How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

by Christopher Boucher

  I said, “You know of one?”

  The stove nodded. “Cod’s name is Jerome. Lives at the bottom of the lake,” he said, “but he’s good.” The stove gave me the mechanic’s number, and I called him that very same day. I told him my son was a Volkswagen, explained his symptoms.

  “Where you guys coming from?” said the voice on the phone.

  “Western Mass—a town called Northampton.”

  “No, oh. Oh, I know Northampton,” said the fish. “Did my cousin give you my number?”

  “A wood stove that I met at the diner gave it to me.”

  “Your son’s a Beetle?”

  “A seventy-one,” I said.

  “Right. Buzzy told me about him. The actor, right?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “I’ve been to Northampton many times—mostly for auditions.”

  I was having trouble following him. “Can you fix him?”

  “Oh. Oh, right, sure,” said the Cod. “No problem. Bring him by—,” he paused, “—how about Thursday?”

  So I did; three days into our stay at Bow Lake, I helped the VW put on his wetsuit and we drove to the bottom of Bow Lake to see the fish mechanic. Deep we went, unconscious, hidden mind. It wasn’t a big lake, and there were only a few businesses at the bottom, so the garage was easy to find. We pulled up to the bay door, waited for it to raise and drove in. Then the fish mechanic came into the garage and pulled the door closed behind us. He was dressed in a grey jumpsuit and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. His flippers were dirty with oil and his eyes carried stories of steel. He immediately approached the VW and extended his hand. “Mr. Volkswagen,” he said.

  The VW shook his hand but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m very, very excited to meet you,” the Cod said. He stared at the VW and then at me. None of us said anything for a moment. Then the Cod pointed to the lift. “Let’s get started, yes?”

  My son rolled onto the lift and the Cod raised it. As the platform rose, the fish pretended to investigate my son’s skin and engine. “Well,” he said, broccoliing it. “A lot of skin color change.”

  “I’m pretty sure the problem’s with one of the transmissions.”

  “I’m not sure about that—have you noticed all the rus–”

  “Or the engineheart, which I still can’t find,” I said. “Can you give me any suggestions there?”

  “For locating the engineheart?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s very hard to explain—they’re in different places in each car,” he said.

  “Well he’s not burning right, or something. I tried to figure it out,” I said, shaking my head, “but I just can’t.”

  But that garage turned out to be a scam. After a few minutes, I realized that this mechanic was nothing more than a lonely old trout from another book, looking for a few more pages. Like most of the mechanics that I’d brought the VW to, this fucking fish didn’t know the first thing about my son’s storyengine—he looked at it as if he’d never even seen a story before. All he did was run a few tests—then he just stood there with his fins crossed, staring at the car.

  I stepped up next to him. “You said it’d be no problem over the phone,” I said.

  He snapped his fingerfin. “Have you changed his memory oil?”

  “His sufferoil?”

  “Right, right. Have you changed that?”

  “Of course I have—I change it every chapter.”

  The fish leaned towards me. “Hey—he still going to casting calls?”

  I stepped back. “He’s sick,” I said. “He’s really sick. You told me you could fix him. We made the trip down here.”

  The fish’s eyes tried to send wires to mine. “Listen: This is a role, friend—it’s just something I’m doing until something better comes along. Right?” He nodded at the VW. “He have an agent?”

  “What?”

  “No, nothing. I’m just, well—I’m just asking. I’m an actor, too, and I’m looking for—”

  “Take my son down,” I told him.

  The fish’s face grew cold. “I haven’t figured out what’s the matter yet,” he said.

  “Take him down, I said.”

  The fish mechanic walked guiltily over to the lever and lowered the lift, and the VW rolled off. His face was bright. “Am I fixed?” he said.

  I didn’t answer him; I just put his flippers back on and prepared him for the trip back up to the surface. As I did, the Cod sidled up to me. “Here’s my card, at least,” he said. “If you know anyone who needs an extra or something.”

  I ignored him; I finished putting the VW’s wetsuit on and then I stepped into the driver’s seat and closed the door. As I did, the Cod reached for the VW’s hand and shook it. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. VW,” he said.

  The VW smiled gently.

  “I read a review of one of your performances in the Wheel. I was very impressed.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. I pulled the VW out of the bay and the fish closed the garage door behind us.

  As we coasted along the lake bottom, the VW pressed me for details. “Didn’t he say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell him about my skin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he had no reaction?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “It’s something serious, isn’t it?” the VW said.

  “He’s not a real mechanic, kiddo,” I said. “He’s never even seen a storyengine before.”

  The VW pounded his blue fist on the watery pavement. “Why is it that no one has ever seen my engine before?” he said, his voice quivering. He glared at me. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Soon I would accept the fact that it was futile—that neither I nor any of the mechanics that I visited knew exactly what was wrong with the Volkswagen. My son was a mystery.

  “Nothing, buddy—there’s nothing wrong with you,” I promised him. I turned the pagewheel and steered him up, up, up towards the bright surface.

