Chapter 4 #2
“Okay,” Ricky said from the simplicity that I hadn’t known to cherish of the passenger seat.
“Don’t look at the instruments for now. Let’s start with the feet.
There are three pedals, right?” I nodded numbly as I shifted my gaze down.
“You can remember them like this: A, B, C. From right to left, you have your accelerator, your brake, and your clutch. You’ll use your right foot for the accelerator and the brake, and your left foot for the clutch.
The car’s off right now; when we go to turn it on—not yet—you’ll want your right foot firmly on the brake, and your left depressing the clutch, all the way down. ”
I practiced putting my feet on the correct pedals. “Jeez, why don’t they feel the same? I want them to feel the same. Don’t I want them to be in sync or something?”
“No, you don’t,” he said firmly. “Now, before we turn the car on, but while you have the clutch in, let’s practice shifting gears.
We have the car in first right now; you can see the shift pattern on the knob there.
Keep the clutch in, and see if you can go from first to second, then to third, then fourth.
” I obediently tried to wrangle the knob through the gears, mostly successfully, I think.
“Now let’s find neutral,” Ricky said, and he put his hand over mine on the shifter and a shiver ran straight up my arm.
He guided my hand gently to the center, wiggling the knob to demonstrate.
“See, here you’re not in any of the gears.
You might go into neutral if, say, you’re getting off the freeway and there’s a red light at the end of the off-ramp.
You’re reducing speed very quickly, right?
So you could go from fourth into neutral while you brake, without having to go down through third, second, first.”
“While we’re here,” I said coyly, “why don’t you guide me through all the gears?”
“There he is,” he grinned, onto my ruse, but he humored me and guided my hand through the full shift pattern.
“So, are you ready to drive?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said with conviction.
“Good. Put it in first, foot on the brake, clutch in, and turn the key.”
Oh, boy. I followed the steps, and the car rumbled to life. The steering wheel vibrated a bit under my grip. Ricky showed me how to release the parking brake.
“Now, the clutch is in, right?” I stared down at my feet and nodded.
“Okay, take your foot off the brake. We’re not going to give it any gas yet.
You’re going to slowly lift off the clutch, only until you feel it start to release and the car start to move.
Then you’re going to hold the pedal in that position and drive with only the clutch for a minute. Does that make sense?”
“Nope,” I said cheerfully, knowing it wouldn’t matter.
I watched as I gingerly took my right foot off the brake, then craned my neck for a better angle on my left foot as I started to release the clutch. Millimeter by millimeter, my foot raised further from the floor until finally, slowly, the car started to creep forward.
“Okay, good, hold your foot right there,” Ricky said calmly. “And, Oliver?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Please look out the windshield.”
My neck snapped up, my eyes wide in terrified realization, and the car sputtered to a halt as the engine stalled. “Oh no! What did I do?”
“Well, you probably came off the clutch when you looked up. The trick is to work the pedals without having to look at them. But the road is very straight here and there’s nobody around, so it’s okay. Let’s try again.”
I tried again, and again and again, stalling a couple of times but mostly getting the hang of letting the car creep forward with the clutch partially out, then bringing it to a stop by pushing the pedal back down. Finally, Ricky decreed that I was ready to try giving it a little gas.
“You know where to hold the clutch to start moving, right?” I nodded, a little more confident but still too nervous to speak. “From there on out, as you release the clutch further, you’ll start to slowly push down on the accelerator.”
This was more working together than my feet were used to doing, but after a couple of tries, I was successfully off the clutch, puttering slowly down the road in first gear, sweat running into my eyes from my forehead.
“Okay, Oliver, you’re doing great!” I didn’t feel great. “We’re looking out the windshield, we’re off the clutch, we’re moving. Ready for the next step?”
“What’s that?” I asked, slightly frantically.
“The next step is to breathe.”
“Oh, jeez,” I said on a ragged exhale. I brought the car to a stop.
“Are you feeling okay?”
I considered this. My stomach was still knotted in panic, but there was something strangely exhilarating about learning this terrifying new skill.
