Zen rocks

My cell phone rang late on a Thursday night. I tried to sleep though the ringing, and laid there until it stopped. They called back. It’s work, I thought. They’ll be persistent. I answered with a yawn.
“Hey man, call in sick tomorrow.” It was my friend Shawn, sounding exceptionally manic.
“Ummm, why?” I yawned again. Obviously he was working on a crazed idea, and there was no point in asking if he knew what time it was.
“I found her, but she’s in Texas”
“Who?” I asked, knowing exactly who “she” was.
“The MR son, the MR.”
“Thee MR?”
“Yup, I’ll be there soon.” He hung up the phone.
Girls and cars are one in the same. For every man there is his Ferrari – or Porsche, or Chevelle. She’s the dream car you’ve imagined in every way, and she’s the kind that looks good on a calendar. It is no accident the Corvette curves to the shape of hip and breast. Indeed, there is a certain genius in a feat of engineering that has a walking mid-life crisis trade-in an old wife for a new car. And as with women, it seems most of them just turn into problems. If they are too good for you, someone will come steal her while you sleep. Some are exotics you have to massage to start, and only driven a few times a year. They are leaky motors that bleed oil every time you touch them, or they are Chevy trucks that have run on the same old Valvoline for 20,000 miles. Some men drive sensible sedans, but your dream is the one you wouldn’t know what to do with in winter.
Maybe one afternoon after a vigorous drive, Shawn realized this truth, and it was then that he devoted himself to bringing home cheap imports and fixing them up. To quote him, “The only difference between women and cars, is that all my cars can live happily together, and when one of ‘em aint worth it anymore I call the junk guy.”
Unfortunately, he could never fully embrace this lifestyle, and found that his numerous machine girlfriends would not to live in harmony with his soft ones. Most farewells went the same. “God damn it Shawn, why don’t you just have sex with your stupid cars,” they’d say, and he had heard it more often than not. Surely he had begun to think, if only.
He soon arrived in his ‘91 Plymouth Laser Turbo. It was a fast as hell piece of junk that felt like riding in a shopping cart with a Hemi. Black spray paint covered a few small rust holes, but at least it looked cool at night. I could hear that damn thing before he got in the neighborhood, and was dressed and standing in the driveway when he arrived. Shawn and I had a pact that if either of us found a good car, we’d make a trip to go buy it – or a least test drive the tires off. The cars we never that good though, and these trips were more a routine we did just to feed the habit. The MR however, was not one of those cars. Arguably the best modern sport compact, a good deal on one of these cars was worth driving across the country to find.
I dragged one of my legs behind me all the way down the driveway, doing my best zombie impression. I groaned and slunk into the car. “What time is it?” I said confused and trying to be funny. He smiled, “Yeah, I know. I’ll buy you coffee in Iowa.” We drove past the closed strip mall and got on I-35W southbound. “So what does Kim think about this” I asked as I closed my eyes and rested on the window. “Yeah… about that,” he wasn’t going to answer. I smiled and went to sleep.
He woke me up four hours later, after hitting Des Moines and stopping at the Kum & Go gas station. He bought me a cup of coffee with the Kum & Go logo printed on the styrofoam cup, and I called in sick to work. I sipped the coffee in the lot, and ceremoniously placed the cup on the dash when finished. I knew, of course, the reason to stop at this gas station was so Shawn could laugh at the stupid cup for the rest of the trip. “Do you think anyone ever protests the name?” I asked. “Meh, probably, but they make too much money selling merchandise to Minnesotans.” He laughed as he pulled a Kum and Go lighter out of his pocket. “But you don’t even smo…” I trailed off and sighed. “You want me to drive some?” I asked. “Naw, I’m feeling it.” The late spring morning was fresh and the sun hovered off the crossroad. He twisted, stretching his back and arms looking down the highway, “Let’s get going, I haven’t talked to the dealer yet, and I want to be there before they close.”
We almost made it out of Iowa without a pig shit joke. Each State on the way to Texas has its own unique theme. Kansas has the Turnpike, with all its infinitely rolling hills, pocked with nothing but cookie cutter gas stations and Hardees every 40 miles (you start to think the Turnpike has you running a loop). Missouri has a monolithic cross on the side of the highway visible from space. And Iowa… well Iowa has nothing but a prevailing smell of pig shit that’s wafted down the entire stretch of I-35. We had rolled up the windows to try and keep the smell out, and nearing the Missouri border, I offered the obligatory “damn that smelled.” At that, Shawn let a huge fart. I looked at him with drooping sad eyes “O, hell no,” knowing the smell outside would just mix with the smell in the car if I opened the window. He laughed hysterically. I said nothing until we were out of the state.
As the Bob Seger song goes, “When you’re riding 16 hours and there’s nothing much to do,” you drift through old thoughts and memories, and you get to talking. By many measures, our lives at 25 were immature train wrecks. Shawn alone had been through at least 20 semi relationships with cars or women. Neither of us could remember, because he would always recount the girls by the cars he drove at the time. “I got the blue one when I dumped Jen”, he’d say as if the girl was a footnote to the car. By the time it was my turn, we had reached oil country.