  TROUBLE, TROUBLE, TROUBLE

  Not long after I spoke with him, the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital was found dead in his hospital bed, his face stumped beyond recognition. Two Dogs were guarding the door at the time, but the Tree got in anyway—by scaling the building, apparently. The Dogs heard the smashing of glass, but by the time they got inside the Tree was gone, Cooley-Dickinson defaced.

  I went to the funeral, stood in the last pew at the Smith College Chapel, watched the hospital’s father—the distinguished BayState Hospital, from Springfield—shake with grief in the front row, his old windows weeping into his white beard. I stared at the giant, hospital-shaped casket, my mind dividing itself into parts. Which sections should I keep? And which sections must go?

  I’ll keep this and this. To hell with the rest of it.

  Cooley-Dickinson’s sister, a paint store in New Haven, gave the eulogy. “When I think back to Cody,” she said, grimacing through tears, “I just try to forget the last years, these last croons. I think Cody would want that. The Wheel might regard him as the victim of a Tree, but I remember the Cody who finished hospital school a year early; the Cody who, before this whole thing started, loved to draw comics, and was excited about the upcoming release of his first comic book series, STAT.”

  Then the paint store coda’d into a southern maine—a plastic review about the hospital’s comic book, which was set, fittingly, in a hospital. She described the first issue, a funny thin side about a dying basketball which had the audience craughing.

  I just kept thinking, this hospital was an artist. A brother, a son. And look what I/the tree had done to him.

  I accompanied the funeral party to the cemetery and watched them lay the hospital into the ground. After the service, I approached the old hospital and offered him my hand. I looked into his old rooms and started to tell him who I was, who my father was, but he put up his hand and said, “I knew who you were, Mr. _____, the minute you walked into the church.”
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  “I just wanted to say how sorry—”

  “No,” he said, his voice trembling. “Don’t give me your sorries. You tell them to my son.”

  I was silent.

  “You go there,” he said, pointing to the giant hole in the earth, “and you tell Cody that you’re sorry.”

  I stammered a response.

  “Mr. _____,” the old hospital said, leaning over me. “Why these stories? Why this one, in particular?”

  By then other mourners had stopped to hear our discussion. “I—I don’t follow.”

  “You don’t follow? How about, for once, a happy tune? How about, a young promising hospital gets renovated, or gets married, or—”

  “You sound like my son,” I said. “This is what he tells me, too.”

  “He’s right,” the old hospital said. “You should listen to him.”

  “Sir,” I said, my voice just a note above a whisper. “These stories chose me. They chose me.”

  “Then ignore them!”

  “Ignore them?”

  “People’s lives are at stake here!” he coaled.

  “I’ve tried. If it were only that simple.”

  “Then run. Run away. Go somewhere where these stories can’t find you.”

  “I’ve tried that, too,” I said. “But they’re faster. They find me every time.

  “I’ve tried everything,” I told him.

  I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

  I’m thinking back, going back in my mind, to that Sunday in the fall of 2004, when the Memory of My Father and I went to the flee bee—the Old Hadlee Flea Market, held every week on a small farm on Route 47—and he bought a small war in a beautiful little wooden trinket box.

  Was that in ’04—so long ago already?

  Yes, I think it was, because it was the same day that I bought the corpse of an old accordion who’d gotten in a bar fight and been stabbed and killed. I bought it from a moustached truck who was selling it for two and a half hours. “No guarantees,” he said as I handed over the time. He put the coffin in my arms; the instrument’s bellows were stiff, its keys cold and grey.

  My hope, though, was that I might be able to fix the accordion and convince the VW to take lessons on it. I’d always loved the accordion, and so had my father. I brought the musicorpse home and began working on it—I opened its skin at the seam, fed it fluids and nutrients intravenously, repaired its organs with epoxy and c-clamps, replaced two of its buttons, sewed its wounds and reattached its skin—and a few days later it opened its eyes and looked into my face.

  “Oh god thank you,” he said, weeping.

  But then the VW refused to play. That night—the night the accordion was resurrected—I put on some Cajun music for the VW to listen to, and he heard two notes and said that it was the least cool thing he’d ever heard.

  “You don’t like this stuff?” I said.

  “People actually listen to this?” the VW said.

  “It’s nice—it’s folky, happy,” I said.

  “It’s a rose bush making fart sounds with its elbow,” the VW said.

  So I had to kill the accordion all over again. The next morning, I set up a noose and a small stool in the front yard. I had the instrument stand in place on the stool while I slipped the rope around his neck.

  He flailed his tiny, keyed hands. “Please, no!” he begged.

  “My son doesn’t want you,” I told him. “I really thought he would.”

  “I need to live!” the accordion said.

  “But for what purpose?” I reasoned with him. “Who will play you?”

  I could see his mind working. He stammered for an answer, but my job was clear and I did what needed to be done: I stepped back and kicked out the stool. The noose tightened. The accordion’s eyes went wide. He coughed—”Gack! god—Gack!”—and then his hands fell and his head slumped forward.

  I kept him hanging there for a week, as a warning to other instruments. A few days later I was sitting by the window and I saw a French horn walking past on the sidewalk stop cold when he noticed the re-killed and hung accordion. His face was filled with fear.

