Questions 1-10 refer to the following information.
Prose Fiction—Imago
I changed my own oil for the first time in the summer
of the seventeen-year locusts. Really, it wasn't all that
difficult—just dirty, vexing, and a little sad. I hear
locusts too when I remember my father calling me out
5 into the driveway to watch him work on his old Chevy
Vega.
"Now mark this, because a kid your age should know
what's happening under the hood."
Nodding, I turned and tried to skate away on the
10 mechanic's creeper; the casters caught on some loose
wrenches and I skinned my knee. I never really took to
cars, or much of anything mechanical. Somehow it all
seemed too artificial, and at school I found that I
preferred bones to bolts, moth wings to air filters, and the
15 vapors of ether and formaldehyde to that of gasoline. But
I conceded; lying supine underneath the car with him, he
raised a finger to show me the fuel and coolant lines as if
pointing out two overlapping constellations. It was cozy
underneath the car—heat still quivering off the engine
20 block, the noxious, earthy odor of greased bolts, the
cricket-sounds of a socket wrench as it doubled back for
another twist—I felt I was enwrapped by a cocoon,
where silk filaments had been swapped for drop forged
steel.
25 "This here's the drain plug. Mark it, or you'll get
yourself a face full of hot oil."
I didn't mark it. At the time I was probably more
concerned with marking the little, sandy ant-hills rising
through cracks in the cement, and the tiny brown insects
30 scuttling between globules of spilt petroleum. My father
often said how proud he was of me, but I've always
believed that he was disappointed when I chose to study
ecology instead of "working with my hands."
I slid beneath the undercarriage and burnt my palm
35 on an exhaust pipe. Dumb— I'd driven nearly fifteen miles
out of town, recalling the little excursions I'd take with
him right before an oil change, just to warm the lines and
"loosen up the gunk." He seemed to know instinctively,
by some tactile, psychic, or olfactory sentience, the
40 moment when all fluids had flooded their various vessels,
and the car transformed, from an ignited curio of
interlocking iron, to an engorged, circulating body of
whooshing vapors and caustic liquefactions.
But I'd let the engine get too hot, and could only bide
45 the time until it was ready to be touched again. The grass
against my neck was soft, but scratchy. I'd pulled off
alongside a huge bean field almost prepared for harvest,
and the illusory silence that follows cutting a car's motor
quickly came to underscore the high, relentless roar of
50 locusts. I laid beneath the car feeling like a larval locust,
buried shallow in the soil, stiffly awaiting my brief
interval above. Like an insect, I had to angle my wrists
and elbows in order to maneuver the tools. I glanced
around at all the tubes and mechanisms my father had
55 once identified for me. Things seemed much bigger back
then. I whispered their names, deciphering the engine
like a poem in a half-remembered language. The locusts
were so loud I expected they would saw themselves in
two.
60 The seventeen-year locusts, of course, aren't true
locusts. Magicicada septendecim never plagued the
pharaohs of Egypt, and—for all the millions in their
swarms—would scarcely harm the crops beside me. They
are strange creatures: underground, they while away
65 sixty-eight seasons, indolently metamorphosing. And
their emergence is twofold: once from the soil, and then
from their own skin; the second is the greater struggle,
but necessary for survival nonetheless. They unfold their
wings, they learn to fly, and not much later, they die.
70 On the drive back, I looked down beside me at the
several plastic jugs of fetid oil and wondered how many
it would take to gather up all the lifeless locusts from the
bean field in a few days. I washed my hands. From the
kitchen window I could see my car, parked askew in the
75 blistering, black driveway, the green panels glinting like
a beetle's carapace. The hot water began to sting; the skin
across my palm had started to peel.