artwork: ralph murre
VW Microbus, Burning
by John Sierpinski
We
are (my wife and little girl)
at
the auto repair garage, again.
It’s Monday afternoon, and they
want
another four hundred bucks
that
we can ill afford. “If we need
to…”
I finally say. “We just have
to
do it,” she says. Our daughter
has
found a purple thistle sticking
up
through the asphalt lot where
other
broken-down cars sit. She
touches
it with her index finger.
She
makes a face like the sad
mask,
sniffs, but doesn’t cry. Then
she
finds a pebble. Last night,
our
battery had shorted out in West
the
entire rear engine compartment
became
engulfed in flames. After
I got my wife and daughter out of
the
bus, I ran over to a liquor store
for
water. The owner looked
at
me, skeptically, then said he
had
none. Aw, come on, I thought,
then
once more outside, I snatched
his
rain bucket and doused bright
orange
flames. Do you believe
he
had followed me outside, grabbed
his
white bucket and said, “All you
damn
hippies are alike.” The flames
had
gone out, but of course the bus
wouldn’t
run. I hatched a plan. “Push,
Honey, and I’ll walk and steer.” My
wife
had on very tight shorts. After
a
few feet, a man in a white jacket
showed
up and gave us a push with
his
car. That was last night. Now,
we’re
back again. The garage
abuts
the chain link fence
to
the Santa
Monica
I-10. I can smell the acrid odor
of
car exhaust. It burns my eyes.
The
noise is near deafening.
My daughter’s soft, round face
looks
through the fence. We’re
forced
to spend the money, and
get
back into the insanity of the
non-stop
freeway.
~
first published in Into the Teeth of the Wind