  At the end of the week I took the accordion down, laid him in his coffin and buried him. I wonder whether I’ll see him again.

  But I was talking about the trinket box with the war inside, the one the Memory of My Father bought at the flee bee that day. As I said, he didn’t mean to buy the war; he was just interested in the box, which was made of spruce and had some very interesting designs carved in the lid. As near as I could tell, the woodcuts told a story—a story about a chariot in the Old West. There was one scene with the chariot in a duel, his wide-brimmed hat cocked back and his hand hovering over his holster.

  I was there when the Memory of My Father bought it, from a young girl who was watching the table while her mother went for coffee. He paid only twenty minutes for it, because the box was locked and the girl said the key had been lost. The Memory of My Father bought it and tucked it under his arm and the two of us walked proudly back to the car—he with his storybox, me with my coffined accordion.

  It wasn’t until about a half an hour later, as we were driving home, that I picked up the box to study the scenes and heard noises coming from inside it. I put the box to my ear and I could hear booms and crashes.

  I held the box out to the Memory of My Father, who was steering with one hand and holding a jelly donut with the other. “Listen to this,” I said. I held it to his ear.

  “I just hear shifting,” he said.

  “There’s something happening inside this box,” I declared. I tried again to open it, but couldn’t. “I’m going to open this thing up and see what’s inside it.”

  “You do that and you’re going to fuck up the lock, and it won’t be worth anything,” the Memory of My Father said. “Just leave it be, _____.”

  “I won’t fuck up a thing,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

  The Memory of My Father shook his head and bit into his donut.

  Later that day, the VW and I went down to my Dad’s workbench in the basement of the Crescent Street house and we tried to loosen the lock. I let the VW try first—he tried to pick the lock with a paperclip, and then he took a tiny flathead screwdriver and tried to pry the catch.

  But I grew impatient, and after ten minutes or so I went and grabbed a crowbar. “Give me that thing,” I told him.

  “Don’t use that—you’re going to snap the latch right off,” the VW said.

  “I won’t—I’ll be careful.”

  “Dad—”

  “Give it,” I said, and I took the box from him. I stuck the prybar against the latch and turned it, which created a little gap between the two halves. I heard moans inside.

  “What’s that sound?” the VW said.

  The latch wouldn’t give. I pushed hard on the crowbar once, twice.

  “Careful—”

  “I’m being careful,” I said, and pushed again, but this time the wood cracked.

  We both stared at what I’d done.

  “Did I tell you?” the VW said.

  I’d pried the lock right out of the wood, ruined the lid. I said a custom-made swear.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to use the crowbar?” the VW said.

  “Just don’t tell the Memory of My Father,” I said.

  “Like he won’t know.”

  “He won’t know, not if you don’t tell him,” I said. “I’m sick of you two conspiring against me.”

  “What?” the VW said.

  “Everyone in this engine is conspiring against me,” I said.

  “Dad,” the VW said. His face was plaid. “Do you really think that?”

  I heard a soft boom inside the box, and then small voices.

  “Are you going to open that thing, or what?” the VW said.

  “I’m getting to it,” I told him. “Don’t push me—I’ll open it when I’m goddamn good and ready.”

  “Alright, alright,” the VW said.

  I slowly opened the lid a
nd we both peered inside. Immediately I knew what we were looking at.

  “It’s a war,” I whispered.

  It was night inside the box—the stars and the moon hung below me. Tiny men the size of eyelashes were running across a field. Then, the crack and flash of a bomb. All of the running men stopped and froze, then dropped back behind a hill. Gunshots came, and a new team of men surrounded them.

  All of the soldiers were of one mind. You could see it in their faces as they aimed and fired, ran and hid, destroyed the hearts of others, lost their legs and eyes and either a) died or b) did not die.

  The VW pulled back from the box and his face shawled. “What are they doing?” he said.

  I was upset, of course. What was this war about? And what was I supposed to do with it?

  “They’re fighting,” I said.

  “What for?” the VW said.

  “It’s a disagreement of some kind.”

  “Over what?”

  “I don’t know the specifics,” I told him. “It could be anything.”

  The VW didn’t say anything. He stared into the box, at the dead on the field, and then he looked down at his shoes. “Can I go to my room?”

  I felt guilty all of a sudden. “Sure you can, buddy,” I said.

  I placed the lid back on the box and I called the Memory of My Father, and he came over an hour later. He sat down on a stool in front of the box. “Open it,” I told him.

  “What’d you do here?” he said, pointing to the lid.

  “I don’t know how that happened,” I said.

  “You tried to pry it open, didn’t you?” the Memory of My Father said.

  “I didn’t touch it—the VW must have done that,” I told him.

  • • •

  We kept the war going through the fall. The Memory of My Father left the box in the basement, and every few days I would check on it and see what was happening. Many lives were lost. The sun rose and fell. I looked to see if there might be any end in sight, but I didn’t have the whole thing—this box was apparently only one piece of a much larger conflict—so I never knew who was who and whether one side was making more progress than the other.