Automotive

We fool ourselves. Sometimes we just open the door and its all gone. No matter how much attention we try to pay and what we try to know, we allow ourselves to think the good times are going to last.

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
(F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Eleventh grade began much like the tenth, only with much less trepidation. We were juniors and the gap began to grow between those who were headed somewhere and those who were not. I noticed that the prom queens and junior achievers were all in the same classes. I had fallen into another category. And it stung. I was smart, smarter than most of the kids in the "finer" classes now, athletes and cheerleaders and student government officers. But I was not socializing well, I guessed. It was a lesson in such things. The coursework became emptier, class time filled with laughter and outrageous behavior. There really was no reason to go to school, I thought. No reason at all.

Tommy had gotten a job in a gas station. He was one of two employees who worked for an old cracker named Les, a tall, stooped, thin man with a low, gravelly voice. But he didn't say much. He moved slowly, not because he was old but by nature and habit. His hands were knobby and cracked from working on cars, his ears too large for his head. But he was nice to Tommy to whom he gave much responsibility. Tommy was learning to be a minor mechanic and was able to do most of the rudimentary things. I'd pull in and he'd have a car up on the lift changing the oil and lubing the joints. He'd run out to put gas in my car and talk for a few minutes, then he'd be back at it.

Before long, Les had Tommy working the night shift, so after dinner, he had the place to himself. There wasn't much business then, so I'd come in and sit with him in the office and shoot the breeze until he closed up at nine. Sometimes I'd go over to Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips or to the Arby's and get dinner for the two of us. It felt good to sit there in the office watching the sparse traffic drive down the highway surrounded by tires and cans of forty weight and wiper blades and road maps as the sun went down. I wanted to grow up, I thought, to be on my own and live in moments like these just feeling the life around you, to make money and decide how to spend it and to be left alone.

On weekends, the trailer park became a hang out. Some older fellows had rented a trailer in the park and so we all went there to drink. And things would get out of hand. One night when everyone was drunk, we drove back into the park from somewhere, and Eddie was riding on the hood of Frankie's car. We were driving out into the woods that bordered the park and ran down to the lake. Eddie thought it would be funny to drive to the edge of the water and hit the brakes and throw Eddie in, but it didn't work out quite right for just there the lake had no discernible edge but only became a lake after forming as a slough, so before Frankie knew it, he had hit the water at about thirty miles an hour, water flying up in big wings all about the car. He was in about halfway up the doors before the car finally stopped, Eddie indeed thrown from the hood into the dark waters. I was driving behind him with a car load of guys when it happened, and we all hooted at once to see it, great flumes of water shooting up into the night. It was a wonderful privilege, I thought. Who had ever seen such a thing before?

When they had all gotten out and made their way to shore, I was amazed at how calm Frankie seemed. Perhaps it was shock, I don't know, but he simply wanted a ride to the phone booth to call a tow truck. A tow truck, I thought!? How in the hell was a tow truck going to pull his car out? But later that night, after wading out and attaching a big grappling hook on a cable to the car's chassis, with everybody in the water trying to push, they were able to pull the car back to shore. Jesus, I thought, anything is possible.

Somehow, Tommy and I seemed to escape everything. We saw it all every time without getting scathed. It was wondrous, all of it, and it formed the fodder of our conversations as we sat in the fading light eating our fish and chips, safely ensconced among the office paraphernalia, happy and fulfilled, the full sensation of life about us.