Gary Huizenga Autobody

GARY HUIZENGA Second Place Salveson Prize in Prose

Autobody

A car is a body, a collection of bodies that working together are meant for propulsion. My own car is an organism of particular brilliance, painted gold and polished, capable of running up to 10 miles an hour when I am inside. My car is self-driving and even though it is self-driving I will, from time to time, amuse myself by twisting the steering wheel to hear various parts shriek and groan in protest.

Every Saturday afternoon I slide into this lively being and accept the warm embrace of my seatbelt as I sink into the arms of my chair. As the car roars with vitality, the radio begins to gently Every Satursing my favorite song. I spent a lot of money on the day afternoon radio, which has a beautiful voice and sits on the I slide into this passenger seat. He is the only one that gets a seat. lively being

I hum along as my car picks up speed. It runs and accept the with an odd gallop on four tangled limbs. I have warm embrace tried everything I can think of to make it roll. I of my seatbelt have thoroughly ruined many of its parts. As it is a as I sink into particularly sunny day I have allowed the roof to stay the arms of my home. I have put it to work shading the dog instead.

Had I been paying attention, I may have chair. noticed that he did not stay where I left him. I may also have noticed that my car was not taking me along my usual Saturday afternoon route. Instead it took me to a secluded part of my orchard where nothing was growing and no pickers were twisting through trees as they gathered plump fruits into baskets. I did not notice any of these abnormalities until my car began to slow.

When it did slow, I began beating the side of the steering wheel with my fist, shrieking profanities of every kind. To my shock and horror, that part responded in kind and wriggled itself free from the rest of the car. The car, unable to maintain cohesion without the cooperation of each member, writhed and roiled around me. I tumbled into a living mass that was curling

and unfurling until I hit the ground. I watched a fleshy horde congeal around me, limbs snapping into their natural positions, straightening in ways that had become unfamiliar to me.

“What are you doing?” I spluttered enraged, “You’re not acting like a car at all.”

“No” said one of my bodies, and I recognized the voice of the radio though now it gave me a chill, “we’re not.”

Judge’s Comments: This story takes as its center an object many of us use daily without a second thought—a car—and wonderfully re-imagines it until it becomes strange, an actual collection of bodies with a mind and will of their own. As the car rises up against the rough driver, the story seems to become a provocative cautionary tale: Be careful how you treat your possessions lest they turn around and use you the way you’ve used them.

—Ruth Williams Poet and Associate Professor of English, William Jewell College