Story 5 - what a cab driver sees
My name is Jon, short for Jonathan. My parents named me for my grandfather, who worked as a custodian at Winthrop School on Mill Street. I‘m in the 5th grade there. I think the school after the cove not fat away. From out our back yard, you can see it between the houses.
Here‘s a picture of our house at the bottom of Stony Hill near Main Street. It‘s a little house that we rent from a man named S.O.B… must be his initials or something… at least that‘s what my father and mother call him. S.O.B. is in a hurry to sell to some people also called S.O.B… whoever they are.
I share a bedroom with my little brother who‘s four going on eight… always asking questions. My sister shares the other bedroom with our Mom. Dad sleeps on the couch by the front door cuz he‘s in and out at crazy hours. You see he drives a Blue Cab, the checkers… twelve hours on, twelve off.
On half-days when my Dad picks me up from school, we stop here at Maynard‘s Grocery on Main Street. We normally buy a large regular grinder to split, oiled and toasted. Sometimes, Mrs. Maynard has plain donuts left over from the morning and gives them to us in a little brown paper bag. She‘s sweet.
She also has Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes and TableTalk fruit pies. What‘s your favorite?
When we reach Union Station, my Dad backs the cab against the curb in front hoping to hear the diesel air horn of a passenger train rolling in for a stop. If that‘s the case, then he steps out and walks around to the platform. He tells me you gotta look for the fares, they don‘t always come to you.
No train, so my Dad unwraps the grinder and just as we‘re about to dig in, a call breaks the silence.
21… 21… pick-up, Beit Brothers on Main.
Five brown paper bags wait for us on the sidewalk by the corner entrance. Two of them are partially ripped open despite being double-bagged. My father‘s face sets hard. He slowly gets out of the cab, saunters to the corner, and nods at the little white-haired lady clutching a small cloth purse. They seem to know each other. I jump out and help load the two broken bags. Our fare is already seated in back. Thank you, young man.
Back behind the driver‘s wheel, my father snatches the mike. 21, here. 26 Shapley.
A tired voice barely breaks the radio static. Roger, 21.
My father double checks the sideview mirror, then pulls the cab away from the curb. We ride in silence. I turn to look in back. Our fare has put on her glasses and is reading a Dime Western by Walt Coburn. There‘s a tough-looking cowboy riding with a beautiful young woman in a long red dress. They’re fleeing for their lives across the open desert with bandits or the law in hot pursuit…
We arrive unscathed before the page is turned. I look to the left, past my father. There‘s a neglected flight of outside wooden stairs leading up to the second floor apartment.
Step by step, the lady makes her way up the stairs, her right hand clutching the railing, the left her little cloth purse with Louis L‘Amour riding safely inside. Without looking at me, my father points to one of the two broken bags. He manages the other ripped one and two still intact in slow motion, easy does it, attention to detail. On my way down, I notice the two guys across the street intently watching our progress.
Ignore them, my father whispers.
By now the apartment door is open, the bags all in, the little cloth purse snapped open. My father takes the two singles, makes change, and stuffs them into his shirt pocket. He waves a short goodbye on the landing and trudges down, each step measured and heavy as if testing the stairs.
I feel eyes drilling through the back of my head, but don‘t turn around.
My father releases the hand brake, shifts into drive and the cab climbs the rest of the way up to Huntington Street. Another left lands us on Federal Street, another world. My father pulls over and hands me the two singles to put in the coffee can stowed under my side of the front seat.
No tip?
No. Last week some low-life pushed her against a wall and ran off with her purse…
This sank in for a moment as I tried to visualize this happening.
She wasn‘t hurt? I almost didn‘t want to ask and just forget it.
My father waved that possibility away.
Nah… she‘s a tough old bird, that one.
Hmmm, I thought, where‘s her cowboy?
21… 21… pick-up, 222 North Bank. The tired voice is back.
Someone you know, Dad?
He shakes his head, looks up through the windshield into the sky. Dark clouds are rolling in from the south. There‘s a breeze now.
We drive up the north side of The Parade and take a right onto North Bank Street just after the Neptune Building. My father slows the cab at John, then Douglass Streets even though there‘re no stop signs. We pass the big apartment house on the right corner and start reading the house numbers. When we hit 202, we slow down and see two people on the left sidewalk up ahead. My father groans and start tapping his hand on the wheel, the one he corrects me with.
