Short Story: A Cornucopia of Coolant

Modern life is fraught with many perils, breakdowns are among the most terrifying

“Honey, there’s something wrong with the car.”

There are few things my wife can utter which cause me such distress. She could say, ‘Honey, I’m leaving you,’ and at least I’d be able to make an educated guess about the underlying problem.

Regarding the car, it could be anything.

“Okay, I’ll go have a look.”

I hate going outside to have a look. First you have to put on pants, which requires taking off the slippers and finding the pants. Then you have to squeeze into your outside boots. It’s a nightmare.

We’re not like those rich folks with an attached garage. We’ve got one of those sheds that was probably made to store something that you could tie on to the back end of a horse. There’s a little addition on one end because when they started making those boats your grandpa drove around in the ‘60s, all the garages needed to be extended. Garages like this were mostly torn down years ago.

We still have ours.

I crept up on the car like it was a napping tiger. You don’t want to spook an injured car. You saddle up alongside, holding your neck with one hand and your wallet with the other. Cars are known to make unprovoked, sometimes lethal attacks on your wallet. My wallet was close to death anyway.

The car slumbered.

I sniffed the air.

There are smells that indicate you need to just run away and bury your head in the sand. Burning smells are bad. There are a lot of varieties of burning smells, it’s like going into one of those expensive cafes with thousands of coffee flavors. I tend to avoid those places because they are another potentially lethal wallet attack zone.

Fire is also bad.

I don’t know much about cars, but I know they shouldn’t be burning. The same is true for ovens and furnaces.

Tonight, there were no burning smells.

I began to relax.

I started the car. There were no banging sounds, no coughing, still no flames.

I backed it up and popped the hood.

Car problems are a mystery. It could be anything. All I knew to check were the two things I didn’t want it to be. You can run a vehicle for years in agonizing torment sputtering and coughing and hacking away as long as you are mindful of two critical things: the vehicle will sound like it’s going to die, and it will probably want to die; but until it runs out of coolant and oil, it will stay miserably alive.

Coolant and oil.

You don’t have to be an expert in cars, but be an expert in that. Your wallet will thank you.

I turned off the motor and pulled out the dipstick.

There was oil!

Awesome, halfway there!

I cranked open the coolant tank and peered in.

Dry.

Dang!

Well, I’d just had this thing in for an oil change, maybe they forgot to top it off?

I grabbed my jug of coolant and filled it to the fill line. Then I went back inside and began looking for my pajamas and slippers.

“Did you fix it?”

“Yeah babe, it’s all good. Pretty major repair out there. Good thing I was here.”

“Oh, thank you my champion and king!”

“No Problem.”

I went to bed, victorious…for the moment.

“Bye honey, I’m heading off to work.”

It was the next morning. Her voice penetrated my consciousness from beneath the surface of the ocean. Something stirred, a memory of some trial that awaited me.

“Mmmph.”

A few seconds ticked by as my old brain jump started itself. All of a sudden, that little ocean diver started swimming to the surface like a madman. He emerged from the breaking waves and screamed, “CHECK THE COOLANT!”

“Dang!”

I got up. My pants tried to scurry away under the bed, but I tracked them down and pulled them on. I ran downstairs. My wife was all ready to go.

“Pop the hood for a second.”

She popped it.

“This is probably nothing,” I said, “I just want to make sure that what I did last night…”

My voice trailed off.

I’d been hoping to see plenty of coolant. I expected to see plenty of coolant. I thought there’d be a cornucopia of coolant.

Instead.

Nothing.

Dry.

No coolant.

“Uh…”

“What is it honey? I’m going to be late for work.”

“I’m afraid you can’t take this car.”

“What?”

“Yeah, there’s a coolant leak.”

Her face went white. She knew what a coolant leak meant. About six months ago the radiator hose had blown on our vehicle. That’s the type of thing that the ‘Check Engine’ light is supposed to warn you about. The trouble is, the check engine light comes on if there’s a speck of dust in the air filter. Mechanics call it the ‘idiot light’ because it means there’s nothing wrong with your car.

Sans coolant the car drove along just fine until it came to a sputtering halt and died. When you check the oil after you run out of coolant you only find unhealthy looking bubbles on the dipstick.

New motor.

The wallet is still wincing.

“Well, what should I do?”

“Take my car, I’ll take this to the garage.”

Off she went.

I went in the house for a while and just peered at her vehicle through the window. It sat there acting innocent.

“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” The words rolled around in my mind. It didn’t have anything to do with the car, those are just my default thoughts when I’m not actively thinking about something else.

I sauntered over to my computer to prepare myself for what was to come. I’d ask the internet what was wrong. My computer flickered to life, the little note in the corner said that Microsoft was no longer supporting the Millennial Edition operating system. I clicked that the note should shut up.

“What’s wrong with my Subaru Forester?” I asked the internet.

“What are the symptoms?”

“No coolant.”

“Oh, that’s probably the head gasket, the head gaskets go out on those things.”

I rubbed my chin, “For hate’s sake…” Then I typed, “How much does it cost to repair a head gasket on a Subaru?”

“$1,500 to $2,500.”

GNAAAAGH!

Dang it, that was probably exactly what was wrong. I had a blown head gasket! Dang, dang, dang! What was it the guy at the oil change place had said? “There’s oil everywhere sir, we don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s like a geyser down here!”

