Car Business

Car Business

MICHAEL

Michael searched through his brief case, the top draw of the bedside cabinet, got down to floor level and skimmed the floor with his one good eye (a fit old man of fifty six years), emptied out his shoes, checked his pockets, and after leaving the motel room, and taking a few steps to the car park, clear blue early morning sky above, peered through the driver's window of his beloved black turbo four runner with red badges.

The traffic, the smell of petrol and the sound of engines had become his second home over the last eight days. Noise from passing highway traffic hundred and fifty metres away filled the early morning silence with sounds more natural than bird song.

He saw the keys dangling in the cab. The vehicle was locked. Adelaide was six hundred kilometres that way and he had planned to be home at Glenelg, on the beach, beside the reinvigorating water, soon after lunch. The challenge was before him.

He had stayed in Broken Hill over night, after returning from Sydney, where he met with one of his partners about finance for a property development.

He was a tall man, with grey hair, gold rimmed glasses (only one lens required because he only had one real eye), rather expansive brows and nose, and goatee beard. He looked like a good bloke, a tolerant bloke. His anger at having locked his keys in his car was masked.

He went back into the motel room and called the NRMA. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and propped his elbows on his knees and lowered his head. He knew that he had to be with his wife, if only for the sad reason that it was unthinkable for her to be alone.

Maybe his keys were better off where they were, locked from him.

The mechanic arrived; his garage was just around the corner; it took him two minutes to enter the car and retrieve the keys.

COLIN

"Which do you want, darling,” asked Colin’s mother, “the lady is waiting?"

Colin wasn't at school anymore, and he wasn't quite at work, but he was certain that he didn't like being referred to as 'darling' by his mother while she waited for him to make up his mind about what flavour pretzel he wanted. She brought him to the mall to buy a neck tie to wear to his first job interview.

He shrugged aside his mother, sort of clinging to cover behind the pretzel stand's sign and out of view of the 'lady' who wasn't much older than him.

Dreading the interview, not really feeling hungry, and preferring not to embarrass himself by hanging out in the mall, even if it was only 10 a.m. on Thursday morning, meaning that it would be unlikely for his friends to be there also and see him with his mother, he nonetheless drew strength from the fact that to travel to the mall, and later the interview as well, had meant that his mother paid for petrol to put into his beloved car, a slightly rusty 1979 Mazda RX7 Series I, which for its age still went fast.

"Cinnamon", he replied.

His mother turned to the assistant and repeated the request.

The wan assistant broke the news. "We don't have any."

MICHAEL

Michel emerged from the highway corridor of road kill and red earth of Pro Hart country and headed to the slightly more populated upper mid North region, where ancient low hills rolled in colours of dotted country housing.

The road wasn't built for a car that went as fast as his car went. He felt thick headed. Probably he was tired. In another three hours he would be home, and he could rest, and that meant he could push himself now.

As he dropped over a low hill, he looked in his rear vision mirror and was surprised to see a prime mover and pantechnicon gaining on him. Some local boy farmer in his shit box grain hauling prime mover thought he owned the road. Michael focused his energy, feeling it settle usefully in the pit of his abdomen, knitted his accentuated brow, and juiced the fuel injectors. He left the wild Colonial grain boy behind. The big square front of the four runner didn't impede quick acceleration and speed one bit.

An hour or so later his mobile rang. His wife Melanie spoke at the other end, quietly desperate, breaking through the low hum of the car. "Will you be home for dinner?"

"I'll be home by 3 p.m." He added, "I'll have enough time to walk along the beach, relax, and work off these driver's legs."

"I want you to help me get some of his things out of storage. I want to be reminded of him, I went to smell him."

"Yes, of course." He closed the call.

His temples tightened. The road was an insular little conduit mercilessly pulling him to the unavoidable realisation that his son was dead and that his wife refused to accept it.

COLIN

Colin was back home wearing his new tie and waiting. It was rare that he was home this time of the day during the week. He looked through the kitchen door at the yard green with grass and blue above with the November sky. It was lunchtime; they were preparing to leave for the interview. Colin felt uncomfortable in his skinny new black tie and worse because his mother had tried to part his thick hair and comb it flat to his skull.

“Ready,” asked his mother.

They walked to the carport.

His mother had difficulty getting into the low sports car, and always complained, though, really, she felt adventurous and was pleased that the car made Colin happy. With a wondrous smile of contentment, Colin turned the motor over. The car could red line at 7000 rpm. The rotary motor could rev well beyond that. It could cruise at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, without a hiccup, just purring, purring, and could top out well above two hundred and ten kilometres an hour.

