I watch the cars. Someone has to.
See, that one is an angry car. Look at the angle of its headlights, the set of its grill. Observe the truculent set of its tires and the grudging grumble of its brakes. That car must be owned by a ninny or a nincompoop, the sort to really grind your gears. Oh, poor car.
That one is a happy car. Its antenna is at a jaunty angle; its engine whines with the excitement of a dog with a leash in its mouth. Wind is whistling over its windshield. How pleasant!
I never get tired of this.
***
When I was very little some relative whose name I don’t recall and whose funeral I probably attended gave me a little set of toy cars whose wheels didn’t work and whose roofs were crumbled and whose innards were clotted up with sand from a thousand ancient sandboxes.
They were easily the best thing I’d ever seen in my life, and I cared for them diligently until the dog ate them and died. It was a great shame, but it taught me a valuable lesson: if you must care for cars, you should care for ones that are too big for someone to eat. I have lived by that every day since, and it has served me very, truly, really well.
Every day on my way on the highway I put my knowledge to good use and great pleasure.
***
I watch the cars.
That is a very puzzling car indeed – quite old to be out and about on the road in this heat. Its lights are glassy and shiny, its cab is bunched up in a sort of confused box. There is a powerful sensation of befuddlement and uncertainty about it, but it moves spryly and in good order. A reassuring reminder that even the oldest of us can learn and move and grow! Good going, car! Good show!
***
The key thing about a car, of course, is its reliability. I have known many people and many cars and let me tell you, the people were FAR less reliable creatures, which I put down entirely to locomotion.
Every car I have known has kept all four of its tires in contact with the ground at all times, low-slung and ready to roll.
Every person I have known has tottered about balanced on two wobbly and unsettlingly-jointed legs, and has spent much of their time with only one of them planted on the ground. It is deeply disconcerting and a sure sign of an indecisive and weak-kneed personality.
No, no, no to people, I say. It is the cars for me!
And besides, I can actually read their expressions. Never quite managed that with people. The eyebrows get in the way.
***
I watch the cars.
This car has something to say, and it’s trying so hard to say it that it’s impossible to even say for sure what ‘it’ is.
Its other car is a Mercedes. It is the proud parent of an honour student. There is a little family of stickmen on its rear windshield and a little happy face on its trunk. It encourages you to honk if you love Jesus, cinnamon buns, and dogs, and its bumper boasts the fading names and logos of half a dozen politicians, one half-atop of the other.
I have never seen a more scatterbrained and incoherent vehicle, and I feel a sort of pity at its wild disarrayment. It needs a firm hand in guidance, and I wish that I could provide but alas, my trailer is full of cars and there is no room for one more. I will simply hope for my cargo and my co-traveller here: for them, a life of hope and purpose; for it, a car wash that will remove these unsightly snarls from its mind and body.
***
The big bay stretches out alongside us, and my horizon fills with a dubious material.
Water. Hmm. No land for cars, that’s for sure. But out there prowl the boats, pointy and slow, and I feel my brow furrow in apprehension.
Now, I’m no bigot. I don’t hate boats – god no!
I just don’t quite trust them. I can’t read them. Their faces… they all just look sort of the same to me. Funny old world, right? But I like a vehicle I can look in the face. And I can’t. Not these ones.
Not that I’ve got anything against them of course. I’ve been on a boat – hell, one of my best friends had a boat back in the day. I just like them where I can see them, not where I can drive with them.
But I’ve got no problem with that. As long as they’re in their place.
***
I watch the cars.
This car is huffing and puffing. It’s hauling a little trailer – a tiny mockery of the huge transport trailer at my heels – and its cargo is one (1) boat.
It’s a pretty big boat, I guess. Does that make it a ship? Not sure.
The car’s doing very well for itself under the circumstances. It’s not complaining, it’s not blubbering. Its sun roof is down and its mirrors are flipped and it’s ploughing forward with the determined badger-bulling air of something that can do this all day because it knows it damned well will whether it wants to or not.
I tip my hat as it passes. Good going, car. Good going.
***
I stop for lunch. Gas for my truck, and a burger for me, and an extra burger which I ceremoniously unwrap and place on my truck’s hood for it to contemplate and sacrifice to the gulls above us all.
It may not be able to eat it, but respect is priceless. Without respect you haven’t got anything.
That had been the problem with my family. They hadn’t respected their cars. I had told them so over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and somehow they’d never learned, not even a little. Some of them had even gotten worse.
I’d warned them about rust, and about the proper tires for the proper seasons, and about windshield wiper fluids and wiper blades and windshield cracks and body work and oil changes and all the components of the rainbow, one after another. I’d even made up little rhymes for them to help remember the important parts.
None of it had helped. Disowning them had been the best day of my life. It was as if a great weight had been removed from my trunk.
The burger was gone, the gulls had taken it quickly and decisively and silently, with no squabbling. A good omen.
This was to be a portentous day.
***
I watch the cars.
Oh, there are so many of them now. We’re near a town, we’re near the end of the workday, we’re in the zone and the hour and the time and the place and the space.
See them bustle and chuff and jockey for room! More on the other side of the highway than mine – folks heading home to the exurbs – but that just makes those fleeting glimpses of my fellow-travellers all the more striking.
Ah, this one is fierce, with his bumper tucked high and tight and his blazing-red roof!
Oho, this one is jaunty, with her convertible top down and the breeze in her teeth!
Well now, that’s a little one, but sturdy and fast – electric engine roaring invisibly as he takes up the space of half-a-car. Suffer no mockery for this! Children like this are our future.
And there is…
Oh.
Oh no.
***
The police car is professional, sitting at the side of the road as if this were its own parking space, traffic whizzing by two feet away totally and profoundly ignored. Its staid power is blameless to me.
The tow truck is gentle yet uncaring. Its job is at work here, and so is it. Up you go, up you go. Not even a flicker of uncertainty in its crane, the mechanisms and the engine smooth as butter. Seen this all before.
But the car, oh the car, oh my god the car. The poor little thing is as tremulous and lost as a dove or a busted bicycle. Ah! Ah! How has this happened? Its tire is gone, its windshield is cracked, its bumper is all but gone. Oh god! How has this happened?
And there is a man, a dirty little big man beside it, sweating and bellowing and cursing at the police and the tow truck and the world at large, swearing up a storm no doubt that this was everyone’s fault but his own.
The rust on the car’s body belies otherwise.
Oh. Oh you. This isn’t even the first time you’ve done this, is it? IS it?
Well well well. A portentous day indeed.
The red-hot rage of the truly righteous grips me like a steel gauntlet and my wheel smokes through my hands and the median barrier is a tiny wisp of an obstacle before me and then….
There I go. Flying onwards to justice.
***
I watch the cars. So many expressions!
All of my cars are planes now, sailing through the air, free of the earthly bonds of my trailer! See their hoods flap open in joy and disbelief! Ah, what wonders we live to see.
But my eyes are not for them, they are for the lonely little lost car that corkscrews towards my windshield. It looks surprised to me – its grill a big round O – but I think I see the glitter of hope in its dented headlights.
Have no fear, car! I am coming to hel