A car should never sound like a World War II bomber. I’m no mechanic but even I know that. This was my first thought after I turned the key in the ignition and a terrible rumbling noise erupted from underneath me. Violently rattling, shuttering at the concussive rhythm of tiny explosions, my parked car felt like I was piloting the Memphis Belle over hostile Nazi Germany. That wasn’t a good sign. I find that anytime you need to imagine Nazi Germany to make sense of your life this is a clear indication something is terribly wrong. Shit. I shut off the engine.
It was just after one o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday, and I was running late. To make matters worse, I’d bought the car seven days earlier. The Honda Element wasn’t new but it was new-to-me. I took a long breath, exhaled and opened the door. At the rear of the car I looked to see if someone had accidentally crashed into my car while they were parking. Perhaps they’d jarred the muffler loose from the exhaust pipe. I’d heard a car of mine sound like a B-52 before; it was after I backed into a mountain and smashed the tailpipe against a rock wall, severing the muffler from the exhaust pipe. No such luck this time. There was no damage I could see.
For the last ten years, I drove vehicles that different members of my family outgrew and then gave to me like hand-me-down clothing, like they were a pair of ill-fitting old shoes. But a week ago, I did something I’d never done before. I bought myself a car. Now I had a car payment. It felt very grown-up for a beach bum like me. I’d already begun to love it the way you love a first car.
Got back in the driver’s seat and started my car up. I wanted to believe this time it would be fine, but like clockwork, as soon as the engine turned over it felt like I was in the middle of an Allied bombing mission over Dresden. So it goes. There was that same terrible open-throated roar. It exploded to life and shook my car like a clattering cement mixer. A defeated nod was my acknowledgment that my day was officially fucked. I shut the car off again and climbed out of the driver’s seat. Had I purchased a lemon?
I squatted low and lay down on the sun-soaked pavement. It was time to look underneath the car for any signs of damage. At first, I didn’t believe what I saw. We all have those moments — you’re confronted with a sight so shocking that you refuse to believe it’s true. No, that can’t be happening. Am I dreaming? Is this how a man goes crazy, he just starts hallucinating? You blink, or you look away, you try to refresh the screen of your mind. But then when you look back, it’s still the same picture. Nothing’s changed. And then you know it’s real and you have to deal with it.
Staring at the underside of my car, I felt like how a farmer must feel when he finds a cow that’s been eviscerated. Only, there was no blood on the grass, no bits of entrails spilled out from the gaping wound. I stared at it for a long minute. It wasn’t technically difficult to understand. Any six-year-old could tell you what happened. I was in shock. Why would someone do this?
My car was so vibrant and healthy the day before, and now it was reduced to a shell of itself. There was a shiny metal ring, and although I was underneath my car, it looked like it was catching the sunlight. Of course, it wasn’t. The reason for the shine was the exhaust pipe, a few inches past the exhaust manifold of the engine, had been hand-sawed, chopped with obvious starts and stops of the blade — jagged metal was proof of that. The cut end of the metal pipe was shiny because it had only been exposed to the elements for a matter of hours. The wound was still fresh. I looked toward the rear of the car and saw a matching cut; between the two sawed ends of pipe, the exhaust system had been removed like organs roughly and rudely carved out of a donor’s body.
I know enough about cars to know that’s where the catalytic converter is supposed to be, along with some sensors and such. The thieves were most likely after platinum inside the converter. I knew it wouldn’t be cheap to replace. I’d get lucky if a mechanic didn’t need to replace the whole exhaust system from the engine to the tail pipe. Awesome. I was surprised how much it hurt to see my car like this — how visceral it felt to see the guts of my car cut out and stolen by lazy criminals.
I didn’t want to get back up off the street. I knew that once I did I’d have to do something next and then my day would keep tumbling ever forward and it would all be real. As long as I was lying on the street, staring at the shiny open-mouthed wounds I was still in the moment and in a sense it wouldn’t be real until I had to deal with it. I lay on the street long enough to feel the sun creep over the roofline of a building and warm my face. That daily reminder that time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future. I knew I had to get back up on my feet and stop staring at the missing guts of my eviscerated car.
