How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive Read Online Free Page A

up
hope
.”
    “I won’t,” I told him.
    He turned and carried his bottle of wine inside.
STREET WOMAN
    I tell you, my hands would get so wet and tired when I booked that I often had to take them off and dry them out on the back porch. After a while I could only get one or two pages a day for them, and I was asked to do more than that at work alone!
    Then, I was trying to change a time-action filter on the Volkswagen one afternoon when one of my hands, soggy and limp, got stuck between the theater’s asbestos firewall and curtain. They postponed the show scheduled for that night, and a crew of tiny men—fifteen or twenty of them—raised ladders and tried to help pull my hand out. But it just wasn’t budging.
    Finally, I unscrewed the hand and left it there, and I went inside and called the Memory of My Father and told him the situation. He came barreling over in my father’s old Invisible Pickup Truck, looking like myDad had when I was five: scraggly beard, a full head of wild, black hair, black square glasses, dark jeans and a button-down shirt.
    The two of us got into my son and I drove down onto Route 9. I didn’t even have to ask where we were going; I knew the Memory of My Father was taking me to see the Junkman.
    I love the Revision of Route 2 and the Route 5 Mango Punch (and of course I’m excited about the
new
melodies, when they appear), but my favorite road in all of western Massachusetts is Route 47—especially the stretch going from Hadley to Montague. Once you turn off 9 there is only one stop light; the rest of the road is winding and fast, with surprises on each side: beaming patches of land, gravesites, the Connecticut River, animals you might never have seen before. Once, I saw what looked like a horse with a harp for a rear end, grazing in one of the pastures. Another time, I saw a cow riding a sit-down lawnmower, a walkman over his ears and a plastic cup in his hand.
    If you catch it right, Route 47 can get you anywhere you need to go. (I don’t know if it changes its mind in the night, or what!)
    The VW roared through Hadley and Sunderland and into Montague—a small, no-cheese town. I didn’t even need to tell him where to turn. We pulled up beside the Junkman’s home—a collage of vinyl siding, shingles, cinder blocks and pieces of old cars. There was no one around, just some bicycles playing in the yard. I told the VW to introduce himself to the bikes and see if they might want to play, and the Memory of My Father and I walked around behind the Junkman’s house and looked out into the fields. It was spring, and the junkcrop was rising high: sprouts of old busses, ovens, bikes, toasters, VCRs, clothes, skiis.
    Then, in the distance, I saw the Junkman trudging through the rows, his beard dangling to his knees. He saw us, waved and cupped his hand to his mouth. “What do you need?” he yelled.
    We walked towards him, and the Memory of My Father shouted back, “Used hand for my son,” and pointed at me.
    I raised my arm, sans hand, and waved it like a court.
    •  •  •
    The Junkman led us through the fields and towards an old bus in the distance, half-lodged in soil. As we walked, the Memory of My Father asked the Junkman how things were going. “Busy, goddamn busy,” he said. “People coming in every day, looking for cars, bikes, washers, dryers. They all want them to be like new, though,” he said, and when he smiled I saw that his teeth had been replaced with what looked like plastic pieces from board games. “I tell them, ‘I don’t know if it works or not—this is a junkfarm! You want something new, go to Thornes!’ ”
    “Right,” the Memory of My Father said, shaking his head.
    When we reached the bus, the Junkman opened the door and motioned for me to step inside. When I did I saw that the bus was
filled
with hands of every shape and size. The Memory of My Father stepped up behind me. “Je Cris,” he said.
    The Junkman stepped up into the bus and