“So, how’s Cameron doing? You talk to her lately?” he asked. Cameron was the girl I left crying on the porch as I drove off in my car. Loud enough to hear up the on-ramp, but slow enough to make it sad and lingering. I won that argument.
“She does like shit,” I said, my tone still freshly burning. “She always did like shit.” I looked out at the oil rigs pumping the horizon, and regretted saying it. There was a time I gave her everything I had to give, and a time she gave everything too. We just never met in the middle. And that’s why I’m here, I thought to myself. I’m only slightly better at fixing cars than relationships, and I held on to them much longer than Shawn did. I held past hurting, to the point everything was broken. That’s my realization of truth: I don’t pick the good ones. I pick the ones I think I can fix. Then I drive ‘em into the ground, or until they burn. There’s a place in the world for guys like me.
“So when do you give up?” I asked. “Women, I mean.”
“Man, this is it. I’m done with ‘em. This car is going to be the replacement.” I knew he could be telling the truth. With the right parts, the Mitsubishi Evolution IX MR is a Ferrari killer, and it would be reliable. I also knew it would consume his finances completely, and would be a far better car than I had ever owned. This car was a dream, and it made me realize I hadn’t found mine yet, not even close. “I’ll probably just sleep in it too,” he said swooningly. Something akin to teenage love must have been turning off reason. In a sense, it all didn’t seem right (to me at least). This car was just too well engineered. It was beauty and grace forged with all wheel drive and a turbocharger. What back brain scrawlings drooled on Shawn’s frontal lobe were unknown to me, but this kid was crazy, and I felt like the friend whose job was now to tell his buddy, “that girl is trouble, stay away from her.” Like we’ve all done when we really know the girl is just too good for him, and is she’s just going to break his heart. Well, that and the other reason a guy tells his buddy a girl is trouble. I wasn’t jealous of the MR, but I was sad I could no longer keep up. Until now, it was me and Shawn, fixing broken cars that started on fire, and telling stupid jokes. We were immature and wasted time. After no one called on Saturday night, we’d spend a rainy Sunday in the garage installing suspension on a new project, and we didn’t miss anybody. It seemed like this would be the car that ended the problems and would end these trips. It would change him as a driver.
I guess I hadn’t said anything for a while and was just staring. Shawn sensed the tension and spotted a sign for a gas station up ahead, “I need to piss.”
We stopped at the gas station, where Shawn bought two packs of hostess cupcakes, a bag of pork rinds and a Big Slam of Mountain Dew. My grandpa had survived in his later years on a diet of Ritz crackers, ice cream cones, and Swisher-Sweets cigars. If lung cancer didn’t kill him, malnutrition would have. But Shawn, only 25 mind you, regularly dined on things like on “sugar-sandwiches.” Comprised of two pieces of wonder bread and a few spoonfuls of white sugar, it was the perfect antacid between Red Bulls. Shawn regularly complained that he had an ulcer, to which I always replied, “no shit.” I picked up a box of Pop-Tarts at $4.59 and a bottle of orange lemonade. I figured since it could nearly qualify as a breakfast, it must have some health value. We paid, and left.
We got back in the car with the goods as not to waste time. With the bottle of Dew between his legs, he opened the bag of pork rinds as we pulled back onto the highway. Wincing at the bag, he said, “I think I have an ulcer,” and sensing the inevitable, he added, “but the grease in these pork rinds does a great job of lubricating the arteries!”
“Hey Shawn, when you die, can I have your car?” And with that, we ran up on an old man driving a minivan. He was no doubt old, because he was going down I-35 in the left lane at 57mph.
“God damn old people”, he said as he tossed the bag of pork rinds over to me. Shawn felt no sympathy for a long hard life. “When I’m 45, I plan to end my uselessness to society.” He paused earnestly and I raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to rent a Ferrari and get three hookers,” he said as he clutched in, blipped the throttle and downshifted to third. Mashing the gas, he swung out into the other lane. “I’m going to drive off a cliff! No, the Grand Canyon!” I snickered because I half believed it. “Two chicks in the back, and one up front… you know, doing what they do best. And when I’m falling down, I’ll be like this.” He pumped both fists into the air. As we passed the van the old man watched Shawn doing his humping motions, no hands on the wheel. “I’ll die doing what I love, whoooh!”
“What’s that?” I asked, “Killing hookers?”
“Imagine reading that in the newspaper” he said as we swung back in line, now doing 90 mph.
“Ah, a sacrifice for posterity. I’m sure for an extra $20 they’ll go along with it,” I added tactfully. And then, over the laughing, there was a boom.
It felt like a softball sized rock had bounced up off the road, and hit the floorboard where my feet rested. “What the hell was that!?” I shouted. Shawn froze momentarily as the sick engine sputtered. We were both seasoned at handling breakdowns at highway speed, but this scared the crap out of us nonetheless. He quickly calmed, put it in neutral, turned off the motor, and coasted onto the shoulder. There was no smoke or steam. We sat in silence for almost a minute until he punched the steering wheel and popped the hood. The problem was immediately apparent, as evidenced by the plug wire draped over the valve cover. The number 3 cylinder spark plug must not have been threaded all the way, and when he stepped on the gas the pressure loosened it, until it blew it from the cylinder head. It made quite an impressive noise against the top of the hood.
