There was a hole here once.
Now the absence of that familiar thing was throwing off his sense of direction. He used to wander the same yard for days at a time when he was a child. Now that familiarity had passed. Towering oaks had withered and died and branches that once seemed impossibly out of reach seemed to bend to meet him as he walked down the dusty field road that led from his grandfather’s old house to the old barn. How many summers had he spent there helping him fix the old farm equipment?
Nothing was where it was supposed to be anymore. As he forced his way into the dark musty barn he could barley make out anything that he had remembered. The windows were clouded to a point of almost pure defiance flying in the face of their intended purpose as if to protest the years of neglect that the building had suffered. Even this place that had once been a temple for all things mechanical had lost it’s heart and soul. Old rusted tools and coffee cans full of nuts and screws and nails rusted away on the rotting saw-dust covered work benches and shelves. The small shafts of light peeking through the cracks in the walls illuminated swirling clouds of the dust that he had disturbed by entering the halls of this long forgotten and hallowed place.
His grandfather had left him everything in the garage in the will, the place where the two of them had spent the most time together, the only person who had ever sat there by his side for hours learning the names of tools and mastering the art of holding flashlights in just the right way. The only thing he had left behind for him was old memories as rusty as the tools he was running his hands over. There was one thing in this garage that was perfectly cared for. There was one thing in this garage that his grandfather had meant him to have. While it may have seemed that he received an old rotting frame of a once powerful building he was to leave one last surprise for his grandson.
There nestled against the far wall of the barn was a large canvas cloth and while the cloth was nothing spectacular, and not that it didn’t do its job as all canvas cloths do, it was what was under said canvas which was important. While the boy wandered around aimlessly looking in drawers and counting rusty screws it waited patiently. It had waited for several years now doing it’s job, keeping something safe. It was now up to the boy to find it.
“Honey! Are you in here?” His mother’s voiced echoed against the creaking wooden ceiling.
“Yeah mom I’m here.” He was still lost in though. Trying to conjure up some great life changing advice he might have learned here long ago and discarded without thinking.
“It’s pretty dreadful in here isn’t it? It hasn’t been cleaned since…” Her voice trailed off and melded with the oppressive silence of the place.
“You think the big door still works?” He gestured toward the old garage door that took up much of one of the walls.
“Yeah, open it up and let’s get some air in here.” She stifled a cough catching it in the back of her throat.
He had some difficulty unlatching the thing; the handle had almost rusted shut. He finally managed to put enough pressure on it to twist the handle and with a loud and plaintive grinding noise from the door; he was able to lift it open. Now with a little more like cast on things the disrepair of the old building had become even more apparent. Though the large bulbous shape standing next to him now became a little more obvious. His mother coughed twice before gesturing toward the canvas cover.
“Well there it is.” Her muffled voice barley audible from behind her hand.
He got a firm grip on the canvas and began pulling it aside. Each tug revealed a little more of the item it had been covering for so long. He managed to get it completely uncovered before wadding it up and tossing it behind him onto the cluttered and dusty floor.
“That’s what he wanted you to have I think.” She smiled at him proudly as he examined his inheritance.
“So what kind of a car is it?” He asked idly.
It is important to note that this boy was in no way interested in vehicles in any way. He knew as much about cars as he did about navigating ocean going vessels by the stars. In spite of his grandfather’s best efforts he grew up without any desire to go fast or feel the wind in his hair. The life he had lived so far had been one as tragic as all the others of his generation, a lifetime of television and computers. While one could argue that any life choice is as valid as any other one of sedentary quests for fake valor and glory is undeniably one of wasted potential and opportunity.
At least for this one boy opportunity had come knocking.
“You practically lived in this garage with your grandfather for every summer of your life and you don’t know what kind of car this is?” Her disbelief was almost painful to him.
He knew very well that he hadn’t retained anything his grandfather had taught him. He never considered a word the man said outside the confines of this large room. Once he left for the summer and returned home it was all about video games and chat rooms and very much the forgetting of every possibly useful thing he could have learned.
“I don’t remember.” He said sternly, arms crossed, hunched over.
“Your grandfather only ever drove one type of car as far as I can remember and it was always a Porsche.” She pointed to the emblem on the hood of the car.
“Por-Sha” he mouthed the word silently under his breath. “Is it a good car?” Directing the question at the car herself rather than anyone else in particular.
“It’s a lot better than what you are driving now.” She smiled and he didn’t appreciate her sense of humor.
He had only just received his license recently and only out of necessity. He had gone all the way to college graduation without ever doing anything more than getting his drivers permit on his 16th birthday and even then it was an excuse to skip school for the day. Now one would question how a 22 year old would be considered a boy and you will find that in many ways our protagonist had never really matured, never accepted any real responsibility, never kissed a girl, never had a fight, never broken a bone, never gotten drunk for the sake of drinking and never driven a car faster than the posted speed limit. I pose to you then, dear reader, a simple question. How can a person who has experienced nothing of life and more importantly nothing of manhood be considered a man?
It was about this time that his father walked in through the open door and into a very confused looking son and a very proud looking wife. The father who had grown up being everything his son was not. Where he played football in school his son played his play station, where he met his wife his son managed to somehow find time to build himself a rather impressive collection of computers and where he had become very much the man he is today his son managed to very much remain the same kid they sent to college four years ago. We can’t go so far to say that his son was a disappointment but, that analysis of the situation would not be very far from the truth in our case here. The only thing the father was feeling right now was jealousy.
“You think you’re going to be able to handle this thing?” he smirked.
“I don’t know how to drive stick.” The boy looked down at the ground and kicked a lonely nail against the wall.
“Well maybe we should see if the thing starts first eh? Did he leave any keys for the thing?” He directed his question at his wife.
“No… I don’t remember anyone saying anything about keys to me.” She look up at the ceiling, not so much to examine the obvious termite damage but more so in the way that people glance in certain directions when thinking deeply about something.
Now there was a flash in our young heroes mind, a single frame of a single day of his youth. He reached down and opened the driver’s side door and climbed into the car. He reached out almost instinctively and pulled down the driver’s side sun visor and down fell into his lap with a very delightful clinking sound a set of keys. Looking on in pretty much the same amazement as he was feeling now his father made some comment about that being how cars were stolen but, he wasn’t in the mood for another of his father’s speeches on how the world should work.
“Well go ahead, why don’t you see if it will start.” His father waved his hands at the car dismissively trying to shake the sensation that he was the only person in the room that would have appreciated the thing.
The boy turned the key and there was a LOUD grinding and jerking and shaking as the car lurched forward and with a loud CLUNK stopped dead.
“You have to put the clutch in to start the car…” His mother volunteered this bit of sage advice before his father could chime in with a much less understanding version of the same.
He was red in the face and quite bored with this whole endeavor by now. While he wasn’t the type of person to give up easily on something he was the type of person to avoid any kind of public embarrassment he could. He stomped heavily onto the clutch pedal and the car turned over without a complaint. He was amazed at how rich and full the engine sounded. It was very much a surprise for him. Being used to Japanese economy cars he had never had the feel of a strong German engine roaring all around him.
“Now you just gotta drive it about five-hundred miles or so north kid.” His father couldn’t help but laugh at his own ‘wit’.
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