Burnout

Saw him in the left turn lane on LaSalle the other day, waiting to go west on Chicago; he rolled down the window and yelled a question out to a couple walking past. Obviously dumbfounded, they kept walking as if the cabbie'd never engaged them in any way, while he smiled to himself, continuing the conversation on his own...

Used to see him at the Checker garage before they went out of business. A worn puffy winter coat with a hood, thick black glasses, a black shirt with the top button buttoned and dandruff dotting the chest like a light dusting on a winter eve, white hair combed in a '50s sort of way, buzzed short round the ears and the neck. His skin reddened to an unhealthy hue, though probably not from boozing, he doesn't seem like the type; though what do we ever really know about people when they're out of our sight?...He'd be in line to pay the lease on his cab, trying to shoot the shit with the others, coming off like some sort of space alien, causing them to take a step or two back, as if two or three feet would keep his insanity from spreading and crawling up their legs...

His name's Mike, his last name escapes me, he's been a taxi driver a long long time. He's got a collection of plastic garbage bags that he hauls around like luggage; the big black one has a note, written in thick marker, taped to it. Never been able to make out what it says, though it starts with his name and goes on to cover most of the side of the bag. When he's waiting at the long table in the driver's room, it's used as a pillow for when he's passed out...

He'll only drive a Checker when most of the fleet are Yellow cabs; this means that he'll wait many hours longer more often than not. No incoming driver escapes his interrogations, "You dropping? Is it a Checker? No...Oh, alright"; more backing up or taking the long way in an attempt to evade his attentions. Save for once telling him to get the hell away from me, when he stood too close in line, I'd successfully avoided any substantive interaction with him, except for once...We'd both been at the garage for hours and on one of the strolls outside he cornered me. He told of his loneliness, of his landlady raising his rent, he asked if I had family, saying he had none. There was no graceful way to disengage, short of just walking away, so that's what I did...

He's the walking embodiment of the worst fears. A solitary, forgotten man twisted and broken by a job that tests the endurance of those much better equipped than he ever could've been. He's what we end up as in our nightmares; taking up space and being tolerated in this world, but just barely enough to be able to draw breath...

Eighteen Hours

MONDAY

2:42AM
Arrive at the garage, look at the waiting list for cabs, put in my chauffeur's number; fifth on the list...Settle in with back against the Ms.Pacman machine, start a drawing.

4:08AM
Drawing's done after a smoke break and some aimless ambling to and fro. The others take turns sauntering up to the list, scanning hopefully for some miraculous progress, though the cashier hasn't laid a hand on it yet. The empty time inspires a kind of magical thinking, where it's possible to convince oneself that subtle signs invisible to others have significance...

5:02AM
The whole time, every few minutes, drivers come in and stride purposefully toward the window. We all zero in, searching for the meter in hand; this would mean he might be dropping his car, thereby laying the path for our release. The ones that hand meters over also put their cabs in the service line, meaning that they have breakdowns and their names will be put at the head of the waiting list, ahead of us...

5:47AM
The overnight skeleton crew washes, waxes, buffs, and otherwise attends to the half dozen cars headed for City Inspection in the morning. If they pass there's a chance that they may be dispatched, though this prospect is hours away at best, it's something to hold on to, a wisp of a chance to make the time feel worthwhile...

6:00AM
A flurry of activity. The morning garage crew comes in, followed by the morning manager and the boss, who casts his jaundiced eye around the place before disappearing into the office. The lifts and other machinery spring to life providing a soundtrack of grinding, hissing violence which tests our fraying, taciturn dispositions...Three cabs are assigned, though with all the accumulated breakdowns the list is now longer than it was three hours ago.

7:53AM
A walk outside reveals the high merciless sun, which feels no sympathy for those that've endured the sleepless night. The cashier is relieved by three morning ones, all windows now ready to receive lease money and endure complaints and hard-luck stories. Those that protest vociferously enough are directed round the corner, through the office door, where their concerns are mostly ridiculed and ignored before being dismissed and sent on their way...Periodically one or another approaches to ask how long the wait's been, to sympathize or share their own troubles, making it all the more excruciating because the best we can do here is cast our minds elsewhere, to have an imaginary reprieve.

11:01AM
Lunch break for the day shift. The roach coach pulls in to dispense coffee, candy, pop, tacos, and a Cuban sandwich so ancient it may've predated the Castro Regime; don't ask how this last bit of data was gathered. The waiting room table, cluttered with half-read newspapers, books, and the crossed arms of nappers, is now littered with wrappers, crumbs, and empty Coke cans. A man, with a workshirt monogrammed with the name Jose, pushes piles of dust and detritus around with an old broom before collecting it into the dustpan and dragging it gradually toward a dumpster...

