Gravity’s Volkswagen

Eight

The next day in Fontinella started much as the previous one had, and it threatened to go on in precisely that same dull way. I couldn’t face it and so I decided to go for a walk. There weren’t, in the ordinary sense, many places near by to go walking. The agglomeration of freeway, junk yard and now no longer abandoned speedway didn’t look like obvious walking territory, but the fact is I’ve always been attracted to disuse and decay, to industrial ruin; and I actually found it intriguing.

I left the trailer park. There was a security guard on the gate, and his uniform made him look a lot like a cop, but a closer inspection of the shield-shaped badges on his arms, revealed that he worked for Celluloid Security, a name that I thought rather blew his credibility and authority. I nodded to him on the way out and he moved his head just enough to suggest that he might possibly be nodding back.

I began my walk, and found that the distances involved were much longer than I’d imagined. The trailer park itself covered a surprisingly large area, and the grounds of the speedway, mostly consisting of parking lot, were huge. Walking once around the perimeter of the two would take up a lot of time, and that was good: I wanted my time taken up.

Even though the speedway was now occupied, it still had an overall look of careworn neglect. There were great potholes in the entry road, and the few portable office buildings were falling apart. The only thing in good shape was the fence, enough to keep out any but the most determined trespassers. It wasn’t obvious why the people inside needed so much protection, and it still wasn’t even clear to me what they were actually doing in there, but as I walked past a side-entrance gate, I got a few clues.

I’d thought Josh Martin had been speaking metaphorically when he called the people next door a freak show, but in fact they were, or at least claimed to be, the real thing. There was a sign attached to the gate that said, ‘Motorhead Phil’s Famous Automotive Freak Show’. That in itself begged as many questions as it answered, but it came with an illustration, a painted fairground sign that made things just a little clearer. It was a garish illustration of an airborne car, flying over a gorge of terrifying depth. The vehicle was on fire and a tail of devilish flames trailed behind it. It was a rather generic illustration of a car, but it could very well have been a Volkswagen Beetle, and perhaps it would have been if the painter had been more skilled.

I was surprised to find the gate unlocked and open just a little, and although it wasn’t exactly welcoming, it allowed me to see a few Beetles lined up inside. And again it struck me as odd that there was such apparent antagonism between the movie folk and the speedway people. Surely a shared taste for Volkswagen Beetles ought to be enough to enable them to get along, at least temporarily. It even occurred to me, though I knew it was totally none of my business, that it might be a help if Josh Martin invited some of the freak show crew to be involved with the movie, maybe as extras: they were certainly an eye-catching bunch.

I peered at the row of Beetles inside the gate, and I could see they were mostly wrecks, but one of them at least was in interestingly distressed condition. In the way that I enjoy industrial ruin, I also like things that have some patina to them: houses, furniture, music, people. And especially cars. This Beetle fitted the bill nicely.

It looked as though it must once have been something very nice indeed — Cal-look, unostentatiously customised; lowered, dechromed, bumpers and running boards removed. The paintwork had apparently started out as a thick, melting shade of pale sky blue, and then a hot sun had burned it paler still. After that, if I’d had to guess, I’d have said the car had spent some time at the coast where it had been splattered by giant waves of salt water that had given it an overall rash of rusty pockmarks. Add to that all the scrapes and scratches, prangs and dings and dents that bodywork is heir to, and you were left with the thing at which I was now looking, a uniquely and elegantly beat up Volkswagen Beetle. I thought it was magnificent.

I slipped inside the gate to have a closer look, and then I saw there was a man sitting behind the wheel of the car, a fat man, a very fat man indeed. I stopped in my tracks: I didn’t want to look like a trespasser. But he saw me and waved and beckoned to me in an all too demanding way. Reluctantly I went over to him.

“How’s it going?” I asked breezily.

“Not so good,” he said. “My car won’t start. And I’m really depressed.”

I had some sympathy. A car that won’t start can cast a pall of gloom over the most inherently optimistic of us, and the fat man in the car didn’t look inherently optimistic.

“Can you help me out? Give me a push?” he asked.

He had a curious accent. I thought it sounded vaguely English, but I knew I could be wrong about that.

“All right,” I said. I could see no reason not to be helpful. Plenty of people had helped me out in the days when I’d owned an unreliable Beetle, and I was happy enough to return the favour. A good push and a bump start was often all that was needed to kick a Beetle into life.

I took up position at the rear of the car and waited for the driver to get out so we could push together. I stood there for a while and nothing happened. I looked at the guy, but he looked at the road ahead and stayed right where he was.

“Aren’t you going to get out?” I called.

“No,” he said flatly, and then added. “I can’t.”

I thought a bit more explanation was required but none was forthcoming. We could have stayed like that for ever.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I can’t get out of the car,” he said, “I’m too fat. It’s really depressing.”

