New Short Story

I was bored this weekend, and snowed in. Needed a new project to fix up to keep me occupied when not studying for finals. 

Imagine, if you will, an ordinary family in eastern Oklahoma, though they could really live anywhere in the country. Almost remarkable in their ordinariness; for that happens so little nowadays…George met Mary just after college, they got married and have stayed together for a little more than twenty years. It wasn’t perfect, of course, and at times things didn’t go too smoothly, but overall they tolerated each other’s quirks reasonably well, things worked out nicely. They had two children, daughter Janie and son Pete, both of whom were now teenagers who insulted each other constantly and were typically disgusted and embarrassed by their parents’ ways of doing things. But they all had a strong sense of family, and that was the glue that kept them together and ruled the day. That loyalty didn’t prevent dysfunction, however – Most people they knew would point to them as a family that was great to be around, but don’t copy their parenting style or anything. But it worked for them.

One of the main rules, probably the main one; could be summed up by this phrase, coined by Janie one day: “The basic theme of our road trips is like, once we get there, you ask, ‘…But did we die?’ And that pretty much sums up everything.” Almost anything went – which, actually, explains a lot…like the menagerie of animals, or the spur-of-the-moment musicals through Wal-Mart. They were very experienced at improv.

Anyway, they lived in a rather ordinary house in the middle of the smallish community called Ritter Hill. It had a basement, which was unusual, and the place was generally strewn about with books of every description. Neighbors were friendly, but mostly kept their distance, besides Mrs. Sylvia Bird, an energetic, enthusiastic busybody who was extremely involved with her church’s activities; and That Helpful Guy, nobody could remember his name(was it Don?), but he usually had just the right tools for fixing a broken sink or starting the car or whatever else might be needed. 

They spent most of their time in that basement, there was a ping pong table in one corner, a pool table in the other, and then several couches and chairs and stuff. Heated table tennis battles could ensue, complete with smashed lips and stinging kneecaps. And one of Pete’s friends once broke his thumb by mistake while playing.

George needed a car, the old one was wearing out, and Jane and Pete’s was falling apart, so it was time to find something new. So….well, I’ll let him tell the story.

I was at the used car dealership, dealing with one of my least favorite people on the planet, Bill Vann. He is just…such a used-car salesman. And he is so hard to bargain with. But this time I had a plan, and I’d clued Mary and the kids in on it. I was hoping to find the cheapest gas-saver I could come across, assuming it still worked. (Being Bill….I wasn’t so sure. Had lots of experience with his lemons.) He came along up beside me.

“LOOKING AT BUYING A NEW CAR TODAY?!”

I stepped back, couldn’t help it. “Well, yes. Yes, I am. Maybe you could help me find what I’m looking for.”

He looked flattered, and boomed on. “Of COURSE, George! That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?! Yes, you look like the type of customer searching for a sporty new pickup, am I right? Now, this would be for you, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, not quite…it’s kind of for me, but –“

“Oh, well, OF COURSE! It’s for your wife, Miriam, isn’t it?! Or is the kids, Jenny and…Piper?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s Mary. Mary, Janie and Pete. I was actually looking more along the lines of a gas-sipper, if you have anything like that. In reasonable condition, of course.”

“Yes, yes. There are some right over here this way…” He grimaced slightly, guiding me along towards his somewhat-more-reputable offerings, tucked away into the back corner of the lot.

“What could you tell me about this one?” I pointed to an old Rabbit, it looked to be in one piece.

“WELL, you OBVIOUSLY know a GREAT DEAL when you see one! This 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit is very reasonably priced, doesn’t use much gas at all. And would you take a look at that upholstery?!” (I was. It was a hideous reddish-mauve color, looked like pleather. Quite loud and ugly.) “Uh-huh…” I said in acknowledgement.

“The color is VERY popular this year, and take a listen to this horn!” He honked the horn, it sounded something like “Eenk, eenk!” “Hmm….” I nodded appreciatively. (The interior, like I said, was a disastrous shade of depressing 70’s crimson, and the outside was blindingly orange, of a rather sickening color. Made you want to throw up just looking at it.)  

“Isn’t that just a GRREAT horn?! WHAT a horn. Any man would be PROUD to park this in HIS OWN DRIVEWAY, eh, George?! What do you say?”

“Hmm…” I again nodded appreciatively, considering. If I agreed, he’d be sure to knock the price down to something extremely reasonable, and then I’d have enough to pay That Helpful Guy to fix all the broken parts. And it looked hideous, for sure. More so than I intended, but…it would run well. And there were plenty of worse-looking cars out there, right? The important part was that it got you where you wanted to go. They’d understand.

