Morris Minor, Crisis Major

MacConnels was not the right choice.

My body screams noooo as I reluctantly bite into what is supposedly a burger, swallowing quickly in the faint hope my taste buds can still be saved. Yuck.

I try to eat as slowly as possible so that we'll run out of time before I'm forced to finish it. Oh, what a shame. Such a tragedy. Picking up a couple of chips, I squeeze them without thinking. Oil oozes down my fingers. “Eugh.”

I stand up just as James gets back, plastering on a smile.

"Thanks, Amira, you left some for me!" he grins.

"All yours," I say, definitely out of my vast generosity.

I wash the grease off my hands in the bathroom, then come back to grab a Coke from the counter.

"Want one?" I ask James. He gives me a thumbs up through a mouthful of chips.

Once they're paid for, James checks his watch, his eyes widening. "Sheep." He jams the cold, condensation-soaked bottle between his shoulder and his ear, grabbing his keys. "We're late. At this rate we'll only get to Newcastle by midnight."

Right. Keys, where are they? I dig into my back pocket—keys for the Morris Minor that my dad gave me for just 400 bucks.

“There’s still time for the mechanic visit, though?” I ask, pushing through the heavy glass exit doors into the bright Wollongong sun.

“We are not skipping that. I don’t trust this tin can.” James clicks his seatbelt, the old buckle sticking for a second.

“It’s not a—”

Shut the car door. We’re off.

*

Welcome to Prime Time Radio. Today is a beautiful Monday morning, with light traffic at Wollongong, and this amazing sunshine. What’s your favourite place to eat out, and why? Well, we’ve conducted a survey, and topping the charts is MacConnels, for its high-quality food and admirable convenience. Coming in second...

*

Apparently our car is doing fine. The mechanic tells James it was good we dropped in.

“So, where are you off to? Sea Cliff Bridge, Bald Hill Lookout?” the mechanic asks eagerly.

“Newcastle.” James gives him some cash. “Why?”

The mechanic goes pale. I drink some Coke. “I expect you’re switching to an Uber or something at least halfway through? Not this car the whole way, right?” he asks.

“No,” James furrows his brow. “Why’d we do that? You just said the car is perfectly fine.”

“Good luck with that one, mate.” The mechanic pats the bonnet and leaves.

James gets in the driver’s seat and shrugs. “That makes two of us sane people,” he says, turning the key.

“Ah, so who’s the person that’s not me?” I say. “Because it can’t be you.” He glowers at me and I actually have to look away to not spit Coke all over his face.

He takes a long swig out of his own bottle. “We’ll be fine.”

We finish the Cokes about forty minutes into the drive. The air conditioning consists entirely of rolling the windows down and praying for a breeze, so by the time we hit the base of the foothills, the cabin feels like a literal furnace. I’m staring at my empty bottle, wondering if I can recycle it for the ten-cent deposit to buy a personality transplant for James, when the road starts to tilt upward.

The Morris Minor does not like hills.

The engine changes from its usual pathetic purr to a deep, agonizing rattle. We’re crawling. I swear a cyclist passes us on the left.

“Come on, little guy,” James mutters, white-knuckling the steering wheel and leaning forward as if his body weight will push us up the incline. “Just get to the top.”

It doesn't get to the top. Right at the peak of the hill, the engine lets out a wet, metallic clunk, a hiss of steam shoots out from the bonnet, and we lose all power. James pumps the pedal, but it’s dead. We roll to a sketchy stop on the gravel.

This is it. This is how it all ends. Amira Carver. Cause of death: MacConnels poisoning and poor life choices.

James grabs both his and my coke bottle and dashes out of the car. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Ah yes, my mind says, insanity is a symptom of dyingness. However, I still mostly like James, so I call out “What are you doing, you maniac?!”

He runs back up, dirty water sloshing out of the bottles. I turn off the radio just as the presenter says ‘how NOT to’ and get out of the car. Partially because I want to help James, but 95.6% because I hear that exploding is one of the worst ways to go.

The bonnet opens and James pours the ditch water onto the radiator. Maybe the radiator expected something better because it hisses and spits like a crazed person. James gets engulfed in a bad smelling cloud of... something.

I mentally inform life that, while it breaks my heart, I am prepared to sacrifice James.

Unfortunately, the car survives. James’s face is still attached, and somehow, when he turns the key, the Morris starts again.

I lean back, relieved.

James does not look relieved. He puts the car in neutral and we coast downhill. Poor guy must be terrified.

*

...special appearance from a mechanic, who will tell us how NOT to quick-fix your car. So Chuck, what’re your tips? G'day, Dave! My number one rule: if your bonnet is steaming, do not yank that cap off and dump random water in.

You've created a ticking time bomb. Untreated water grinds your water pump to pieces until the car dies on the highway. Number two...

*

We’ve made it to Sydney! I can’t believe it. We’ve actually survived this far in the Morris from hell. The hunger gnawing at my stomach takes a break, probably to celebrate as well. I look out the window like a little kid. We’re about to get on the Harbour Bridge, and I haven’t seen it for a long time.

