Burning Cars
By Nyla Chuku
Even though she worked at a car shop, Sydney preferred to take her chances as a pedestrian. She couldn’t afford not to. Besides, Uz wasn’t a very large area to call home and so a 40-minute walk to the corner store for cigarettes and back didn’t really bother anything but her lungs in the wintertime (she only smoked some of them, others she just watched burn). Her trailer camper was also a skip and a hop from work, which was convenient, especially on days when the thought of getting out of bed made her wish for a physical agony rather than a mental one. She was a damn good pedestrian. She always walked briskly across streets, she paused at stop signs to let cars decide if they would let her cross, she smiled at them on the rare occasion they did. It was the drivers who were jerks, either too sleepy from neglected morning coffee or hangovers, or just general negligence. Almost every day she almost got run over. And when she felt the anger bubble up from her gut, she tried to remind herself that this was the Midwest, not the east coast: these people weren't used to caring about people walking. She reminded herself, with gratitude, that every near-death experience was just that; she still had her life. She was trying to do that, be more grateful, her therapist told her it would keep her out of trouble. Of course it was easy for her therapist to say that. She was living in the neighboring city and was always going on vacation. Of course she could be grateful. Sydney itched for the city instead of the rot that Uz felt like.
She could feel it in her coworkers, the rot settling in. She was twenty-three while the rest of the guys were in their forties, and she imagined that, like her, they too had dreams of moving away from Uz, and having a flourishing social life, good-paying jobs, and a family. Now that they were set in their ways, knowing Uz would be their tomb, she assumed that had to be the reason why they were such assholes. All those dead dreams within them with no place for them to go. Every time she walked in, with dirty jeans and the gray button-down uniform shirt, they hooped and hollered. Johnny, the youngest one at 41, would always whip a towel in the air and yell, “Good morning, firecracker!” which would send the rest of the men into a fit of laughter while she clocked in on the punch clock. This insidious nickname was not just because she had ginger hair but also because of her past that she tried every day to bury, especially Tuesday evenings in therapy, but one that would never escape the mouths of the townspeople when they saw her.
Technically, she was a convicted arsonist, though it was only a misdemeanor because no one got hurt. It was in her teenage years, and it was her own house that suffered her wrath. Thankfully her mother wasn't inside. It was why she lived in the trailer park; her mother had cut contact with her after she went to jail, their relationship already strained before the incident. It had felt poetic in the moment; something in Uz, the town of ashes, being reduced to ash. The judge said she was mentally disturbed, and she got put into court mandated therapy upon release. Her therapist said the fire was the peak of her mental break from her mother’s abuse. Sydney just knew she liked fire.
Her job fixing cars was enough for her to buy her trailer and end her time sleeping in tents and couch surfing with various friends, hiding in basements and closets so their parents didn’t know. Who wants an arsonist in their house? The money was also enough to make her monthly payments to repay the various fines from her criminal activity and to bribe her parole officer initially to not report that she had no place of residence. Now their relationship was over, she had been trying to save up to buy a truck, hook up her camper and move away, to get away from her history. So, every morning in response to the rowdy boys she just smiled and said good morning back.
It was a wistful December morning when the car came. The car didn’t make sense from the beginning. The way it sputtered and wheezed and groaned into the car lot should have sent alarm bells into Sydney’s head. It was an older model, a classic car with the bulging headlights, glossy finish, and rail thin steering wheel. There were so many issues off the jump. Headlights were broken, paint a chipped mess, tires flattening, and the sound it made when it ran. Sydney was grateful when the old man stopped its engine and lumbered out of the car until Johnny came up from behind her, slapped her on the shoulder and said, “He’s all yours.” The three little words filled her with a mix of dread and anger, and she shook off his hand to go approach the gentleman.
“Hi,” she started. “I’m Sydney, what brings you to Joe’s Auto?” The man took her outstretched hand and shook it, and she found that his hand was colder than the crispy breath of winter.
“I’m Saul,” he said. “I know she looks real beat up, but she’s ma pride and joy and I wan’ her fixed up if you can, miss.”