There. I won this time, and wouldn’t have to deal with him again for several years, hopefully. So I drove it home and left the blue Olds Intrigue at the Auto Zone near the dealership, I’d pick it up later.

I park it in the driveway, then get out and push it the rest of the way up nearby to the garage door.

“Mary! Kids! Look what the old man brought home!”

(Interrupting here, it was mostly a typical Saturday at home. This is what was going on inside.)

“Twisss-TER….” Mary was using that “you are so in trouble, dog” tone. The blonde beagle/Lhasa Apso mix scurried off the couch and went to hide under the kitchen table. “Whatcha watching?” she asked Janie.

“Return to Titanic.”

 “Again?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“No reason…it’s just, like, the ninth time you’ve seen it.”

“Wellll…..yeahh….” her daughter agreed. She gestured at the screen, where Quentin Gage was looking ruggedly handsome with his “I-haven’t-bathed-with-soap-in-eight-days-yet-I-still-look-perfect” hair all styled and scruffily well-trimmed beard, gazing soulfully in a masculine way while looking way off into the distance, as the ocean-specializing archeologist Colin Thayer. “He’s just….I love his acting. And he’s hot!”

“Okay, Janie, if you say so…” Mary rolled her eyes, thinking back to when she was a teenager and had a massive crush on Cary Elwes. “My show’s about on, can you pause it for a while and finish later?”

“It’s a DVD, not a VHS tape; you can’t just pause it and return immediately where you were.” Janie snorted, but complied.

 The intro music for Mary‘s favorite game show, Go With the Flow, could be heard as Janie looked to see what Pete was doing.

“You’re…what the heck are you doing, anyway?”

“Barking “Jingle Bells” with Sleet and reading this story in the paper about Candy Karpinski.”

She frowned. “Back up….barking “Jingle Bells”…?”

“Yeah…I was bored.”

“That’s when you meow songs, not bark them. Anyway; what’s the story about?”

“Well, it says that she’s got a new movie coming out soon in a couple months, and that guy you like is supposed to be in it, too.”

“SERIOUSLY? We are GOING to this one.”

“I know, right? Anyway, what’d you come in here for?”

“Ping pong?”

“You’re goin’ down.”

They’d barely gotten started when George yelled, “Mary! Kids! Look what the old man brought home!” 

They came running, then stopped abruptly at the door. “I hope it’s not another stray dog…we’ve already got four.” Mary moaned.

“I hope it’s not another box of week-old doughnuts. My teeth still hurt from the last ones.” Janie rolled her eyes.

“I know, those were terrible for our braces,” Pete agreed.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Maybe it’s some more fireworks? I still don’t know how Dad didn’t know Black Cats were illegal inside city limits…”

“Welll….let’s go see what adventure your father’s brought home today,” Mary said firmly(and also rather pathetically).

“Do we have to?”

“I can’t wait…”

So they came outside and looked at the new(old) car. “A new car!” Mary said faintly brightly. The kids echoed, sounding less-than-pleased. They scowled at each other behind Mary’s back, I pretended I didn’t see. They needed to be embarrassed sometimes, it’d do them good.

“Oh, George….it’s…beautiful. Can we go for a ride?”

“Sure!” I waved them in. “Hop on in!”

So they hopped in, Mary driving, kids in the back, they were busy elbowing each other. I rapped on the back window to get them to quit, so they settled into merely glaring holes through each other by looking in opposite directions out the window. Then I pushed the car around the block, showing it off. We were getting plenty of strange looks, we’d gone about around the block about three times when Mrs. Bird waved hello. She’s…a character. Friendly, but unusual. And very very very involved in the goings-on at her church.

“Howdy, neighbors! How are y’all liking your new car?”

“Oh, it’s tremendous,” I said. “Look at that upholstery, and get an eyeful of this color, oh, yes! Listen to this horn.” (I ran around to the front, reached in and punched the horn a couple times. Eenk, eenk!) “But I do find it sort of exhausting…it goes downhill beautifully, but if there’s even the slightest rise in the pavement, I find myself panting and struggling and groaning. It’s very difficult to push it uphill.”

“Wow. You really do have a problem there, all right.” Mrs. Bird was starting in one of her speeches. Mary and the kids slunk back towards the house, can’t really say I blamed them. “Well, my friend, you certainly do look like you could need some help! But I think I’ve got some good news for you. Ya know, at our church we’re having a conference this week, and our speaking is fixin’ to talk about the very subject you need to hear: ‘How To Push a Car Successfully!’ On Monday night he’s going to show us how to push with our right shoulder.” (She indicated which was the right shoulder.) “And Tuesday night he’ll illustrate the techniques of pushing with our left shoulder.” (She again pointed out which was the left shoulder.) I nodded along in agreement.

