Dearborn, Belle Tire
Mark has been doing tires for 45 years. Another patron, Sam, wants to learn. He is here with an older person in his life. The old man is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a windbreaker. The color leaks out of the gray. Sam wants to go to school to be a mechanic. He tried to go last summer, but he was too young.
The old man says, “Hey Mark, can Sam go back there and learn and see how you’re going to use the bone tool to patch it up?” Mark stares. Up and down at Sam. “I’ve heard of the bone tool,” the old man adds, “but I have not seen it. And I think Sam should see it.”
Mark says, “I have a Masters. I have a Doctorate. I’m in your court. I only left the garage last year. My vertebrae.”
There is a baby in a red and yellow flower coat, and she has pink crocs and is crawling on the floor. Her mother wears a long, army-green trench coat. She says, “Stop that. Don’t be disgusting.” It’s April 7th, 2025, and it is snowing outside. The fat rectangle slabs of gray that make up the Belle Tire floor are covered in streaks of mud. Across the street is Elite Automotive Service and Tire Repair. To the right of Elite, there is a Snipes, a brand I am not familiar with, but assume is auto related. To the left of Elite, is Metrotech Collision Repair Center. I am sitting in one of six black leather chairs along the window wall. Outside, the Michigan Avenue sidewalk is covered in gravel. There is a square of dirt cut into the sidewalk where a tree used to be.
The first time I came here, two years ago, I had a flat tire. I texted my sister: Where should I have AAA take me?
Dearborn Belle Tire, she said.
The mother picks the baby up. I nod and smile. She puts the baby over her shoulder, not facing me. My current predicament, after several tire predicaments over the last few years, goes back to a flat I had in August.
The flat was bad. It was 7 pm on a Saturday. I was joyriding in the city with my girlfriend. She had just moved back to the states from the Dominican Republic, where her family is from, and where she was attending film school. She couldn’t believe how polluted the air felt in Detroit. We were stranded in the polluted heat on Jefferson Avenue, just past Belle Isle, over by Sinbad’s, for over an hour. The AAA guy came and took us to my parents’ house where we were temporarily living. There was a spare at the house, so instead of having us towed to the Dearborn Belle Tire so late at night, we went and got the spare and the AAA guy threw it on. He told us about his dogs and how his neighbors complained about them. We kept saying we’re sorry that you’re doing this so late at night. Thank you for helping us. He said, I’m taking my time. I’m getting paid. You seem like okay people. I’m doing this because this is my choice.
Months go by and I’m teaching children and we’re moving into another place and I quit drinking and I’m trying to figure out the point of my life and why am I so unhappy and I have to buy Christmas gifts and go to the doctor but I have to get healthy before I book my appointment so they’ll be proud of me when they check my body and we have to get our names put on the water bill and the Lions are on, too, and I need them to win a Super Bowl before I die.
I ended up driving around for half a year with the spare donut on my car. From August until January, when I got a sort of waning flat, a tire that started at 35 PSI and went down to 23 PSI over the course of 3 weeks and stayed at 23 until I filled it up again. I told the technician at Belle Tire about how the computer in my car didn’t read my PSI anymore and the technician said that’s because the donut is on there. And the tires don’t match. And that breaks the computer’s mind.
I said, “That’s dumb.”
He said, “Do you want me to look into ordering a new one?”
That January day was so gray, it was like an alcoholic’s liver in the sky. Juicy rivers of rain wrapped around clouds. Ready to pummel us.
I said, “No, I have to go.”
And I did have to go somewhere, but I don’t remember where. The point is that nothing got fixed back in January. That’s how my predicament became an April thing. Maybe it was because it got warm outside that I took my car to the Belle Tire and told them I needed a new one.
Mark, who looks like a goateed Pillsbury Dough boy, says, “What is your last name?”
No eye contact. He only makes eye contact with the computer.
I say, “My last name is Spark-MAN.”
He says, “Eliza?”
I say, “No. Elijah.”
He says, “I usually hear it pronounced, Sparkman.”
I don’t say anything.
And he says, “What kind of tires do you have?”
I say, “Jeep Renegade 2020 tires.”
He says, “But what kind?”
I say, “I didn’t know there were other kinds. That’s the kind I have. I need tires for my kind of car. Jeep Renegade 2020 tires.”
He says, “It will say inside your driver’s side door what kind you have. What wheel needs a new tire?”
I say, “Back left.”
He says, “Passenger rear?”
I say, “Passenger rear.”
If I can just get this tire right, and fixed, and how it is supposed to be, then I can live safely. And I won’t die in an accident. And I can live longer than I am currently bound to live. I just know it.
