Riding the Night

1939 Jaguar

Photo by Ethan Sexton on Unsplash

Riding the Night

It was the summer between freshman and sophomore year of high school—1999—when we used boards to pull my best friend Sean’s maroon-colored 1939 Jaguar out of the rut it had sat in for years, off to the side of his driveway.

            We were fifteen years old. Me, Sean and Adam. We lived in Ojai, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, off Highway 33, which T-boned smack-dab into the infamous Highway 101, following the rugged cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. Sean was this insane kid—not really—who was both intelligent and out-of-control, a perfect mix for me. His house was on Wylie Street, a few blocks down from the 7-11. His mother was a religious zealot. She thought I was corrupting her son with that “rock and roll music.” She was a return to the repressive 1950s.

            Sean had an older brother who lived in San Francisco, six hours north. Jamie. I’d never met him but Sean had told many lurid tales. Drugs, alcohol, women. I never knew if any of it was actually true, but the stories were exciting and chilling. A small part of me always yearned to experience life like that: In the raw. Living in the big city, free. Jamie was a decade older. He was also bipolar, and he owned many guns. This was a tantalizing, scary twist in the mirage reality of Sean’s mysterious older brother. Sometimes I wondered if Jamie was a myth, was made up, never even existed.

            Sean’s father had died when he was 12. He’d left only one thing behind: The maroon-colored 1939 Jaguar. It sat perennially off to the side of his asphalt driveway, underneath a towering Eucalyptus tree, which climbed to dizzying heights. The driveway sloped down slightly and the front left tire, flat, was deep in that rut. It made the house look white trash, even though he attended the private St. Andrew’s Prep, with me and Adam, a school which cost much money.

            Adam was a fat kid who was built like a flabby linebacker. I’d met him at the start of freshman year. He lived with his mother, closer to campus. His stepdad was a mean drunk and sometimes hit his mom. His biological father was a mechanic. Growing up, Adam had learned everything there is to learn about a car’s engine.

            Me? I was a rich kid. Bone-shaped, Olympic-sized pool, big house in a nice part of town. Overprotective mother, emotionally detached father. He was a computer engineer. There were myriad graduate degrees in my family. My paternal grandfather was worth millions. He’d invested in the stock market and had been CEO of several corporations and had worked in Information Technology and Radar Systems. He and I were about as close as Russia and California.

            Me and Sean were into the punk rock stuff. He’d come over to my house and we’d stay up in my room until the wee hours of the morning, playing The Casualties very low volume, so my folks couldn’t hear across the hall, drink our filched green Micky’s forties, and stitch punk patches on our tightened thrift-store jeans.

            This was before sophomore year started, before I met Carl and Zach, before I faced alcoholism, before I jumped into the existential rabbit hole, swallowed the colored pill, metamorphosed into a true punker, rebelled against my parents, against it all, did drugs, lost my virginity, took it too far, got expelled from school, got arrested, landed in jail, and messed my life up well into my late twenties. It was only the beginning. Before the beginning, even.

*

            It was Adam who convinced Sean to do it. He kept commenting on the Jaguar. The “Jag.” How it was such an incredible piece of machinery. How they should yank it out, work on it. I knew nothing about cars. Sean knew a little. As far as we were concerned, Adam was a working mechanic.

            Sean finally gave in. The plan was simple: For the last month of summer, August, we’d pull her out, clear the garage, insert her there, and work on her. Pure and simple. Sean’s mom was not thrilled but she didn’t put up serious resistance. One day, we went to the hardware store and then to Auto Zone. Sean and Adam filled carts with things they’d need: Rags; oil; gloves.

            The day arrived. Adam borrowed his stepdad’s mid-90s beige Dodge Ram and they tied the back to the rear of the Jaguar. The Jag sat there, as always, like some sad old retired father. Its maroon color was ancient and rusty and faded. The massive, curved wheel-wells reminded one of an earlier time, far, far before we’d been born. Another historical period in America. It had a tall silver grill, rusty and flaking, and two round, broken headlights. The miniature once-sparkling and silver Jaguar sat atop the grill, proud still after all these decades. The doors were wide and tall, the windows short and narrow. The windshield, too, was narrow, like strange shades. There was a low-hanging, muddied bumper on the front.

            Seeing that car made me think of our history class with Mr. Avery. In 1939, Hitler had been waging war against the western world; he’d been occupying Poland. The Depression had still been going on, full force. People were still feeling the global effects of the 1929 stock market crash. Come to think of it, both my grandparents would have been about the same age as us now, back then. Wild.

            It took a few tries, Adam slowly pressing down on the gas in the Dodge, his elbow out the window, Sean and I pushing the Jag from the front end, using boards we’d found, placed under the rutted wheel, before it at last moved, jiggled, danced, and finally rose up and out of the ditch and onto the driveway. For a moment we all just sat there, eyeing it, as if we’d pulled some black magic trick. It seemed as if Sean’s deceased father had somehow come back to life.

            Sean stood there smiling, wiping his brow. “Deus ex machina.” Sean had been taking Latin 101 classes at St. Andy’s. It’s one of the things I recall best about him, how he’d always use Latin terms outside of school. Like “ad infinitum” or “carpe diem” or “quid pro quo.” He thought he was pretty smart and clever.

            “What does that mean?” I asked. I knew he enjoyed when I asked. It proved his intelligence and knowledge, and my ignorance. I’d learned that you had to give your friends a point here and there.

            Adam said nothing, leaning his bulbous body against his stepdad’s Dodge, the beige body creaking. He wore a bright red bandanna around his head, like some 1970s mechanic father working on his Chevy in the garage. He reached into his jeans pocket, extracted a Winston from the pack, stuck it between his thick lips, lit it, and inhaled, blowing back out his nose. He’d started smoking a few months ago. I had to admit: He looked tough and cool. Hard.

            “God from the machine,” Sean said. “It’s a double entendre.” I knew the meaning of that phrase because of my English 101 class.

            Adam moved the Dodge out of the way and we all pushed the Jag from the front end, backwards, into the garage, which we’d cleaned out thoroughly. Once in, we stared at the thing for many silent minutes. I thought maybe we’d just leave it there, call our work complete. Why mess with a good thing?