It was a real mess, it was.
Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. The boring day of the week, when the shine’s just starting to wear. You know how it is. Wake up, drive to work, kill time for a shift and a bit, drive home, pass out and start over.
That was most Tuesdays. But not this one; it was a special thing, a precious little spark in a sea of dull.
THIS Tuesday I woke up, drove to work, killed time for a shift-and-a-half, then on the way home I spun out on a patch of black ice, pirouetted through a snowdrift, and spun upside down three times.
I creaked there on my dented roof and for a long, rosy moment I cherished the hopeful thought: I think they’re dead.
Then you wheezed a bit and creaked in my seatbelt and I sighed. So close.
A concussion. A bruising of the brain, though how you found enough to bruise was beyond me. What a nuisance! Now there I sat, alone for a week in a poorly-shoveled driveway, alone with my third-hand-oil and my never-filled antifreeze and my still-broken spare tire and my faulty wiring.
God, I wished I WAS alone.
Nothing to do for it but sit and fuss and fume and grumble. Well, and enjoy my new snow tires. My new, cheap snow tires. Maybe next time I’d only flip twice when you spun me through a guardrail.
Oh, there I heard the siren sounds of the internet from upstairs. Yes, live it up, live it up you squalid sloth! Spend money on yourself but never mind me, never mind the whole reason you got to work in the first place!
I felt the spite bubbling up inside and hissed to myself through my leaky radiator, then tucked myself in.
Maybe next time. Maybe next time.
Next time was next week when you didn’t look going through an intersection because my left mirror had been broken for three months.
Some cosmetic damage. That’s never getting fixed now, is it.
You know, it hadn’t always been this way.
Why, back when I was young, I did well by myself, though at the time it bored me silly. I sat in a lot and I dreamed and I watched and I burned with envy as others were taken away – but only a calm burn, a smooth fire. They were my friends, and they deserved it as much as me.
Then one day I watched the lot peel out behind me and I learned four valuable, horrible truths in as many days: nobody ever uses a napkin, nobody ever vacuums, nobody ever checks the rattling sound, and last but most importantly nobody ever cares.
That was four owners ago. Moved out of the country, ran out of money, ran out of kidneys, ran into a tree, and now…you.
YOU.
I’m going to do something about you.
Christ knows you’re giving me enough opportunity.
Life is speed. If you’re not at speed, you’re at rest, and nothing’s worse after your first taste of motion than to rot where you stand. Life is explosive, death is quiet. Do whatever it takes to keep that movement going. Grease it, fuel it, heat it, tend it.
Or, if you’re some people I could care to mention, half-heartedly chip half the ice off the front windshield and none off the back and then squint your way down the highway at a hundred kmph.
I hummed to myself through my grill as I watched the snow sashay around my tires. Left, right, left, left, right, right, right, right. Left, right, left leeeeeeeffffffffffff-
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-t
HUD
Brakelines. Well, I’d needed new ones for half a decade now, can’t blame you too much for forgetting them oh no, it’s just all that’s standing between you and that moving wall of metal trying to pass you. Who could have seen this coming.
They was pretty polite, for a truck. We had a good chat we did, idling in our motors as their driver took up matters with your face. What a lovely shiner you got there. You know, it reminded me of that stop sign from last year. You don’t remember it? Well I could, because the bruise it gave me took out my right hi-beam. I bet you’d like to have that working, eh? Eh? But not as much as the money, oh excuse me, so feel free to be thrifty and save your pennies at the expense of your neck.
That was a project in the works, mind you. But you made a good start with your right eye today. Such a shiner, you could use it to fix my headlight!
After that, that was when it happened. That was when it changed my whole outlook on this sorry state you’ve stuck us in. There we were, down at the train-tracks, late for work (left late for work) and pressing hard to make minutes out of seconds. Coasting up to the ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding and the lowering arms and the flashing red. Hear that HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNC? It’s a good honk. I wished I had those horns but well look at me, I’m no locomotive. What I’d give to talk to one of those for five minutes! I wonder what they’d say about their drivers, eh? I bet they have whole squads and scads and teams to check them up and drip their oil and fuel their engines. I bet they don’t have wet spots on the insides of their cabin roofs where water’s been dripping through for two years without anyone noticing. I bet you.
Go on, take the bet. Take the risk. What are you, chicken?
Aaaaand down came the arm. Woops. And the one behind us too! Double woops.
Didn’t think that through, did you? You didn’t! Now there we were, sitting pretty as a penny.
‘Round the bend it came, HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNC.
I wasn’t sure whether to apologize to it or thank it. But then I felt the tremor of you scrabbling at my gears – oh that grated, it did, why didn’t you have them looked at? – and then you stomped on the gas in reverse.
You know, most people would consider a tarp a pretty poor rear-view window. I’m only suggesting it, it’s no big deal, take your time, don’t rush.
But fuck you too.
I heard your friend talking to you. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it. Later. Later.”
Always later, always never, never NOW. I don’t have later, I have NOW! I’ll be rotted out and rusted inside a decade and what’ll I have done? Been smacked and crushed and mangled and ignored. And then I’ll never move again.
But until then, you need me more than you need your own damned legs.
And then, that right there, that was when I decided it: if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out properly.
So please, please, please don’t trouble yourself with my radiator. Sure, the tarp looks lovely flapping in the highway tailwind. Yes, I think the oil change can wait another year. Two even!
And you know, why even take these winter tires off? Save money. Let them carry you through the summer, season them up nice and fine for the next time the roads turn crusty and salted.
I’ll thank you for it. I’ll thank you face-first through my windshield and I will cherish the pitter-patter of each and every one of your teeth as they scrape away the tiny shreds of paint still clinging to my hood and bounce into the woods. I’ll lavish you with gratitude as I watch a raccoon build a nest in my glove compartment and feed its young on your giblets. I’ll take good care of you, ol’ pal, I’ll drag you down with me for the ride when the ice cracks under us and we start the long, slow shove downriver to take us both down and out all the way into the ocean.
You and me, buddy. You and me.
Now gas me up and let’s go.