Sciatica he cured it, by boyling his buttock.
John
Aubrey, The Life of Jonas Moore
“Eisenhower
is dead.”
“I
read about that,”
Pinson answered with calculated terseness.
I
persisted, “It looks like the fifties are officially over. Granddad has finally died.”
I
waited for some kind of response to my self-consciously strained
insistence. After all, Ike was the
symbol of an age. Pinson had an obligation
to respond. But he just looked irritated
by the implicit moralizing of my insistence.
So-fucking-what, he seemed to say with a wary look. Then, after a respectable silence, maybe for
the Old Man, he said, “Vivienne invited me over for a drink.”
“Who?”
“Rodney’s mother.”
“Far out-- when?”
“Just a few minutes ago.
When I was taking out the garbage.”
“No
kidding.”
He
asked, “Why don’t you come with me?”
“Right now?”
“That’s
right dad.”
I
didn’t really feel like a drink, and I didn’t think she would appreciate me
coming along, but I was curious. And he
obviously needed protection. I thought
about it for a few seconds, contemplating the butterflies dancing on my
ribs. Reason gave them no importance.
I
said, “Why
not?”
She
opened the door into the little living room with nothing in it but an old couch
and a two folding chairs. She was very
black, and somewhere in her twenties.
“I
thought you weren’t gonna make it,” she drawled to Pinson.
“I
wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Rufus
was standing by the couch with a tobacco can in his hand. His eyes gleamed as he moved the can in
little circles and looked into it with satisfaction.
“Come
on in an set down,” she said in her best White
English. The room was dark. The windows had sheets hanging over them
instead of curtains.
Another
man whom I had seen but never met was sitting on the couch. Neither he nor Rufus met our eyes as we
entered the living room and sat on the chairs.
She
asked, “What you gonna have to drink?”
I
could see five-year-old Rodney peering out nervously from another room.
“A
beer’s good enough for me,”
Pinson said in a slightly condescending tone.
“Yeah,
I’ll have a beer too.” I tried to sound
cautious. She disappeared into the
kitchen and, as if on cue, the man on the couch took out a packet of cigarette
paper and held out his hand toward Rufus.
The
man asked Rufus, “You
gonna keep all that weed for yourself or you gonna give me some?”
Rufus smiled and put a couple of pinches in the man’s hand. He began the ritual of rolling a joint.
Vivienne
returned with the beer. She sat on the
couch with the man, while he rolled the joint; Chris and I sat facing
them. Rufus looked at me benevolently
and then got up abruptly and went into the kitchen. The silence was broken with popping beer
cans.
Vivienne
asked Chris, “You
a student?” Then her eyes moved towards
me.
Chris
said, “Yeah,
this is my last year.”
I
said, “I’m
almost finished too.”
The
man lit up the joint, took a hit and held it out to Chris. Chris took a hit and then passed it to
me. I held up my hand, and lied, “No thanks, I’ve
got to go to work after awhile.”
Rodney appeared behind the couch, rubbing his eyes, and not looking
at either Chris or me. I watched
him standing behind the couch but I couldn’t catch his eyes.
Suddenly
the man swung around and said, “Get
back in that room boy.”
The
boy wailed, “I
can’t sleep!”
“You
want me to WHUP you boy?”
“No.”
“Then
get your black ass back in there.”
Rodney
hung his head and trudged back into the room.
The man turned off his anger as quickly as he had turned it on and
asked, “You drive a Yellow Cab?”
It
was more of a statement than a question.
A look of admiration was in his eyes.
“Yeah, part-time. Two
or three times a week. Whenever I want
to,” I said in a self-deprecating tone, trying to recover from the sudden
change in his mood, still reacting to his quick violence.
Vivienne
crossed her legs and her mini skirt hiked up further on her thighs. Chris was looking at me sitting to his left
and couldn’t see her sitting on the couch to his right. The man asked, boyishly, incredulously, “Are you working
tonight?”
Vivienne
uncrossed her legs, and letting her dress ride high on her hips, displayed her
bush. She looked at me with the
calculating, mildly optimistic look of a businesswoman.
I
said, “Yeah, its going to be a big night.
