How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

by Christopher Boucher

  As the days passed, I saw the Memory of the Volkswagen more and more. One day I took the VW to the Academy of Music to see a film and I spotted The Memory of the Volkswagen sitting in an adjacent seat. Another time, I was carrying the VW to Rao’s Coffee in Amherst when I saw the reflection of a Volkswagen in a store window and realized that The Memory of the Volkswagen was following us.

  I stopped walking and turned to face the Memory. “Stop following us,” I told it. “Shoo. You’re not supposed to be here.” Then I turned and kept walking.

  But the Memory of the Volkswagen followed us right to the door of Rao’s and stared at us through the window as we stood in line for coffee. I ignored him and found an empty table. When I looked out the window ten minutes later, the Memory was gone.

  After a few weeks of trying to jumpstart the VW, I lost one of the external engines one day while we were walking down the bike path in Northampton. I don’t even know where I lost it—I just noticed that it was gone when we got back to the apartment.

  A few days after that, I was carrying the VW to Florence when I heard a clang on the sidewalk and I noticed that one of the VW’s wings had fallen off. I stopped walking, put the VW down and picked up the wing. By now it was all rusted and it smelled terrible, like forgotten words.

  Something changed for me as I stood there on the sidewalk with that wing in my hand. It was at that moment, I think, that I surrendered. This procedure wasn’t working—the book of power was wrong again. There was nothing more that I could do. The VW couldn’t be resurrected and he couldn’t be jumpstarted—no story on earth could save him. The VW was dead.

  • • •

  That night, I wrote one more story for the VW—a story of apology. I was the main character and the plot was, I was very sorry. Sorry for not taking better care of him. Sorry for ignoring the signs of his failing health. Sorry for writing the book of power, which had been wrong at every turn.

  I wasn’t listening, I wrote. I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I thought the stories would save you. That they would save my father. I thought they were worth so much more.

  And I wasted so much time! Time I would do anything to have back again.

  No VeggieCar will ever replace you, I wrote. All of my roadtrips will be Volkswagen roadtrips.

  Sometime that night, while I was writing that story, the Memory of the Volkswagen sat down at the kitchen table.

  “How’d you get in here?” I said.

  “Easy. I’m a Memory,” said the Memory of the Volkswagen.

  “Please go away,” I told it.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Dad,” the Memory of the Volkswagen said.

  ENGINE OVERHAUL

  The next day I brought the Volkswagen back to the swordfish. I wouldn’t look the fish in the face when I walked in with the car. All I said was, “How much again for the headlights?”

  The swordfish crossed his fins. “Twenty-five,” he said.

  “I thought you said thirty,” I said.

  “They weren’t so dusked then,” he said.

  I looked into his whiskery face.

  “Twenty-eight,” he said.

  That day I sold that swordfish the memory coil, some of the morning cables, the passenger seat, the steering wheel, the dashboard and two transmissions. And whenever I needed time, I’d go back there and sell something else. Over the next year I sold him all of the transmissions plus the sound stage, the differential, and dozens of other parts. Some parts weren’t worth saving (the fin, the second engine), so I put them in the dumpster behind the Crescent Street apartments. Other parts I stored in the VW’s room; they’re probably still there.

  Every time I went to see the swordfish he asked about the engineheart. I always declined to sell it. He offered me fifty-five for it once, then sixty another time. I shook my head and said, “The heart still beats.”

  “Seventy,” he said.

  “The heart of the Volkswagen is not for sale,” I said.

  “Seventy-five hours,” he said.

  “Not for all the time in Northampton,” I told him.

  X. KNOW-HOW

  BUTTERFLY VALVE

  These days, all I have left are these spare waltzes, sitting around and fermenting in jars. Like these over here, about the VW’s experiences as an actor. Have I told you any of these yet?

  I remember one time in particular, when they were holding auditions for the air-cooled play, Emily Dickinson Rides Again. The three of us—the Volkswagen, the Memory of My Father and me—went down to the Academy of Music one Saturday morning so the Volkswagen could read for a part.

  When we got there we saw that the hallway outside the audition room was filled with other parents and children—baby lamps, small air conditioners, toddlers sitting cross-legged on the floor—but I didn’t see any other Volkswagens. A spider came by and I gave her the Volkswagen’s name. Then the Memory of My Father stepped forward and asked her to write his name down as well.

  “What are you doing?” I said to him.

  “Auditioning,” he said.

  “You have a role already—you’re the Memory of My Father.”

  “I can play two parts at once,” he said to me. “So can you, if you want to.”

  “But you’re the Memory of My Father, which means that you’re going to have to do your best to look and act like my father,” I told him. “He would never audition for a play.”

  “There’s a role in this play for the Memory of Mount Holyoke,” the Memory of My Father said, and he flexed his bicep muscles. “And look—look at these guns. Are these things mountain muscles or what?”

  “We’ve got a whole book ahead of us—” I began, but the Memory of My Father flickered away, which he sometimes did when he didn’t want to hear it from me. A minute later he reappeared in a far corner of the room.

