of water.
I realize this is frustrating. It’s what we’re trying to stop!
THE STORY
As always, there is a story—the tale, in this case, of you or me driving a Volkswagen Beetle.
I didn’t want to use the VW as my main means of transportation, but when the Lady from the Land of the Beans left me I had no choice—she’d taken the VeggieCar and I needed a way to get to work and around town. What else could I do? I had not a minute to spare, and every job that I could think of required me to have a car.
And it’s not like I had to teach him; the VW knew everything he needed to already. He’d already practiced turns and maneuvers in the big driveway behind our house, and his teachers at school used to tell me that he’d spend his time during recess showing off his three-point turns on the playground. I was the one who needed the practice, and so every day for two weeks the VW and I went out for drives. I’d practice stops and starts on Crescent Street, then lag onto Routes 9 or 5 and rehearse accelerations, shifts and page-turns until I finally felt I could control the car.
But learning to drive the VW wasn’t a smooth process; in fact, we fought almost every time we practiced. I’d get angry at the VW for speeding or traveling too many lines at one time, or he’d groan about how slow I was going or the fact that we traveled the same roads over and over.
And while the VW knew how to maneuver himself on the road, he didn’t understand the first thing about western Massachusetts—its stops of story and memory and fear. I scolded him repeatedly for driving too casually, for not staying aware. One fall afternoon, while driving through Florence, I tried to elaborate. “There are roads that we can take and roads we can’t,” I explained.
“Why not?”
“Because people go down those roads and they don’t come back,” I said.
“Ever?”
“Right,” I said.
The VW was quiet for a moment. “Well, how do we know which roads are OK?”
“I’m writing about that in the power,” I told him. “The first rule, though, is to follow your ears, your heart.”
The Volkswagen spoke slowly. “Follow my ears—”
“Well, your sensors.”
“—and my heart.”
“Your engineheart,” I said.
“What am I listening for?”
“For change—the sound or sign of change. That’s why you need to avoid the main routes. Forty-seven is OK, and five, but never ninety-one or ninety.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can get lost; they might take you so far away from here that you’ll—we’ll—forget which roads you took,” I said. “Or, Northampton could change its tune while you’re driving, seal off its exit, and then you’re screwed.”
The VW seemed to be digesting this. “Why can other cars—”
“You’re not like other cars,” I told him. “They’re searching for something. You already have everything you need.”
How could I know at the time how true those words were?
Even so, though, the VW heard but didn’t listen. He was always getting lost or distracted by something on the side of the road, and the older he got the more curious he became and the harder it became for me to drive him. He’d make decisions without asking me, take turns without even signaling. Once, driving towards Hadley, he saw an entrance to Route 91 and he leaned towards it as if I wouldn’t notice.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing the wheel.
He didn’t say anything. He just kept leaning.
“VW,” I said again. I yanked the steering wheel over. “What are you doing?”
The VW spat oil.
“What’s the rule about ninety-one?” I said.
“Even though there are a million freaking cars on it.”
“They aren’t you,” I said.
“You mean they aren’t sick?”
“You
aren’t sick,” I said. “You just don’t understand—”
“—understand the area. I know.”
“You don’t,” I said. “These towns can be loud and harsh.”
“Sure they can,” the VW curred.
“Alright big shot—what do you do when you meet a city made of parchment?”
The VW’s eyes went off. “There are cities made of parchment?”
“Off ninety-one? Absolutely. Parts of Amherst are paper-thin. Not only that, I’ve seen towns made of prayer—heard of others made of fabric and film.”
I could hear the VW processing this. “But how do I navigate—”
“You don’t. You stay off ninety-one, away from the changes.”
The VW made a gutterface. “Away from the changes,” he sang, impersonating me.
“Hey—stop that.”
“Stop that,” the VW said, his voice high and thin.
“I wonder what a good memory coil would go for at the flee bee,” I said.
The VW smiled and slowed down. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“You never know,” I said.
FREQUENTLY CRASHING QUESTIONS
I have trouble shifting my VW. Am I doing something wrong?
Probably not. Shifting a VW is more difficult than shifting other cars; VeggieCars allow you to shift a stalk from one seed-cluster to another, but to shift a Volkswagen you must select from twenty-five different gears spread out over five different transmissions. It simply takes money to get used to that system, and to immediately know when to use which speed.
Often, though, it’s an issue of common sense. Clearly I used a faster speed—gear 4/3 (transmission four, gear three), say—for an excerpt from the manual, a lower gear for “One More Night,” a higher gear for “A Scanner Darkly.” I’d use a 3/1 on Route 9, a 3/5 on Route 47, a 1/4 downtown. If I switched to too low a gear—a 1/5 on 47, say—the Volkswagen would stall.
This all might be fiction, though, because usually the VW shifts for you. It’s only if he fails to do so that you have to grab the page and shift it into gear.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive Page 8