There are some ships coming into
Chris
looked back to Vivienne and I watched his eyes blink, but he looked steadfastly
into her eyes, pretending not to notice that her cunt was in full view. He took a swig of beer, hiding behind the
can, and then turned his head towards the man.
Vivienne got up and went into the kitchen. The man followed her. I looked at Chris. I thought it was pretty amateurish. He wouldn’t meet my eyes but didn’t seem
worried.
“I’m
going to leave you here on your own Pinson.”
I stood up, waiting for them to return so I could make a decent exit.
Once
outside I realized that my heart was beating too fast. But instead of running, I decided to do
Yoga. I went to my room, opened Mircea Eliade’s book, Yoga:
Freedom and Immortality, and I read over the parts that I had underlined in the
first two chapters.
I
didn’t usually drive cab on Friday. For
some reason it wasn’t a good night. But
after an hour of breathing rhythmically, concentrating on a single point, and
maintaining my body absolutely still, I thought it would be interesting to see
how it would affect my capacity to relate with my fares. So I went.
I
ran into Michael Turnbull at the barn, fellow unpublished writer, 25-year-old
tippler, ex-actor and supposedly heir to a half defunct,
and probably mostly imaginary, fortune.
At the top of a long breath, from the perspective of God Consciousness,
I offered: “How about a drink after work?”
“You’re
on, my liege.”
I
let the air out slowly as we advanced together past the gas pumps and towards
the time cards. I spied the Indian from
“Who
is that asshole Hindu anyway, Mike?” I
grumbled under my breath. I realized
that I was in the middle of a long slow exhalation and so I watched myself
knock the thought away like a ping pong ball.
“What?” Turnbull had the habit of asking me to
repeat myself if I didn’t speak loudly and clearly, whether he understood me or
not.
“Nothing Mike.” I
heard myself being condescending and then let the insight bounce away. “Hey Gonzales.” I saluted a Mexican with whom I had had many
a lively political discussion. He said
to me, “Jack, I
want to talk to you.”
He
eyed Turnbull distrustfully. Mike
obligingly walked straight ahead while I veered off towards the lot with
Gonzales.
“I
want to try something out on you.”
I
looked at him blankly. I drew a long
breath.
“I
want to get your opinion on something.”
“Sure.”
I
let the air out slowly.
“But
you have to promise first not to discuss it with anyone, not even your mother.”
I
drew another breath, and an odd image flickered into my consciousness: my first
girlfriend, seven year old Anna Avantis standing near
a roasting pit, wearing a large hat and eating a turkey sandwich. Almost before the image arose, I knocked it
out of my mind. When I looked back at
him he was looking away at a hostile world, not waiting for any response. Then he looked at me again, searchingly,
seriously. I answered, “Yeah, I guess so, why not.” I didn’t tell him that I didn’t share secrets
with my mother anyway.
“Well,
the Indian Council is thinking very seriously of occupying Alcatraz, and we are
doing a kind of informal poll to see how people will react, but it has to be
totally secret because if the FBI and
“I
thought you were Mexican?!”
“I’m
half
I
had just finished a book about the Sand Creek massacre.
“Occupy
“We’re
going to stake a claim. I mean a
symbolic claim. We want to publicize the
fact that
His
voice sounded a little hollow and tremulous, like he was giving a prepared
speech, but the idea sounded excellent, one I hadn’t even imagined. I remembered Colonel John M. Chivington, former minister, with his band of volunteers at
Sand Creek.
“That
really sounds far out. I mean yeah.”
They ambushed and murdered at least two
hundred innocent
“You
won’t actually get it of course.”
“No, we don’t expect to. We just
want to draw attention to our cause.”
They raped the wounded squaws before
they killed them and then, to get souvenirs, they cut off their fingers and
ears for their rings and earrings, and their arms and hands for bracelets.
“You’ll
have most of the people behind you. I’m
sure they have an enormous guilt complex.
Especially now that there’s no danger that you’ll ever
get your land back.”
We
looked around to make sure no one was listening. Turnbull looked at his waybill,
ostentatiously unconcerned about not being preferred by Gonzales.
“We
really don’t want this to leak out. You
can’t tell anyone. Your
girl friend. No
one.”
They bashed out the brains of little
children against the ground and cut out the genitals of both men and women and
exhibited them in
“You
can count on me. I won’t mention it to
anyone. When is it going to take place?”