Mark smacks his gum, and the drills drill behind him in the garage.
He says, “Where is the tire now?”
Of course, I don’t know. And I get this chill in me, like I am being interrogated.
Like Mark is a Tire Detective.
And then I feel stupid.
I am embarrassed that I know nothing about my tires. My embarrassment of knowing nothing practical outweighs my fear that I am being interrogated.
I grab the collar of my Carhart and accept Mark doing his job and that anyone who had their shit together would have all the answers about their car prepared for the man behind the desk. Because normal people are smart and understand and respect their cars and the people who maintain them. Some people even maintain their own cars. These people don’t live forever, some smoke cigarettes for instance, but they live in such a way that is better than living forever. They live in the flux of action and can-do.
But, also, couldn’t Mark be nicer?
I have a second job at a bookstore. I accept not everyone knows about books and authors and publishers. I meet them where they are. Mark must know that I know nothing. Mark. Meet me where I am. Mark!
I say, “I don’t know where the tire is now.”
Mark says, “What do you mean?”
I say, “The tire is gone and I don’t have access to it.”
Which is true. I am here to tell the truth.
Mark says, “Well, let’s go look and see what kind of tires you have.”
My obtuseness has forced his resignation. All I remember about that August day, when I had the flat on Jefferson Avenue, is my girlfriend being sure she’d aquired asthma ever since moving to Detroit. And the AAA guy and his dogs who were nice but who his neighbor didn’t like...but fuck those neighbors! Those dogs were good dogs even if the neighbors didn’t have the sense to observe their character. Those dogs were not going to do shit to anyone but love them.
I held the door open for Mark as we walked over to my car so he could open my driver’s side door and tell me that I had: GVRW 2080 KG 4568LB 215/60 R17 TIRES.
He said, “I can run some numbers for you.”
He checked a single box on a clipboard and neither of us held the door open for each other on the way inside.
He ran numbers and told me it’d be $236 for a new tire.
I didn’t like that number.
I felt like a new tire should be about $40.
And the idea that I was getting a new tire when I had a tire that I’d abandoned in my parents’ garage, well, that just felt wasteful.
So I told Mark, “Hey, actually, I’m going to check in about that other tire. Maybe I can locate it.”
He said, “Okay. Here is my card.”
So I left and called my mom and said, “Hey ma, you remember that time when you were out of town and I got a flat on Jefferson Avenue and I had AAA take me back to the house and they put on a spare?”
“No,” she said, “not really.”
“Well, do you remember what happened to the tire they took off? I’m finally getting it taken care of…I’ve had this stupid donut…I want to have everything fixed.”
She said, “You’ve been driving with a donut since…summer?”
“Do you know what happened to the tire? Is it in the garage or something?”
She said, “I don’t think it’s here. I can’t remember what happened to it, but whatever it was, whatever was in there, it wasn’t usable. I think we got rid of it. That’s kind of what I remember.”
“I’ll check,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s there.”
I said, “Thanks, Mom. I’ve got to go to work.”
I let her go and drove on the highway and thought maybe this will be the moment when the donut just explodes and my car goes flying off I-96 and it will be the sheer force of my body flying into concrete that kills me before the air pollution or radiation in my cellphone and I won’t see the Lions win the Super Bowl or make the world a better place through collective action.
My mom texted me, Nothing.
I poured a glass of water from my kitchen faucet.
I am in considerable credit card debt due to travelling to the Dominican Republic the last two years. I wanted to live moments with my partner that would last a long time. I am pretty sure the things that were her favorite to do were not the things that cost money. Like sitting in the park with friends, gossiping, making jokes, and showing emotions. I also paid for YouTube TV for a year so I could watch the Lions on their road to the Super Bowl because the win would feel that much better if I had watched all 18 games. I drank a lot. I paid for creative writing workshops with prestigious instructors. I ate sandwiches out of machines and drank Vitamin Water. I bought trays of enchiladas from the market for friends and watched YouTube TV with them so they could be part of my journey.
I didn’t want to bite the $236 bullet, but it is what I did, and I called Mark when I got home, sitting in my living room looking at Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, the way everything blurred into everything, somewhere in the middle, stopped being the thing it was next to, and it started becoming itself. The reproduction hung above our $150 sectional from Grosse Pointe Facebook Marketplace. Which should have been $1,100 if I bought it new from Ikea. Which is like I saved $1,000 and even if I bought a $236 tire I would still have roughly $750 that I didn’t spend on a couch and I should be proud of myself for my thrift even if it was my mom’s friend who is in Grosse Pointe Facebook Marketplace and sent me the link. But it was still me who took action and made the decision to purchase.
