How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

by Christopher Boucher

  The VW loved so many places in western Massachusetts—the Prayer Wheel, the Mill, the Moan—but none so much as the Castaway. This wasn’t just a fun cove to undrive; it played an essential role in the overall motion for my son, in the connecting of one thread to another. I suspect the same is true for your car. Do you see, behind the wrap of Northampton, the tune-souled road that runs by two bookstores? Follow that road until you see the sequined coils of the Castaway. You can’t miss it!

  Inside the Castaway, you’ll find men and women drinking the Promise of Beer at small, wooden tables while watching the ideas take off their clothes. I’ve seen an oven take off its bikini slow, a cactus saunter through the tables in a mini-skirt and tube top, the Memory of a hanged slave throw his overalls into the crowd.

  You can see, as you sit at the bar, that the Castaway is not only about faith—though plenty of faith occurs—but also about revision, about moving from one draft of the Volkswagen to the next. Each of us has several skins. Say we could have found the time to sit at the bar together, you and I. And let’s say we saw one of the Castaway regulars—the toaster, say—step up on stage and take off her clothes, as she does at least once a week. She strips to encourage faith—a reader’s faith—but also to be free. You would see that underneath her clothes, the toaster is a wooded backyard in the moonlight. You see? It’s neither the sweet music nor the driving beer that prompts the Castaway; it’s the fact that an overworked toaster can unplug from the wall, lift her shirt and reveal a thicket of trees.

  Drink enough Memories of Beer, though, and everything will quiet down for you. Then you’ll hear it—that one note inside your chest that you know is real, the one that no one can buy, steal or retune.

  THE STORY

  There are many wires that head back to the Castaway, but this one, which takes place much later—in 2005, actually—is certainly the thickest and most traveled.

  Inside the Castaway that night, the air was rich with narrative and all of the stories were saying the same thing. The posters on the wall yelled insults to one another while a group of instruments set themselves up in the corner and two white plastic cups danced on stage.

  It’s worth pointing out, incidentally, that everyone I’ve ever taken to the Castaway—my brother, my son, the Chest—has managed at one point or another to secure themselves at least a little bit of faith there. But not me. Every time I tried—sitting down next to a lonely airport lounge and trying to heat up a conversation; suggesting to a stereo that we take a walk outside—it turned sour. I believed and they didn’t. There was something about me—either I wasn’t attractive enough, or I lacked confidence, or they could see something in me that I myself couldn’t see.

  That night, my son went to sit by the stage with a MemoryBeer and I tried to find a seat at the bar. In a few minutes one opened up and I sat down and ordered the darkest Memory on the wall. As I drank it, I looked around at the people huddled on the stools; almost every one of them was a no-face or misface, men and women for whom things had gone wrong.

  The VW, meanwhile, went to sit by the stage, and soon enough he’d started laughing and drinking with a Kandinsky Print—a regular image at the Castaway. She was chatting casually with him, her feet on the chair and a drink in her hand, but her composition twinkled in a way that told me she had something more in mind. I predicted that the two of them would soon disappear.

  Then I stopped paying attention to the VW, though, because I began talking with an old vice—she’d asked me about the Volkswagen and I started telling her stories. I told her about his health, how he was sick all the time, and then about his mother, how she’d left me to raise the VW by myself. I suppose I mentioned this so the vice would have pity on me, and maybe generate a little faith for me, but when I mentioned the Lady from the Land of the Beans the vice slapped the bar with her hand.

  “You’re kidding me,” she said. “She doesn’t help at all?”

  “She’s hundreds of miles away!” I said.

  Her face was gritty, scratched. “How can she not want any involvement in her son’s life?”

  “Well, the VW is in touch with her—they do speak about once a week on the phone.”

  The vice was quiet as she registered this. Then she said, “Oh.”

  “And he spent a week last summer with her in the Land of the Beans.”

  “He did?” the vice asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Well why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I just did.”

  “I mean before, when you were telling me all of those stories?”

  I put my drink down—I was a little dizzy, too beered up for this conversation. “My point is—”

  “The woman didn’t abandon him—it sounds like she does what she can.” The vice pointed to my power. “How many stories does that thing hold?”

  “A lot—at least fifty,” I boasted.

  “Are there stories about her in there?”

  “Some,” I said defensively.

  “About her role in the VW’s life?”

  I looked down at the tangle of tape and dust.

  “See?” she said.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing—I’m listening to what you’re saying, and I’m trusting you to be fair.”

  “Fair?” I said. “Who said anything about being fair?”

  And that’s when the VW tapped me on the shoulder. “Dad,” he hissed.

  I turned to face him.

  “Did you see that tree over there? The one with the note-coat?”

  “Where?”

  “Across the bar,” he said.

  I looked.

  The tree was sitting on a stool, drinking a beer. He had a moustache and a baseball hat. His vest was harmonizing with the music from the jukebox, but upon first glance he didn’t look to be any different from the firs and cherries that sometimes stumble-twigged into the bar.