“It
won’t be long now. I can’t say for
sure. But we’re ready.”
He
saluted me and moved away. I went over
to get my time card.
Turnbull
asked, “What
was that all about?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a lot of political nonsense. Nothing really important.”
I
stuck my timecard through the opening in the window and got a waybill with a
cab number on it.
“What
number cab did you get?”
“132”
“Oh,
shit. You’re lucky, I got 239. That fucking thing goes down the street
sideways like a goddammed... giant yellow crab.” He raised his arms over his head and crossed
his eyes and formed his hands into claws and crept sideways for a few
feet. “That bastard Graham is out to
get me.”
“It’s
just a lottery, Turnbull. Anyway, Graham
has nothing to do with it. It won’t do
any good to get pissed at him.”
He
stopped ten feet from me and glared at the old man behind the window. His face was red and he looked like he wanted
to go back and punch him out. Suddenly I
remembered that I was practicing Pranayama. I drew an unsteady breath and let it out immediately. I drew another one.
He
said, “Oh, fuck
it. I’ve driven it before.” He gave a disgusted wave of his hand.
“I’m just in a fucking bad mood.
Don’t mind me. I’ll get over
it.” He walked dejectedly towards the
cab. He turned around and walking
backwards, said, “I’ll see you
tonight. About
I
was on my third breath. I took a few
seconds to complete the inhalation. “Yeah. No later than
“Are
you all right man?” he
asked, squinting at me.
“Yeah,
I’m OK.” I pretended to be surprised by
the question but I knew I looked like an idiot.
I didn’t want to explain what I was doing so I said, “It’s Friday night Turnbull.”
“I
noticed.”
“I’ll
see you tonight.”
He
raised his hand in a salute, turned and walked towards his cab.
The
first call out of the barn was a NO GO.
A little black girl leaned out of the window and I thought she said that
a white man ordered the cab but then left.
I stayed relatively relaxed but I lost control of my breath
completely. Going back to town, I
stopped at 105 and began meditating again.
Then I got a call to the bar around the corner and, as I was pulling
out, a bus scraped my fender. After the
accident report was filled out I went back to 105 and a guy about 60 got into
the cab.
“You
know where I can find any girls?”
I
knew several whores personally. One,
named Juanita, had already given me her telephone number. Of course, I also knew the places where
whores hung out, but he looked like he could be an undercover cop and I didn’t
want to take any chances.
“No,
I can’t help you there.”
“What? A cab driver who doesn’t
know any whores?”
“Well,
I see them around. But I’m not a
pimp. Where are you going?”
“Greyhound.”
“
“No,
I
left him at the Greyhound station and went in to use the bathroom. I stood waiting in front of the bathroom door
for 5 minutes. I couldn’t tell if
someone was in there or if it was locked.
After having been constipated for more than a few days, I didn’t want to
lose the opportunity, so I took a chance and went into the women’s
bathroom. As soon as I got my pants down
and was sitting on the toilet, I heard the guy leave the men’s bathroom and
then, just as I was finishing, a woman and her daughter came into the bathroom
and the little girl pulled on the toilet door.
“I have to pipi mama,” she piped in a clear, high pitched
voice.
I
said as politely as possible, “Just a
minute. I’m sorry. The men’s side was being used.”
They
made a quick exit, and I followed, ostentatiously tipping my Yellow Cab
hat. The woman seemed to look at me
sympathetically but her husband glared at me as if I were a pervert. The little girl held her crotch and pranced up
and down yelling, “I have to pipi daddy, I have to pipi.”
Returning
to my cab, I saw the man I had brought to the bus station. He was sitting on a bench in the waiting room
with his hat over his crotch and a leer on his face. When I got to my cab another man was sitting
in the back seat. I took him for a short
ride and then drove around
A
Mexican woman and a white man were standing in front of the bar. She yelled at him: “You son of a bitch. You gonna loan me
ten dollars. You
stingy son of a bitch.”
I’m
standing there holding the door open like an idiot. He is drunker than she is.
“You cock su’er. Who’re you callin a
someabithch.” He can hardly get
the words out. They are both screaming
at each other but they manage to get into the cab. Once inside the cab she seems to sober
up. She pleads with him, “I have to have my
insulin pills.”