Just like now. I would purchase this tire and right my world.
Biting my bullet gave me a quiet sense of pride.
I would be safe. Because I stepped up and took care of business.
I called Mark and I said, “Mark, I want that tire.”
He said, “It’s late at night. Come back tomorrow. I will run some numbers.”
So I drove down to Dearborn Belle Tire in the morning.
Mark took another look and said, “Sir, Eliza, that’s a donut. We’re going to need to order you a new wheel.”
“A new wheel?”
“Come inside,” he said. The gravel stabbed into the rubber bottoms of my teaching shoes.
At the computer, Mark said, “You told me before you needed a new tire, when what you need is a new wheel.”
“I thought they were the same thing.”
“Let me look in the system.”
He clicked and swiveled his cursor.
He cleared his throat and said, “It will probably take a week to get it in and it will be $640 bucks.”
I lost the gravel in my shoe by rubbing it across the carpet in front of the kiosk.
“Mark,” I said, and took a deep breath. “It sounds like… I need this. For my car.”
He said, “That’s what I can do.”
And he added, “And I’ll be honest. I need to recommend that we put new tires on all four wheels.”
He said, “I’m certified in this. I helped do a lot of the studies, and I’ve got a webpage here…I’m pulling it up now, but the situation is that if you have one tire that is different from the other, especially in a high-performance four-wheel drive vehicle like your Jeep Cherokee, it will induce stress on the transmission. And that can be… very bad.”
He said, “Take a look at the page.”
Several paragraphs: a parable about two people walking down the sidewalk together—I think in my mind, like me and my girlfriend walking my parents’ dog—and one person has longer legs (me) than the other person (her) and over time the person with longer legs walks further if both walkers are walking the same speed. You can imagine for tires what this is like: one wanting to go far while the other doesn’t: it puts a lot of stress on the car. And fucks up the transmission.
I’m not sure it makes sense, but there is something creative and abstract about this metaphor of the walkers that I really enjoy, that makes me feel like I should pay money for it.
So I said, already resigned, “Mark, thanks for showing me the fine print. I want this. It makes a lot of sense to me, this story.”
Mark said, “Let me run the numbers and see where I can get what from where, but you’ve got to know I’m not trying to pull anything over on you. This is what the science says, and it can really mess up your transmission, and if you don’t opt for this, then we’d have a waiver for you to sign stating anything happening to the transmission was not our fault.”
A car vroomed by and its engine cracked the atmosphere and everyone caught its noise in their eardrums together.
Mark said, “I’m looking at $1,220.”
I pause.
There is no sound of cars. There is the smalltalk of technicians and the clicking of another computer’s keys.
I take a deep breath.
I say, “Mark. I want to do the right thing. I’ve gotta do what I’ve got to do. Order the tires, please.”
Mark says, “I can do that.”
Sam.
Who wanted to learn about the bone tool. Who will go on to do something sensible in his life and fix cars and know how machines work and have his terminology down and hold the world around him accountable to his terminology. Because it’s the sensible thing to do. Otherwise, the transmission will blow. I don’t know what a transmission really is. In my imagination it is like the spine of the car, the vertebrae, and it’s got brain nerves all wrapped around it. Dream juice and bone structure. There is no car without it. There is no motion or going further. I’ll be taking the bus. It is vital.
This old man with Sam, he just says out of nowhere. Can Sam go back there and learn?
He just talked to Mark. In such a cordial and cool and unstressed way. Something I could not do. And Mark talked back. And they talked to each other like humans. And they taught each other and learned from one another.
I am a teacher and yet I could not participate in this kind of interaction with Mark, or Sam, or the old man…Why? What is wrong with me?
I waited for a half hour before the technicians finally took my car back into the garage.
Mark called me up to the kiosk within ten minutes.
He said, bluntly, as if I’d tricked him, “There’s no core.”
I said, “Excuse me.”
“There’s no core.”
“Forgive me,” I said, “But what is a core?”
He said, “The core is in the wheel. I thought you would have the core. Now I’m going to have to use the core that came with the wheel.” He shook his head. “And they charge me for that,” he added. “So, I’ve been trying to do you right, Mr.… Elijah. But I’m going to add the core to the bill… running the numbers, it’s going to be $1,281.”
Mark looked at me.
Was this the only time he’d looked at me?
Had his eyes been on the computer this whole time? Or had he been picking at the hair on his folded arms while he spoke to me?
Mark’s eyes were like. What were they like?
Like fucking mop buckets filled with gray water after scrubbing the walls of your living room in Apil in Michigan.
