Out of Nowhere(16)

“BMW. Established 1916. Produced aircraft engines but forced to stop based on the terms of the Treaty of Versailles prohibiting the manufacture and stockpile of arms or armored vehicles. Began producing motorcycles in 1923 and cars in 1928. In the 1930s, BMW engine designs were used for Luftwaffe aircraft, including the first four-jet aircraft to be flown—”

“Holy crap, so Conan has a Nazi car?” Carlos says.

I can’t take my eyes off Ricky. She’s staring straight ahead like she’s reading this information out of the air.

“Hey, Ricky?” I say. She jerks her gaze toward me. “That’s really impressive. How do you know all that?”

“Yo, Ricky Recordo right here! She’s got a straight-up photographic memory,” Mikal says, stepping closer to me and winking.

“Oh. Cool,” I say. “Great. So, we’ve got the year, the manufacturer. Then the model of the car. In this case, 320. Well, 320i, but the i just means it has fuel injection—anyway, the 320 refers to which BMW it is.”

The kids are looking a little blank.

“But, okay, so a 2014 Honda Civic is simpler: it was made in 2014, by Honda, and the model is a Civic. Got it?”

“Got it,” a few of them echo.

“Pop the hood?” I ask Rafe. He has to contort to do it from outside the car and he’s surprisingly flexible. He has on worn black jeans that sit low on his hips and hug his ass perfectly and a gray henley with the sleeves pushed up his muscular forearms. Damn, I am not paying attention to that right now because I’m supposed to be talking about cars. Uh, no, I’m not paying attention to that period.

I force my eyes to the car and resolve not to look at Rafe again. Under the hood is familiar territory, and I lose myself for a moment in the satisfaction of seeing everything exactly where it should be. When Daniel was little, he had these books he would beg me to read to him that he got from the school library where a wacky science teacher miniaturized the kids in her class so that they could see things at the micro level. Daniel would sit on my lap and we’d trace the students’ path through the human body, through a hurricane, through the solar system. That’s how I feel when I look at a car. Like I’m tiny and can imagine a path through all its different systems. It’s dumb, I guess, but it helps me picture everything.

I figured that I’d start by explaining how each of the systems work—engine, exhaust, brakes, cooling, electrical, fuel, suspension, etc. It will give them a good sense of the basics and how all the systems interrelate.

“So, does anyone know what makes a car starts when you turn the key?”

Blank looks and narrowed eyes.

Ignition is so cool—like an action movie. I can see it in my head: the combustion chamber and the crankcase, the pistons floating on a layer of oil in the cylinder, moving up and down, rotating the crankshaft and starting rotary motion; the valve train; the camshaft opening the intake valve as the piston moves down, forming a vacuum that sucks air and fuel into the combustion chamber where they’re compressed; the spark plug firing, igniting fuel and air, the explosion pushing the piston back down the cylinder and driving the crankshaft; the exhaust valve opening and the excess gasses being pushed out to the exhaust system. Each tiny piece has one job, and when they work together perfectly, they power this one-and-a-half-ton machine. It amazes me every time I think about it.

I realize I haven’t said anything out loud and the kids are still staring at me, and I immediately rethink my plan to explain all the systems. I don’t know how to express to them the… magic that I see.

“Um,” I say. “Well, really, it’s an explosion. Fuel—the gas you put in the car—and air get compressed, squeezed into a really small space, and then a spark ignites them and the explosion starts the car. Like a bullet.”

“Whoa, cool,” the kids chorus.

“So why doesn’t the whole car explode?” asks one of the girls who introduced each other earlier.

“Yeah,” says the other. “And sometimes don’t they just explode?”

“Totally,” Carlos says. “Hey, do real cars explode like in the movies? Like… what do you call it…?”

“Spontaneous combustion,” supplies Gap Model quietly.

“Yeah,” says Carlos, pounding on Gap Model’s shoulder in thanks, “spontaneous combustion! That’s so sweet.”

“Ooh, honey, I saw a car on fire once, at 12th and Girard. I bet it totes blew up,” Mikal says.

“Oh my god, would you stop it with ‘totes,’ Mikey. You sound like a twelve-year-old white girl.”