How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive (16 page)

Sometimes you can make the tune travel, even travel in it. I don’t know if this happened in the town where you grew up (Did it? Type or speak your answer into the power—or just think it, and the book will catch the thought.), but it happens all the time in western Massachusetts. Like I’ve said, these mirkins were everywhere, cupping every aspect of our
lives—the weather, our financial status, collective mood and travel conditions. They were in the walls of our homes, our books, our clothes, even! I once had a hell of a pair of musical pants, for example—the notes fit me just right. An ex-girlfriend borrowed them from me, though, and that was the last I saw of them.

In the Volkswagen, incidentally, stories and songs were the exact same thing. I’ve received several deets about this, zoffers coasting keys and rhythm. Dizzyspeak aside, though, I think it’s clear that we’re all always instrumenting—either versing and chorusing, or “His name was Sneaker” and “Later that night I called Edna and asked if we could meet”ing.

Whether you’re esking, fisking or a little of both, though, the practice is only good for so much. Music’ll get you to the store, and maybe from Northampton to Amherst. But can we reach people with it—really
reach
them? No. How many times, after my father’s disappearance, did I send out songs for him? I can’t even give you a number. For a while there I would leave work in the afternoons, find a place where I could dean—the campus of the old abandoned mental hospital, the Prayer Wheel at UMass—and try and build distance from those old country tunes we once shared. I yelled as loud and as strong as I could in every direction. But what good did it do me? Every tune I sent came back empty and cold. At the end of every story my father was still gone, still dead.

But what did I expect? Songs don’t have
hearts
—they’re just mindless vessels of notes and beats. This is why 90, 91 and other multitunes are so frightening—they’re nothing but sheer force and character. Hell, most of the time you don’t even hear a melody until you’re in it—until you notice, after some money, that your surroundings have changed, that something has shifted. All of a sudden you look through the windshield and find yourself mid-chorus, or stopped inside a note or unresolved phrase.

There are positives and negatives with this kind of travel. Driving through music is exciting, first, because you can see things you’d never see on sidestreets: double-timed Veggienotes, racing codas, rests restocitating at sidestops on the shoulder. Plus, all money loses value—it must, by virtue of the fact that you’re traveling through a specific measure at a speed unique to you and your vehicle. In many ways that’s a good thing;
you can relax, there’s no need to worry. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you drive; you’ll get there when you get there!

For the very same reason, though, music is an inefficient way to travel. A big reason for this is the fact that notes/characters are finite—once they die, that is, you can’t go back through them. If you’ve gone more than a few measures it’s impossible to turn around. You have to see the story through, however long it takes. Plus, there are mistakes made all the time—tunes sent at random, or directed to one person and unknowingly read by another.

One time, for example, the VW and I were tracking a story for the
Wheel
when we picked up a storytune—a swooning dirge—that wasn’t meant for us. The maul was sent by a woman whose mother had died just minutes before. She’d intended to target her husband, a long-haul truck about a half-mile behind us, but in her grief she’d picked us up instead.

The VW and I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course—we picked up the song, realized we were on it, and followed it. After some time—it’s hard to say how long—we arrived at the ledge of a window on a high floor of a hospital; the final chord twisted right up to the glass.

The poor woman drifted over and opened up the window. Her face was a spiral staircase. Her eyes attacked mine. “You’re not Gary,” she said.

“No,” I said. I immediately understood what had happened. “I’m not.” I looked past the woman at the window. There was a dead body—that of an old woman, nearly bald—in the hospital bed.

I quickly turned the VW around and we drove back the way we came, passing the truck on our way out. By now I’d almost certainly missed my assignment. Plus, this trip had left the VW low on stories and we had a long way to go before we made it back. So I had to power on the spot, which I hated.

We raced back through the song, knowing full well that the first plot points were probably dead. We were able to make it back through the fourth chorus and the third verse, but then we hit traffic—VeggieCars, bioleggers and Volkswagens as far as I could see. I tried to look past them—was that the end of the chapter up there?

As we slowed to a crawl I grew anxious—I was gripping the wheel with my hands and custom-swearing.

“Dad,” the VW said. “What’s the problem?”

“My
job
is the problem,” I said. “I’m missing the story—who knows how much money is passing outside this tune?”

Soon we saw why the traffic was backed up: A VeggieCar had hit the edge of a note—trying, as we all were, to make it back. The car was crushed—there were bits of VeggieEngine all over the place—and two CityDogs were loading an older woman on a stretcher into an ambulance.

Past the crushed car was another CityDog, diverting traffic onto a detour tune—one set up to get the stranded passengers back to western Massachusetts via a different premise. We followed the detour until we could see the definite break in the sky where the fluorescent song ended and the looming Route 9 began again.

I didn’t get back to the
Wheel
until about four in the afternoon. When I walked into the office I saw Louise, standing at my desk with her arms crossed. “Where the
hell
have you been?” she cheesed.

“Wrong story,” I said. “We got lost.”

“For two weeks?” she said.

I held my hands out to her. “There was an accident,” I said.

You have come to this chapter because the red light on the dashboard is burning—because the VW is asking for something and you need to know what. The red light is the
Castaway Light
; if it goes on, it’s time to get onto Route 5 and head out to Whately. You’ll know you’re close when you see a field of Troubadourians grazing in a field to your right and the
Antiquarian on your left. Then the road will whistle low. About a mile down the road, you’ll see the pink and white moor of the Castaway.

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.

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.”