Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  See? He had the calling. Most folks didn’t know that. They knew he could fix shit – even if he did rob you for it, but, yeah, he fixed shit; a grease rag with an ass pocket attached, crap with a cap, stench on the hoof, that was Einar. He had a calling and he had an eye.

  The service began at his eye. The eye just all to hell glowed seeing that organized sheen that slid down a turned metal shaft or the saw the many ways light slipped off a gas-washed gear and broke into a thousand pretty-colored wiggles. He went stupid in his bowels over the perfect miracle of a countersunk flat-head machine screw. By God, whenever he saw a surface patterned with them and buffed smooth, he just ran his fingertips over it all with something near the far side of happiness it was all so fucking beautiful!

  So, what started at the eye, led elsewhere; the scent of things gone wrong, oil burning or not consumed enough, the little play in a bearing that led to clanks and garbles in the rear end. Where it ended was inside, where it filled him.

  Where it ended was love. Love of how it all worked, how one thing moving just so, made all other things move in their turn, all polite, all of it happening a billion times over and over and all of it quicker than THAT.

  Engines that didn’t work, would not work, just Goddamn stopped for no damn reason? He loved them more than dads love homely daughters, more than the Amish loved their shitting horses! He whispered busted engines, questioned them going in, got fair and filthy finding out. He poked, pushed, smacked and chewed over them; he shoved, wiggled, bit his tongue, profanely urging the sweet fit of clean, slicked shafts into greased bearings with new bushings. He ground cylinder heads in a state of ecstasy like unto the Hebrews of Old. He revived aged carbs, made them young with a gas bath and a tweak, flipping their butterfly’s springs till they sighed, sucked and blew like new.

  Einar twitched less when he worked. He used both eyes tuning the dwell, or whatever was needed to made it all so fucking beautiful.

  Service. That’s what Einar sold. So no one bought gas? So who cared?

  But what did folks do when they had a flat, dead of winter, say, and didn’t feel like smashing their knuckles on frozen lug nuts? Or what when something funny was going on with the air-thing, top of the do-hickus on the whatchakallit, engine? What then? Or when the goddamn piece of crap just plain wouldn’t go, not turn over, even once, not make a sound, nothing! What did they do then?

  Folks might get Bunch. He was okay.

  Course, him living under Papoose Crick bridge, you couldn’t call him when you needed. You plain couldn’t! And even if, there you were, standing in the street, snow piling up on your ears and you scratching your head, the vehicle right in front of you, and here comes Bunch, hoofing along Commonwealth to the Wagon Wheel looking for a beer-job and you ask him nice, right there, if he’d have a look at the damn thing sitting at the curb; and even if Bunch said, “Yeah, sure,” you couldn’t count on him getting to it for, well, till he got to it.

  So, what did folks do, automotive care being crucial in a cold small town like Bluffton, far from anywhere? Folks bit down and called Einar, is what. Charge an arm and most of your legs, but he’d come get it and make it work. And in a couple years, damn if it didn’t look like he was going to make a go.

  Now who was the son of a bitch?

  He was from Bluffton. No one remembered baby Einar, Einar the tyke, Einar, coming-of-age. The guy had been around sidewise to things. He went to school a little. Didn’t make a dent. Read a book? Robinson Crusoe, that was it. He was one of those guys who was born, had some troubles, went to the army and should have vanished.

  Instead, Einar came back and there he was: an institution.

  He had no folks. Once, but they were out of the way by the time he became a person.

  His old man, Lewis, drove the stock auction truck before Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais took the job and held onto it forever. What happened was one day on the Interstate one of the steer Lewis was driving got the willies. Must have figured how the ride was going to end and said, what the hell? and reared up. The fuss probably put the smell of crazy to the other dumb animals which no doubt inspired the smart one to increased effort.

  Even with ten or twelve hoofed-ton of terrified meat rampaging in back, the rig running twitchy with it, Einar’s pop didn’t notice. He still didn’t notice when the steer tore through the front slats of the trailer leaving himself hanging half-in, half-out, bellowing and pawing the air over the driver’s cab. It was only when other drivers – dads, moms and kids scooting by on the Interstate – started blowing horns and pointing that Clueless Lewis pulled over.