He backed out the driveway, crunched the gears just a bit, forgot to indicate, oversteered just a little, and they were off, the worn engine emitting a cloud of oily smoke behind them. They merged with traffic on the highway. Both mother and son were pleased, and shared the same smile. It was good to be travelling to a future.

MICHAEL

Michael cursed the young driver who cut him off. He felt tight, he felt irritable. He found himself amongst the cowboy traffic of the outer suburbs, everyone wanting to race you in a shit box or let you know they were there, and he wanted to tell the 'everyone' to fuck off and give him space.

"To look at me, you would never think it", he said, trying to catch the humorous side of things and calm himself, ‘one glass eye and cropped goatee’. The green light arrived and he powered away at the head of the traffic, at the head of the pack. "This car business would be a whole lot easier if the competition disappeared," he smiled, undoing any calming effect he produced seconds earlier.

Then an idea struck him - he could cut through Salisbury, pick up Cavan Road, cut through Port Adelaide and then drive to Glenelg along Military Road and the Esplanade.

COLIN

Colin pulled off Salisbury Highway and parked around the corner under the shade of a tree where his mother would be more comfortable while she waited for him to attend the interview. She was not coming with him to the interview, no way. However, as a show of good faith, as it were, he resisted his heart's desire, wrestled with himself, and in the end decided not to take the car key with him, and sadly not therefore feel its good luck sensation in his pocket during the interview. Instead he left it in the car so that his mother could listen to the radio while she waited for him in bated breath.

One more look at the fast car squatting like a panther in the shade. Hell it was great. The best thing about a fast looking car, he thought, was that he never had to drive it fast, he never had to prove anything. In fact he always drove within speed limits. The whatsyam'callit about the 7000 rpm warning beep, prompting a gear change, was something he read about in a magazine, and had never put to the test. And never would. Colin smiled at his mum, and tried to appear confident as he decided to himself that he would win the interview. For Mum and Dad. And for him.

He walked twenty metres and turned the corner back to the highway and walked to pedestrian lights and pressed the button and waited for the lights to change.

TOPSY TURVEY

The speed limit was back to sixty kilometres. That irritated Michael. Young drivers irritated him. Why the young drivers, he asked looking around. Why do they irritate you? Because they killed your young son?

It had, in fact, been long day. He wanted to get home, he didn't want to get home.

At least there was something definite to reach for; he knew car business; he knew how to drive. And the beautiful, black, dual differentialled weaponry wrapped around him knew how to respond. It was the sort of car only sensible drivers ought to have control of.

The vehicle was the mirror he held up to himself, the way in which he understood himself in the modern world, the thing, the joy, the expectation, the piss he shook into his trousers after not shaking his dick well enough after pissing, everything. And it was here, big and small, it was he.

He had had enough lights for the day. He pumped the juice through the fuel injectors and wound the car out to seventy kilometres and seriously believed he would make the lights.

Witnesses said he clipped Colin with his left fender and sent him bouncing like a rag doll back the way he came. As he did so, the car went into a spin and went passenger-side first into a light pole.

The tree next to the light pole was rather lonely and leafless before and after the crash; it had been desolated by the poisonous vehicular gases swirling around it daily for year after year after year.

HOSPITAL

Amongst a number of injuries, namely a broken right collarbone, shattered left leg, damaged spleen and liver and broken right cheekbone, Michael also sustained head injuries. But a couple days later, he showed signs of recovery.

Somebody else stood nearby the two police officers and the nurse, but didn't really join in the conversation.

As Michael opened his eyes from a depth unknown to him he picked out his wife Melanie. Some of the words reached him, something about a "boy" and "arrest", and he calculated that somebody else was in the room with her.

The nurse ushered the police officers out of the ICU and called for a doctor.

Melanie spoke tearfully, "you hurt a boy in the car accident." She immediately wished she had said something comforting.

Michael was thinking, "who could do that, who could hurt the boy? Who killed my son?"

“He might die." Melanie started sobbing, "how could you do this to me?"

He said, "Adam is dead, my son is dead."

A FEW DAYS LATER

Collin's mother and father sat in the corner of the room near the window in ugly hospital armchairs. The air smelt of shit and hospital food.

"May we enter?" Melanie pushed Michael’s armchair.

The father approved. Moments passed in silence.