“I bet you just finger tightened those, didn’t you.” This would normally be amusing to me, but we were chasing the sunset.
“Do you see the plug anywhere?” he asked looking up and down the road. It wouldn’t matter even if it was found. It would have been shattered and useless.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll walk back to the station,” I tried to tell him, although it was obviously too far, and it was just a gas station from what I remembered. He just glared at the plug wire. “We can sleep in the car, or hitch ride and get the MR tomorrow,” I added trying to console him again.
“It’ll be sold by then,” he scowled. I gave up and sat by the car. Waiting.
Damned if he’d give up on his dream within reach, he cursed, fastened the loose wire out of the way, and slammed the hood. “Aint no choice, get in,” he shouted. It was clear that if I didn’t, I was getting left behind. I jumped in, and we drove back for the service station with one cylinder spewing fuel mixture from the plug hole into the engine bay, risking catastrophic fire. Now it was like riding a shopping cart with a Hemi, and welding tanks for a front bumper.
The mood lightened when the station turned out to have a small attached service garage. They surprised the shit out of us when they actually had the right plug, and someone around with tools. “Hey, can you tighten the other plugs too?” Shawn hollered into the garage, and the guy with the wrench laughed. He walked over and sat down on the curb by me. “Ha, we almost died,” I joked. “You’re under-exaggerating,” he stated. “I like to think every time we leave the car, we almost died.” He truly did have the gift of never under-exaggerating anything.
The car was finished and we were back on the road. I took over driving while Shawn called the dealer. We were going to get there after close, and he begged them to stay open. But thanks to the wonder of internet auto financing, Shawn had the equivalent of a blank check, and the salesperson agreed to stay. He did however promise to “pay sticker without any shit,” as the salesperson put it. The sun was setting and the mood was right. Despite trial and hardship, he was getting the car. He gazed out the window, over the hills of cattle ranch, and dreamed of his new partner. And I drove this piece of junk into Texas wondering what would change. Everyone finds their little place in the world, and somehow this was mine.
The dealership was outside of Dallas and we arrived well after dark. The salesguy Shawn talked to on the phone turned out to be a jackass in a cowboy hat. When we walked in, we overheard him calling us something like “the dumb Yankees who drove all the way down…” under his breath until he trailed off. He looked like he needed a spittoon. He shook Shawn’s hand with, “Y’all gonna buy this car.” We didn’t even get to look at it until he had his license copied, and papers signed. He clearly wanted to go home, and let us take the car with the promise we’d register it in Minnesota first thing. We didn’t care. Shawn wanted his car more than anything, and truth be told, I really wanted to see the damn thing too. We all walked out of the building together, and the big cowboy locked up and drove off in his Cadillac.
There’s definitely something special about getting the keys and walking up to your new car. It really is just like meeting a girl with whom everything clicks. We walked around it, running eyes up and down the curves, and even though it was Graphite Grey, the glassy glow of the fresh detail floated my hand as I ran it over the reflections of the lot lights. “Well, there you go, the perfect car,” I said breaking Shawn from his moment. “I’ll let you two get acquainted,” I added with slight, but appropriate sarcasm as I turned to walk back to the Laser. The little piece of shit in me pictured him watching as I walked away. I sat down in the old car by myself, and regretted saying a lot of things.
We had earlier agreed that the Laser was not worth the gas driving back up to Minnesota. It had many problems we were lucky hadn’t given us trouble yet, not to name the loose plugs, so we decided to leave it on the side of the highway abandoned. We drove the cars north on I-35 out of the city back to nothing and cattle pasture. He figured maybe some deserving kid would find it, and strip it down for the turbo or something. It was a nice thought. Not likely, but I think it made him feel better.
“Do you want to say something?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said bowing head. I did the same. “She got me where I was going, and that’s all I could ever ask,” he said, and then dropped the key on the seat, like he was dropping a fist of dirt into the grave.
We sped off in the MR with a cliché trail of dirt in the rearview, leaving the Laser dusty and alone. The 19psi off stock turbo boost got us to 100mph astonishingly fast. “Damn that’s fast,” I said clutching the handle. You could just feel the solidity and smoothness from even the passenger seat. In the MR, you kind of just sit behind the wheel, and through magic, the center differential, wheel speed sensors and other engineering bits all feel like they’re driving the car for you. At least that’s what the magazines said. Like every new woman, it seemed so perfect, but after all, there were no tricks to this car, no games. I looked over, and saw a waver in the smile. I’d imagined he was fighting the urge to look back. They say opposites attract, but not for very long. “So, what are you going to do with your new car?” I asked. He looked over with a grin, “we’re in Dallas man! Let’s go pick up chicks!” Good ole’ Shawn. We both have a place in the world.

