Riding the Night
1939 Jaguar
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?
But Sean and Adam actually wanted to try to get the thing running. They worked tirelessly, six hours per day, the garage door swung open, August sunlight pouring in on the quiet residential street. Adam wiped his cheeks throughout the day, leaving grease marks, using a rag to clean off the beading sweat, digging deep into the core of the engine, trying to explain the basics to me and Sean. Sean understood to a degree. I was lost, clueless. I helped in little ways: Handing one of them a fresh rag, snatching a wrench, carrying over the yellow plastic bottle of 5-W 30 Pennzoil.
The days passed, and then the weeks. They spoke about engine parts which might as well have been Russian to me: Radiator; timing belt; piston; cylinder; exhaust manifold. They began discussing some near future date, when the three of us would ride to school in this thing, brand-new looking, sparkling chrome grill so shiny the sun would painfully glint off of it, blinding students’ eyes. The maroon paint so perfect and full and glorious people would stop and look, open-mouthed, slack-jawed. Perfect, fresh black leather seating. A new transmission. Adam told Sean he’d have to dip deeply into the trust fund his father had left him for college. Sean said he was fine with that. I wondered if his mother would allow it.
I pictured the three of us senior year, in the future, tattooed, slicked-back hair, sitting in the new Jag, windows down, stereo system installed, blasting The Stray Cats, making people’s eyes go wide. We’d be the coolest kids in town.
Inside the Jag it reeked of old, stale, musty everything. Moth-eaten seats. The ancient stench of faded, beaten leather. The lingering, feint scent of once-smoked cigarettes. There were spider webs in there. Rust on the metal floorboards. It stank like an old, abandoned warehouse. It was hard to imagine anyone had ever driven the thing. It made me wonder what Sean’s dad had been like, how he’d died, why he’d left his son this decrepit car from another era.
Time flew by and there were only a few days left of August, a few days left until school started. We were going to be sophomores. From there, for me, it would all change. This would be the last time I’d feel innocent. Of course, I didn’t know that yet. I thought that boyhood youth would last forever. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I knew everything was going to change.
*
It happened two days before the start of school. The Jag still had far, far to go before anyone could actually drive it. It would require many more months, if not more. The plan had been to work on it on weekends and sometimes after school but I think we all sort of intrinsically knew it wasn’t going to happen. We’d gotten the thing out of the rut and into the garage. We’d heard the rusty, choppy sound of the engine briefly running, after Lord knows how long. Maybe that was enough. You can’t finish everything you start. In terms of a worthy summer project, we had been on terra firma.
I woke up that night, in my bed, startled by what I’d swore was a hard knocking on the front door of our house. Sitting upright, I waited but heard nothing. I must be imagining it, I thought. But then it came again: A harsh, powerful knock. I glanced at my spider-man alarm clock. It was nearly one in the morning. I paused, wondering if I’d hear the pattering of my father’s feet stampeding across the brick hallway but I heard no such sound.
The knock came a third time. I swallowed, ripped my top sheet off, swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and walked out of my room.
The uneven bricks were cold against my bare feet. The royal blue door stood there like an omen. That shiny gold knob, like we were some royal family. In the light from the outside lamp, I saw a shadowy outline, a figure, a person. I had this feeling of terror. I didn’t know why.
Ok, I told myself. On the count of three. One. I felt the pounding of my heart. Two. I turned and peered behind me, into the darkness of the hallway, where my parents’ bedroom was, still hoping they’d emerge. I could go back there, knock, wake them.
Three. I turned around, just as another intense knock came down.
With two fingers I slid the white frilly cloth aside. There was Sean, looking very distressed. Crying, in fact. His features were all smashed up, a grizzled gremlin mask. Tears arrowed down his white freckled cheeks. His tangled brunette hair was a thick mess, springing and coiled.
I unlocked the regular lock and the deadbolt. Opening the door, I stood a foot away.
“What is it, Sean? Are you okay?”
“What’s going on here?” It was my mother’s concerned voice, behind us. I turned. She was yawning, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders.
“It’s Sean,” I said.
“What is he doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Sean eyed the two of us. Without being invited in, he stepped forward, crossing the threshold, moving from outside to inside. From one dimension to another, from one portal into the next.
“Sean,” my mother said, wrapping the blanket tight. “What’s wrong?”
I closed the door behind him. Darkness enveloped us. My mother flipped the hallway light on and it brightened. She leaned against the wall. Sean took a loud breath, held, exhaled. His crying had ceased but his cheeks were stained with dried tears.
“My brother,” he said. Jamie. Jamie. Had something happened to him? Was he here?
“What happened with your brother?” my mom said.
“Is everything alright in here?” My father’s booming, deep voice punctured the quiet.
My mom held a palm out. “Sean is here. He’s trying to tell us something.”
My father stood halfway between shadow and light. He caught my eye for one instant.
Sean gulped. “My brother showed up about an hour ago, at our house, out of nowhere. He has an extra key.” Something inside of me tweaked. This was sketchy. Something was awful and wrong. “He was erratic, angry. He woke me and my mom up. He’s bipolar and he’d stopped taking his meds. He was drunk. I think he was on drugs, too.”
Sean paused and his eyes grew big and fearful. “Jamie told us to go into the kitchen. He started yelling at my mom, saying how she had abandoned him, how he could never forgive her, how we could go to hell and die. That’s when he pulled out this handgun. It was black. He said it was a nine-millimeter.” Sean started crying. “He pointed the gun at my mom, held it at her temple, said he was going to count to ten and then blow her brains out.”
I peered at my mom. She looked terrified. My father’s features were hidden by shadow. His arms were crossed. My heart thumped. It was very quiet.
Sean sniffled and then said, “He counted to ten and then whipped the gun away. After that he called us names and walked out, slamming the front door. We heard his Chevelle peeling rubber off our driveway and down our street and then he was gone. My mom called the police. I just started running. I didn’t know where I was going until I got here.”
“Sean,” my mom said, “That’s like three miles.”
“I know,” he said. “And I had to hop the gate, too.”
“Jesus Christ,” my father said, his face suddenly bursting through the dark shadows. “You poor kid.” He said nothing for a beat and then, “I’m going to call your mother, tell her you’re here, make sure she’s okay.”
My father retreated back into the dark depths and entered their room to use the landline. I heard my dad’s muffled voice. He returned a minute later.
“She’s fine. The police came, took a report. She’s going back to sleep. I told her you’d better stay here tonight. She said that was fine,” my father said.
“Thanks,” Sean said.
We disbanded, my folks into their room, me and Sean into mine. We didn’t speak. I yanked my sleeping bag out of the closet and handed him a pillow. I jumped into my bed, he got into the bag on the rug. I flipped the light switch off and darkness swallowed us.
I thought of Jamie, gun pointed at Sean’s mother, telling her he was going to kill her. I saw his wild, rageful eyes. I saw spit fly out of his mouth. I saw a black bandanna around his forehead, like Adam’s red one. I envisioned Jamie driving south from San Francisco on Highway 101, only I didn’t envision the Chevelle. I pictured Jamie behind the wheel of the ’39 Jaguar, crazed eyes seeing out of the narrow windshield, arm sticking out of the short window, new black leather against his back, hair combed, boot on the gas, all the way down, the empty road unfurling ahead of him, double yellow divider, riding the night like some long lost ghost come to seek revenge.
“Sean, you awake?”
There was no response. Only a feint snore.
I turned over onto my side, closed my eyes. But all I saw was Jamie, in the maroon Jag. Riding the night. Riding. Riding.
Riding.