“On Wednesday night we’ll have a slideshow and an overhead projector(I immediately thought of “The Song of the Cebu”, couldn’t help it.) “to show us how to really get our backs into the work and push! On Thursday night he’s got committees and workshops organized that will all help us push more effectively, and on Friday night there’s gonna be a great dedication service where we’ll all come down to the front and commit ourselves anew to the work of pushing cars! It’s gonaa be great. Come on out every night next week, and learn all there is to know about how to push a car successfully!”

She couldn’t be serious…could she? Why on Earth would there be an actual conference on car-pushing? And if there was, why would a church be putting it on? Would they find some way to tie a message into that somehow?

All I said was, “Well, um…thanks. That sounds like it may be just what I need.”

“Great! Hope to see ya there!”

I turned back to pushing, homeward bound this time. That’s about when That Helpful Guy, Don, spotted me.

“Well, hey, George! Man…you look pretty tired. How’s the new car treatin’ ya?”

I sighed. “Oh, it’s a tremendous car…or it will be, anyway. Still has some kinks to work out, but it’s got a lot of interesting things going for it. The upholstery, the color…the horn. Get a load of this horn.” I honked it again.

He nodded appreciatively. “It is a pretty great horn. Can I show you one of its best features, though? Come along here over with me, it’s under the hood.” I popped the hood, he lifted it up. “You see that big iron thing with all the wiggles coming out of it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that is a real motor. A power plant, in a way. One that really needs some work, but, anyhow…The maker of this car knew that you’d be having the problems you’ve been having, and so they designed a power plant that would enable you to go uphill just as easily as you go downhill. When you learn several simple things about how to operate and maintain the motor and everything else under here, you’ll begin to understand it’s power. Just turn this key and the motor will start. Then you pull down on that lever, step on the pedal – No, not yet! Yeah, there we go. You do the steering, but the engine supplies all the power you’ll need. You won’t have to push at all; just sit back and you can go up the highest hills as easy as you can breathe. You won’t have to worry, cause that engine will handle any demand.”

“Man, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day. That other way was way too exhausting. The car looked pretty good” (Don winced.) “but I was becoming an old man before my time. You got time for a ride?”

He shrugged. “Sure! Would you mind if I worked on it for a while, though? It has some problems, and if the kids are gonna drive it…”

“Sounds like a plan.” I smacked the horn again for emphasis. No response. “Hmm…and now the horn is broken...”

“Sooo…..we’re actually gonna drive the Rabbit, Dad?” Janie asked on the way to church about a week later.

“That’s what I had in mind, yeah.” I answered.

“….Oh. Well, okay…as long as it runs, I guess. Why were you pretending the engine was out?”

I thought about that a minute. “I’m not sure. Guess it just needed a little livening up, maybe, make it into an adventure.”

“That’d be easy enough. I mean, it’s us, after all…” muttered Pete.

“You know, I was thinking,” Mary announced. The rest of us prepared for the worst.

“Doesn’t it seem like the church today acts a lot like the way you were acting, dear? Like, always thinking ‘Maybe if we have cooler worship songs’ or ‘Our church spent this much money on a new sanctuary’ or ‘We must get involved in every, single, fundraising, effort to increase our crowds, instead of just preaching Scripture and relying on God. It’s all about us, how important we are, we’ve got everything all figured out, who needs the Holy Spirit? It’s like, we just focus all our energy on how to make the most use of our human resources, try harder to do God’s work for Him. It’s works, not faith. Positive thinking, the ‘power of a determined will’, all that crap.”

“It’s messed up.” Pete agreed.

“Thankful for our church.” Janie said quietly.

Silence for a while, except for the mandolin and fiddle of the gospel music on the radio.

“It needs a name, though….something sarcastic enough to be able to bear driving that thing around town. Wouldn’t be able to handle it otherwise.” she added.

“Wapid Wabbit?” I suggested.

“NO.” everyone else said firmly.

“Okay…sorry….I was just trying to think up something.”

“How about ‘Calamity Junker’?” Mary offered.

“Not quite right…but getting there. Oh, Dad, WHY…?”

“What, you aren’t down for tribulational joyrides?” her brother jabbed in quickly.

Her ears perked up. “You know…that could work. We could call her TJ….”

“We could...”

“Let’s do it.”

High five in the backseat.

We pulled into the church parking lot, eleven minutes late. “I thought we could get there faster this time…” Mary said to herself.   

This is a short-story version of our SWAT skit "The Parable of the Big Push", might keep going with more based on the other skits in the program.