1:33PM
ID numbers are called out, inspiring a rush toward the window whether the numbers match or not, the cashier telling the stragglers to sit back down; those not present when their turn is called are crossed off the list, those just arriving informed that no more will be taken this day. Some loiter around anyway, chewing the fat with their buddies, or playing half-hearted games of pool, punctuated by loud disputes as to the true rules of the game. When the list is taken down, we brace anxiously for some bit of progress, studying the worn sheet of crossed-out and newly added digits, as it's returned to it's place next to the row of cashier's windows...

3:53PM
An attempt to purchase Munchos from the vending machine is temporarily thwarted as the bag lodges horizontally aloft above the door slot, refusing to drop any further. Banging and shaking don't do a thing, neither does the purchase of Bacon&Cheddar Potato Skins, bought in the hope of jarring it loose with their own fall. Another driver saves the day by getting his own Munchos, "Problem solved!", he states proudly...The last of the cigarettes are inhaled in the glare of the afternoon, sunglasses left at home not anticipating the duration of this ordeal. Trips to the washroom to throw water at the face only serve to remind of the extent of sleep deprivation.

6:30PM
The office is now darkened, the higher ups' day done, but the parade of payers rarely slackens; they jostle each other, feigning outrage, as they squeeze toward the slots that relieve them of their earnings. Every possible place to sit, lean, or slump over has been exhaustively explored. What's left, more often than not, is a dazed and wavering stance with eyes unfocussed; a zombie-like existence that feels as if it has neither beginning or end...

8:37PM
A beckoning finger draws me toward the window, followed by the clink of a car key hitting the metal basin of the slot. The fee for the remaining hours of the evening collected, I'm free to go forth and seek my fortune. Eighteen hours at the garage, thirty-three since the last moment of sleep, lucky not to've driven into a light pole on the way home; dead to the world before head hits pillow...

Good Omen

The old man stood on the corner, looking this way and that, a hand cart holding a cardboard box marked 'eggs' waiting expectantly at the curb. The cab was parked just beyond him and as I passed he looked over and asked, "Is that you?"...

We loaded the cart carefully into the trunk, the contents of the box covered by cloth, heavy enough to require both our efforts. His destination was within a block of the restaurant I'd decided on for my meal, "I'm your first fare, maybe I bring you luck", he said...

He'd been waiting out there for the Western bus, but it'd apparently been rerouted because of the Mexican parade. He was as grateful for a ride as I was surprised to have someone pay the cost of my breakfast so soon after leaving the house. As a rule people in my neighborhood don't take cabs, they wait for the bus not giving the taxi a second glance. It's understandable, as I rarely take them myself, a luxury that many of us wouldn't allow regularly. Miles usually pass before the first up-raised hand is spotted and the meter clicks to life...

We sailed north on Western in contented silence, furtive glances in the rearview revealing a healthy crop of greying nose-hairs but an otherwise placid countenance, both occupied by our own ruminations. His day's labors apparently at an end, mine only just beginning...

As I pulled over to the corner of Augusta he paid and asked for assistance with his cargo. The contents shifted a bit as the box was lifted out, food or perhaps something else to be sold on some corner where people passed by, yet remaining mysterious and unnamed. He refastened the straps holding the whole thing together, thanked me, and wheeled it away down the sidewalk. I parked the cab, bought the Sunday paper from the BP gas station, and went toward the cafe to put his $10 toward the cost of an omelette and some coffee...

Marriage

She dwarfed him by a good foot or so, yet he steered her down the steps and into the back seat with practiced efficiency. She's going to 22nd Place and Western, he said, looking hard to be sure that she was delivered there safely...

"Where are we?", she asks, looking out the window at the deserted early-morning street. Reassured of our location as well as the destination seems to ease her a bit, though a few minutes later she wonders how long it'll be 'til she's home. "He wanted me to spend the night, but I gotta go to church in the morning. He always does, he don't understand, I have no one except my pastor. If I don't come, he'll wonder what's wrong and the next time he'll lecture me..."

"I'm so sorry I've been drinking and you don't wanna do this...He told me that if I get in the cab, it's over." Nearing her house she repeated these things until the tears began to flow and in front of the gate it was clear the burden had not yet been lifted; the engine idled and she kept asking questions to which her driver had no answers...

"I want to marry him so much but he won't go into the church, doesn't believe in it. What can I do?...You don't know me and don't care about me and this shit, so what do you think I should do? Thank you so much for taking me home, I know you didn't want to..." Her tear-stained face was right up to the open partition, darkly lacquered nails reflecting the street lights as her hand rested on the runner of the sliding window; threatening the established distance needed to convey customers to their desired destinations without being dragged along in their wake. Without that barrier, the line is blurred further than the typical alcohol-aided intimacy of a Saturday night...

