This is It

                                                                            continued from “West”

The RV made it to Austin before it died, without fanfare, in the night. Dena and Chris didn't hear it breathe its last mechanical breath. It just refused to start when they woke in the morning, foiling their intention to check out of the Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park.

"I didn't even know she was going," Chris said, struggling to open the hood of the giant camper.

"So she's a she, now?" Dena asked with an eye roll.

"It's probably the transmission," Chris said.

He doesn't know a damn thing about transmissions. He doesn't even know the difference between regular gasoline and diesel.

"Okay," Dena said.

"I'll fix it," Chris said. "Go find us muffins?"

The Austin Lone Star Carefree RV Park was five miles from downtown. Dena shuffled out to the main road. She shifted her weight on one leg, thrust her hip out, and extended a thumbs-up to the passing traffic.

Is this how you hitchhike? Shit. I'm as much of a poser as everyone else.

After ten minutes of cars zooming past without stopping, Dena started walking. She Google-mapped the nearest bus stop. This is how it goes, now. Forget everything you've seen in the movies.

When the bus arrived, she boarded and made her way to the back. She slumped onto the last row of seats, avoiding an old woman with a bloom of grocery bags and a hipster with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby looked at Dena with big, sparkling eyes, but didn't wail.

At the next stop, a girl got on. She looked maybe nineteen, twenty at the most, and wore a work jumpsuit with LeeAnn stitched over the breast pocket. Her boots were enormous and caked with dirt and grease. Her hair had been dyed black, then grown out, and then the roots re-dyed camellia pink.

After her short-lived hitchhiking experiment, Dena was now sure that nothing happened unless you made first contact.

"Hey," she said to the girl, presumably LeeAnn, "Are you a mechanic?"

"Learning to be," the girl said. "Please don't tell me how badass that is. I already know." She rolled her eyes and lit a cigarette.

The hipster's baby began to scream.

“Shh, shh, Reagan,” the hipster crooned.

"Hey! No smoking on my bus!" the driver yelled.

"Whatever," LeeAnn muttered. She extinguished the cigarette on the dingy vinyl of the bus seat. It burned a glowing circle, which then blackened.

"Do you know anything about RV's?" Dena asked. She extended her hand. "I'm Dena."

"Jennifer."

Dena's eyes drifted to the girl's name tag.

"Hand-me-down uniform."

"Huh."

"So you've got an RV? What are you, eighty-five?"

"Something like that," Dena said.

She felt a jolt of realization that the RV, as much as she hated it, was the sum total of all she had in the world. She and Chris had sold everything to buy it, and now it was dead. The RV was her family inheritance, her car, her favorite vintage clothes she'd consigned at a loss. The RV was the re-fashioned, welded-together, Frankenstein’s-monster version of her life.

"It's at the RV Park a couple of miles back,” Dena said. “Won’t start. Any chance you could look at it today? Or know somebody who could?"

"I'm going to class now. I'm done at noon if you want to wait around downtown until then. You can pay, right?"

Dena promised she could.

They got off downtown, where Jennifer left her at a Starbucks. They exchanged numbers.

"I'll text you when I'm leaving class," Jennifer said.

Dena stood outside the Starbucks, watching Jennifer go. She walked with such purpose. Her bag of tools bounced against her leg as she moved. Her steel-toed boots clomped through the morning shadows of tree branches on the sidewalk. She was a rough goddess of Austin.

Dena's phone buzzed. It was a text from Chris: Muffinz? and a cat emoji.

This is my life, Dena thought.

No muffins. Mechanics, she texted. Back this afternoon.

Sad cat emoji.

Whatever. Dena pushed open the door to the Starbucks, where the burnt stench of bad coffee assaulted her. It was still early, and the line of people wound through the store, circling cutesy displays of seasonal beans and Keep Austin Weird coffee mugs.

She ordered a grande chai tea and barely flinched when her cup arrived with her name spelled "Dean."

It made her want to find some boots like Jennifer's. Who wears the pants, now?

"Is that the Oprah Chai?" a guy in a beanie asked her as she plopped down in a faux-leather chair.

Hipsters. Who wears a knit hat in Texas summer?

"What?"

"The Oprah Chai. There's Tazo and Oprah. I want to try Oprah, but I kind of don't, you know?"

"Oh. I don't know. I don't think it's Oprah."

"Gotcha. Where you from? I’ve never seen you around here before."

"Georgia."

If this guy’s going to hit on me, he could have at least bought my tea.

"Do you go to UT?"

“I graduated from college already.”

“Cool, cool. So what brings you to Austin?”

“Well, my dad died and now I’m an orphan, so I sold all my shit and bought an RV, and now the RV’s broken down, and I’m stuck here until the stranger I met on the bus gets out of mechanic-class.”

“Whoa.”

“You asked.”

“Well, good luck with all that. I gotta—“

“See ya.”

She watched his beanie-clad head pass out of the doorframe as Jennifer’s hot pink roots entered it.

“My whole class is like, in love with you now,” she said. “You got us a field trip.”

                                                                                                 ***

Chris stood on the sidelines, useless, as the head mechanic and his gaggle of protégés peered under the hood of the Chinook. Dena was there in the thick of them, handing Jennifer tools when she asked.

Jennifer’s whole class was women, all dressed in their matching jumpsuits.

“I know the whole point of fixing this is so you can go, but you should stay and come to the shop sometime,” a blonde named Shelly (nametag: Bridget) said.

“We’re going out West,” Chris said, knitting his eyebrows.

Dena watched the smudged, engaged faces of the women as they tightened valves and checked fluids.