  At which point everyone took a breather – the Steers and Lewis. Lewis figured he’d give it one half minute by his ticking watch then figure what he ought do. Lewis was not the brightest lamp under that bushel.

  Twenty-seven seconds into Lewis’s half minute, the hanging steer battered two hoofs through the roof of the cab. One collapsed Lewis’s head, the second shoved Lewis’s hat into his brain. Lewis never woke up.

  Einar was 4, maybe 5, at the time so he didn’t much care.

  He still had his old lady. She died gracefully when Einar was 8, maybe 9. One of those things: heart, brain or some other female thing. She did go behind the wheel, attempting to park on Commonwealth – a one-way street back then. She must have been lousy at left side parallel parking because there she was, stuck, half-in, half-out, traffic going by, drivers wondering, “She pulling out or going in?” Aggravation must have hit her hard because she passed-on like/THAT.

  Dead, she drifted back and nudged the Ford parked behind them. This was before diagonal parking on Commonwealth – which, in retrospect, might have saved her life and changed things for Einar.

  Einar was riding shotgun, no idea the old lady had passed. When folks peered in to see what the hell, he was still looking back and forth, “Come on, ma, cripes, cut her harder, go on forward, you got room...”

  After that he went to the County Home.

  Couple years and he escaped.

  Not that he was locked in and had to make a run for it, he just never came back from school one day.

  The County people wondered for a bit, looked some, then stopped, figured the kid wasn’t going anywhere and who’d steal a homely runt like him, an orphan and not worth a damn, anyway? He’d come back when he finished whatever he was doing.

  He didn’t go far, but he didn’t go back.

  A few days of not being anywhere and he showed up in Bluffton. He walked around, slept in the gazebo at Elysium Park near the hydroelectric dam. Nobody paid heed. The weather was warm.

  He tried fishing but had no head for it so he ate, stealing day-old and out-of-date mystery cans from the grocery. He didn’t have much head for theft either, but if anyone noticed they were polite enough to not say anything and, of course, Egil and Astrid Dorbler were running the Wurst Haus then and Karl Dorbler wasn’t. Karl would have noticed, Karl would have said.

  One rainy day Einar found himself out by the Kiddorf Banks, past that damned closed-for-the-season Drive-In joint. No reason to be at that smelly bend of the river, no reason at all, just old devil fate, but there she was: crummy, battered, and busted: a ‘51 Kaiser Golden Dragon. Hadn’t been there day before, today she was. Some pissed off motorist ditched it, maybe. Joy-riding kids from the school Einar should have been in stole it, maybe, skidded off the road and ran when it stuck in the muck of the Banks. Maybe the old car belonged way upstream in the Driftless. Maybe a washout had carried her off. Night before had been a doozy, a summer’s-end storm that comes a sudden bang and flash down off the bluffs. That old Kaiser could, maybe, have washed off a bank and floated, who knew, from up the way, ridden over the dam, drifted right past him, sleeping in the gazebo at Elysium, through town, bobbing invisible in the roaring water and pouring night and, now, here she was, she couldn’t make the turn and washed onto the bend in the banks, got sucked into the muck, here, right in front of him.

  A wild notion and whimsical! Even at 14, maybe 13
, Einar was not given to that kind of crap! Suddenly, though, here he was, thinking whimsy crap like that.

  That old Dragon might have been automotively dead but she was a corker under the muck, all chrome, curves and cuts, her sunscreen overhanging her two-lobed windshield.

  And there he was, chilly and homeless, a rat in the wet.

  Her high roomy interior beckoned.

  Took some getting, getting in and Einar groused in the getting. She wasn’t locked, just settled to her chrome and enamel splashboard. He tried digging for about thirty seconds then said shit and took a rock and whacked out a side vent.

  That whack! Felt like he had caved in his own skull! Figured he was going to die. Absolutely. That was it! His head had busted open, brains were oozing out, his eyeballs were going to roll away and his tongue would just dry up on the ground. That lasted a second or two then it passed. He reached in, rolled down the window and crawled inside, scrawny weasel that he was. Had a headache like he’d never felt, but once he settled and stuffed some rags where the vent had been, rolled the window back up and once he snugged down and went stupid listening to the water running nearby and the night coming on in sounds like it did by the banks, damn if he didn’t warm up and settle in pretty fast.