"I love him but he won't agree to it. The church is all I got. I'll wake up in two hours and go...Will you please wait until I get inside my house?"
She balanced one uncertain foot after the other through the metal gate, then to the door and in, waving her hand and disappearing into the unlit house...

Demons

Stopped at a red at Chicago&State, he bolts across the street and gets in through the left rear door of the cab without any warning..."Take me to 79th&Halsted...No, better take me to the 35th Street Po-lice Station, my sister's there."

Southbound on Lakeshore Drive he asks, "What is this? Lakeshore?...Oh, OK..." just then a hulking SUV's headlights overtake us and he jerks his head around, then ducks out of view as if under the hail of enemy fire..."Who's that? Don't know why they're tryin' ta kill me. Somethin' that happened to one of the other guys at the place I was stayin', now they're after me...Have ya heard about it?"

A few moments of silence is broken by his sudden suspicion that we've passed our exit, a tone that implies complicity in the conspiracy against him; reassured after roadside landmarks are pointed out verifying our course, he apologizes but remains vigilant...

We pull up and he hands over a money-clip as collateral, "Gotta go inside to get the rest, " and runs into the over-lit lobby of the Police Station. An inventory of the clip yields four singles, a Link card(for food stamps), a library card, and a State ID all miraculously under the same name with a picture that even resembles him...

He returns with a uniformed woman who leans through the window and asks how much he owes, "Ain't got that much, gotta go back upstairs for my wallet, alright?", then asks him where he's spending the night and when he tells her, hollers, "Stanley, ain't got no damn cell to put ya in!"...Nevertheless, he gathers his things from the back seat and slinks toward the glass doors...

Ten minutes later she's back and upon hearing about the forces fomenting the man's demise can only shake her head wearily; the demons are no stranger to her...She over-tips and tells me to be safe, then shivers and pulls her coat close against the windswept night...

Modesty

5AM and the two of them were the last outside the bar's locked doors..."Your place?" he asked her as they got in and the Lincoln Park address she offered made him ask, "You live there?"...

Whether they'd met at the last watering hole or at the one just before that, they made an odd pair. She was made up and wore clothes that had obviously set her back something, whereas he was a scrawny, bespectacled, hipster type. The need to warm another's bed had bridged the class and culture chasm once more...

"I get it," she said, "ever since I got to this town, the guys I've dated have been infatuated with who I am,"...Eliciting no more than murmured assent, she continued, "I've always been the best at anything I've ever tried, Oh Yeah, I was the Homecoming Queen...I'm passionate about everything I do, my sisters were model-gorgeous, in beauty contests, so I'm all about competing and getting what I want..."

All through her soliloquy, he cowered closer and closer to the window, present in body but edging toward flight...As we pulled into the high-rise's drive, he went out without a word and loitered uncertainly by the glass doors..."My little boyfriend's allergic to paying his way, a real winner!" as she dug the MasterCard from her purse...She bolted inside, high-fiving the doorman; he followed sheepishly in her wake, undoubtedly thrilled to spend the night with God's Gift to Men...

Blessed

He haunts the taxi barn. His belongings are stowed behind the enclosure where new cars are spray-painted into cabs; coats, lawn chairs, and other discarded treasures are arranged to approximate a living-room of sorts. His head pops up to greet drivers slinking in to pay their lease or argue about the disrepair of the vehicles that the shop's foisted on them...Other times he's outside, earning a few bucks wiping down the cars fresh from the wash. ..He's scarecrow-thin and wears his Kangol backwards over a stocking cap...

I leave cigarettes for him next to the boombox blaring R&B..."He wanted me to wash his personal car and the water froze as soon as it hit the hood, no point in it", he says, "Why even bother in this shit?"...When asked about how he's doing, he always says he's blessed, "Cuz I don't worry, no use to...I seen'em die doin' this job. Know why? They worry and it kills'em. They say, 'You're homeless, you got nothin', how do you get by?', and I tell'em that the Lord'll take care of me..."

He shares his Bugler tobacco if I'm out and compliments my easy-going disposition. The few remaining teeth show in the smile that doesn't spread to his eyes. "You smoking today?", knowing that the answer's most likely yes...

He knows not to ask for money but for rides instead. He goes to the gas station at the edge of what's left of the Cabrini Green housing projects... "Gotta get me some food, give me a lift?"...He has me drop him across the street so as not to be seen getting out of the cab; why seem like you've got more than you do, in case someone's watching...One time, he said he was going to see a woman he had, up in the high-rise, "Only way to get warm", he said..."I'm blessed"...