THE STEERING WHEEL CLUB

KAARON WARREN

Eddie sat in his car for a long time in front of his wife’s house. His hands clutched the steering wheel, knuckles white. He barely blinked, and when he squeezed his eyes shut, the glare of the street lights meant there was no darkness even behind his eyelids.

He let out a breath. In the confines of the car his breath stank; whisky, cigarettes, beer, tooth decay he had neither time nor inclination to get fixed. He laughed; a short bark. She wouldn’t be nagging him about that anymore, would she? Not that or anything else.

She stirred next to him.

He unclenched his hands and looked at them.

Something caught in his throat. It was the same feeling he’d had on their wedding day, when he turned around and saw her coming down the aisle, beautiful when she was usually just pretty, walking towards him to say she’d love and obey.

He momentarily felt that same sense of excitement, love, and desire.

His phone rang, his mate Gerry. “How the fuck are ya?” Gerry said. “You were ber-lind last night.” He HAD been blind drunk, so much so it was only the last few hours he remembered. The irritation leading to fury.

“Mate,” Eddie said, “what a night! If anyone asks, I crashed at yours. Right? Too pissed to get myself home.”

Gerry laughed. “What’s her name, mate?” and for a moment Eddie wished that’s all it was, he’d fucked some slut and didn’t want his wife finding out. That’d be easy. He’d done that enough before. He didn’t even have to try; women loved his blue eyes, his smooth skin, his cheekbones. They loved his footballer muscles.

He started the car. “Thanks, mate.”

Hanging up, he looked at his wife, her hands folded over her head. “Pretty as a picture,” he said, and laughed. “Ready for a ladies’ lunch with all your friends.” She had no friends anymore; they all hated him. Fuck them. And her family were bastards; he would never have to talk to any of them again, thank fuck. A feeling rose, for a moment, a possible sadness, but he swallowed it down, necking a stubby of still-cold beer to wash it away.

Both her eyes were swollen shut, and fingermarks around her neck seemed to pulse at him.

He wasn’t feeling much pain. She’d feel it. She’d suffer. She’d deserve every bit of it. He punched a song into the player, Public Image Limited ‘This is what you want . . . this is what you get”, a song he liked to play loud, so loud. She used to like the band; years ago they’d seen them live.

He floored the accelerator. She reached over to try to stop him, both hands grasping at the wheel, climbing on to his lap like she used to long ago, reaching for his eyes with her long fingernails, and for a moment he was back there in that time, remembered it, and so he died with an erection.

Alex Thompson kept an eye on the auction sites. Most of the club’s memorabilia came from these places, or lucky finds at garage sales or charity shops. When he saw the steering wheel, described as carrying “visible bloodstains, fingernail impressions,” he knew they needed it.

Alex had been a member of the Steering Wheel Club since its inception twenty-five years earlier. It was established as a place where men could gather and talk about cars without anyone telling them off or making them feel lesser. Over the years they’d filled it with things that made them happy: framed front page newspaper stories about classic race wins, and photos of race winners, as well as their collection of steering wheels. The idea was inspired by a defunct English club, and they’d talk about that, the famous drivers who’d attended it, and the steering wheels that decorated the walls there. Alex’s club had close to a hundred of them now; wheels from famous drivers, including the ‘death crash’ ones. Wheels from cars that had travelled across the Nullabor Plain, and those that had travelled the entire National Highway. They had other wheels, too, infamous ones like the wheel from a van driven by a drunken mother, in an accident which killed seven children.

All of them carried a ghost of the driver, an echo of what was.

Alex wore driving gloves to buy the steering wheel, and tolerated the sideways glance the two men at the auto-wreckers gave each other. They weren’t the brightest of souls.

“Lucky you got permission to sell off the parts,” he said.

The men laughed. “We don’t need permission, mate. Once the police have done their shit and it crosses the threshold, we can do what we want with it. It’s part of our charter.”

Alex itched to touch the wheel with his bare hands. “You’re doing good work.”

“Be glad to get rid of it.” Most of the car was unsalvageable. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but that wheel gives me the creeps.”

Alex handed over a business card. “Let me know if you get any more like it. And you’re welcome to come to the club one evening as my guests. See how it all looks.” It was easy to be jovial with these men. They offered no challenge to him. They admired him because of how he presented himself, clean and confident.

