Demon Car

Rebecca Johnson

Humilated author after crash in Bolivia

1979 Pinto

A girl left Memphis for college in Connecticut during the 1970’s. The girl’s mother wore earth shoes and kept her long grey hair in a braid. Whenever her daughter spoke, the mother’s face would light up like the sun breaking through the clouds. My parents never looked at me like that.  One day, the girl was driving on the highway near Middletown, Connecticut when something fell off the truck in front of her. She swerved to avoid the object and was killed.

Months later, I saw the mother at the grocery store. Her shoes did not match and her once tidy braid was now frazzled and unkempt.  It was the first time I realized  a parent could lose too much of herself in her love for a child.

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1985 Volkswagen Beetle

When my grandfather bought my mother her first car in 1953, he insisted the dealer remove the radio. Too distracting, he said. This story got passed down in the family as evidence of my grandfather’s personality—generous but, oh my God, SO controlling!

As it happens, all the wrecks I have had in my life occurred because of the radio. The first time, I was 20 years old and driving through the mountains of Bolivia with my two best friends from high school. We had rented a white VW Beetle in Bogota. We were crazy for Mercedes Sosa and those flutey Andean tunes like El Condor no Pasa a.k.a I’d rather be a hammer than a nail. One morning, while driving through a mountain town, I leaned over to take one of those cassettes out of the player and veered right into a parked bus. The side of the Beetle looked like a sardine can had been rolled open.

Everybody on the crowded bus got out to take a look. Luckily, the bus was undamaged but word spread around town about the gringas who hit the bus and people emerged from their houses, pointing at me and laughing, delighted by the spectacle. I accepted their derision as the price for my carelessness. What choice did I have?

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1991 Mercury Sable LS

My best friend and I decided to buy a car together sometime in the 1990s, when we were both in our late 20’s. We lived three blocks away from each other in Brooklyn, so this seemed to make sense. Her brother was getting rid of his tomato red Mercury Sable so we bought it for a good price.

At first, it was fun having a car in New York City.  Vast outer boroughs, which had once seemed as remote as Greenland, were suddenly accessible and I now thought nothing of popping into Manhattan for a night out. (Previously, this kind of outing had triggered a calculation on whether the night would be sufficiently fun to warrant the $25 cab ride home, not to mention the anxiety of a driver refusing to drive to an outer borough late at night.) Around this time, my friend started dating a man who couldn’t stand me.  It hurt my feelings but, meh, I am not everybody’s cup of tea.

One day, she told me she was pulling out of the car deal. I could have her whole share for nothing. On the one hand, yay! My own car. On the other hand, shit! By then, the car seemed possessed. Whenever I had my foot on the brake, the engine would rev strangely, as if it were angry at me for holding it back. I took it to a few mechanics but they were stumped. I even called the old NPR show ‘Car Talk’ to ask the brothers what they thought was wrong but they kept me on hold for an hour so I gave up.

That summer, my friend got engaged to the guy who disliked me. I decided to travel in Guatemala for five weeks, leaving the possessed car in the long term parking lot of JFK. I got home late one night, put the key in the ignition and held my breath. Everything was ok until the Belt Parkway when the engine started going 70 miles an hour on its own accord. I pushed the brake pedal as hard as I could and managed to pull over, utterly freaked out--the trip had healed me but done nothing for the car.  Eventually, two police officers pulled over and helped me arrange a tow back to my house.

For weeks, the car sat on my block as I gingerly moved it back and forth on Tuesdays for the street sweeper. I wished I could sell it, but who would buy such a demon car? And how could I live with the guilt if they did?

One morning, I went to move the car and discovered that someone had smashed into my car as well as the two cars parked in front of me. A bystander had witnessed the accident and left a note with the name of a lumber company truck that hit me. The company was furious with their driver but admitted guilt. A few weeks later, I received an insurance payment for $2600, about twice what I had originally paid for the car. 

Rebecca is the author of the novel And Sometimes Why. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.