  I said, “I’m in the middle of a conversation, OK buddy?”

  “But—”

  “I thought you were chatting with the Kandinsky Print.”

  “Dad—” the VW gasped.

  “—we can’t get excited every time we see a tree, kiddo.”

  “But that tree has blood on his chin,” the VW said.

  Did he? I looked again. “No he doesn’t,” I said.

  “Yes, he does,” the VW said.

  “You’ve probably just had too much to drink.”

  “I have not,” the VW said. “I’m telling you—”

  “Go back to the print,” I said.

  I went back to my conversation with the vice—I was still hoping that something might develop. A few minutes later, though, I saw the tree stand up and pay his time. Then he turned on his tree-heels, pushed open the door and walked out into the night.

  The VW sped across the room and followed him out. Before I knew what was happening I was walking out too.

  By the time I reached the dusty parking lot, the VW was standing in the middle of Route 5. “Dad—look!” he said, pointing north.

  The whole night was ringing—the stars, the homes, the road itself.

  I looked. All I saw was a yellow light in the distance.

  “Isn’t that a farm?”

  I looked again. Was that light in the shape of a window? No. “I don’t think so—it’s a shed or something.”

  “It might not be,” the VW said. “Come on—let’s follow it. It might be a pasture.”

  “It’s not a pasture.”

  “I think it is,” the VW said.

  “We can’t, VW,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “I’m fine!”

  “Let’s go home, alright?”

  The VW shot me a ditto-face. “Dad,” the VW said. “Don’t you hear the music?”

  And I did—I did hear music. But so what? I said, “We’ve both had too much MemoryBeer, is all.”

  “I’m telling you, that tree was—
”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  The VW threw down his hands. “I can’t believe you! Why can’t we—”

  “Because I said no, OK? No.”

  The VW shook his head in disgust. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” I admitted.

  The VW turned to face south, towards home. I got in and we started driving through the dark. After a moment the VW said, “You know what, Dad?”

  “What?” I said.

  “When I get older? I won’t be like you.”

  “Oh really?” I said.

  “That’s right. I won’t watch my whole life, every opportunity I’m given, go the other way.”

  I was offended, then angry. I said, “VW, you are older.”

  “I am not,” he said. “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. My real life hasn’t even really begun.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. You’re a nineteen seventy-one Volkswagen Beetle—a thirty-five year old car. You’re older than I am, for god’s sake.”

  The VW seemed to mull this over for a second, as we vaulted through Hatfield and towards the Northampton line. Then he said, “You’re just trying to hurt my feelings. I’m not even three freaking years old.”

  “It’s too late for you, VW, just like it’s too late for me,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” the VW said. “I’m still fresh and new, with only a few dents on me, and I’m going to grow up to be a—”

  “VW,” I said, “You’re already everything you’re ever going to be.”

  STORIES AND AUTHORS IN CONTEXT

  Later on, I came back to Northampton with the woman I was dating—a Scientist, who worked with infectious diseases—and we went down to the store called Faces to see about getting my name back. This was years in the future—my father was dead and the Crescent Street house just a Memory. When the Scientist and I turned onto Main Street we found it completely changed: Most of the stores had died and were just stiff corpses on the sidewalk, their doors swinging open to expose ribs and grey lungs. And the only cars on the road anymore were VeggieCars—rows of half-rotten jalopies lining either side of Main Street.

  The Scientist and I had a complex relationship, which is to say that sometimes she was fond of me and other times she treated me like an orange traffic cone. She’d been nice enough to me to take me in after I’d lost my father’s house, but sometimes she gave me a look that meant I was to go away, to leave for several days.

  It was then that I called the Memory of the Volkswagen, who barely spoke to me otherwise.

  “What,” he’d say when he answered the phone.

  Other times, the Scientist would let me stay out of pity, but under a particular arrangement: I slept in her living room or on the kitchen floor, priming in a sleeping bag, while she went out to the chemi-clubs to find young men and women. I would lie awake, listening to them faithing in the next room, moaning and lying.

  But something kept us together, at least for a time. She was honest and jaw, and I was soft and afraid, and maybe she liked the fact that I would do whatever she told me to. I was happy to oblige in any way I could, even if that meant leaving or curling up to the refrigerator for warmth while she cried out in faith in the bedroom.

  Once every few weeks or so, though, the Scientist would open her bed to me and I would climb in, and she would float above me, suspended, and touch me here, and here and here. As she did, I could feel myself getting infected with whatever condition or virus she was carrying at the moment. This explained the pain in my groin. Sometimes I had trouble urinating. For a few weeks I lost all track of time.

  But by that time I didn’t even really mind. I was old, and without knowing it I had carved out spaces in my life for each of these conditions. In some subconscious way, I think I wanted them.

