Gasoline

He had loved cars ever since he was a boy. The smell of gasoline, the hum of the engines and the smooth motion of the car attracted him like a moth to a flame. He remembered that on his 18^th birthday, his gift had been a second hand Chevy Camaro. It was orange with white stripes vinyled on it. He loved that car. He drove it to school, he drove his mother to work or to the grocer’s and he drove his friends to their respective homes at the end of the school day.

When he joined college, he found a new love- racing. It was the adrenaline rush that made it so rewarding for him. He raced around the city at night, sometimes getting chased by the cops; but never getting caught. Racing turned the purr of the car to a roar, like a lion being released from it’s cage. He was a good racer. He set impressive lap times on the road leading from the college to the city. He had never lost a drag race in his life.

After college, his love of racing made him take to the tracks. He participated in rally races and again his lap times were superb. People started calling him the next phenomenon. When he was not out amongst the racers burning rubber, he would be inside tuning his car. Cars were always attractive to him as I said earlier. He would tinker with the suspension, brake pads and even tweak the engine from time to time. He made sure the coolant in his car was always there, that it had adequate power steering fluid and he always kept his gas tank full. We were not unsupportive of his desire to race and we would turn up at the track from time to time to watch him race. He was good, weaving his way in between cars, shifting at the right times and generally staying within the top 3 in every race.

My brother was in a car on the day he died. He was out on the track, cruising at an even 80mph when it happened. He didn’t see a brick or some such object on the track I’m told. He drove over it and his rear tire exploded. His car spun out of control, did a backflip and rammed the divider. We dragged him out of the wreck. He was still breathing, despite having sustained serious injuries. The irony is that he died in our car on the way to the hospital.

You see, though he loved racing; racing never loved him back. He was always a car fanatic and it is only fitting that he died doing what he loved, in a machine that he loved.

This is the story of my brother and today he would have been 32.

The Bilge Master