He kept the wheel, wrapped in a towel, in the boot of his car until he could get to the club, not wanting to touch it until it was in place.

The club was in an old building on a backstreet, a converted mansion that had quirky shops on the ground floor. They rented the top floor. Alex loved the smell of it; motor oil, cigar smoke, good aftershave. The foyer was tiny and really only served as a place for them to put out flyers and promote motor events. Through the door to the main bar, well lit and with converted car seats as furniture. The walls were covered with memorabilia, and in the far corner was the arcade driving booth. Alex had picked up the booth years ago when a games arcade closed down, an ‘as is’ game. They’d never tried connecting to sound or power, and there was something meditative about sitting in that booth. It wasn’t sound-proofed but at the same time felt all-encompassing.

Alex wasn’t the only one who saw, or rather felt, ghosts in the club. They didn’t talk about it but some of the steering wheels carried something with them. You sat in there, positioned your hands, and you were transported, you felt what that driver felt. The exhilaration, the glorious fear.

Alex sat in the driver’s seat of the game. He wanted to experience this steering wheel one more time before he swapped it for the new one he’d just bought. The existing one had come from an accident on the track, the car careening wildly out of control, crossing the boundaries and almost flying over the crowd. Eyewitnesses described it as being in slow motion, giving almost all of them time to run out of the way. There were injuries, people hurt in the rush, but just two deaths: the driver and an elderly man who had drunk himself into a stupor and, people hoped, had not known what was coming.

Alex put his hands on the wheel. The immediate sensation was a stomach-churning one, like you get on a high-flying ride at the Fair. Then exhilaration and, Alex thought, a sense of relief. The members had all felt this and between them decided that perhaps the accident was deliberate; that the driver had chosen to die.

Most of them didn’t believe the steering wheel (and others before it) was haunted. It was Alex’s stories, his fantasies, that made them seem alive.

The sensation had lessened. Either the ghost was fading, or his echo at least, or Alex was becoming immune to it. Either way, it was time for a new experience.

Most of the steering wheels carried little or no echo. Some carried just a shiver. Others thrust you into the last moments, embedded you in the experience. He had high hopes for his new one.

Useless Euan was the only man there. He stood with his light beer, sipping it as he always did. “How’s the wife?” Euan said.

“Oh, you know. She’s a modern woman. Thinks cooking and fucking are provinces of China.” The joke was that nobody believed this of Alex’s wife. “I’ve got a new steering wheel,” Alex said. “You can stick around and watch it go in.”

More of a command than a request, but Euan said, “Sorry to love you and leave you, need to go coach my daughter’s soccer team.”

Alex offered to do the coaching for him. He offered this service often. Euan said, “Err, no thanks,” to which Alex said, “Your loss.”

He didn’t want to unveil the steering wheel until there were plenty of other members about, so with the club so quiet he ducked home for dinner. He’d been neglecting his wife, and club food was notoriously bad, frozen food cooked in the microwave. He returned to the Club after he’d eaten, expecting he’d have the chance to show off the steering wheel and fill them all in on the story of it. None of them were interested though. It seemed they were having a wake; Paul Moss had lost his brother (not in a car accident, although Alex couldn’t quite gather how he’d died) and Paul was drinking to excess, joined by the rest of them. They were raucous, laughing and joking, as disorderly as these men got. Alex set aside the new steering wheel, thinking now was not a good time to present it.

A group of women arrived, perhaps summoned by Paul, and Alex enjoyed their company. He slipped off his wedding ring and played the lonely widower: Women loved that. “I miss her, I just want to hold her,” he said. He had the air of a military general, but he’d never been one. Pink-skinned, broad across the shoulders but also across the stomach, he smelled of soap. He was a keen hand washer and fuss would be made if there was no soap in the bathroom, at home or here at the club.

There was no female bathroom. The rare lady visitors (always racing fans) used the men’s, although the board had to draw the line at assignations happening in there. Plenty of private nooks and crannies for that stuff.

Alex didn’t want to bring out the new wheel with the idiot women there. One of them climbed into the driving booth and play acted, but left it quickly, face white under her thick, ugly makeup.

