“What the hell you drivin’ that unsafe, recalled, boring piece of un-American, rice-burning trash from the people who bombed us at Pearl Harbor for?” Kenny demanded to know. “I ought to kick you off my land. Get yourself a safe car—like a Corvair! Oh wait, you already got a Corvair!” He cackled with glee.
I cringed. “Kenny,” I asked, “do you have to say that in front of my son? He can’t always tell when you’re joking.”
“I ain’t joking,” Kenny said.
“I’m fine,” Benjy said. “I think we should just do our work.”
At Benjy’s insistence, we’d come to Kenny’s to prepare the Deathmobile for the Grand Prix. The late spring sun beat down hot as August. Manny, Moe, and Jack were sniffing and licking me like I was dinner. One of Kenny’s neighbors had just spread poultry manure on his field. As my sinuses imploded, felled by the pungent stench of roasting chicken poo, and I contemplated spending the next few hours with Kenny, the thought occurred to me that I’d rather be elsewhere.
“After we left here the last time, my dad broke the Corvair’s fan belt, and now he’s afraid to try to replace it,” Benjy shared with Kenny. Now, with Kenny certain to tease me over my mechanical ineptitude, I was sure I’d rather be elsewhere.
“Fan belt’s no harder to change than a tire!” Kenny cackled some more. “Oops, well, I see your point, given the tire problem you had.” He chastised me for not laughing hard enough. “C’mon, Big Ben, it’s fun! Lighten up a little! To learn, ya gotta make mistakes. Right?”
“Things are a little tense between the Corvair and me,” I said, tensely. “I’ve put it to the side. I wish you would too.”
Kenny got my hint and backed off the teasing. “Wait’ll ya see this, you’re gonna flip,” he said, rolling himself toward the barn. Benjy offered to push him, and Kenny accepted. The barn was mercifully cooler, but the chicken poo pungency had drifted in. Kenny directed Benjy to push him all the way to the rear, then proudly asked, “Whaddya think?”
“Deathmobile” in jet black graffiti lettering had been spray-painted across the side of the shark Corvair. “We’ll look so awesome, them other cars may just pull off the track and gawk at our awesomeness,” Kenny cackled.
He held up his hand, and Benjy high-fived it. “Yes!” he grinned. “The New Deathmobile!”
I laughed. It was fun. But it was time to pour some necessary cold water on their parade, which seemed doomed to disappointment. “Kenny, there’s still a problem,” I warned. “Benjy will probably not have his driver’s license in time for the race.” I told him that, even if the state approved Benjy to drive, he still wasn’t eligible for a driver’s license until he’d had a learner’s 30 days.
“That’s cuttin’ it close,” said Kenny. “Real close.” He slammed the armrest of his chair. “Shoot.”
“Sorry,” said Benjy.
“Not your fault,” assured Kenny. “You got nothin’ to be sorry for.” He sighed. “I’m lookin’ forward to it, that’s all. I haven’t been out on the track for so long. Haven’t seen my friends. I’ve been so out of it.” His cackle gave way to a deflated scowl. “So do we keep working on the car or do we sit around?”
“We work on the car!” Benjy exclaimed. “Because I should be able to drive under the Americans with Disabilities Act! We can go to court to fight this discrimination! We—”
Kenny held up his hand—Stop!—and Benjy stopped talking on a dime. “If we’re plannin’ on racin’, then, like you said, we got work to do,” he growled, wheeling to the rear of the Deathmobile. “I dropped the engine and started tearing it down. Got the pistons out. Get them for me over on the bench, if you don’t mind, Big Guy.”
Benjy strode ahead, pulled some engine parts off the bench, and brought them to Kenny.
“How’d you know those are the pistons?” Kenny asked, impressed. I wondered the same thing.
“I read the parts catalogs my dad has,” Benjy said. “Are you rebuilding the engine?”
“Yes, sort of—doing as much as we can afford on our budget.”