She couldn’t remember the last time her life felt real.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Jennifer’s instructor said, slamming the hood. “The bad news is, it’s the fuel pump. The good news is, a part replacement on this baby is so outrageous that it would be cruel to charge you for the diagnosis.”

Dena looked at the grimaces on the faces of the mechanics, whom she was beginning to think of as friends. She looked at the hulking RV, her worthless everything. She looked at Chris, playing Candy Crush on his phone. This was it.

“Shit,” she said. “Should I order pizza?”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Wheels

Robbie leaned in the passenger door, wrinkling his long nose. Trace had one tanned arm slung over the faded top of the car.

“It looks like someone died in here, Trace,” Robbie said.

Trace took in the wretched interior with a critical eye. The stuffing spewed out of the cloth seats and there was the faint reek of decay in the air. “I’ve been looking for this car for years, Rob.”

“You’ve been looking for a car somebody’s grandpa doesn’t even want?” Robbie shut the car door with a creak and folded his arms on the weathered, rusted top. “You’re going to spend the money you saved—that you worked your ass off for—on this?”

“Maybe I am.” Trace struggled to close the driver’s side door.

Robbie laughed.

                                                                                       ***

Poking around an engine with his older brother, Jack, in the driveway was one thing; overhauling an entire car was another. If it wasn’t rusted or corroded, it was rotten. The headlights seemed to be the only thing that worked. All summer, the most anyone saw of Trace were sneakered feet sticking out from under the Chrysler New Yorker. His friends laughed at his single-minded mission to resurrect the old car. Robbie kept him company for the first week, making suggestions and asking him if he’d been back to the future yet. Trace threw a wrench in his general direction, swearing as grease dripped into his eye for the thousandth time.

Trace sat on the driveway, feeling the heat of the concrete beneath his legs and the warmth of the metal door against his shoulders as he leaned against the old Chrysler. Shuffling steps caught his attention and he scrambled to his feet, wiping sweat and grease on his jeans.

“Ma, go back inside, it’s too hot out.” He gestured back to the house.

His mother cocked her head to one side and held something out to him, her hand shaking. Trace took the beer from her and swallowed past the lump in his throat. He and Jack always had a beer after a long day working on Jack’s car.

“Thanks, Ma.” He twisted the cap off, taking a long pull.

The cold liquid trickled down his throat and he felt the weight of it settle in the pit of his stomach. His mother’s mouth twitched in a parody of her old smile, her pre-breakdown smile. Jack’s smile. She fluttered a skeletal hand at him before scooting back up the driveway in her worn slippers. Trace rubbed his hand across the peeling paint on the rusted hood of the car; the condensation on his hand left a smear that quickly evaporated in the late afternoon heat. It was impossible to tell which shade of paint came first. He squinted up at the sun and drained the rest of his beer. There were still hours of light left. He crawled back under the car.

                                                                                       ***

“You have got to relax,” Robbie said, handing Trace a beer. “It’s supposed to be a goddamn party.”

Trace tried to conjure a smile, switching the beer from hand to hand without cracking the tab. He resisted the urge to check his watch.

“Well if it isn’t the grease monkey,” Carl said. “Sure is a lot better view than the undersides of a heap of junk.”

Trace followed Carl’s gaze to the girls lounging near the pool. A few of them looked up and smiled. Trace waved—he vaguely recognized one or two. He opened his beer and took a gulp to keep from answering.

“What’s with him?” Carl asked Robbie.

“What’s been up with him all summer? First time he’s been away from that damned corpse of a car.”

Trace looked down at his watch. He’d been there fifteen minutes. He took another swallow of beer; the taste of aluminum overpowered the cheap brew.

Carl turned back to Trace. “What brought you out, anyway? Get tired of looking up the same skirt?” He grinned.

“She’s getting body work done and a paint job—stuff that needs a professional,” Trace said, feeling the thin beer can flex beneath his fingers as he tightened his grip.

“Not the only one that needs a professional,” Robbie said.

“What’s that?” Trace set his beer can carefully down on the table.

“What’s with you, man?” Robbie asked. “You search junk yards like you’re on a mission from God and then you buy a rusty Chrysler for chrissakes. If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’d gone crazy like…” Robbie stopped, his freckled cheeks flushing.

“Crazy like who, Rob?” Trace felt the muscles in his jaw contract. “Crazy like my mom?”

“Robbie didn’t mean anything.” Carl sidled between them. “We just missed seeing you around is all.”

“Sure,” Trace said.

He let himself out of the back gate and walked the five miles home.

                                                                                       ***

Two weeks later, he could hardly believe his eyes. There she sat, shiny coat of red paint looking like melted candy poured over her, the upholstery inside as smooth and flawless as a Playboy centerfold. Trace slid into the seat and flipped down the visor. He looked at the picture of him and Jack, arms flung around each other’s shoulders. Growing up, Jack had pictures of cars taped all over his walls—but one predominated. The Chrysler. Trace never understood it; there’s the Mustang, the Impala, the goddamn Ferrari, he’d always say. Jack simply shrugged, and said, “She’s my favorite.”

The engine thrummed as Trace turned the key. His gaze returned to the faded photo taped to the visor. Its corners were curled from the time spent in his wallet. Ten years time. He smiled and, for a moment, he was the boy in the photo again. He felt a desire to glance over at the passenger seat so strongly that his hands froze on the steering wheel. With the windows down and Jack’s favorite cassette in the refurbished player, Trace inhaled deeply before shifting the car into drive.

“She’s all yours,” Trace said.


Written by: Hannah Sears
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe