#attex

When I couldn’t answer a question myself, Ernesto could, thinking for a second and pulling reams of information from his long years of repairing shitty yard toys for helpless suburbanites like myself. What would happen when Ernesto failed? I imagined for years that there was another, better mechanic out there, but none of my problems were ever serious enough to necessitate the introduction of such a person. Not even that time I sheared off a bolt flush with the front of the engine case was enough to stop him in his tracks for more than the time it took to pick out the “good” left-hand drill bits.

One morning, my own apprentice, my neighbour Carl, had a question about his outboard motor. I couldn’t even comprehend what I was looking at inside the non-Euclidean surfaces of the cylinder head, so I took it immediately to Ernesto.

He frowned, as if witnessing the success of an old enemy, and told me that I had to call “the Attexman.” My heart began to race. Was this Ernesto’s superior? What the hell was an Attex? All my questions would be answered in time.

I drove to this Attexman’s house, having carefully selected my car in order to make the best possible first impression. For this kind of trip, no other vehicle would do but my mint-condition Suzuki Sidekick, a vehicle that appealed to both the shut-in nerd and hardcore 4x4 enthusiast alike.

What I saw wasn’t so much a ‘house’ as it was a high-class Unabomber shed. Inside, I met a man who didn’t notice my approach. I tried to get his attention, but he refused to acknowledge me, only endlessly rebuilding the strange head in front of him, over and over. It seemed that every time he completed the fix, the valves suddenly became too tight, as if nature itself was working against the humble two-stroke engine of his bathtub-shaped ATV. Suddenly, an idea occurred to me, and I blurted it out before thinking of the consequences.

“Why don’t you just put in a Honda?”

Hateful eyes snapped up from the workbench, and I became aware of a deep hissing sound that seemed to fill the room. At that point, I decided that the better part of valour was running the fuck away, banging the clattering engine of the Sidekick into fuel cut on every shift as I made good my escape.