  That morning, we stood at the counter in Faces until a teenager came to the register. She had lightattoos all over her and her head was completely sized.

  I told her that I was there to buy back a name which I had sold to the store years earlier. She punched some keys on the back of a transaction animal—a dog-like creature bred and modified for retail—who sat patiently on the glass countertop, staring at me blankly.

  “So,” the girl said. “This was a name you leased to us?”

  “I sold it,” I said. “I needed the time for a constant velocity joint for—”

  “Sold it when?” The girl’s eyes were gutters.

  “Fall, two thousand and three,” I told her.

  The girl scrunched up her face. “We usually don’t keep our names for more than four years, even if they don’t sell,” she said. “They go out of style, see?”

  “Can you just check for us?” the Scientist said, and she slid her arm around my waist. Her face was lumpy, soft.

  The girl typed data into the buttons on the back of the animal. “Hm,” she said, reading the backscreen. “City Life?”

  I shook my head. “I had a small child at the time, a Volkswagen?” I said.

  “What’s a voke wagon?” the girl asked.

  I was getting irritated. “Volkswagen. It was a type of car,” I explained. “He was about—” I tried to think back, “two, two and a half. He was very sick. I needed some quick time, and I’d already sold every moment I could spare.”

  “Well, I’m not seeing any other names bought in two thousand three,” she said. “Do you remember the name—what it sounded like?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  The girl spoke into her wristmike and asked for a manager, and a minute later one appeared. He looked to be about twenty, and I noticed that his ears had been altered; he’d had small black speakers installed in his eardrums. “Here I am,” he sang to her. “Hi,” he said to us.

  I nodded.

  “They’re trying to buy back a name that they sold us ten years ago,” the girl said.

  “Not quite that long,” I said. “Two thousand three.”

  “Hm,” the man said. “We don’t usually … what was the name?”

  I winced.

  “We’re not sure,” the Scientist explained.

  “You don’t remember the name?” he said.

  “I don’t. I just remember that it was fall, two thousand three, and that I had my son with me. He was ill that day and he spit up all over the carpets.”

  The manager wasn’t really listening to me—he was searching through the database on the backscreen. As he did, the transaction animal shifted in place and itched under his arm, never taking his eyes off of me. These animals frightened me—I had seen footage of them chasing shoplifters down the street, their metal teeth glinting, their bellies bouncing with time.

  After another minute the manager shook his head and looked up at me. “I’m not seeing it here,” he said.

  “That’s what I told them,” said the girl.

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “See, we’re not really in the business of selling names or faces back to their original owners,” he said. “Sometimes, if someone comes in looking to buy back their name and they remember the features, we might still have it or have records of who we sold it to. But that’s pretty rare.”

  I leaned on the glass counter, which featured a few of the store’s most expensive faces. “I’ve saved up a lot of time to buy this name back,” I said.

  “What if we show you another name?” the manager said.

  “I don’t want another name—I want mine.”

  A line of people had started to form behind us. “Honey,” the Scientist said.

  “I’m really very sorry,” said the manager.

  “It was long—it was long!” I said. “Four names, strung together.”

  The man pressed his lips together. “That’s not really enough for us to go on,” he said.

  I dug my fist against the top of the glass case and the faces beneath it rattled. The transaction animal bristled and showed its teeth. “I have the time now,” I sa
id. “I’ll give you as much as you want.”

  The manager didn’t say anything. The look on his face was the yellow lines of Route 47—both had the same hatch marks, the same pattern of wear.

  The Scientist excused us and led me outside onto the sidewalk. “It’s just a name,” she said.

  The sky was naked and far too wide. “The Other Side of My Mother gave me that name,” I told her.

  “Then how can you not remember it? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” I yelled into the morning. “But I don’t.”

  She took my hands. “Think back,” she said.

  “Please,” I huffered. “Don’t try to tell me how to navigate my own memory. It’s like a junkfarm in there, alright? Everything is rotted and picked through.”

  She let go of my hands. “Alright.”

  “It’s a graveyard,” I said, “filled with the dead and the decomposed.”

  “OK,” she whispered. She started walking. “Enough, alright? Can we just go home?”

  “This is what I’ve been saying to you,” I said, following her down the sidewalk. “How am I supposed to communicate—to tell you how I feel—if all I have are the bones of words?”

  LEAVES OF GRASS

  A few weeks after we saw that vested tree at the Castaway, Goshen CityDogs picked up a hospital hitchhiking along Route 9. When they found him he was without words, completely storyless—just a shutdown, abandoned emergency room in critical condition.

  The Dogs rushed the hospital to Holyoke Hospital and they fed him stories intravenously. From what I was told, he very well might have died. Four or five days after his arrival, though, his backup generators kicked on and he started talking. The Dogs bedogged him, and when he mentioned Atkin’s Farm they called me. The VW and I drove down to Holyoke and two Dogs met us at the main entrance.