Paige Turner

That was a really good read! Hey. If you can impress an old lady, you're doing great.

And by the way, I have no criticisms of your work. Great job!

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i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

blackthorn

oh man, that was awesome! I only read about 3/4 of the story and I'm already hooked! Great story man! How long have you been writing? I'm just curious...

Zen rocks

Thank you. I've been writing for years, but this is my first actual completed story. It's not too long or anything? Did it all come together OK? Is the last line too cheesy? Thanks again.

Charlie_Eleanor

Zen: Really enjoyed this. Easy to read, and I really hope there is a gas station called Kum & Go. One reason I enjoyed it is because my husband is really into cars as well, although he is a little more into Hondas (we have an '07 Si Sedan and a CRX w/a single cam ZC swap)...but, a lot of the descriptions you used with the cars and women really reminded me of him. Next time ya'll drive down to texas to pick up a car come down to Houston/Westheimer. Sure you would feel righ at home!

Well Done!

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nowheretogobuteverhwhere

I liked the dialogue and the way you paced it. Very good read!

RyeCatcher24

I agree. I was hooked from the beginning and didn't want it to end. It does end however, but it's a good ending. Great job, great story.

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I wish I had something clever to put here

blackthorn

Zen Rocks- oh no, it wasn't too long at all! I thought it was great just the way it is!

Keep on writing! I want to see some more of your stuff!