“To rebuild the engine, you must remember that all Corvairs are over forty years old,” Benjy said, reciting from memory the guidance he’d read in one of the catalogs. “It is important to consider replacing the pistons and cylinder units in a Corvair engine because they are air-cooled. The higher operating temperatures are hard on the aluminum pistons. You should never replace just one piston. If one is bad, the others soon will be. So you should replace all of them on the same side of the engine at the same time. You should also consider new cylinder barrels. Honing and re-ringing will not remedy excessive clearance. Installing an overbore kit, containing new pistons and new precision barrels, is the proper way to address these problems and ensure a successful engine rebuilding project.”
Astonished, Kenny eyed Benjy, then me. I shrugged, having witnessed Benjy’s amazing recall so often. “Wow,” Kenny finally said. “You’re a walking, talking Corvair manual. What else?”
“We recommend that engines with over one hundred thousand miles also get a reground crankshaft and camshaft,” Benjy added.
Kenny looked to me, then back to Benjy. “Who is ‘we’? Not your dad. He cain’t even fix a broken fan belt.”
“The company that published the catalog?” I asked Benjy. He nodded yes.
Kenny eyed Benjy. “Did you just read the catalog and memorize it? Or do you know how an engine actually works?”
“When I was four, I had a computer program called ‘How Things Work.’ It showed how an engine actually works.”
“Abso-freaking-lootly amazing,” Kenny said.
“I can remember really well,” said Benjy proudly.
“The curious cat and pug nose pup,” I quietly sang, grinning.
“Milo and Otis was a long time ago, Dad!” said Benjy, annoyed as he recognized the movie’s theme song. “I haven’t recited that since I was six!”
Kenny shook his head in wonder, then got down to business. “Well, for the race, we can forget any kind of major rebuild. That would eat up our five-hundred-dollar Garbage budget, and leave nothing for the automatic transmission problems. So we’ll have to scrounge in these boxes for parts or get them out of one of the cars out back. What do you say to that, Professor Corvair?”
“When a major engine rebuild is not practical,” said Professor Corvair, not missing a beat, “we recommend a complete set of gaskets for the O-rings, oil pan, top covers, bell housing, oil pump cover, and oil cooler. It also includes all the other seals and gaskets needed. A new set of gaskets will prevent most oil leaks and increase engine performance.”
“Yes! Exactly! That is abso-freaking-lootly AMAZING!” Kenny shouted. “That’s exactly right! The biggest bang for the fewest bucks! Now, what do you know about tools?”
“Not much,” said Benjy.
“It doesn’t matter—I can teach you.” Kenny was ecstatic. “Man, could I ever use you! Holy cow! You could fetch my tools, hold wrenches, tell me the repair instructions in the technical manuals. You could be my legs! The top floor’s empty in my house. When can you move in?”
I cringed. Yet again. Benjy live and work here? With Kenny? Was he joking? My heart stopped, fearing Benjy would take Kenny seriously.
“No, thank you,” said Benjy politely.
My heart started pumping again. Whew. Annie, we dodged a bullet there.
“We could be Professor and Doctor Corvair,” Kenny joked.
“After I graduate from high school, I’m going to college,” Benjy said. “To James Monroe Community College. My grandfather wanted me to go to Dartmouth, but—”
“Whatever!” Kenny interrupted impatiently. “We’ll just wrench on this job. But it’s pretty darn dry out there for kids comin’ out of college. That’s why I went in the Army. And it’s even worse now with the economy so bad. But a good mechanic can always find work.”
“I am going to college,” Benjy said firmly. “It’s part of my plan.”
“Speaking of college,” I said, hoping we could flee Kenny, the Deathmobile, and the roasting chicken poo, “you’ve got your math assessment coming up. And the way the DMV works, it’s doubtful you’ll be able to race. Maybe studying would be a better use of your time right now.”
He looked down. Disappointed. Still, he nodded. He understood.
Suddenly, I recalled all the times on the schoolyard when he stood to the side, looking on enviously, as the other kids played ball. Or, more recently, when his teachers had assigned group work in his classes and he’d been mysteriously left out of the groups. Now he’d actually been invited to participate and utilize his unique talents. By a friend he had made. I relented. “You know what,” I said. “You’re a responsible guy. It’s your choice.”