And, I thought with pride, learning the hard way, not only finally being able to drive, but lapping many of my peers by being able to drive a stick shift.
“You know,” I said, “I think I am. Thank you for doing this.”
Ricky smiled broadly, his dimples appearing as he flashed his perfect teeth, which by itself was almost reward enough to have made the whole stressful exercise worthwhile.
“I’m excited for you! And you’re really doing well.
We can stop soon if you want to, but first I want us to try one more thing—let’s see if we can get you out of first gear and into second. You think you can try that?”
Of course I wasn’t sure, but I gritted my teeth and nodded through Ricky’s explanation of the mechanics of changing gears while on the move. As I started up the car again, I resolved to methodically walk myself through the steps.
Brake on; clutch in. Turn key; release parking brake; foot off the brake; slowly lift off the clutch until you feel it engage; gently start to push the gas.
Look out the windshield; breathe. Notice the curve in the road ahead and wonder whether to try shifting before or after getting to it; reach the curve while still debating; feel the car start to buck because it’s still in first. Hear a horn honking nearby, getting louder and angrier; try to give it more gas to stop the bucking, which somehow makes it worse; look around frantically for Ricky to give some instruction; catch sight of the rearview mirror for the first time, and notice the flashing headlights on the honking pickup behind you.
Start to flap your hands and scream in panic.
Yep, I had hit all the steps. Except for the one about trying to get into second gear. And the screaming and flapping might have been an improvisation.
“Oliver, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Ricky was shouting over my screams, grabbing the steering wheel and giving it a gentle rightward tug toward the shoulder. “Let it stall. Just get off the gas.”
I realized as the car juddered to a stop that I hadn’t been able to hear any guidance from Ricky over my intense focus on following the steps.
The pickup on my tail, which had seemed enormous in the rearview with its lights flashing and horn blaring, turned out to be a little old red Toyota as it zipped past. I labored to catch my breath as Ricky reached over and rubbed between my shoulder blades.
“Sorry,” he said. “I threw a lot at you this morning. Becoming fake boyfriends, learning to drive—big day!”
“Dead guy last night, too,” I wheezed. “Lots of ups and downs.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe I’d better take back over the driving.”
I was a little alarmed to see the red Toyota pickup in the parking area for the trailhead at the end of our drive, but as we began our hike and didn’t encounter anyone, the quiet and solitude around us calmed the last of my jangling nerves, and I tried to refocus on taking in the details of our hike for my story.
The narrow trail followed a stream that bubbled and burbled along over rocks, winding its way through a thick, emerald-green forest, occasionally dipping out of sight through a thicket of giant, primordial ferns.
Opposite the stream, the trail was hugged by a hillside, with the odd giant boulder shouldering its way out through the verdant vegetation.
Rivulets of water trickled down some of these, pooling a little where they met the ground, then getting absorbed under our feet on their way to join the stream.
At one point, the trail passed through the wide, low-hanging canopy of a tree; Ricky parted the leaves, which reached nearly to the ground, and together we entered its private, cool green embrace.
The trunk of the tree grew up along the edge of the path, and as we passed through, Ricky stopped, leaned against the trunk, and grabbed my arm, pulling me up next to him.
I put my hands behind my back, feeling the rough bark of the tree against my arms, while on the side of my right arm I also felt the cool skin of Ricky’s arm next to me.
“See, this,” he said at length, “this is a romantic spot.”
I took it in some more. It was definitely private.
Our closeness within the sweep of the hanging leaves felt almost overwhelmingly intimate, and the dappled light flickering through the branches onto Ricky’s face brought out the gleam of his teeth and the sparkle of his eyes and deepened the shadows in his gorgeous dimples and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiled at me.
I smiled back. “What kind of romantic things does it make you want to do?”
I was angling for him to show me, not tell, and for a second as he seemed to lean further into my arm, I got really excited.
“Well, the obvious answer is that this would be an excellent make-out spot,” he mused—absolutely the right answer—then, to my eternal frustration, he pulled away.
“But I think what I really want to do is to take a picture of you here.”
This was disappointing news. I hated having my photo taken. “Are you sure? Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one,” I said.