  She was a tight old car and the headache was gone with next daylight.

  Then nothing happened. Weeks of it. Nobody came for Einar. Nobody claimed the junker. Einar figured she was his. His home.

  The son of a bitch had no idea, not about life, the world, people, work, nothing. He also knew squat about vehicular repair at that time and, what’s more, didn’t even care. That came later.

  After a couple months of settling-in he figured to make the old place better.

  He brushed it out, washed it down; dug out the muck around the front passenger side door so she’d open proper.

  Nights were good. Days running, figuring, wheedling, stealing, they were shit. But nights, he came home. He snugged himself into the front seat, wrapped up to nibble whatever grub he’d found, wheedled, or stolen and, by God, he was welcomed. When the sun was gone it wasn’t pure black like it had been back at the County. Night in the Dragon was a smear of stars through safety glass. He watched the cold things turn overhead; he could almost hear the sky grind its gears as it rolled over him. Sometimes the moon rippled past and licked his eyes. Owl shadows swept a soft whoof of feathered air. The stink of the Banks filled the car along with rubble-bubble of the river’s passing and the crackling of the critters in the weeds around and trees above. That all filled the Dragon. After a while, all that was home to Einar.

  By the time the Kaiser started singing, he’d begun to gauge the world, learning by nose and heart how high and far away the river was, how to read night like a clock, scent next day’s heat or cold in the river’s breath or in the wind off the bluffs. When she sang, then, the Dragon used the river, the critters and the stars, the wind and heat as her voice. She sang words, now. Not like folks saying “cripes sake, you ain’t buyin’ nothin’! Scram, why don’t ya!” He’d wake middle of the night needing a piss, say. Just as he was hanging hog out the door, ready to let fly, the Dragon would start in. He’d hear her inside him.

  Hey…what are you doing? she might sing out, Go on over and do that in the river you lazy bastard. You live here! And he knew what she meant, and he’d hang is head and go over to the water’s edge and add his respectful tinkle to the murmuring stream. She sang not in people words, but Einar got the message.

  He started working for Old Man Olafsohn at the Amoco about that time. Shit work. He ran for sandwiches and beers on account at the Sons of Norway, he pumped gas, checked tires, stood around with his finger up his ass but made a buck here and there. With which he bought bread and baloney, scrounged a shift knob or rubber floor mat when he could.

  He lived. Like folks do.

  If anyone knew he was on the Banks they didn’t care or didn’t say; he was just that kid from up the Amoco, what the hell? Someone else’s lookout. Even old Pers Olafsohn didn’t much mind where he went or what he did when he got there. He wasn’t, whatchacall an employee, hell no; that little rat sure as shooting wasn’t getting his hands on the working parts of any customer vehicles. Hell if he was!

  When nights started whistling and icy crystals started tingling his bare parts, the Dragon started talking plain. He tried ignoring her, patched and stuffed until she got good and pissed and wouldn’t let him open the door without a fight, so he hitched to Cruxton, climbed all over Wayne’s Wrecks till he found the right piece of glass, stole it, then hooked a ride back to the Banks – he was picked up, ironically, by Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais, deadheading back to Bluffton in the stock truck! That’s right: the same cab in which his old man’s hat had got stuffed into his brains ten, eleven years before (they’d pop-riveted a sheet of tin to the roof by then).

  Einar grumbled all the way home. Not to do with the truck or Andre’s driving – Andre drove fine even if he was half-Chippewa, half-French – grumbling had come to Einar. Something the Dragon did. He picked it up, naturally, from her.

  When he got back, it was dark. Still, Einar took that side vent window and fitted it into the place where he’d whacked out the old one, gusseted it with a strip of rubber and a bead of silicon and she was good as new.

  The Dragon sang a pretty little song and, curled warm and comfortable, Einar was fine. Never grumbled, not even in sleep, all that night.

  One evening after spring had come, the old car cried. She didn’t sing, didn’t talk.