  In the end, I decided to audition too. I used to act as a kid, and I figured that I’d be making frequent trips to the Academy anyway if the VW was cast. An hour or so after we arrived, I was called into the audition room and told to take off my clothes. As I stood there, a man with a ponytail came in with two women and they sat down at the table. “Good morning,” the man said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He looked at his clipboard. “That is a very interesting name,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He sounded it out slowly: __________________.

  “It’s French Canadian,” I told him.

  Over the next few minutes the three of them made various requests: They gave me a sandwich and asked to see me eat it, they asked how I felt about fences and they told me to read a few lines from the character named Tom, who was a General in the play.

  “Tantamount Price!” I boomed, stretching my arms up to the sky. “Let go of my wallet, and let me seep into the night!”

  I thought it went well, and when I spoke to the Memory of My Father he said he thought his audition went fine, too. But in the end, neither of us got a part. Only the VW was cast, and even he didn’t get the part that he wanted; he auditioned for the role of the Volkswagen, but was cast as the Unforgettable Thermos instead.

  After the parts were announced, the VW cascaded the director. “The Unforgettable Thermos?” he said.

  “Of course,” the director said.

  “I read for the part of the Volkswagen.”

  “You did, I know,” said the director. “And you were really very fine—you have a lot of talent.”

  “Then why didn’t I get that part? I was that Volkswagen in there,” said the VW.

  “But you are so right for the Unforgettable Thermos,” said the director. “The minute I heard your voice I could tell.”

  “I’m the Volkswagen, though,” said the VW. “This is my story.”

  “You’re a Volkswagen.”

  “Who’s playing the part, then?”

  “The podium’s going to play the Volkswagen,” said the director, and he pointed across the room at a podium, leaning against the wall and talking to
a woman.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said the VW.

  • • •

  A few weeks later I went to see the play. I took the Memory of My Father and a half-faced woman who I was dating at the time. She was a real beauty, but we only dated for a short time because she fell in love with a pharmacy and left me for him. But we weren’t there yet; things were still good.

  The production was wonderful. The podium did a great job; he was the best Volkswagen I’d ever seen. His facial expression when looking into the dream, seeing Emily Dickinson for the first time? For me it held a real moment of growth, when a child realizes there are walls in life, places we cannot go. There is this world and there are other worlds, and pain blooms when we can see into those places, feel the need to get to them, and then find ourselves unable to, trapped in the here and the now.

  The VW was good, too. He held still as the Unforgettable Thermos, he poured the sacred chai, he helped row the boat during the river scene. The lights reflected his blue, perfect face, filled with concentration. He looked, there on the stage, like a young milk cart in the making, and I was proud and filled with confidence for what he was and what he would become.

  I reached for the hand of the woman with half a face, and I whispered into her one ear. “That’s my son,” I said.

  KNOW-HOW

  I want to tell you the end of the story, the katydids raccoon, and I think I can do so in one seissun, a seissun I’ll call “Know-How.” Because now I know how.

  The VW failed to track down the Heart Attack Tree, and so did I. Some roadsongs yield bookmills, and some trips trip and slip and break their Volkswageny necks. In the months after the Volkswagen’s death I stopped writing about Trees, thinking about Trees, believing in Trees altogether. If I saw a Tree on the street or on a lawn, I would shout at it in disbelief and then turn and walk the other way.

  I spent most of those first Memory of the Volkswagen weeks by myself, in my home, wearing silence and watching, through the window, the long, slow blink of Northampton—the way the city opened her eyes on me, closed them, kept them closed for a while, and then opened them again. I’d always ask her the same question: “Will you help me?” But of course she didn’t respond. As if she wasn’t aware of my sorrow!

  “I’m all alone,” I told her.

  The city said nothing.

  Sometimes, I’d forget the How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and I’d start driving out to Florence or Amherst just like I had six months earlier. I’d be moving at top speed when I’d awaken to the fact that my son, my car, was dead—that this trip was impossible, just a Memory. Then I’d have a breakdown-in-belief, which involved my stopping suddenly and falling to the ground, often injuring myself and ripping my clothes. Then I’d get up, brush myself off, and walk home.

  But if you don’t find the stories, they’ll find you. And that’s exactly what happened to me one Friday a few months after the VW’s death.

  By that time, I’d traded in enough of the VW’s parts to be able to afford a used pair of BioLegs, and I’d gone ahead and had the surgery*. The bio’s were slightly too small, and sometimes they really ached, but hey—they were convenient and reliable, and they got me from one chapter to the next.

  I was short on time, though, so I was still selling extraneous chapters from the book of power. That day, I’d brought a few stories (“Valve Adjustment,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter”) to the Troubadour—an experimental bookstore in North Hatfield—to see what I could get for them. I’d turned in the chapters at the counter, and I was browsing through the shelves while the owner—a kind vinyl sofa—assessed them. I’d found a few books on the moment and I was skimming through them. Even though the VW was gone, I still had questions. I couldn’t help but wonder, for example, whether Momentism, the belief system, had anything to do with a momentpump. So I was flipping through the beliefs, one by one.