Over the low din of a busy boulevard, I could hear a caw, but not from the crows I’d befriended in my new neighborhood. It was the squawking sound of a seagull perched atop a palm tree, staring down at me, or at least in my general direction. I thought: he doesn’t belong in this neighborhood; he should be at the beach. And then I didn’t know if I was talking about him or me. I’d only been living in the neighborhood two weeks longer than I owned the car. So much of this was new to me. I was making a valiant stab at this thing we call responsible adulthood, something I’d avoided for all the years since my eighteenth birthday. And three weeks in, it sure felt like I couldn’t hack it as a verified adult.
I stood up and listened to the seagull croon. I noticed that beneath the bird, across the street from me was a church. There was a school attached. It was recess. Kids were running across the blacktop, some were playing tetherball and laughing like rainforest monkeys. I wondered if any of the kids had been watching me. If they were, I must’ve looked like such a strange man, turning my car on and off, laying in the street like I’d been shot, and now, standing tree-still and staring at them playing. If I were a kid I would’ve thought that dude ain’t right. And I would’ve been correct, I wasn’t right.
I lay back down on the street. It wasn’t defeat or capitulation. I realized I should probably take pictures to show my insurance adjustor or the police. So I did that. It gave me something to do. This was me doing my best impression of being a grown-up, handling my business.
I wondered why I was taking it all so hard. I mean, I love my cars, I give them names and have storied histories with them, relationships like partners-in-crime; but I’d only had this car for a week. That wasn’t enough time for me to bond so deeply that I felt this much shock. And then it hit me. It wasn’t the car at all. It was my grandfather.
What was really pressing hard against my heart was the fact, a week earlier, about the same time I bought my car, my grandfather, the man I most revere in my life, had suffered a stroke. I’d called the hospital and spoken with him the day before I discovered my eviscerated car and he sounded so weak, so distant because of pain pills. His words were slurred, his voice tiny. At the edges I could hear that he was scared. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was thousands of miles away, and now I had rent, a car payment and car insurance, and for the first time in my adult life I couldn’t get up and leave and go be with him on a moment’s notice. I was bound by money. I was an adult with adult problems of my own.
When I heard my grandfather’s voice and he sounded frightened, it made me feel like a little boy who wanted to tell him everything will be okay but as an adult I knew that was a lie. Instead I just listened to him because I wanted to hear him speak, not knowing if it might be the last words I’d ever hear him say. I cursed myself for erasing old voicemails from him.
Lying in the street I wondered if I would ever be the man he was. Seeing my car eviscerated by thieves made me feel like I wasn’t up to the task, that I wasn’t able to maintain my new place, my new car and my new attempt at being an adult like all the others I saw, instead of remaining an overgrown man-boy beach bum who did as he pleased and went where he wanted whenever he wanted. All of it crushed me.
My back to the pavement, I turned my head and mutely stared at the kids running and playing on the blacktop of the school attached to the church. I heard the seagull caw again. I decided this was my moment. This wasn’t happening to me. I wasn’t a victim. This is just the bullshit that happens when you aren’t a child, and you, not someone else, have to handle your business. Again, I thought of my grandfather, alone and scared in some Florida hospital room, the man who hates hospitals as much as I do, and for him and for me, I told myself what he would say if he were there, “Get up off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself, you’ve got stuff to do.”
I got up. I pushed back against everything, all the feelings that were crushing me. Part of me hoped he would feel that. If I refused to give in to my fears and doubts, if I could soldier on and be brave and do my due diligence, he would do the same. It was a child’s magical wish but it helped me act like a man. If I got back up and handled my business like he would, he’d be okay, and I’d be okay, and everything would be okay. I know that isn’t how the world works, but it’s what I needed and it worked for me. I stood back up and called Triple A. I asked them to send out a tow-truck.
The next day, I called and was able to speak with my grandfather. His voice sounded stronger. I joked that if he wanted I’d come down there and pull a jailbreak and spring him from the hospital. He laughed. He told me that he liked his physical and speech therapists and he was feeling really tired but he was going to get out of that hospital on his own. I told him that’s why he’s my hero, and if I can become half the man he is, I would consider myself a success. He was touched to hear that. He said he’d be okay. He asked how I was and I said I was okay. Everything was okay.