There‘s this bear-like guy in a dirty V-neck leaning into a short, skinny woman withwikd blond hair and large sunglasses. There‘s stuff all over the place… open bags of clothes, cardboard boxes, piles of blankets and sheets on the sidewalk, the front steps, in the gutter. We drive around to avoid hitting a flipped over end table and a lamp with a bashed-in shade.
The woman screams something in another language and, as if by instinct, I look away. A door slams shut. I turn to see her pick the sunglasses up off the ground. She straightens and turns to glare at us. A drop or two of rain falls.
What took so long? I called over an hour ago!
My father waves at all the stuff.
I‘m no moving van, Miss.
We both hear a sound and turn to see a boy of three or four sitting behind a bag, crying. He‘s in bathing trunks, missing a sneaker and a sock. We watch as the woman, now a mother, starts loading the back of the cab. I open the door to get out and help. My father motions me to sit still.
Would you open the trunk?
As if by miracle or practice, she gets nearly all the stuff in the cab. The camouflage now gone, we see a mattress propped against the wall. It‘s impossible to ignore.
The rain is now steady.
Here it comes, my father mouthes. The mother comes to his side.
You got rope?
Where to, Miss?
38 Hill.
21 to 38 Hill.
Roger, 21. Stay put after. Got another job for you.
With the mother on one side, my father on the other, they waltz the mattress over to the roof of the cab and push it on top, covering the vacant sign. I almost laughed. No, Miss, there is no rope.
Now my father must perform magic with the mother as his assistant. With his left arm holding the left side of mattress and his assistant the right, he not only has to steer, but also fight gravity going up the hill around the corner… in the rain.
I sense something wrong, something missing…
Dad, the kid!
Sure enough, the kid is standing ten feet away by the front steps.
Miss… Miss? He‘s staring at her in the rearview mirror.
There‘s a long, strange moment of shared silence, shared exhaustion. I can feel the mother‘s sunglasses boring through my head. My father looks at me and nods. I spring from my seat praying he‘s been potty-trained, grab him to my chest and rush back to the front seat, the boy squirming in my lap. He‘s crying non-stop.
Feed him a donut… slowly, or he‘ll choke. My father is grinning. We round the corner, then crawl up Federal to Main, wipers in a slug fest with the rain.
We hang a right on Main. Not much traffic. The police are busy elsewhere. Left on Hill. The mattress is sliding off to one side as we start our ascent. My father pulls over and orders the mother out. They move the now wet mattress forward so that it slumps over the windshield. He tells me to change places with the mother. The kid and I go in the back and share the last donut. We reach the top of the hill while ignoring the amused onlookers standing on the sidewalk.
It‘s on our left. 38 Hill Street.
The house is a double-decker. The first floor porch is alive with children playing tag… jumping up and down, bouncing off the walls, screaming and laughing. As summer is only three months away, someone has planned ahead and removed the front door, improving air circulation throughout the house. As we prop the now heavier mattress against the new wall, the boys and girls take the initiative of racing out to unload the cab. A pack of stray dogs, their owners having moved on, walk over from across the street to sniff and paw the mattress.
The mother bawls out after seeing one boy opening a bag marked Ana.
Hey, you think it‘s Christmas?! Nevermind what‘s in the bag, get the hell away from there!
The mother sees where the others are going…
It‘s the goddam second floor, not the first!
The parade of children changes course, stomping up the stairs and whooping it up as they race back down, two steps at a time. The donut kid stands in the rain, stranded, looking back and forth between the dogs and his new playmates, his face a damp mixture of wonder and fear.
My father is already back in the cab drying his head with a hand towel that he throws at me. The mother has payed him what the meter says… $.70… in nickels, dimes and pennies.
Someone upstairs is listening. The rain stops. It‘s getting dark, but no lights are on. My father looks at me, shrugs, and picks up the mike.
21… 21 clear on Hill Street.
Roger, 21. Pick-up, Beit Brothers, Main Street.
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photo credits to George Oldershaw, 1961, the New London Public Library, New London Landmarks, City of New London, and Dime Western Magazine… thank you!