  Deep in those dark stacks I felt a tap on my shoulder, and when I turned I saw a tall, thick oak tree hovering over me. He was wearing a disguise—a fake moustache, fake glasses, a baseball hat, a trenchcoat—but even so I knew exactly who he was. I read his eyes and they told me the story. And I could smell the blood on his breath.

  I’d always planned for this moment, for the day when I finally met the Tree, and how I’d hurt him in surprising ways—saw his arm off (how I wish I’d had my musical saw with me!), crush his face, poke out his eyes or kick him in the balls. But none of that happened. He put one branch over my mouth, picked me up with another branch and drew me inside his coat, close to his chest. Then he turned and walked towards the exit.

  Inside his coat, it was dark as birth. There were stars, and a moon, and it was perfectly quiet. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t want to. I observed that I might suffocate, and for a few seconds every word was the same. I met my own Memory, looked into its hollow eyes.

  The Tree rushed me out of the store and through the parking lot. When he opened the coat I covered my eyes in the new light. By the time I’d caught my breath and regained my wheres, the Tree was gone—I saw him sprinting down Route 5, the trenchcoat waving open to reveal his thick, barky legs.

  I didn’t chase him or call after him—at that moment I didn’t even care about him. I was too stunned by what I saw in front of me. There, parked on a sidestreet about fifty feet away, was an idling Atkin’s Farm. I ran toward it as fast as my bio’s could carry me.

  HOW TO KEEP YOUR VOLKSWAGEN ALIVE FOREVER

  The night had told me the truth about my son, but lied about my father.

  He was sitting inside, heartless, at his table near the scarred window. He was only half-alive. His face was a still lake and his eyes were dirt roads. Through the hole in his chest I could see his lungs, struggling to fill.

  “Dad,” I said. “Dad.”

  He looked at me lakeishly. It was clear from his eyes that he had no heart.

  “Dad,” I said.

  “What,” he said. Then he said my name, and put out his hands.

  “Stay right there,” I said. “Stay right there, OK?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  I ran back into the store and spoke to the sofa behind the counter. “Please,” I sang. “I need to buy back some chapters.”

  “What chapters?” he said. “Of the power.”

  “Which power?”

  “The one I just sold you,” I said. “You sold it here?”

  “Remember, I was just in here?”

  “When?” he said. “Five minutes ago!” I said.

  “No kidding?” he said. “No, I don’t remember that.”

  “Literally like five minutes ago.”

  “I think I would remember that.” The sofa put his hands on his hips. “Well, I’ll go check.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Let me just find my glasses,” the sofa said, wobbling into the back room.

  Wires in my mind began to fray, to snap. “Please hurry,” I said. “A man’s life depends upon it.”

  Then I heard the sofa’s voice: “Was it a book about sand?”

  “No—it was about—”

  “Was it a songbook?”

  “It was stories from a book about Volkswagens,” I shouted back.

  • • •

  I sprinted out of the store and back to the farm. I sat down beside my Dad at the corner table and I held out a story—a quickloom about a makeup named Emily.

  My father looked at the pages. “That’s supposed to save me?”

  “It’ll buy us a few more minutes,” I said.

  He took the story and began to read.

  I got behind the deli counter of the farm, fired it up, shifted it into gear and sped it back to Northampton. There wasn’t much money. I raced up the hill to the Crescent Street Apartments, ran inside, then coaled back into the farm and drove it out onto Route 5 and south, towards Springfield and the BayState Hospital.

  Twenty minutes later I pulled into the hospital parking l
ot, parked the farm and ran into the emergency room. When the hospital recognized me his eyes became dry, dour stalks. “You,” he hissed. “How dare you show your noface here.”

  “Listen,” I said. I bent over to catch my breath.

  “After singing the song that killed my son? I should have you removed—”

  “We found the farm,” I said. “And we found my father.”

  All his rooms were dark. “Good for you,” he nickeled.

  “But he’ll die if you don’t help me right now.”

  The hospital pursed his lips.

  I put an oily, plastic garbage bag on the counter.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  I pointed at it. “Look inside,” I said.

  He opened the bag and peered inside. “You must be kidding me,” he said. He reached down to the bottom of the bag and pulled out the VW’s engineheart. It was small, rust-free and still beating. “This is—”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “It still holds stories,” I said. “A lot of them.”

  “A transplant?”

  I nodded.

  “You want me to—”

  “Yes. Please. Yes.”

  His eyes were waiting rooms. “I should sit here and do nothing. I should let you watch your father die.”

  “Please,” I said again. “I’ve already lost a son.”

  HEART SUTURE

  TOOLS

  One engineheart

  Questionhope, one bushel

  One book of power

  As many stories as you can find

  PROCEDURE

  Do as much as you possibly can.

  DIAGNOSTIC

  I wish I could have shown you that engineheart—the system of pieces and parts that moved us forward, that moves us forward still.

  One day, a few weeks after my son’s death, I took the bolts off the casing and opened it up. Just to see how it worked. Opening that heart was like opening the first page of a book—there were characters (me, the Memory of My Father), there were themes (engineering, money, journalism), there was rhythm and chronology. I saw, in the images, old roads I’d forgotten—Huntington, Bird’s Pit, Loudville—and scenes from stories where the VW was just a newborn.