The Former Car Owner

A story about driving different places.

I used to own a car. That sort of thing isn’t allowed anymore, of course, but back when it was, I did, and I would drive around sometimes. I would drive to totally different places, places I had never been before. I assume you want to hear about that. There’s no need to apologize, it’s perfectly understandable. Sit down, and I’ll tell you.

I used to like to drive around into the loading areas behind supermarkets and places like that. These were places you weren’t really meant to go, but there wasn’t anything stopping you, either. They weren’t restricted or anything. It wasn’t illegal. It just wasn’t the sort of place you were supposed to drive around unless you had business there. Sometimes there would be a few cars parked there that were just ordinary cars, like mine. I liked to pull up and park next to them and see if anyone was inside. There usually wasn’t, but once there was a kid with a plastic bag over his head. When I say “kid,” I mean he was a teenager who probably had just graduated high school. I believe he must have worked at the supermarket we were parked behind, because he was wearing a kind of green apron that was part of the standard uniform there. It used to be very common to get a job at a supermarket around that time in your life. It would be a job that usually mostly involved standing upright and walking and lifting boxes or putting things into bags or onto shelves or typing things into cash registers. It didn’t pay well at all but the idea was it would set you up for a better job in the future. I don’t know if that was true, it was just the common understanding around that time. Anyway, this teenager I had parked beside was just sitting there in the driver’s seat. He had his hands on the steering wheel but the engine was off and he wasn’t doing anything. It’s not that he was dead; I could see him inhaling and exhaling by how the plastic would get sucked into his mouth and then be pushed outwards again. This was only happening a few times a minute, though, so he was breathing very slowly. I could see through the plastic that his eyes were closed. I decided to get out of my car and check on him. When I opened the door he let his hands drop from the steering wheel but that was it. He didn’t show any other indication of being aware of me, even when I stood next to his open window and shouted at him. Eventually I reached in and tried to pull the bag off his head, but it was like it had fused with his skin somehow. It felt all raw and a sticky, and pulling on it, it was like I was trying to peel off his face. He kept making these little sighs. Eventually I just gave up and let him be. Another time I watched a woman with blue hair pace pack and forth and smoke a cigarette. Once, I saw a rabbit fall down a steep embankment and bring a little avalanche of dirt and pebbles down after him. I would see lots of things like this. In those days, it seemed like there were always animals around the edges of the cities. It’s not like it is today. There would be huge herds of cattle grazing under the open sun. Fruit would fall off of trees and be left to rot on the sidewalk. Squirrels and raccoons and other animals like that would sometimes pick the fruit up and carry it off to their secret hideaways. These animals had byways and secret passages leading all over the city, and they would traverse them in total darkness without the slightest trepidation. Scent alone was enough to guide them. It may be hard to believe, but it’s true. I would see them sometimes, darting out from some crack or crevice with their eyes still closed, as if they were asleep, and this world was just their swiftly fluxing dream. Once, I took my car to a car wash. These were plain and boxy buildings where you could have your car put through a gauntlet of huge, spinning brushes and jets of soapy water, while you watched from behind a long display window. I found the experience vaguely nauseating, to be honest with you; it reminded me too much of the slaughterhouse I worked at as a teenager, before a whirlwind picked me and my family up and carried us and set us down in this far away part of the world, instead of the place we had been. Of course, later the whirlwind picked up all of us, in every place, as you know, and has continued to carry us and has not yet set us back down again. I doubt that I’ll live to see the day when it does. I doubt you will, either. I really do. But as I was saying, after the process was over, and I saw my car was sitting there glistening bright and naked in the sun, I resolved never to visit a place like this ever again, but, having done so, I found myself strangely reluctant to leave. I found myself having wandered to some indeterminate shaded area near a corner of the lot, making conversation with a man pouring a blue opaque liquid from a large plastic container into a valve in the side of a much larger storage tank. “What sort of liquid is that?” I asked him. “Death liquid,” he replied to me. “For killing squirrel, rats, all kind of small animal. No creepy insect, though, doesn’t work. Only mammal. Only live-birth creature. Go somewhere dark, warm, small place, under porch, behind furnace, place they think is safe to give birth, we find them there with the liquid, liquid kills them, bam, all gone, no more animal, no more baby.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t have thought a place like this would have that sort of problem,” I said. The man shook his head. “No, no, you misunderstand. Car wash is just for paying bills. Killing the animal is our true passion. We always make sure and have lots of death liquid. There is much more inside, much more. You could take small bottle yourself, try it out at home. It would be okay. We are sure you won’t find any formula that is more effective.” These are the sort of conversations you used to get into when you would drive around to different places. It’s hard to imagine now, but that’s how things used to be. It used to be there were lots and lots of animals that you could do whatever you wanted to, and no one would blink an eye at it. If you did the same things to people, you would have gotten into a lot of trouble unless you knew what you were doing and made sure no one ever found out, but if you did them to animals instead you could be completely out in the open about it, even to total strangers. I don’t think you need to to feel any definite kind of way about this, it’s just how things were. There were always all sorts of opportunities like that being offered to people. You know, the very same week I had that conversation at the car wash I read a story in the newspaper about a man who had something similar happen to him. He sounded like he was a lot like me. He had bought a car and he had been using it to drive around all over the country, to all sorts of places you wouldn’t usually think to drive to. The newspaper said he had been spotted in his car driving beside big piles of cardboard boxes and big mounds of dirt and mulch and sawdust and lots and lots of roads all around big plots of land that were behind electrified fences. I found that very impressive. I would have liked to meet him. But anyway, this man had been driving around, and he had come to a field behind some warehouses where there were some oil drums burning and a crowd of people, mostly men, I remember the newspaper said, but there were some women there, too, and they were standing in a circle around these two men who were fighting. These men were both shirtless, and the one man was on the other man’s back, straddling him, with his knees on his elbows, and he was just beating him around the shoulders and neck and the back of his head with this metal chain. He hit him again and again until the man was completely unconscious, and then the organizer of the fight came and pulled him off the other man and held his arm up and handed him some money. Things like that happened all the time back then. People were always handing each other money. They didn’t even think about it. It wasn’t like it is now. Anyway, pretty much everyone went and got in their cars and drove away after that, and left the loser of the fight lying there in the field with all the oil drums burning around him. He was still unconscious. But the one man, the one who was a lot like me, you know, he had stayed, and after everyone was gone he went over to the man and shook him by the shoulder and said, “Hey, you need to wake up. The show’s over. Everyone’s gone.” And the man sat up then, and according to the newspaper there were blades of grass stuck to his face and all sorts of dirt and grime smeared on his face and mixed with his blood. I imagine it must have been quite a sight. He probably looked like he’d just come back from a war, a war that had changed him and made him unrecognizable to his family. I’m sure you know all about that, probably even better than me. Anyway, he thanked the man, and then he said to him, “Mister, I’m sure that we’re the same blood type. If you give me a lift to the nearest town, I’ll let you have one of my organs after I’m dead. Whichever one you want, it doesn’t make a difference to me. What do you say, mister? You probably won’t have to wait too long.” That was just the sort of thing that happened back then. It wasn’t like it is now.

I’m not quite sure if this all this happened before or after the really important things that were happening around that time. Probably, it was after. When I was your age, I decided to always assume if I didn’t know when something happened, it happened later than I thought it did, and that if I didn’t know how much time I had, I had less time than I thought. And look, I’m still kicking, aren’t I? There’s a lesson there. I’m sure of it. Listen, it’s going to get very bright outside that window very soon. In fact, I think it could be any minute now. We’d better close the blinds, and get under the table.