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Couched in human terms, the little Volkswagon Beatle might have been aged somewhere between six and sixteen. Now, that maybe sounded like a pretty big range, but Herbie (as he would later be called)—as a car, Herbie didn’t necessarily get all his life experiences in the same way that humans would have, and he didn’t think about all of them in the same way, so somewhere between six and sixteen was going to be as good as it got.
By the time Herbie was delivered to Thorndyke’s possession, and particularly after he got an eyeful of the showroom full of European sport and racing cars—Herbie knew at that young and delicate age of however old he was that he wasn’t looker, not by a long shot. He was short and compact and had the kind of frame that little old ladies liked to coo over and pat on the hood like he was some kind of cute little animal. Even at that tender age, Herbie was a petulant little guy. He resented the other cars—who were sleek and painted in attractive colors waxed to a perfect shine—but they had no brains, and were loved anyway. If he could have, Herbie would have gotten into fights with them every day and then some, but there wasn’t any point to it. Like what’d been mentioned, no brains—The other cars had that subtle presence of life that everything that ever existed ever had, with those kinds of quiet, subtle voices—but arguing with them would have been like arguing with sun-bathing turtles. No one ever argued back, and sometimes there was even that quietly judging feeling, like they thought Herbie was too much an idiot for brimming with that kind of extraordinary life. Better to quash it down, have a normal life, and be happy with the little old ladies who patted him on the hood and promised to use him for nothing more than purchasing groceries and visiting their little old lady friends.
Every day, Herbie seethed.
He wanted to knock something over.
He was rude and cantankerous to the little old ladies, and got into fights with Thorndyke’s employees; they, at least, actually put up a struggle when he tried to drag himself around any old where and especially where he wasn’t wanted.
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Herbie followed that racecar driver, Jim Douglas, home after he defended Herbie from Thorndyke’s abuse in the showroom. Even if you’d asked him then, Herbie wouldn’t have even known why he did it. He was somewhere between six and sixteen (if you wanted to take that metaphor and run with it) and he didn’t know a lot about the world, or what it meant to live in a world that didn’t involve some idiot trying to sell you to little old ladies, and then threatening to tear you to pieces when you misbehaved. Okay, so Herbie had maybe been a little afraid of death (a lot afraid of death) and feeling pretty hateful towards a lot of things, considering, and he had followed Jim home, because Jim was the only person who had ever treated him like he even mattered.
Herbie was somewhere between six and sixteen, and he knew a thing about the birds and the bees. That’s why he’d taken such pleasure in screwing around with Jim and Carole’s love life, but had also wanted to encourage it. Jim was—well, by that time, maybe you could have said Herbie looked up to Jim like a friend, or like a guardian, like an uncle or a father, but it would have been hard to say because Herbie was a car and Jim was a human and there wasn’t much language that could really cover that kind of relationship.
Tennessee really was like a favored uncle with Herbie. Maybe that wasn’t quite fair, given that Tennessee always treated Herbie so well, but that’s how it had gone down.
What Herbie really loved: the race track. Or not even the race track, but racing, because he loved to get off the road and roll his wheels through the dirt, and go as fast he can, and then knock things over. He loved racing. He loved it so much, and even, for a long time, he hadn’t minded Jim taking all the credit for his wins. He nearly didn’t mind.
He kept telling himself he didn’t mind.
It’s just the way the world worked, you know? Humans didn’t recognize the crazy things going on right under their noses, and they liked to look at it their own way—well, not everyone, Tennessee illustrated the exception—but Jim was like a normal human, and he couldn’t tell that Herbie was…that Herbie was a person too, and really doing all the driving, and Herbie had just let it go.
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Then Jim had tried to replace him with that awful, that horrible new racing car.
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Okay: you know, it was a lot of things going on that night. It was looking at that sleek, shining, beautiful new racing car and like being kicked in the engine with a one ton weight. It was realizing that he could be replaced that easily, all credit for the races taken—stolen really—and what would it be next, the garage taken from him too? Herbie out in the cold. Or maybe returned, next, to pay for the new car. Maybe it’d be back to Thorndyke. Maybe Thorndyke really would have him torn apart then, split into one inch pieces of metal and rubber.
Herbie had let all of these things sort of go through his mind, and then in a rage, Herbie had rammed into the other car. And he’d kept ramming. He took too great a pleasure in crunching the metal of its frame down until it became quite unusable and, honestly, Herbie hadn’t even felt any real guilt—this car was like too many other cars, only gently overlaid with a thin film of life, and not particularly caring one way or another what shape its body was shaped and molded into.
Herbie cared.
He cared so much, and then Jim had come out.
Jim had come out and shouted at him and then tried to beat him with that shovel, until Tennessee and Carole dragged him back. Jim had come out and hit Herbie but, see, that didn’t even hurt, Herbie didn’t feel any real pain, whatever bruising his outer body went through. It was what came out of Jim’s mouth that nearly knocked him over, because Jim had known. He’d known that Herbie was alive, on some level or in the back of his mind whatever it was, what did it matter, he’d known, and to accuse Herbie of all that pettiness, about being jealous of Jim taking all the credit for the races—and then knowing all of that, to still yet try to replace and erase him away—
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Herbie was between the ages of six and sixteen (if you could paint it in the terms of humans) and a kid could only take so much from the people who were supposed to take care of him, who were supposed to—maybe the word love was supposed to be in there too, Herbie didn’t know. He just didn’t.
He’d wandered the streets. Thorndyke even nearly managed to catch him and really take him to pieces; the sight of those thugs with their crowbars and their cutters had Herbie so scared his entire body had been shaking and rattling hard enough to loosen a piece or two of him before he’d managed to get out again. Even after that, though, Herbie’s entired mind had seemed thick with some kind of pathetic despair. It was too many things going on, propped up one against the other, and shaking through his whole body.
That’s why Herbie tried to throw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge, that night. Maybe there were a lot of things that cars weren’t supposed to be able to do, or supposed to be able to feel, but a lot of things had been going on that night, and that’s why he’d tried to do it. He would have, too, believe him, if Jim hadn’t thrown himself on the hood of Herbie to stop him doing it.
Jim would have died with him, had Herbie finally tipped himself over the edge.
So Herbie hadn’t.
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Everything leading up to that moment—it wasn’t something that Herbie could ever really talk to Jim about. Well, literally, he couldn’t speak to Jim—but even if he’d been human, it would have been hard to say all of that. Even humans seemed to have trouble with the words coming out of their mouths, and Herbie wouldn’t have known what to do with all of those complicated feelings and sensations. Sometimes Herbie thought back to that whole night and—well, he didn’t really want to think about it.
He kind of liked to think that Jim understood though, maybe a little. It could have been just another one of those myriad things that they never really talked about, but Herbie was hoping. Sometimes—you know, he liked to allow himself to hope it when they were sitting together in the garage, and Jim’s hand was on Herbie’s hood, almost… nearly fond-like, while Tennessee puttered around in the attached kitchen making his awful Irish coffee, and it wasn’t like all those times that Thorndyke tried to sell Herbie to the little old ladies who liked to pat him and coo over him. Thank god: it wasn’t anything like that.