BAT TURN
That summer, Chris had a girlfriend named Heather. She was beautiful, and blonde, of course, and she was always very nice to me. When Chris wasn’t with Heather, he was with Jimmy and me.
Neither Jimmy nor I are known for our outstanding memories, but Jimmy has been indispensable in helping me put some of the puzzle pieces of that summer back together. Between the two of us, I stand by my previous statement that 90% of what I write in these blog posts is 100% accurate. Jimmy even remembered the name on my fake ID that I used that summer – Paul K. Hynes. How the hell Jimmy remembered that is beyond my understanding. Simply hysterical!
That summer, Chris was driving a yellow ’77 Volkswagen Rabbit, without a title, registration or insurance. The engine was in reasonable working order, but the body itself was a mess. It would never pass inspection. And besides, Chris didn’t have a legal title to the car anyway. One Saturday while driving to Jimmy’s apartment in Holyoke, we saw a yellow ’76 Volkswagen Rabbit parked on someone’s front lawn. Weeds were growing up through the wheel wells as well as the hood and trunk. Chris rang the doorbell, and an elderly woman smoking a cigarette and wearing a housecoat answered the door.
“Is it for sale? Of course it’s for sale.” the old woman said
“Do I have the title? Of course I have the title. Here it is,” she said.
For $100, Chris was now the proud owner of a bright yellow ’76 Volkswagen Rabbit, with an engine that didn’t work.
“My idiot grandson seized the engine two years ago, and it’s been a lawn ornament ever since,” the old woman explained to us.
Jimmy lived a few blocks down the street from the old lady, so we went and got Jimmy, who drove an ’81 Rabbit. Chris got behind the wheel of the non-functioning ’76 Rabbit to steer, and Jimmy pushed it to the studio with his ’81 Rabbit.
Now, the two bright yellow Rabbits, ’76 and ’77, lay side by side in the parking lot alongside the studio. Jimmy helped Chris hoist the ’77 engine and the transmission using an engine lifter, and placed it inside the ’76 body. Now all Chris had to do was hook everything else up to the engine – radiator, carburetor, water pump, hoses, belts, gaskets; and make sure the lights worked, the brakes worked, the windshield wipers worked, etc. What could go wrong?
Earlier in the summer, a tenant moved out of the apartment complex and left an old set of golf clubs for Chris, so we decided that Saturday night we would play some golf. Night? Yes. Golf? Yes.
We jumped into Jimmy’s ’81 Rabbit, drove to an exclusive neighborhood near Londmeadow, and parked alongside railroad tracks. We walked stealthily along the tracks, snuck our way through a few backyards, somehow didn’t wake up any dogs or people, and found ourselves, finally, at one of the fairways of a fancy country club.
Chris held the golf bag, and Jimmy and I were responsible for carrying the beer. Anticipating that we would get too drunk to actually hit golf balls, we decided it’d be better if we just brought along a bunch of tennis balls. So there we were, three knuckleheads at midnight hitting tennis balls at an exclusive country club somewhere in southwestern Massachusetts. We played a couple of holes, laughing our asses off. We must have been on the 8th or 9th hole, because we were getting closer to the club house, when we saw the flashing blue and red lights.
A police cruiser had pulled into the parking lot. The three of us dashed into the nearest woods alongside the fairway, buried our heads in the leaves and branches and prayed that the police officers didn’t get out of their squad car for a closer inspection. Unfortunately, the damn bee hive that one of us knocked into to avoid getting arrested fell to the ground, and the bees were not happy to be awoken in the middle of the night. Each of us were stung multiple times, but somehow we didn’t scream out in agony. After a few minutes of shining their spot light from the comfort of their squad car, the police drove away.
The bee stings helped to sober us up in a hurry. In pain, we all decided that we had had our fun for the night, and it was time to figure out how to get back to the railroad tracks without the cops seeing us. We got out of the woods and dusted ourselves off, and that’s when Chris saw the diving board. Before Jimmy and I had time to tackle Chris, he was running towards the Club House pool.
We caught up to Chris as he was climbing the ladder of the high dive, fully dressed. Jimmy laid down in a lounge chair. I took off my sneakers and jumped in, hoping the water would ease the pain of the bee stings.
I turned my head to see Chris standing at the edge of the high dive. I waited for him to jump, assuming he was going to do a cannonball or some other such jump and splash Jimmy poolside. Instead, he backs up on the diving board, takes three steps forward, springs into the air, and does a 1½ flip in pike position.
It was the last thing I expected to see. Chris got out of the pool and went right back up the ladder. He did about 10 dives, each one better than the last. If there were ever a warped version of the Olympics where, instead of steroids, all of the athletes were forced to drink beer, no doubt Chris would have been a gold medal winner in diving. He was also an excellent skate boarder, skier, and white water rafter. On his last dive of the night, standing atop the diving board, Chris spotted the country club flag pole. There was an enormous American flag flapping in the light breeze. For good measure, as kind of a night cap, we grabbed the flag. Chris had a penchant for stealing American flags.
Somehow, the three of us made it home that night. Jimmy dropped Chris and me off at the studio, and I headed for the front door. It must have been about 3 a.m. Chris said he was going to work on the car, so I helped him bring out the tools and all of the flashlights we could find. I then went inside to get some sleep.
Several hours later, the cats woke me up. When they were hungry for breakfast, they would jump up onto my suspended bed and nibble at my feet. Once I fed them, I made coffee and then went outside to see if Chris was still working on the cars, or if he had in fact slept under the cars.
“Get in,” he said, as I handed him a cup of coffee. Chris was covered from head to toe in engine grease, but he was smiling from ear to ear.
I got into the passenger seat. He made the sign of the cross across his chest, which made me laugh. I think by now you can figure out where Chris stood with regard to religion.
He turned the key, and the car started. We high five’d and laughed again.
“Wow,” I said. “I can’t believe you got this thing running, especially after everything that happened last night.”
He put the Rabbit into gear and we headed down Sargeant Street. It was Sunday morning. The road was empty.
“Oh, I knew I’d get it running,” Chris said, as he shifted into 2nd gear, then 3rd gear. He brought the car up to about 35 miles per hour and then said “I’m not so sure how it’s going to stop, though.” And with that he slammed on the brakes. The car spun 180 degrees, and then stalled.
Thank goodness the window was rolled down, because I was about to throw up.
“I only had two good brake pads, so I put one on the drivers-side front and the other on the passenger-side rear. Pretty cool, ha? The damn Rabbit makes Bat Turns.”
Chris was a big fan of Batman. Batman was his alter ego. Or maybe Chris Merullo was actually Batman’s alter ego. I don’t know where Bruce Wayne fits into this scenario. Either way, the car went forwards, backwards, and turned in both directions. And as far as Chris was concerned, it stopped.
“You know,” I said. “Most people would have probably tested the brakes out at five miles per hour, maybe ten, tops.”
He just looked at me as if I were the lunatic, and then we drove to the nearest diner for breakfast.
When we returned from breakfast, we saw that Jimmy was waiting for us in the parking lot, but he wasn’t sitting in his ’81 GTI Rabbit. He was sitting in the cab of a CAT 214B. Chris showed off his brake pads by doing a 180* Bat Turn into the parking lot, and I got out of the car and did my best not to puke my pancakes.
Chris and I watched as Jimmy used the boom of the CAT to flatten the now motorless ’77 Rabbit. He came back a few days later, loaded the crushed car onto a flatbed, and dumped it at a junkyard in Goshen, Mass.
GLENN SLOVES 