There, on the off ramp, out of nowhere, her rusted Toyota coughed, gasped, then screamed before falling completely silent. She was within sight of the car dealerships on Mendenhall and could hear the horrible music blaring beneath the roar of the interstate traffic.

Her Toyota had never been new. She couldn’t ever remember a time when the air conditioning had worked. The windows were the kind you had to roll up by hand, the mirrors were hand adjusted, too. Once she’d forgotten to roll them up when it rained, and the interior had never smelled right after. She could see repugnance creep across her friend’s faces whenever she had to drive then anywhere.

But, it had been with her when she decided to leave her small town and find something better. It was her love of Elvis that had made Memphis the dot on the map she aimed for, and it was that old beater Toyota that had gotten her here. It had driven her to the first day of her dream job, and to the first date with her fiance. It was hers.

So, she got out and did the only thing that felt right.

She started to push.

Memphis Note
Car dealerships attract other car dealerships, and the stretch of Mendenhall just south of the the 240 loop is a perfect example of this. Vinyl banners flap in the wind, inflatable animals of all shapes and sizes loom over the car lots, and quick-tongued car dealers are waiting to cut you a deal on the car of your dreams. And, if you can’t find what you’re looking for on their lot, just go next door. They’re sure to have it.

Two devils sit on a park bench, enjoying a beautiful day. The older of the pair points at child walking past, eagerly licking a towering ice cream cone. Then the younger one snaps his fingers and the child falls, face first, into the desert. They explode into laughter.

Composing himself, the younger devil turns to his mentor. “It’s been an honor learning from you, sir. ”

“You took to the suffering arts like a natural.” The older replies, nodding with approval.

“I have one question, if I might be so bold.” Timidly asks the younger one.

“Oh? What might that be?”

“What act of misery are you most proud of?”

“Malfunction Junction.” The old devil says without hesitation. “An interstate interchange in Memphis, Tennessee. I manipulated the minds of a half dozen civil engineers over the course of a decade. Every attempt they made to solve the problem, to mitigate what I’d done, just made even worse.”

“Really, sir? You’re a legend in our line of work, and you’re proudest of a traffic jam?”

“Wasn’t my grandest project. But, nothing beats the suffering a human experiences tying to merge from five lanes to two in the middle of rush hour traffic.”

Memphis Note
Malfunction Junction is the local name for the intersection of two major interstates in south Memphis. On the surface, it looks like a simple cloverleaf interchange, but evil lurks in those sweeping curves. Trucks get stuck under the overpass. Cars burst into flames for no reason. And if there’s going to be wreck, it’s going to be on the on/off ramp, blocking everything up.

“It is absolutely criminal. That road is wide and straight and gorgeous. It begs you to do more than forty on it.” She had that glassy look in her eye she always got when dreaming about taking a road at an obscene speed. For the most part, everyone in the shop had become accustom to ignoring her speeches.

This particular road was a stretch of Poplar out in the suburbs. Fives lanes wide, and so straight you can see down it for miles. They’d all been down it, all felt the dare of that speed limit. And everyone that’d taken that dare also had a ticket and a court date to go along with it.

Those were shark infested waters, as they liked to say.

“I wonder how fast I could get up to late at night, when there’s no one out and the lights’ve all gone blinking yellow.” She pantomimed the gear changes, wetting her lips at the thought of that speed.

“Fast enough that any wanderlust you might have would get cut horribly short by an extended jail sentence.” The shop boss threw a rag at her. “Not unlike your employment if you don’t get back to work.”

Memphis Note
Everyone that lives in Memphis knows the stretch of Poplar in Germantown that this story is about. Just past Exeter, until it merges with Poplar Pike, is a place where if you aren’t actively watching your speedometer, you’ll find yourself easily into the fifties without even noticing. It feels like highway you should be doing a bare minimum of fifty-five on, but if you even get close to that, you’re looking at a rather expensive ticket from the always vigilant Germantown Police Department. I swear they built the road like that to keep the city funded.

Sweat was beading up on the back of her legs. She could feel her pores suffocating under the nylon hose, could feel herself suffocating inside the corset, could feel herself suffocating inside of her life.

Then without warning, that was suddenly it. That was all she was going to take.

She kicked her leg up over the door of the convertible Cadillac to get a breeze up her skirt.

“What the hell!” Her husband bellowed when he realized what she was doing.

Shrugging, she told him to shut it.

His jaw went slack, flabbergasted at her.

“Lynda, I swear, if you talk to me like that I’ll-”

She cut him off.

“You’ll just keep up your little slalom eastward on a street called north, but don’t worry about how off that is, because you’ll be to caught up to think about what happens next.

See, I know about all your girls. And I’ve finally had enough. I’m leaving you. And taking half of everything that’s yours.

I’m going to smoke, drink whiskey, dance with strange men, but more than that, I’m never going to wear these stupid clothes again.”

In the end, she wore the Cadillac better than he did.

Memphis Note
It has always bothered me that it is impossible to drive in the direction that the three parkways are named for. North and South Parkways only has east/west traffic, East Parkway only north/south. I realize this is because they were originally the northern, southern and eastern edges of the city proper, but it still bothers me.

They’d gotten the cancer out of his prostate, but it had fought back in his balls. Ultimately, they removed his testicles, instead of risking a recurrence of the cancer and the embarrassment of hypogonadism. Instead they left him with the embarrassment of a piece of bendy metal in his johnson.

“Feels weird,” he said to his son, on discharge day. “Like I’m always at half mast.”

His son started to respond, then stopped, his mouth open, malformed words awkwardly stuck in his throat.

“So,” he eventually managed to get out. “What’s next?”

“Back to the track, I ‘magine. Gotta get ready for the drag races in spring. Stock parts, check the car, all that. Kinda miss the MIR, you know?”

A stern look shushed shushed his son’s forthcoming protestations.

“Son, I love you, but your mother’s dead, and you’re a father of your own now. I’m in the bittersweet position where I’ve got no one left to live for but myself.”

He took one last look around the hospital room where he’d almost died. He swore he’d never be back here again.

“And, if it’s just the same to you, I’d rather feel alive with the time I’ve got left.”

Memphis Note
MIR is the abbreviation for the Memphis International Raceway, formerly the Memphis Motorsports Park. The MIR is one of the few places in the Mid-South that gearheards can get their fix. They specialize in drag races and amateur events. And when their doors are open, you can hear the roar of engines for miles.