“See a ghost?” Alex winked at her. She ignored him, which pissed him off. This was his club. Who did she think she was? He turned his anger into something else, though, an irresistible, passionate charm, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer as he pressed her into the alcove that used to house a telephone, many years ago.

Paul Moss was crying in a corner, the drink and the grief meeting in the middle. The members stood around watching him for a while, disgusted. “Pathetic,” they said. “Look at him.”

Alex didn’t have that last whiskey. The idea of being physically incapable, of not being able to look after his physical needs, was one that filled him with horror.

He showered at the club, wanting to maintain the moral high ground at home. He had no delusions about the hypocrisy of this but he didn’t care. When once his wife had looked at him reproachfully, now she looked at him hopefully. That look made him livid; how dare she wish him a lover, a woman on the side, in the hope he might leave the marriage?

Alex got a lift home from Euan. He’d been fine to drive, had driven in that state before, but Euan was there to serve, so why not. On the way home, Alex called his wife.

“NORWICH,” he said, winking at Euan, who barely suppressed a laugh.

“Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home,” Euan said. The men always liked to say the actual words.

Alex didn’t ask Euan in for a drink. While he knew the house would be spotless (it better be) and food ready to eat, he was so ashamed of his wife he couldn’t let anyone see her.

Not anymore.

She hadn’t been out of the house in what, six months? He thought even if he let her go now she wouldn’t be able to. Luckily she’d been a primary school teacher so she knew how to fix cuts and abrasions. Breaks she treated with pain killers. He didn’t mind her when she was on those. He could blame the drugs for her unresponsiveness.

She was sitting up on the couch, wearing one of the dresses he liked. Bottle of wine open on the coffee table, and some kind of snack. The sight of all of it relieved him. He really didn’t have the energy to put her in her place tonight, if she’d done the wrong thing.

The next day Alex got to the club early. A couple of members were already there, or, given the state they were in, hadn’t left. It was disgusting; Alex prided himself on his appearance and couldn’t understand how others didn’t. It was the mark of a man.

They watched as he laid the new wheel down and stretched out with tools to take off the old one.

“That was a good one. Loved it. One of the best.” This from one of the club’s greatest sycophants.

“It’s no Le Mans ’55,” Alex said. He was still on the lookout for one of those.

“What’s the story on this one, Alex?”

He told them about the good man who couldn’t take it any more, and about the crash that left nothing behind but this steering wheel and a tool box, and their wedding rings in the ashes. The last time they had one like this, it was the drunk mother, with all the kids in the car. They’d pulled that one out after a couple of days; even without touching it, they thought they could hear screaming. “I reckon you go first on this one, Al. You scored it, you get first go.” They all nodded. Most of them don’t really like touching the wheels.

The old wheel came off easily. Holding it, he got that sense of vertigo, of flying, and it made him feel a little ill. He laid it carefully on the floor outside the booth. They’d hang it on the wall later, between the Austrian Grand Prix winner and the Bathurst 500 Winner. He positioned the new steering wheel, still covered with a towel, and then fixed it in place. He really wanted the rest of them to piss off, leave him to it. He wanted privacy for this, wanted the experience, the first experience, to be uncluttered by these observers.

“Drinks, boys? I’m parched, I tell you. My shout.”

That surprised them, and they trooped to the bar, where he bought them all a whisky and a beer each, before he slipped out back to the booth.

He sat in the driver’s seat, breathing hard. He wasn’t as young as he used to be and even this level of exertion puffed him out. He lifted off the towel and placed it beside him on the floor. There was no passenger seat but there were pedals, something he’d insisted on when the booth was being converted. He put his foot on the brake (an old habit) and placed his hands on the steering wheel.

He felt powerful. He felt his chest filling with air, his lungs inflating, and he breathed out. His muscles tensed; he recognised this, it was anger, his muscles tensing as if some kind of chemical ran through his veins, and he could feel that lessening of thought, the forget all else blankness he knew so well himself. His knuckles ached. His heart beat with excitement, and he felt a deep sense of rightness, of satisfaction, but then his eyes filled with tears because there was sorrow as well. If he survived this he’d never stop crying; he knew that. This was why the man had died. He wanted to stop crying.