There
is a stony silence. I say, “Maybe you ought to
give it to her man.”
I
can’t bear the thought of this poor woman being without her insulin pills. She finally gets the money and then gets out
of the cab. I drive him on to the
Then
he looks at me and calls me a queer but in such a slurred voice that I don’t
figure out what he said until I’m sitting in the cab. When we get to their apartment she tries to
pay me with play money. After I get the
dollar fifty and they are out of the cab, I plead with the dispatcher, “I’ve had it
man. Get me out of town.”
“What’s
that 132?”
“
“OK
132. Try Highland. Back Entrance.”
It’s
the
“You son of a bitch.”
“What’s
that 132?”
I
scream into the microphone: “I said
“OH,
oh, it sounds like 132 is mad!”
“Very
funny,”
And
then I put the microphone back on the hook and yell to myself, “That’s it you fuckers. I’m deadheading to the airport you goddammed assholes.
I’ll take Murphy one more time and that’s it. I’m finished.”
After
taking Mrs. Murphy and her crazy daughter home from the Highland Psychiatric
Emergency Clinic, I deadhead to the airport and I am almost there when the
dispatcher sends me half way back to town and the guy goes for a long ride
almost back to the airport.
“Well
there’s justice in the world after all,” I say to the dispatcher as I check
into 705.
“132, get Lucky supermarket.”
I
don’t have the strength to scream at him: “There’s no justice but who gives a
fuck.” I load and unload the lady’s
groceries for 60 cents and thank her, politely, for a ten cent tip and then I
drive around in East Oakland feeling like a martyr, snap some angry remarks at
a couple of teen age girls, let them out, and then dead head back to the
airport. Finally, after telling myself
that it was a really bad night, I am sitting in front of the airport at stand
720, the airport is very dead, and I remember that I am supposed to be
meditating. So, for about an hour I read
The Tao De Ching, begin breathing rhythmically again,
and just relax.
Then
I get out of the cab because a plane has just landed. I woman motions me to pick up her bag. She is blond, about thirty five and has the
same crease between her eyes that Van Decken
has. She is a very neurotic lesbian and
by the time I drop her off in
Once
back to
Curly
said, “You see that motherfucker?”
I
saw a middle aged man disappearing into the shadows of the
“I’m
going to get that motherfucker.”
Curly
was a balding black man with a shaved head.
He was just under 5’ 8”. He worked out with weights three hours a day
but he couldn’t pass the
“He
steals fares. If there’s ANYTHING that I
can’t stand it’s a man who steals fares.
They’re the lowest scum in the universe.”
“Shit
Curly. He doesn’t even speak
English. He probably doesn’t even know
what he’s doing.”
“He
knows all right. I’m going to get him.”
I
didn’t say anything. He didn’t expect me
to. The conversation was over. The driver that he was going to get, was a middle age Scandinavian man who never talked to
anyone. The rumor was that he was
running away from the Swedish police, and that he was hiding out in
A
middle aged black cab driver came into the cubicle with his waybill, and
ignoring Curly, whom he didn’t like, asked,
“How was your night?”
“Lousy.”
“One of them, huh.”
“Yeah,
I had one really depressing fare. To
“Was
he a nigger?”
I
looked at him, too tired to reply intelligently.
“Tell
me, I’ll bet he was a nigger. I won’t
pick the motherfuckers up after dark.”
“No,
no. It was a dike. Nothing really. Just a lot of depressing
people.”
“I’ve
had worse,” he
answered, “whatever it was, I’ve had worse.”
Turnbull
pulled into the garage and I thought that maybe they really were after the poor
bastard: he was right, the cab seemed to move into the lot sideways, like a
giant yellow crab. It shook and rattled
as it idled in front of the gas pumps. I
gave him a wave and stuffed my waybill into the little semicircle. The Old Man, Bob Graham, was standing there
with his black woolen cap over his bald head.
He said, “Jack,
the RoadMan wants to see you.”
“What?”
In
over a year I hadn’t been in trouble for anything. I couldn’t believe it.
“Where
is he?”
“He
said to meet him at the Blue Dolphin.”
“The Blue Dolphin?”
