Driving Cab: Chapter Fifteen

Driving Cab: Chapter Fifteen

The second I hang up the phone, I’m cussing myself out for being a stupid idiot. What’s wrong with me? I ask myself. He isn’t coming over Saturday. He wanted a definite invitation. I think about his brothers and sisters and tell myself it serves him right. I can’t afford to feed nine of them. I have my own family to think of. Maybe he’ll call again. I could invite them over for lunch… What the hell, if he loses his job though?

I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down on the front room couch. He still hasn’t learned , I tell myself. Those brothers keep hanging on to him. What’s he doing back in California? How long is he gonna stay this time? I prop my feet on the coffee table and think about his last visit. It was almost two years ago , I tell myself. We were still living in the back part of the house. Yea, I must’a been subbing over in Pittsburgh . I remember coming home around three o clock. Anne tells me Willie dropped by around noon. “He and a buddy from Philadelphia. He said he’d be back tonight to see you.”

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

Anne told me he only stayed for an hour. She made breakfast for them. They ate and Willie told her about the trip out. He explained how they got stuck in a snowstorm in a small town somewhere in Montana or Colorado. Spent a whole week in a local bar, drinking and playing pool, but mostly just drinking, drinking and laughing it up with the town folks, drinking and watching the big snow flakes fall, drinking and counting their money, drinking and trying to dig their car out, drinking and watching the snow fall harder, and harder, drinking and counting the little that’s left. They came to blows with a couple locals, and got hustled out of town as soon as the first snowplows went through.

He told Anne that his two buddies are brothers. Their father lives in Richmond. They hadn’t seen him for over ten years. They came out with Willie especially to see their old man. They arrived at his darkened door around midnight. At first they were not sure if they should knock. The new wife opened the door. She’s not much older than the brothers. The father greeted them like long lost heirs. They broke out the bottles and began to celebrate. Everyone got roaring laughing drunk. The brothers were out in the kitchen filling their glasses. They got into an argument over an earlier slight. Danny picked up a butcher knife and stabbed his brother three times before he came to his senses. Willie drove like crazy to get the bleeding boy to the hospital. At emergency, they patched Donny up just enough to stop the bleeding. Because they had no money and no medical insurance, the Richmond Hospital wouldn’t admit the boy. They had to speed off to the county hospital in Martinez.

“He looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week,” Anne told me. “That friend of his didn’t look like much. Anyone who would stab his own brother. He never said a word. Just laughed and nodded in agreement to everything Willie said. They came from visiting the brother in the hospital. He’s in critical condition.”

“Billy gonna stay out here dis time?”

“He said they’re looking for jobs. There’ s no work for painters back East in the winter. I told him he could stay with us ‘til he finds something. He’s such a nice boy. He couldn’t thank me enough for the bacon and eggs.”

“He gonna stay?”

“He said he didn’t want to put us out. I told him he could sleep on the couch ‘til he finds something. I’m not sure if he’s coming for dinner or not. I told him we eat around five.”

Anne holds back dinner until five-thirty, but Willie doesn’t come. While we eat, I tell Stoke about his uncle Willie and listen with one ear for his car. His coming gets me thinking about the past. He wasn’t any bigger than Stoke, when I went to the foster home , I tell myself. I think back to my foster parents’ farm. I remember a couple days after my arrival; I was pulling Willie in his red wagon. Somehow, I got a little to close to the edge of the porch. He and the wagon toppled over. He fell to the ground screaming in fright. My foster mother came running from the house. She picked him up and hugged him to her breast. “If his arm is broken, I’m sending you back to Mrs. Murray,” she screamed at me. I was not number one any more, Willie the youngest was.

After dinner, I sit in front of the T.V. with one ear on the news and the other on the front driveway. I see how small the room is. How crowded the four of us are. I think about squeezing in one more body. I wonder if Anne told Willie that I’m driving cab. I think it’s lucky that I have tonight and tomorrow off.

“I’m going outside for awhile,” I tell Anne as Stoke changes the channel for his six o’clock show. She nods yes from her dishes at the sink and tells Stoke to turn it down a little. Vickie throws a rattle from her high chair. I stoop to pick it up and we play a little, laughing and making faces at each other.

Outside, fall is in the air. The aroma of burning leaves drifts into my nostrils. I sit on the cement walkway that runs around the house and rest my head on our living room wall. I can barely hear the noise of the T.V. I remember that it was the outside which convinced us to rent this converted four room back of a larger house. I think back to our return from Philadelphia. Dat was jus’ five months ago? I ask myself. I drove all the way back certain that I had a teacher’s job. I knew that the history position was just made for me. I remember looking for houses in Hayward, San Leandro, and Oakland, trying to find a place that was centrally located to where a job would come up. I learn that Mt. Diablo is the largest district in the whole Bay Area.

Looking over the back fence that separates our yard from the neighbor’s orchard, my vision stretches to the foothills some twenty miles away. I listen to the wind break like surf in the branches of the walnut trees. It grows peaceful and quiet inside me. I close my eyes and watch the color flow from dark black to red and then to orange yellow. Opening my eyes, I see a dark sparrow flit out of a tree. I follow the lace like pattern of the branches. There are still a few yellow-green leaves scattered about. Black clothed walnuts stand out clearly against the background of blue-gray sky.

Stoke come outside with his football hugged in his arms. “Wanna catch?” he asks. We line up on opposite sides of the yard and toss the ball gently back and forth. I throw an easy spiral and watch its pattern.

Hey, that’s really neat , I tell myself. I remember that Willie and I use to play like this the first couple of years that I was with my foster parents. You even think of Stoke as being him sometimes when we’re out like this, I tell myself. “Good Catch,” I tell Stoke.

“How do you make it spin like that?” Stoke asks.

I toss an easy spiral to Stoke’s outstretched five-year-old hands. He watches and returns one to me. “See the pattern it makes in the air?” I ask. I never saw the ball spiral when I played catch with Willie, I tell myself.

How many years did Willie and I play together like this? I ask myself. I remember when we moved to River Road we shared the same small bedroom for a couple years. We didn’t talk too much though. I was in high school with an after school job. He was in sixth or seventh grade. We both had our own friends. I remember I traded my black leather jacket to him for a tire when we split for Alaska. The tire blew out before we were even out of Pennsylvania.

“We got a new kid in school today,” Stoke tells me. “His name is Bobby. Him and me are building a gigantic fort. He got no teeth in front.”

“What are you gonna do wid the fort?”

“Tear it down.”

“What did you learn in school today?” I ask with one ear on our conversation and the other cocked for Willie’s car.

“Ahhh… we didn’t learn nothing. All we ever do is play.”