Oh, that would explain it. Head gasket. I applied the defibrillator paddles to my coding wallet and brought it back to life.

I sat shivering for a moment. When I recovered, I scooped up my jacket and got my keys. Two minutes later I pulled into the garage.

“Can we help you?”

“Yeah, remember that car you put a new motor in for me?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it has a blown head gasket.”

The guy just looked at me sideways.

“There’s no coolant in it, it’s leaking oil everywhere, there’s also the faint smell of Sulfur.” That wasn’t true, but you had to say things like that for them to take you seriously. The guy wrote ‘Sulfur’ on his note pad and underlined it three times.

“Okay, I’ll take a look.”

I walked home.

It was a cool autumn day. I’d have to make plans to pick up the kids. The school was only a mile away, they wouldn’t like having to walk home, but it couldn’t be helped. I made a mental note to remind them how I used to have to walk ten miles to school a day, into a headwind, uphill, under water.

The world seemed bleak and gray. I’d been planning on making some purchases with the two thousand dollars I was about to spend on car repairs. Maybe a new pair of deluxe house slippers. It looks like I’d just have to endure semi-frigid toes for another year. Well, it would be alright, I’d made it through tough times before.

As I pulled my keys to unlock the front door, I was surprised to see there was a message blinking on my phone. It was the garage. Already?

“Hey, we checked that car, you had a leaky hose, it’s all fixed. That’ll be seventy bucks.”

Hallelujah!

I skipped back to the garage, got the car, paid and went home. What a successful day! I decided not to risk doing anything else so I kicked off my slippers and crawled back into bed. When the wife came home I told her the good news.

“No sweat on your vehicle, it’s all fixed and good to go, you can drive it tomorrow.”

“Oh thank you my handsome king and God emperor!”

“No Problem.”

I went to bed, victorious…for the moment.

The next morning I got up and ate dry toast. It was delicious and crunchy. I felt good. The car was fine. I felt like I’d saved $1,930. My wallet was whistling, it was a morning of victories. In fact, I felt so good that I thought I’d tempt fate and check the wife’s car.

“It’s all fine,” I said with confidence, “I’m just doing my due diligence.”

“You take such good care of me.”

“Yeah babe. You’re worth it.”

I prepared myself for a good morning. The car had been fixed, the coolant reservoir was about to be full. It would be overflowing with coolant. This was just a well-earned victory lap. Finally, I’d get to see my cornucopia of coolant. I was relaxed and calm as my wife popped the hood. I popped open the reservoir…

No coolant!

There was a brief moment when not a single muscle in my body moved. Not even my heart. I just stood there in stasis willing reality to be different, waiting for my brain to catch up. My wallet flatlined. Then, all at once, a wave of fury and motion crashed down upon me.

“I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE!”

“What?” My wife said.

I made two quick gasps of air, then slowly closed the hood.

“I’m afraid you can’t take this today.”

“Why not?”

“There’s still no coolant.”

Her face hardened.

You see, my wife babies her car. She takes it down for a manicure. Oh, you didn’t know they had beauty salons for cars? They do! They put the car up on a cushioned mattress and bathe and massage it and scent it with exotic perfumes.

My car smells like a gym.

“Maybe they just forgot to top it off,” I said.

She didn’t answer, she just took my keys and drove the kids to school.

The autumn day was gray and cold once again.

I filled up the reservoir with coolant. Then I waited five minutes. I checked it.

There was still coolant.

Hmmmmmmm.

I decided to go on a drive, get the car up to highway speeds, heat it up a little. I got in and turned the vehicle on, noticing how good it smelled inside her car.

I drove, keeping my eye on the temperature gauge. I drove about twenty minutes, 70 mph for ten of them. Got home.

With a shaking hand I popped the hood.

Coolant!

Hmmmm.

The dark cloud began to part.

I went back inside, color began to return to the world.

Five hours later I checked again.

Coolant!

Went to pick up the kids, returned, checked…

Coolant!

Hmm.

“Did you fix the car?” My wife said when she got back home.

“I’ve been checking it all day, it seems to be working.”

“Hm.” She said.

I went to bed, cautiously optimistic.

The next morning, bright and early, I was up. No toast, just business. I was a wiser man now than I had been the day before. I had no expectations. No certainty. I had come to accept the ways of cars and men. Sometimes there is coolant, sometimes there isn’t, you just had to carry on, work hard, hope for the best…

I flipped the lid.

A heavenly choir played.

A ray of golden light illuminated the engine block.

Coolant!

Glorious yellow-lime coolant!

Plenty of coolant!

A reservoir overflowing with coolant!

A CORNUCOPIA OF COOLANT (no, not really, in fact the coolant was right up at the fill line as it should be, too much coolant is bad you know…but cornucopia of coolant sounds better).

I leaned upon the motor and cried.

At last! At last!

A little while later my wife emerged, a skeptical look on her face.

“Well, can I take my car today?”

“Sure babe. Totes fixed it!”

I tossed her the keys.

Yes, it was good to be the man of the house.

I sat down for my coffee and dry toast.

It was a perfect autumn day. Ideal conditions for a masculine nap.

Snuggling up to my healthy wallet, I dreamed of swimming in a vast ocean of slightly glowing, green/yellow waves.

“To the last, I grapple with thee…” sauntered through my mind. I was happy because the words meant I had nothing else to think about, which was exactly what I wanted.