Mark said, “Is that price okay with you?”
I said, “Yes.”
And the technicians got back to work.
I noticed the wallpaper, which was the gray and white of tire streaks, as if a car had driven up the wall and left its mark. I pulled out my laptop and wrote it down. On a flatscreen television there was a show on HGTV about a couple renovating a house in the desert. The TV sat atop two water fountains: the water fountain on the left is six inches higher than the one on the right.
I sat and waited.
Sam and the old man go in and out of the garage. Sam has a duck-billed baseball hat. He is scrawny and smiles. I try to imagine what he likes to do for fun. What would it be like to sit down at a bonfire in Sam’s backyard and ask him about his week? Does Sam have a crush on anyone? Does Sam talk about his emotions? What is Sam’s philosophy on life? What does it all boil down to, for Sam? I don’t talk to Sam.
Instead, I sit there for 45 minutes and type out the things that I see. As if I were translating material reality into words, specifically the English language, a language, like all languages, drenched in imprecision. It is this practice of feeling like I have words for things, and feeling like I don’t. Like things have words for them, and things defy words. That is mine.
A technician comes around. And puts my keys in a sack on the desk behind Mark.
He doesn’t notice my keys are back and I don’t say anything.
Instead, Mark talks to his colleague about some new version of a Ferrari that has something-something capacity and special effects. It can do something somewhere that hadn’t occurred yet before without the addition of these new features. It’s interesting, he supposes.
Another kiosk worker notices my keys and calls me up.
Mark says, “Sparkman, huh?”
I say, “Yes.” Fingering the indent of my last name on my Spirit Airlines Mastercard, which paid for my trips down to the Dominican Republic. With long layovers, sleeping on the floor of the Orlando airport. Eating $17 Cuban sandwiches. $11 tall boy Heinekens.
“What’s your last name?” Mark says, “I’m Romanian.”
I don’t understand. I say, “Oh no, my name is Spark-MAN.”
“I thought it was Sparkman,” he says, “Well, I’m familiar with it. I’m Romanian, and Sparkman… that’s a Romanian name.”
“What do you know?” I say, intrigued.
I’ve never quite known the origin of my last name. I’ve at times desperately wanted to know. Thinking it would hold some key to who I am. One time, at a South African cultural festival in Taiwan, I smoked a joint with an Italian who told me my last name was German. He told me it is really “Spracht-man.” In the village of my ancestors, my people were the “speaking men.”
I say, “What do you know, Mark?”
But before he answers, out of the corner of my eye, I see this tiny dog. A very scrappy, tiny brown dog. And then I see it jet back towards the TV. It has long gangly legs.
I realized it is not a dog.
It is a squirrel.
The mechanic holding a clipboard in the back says, “Am I just tripping, or is that a squirrel?” The squirrel jumps onto the sill of the window wall. Loops back around the hallway he came down. The mechanic can’t get the door open in time, so the squirrel jumps onto the door and bounces off it and comes back down the hallway, behind the kiosks, over by the TV again, until Mark tells a third mechanic to open up the side door and get that thing out of here. The third mechanic complains that the squirrel probably has rabies, but he does it anyway and this time the squirrel skirts through.
I find myself tracing its steps, and pointing my finger through the door, as if I was the one who chased him out, when, in retrospect, I didn’t do anything.
I wanted to hang around longer and ask about my name again.
What did Mark mean when he said that he had familiarity with it because he was Romanian? But it didn’t feel right. After the squirrel episode. To do so. Like I would be tipping off some type of desperation inside of me, and I couldn’t stomach that.
So I said, “Am I all good?”
The receipt printed. Clicking digital noises.
Mark handed me my $1,296 receipt for my four tires, one rim, and one core. A wheel.
I didn’t say anything.
Mark said, “Be safe.”
And I left.
And I drove home down Michigan Avenue avoiding every pothole. I got home and my partner was in the kitchen. She kissed my face. I said, “Hello. I love you.” She said it back. We watched a movie on the Criterion app. $15 a month. The best money we spend because there is always something artful on there we didn’t know existed. I feel emotions with her. And her body is warm. And she notices things about the movies that I don’t notice and when she tells me it is like I get to watch them twice. I am reset. And overjoyed that I’ve arrived in this future with her.
ELIJAH SPARKMAN is a writer from Harper Woods, MI. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast Review (Online), ANMLY, Sleepingfish, X-R-A-Y, and more. He is the Detroit Program and Volunteer Coordinator for 826michigan, a youth writing organization. He is a member-owner of the co-op bookstore Book Suey in Hamtramck, Michigan. Website: https://elijahsparkman.com.
