01.22.2007 - 10:25 a.m.

Last night I drove through 180 miles of snowstorm. It was the sort of night when you call your car by its full name.

�Alexander,� I said, looking out into the darkness, snowflakes coming at the windshield like stars in a warp-speed animation, �It�s gonna be a long night. But you are a beautiful, responsive vehicle, and I am a pretty good driver. If I�m gentle, and you�re careful, and we both pay attention, we can do this.�

We pass, over the course of the night, ten separate vehicles that have committed physics violations and now sit akimbo in a ditch, or with one wheel hiked over a guardrail, or with all four wheels pointing at the sky like the legs of an upended turtle. They seem abandoned, or they are surrounded by police cars or flares, so we do not stop�stopping, in fact, might be disastrous for us. They are invariably pickups or SUVs. I imagine they thought themselves invincible, perfectly capable of handling a little bit of snow.

Alexander is a rear-wheel drive, two-seat, stick-shift convertible with no cat litter in his trunk. Whatever else I feel, it�s not invincible.

We do everything right, thirty or forty miles an hour, tops, and often more like twenty. We follow in others� tracks, but we don�t tailgate; we keep lots of space, on all sides. We watch the cars ahead for trouble. We fishtail in one, two, four places before I stop counting. I know how to do this: Let go of the pedals. Turn the wheels against the spin. Make every change in the smoothest way possible. I pet the curve of the dashboard after a particularly bad one: �Sshh, Alex, that axle goes second, remember?�

I also lose count of the number of times I think, �If it stays like this, we�ll stop. The very next parking lot.� It doesn�t stay the same though. It is unnaccumulated slide, then heavy snow, then slippery slush that the invincible pickups spray all over Alex�s windshield as they pass, then rain with crunchy edges to each slushy puddle. Stoplights are the worst. There�s enough traction to coast, but not to accelerate, and there is always someone in the next lane. And we are often guessing at the location of the lanes, anyway.

The steering wheel feels unconnected, like a paddle in air hockey, and I can feel the hum of wheel-spin through the pedals. �You are a beautiful, responsive vehicle, and I am a pretty good driver. We�ll get through this.�

�Baby,� Alexander replies, �Tonight, I�m no vehicle. I'm a projectile.�

-stonebridge

previous | next