I
suddenly realized that my stomach was in a knot, I was tense all over, and I
felt like kicking someone.
“What
is the problem?”
“There’s
a police report on you.”
“What
are you talking about?”
My
voice was shrill with disbelief. I
suddenly remembered that I had been roaring back and forth to the airport,
doing about 70 on Doolittle Drive, a 35 mph speed zone.
“OH
shit.”
Graham’s
eyes looked sympathetic. I questioned
them for an explanation.
“I
don’t know what it is Jack. They don’t
tell me anything. I’ve only worked here
for 35 years.”
I
turned and saw Turnbull approaching from the shadows of the parking lot. He had a scraggly, reddish beard and his dark
brown hair almost touched his shoulders.
A hundred Yellow Cabs were parked behind him.
“What’s
up.”
“Shit. The road man wants to see me.”
“That
punch drunk asshole Gas duh polis? What does he want with you?”
“The
police want to talk to me.”
“What
did you do, punch someone out?” He gave
an encouraging smile.
“No. I was driving too fast on Doolitle. I might have been doing 80.”
He
blinked. I was exaggerating but we all
drove at least 60 on
“Is
he in there waiting for you?”
He
motioned towards the office with his head.
“No,
he’s waiting at the Blue Dolphin. I’m
supposed to meet him there.”
He
stared at me in disbelief for a moment and then broke into an irritatingly
ecstatic smile.
“Do
you mind if I go with you?”
“No,
I wish you would.”
Gazopoulous was an ex-pugilist that no one had ever heard
of. He was in his early fifties and had
apparently fought around
He
inspired fear, not for himself as he liked to think, but for the underworld
connections that you imagined that he had.
Actually, I never saw him with any underworld types, but there was no
question that he projected that image.
Sometimes I thought it came from the dime novels he was always reading
and hid whenever he thought anyone noticed.
He
seemed to have a certain respect for me because I had injured my ear playing
basketball and it looked like I might have been a boxer. So I had told him that I had some amateur
fights but actually I had only spent one summer in the
I
affected an insouciant bravado around him but underneath I was terrified of
what I felt was a capacity to maim or kill without conscience. Let the rest of the world be advised: the
American underclass is by far the most violent and venal in the world. It has the soul of the fiercest people on
earth, the vanquished American Indian, and the manners of a people that were
systematically deprived of any culture, its former slaves, the American
Negro.
He
was sitting at a table with a group of people that I had never seen before. And there was a uniformed cop sitting next to
him. I couldn’t believe it. I wondered how fast they had clocked me and I
wondered if he would fire me right there.
When I spotted him I put on my Yellow cab hat. He was laughing about something and had a
drink in his hand. I told Mike to stay
behind at the bar and I approached the table.
He didn’t see me until I got to the table and then he looked at me
without recognition. Then he looked up
at my Yellow Cab hat.
“Yeah,
Jack.” He took out a sheet of paper,
unfolded it and then realizing that he couldn’t read it, groped in his pockets
for his reading glasses. Everyone at the
table stopped talking and looked at me.
“We’ve
got a complaint here against you.”
I
squared myself off for the coming blow.
“Were
you at the Greyhound... let’s see... at
“Let’s
see. Yeah I think so. Why?”
“A
woman and her daughter... they say you were in the woman’s bathroom. What do you say?”
They
were all looking at me.
“I...
Yeah.” Pause. “I
really had to go. There was a guy in...”
Gazopoulous had an amused smile on his face and the rest of
the table looked like they were trying not to laugh. The cop interrupted me with mock
seriousness. “We have laws in
He
looked at me with an ambiguous smile, almost as if he were trying to apologize
to me but didn’t know how to do it and was tempted to hide his confusion behind
his uniform.
Blood
was in my face and I was shaking a little.
As I looked down at him, trying to think of what to say, I noticed that
his lips had become moist and the rims of his eyes had reddened. His head turned slowly from the vertical and
I thought that he looked like a father who was struggling against an ancient
need to hit his son with a belt. I
said, “I just didn’t think... I
mean...”
I
looked at the women sitting at the table for sympathy but they were looking at
him.
“Don’t
let it happen again. Do you understand
me?”
He
pretended not to be surprised at the bestial sound in his voice, and I thought
he fingered the edges of it and savored it as if he were discovering for the
first time what it was to be a cop. I
answered dryly, “Yeah,
sure.”