Then something else, on top of that. It wasn’t lust but he had an erection, it was a physical response, a muscle-memory action. Like the times he caught his wife sidelong, and for a moment remembered their early days, how he was taken back to those wild times and he wanted sex again.

It was that.

And speed, he felt speed, and then the coming of impact

Then orgasm

He tried to take his hands off the wheel, feeling the impact coming, not wanting to experience it, but it felt so good he couldn’t.

And it was impact and orgasm and impact and orgasm and impact, until something clicked, his hands froze, and he could no longer decide for himself to take them off the wheel. In his mind’s eye he could see her, the other wife, thrusting her fingers into his eyes, reaching deep into his brain

He became dimly aware of men around him. One of them was a doctor and they roused him, brought him back to life, but he couldn’t lift a hand, could barely blink. He’d never experienced anything so powerful. “Elizabeth,” he rasped, calling for his wife.

Elizabeth Thompson heard a key in the front door and ran her hands over her hair, flattening down any wild bits. She had a roast in the oven (it was Sunday) and she’d made a trifle for afterwards. She had to start early because she couldn’t move quickly at the moment; every breath hurt her ribs.

“Hello?” she heard. It wasn’t Alex. IT WASN’T ALEX.

“Hello! Hello!” She tried to calm herself. She’d practised the words she’d need to use to save herself, so many times. How to get it across quickly? How not to sound insane? She’d considered simply asking for a lift somewhere, to the shops, making sure she had her handbag with wallet and passport, which he’d never taken from her, and her pills, ready to go with just that.

“Mrs. Thompson?”

What could she say? What words could she use? Two men stood in the doorway, from the Club, she thought, with their Hardie 500 T-shirts, their Peter Brock caps. What could she say to THEM, her husband’s friends? Then she saw their faces; the pity, the shock, the horror, and she knew she wouldn’t have to say anything at all.

The relief at not having to explain made her cry.

Paul ushered Mrs. Thompson out the back door while Euan helped Alex in the front. He could barely walk and Euan didn’t want to touch him. The doctor said take him home, put him to bed, but Euan wasn’t going upstairs. He wasn’t touching this man any more than he had to. “What sort of cunt are you?” Euan said. “Ay? Who does that to a good woman? Who does that to anyone?”

He sat Alex in an armchair. Alex grabbed his wrist, starting to regain himself, starting to remember who he was. His eyes ached; he could feel that woman’s fingers in them and was sure he was bleeding, but when he haltingly reached for his face, he found tears, not blood.

Euan and Paul returned that night with the steering wheel. Alex had managed to get himself a beer, and there were some crusts of bread at his feet. He was back in the armchair, fumbling with the remote, wanting to watch the racing, the race.

Euan unwrapped the steering wheel. “We all decided you can have this. None of us want it. We never have. And you’re not welcome back at the club, Alex. And it’ll be the nurses looking after you, not us. Not your wife.”

Paul appeared from upstairs, carrying two heavy suitcases. “I think I got everything she wanted,” he told Euan.

Euan placed Alex’s hands on the wheel. Alex shook his head, half shook it, but then the sensation over took him and there was nothing else

Alex called for help but none came. No one organised the nurses or anyone else for him.

He died and orgasmed and cried and the impact and the fingers in his eyes, and he died and orgasmed and cried and the impact and the fingers in his eyes

He called for help

He would be found. In all of it, he knew he would be found, filthy, rotting, and they’d say, what sort of man dies like that, with no one to love him?

He died and orgasmed and cried and the impact and the fingers in his eyes, and he died and orgasmed and cried and the impact and the fingers in his eyes/guilt/sorrow/death/orgasm/

He wondered who would touch the wheel next and would they feel him, too. Would he be, at least, remembered there?

The pain was worse each time, and the fear. Now he got it. How this shit could build up. How it wasn’t a single event, it was a series of them, and the more of them the worse the next one would feel.

He felt the loss of the future. All he was supposed to be.

They would find him like this. That was worse than the pain and the fear, the guilt, the sorrow, the death/orgasm/death/orgasm, the blindness of her fingers in his eyes.

They would say, this nobody. This unloved man.

This powerless man.

This forgotten man.