Thinking Things Through At Les Schwab by Tess Kelly
Managing Editor Andrew Walker on today’s bonus short: When stuck waiting at the mechanics, what else is there to do but contemplate one’s surroundings? Through straightforward, impactful prose, “Thinking Things Through at Les Schwab” asks its reader to consider the history of quotidian things like tires. Like a trusty car with new wheels, this short travels far and wide in a space that feels all too familiar.
Thinking Things Through At Les Schwab
Off to get printer ink at Best Buy, my Honda plunged into a coffin-sized pothole with the blast of a blowout. I inched into the parking lot of the nearest Les Schwab Tire Center. The mechanic behind the counter resembled Paul Walker, the stunning action film star who died when his Porsche slammed into a tree at 100 miles an hour. Paul said I’d have to wait at least three hours. “With a winter storm brewing, everyone wants snow tires.”
“I didn’t even bring a book,” I groaned, recalling Station Eleven on my nightstand. Paul shrugged and we locked eyes for a hot second. His were cornflower blue.
I wandered around the shop. I ate two bags of lamp-heated popcorn and a salty old meat stick I’d found in my glove compartment. General Hospital blared from the crowded waiting room TV, mere background noise for patrons slumped in molded chairs, suckling their cell phones. I would have joined them if mine had data.
I wandered some more. I smelled the bitter rubber from tire shelves that reached a 20-foot ceiling. I wondered where it had been harvested and who had suffered for the tires on my privately owned vehicle: a 2200-pound Civic charged with toting a two-ounce printer ink cartridge. I wondered about the ages of the harvesters and how little they were paid. I wondered about the tires’ origins, the tropical landscapes of South America, West Africa, Southeast Asia.
I estimated how many tires were in that one Les Schwab and multiplied it by a hundred Les Schwabs. Was I in the ballpark? I asked Paul how many Les Schwabs actually existed. He said more than 500 and that really gave me something to think about.
Then I imagined all the tires that no longer spun down interstates and backroads, the ones recycled into shoe soles or sports equipment and the lucky few that swung from tree branches, encircling a daydreamy child. I thought about tire shreds on highway shoulders and worn-out tires in landfills, toxins leaching into Earth. I envisioned stacking a fraction of those buried tires to the moon, the atmosphere growing thinner and bleaker with each rubbery mile.
I grew restless. I asked Paul for a break on the tire cost and got 20 dollars off. “Yeah, I can’t give much of a discount for something like that,” he said. “If you hit a rock or nail that’d be different.” Different, I suppose, in that the tire might have survived with a patch.
There was a holiday toy collection barrel near the entrance. It looked as though someone had shoved a mink coat into it. I crept closer. The fur belonged to a gorilla that was about as big as a fifth-grader. Its arms hung over the bin’s rim and its head slumped forward. I gently lifted the face and gazed into its brown plastic eyes, the kind of eyes that track you no matter where you position yourself. The gorilla looked sad, in the way real gorillas might look, gorillas that live in rubber tree forests demolished for human consumption. Humans like me.
I roamed back to the counter and asked Paul if I could have some free beef. “Yeah, Les Schwab doesn’t give away beef anymore. Besides, it was only during February when sales were slow.” I didn’t care, I didn’t want beef. I’d just gnawed an old meat stick. I wanted to talk to Paul. Why are you here and not Hollywood? was what I really wanted to say.
I thought about my nephew who worked at a different Les Schwab. I once went to see him on the job. He popped out from behind a jacked-up Toyota truck and ambled toward me, half smiling. He wore navy coveralls and a name tag. My nephew doesn’t look like Paul Walker, he looks like himself. He loves cars, especially restored muscle cars. Back then he drove a red Mustang half a mile to work. I thought he should have walked but never told him that because we have a complicated relationship. I went to Les Schwab because I wanted things to be less complicated. My nephew has a blue eye and a brown eye. Heterochromia, it’s called. Sometimes I don’t know where to look.
Tess Kelly's essays have appeared in River Teeth, Sweet Lit, Cleaver and HerStry, among other publications. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.