They
were all looking at me again, but this time it seemed that their eyes were full
of disgust and their faces were hard and that they expected a show of
remorse. A surge of scornful mirth rose
from my lowest chakra and I filled my lungs with their nicotine laden air and
felt like telling them all to fuck off.
But in a moment of weakness, I thought that the only way to get them off
my back was to play the role that they had choreographed for me. And so I smirked and said, “It won’t happen again.”
I
completed the sentence to myself, “you fucking assholes,” and I gave
them an ironic smile that was immediately slashed by the peroxide blond. I consoled myself by noticing that she looked
like a whore but I felt like hitting her in the stomach anyway.
Gazopoulous said,
“Jack, get out of here.”
He
had a look of disgust in his face and instinctively, I stood my ground. I felt my fists clench slightly and I looked
at the other faces. They were looking at
him with a mixture of anxiety and mirth and after a tense silence he broke into
a forced smile that made him look like a grinning wolf.
Without
saying anything, I turned around and walked towards Turnbull who was sitting at
the bar. He asked, “Would you like me to order you a beer?”
“No,
let’s get out of here.”
We
walked along the harbor, past the boats and over to Jack London’s Last Chance
Saloon where we ordered a pitcher of beer.
I harangued him for a few minutes about the impossibility of publishing
anything serious while I watched a thunderous cloud of poison construct itself
just over his right jaw bone, causing the muscles there to vibrate
slightly. I tried to dissipate the
tension with humor.
I asked, “Do you know who the Governor’s
favorite author is, Mike?”
His
eyes narrowed and he sat back in his chair and pulled in a long breath and
raised his shoulders as the poison migrated through successive muscle
groups. The mandala
of a ram looking for a choice spot on his own butt seemed to symbolize his mood
but I braced myself anyway.
“Jack,
I don’t write for INDIVIDUALS, I write for aspects of people.”
I
imagined that he was haughty and supercilious and I felt like removing his jaw
bone and grinding it into bone meal. But
I attacked Louis L’Amour’s readers instead.
He
persisted, saying in a very soft, tired voice, “I don’t write for any particular
audience. I think that’s a drag. But I do write for certain aspects of
people. I appeal to those aspects.”
I
poured another glass of beer and lied to myself because I knew that I was too
emotional to listen to reason: I pretended that it made sense. “For example?”
“Well,
the desire to laugh deeply... to laugh your way past all sense of isolation
and…The feeling that true sorrow is one of the greatest luxuries ever bestowed
on human beings.”
His
voice was sympathetic and soothing, but I couldn’t hear the meaning of the
words. In self-defense, he began,
surreptitiously, to lecture the people sitting next to us. “The aspects towards which I appeal are found
in all sorts of people. Shits and
saints, squares and hips, straights and gays, artists and general
managers...” He waved his hand in the
air and eyed me apprehensively. “All I’m
saying is don’t be too picky about your audience.”
My
anger dissipated itself, not in what he said, but in the observation that he
resembled the picture of Walt Whitman that was hanging on his apartment
wall. I noticed a warming fire
flickering in my stomach but I thanked the beer instead of him.
He
asked, “By the
way what are you writing anyway?”
“Oh, nothing creative at the moment. An article on intelligence and an article on
writers and, uh, something on Mick Jagger,... maybe.” I had
difficulty getting the words out. I
thought about
“Who
is it anyway?” he
asked.
“What?”
“Reagan’s favorite author.”
“Oh,
it’s...”
“Don’t
tell me. It’s probably Donald Duck.”
That
reminded me of something I had read in the
He
laughed. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,
I read that this morning in the Stink Sheet.”
I
took a swig from my third glass. After a
silence, I muttered, half to myself,
“Well anyway, it might as well be.”
He
didn’t hear what I said and answered,
“Yes, I suppose quacking is more congenial to the human race than
Lenin’s theory of imperialism.”
“No,
I was still thinking about Reagan’s favorite author. I was going to say, it ought to be Donald
Duck. He’s probably more relevant to the
American mind than Louis L’Amour.”
After
a short, transforming silence, we broke out laughing.
He
lifted his glass, “Cheers.”