by Magi Sumpter
Kenneth looks a bit like Santa Claus. Laughs like him, too. Even wears a pair of shiny silver glasses with impossibly thin wire frames. Every year around the holidays, he pulls a thrifted red plush suit from his closet, rubs some pine needles on it—the most spirited way to remove the heady, metallic sweetness of motor oil perpetually clinging to him—and piddles down the road to the local elementary. He asks the kids what they want for Christmas. If finances allow, he helps make it happen. Real jovial guy, deacon at the church. He passes around the offering plate every Sunday, collects tithes with a rosy-cheeked smile and polite nod.
He has two kids of his own, both out of the house in bigger towns that can even be called cities, fully ensconced in their own futures. His wife of twenty-three years passed away two winters ago, but he seems to be doing well despite the circumstances, save the flask leeched to his hip and the faint smell of whiskey on his breath, clouded with spearmint gum.
Most days, though, he runs an automotive repair in the middle of fuck-all. Has since he was nineteen years old, all on his lonesome. The Greasy Spoon, a name that he (and only he) still chuckles at all these years later. It’s not a particularly impressive display, a ramshackle shed of aluminum siding painted bright blue with acrylic so people can find it. Not that that’s an issue. He doesn’t have much competition, small towns being small and whatnot. He manages just fine on his own, always smiling, promising prompt service, and extending a rough-calloused hand to a neighbor down on their luck.
Cars are just people, he says at any opportunity, all made of the same stuff. Always need a tune-up, both of ‘em. His daddy was a mortician, so Kenneth spent a lot of time with him after school, helped him in the way small town boys help their fathers at work. He knows these things.
Like a true gearhead, Kenneth has his own little fixer-upper. His passion project. His baby. He calls her Carla, after his wife—again, a name only he understands the throes of. Unlike a true gearhead, he doesn’t talk much about Carla: the Carla now, not the Carla before. He’d be remiss not to include some remnant of his lover’s memory in every passing conversation to preserve her legacy.
He spends his nights now in the Spoon tinkering away at her, hidden away underneath the service pit. He climbs down a rickety ladder into the trench, removing a grate from the floor to reveal yet another ladder descending into a murky, concrete darkness. Down he goes. He flicks on his shop lights, illuminating the secret basement and casting a spotlight onto her.
She is beautiful, in the way that rust is beautiful.
He takes a long swig of booze before he works, as per tradition. A little something to numb the memory of the Carla before, a little something to jumpstart his aging joints to work on the Carla now.
The goal is not to get her running again. It was, once, but he’s accepted that she’s too old now, been out of commission for so long. She is but a lonely night spent purposefully—a toy for him to tinker with when the kids haven’t called and the whiskey doesn’t taste like fire anymore. Something for him to disassemble and frankenstein back together just to prove to himself that he’s still got it.
He takes a peek under the hood, peeling back a loose flap of shrivelly skin and fleshtight muscle to reveal her components. He admires her liver fondly, gripping it in a tremoring palm. The piece is bulging with jaundiced tumors, swollen with failure and formaldehyde, unrecognizable as a part of the beautiful vehicle it originated from. He gives it a kiss, reminds it that he still cares for it.
It’s fascinating, truly, how similarly she resembles his day-to-day. He is reminded of his first car, a Pontiac Grand Prix that stunk of wrong eggs. The catalytic converter was shot—couldn’t filter out all the gunk and junk properly, eventually killing the engine. Carla was very much the same: she was yellow, the hue of a wrong egg before she went stiff and cold. He used that car as practice, a toy to disassemble and frankenstein back together to prove to himself that he can.
Like he says, cars are just people. All made of the same stuff.
His own liver aches. He takes that as a yearning, a sign that he should take another sip of mania from that flask clinging to his side. Carla’s initials are engraved along its brass body. It was an anniversary gift, many years ago, a token still clutched between her fingers when she passed.
Tonight is a hard one, and tonight is short—he cannot handle much more than admiring her. As he gingerly tucks her liver back into the empty socket it came from, a singular sob wracks deep within his chest. Right beside the operating table she lays on, Kenneth keeps a medical cot with an old, flat pillow and a quilt Carla had made him many Christmases ago. It smells of them: motor oil and whiskey and preservatives, a stench few can stand if they have not grown up in it. But Kenneth is made of strong stuff.
He puts his wife back together, piece by fleshy piece, until she is beautiful again, in the way that rust is beautiful. He promises her that he will spend more time with her tomorrow, when he can stomach it. He kisses her forehead, and curls up on the small bed beside her. He takes one more sip from his flask before his dizzying eyes flutter closed, laying the bottle between him and his wife.
She can take from it if she wants—it surely won’t kill her.
Magi Sumpter (they/them) is an established poet, up-and-coming human, breaker of chains, and mother of cat. Their poetry chapbooks “LITTLE ROOMS WITH BAD LIGHTING,” “Utopia in Green,” and “Show me where the rain comes from.” all have designated places on their mother’s bookshelf, which is really the only achievement that matters. Find them at https://magisumpter.carrd.co/