“I’ve almost finished the math tutorial,” he said. “I know it really well now.”
“Well, then, let’s stay. Abso-freaking-lootly.”
He smiled a huge, very surprised smile. I loved that smile. He deserved to smile. He said he knew the math. Everything would be fine.
“Did the envelope from the DMV come today?” Benjy asked.
Barely a hundred hours had passed since we’d seen Doc Pollard, I reminded him. As he did with the envelope from Wheeler, he would ask every day whether the DMV envelope had come.
With Benjy’s senior year at high school wrapping up, ebullient Katie in the James Monroe Disability Office sent me an e-mail urging that Benjy retake his math assessment as soon as possible; fall college registration was well underway and she didn’t want him to be shut out of a class he needed. I explained to her that, for hours each day, Benjy concentrated hard on the math tutorial. He had no choice; I’d spent those hours with him, looming over his shoulder, then catching up on my own work after he’d fallen asleep. When his mind wandered to Corvairs, or racing Denny Hamlin, or Lydia, or National Treasure, or elsewhere, I cleared my throat. My throat was on fire, I told her. She replied to my joke with a line of smiling and dancing emoticons, then a series of questions about Benjy and his Asperger’s, and asked for my suggestions on how she could best ensure his success at college.
I told her that the best thing she could do for Benjy was get James Monroe to waive its math requirement. I wanted her to know that, for Benjy, math was hieroglyphics, and he didn’t have a Rosetta Stone to help him translate. His weakness in math was likely my fault, I told her. Until I discovered my mobile phone had a calculator, I asked waitresses how much I should tip them. No wonder they fought to have me seated at their tables. In her reply to that joke, Katie sent me guffawing emoticons, then sweetly informed me there was no waiving Benjy’s math requirement, and asked if I knew what made math so hard for him.
Benjy might know how to do the math, I wrote back, but where he often struggled was in understanding what he was being asked. Key words, clues, and concepts in word problems often threw him for a loop, or else caused him to ask questions rather than give answers. If a test asked, “Did the seller earn a profit?” Benjy might stop and consider: Was a profit only money? What if the seller liked selling so much that he’d do it for free? Or he just happened to like the buyer? Should that count as “profit”? Benjy also disdained scratch paper and calculators, even if the test suggested he use them. It was a point of pride for him; he wanted to work everything out in his head. But then, in the middle of working a problem, his mind might shift tracks and focus on things that interested him more, like the ever-fascinating conundrum of why Riley was called Irish in National Treasure. After a few minutes of puzzling through that riddle, the math problem was a distant memory and he had to start the problem all over again.
Katie e-mailed me a list of test-taking techniques she thought might be helpful. She suggested that Benjy slowly say the test questions out loud, word by word, to make sure he understood them before trying to answer, and to block other thoughts from distracting him. He should have a rule to use the calculator for every computation—no exceptions!—even if the problem was as simple as two plus two. He should employ the process of elimination, crossing out wrong answers to multiple-choice questions and then choosing an answer from the ones remaining. He should check over the answers a second and third time.
Of course! A list! Just like Annie would have made! What hadn’t I thought of that? After I had Benjy follow the list, his practice scores improved dramatically, I e-mailed Katie. I also told her about Annie and her lists, and a lot of other stuff about Annie that, an instant after I hit the Send button, I realized was far too personal. What possessed me to do that? Was that ordinary social awkwardness or Asperger’s? Or loneliness? Whichever, she wrote back quickly, this time with lots of Thumbs Up emoticons, and suggested Benjy retake the assessment the next Saturday. And she talked about how great Annie was and how hard it must have been to lose her. She said it just right: not too much empathy, but not too little. I admired that so much. I admired that she e-mailed me so often and replied back to me so quickly. And that she liked my jokes. And she had such gorgeous teeth.
On Saturday morning, I prepared Benjy a lighter breakfast than usual; getting him too full might make him drowsy. During one math test he took after lunch a few years earlier, he’d put his head on his desk and napped. As he ate toast with jam from one hand, he paced intensely, reciting, “Principal. Interest. Compound interest. Amortization,” while flapping his other hand to the cadence of each syllable. He knew this stuff cold.
We made our way across the driveway to the Toyota and he stopped reciting to say, “Dad, we need to fix the Corvair. The fan belt is one of the easiest—”
“Focus,” I interrupted. “No distractions.”
“Right!” he agreed. “No distractions! Remember Katie’s list!”
At the Learning Center, as the attendant prepared the private test-taking room reserved for Benjy, I asked if Katie was going to meet us. “It’s Saturday, Dad,” Benjy said, eyeing me closely. “She doesn’t have a job like yours. Lots of people don’t work on Saturday.” The attendant confirmed it, and also said that Benjy was not allowed to take her list into the test-taking room.
“Possibly it would have been helpful to you if Katie could go over her test-taking techniques with you one last time,” I said. “So I’m disappointed she’s not here, that’s all.”
Benjy eyed me even more closely. He wasn’t usually adept at reading the subtext of a conversation. But he saw one here.
“I know how to take the test,” he assured me. As he closed the door to the test-taking room, he said, “You just like to see her teeth.”
Three hours later, I waited in the Camry at James Monroe’s front door. When Benjy emerged, he marched to the car as he always did, betraying nothing.
“So? How’d it go?” I asked as he opened the car door.
“Fine,” he said.
“Did they give you a score?”
“Yes.” I waited. He waited. Then he finally repeated the words I hoped never to hear again: “It wasn’t all that we’d hoped for.”
His score was worse than the first time he took the test.
“I wasn’t allowed to take Katie’s list in,” he explained.
“But you had memorized it,” I said. “You didn’t need the actual piece of paper the list was written on, did you?”
“It wasn’t the same,” he said.
I winced. I sighed. I was bewildered. How could Benjy put in dozens of hours on the tutorial and have his score actually decline? Now he still faced two and a half years of remedial math before he could take the college-level math course required to graduate.
“I can do better,” he said. “I know I can.”
I couldn’t be angry. He had worked hard, and somehow that just hadn’t registered on the test. We’d figure something out. I rubbed his shoulders. He leaned forward so I’d scratch the center of his back.
“Dad, did the envelope from the DMV come yet?” he asked.
It hadn’t come.
After the test, Benjy wanted to drive to Kenny’s. They worked together on the engine rebuild, Benjy handing Kenny the tools and parts as he repeated the instructions over and over, whether Kenny wanted to hear them or not. I excused myself and went outside, where the chicken poo pungency was fortunately no more. Wandering, I found myself drawn to the rusting Corvairs in Kenny’s back field. No one had ever answered Kenny’s Craigslist plea to come to their rescue, so they were destined for the scrap yard. It was an ignominious end to a celebrated experiment in automotive innovation. But what other fate could there be for a car that was now best known as a failure, a botch job, a punch line, a menace to society, a killer, and the car that even a half-century later was still being blamed for bankrupting General Motors? No matter how unfair that fate might be, how could the Corvair not be shunned and voted off the American island?
Yet, the Corvair still had its fans and friends. And they had stubbornly kept them in fields like Kenny’s all over the country, resisting sending them to the scrap yard for recycling. In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a musket-shot away from our nation’s greatest battlefield, the Corvair Ranch gave refuge to more than 700 Corvairs that over the years would give up a useful part here or piece of bodywork there to a Vair that still endured. But here in Kenny’s field, these Corvairs couldn’t even look forward to those meager prospects. They endured their fate in stoic dignity, peacefully rusting, awaiting one final journey down the highway—the highway to the crusher.
I stopped as I realized I was making the same connection Benjy had—that the Corvair was a different car that he, a different boy, could identify with and appreciate. But now in this field I confronted the fate the different Corvair faced in our society; having so much life still to give, they instead sat here decomposing in the muck because the world had no place for them. How could I make sure my different son did not suffer the same fate? How could he find his own satisfying and accepting place in the world?
I didn’t know. All I knew was I had to get away from these Corvairs, and quickly returned to the barn.