Leo - not "Leonard", nor "Leon", at age thirteen you have to have a cool name - remembers the first time he sat in the driver's seat of his very own car.
Mr. Dorsey was a junkyard owner, and his new father. Leo remembers that this was when he realized how important junk was. Mr. Dorsey taught him that. "Everything you see in this yard is unwanted by someone," he said to the boy a few days after the fostering paperwork was signed. "That doesn't make it useless. That doesn't make it garbage. It means that somebody just couldn't see the value of it." He gave the boy a hug. Leo silently cried as he hugged back.
The car was a wreck. The engine wouldn't turn over. The structural damage was considerable. But there was potential. When Leo looked it over, the familiar flash in his brain told him how it could be fixed. He saw the limitless possibilities, the galaxy of ideas hiding inside the metal frame. It made sense. It had clarity. He'd asked Mr. Dorsey for permission to raid the junkyard for parts to fix it. The junk-man assented with a kindly smile.
The engine was the easiest. Leo got parts from other engines, parts that didn't belong together, and he made them work. He watched himself piece together gears and coils and clockwork in ways that seemed obvious, but were impossible to explain to the curious Mr. Dorsey. The body work was tougher. Leo spent hours learning to weld properly, and his foster father still insisted on supervising whenever he used a torch. He caught young Leo inhaling paint fumes and firmly insisted that he'd do the painting himself, once the rest was finished.
Leo learned fluids - brake fluid, oil, lubricant, gasoline. A dozen different liquids pumped through the arteries of a car, keeping it alive and mobile. Mr. Dorsey took him to the thrift store and they bought the oldest, thickest clothes that'd fit Leo's still-growing frame. Then he got as dirty as he'd ever been allowed to get by any of his foster parents, then or since, but by the end of it he knew everything by sight and smell.
Mr. Dorsey didn't participate in Leo's computing hobby. Mechanical things were his interest. So when he saw Leo wiring a ponderous black box into the battery and flipping switches experimentally, he lost interest. "Just don't stay up too late," he warned the boy, who heard but didn't listen.
And so Leo found himself in the driver's seat of his very own car. And at 2 a.m., he finally sighed. "Please start," he begged of the air, gripping the steering wheel tightly.
"I'm trying, Leo, I'm trying," came an apologetic voice from the black box.
"I know, but I was so sure the ignition was wired into you correctly." Leo sighed and leaned forward, resting his forehead lightly on the steering wheel. "I'm tired. I'm gonna go to bed. Goodnight, Otto."
"Goodnight, Leo," came the voice.
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