You Must Relax
GRAVEDIGGER
Your brother Daniel sits across from you in his truck, angry. His truck is called El Toro Loco and it is a monster truck. It has a 2004 Custom Bull body with a 540 cubic inch Merlin Big Block engine. Its fiberglass horns have been newly painted with orange flames and point directly at you.
Daniel is frowning but you are not. Inside, you are seething, but your face is serene, because all around you is the shining green metal chassis of Graaaaaaaaavedigger. Its body, assembled from the corpses of several 1950 Chevy Panel Vans, is airbrushed with horrifying images. A haunted house silhouetted by a full moon. A pink skull. The graves of its rival trucks…
Your father’s ghost officiates. It roars “GO” and you cross the simulation-of-Mars dirt pile at your brother. Your aim is to crush him. It’s a family tradition. When a disagreement can’t be settled with words—and this one is unspeakable—the men of your family ram monster trucks. Always have, always will. In a black and white striped shirt, your father’s ghost nods knowingly. He will decide what counts as “crushed.”
You try to close in, but the terrain makes it difficult. There are crags and bumps and pointless ramps in your way. Old scrapped Ford pickups are arranged in neat rows. Daniel veers off course. He takes a ramp and jumps over a string of five Fords. His 645 pound back wheels land on the last one’s roof and it crumples like a paper cup. He has always been a show-off.
You stomp on the gas and your 66 inch tires kick up dirt. Your red lights are on, which means you’re ready to go All Out.
There is an ‘02 Mercedes Sprinter Van between you and Daniel, so you run it over. Your front wheels crush it with ease but something under your chassis catches on its shattered back window. The impact sends you sideways. You are flying and for a moment, you are upside down. Suspended in the air, your dad’s disappointment looks like a smile.
You crash into a sign for Advance Auto Parts and roll onto your side. You rev your 1500 horsepower engine, but you can’t get up. Your wheels spin, dragging Gravedigger’s shell in circles like an overturned bug. El Toro Loco smells blood and charges. Daniel leers at you through bulletproof glass.
You try to recall how this argument started. It had to do with your mother. Her burial, or the inheritance, or something about her memory. You’re not sure anymore. As often happens when you and your brother ram trucks, you have forgotten the root of your pain in the process. Each hateful glance you shared has been a pile of dirt shoveled atop your anger, burying the lede. This must be why this strange filial ritual became a tradition.
Now, soaring off a ramp to inflict maximum damage, your elder brother looks small, fragile, and beautiful inside his titanium cage. He also looks mad. Very mad.
Abruptly, your family tradition seems excessive. Unnecessary. While once, in the early days of Monster Jam, this ramming of trucks must have replaced some real violence, now there is nothing real for which it may stand in. The metaphor has run dry. Now you’re just ramming trucks.
“Isn’t there a better way to settle this?” you ask Daniel, stepping out of Gravedigger.
“You’re just pissed cause you’re losing,” he says as El Toro Loco’s horns gore your truck’s undercarriage.
“No I mean it,” you say, appealing to the crowd of drunken spectators. “This is absurd. It just makes us more violent.”
The crowd boos. They wave their foam fingers side to side as if to say, No.
Your father’s ghost is about to declare you the loser when Daniel jumps down from El Toro Loco. He looks angrier than ever. You have hurt him and what’s worse, you have denied him his trusted pain reliever. Plus you ruined the show.
It seems possible he will hit you. His strides toward you, hands in fists above his waist. He has never hit you (outside of a monster truck) but this time there is something different in his stance. You’re older now, adults with families of your own; the stakes are higher. The corner of his eye, where the two lids meet, twitches ominously.
Daniel is really going to hit you! But you hardly mind because here is your big brother, fists knotted with care, coming closer to you out of genuine concern for something you have done. Your truck’s engine is smoking and your brother’s fists look like two balls of pure love. You stand with your arms out, ready to receive your brother’s love, as if he were going in for a hug.
Daniel pauses, one fist cocked behind his ear. Before he can swing, your mother’s ghost appears between you.
“Put the trucks away and go home, both of you,” it says.
“But Mom!” yells Daniel.
“Elena,” says your father. “Now’s not the time.”
“It sure as hell is,” your mother replies. Her levitating body swivels to face him. “How many times have I told you this stupid tradition doesn’t solve a thing?”
“You don’t get to decide!” Your father is shouting now, losing his cool.
“Oh yes I do,” she says. And they hop into their F-15s to settle the score.
If mangled metal could show relief, that’s how you’d look.