I looked at him more closely, and yes, he was a whale of a man, shapeless and blubbery and apparently far wider than the door of a Volkswagen Beetle.

“How did you get in there?” I said.

“I wasn’t this fat when I got in,” he replied.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but I didn’t want to drag this out any longer than necessary. I summoned up such strength as I had and I started to push the Beetle with the guy inside. The car moved, but not very far and not very fast, and it certainly didn’t pick up enough speed to make a bump start possible. After a prolonged bout of pushing we had barely got through the speedway gate to the road outside. The road was straight and flat without the kind of easy downward slope that would have encouraged the car to start. I looked around to see if there was anybody to hand who might join in with the pushing but the whole area was utterly deserted.

“If you could just push me over there, that would be great,” the fat man said.

He pointed down the road in the direction of a long, low building made of pink-painted cinder blocks that I could just make out as a diner. It was tucked in under a concrete ramp, and it had a sign outside that told me I was looking at an establishment called El Puerco Loco, the Crazy Pig if I remembered my Spanish. It was adorned with a large plastic figure of a cheerfully demented cartoon porker. It was perhaps two hundred and fifty yards away, a fair distance when you’re pushing a Volkswagen Beetle and its occupant, but I felt I had no choice.

“I haven’t eaten for ages,” the man said.

This wasn’t much encouragement in itself, but the knowledge that when I finally got to the diner I could have some lunch did sustain me, at least for a while. By the time I was halfway to the diner I felt sure I would never have the strength to make it all the way there. By the time I actually did get there I didn’t much care whether I lived or died. And yet I managed to push the Beetle into the car park of El Puerco Loco, and by some fluke positioned it so that the driver’s door lined up nicely against the take-out window. The window now opened and a broad, smiling Mexican woman’s face appeared.

“The usual, Barry?” she said.

“That’s right, Maribel. You know what I like.”

“Yes I do. And how about your friend?”

Through my sweating and heavy breathing I managed to order a cheeseburger and fries. That sounded like a thing a human being might order, though I felt anything but human. I’d have preferred to go inside the diner to eat but I thought it would have been unfriendly to leave my new pal outside, stuck in his car.

While we waited for the food I had to push the car just a little bit farther so that it didn’t block the takeout window and it came to rest right next to an outdoor table where I could sit and eat, and be in range of the Beetle and its driver.

“I’m Barry,” he said, but I already knew that.

“I’m Ian,” I offered, but he didn’t seem very interested. And I thought about explaining what I was doing in Fontinella, my involvement with the movie, my role as writer of the novel, but something told me that a man in Barry’s position would be unlikely to be interested. I feared it might sound as if I was just showing off.

In due course our order was ready, and I was reminded how much I enjoyed American food: greasy, salty, sugary and far too much of it. Who could resist that? Barry’s ‘usual’ seemed to consist of everything on the menu — various all-American items but with a distinctly Mexican influence — pancakes, chorizo omelet, a breakfast tortilla, retried beans, and a number of things I couldn’t identify. They were stacked up on a tray that I handed to him through the car window. The tray fitted snugly into the angle created by the steering wheel and his large, but yielding stomach.

I sat there at the outdoor table, in that blank, sunless, cheerless spot, eating my cheeseburger and fries, and I have to say I felt perfectly content. It was a blighted spot in most ways, but a writer spends so much of his time all alone in his own room, that to get out, even to a blank, sunless, cheerless spot, sometimes feels like a great treat.

More than that, I reckoned that Barry must be a man with a story to tell. I was a writer who still believed in stories. I thought that hearing this one would be a small reward for the pushing I’d done. But eating and speaking were incompatible as far as my new pal was concerned. He was far from silent, there was much loud chewing, gulping and lip smacking, but no words came out of him. I finished eating long before he did, but I waited patiently for him to ingest the contents of the tray, and then I thought he’d tell me about his life and times. Call me a fool. The moment he was done he said, “Any time you’re ready to push me back is fine by me.”

I could have argued. I suppose I could even have left him there and walked off, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t. I suppose it had something to do with retaining my sense of self-worth, of making myself believe I was a decent person, one of the good guys, but as I pushed and strained and sweated all the way back to the speedway gate I had plenty of thoughts that weren’t decent or good.

When I’d looked around before, hoping to find someone to help me push the Beetle, there had been no sign of anybody. Now as I entered the gate there was a knot of tattooed, tightly muscled, freakish men standing around sniggering among themselves, and I don’t believe it was just paranoia that made me think they were sniggering about me.

I pushed the Beetle back where it had come from, more or less. I didn’t say goodbye to Barry, because I was having difficulty both speaking and breathing at that moment. And he didn’t say anything either, least of all thanks.