In honor of Wheaton 1991-?

That's Wheaton back there behind us. A little four-door Nissan from 1991. That's Rebekah I have my arm around and a jade plant on the roof that she gave me. We're heading through the Canadian stretches in the Spring of 2005. Rebekah was struggling for sanity down in Antarctica working with a bunch of quasi-scientist frat student types on that big chunk of ice. That was the year Antarctica split in two, one big crack moving across the frozen continent. I guess the continent is a pair of gigantic islands shaped similar to two lungs alongside one another, though you'd never know land to be beneath except for the rocks showing on the peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains. I imagine the crack running that line of water beneath, separating the two. Nonetheless a significant occurence; certainly more interesting than Earnest Shackleton and his dummies, but maybe not as much as that baby Emperor penguin in Happy Feet dancing to his heart's content.

While all this was happening I was working three food service jobs in Portland, Maine... struggling with two somewhat undefinable relationships, smoking and drinking copiously yet running and otherwise exercising like a madman. There were unaccounted sleepovers, walking pneumonia, depression and confusion, longings like a lost student, and too many Japanese authors' words in my head (likened to the Germans or Russians if you ask me). Danger for the fragile soul mind you; rationalization of the morbid, beauty in sacrifice.

That's around the time I found Wheaton. She was abandoned for a year in this cleared space in the northern woods of Maine. A red Sentra left to the elements of rain and snow, the salty damp of the coastline. Beneath her hood a dead battery, the engine block rusted and flaked reminding me of barnacles on a pier or side of a humpback. The owner was an estranged adulterous husband; the seller was his wife. She signed over the paperwork and sold it for a steal, partially out of spite.

I wanted to get back out west and put together a plan with Rebekah (who had similar wishes) on some scratchy sat phone connection, maybe distorted by polar magnetism or some such thing. She flew in to Philly and connected to Portland and then we set out. Wheaton saw the provinces, almost every damn one, the Great Lakes. She came down into more G-D fearing country, ran the line of the Pacific and inland to the western states. My wheels, my salvation, my demise, my ridiculous car-love and growing superstitions. She never criticized my alcoholism, my compulsions, half-baked plans and erratic heartbeat... never put down my passengers, or refused a state of place or mind, only delivered me safe and sound and often confused, but otherwise cheaply traversed by high mpg. Oh bless that damn car.

I can only imagine her breaking heart now on the houseside curb, with her replacement just feet away. A 2003 Toyota Echo named Cubby with power-steering, unheard of to the likes of Wheaton.