I want to go to sleep to take my mind off food, but something doesn’t feel right. It starts small, but soon my seat is searing so much I can practically taste the five Michelin star, medium rare roast Amira. James rubs his eyes furiously and I grab the steering wheel because I hear that car crashes are also one of the worst ways to go.

On the Harbour Bridge. Instead of the childlike excitement, I feel a sense of foreboding. It hasn’t been this hot the whole day, but our car is getting hotter. Hotter. Hotter.

There’s a huge whoosh. I look out the windscreen, desperately hoping that a symptom of not eating for an hour is hallucination. Because if it is, I’m hallucinating that our bonnet is up in flames. I blink much more aggressively than necessary, then realise that no, the flames enveloping our car are real.

There’s orange and yellow licking at the Morris. James looks frantically, forward, back, left, right, but there is nowhere we can stop in the middle of the bridge without causing a pileup and our own deaths. “Okay. We’re gonna be--”

“JAMES!”

“... yeah, no.”

So we drive the rest of the harbour bridge very much on fire. Once we're off the bridge, he swerves to the left and slams the brake. Skidding, sliding, slipping. We slue onto the grass right after the bridge exit. James and I fly out of the doors because, as established, exploding is high on my list of things not to do today.

The bonnet is fully on fire. Like, a proper campfire.

"The bottles!" James yells, looking like he’s about to cry. "Amira, the Coke bottles!"

I dive back into the footwell, inhaling plastic smoke that definitely subtracts three years from my life expectancy, and rip the empty bottles out. We are right next to the harbour water. My brain doesn't even process it. I run down the grass, vault a stone wall, and drop onto some incredibly slippery rocks. I ram both bottles into the salty Sydney Harbour, fill them to the top, and scramble back up.

"Catch!" I yell, launching the first one at his head.

He pours it on the fire, and we swap (hurl at each other) the bottles. I fill the empty one, he empties the full one until the fire is dead. James checks the brake to make sure the cable isn’t burnt through.

We sit on the grass for a while.

“Uh,” James starts.

“Don’t,” I cut off.

“But I didn’t--”

“You were gonna.”

I get in the driver’s seat.

"We are never speaking of this," James says, staring dead ahead.

"Agreed," I say, wiping soot off my face.

*

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*

We merge back into traffic and head toward the freeway, desperately praying the car doesn't self-destruct again. My nerves are completely shot. To break the suffocating silence, I reach out and click the radio back on.

“...and an urgent update for drivers heading north,” he says. “The main freeway is officially closed in both directions due to catastrophic bushfires. Emergency services are advising everyone to pull over. If you're already on the blacktop, find a safe spot, because you aren't going anywhere.”

I don't even scream this time. I just let out a small, deflated wheeze and steer the burnt marshmallow toward the shoulder. Ahead of us, a solid wall of red brake lights blinks into existence, stretching out as far as the eye can see. The sky isn't blue anymore. It’s an ominous, bruised charcoal colour that tells us our Monday is officially ruined.

We are stuck.

Hour one is fuelled by optimism. James keeps checking his watch like he can bully the hands into moving backward. “They’ll clear it soon,” he says, nodding aggressively. “An hour, tops.”

Hour five is when the optimism dies. The sun beats down on the roof, turning the cabin into a literal airless oven. Because we doused the engine in Sydney Harbour, the car now smells like an equal mixture of melted plastic and hot, decomposing seaweed.

By the morning of Wednesday, I am ready to eat the Morris Minor's vinyl seats. Or James. He is staring blankly at the dashboard, probably hallucinating about that mechanic.

Then, a giant red Salvation Army truck appears through the smoke. A guy in a hi-vis vest gets out and knocks on our window. I roll it down with the absolute last shred of my remaining energy. He smiles and hands us a cardboard box and two cold bottles of water.

I open the box, and my soul leaves my body.

It's MacConnels.

Cold, squashed MacConnels.

James is stuffing his face. “Well,” he says. “Eat up.”

I take a bite. My stomach is glad to have something in it but I will never deny that it’s worse than before. The lettuce is decomposing and liquefying and the tomatoes are leaking juice all over the bun.

I eat as much as I can handle (one burger, surprisingly – new record). I take off my seatbelt and go to sleep.

By the time the police finally open the road on Thursday, the Morris Minor has apparently accepted its fate as a charred piece of scrap metal. We wheeze all the way up the coast, crawling past the speed limit signs until, finally, Newcastle appears. We pull into the driveway, where the Morris from hell gives one last juddering cough, gratuitously throws in a dramatic puff of smoke, and dies a permanent death.

We sit there for a while.

“Well,” says James “We made it!”

“Barely.”

“We’re seventy-two hours late, but we’re alive, and have survived all that crazy stuff!”

I think about it. He’s right. It’s a miracle we’re here. Seventy-two hours with James? Wow, I should go on a special episode of Australian Story or something.

“It’s time for dinner...” he says. I catch the gleam in his eye. “Up for MacConnels?”

I slam my forehead against the steering wheel, asking it to put me out of my misery. Then I get up. “Fine. But you’re paying...” I pat the car door. “And apparently, we’re walking.”

(inspired by true events)