Watermark

After two transmissions, one small accident, miles of surf trips, pounds of sand, and a bum’s shopping cart worth of general clutter and paraphernalia, my little car hit the 100,000 mile mark this evening. When it did, all the car’s functions immediately locked up. The steering wheel caught into a rigid position, my brakes and gas pedal stopped working, and the stick slammed itself involuntarily into neutral. Now with fate completely out of my control, I watched as the car slowed and directed itself to the side of the road. It was possessed as if by some unknown source.

When the car came to a rest, the hood popped open with an audible grunt. I used my last remaining working door handle to step out and see what had happened. But as I approached the hood it swung itself completely, into the upright near vertical position, and out from where I thought my engine should be jumped a tiny bald man with giant watermelon sized feet. He had a ripped greasy beige shirt on that said in fading cartoon print “Honk For Honey”, and the blackness on the bottom of those gargantuan tootsies was as dark as the very pavement I now witnessed him stomping on.

Shocking. But he paid me no interest. Actually, he shoved me to the side (gently) and started jumping near my driver’s side door, seemingly trying to get a glimpse at my dashboard. He was wide-eyed and frantic.

“Here I gotcha,” I finally said when I’d composed myself. Starting to accept and understand the strangeness of my little human engine.

And I picked him up by the belt loops on his olive Jnco’s and held him easily at a visual evenness with gauges of my dashboard. He studied only the odometer for what must have been a good five minutes. Cars passed us but did not stop to question the event. People are busy. We looked like two aliens fresh off the mothership, taking a fresh inventory of the source of human locomotion.

”Well,” I heard him say after those minutes silently hoisted in the air. I thought I heard his voice crack a little, but I couldn’t see his mostly featureless face. “That’s that. Put me down.”

I did. And as if nothing had happened he began walking back to what was in all reality his cockpit. A silent, thankless, Captain.

“Wait.”

He continued climbing into the bucket seat I assumed he created for himself. Just below the seat were two perfectly concentric circles. He hit a bulbous yellow button, without acknowledging me, and quickly the hood began to lower. I grabbed it half-way down and held my car open like a clam-shell.

“So, you have been making this thing go all these years?”

Finally he made eye contact with me. He had a dull passive face, but giant gecko like eyes, they seemed perfect for someone used to living in dark cramped surroundings and were quite intense.

“Did you just think every car ran like this?”

“Well no…”

“Are you unhappy with my work?”

I felt awful about the idea. How could I be ungrateful?

“No, she’s been driving great actually.” (I lied). “I need to vacuum the-“

“You paid thirty-seven dollars for this transmission, did you actually expect a transmission?”

”I guess….” I had to think about that question. The price did seem good at the time.

“I know I didn’t expect a little human to be peddling this thing.”

”I’m not human,” I heard him say, and then he frantically started pressing the dimpled yellow button again. Caught off guard, I nearly let the hood close, and I felt certain if the hood did close, it would never open again. A coffin of bolts and long flat feet.

But I grabbed it just before it could clamp shut. My tiny engine looked more exhausted by this development then angry in any way. It was time to get back on the road.

”Now what?” he said.

What indeed? Was there anything else to ask or was this a fairly self-explanatory situation? I’ve seen the Flintstones.

“One more question,” I said. “What do you do when we’re not driving?”

“I write,” he said and I saw him shoot a glance over to the button again.

“Wait, what do you write?”

“All kinds of things. Plays, fiction, I could do long-form journalism if anyone ever needed it...” He trailed and seemed to relax slightly.

”Have a flashlight in there?”

He pointed to his huge bold eyes.

“Thought so. Do you have anything I can read? I have a little website myself actually, I could put it on there.”

He seemed to brighten at this idea, and he began fussing around in the remaining pieces of what I had thought all this time was an engine. It was in fact a bookshelf of sorts, simply disguised as a poorly functioning engine. The small man started rummaging through the scrolls he seemed to write on in what must have been long-hand form. No space for typewriters; all function. In every place where important engine components should have been (oil, belts, radiators, the battery), instead were stuffed with strange yellowed sheets of long paper held together with gold handles shaped like dragon heads. They seemed ancient.

”Ah, here, I kind of like this one.”

Here strained himself slightly as he reached over to me with his weak underused arm one of the scrolls. I looked down quickly at the feathery piece of paper.  It was blank.

“This is actually pretty good,” I said, but just as I was looking back up the hood slammed shut. I don’t know if he heard my critique.

Sitting back down in the driver’s seat, its grey pot marked cloth peeling and fading, nickels from the 1940’s embedded in the tomb of the headrest, I found myself feeling guilty about starting the car. Especially putting the key in. So I leaned forward and whispered into the air conditioning duct: “I don’t mind if you quit, one-hundred thousand is more then I ever expected anyway. Maybe you can spend more time writing.”

Nothing in return. At least not for a long few minutes, I sat in silence wondering if he was just digesting my offer. I’d yet to even get his name. Finally I heard something muttered from deep within the greasy rusted confines.

”My story has already been written.”

And with that the car lit to life with an electric shock, peeled back onto A1A and flew south like a snowball made with day old sleet. In the distance bolts of lightning speared the island silently. The check engine light continued glowing, but I understood it finally, and as the car hurled down the highway I threw the key out the window and into the humid darkness of an advancing night.