In the folds of his face, Sydney found compassion and an earnestness that instantly washed out her rage. She agreed to do the best she could and took his keys to run a diagnostic in the shop. The guys hooted and hollered as she brought the car in while the man went to sit in the waiting room. Ben and Joe, who was the namesake of the shop, instantly popped the hood and started the diagnostic. It was bleak. The car basically needed all its innards replaced, especially the engine and brakes. Because it was such an old car and they were a small shop, the parts would have to be ordered and wouldn’t come cheap. The body of the car was also starting to get damaged from the paint being gone.
“This car is a rolling tombstone,” Joe said. “If he keeps driving it, he’s bound to die.”
“How much to fix it? He said it has sentimental value,” Sydney pressed.
“Looking at a possible 17 grand minimum.”
“Can’t you cut him a deal? He’s an old man.”
“What is this, Make-A-Wish? Syd,” they always called her Syd and she detested it, “this is a business first and foremost. Go tell him the news.”
Sydney begrudgingly found herself in the waiting room detailing all that’s wrong with the car and how much it would cost to fix it. “It’s a luxury brand, so it's more expensive to get the parts and the paint,” was how she tried to wrap everything up.
“I don’ have that kinda of money. I didn’t think it would be so much,” the old man pleaded.
Sydney gave a sad look, and the man’s expression turned sorrowful with a twinge of anger before he stood up to head towards the car lot. She stopped him and told him it was dangerous to drive the car, that he might die. The man shrugged off her concerns and drove the sputtering car out of the lot.
“He’s some kind of crazy not to throw that thing away,” Johnny said once the car could no longer be heard.
Sydney wanted to set the whole world on fire.
***
She was having fire dreams again. She usually had these dreams when she was stressed, when her brain was filled to the brink with her chaos. Her therapist said to see it as a warning sign, a sign to reach out for help. But Sydney didn’t feel like being helped, she wanted to suffer, felt like she earned it. The dreams were always a blank white space and an object or a person, usually her mother. This time, she dreamt of a bloated beached whale laying in a liminal space, grains of sand still on the bottom. The smell was awful and she covered her nose, but she inched closer to the dead animal. With one touch from her fingertips, the whale went ablaze, the blubber roasting and popping, gore spattering and then caramelizing. She always backed away a reasonable distance and laughed as the smoke started to fill the space. She would laugh until the laughs turned to screams and coughing. Always screaming and coughing. Then she would wake up with her throat hoarse and she would know she had been screaming in her sleep. That would be her only indicator. When she woke with her heart pounding and the whispers of the taste of smoke on her tongue, she would open her notebook in her nightstand and write down what burned. Today she wrote ‘whale’ and wondered if the grains of sand on the whale would make glass. Her neighbors never said anything even though she knew they could hear her. She was grateful.
Three nights after the burning whale dream was when it happened. She was working on a Pontiac when she heard that distinct sputtering again. She popped out from under the car, almost hitting her head to race to the car lot. She was happy that he had changed his mind. The other guys were outside too, watching the car slowly wheel its way in the lot. The old man stopped the car, just sat there with a grief-stricken expression. When Sydney got closer, she would see that the back seat was filled with hay, and her eyes widened as he turned it on once more, its hacking filling the silence. She knew what would happen because it's what she would do. He would reach in his pocket and pull out a match, and he would strike it against the box. He would throw the match into the hay. He would accelerate. She ran and pushed her coworkers out of the way as he threw the match behind him and floored it into the building. Joe screamed, Johnny cried, Ben scrambled on the floor and then ran away entirely, and Sydney just watched. She watched the fire lick up the car, listened as the man screamed in the agony of the flames and then heard only the flames after the car exploded, triggering explosions of the other cars in the shop and the building collapsing down on itself. Joe’s Auto Shop was nothing more than flames, huge yellow and red dancers swirling around the material, hungry for more. Joe called 911, Johnny just sat in shock as his tears dried, and Sydney watched with a joy and dread that swarmed her chest until she laughed. She laughed until she started screaming. And she was grateful.
Hachi Chuku is a Managing Editor for Nimrod International Journal. Their writing explores family, nature, and mental health within the realms of fiction and poetry. They have work forthcoming in The Shallot, Knee Brace Press, The Amazine, and The Basilisk Tree. They can be found on Instagram @curio.odes and substack @curioodes. When they are not writing, they love to crochet.
