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Second Hand Cars

David Hutt

    I remember the first time I thought about hitchhiking. I was twelve or eleven years old, riding in the second hand car my friend’s mother had just bought. My friend said, “when I’m older I’m never buying a second-hand car. Only new ones for me. Shinny ones. With engines that work.” His mother looked at him. She had accepted second-hand cars long ago. “I ain’t ever gonna own a car,” I said. “I’m just gonna hitchhike.” She opened her mouth to me. “Better get used to going to where others are heading, then.”
    I remember that whole scene now like one of those nineties sitcoms we used watch. We had us an audience on that ride back and they were laughing on cue, and we were strutting around the set, waiting for costume changes and forgetting our lines. My friend was the arrogant one with big plans but the audience knew from dramatic irony and life-learned lessons that he would never get anywhere, just talk and hope and all of it falling into the air. His mother was the wise woman who appears at the end of each episode to narrate the morals of the last thirty minutes. I was the odd one no-one really likes but the audience puts up with me because the writers give me funny one-liners. I was fat and geeky and the only people who loved me were the ones who were supposed to.
    I don’t know what happened to my friend. He thought he was tough but he wasn’t and he started hanging out with kids who were, and that was it for him. We lost contact. Now, when I go home to see my parents I walk just to pass his house. We used to play football outside. Wheelie bins for goalposts and hedges for nets. Two-touch. World Cup. We’d do headers and volleys only and I’d usually win. There was a park across the road but we played in his front garden because it was ours. Ain’t nobody going to take our ball and stomp our heads into the mud in his front-garden.
    His old man was loose with the drink. I learnt from an early age what a typical drunk was. I’d be sleeping over at my friend’s place and on his old man would come back around 3 a.m and we’d push a wardrobe in front of the bedroom door and pretend it was all a game. Kicks, you know. My friend gave me two BB-guns. I loaded the clips and tucked them down my boxer shorts. He took a BB-gun too. He said if his old man came through the door we drop him. He held the gun sideways and squinted his eyes like Clint Eastwood. But his old man would give up on us and go to find his wife to rinse his emotions on.
    I don’t think my friend ever bought himself a brand new car. The last time I saw him he was taking a driving lesson in that second-hand car. The instructor was saying, “And don’t think about pushing the limits. Roads are 30 miles-per-hour; motorways are seventy; your life is second-hand cars.”

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