  What the hell? Einar wondered. He slipped in and out quiet and respectful, giving her time. She wouldn’t say a word though, just whimpered in the owls, sniffled in the bubble of the river and ooze of the mud.

  Einar finally looked under her hood. She hadn’t said to he just figured that after wintering over in her, well, he figured life wasn’t too lousy and maybe he ought to do something for the old car.

  She yawned open, squealing rust, and – holy hell – life got different.

  Most engines Einar had peeked at the Amoco were hot, oily things, things that shook, bit or burned. This? Cripes. She was a fused lump of dried nowhere. He stared for hours. He touched her only when he figured he’d stared enough – and then he touched her easy. He moved his fingers slowly along the block, around the carb, over the plugs and what was left of their cables – not that he knew those things or what they were, he just felt for something, he didn’t know what. When he felt what, she sang a kind of chirp in his gut and he wiggled whatever it was. When the wiggle showed where his fingers ought to walk next, he walked them there. When he touched and walked his fingers long enough, and the rippling river, spring birds and his wiggling gut said what was needed, he tried moving the hose, wire, shaft, whatever. Sometimes, whatever slipped off and lay like a dead mouse in his dirty hand. Sometimes the piece required a twist or a yank, sometimes a whack. He borrowed tools when old Pers Olafsohn wasn’t looking. Applied cautiously, the tools let him explore. He found for himself how one part engaged another, why some damn thing here, made another Goddamn thing over there do something completely damn remarkable!

  Every day that old Dragon showed him what.

  When he saw something wrong, he’d figure how to make it right. He’d get the stuff. He’d do the damn job. Then he’d listen to the Dragon about how to do the damn job right, then he’d do it again, and there it to hell was!

  The finger-walk took him three years to touch, wiggle, and listen to every part of that engine; a thousand days, days wrapped around thousands of hours at the Amoco, days with him earning money to buy – or finding a second to steal – a tool, a part, a notion.

  In the end, the Dragon fired up.

  She sputtered, he adjusted; it grumbled, he nudged. They went back and forth, days on. They burned miles of gas and didn’t move an inch. But when she gurgled sweet and throaty, Einar sat behind the wheel – just like a damn driver, his hands resting easy on her wheel, like they belonged; he felt her quiver down beyo
nd her steering column and linkages. He touched the horn button and she burst into a throaty laugh. He turned on the heat. Like that, she chattered, chewed a couple spider sacs and dry leaves, and breathed an oily sigh of dust into Einar’s greasy face. Her breath! He had no idea what it was, but, yes, there – there it was – heat from the engine that had raised him.

  A few minutes and he turned her off with a teeth-showing smile. She went smoothly quiet, ticked a couple seconds, then was still.

  They didn’t move. No tires, for one thing. For another, she was still sunk to her floorboards in river dirt. There was a whole world of Kaiser Dragon, beneath! She had parts Einar had neither seen nor touched: frame, springs, shocks, exhaust system, gas tank, oil pan, lines, cables, struts. About all that, he knew not a Goddamn thing. No. They were going no place.

  Anyway, Einar couldn’t drive.

  That night she sang again and he cried. The next day he hitched out and enlisted. Army.

  He learned by the book! By the Goddamned book! He learned frames, springs, suspensions, exhaust, electrical systems; learned vehicles the book way, the Army way. Once learned that way, he went off and did it the hot and greasy way, the way the machines taught. He did it for three years, re-uped, did it for some more years. Then he came back to Bluffton.

  The Kaiser was gone.

  Half-way, he expected it. Sheriff Eriksson – old man Eriksson, not Vinnie, the son, who became town cop later – told Einar they’d dragged that piece of crap away, damn near, what? Six, seven years ago and who the hell was he and by the way did he have any I.D.?

  “Fuck you,” Einar said. Expression he’d picked up in the Army.

  “Bum,” the sheriff said.

  The door clanged closed and clicked.

  “I got a home,” Einar yelled! “That Kaiser. She is my POV!” He pointed out he’d fixed that Kaiser hisowndamn self, made it nice, and it was his by right of fixing or whatyoucallit. The County had hauled away his place of whatchacall!