Driving Cab: Chapter Twenty -Three

Driving Cab: Chapter Twenty-Three

Few of the girls matched the beauty of the girl from Motel Five, but they all stayed in my mind. I remember the pair of female impersonators that I picked up one night outside the Hound. Even in the dim light of my cab I could see their hairy arms and legs, their bulging muscles. But, I went along with their game. I reacted to them as if they were the girls that they pretended to be as we cruised past the California Hotel and they practiced their dialogue on me. I had been driving cab for over a year by the time I picked those two up. I had seen countless numbers of muscular legs parade past the Hound in tight mini skirts. I had watched them wiggle a phony ass and give the come on with a pair of falsies. As I listened to those two talk, it didn’t take long to figure what their game was. They were going to pick up some drunk, take his money, and beat his brains in. if he was lucky, they might even shove a dick up his ass, or maybe a rusty corncob.

The only reason I wasn’t scared to death with this pair in my cab was that it was still early, not quite nine o’clock. There was still some traffic on the street. But, I was a little scared, and my girls knew it. They started talking some bad shit just loud enough for me to hear. They told each other how they ain’t had no young white ass for at least a couple days now. “How you like to do dat dude up front,” I heard one ask the other,

“He look like he gots a tight little ass, don’t he?”

“We circled the California Hotel a couple times and the girl on the right tells me to take them to the Aloha Hotel on East Eighth Street.

“The Aloha?” I asked as my heart stopped beating.

The Aloha was the hotel where a driver made his last pickup a week or so earlier. Some time around three A.M. Traffic Seven found him slumped inside his cab with a bullet in his head. The girls knew right away what reaction the mention of the Aloha would set off in my mind. Everyone at the Hound had been talking about the murder for the last several nights. He wasn’t the first driver to be murdered after picking up there. One of the drivers told me at least two other cabbies had been knocked off by some animal out of the Aloha. “Dey ought’a go in dere wid machine guns and wipe dem f---ing niggers out’a dere,” he told me.

When we stopped in the shadows of the three-story building, my knees began to shake. The girls were laughing in the back seat. I switched on the dome light and turned to face them. From the corner of my eye, I saw the dimly lit lobby. There were a half dozen or so blacks standing around a couple of faded red couches.

“What we owe you, honey?” the girl behind me asked in a deep throaty voice.

“Two-twenty,” I said pointing to the meter. She pulled a ten from her purse.

“You holding quite a little money in yo hand, honey,” she told me as I counted out her change.

“Shit, mother f---er… You oughts to know better’n to pull out a roll like dat. How long you been driving cab?” asked the taller of the two.

“Mother f---er, you got near twenty dollar there. Come back for us later when you gots forty,” from her friend.

“Come back ‘round three A.M. ”

“Now, get your narrow white ass out and hustle up some bread fore you come back,” the first one said as they exited my cab.

I knew they were just jiving me. I wanted to laugh with them and let them know that I was hip to what was going on, but I couldn’t bring myself to join in their game. I just wanted to get out of the shadows of East Eighth Street to the safety of downtown.

The double pull, the double pull was always there. I want to join in the game, but I’m scared to death. Every night of the week it was there. I remember another night; dead heading out to the Port near quitting time, sitting on the back up stand all by myself. Traffic Seven came out and told me the last flight had left. He told me there was an order at Scotty’s. He knew that ninety percent of the drivers would turn down an order from Scotty’s after dark. He knew that I was scared to even drive past Ninety Eighth and Edes after dark. He was so reassuring. He told me he would follow me over. “Them f---ing niggers in dere is animals. They’ll slice a man’s throat for a couple bucks. Bleeding heart judges let dem right back on de street, again. You gotta look ‘em over good. I’ll wait outside for you,” he told me.

We made a U on Hesperian and headed for Edes. I pushed it up to thirty-five and tried to remember where the turn off was. Traffic Seven went flying by. I pushed it up to sixty and I was still losing ground. Slowing for the turn off, I squealed tires past the Holiday Inn. The only lights on the empty East Oakland Streets were Traffic Seven’s receding taillights.

Scotty’s bar was almost empty as my shaky legs carried me inside. It was the first time I’d walked through the dark stained doors. A couple heads turned and watched me walk to the bar. The bartender told me, “The dude that called for a cab left an hour ago, figured it be quicker to walk.”

“F---ing animals,” said Traffic Seven when I returned to his car. “Dey call for a cab, and if it’s not dere right dis minute… Dey wouldn’t think to call in and cancel.” He pulled off a radio order for a couple blocks away.

I got back in my cab with a sense of relief. Traffic Seven followed me to the front of a fairly new hundred dollar a month apartment building. A young black man opened to my knock. I saw a young black girl on the couch crying. Dey must be newly weds, I told myself. Probably dere first fight. The guy complained that they had been waiting for near an hour. When we got in the cab, he told me downtown Oakland. A surge of joy ran through me as I gave Traffic Seven the high sign and headed for East Fourteenth.

The girl sat in the corner behind me. I heard her trying to hold back her sobs. “You said we’d go out tonight. You said jus’ the two of us,” she told him.

“Yea, baby, we can do dat. Les jus’ take a little ride downtown. See what happening,” he answered. She insisted that he promised that they would go out together. She covered her face and began to sob again. We rode to East Fourteenth in silence. A few blocks down East Fourteenth and he gave in to her silent treatment. He told her that they would stop at the Caravan. She leaped out of her corner and put both arms around him.

When I stopped in front of the bar, he told me to pull up a little bit. I kept pulling up until we couldn’t see inside. He told her the place must be closed. “There’s no one inside,” he said. She knew he was lying. It was just past midnight. She moved back to her corner and covered her face.

“Dere’s lots of places downtown. Where you wanna go?” I asked the guy. He told me he’d let me know when we got there. We rode the rest of East Fourteenth in stony silence. It wasn’t until he directed me to Tenth and Market that I realized that he was her pimp. He told me to park across from a bar and handed me a hundred dollar bill for the fare. I explained that I didn’t even have change for a twenty.

“Dey change it inside,” he told me pointing to the bar. I grabbed my hat from under the seat and hoped that I could make to the bar and back without getting held up. Inside, I told the bartender that I was a cab driver. I was surprised when he changed the bill without question. When I hurried back to my cab, the girl was already on her corner.