Something About Human Nature

I.

The line of running cabs are parked out in front of the bars and it's 2 am on Two Street in February hovering right about 40 below. I took my place in the line and noticed a man lying in the snowy street bleeding so, after a minute of sizing up the scene, I get out of the car to check on him, but before I get far another cabbie calls me over. At the same time, a group of three young Indians come out of the bar, walk up to the man and stomp on him for awhile, and I mean stomp him until that man is scary still. I start to say something and the cabbie next to me grabs my elbow and squeezes hard,

"SHUT the fuck up, Greenhorn".

The young men laugh a little and go back inside, a thin cloud of frozen breath rises from the bloody mouth of the still man - this was there second trip.

"White man offered a squaw money for sex", says the cabbie, "It's Native Justice, stay the fuck away from it".

II.

It's the same corner on a different night with even colder temperatures - that "hurts to breathe" cold, like dry fire, and your breath doesn't even want to come out. There's a dog tied to a light pole right there on the corner - spotlit and whining in the unbelievable cold outside the bar. An occassional drunk staggers by and gives that dog a double take - "it's too fucking cold, man"- and the cabbies are talking among themselves about what ought to be done to the owner. That dog is walking in place, and just crying, trying to keep his pads from freezing to the sidewalk. Finally the owner comes out, unhitches the dog, and approaches one cab after another until he gets up to my station wagon and I tell him to get the fuckin dog inside before he kills it. I take him to where he wants to go in silence and disgust, dog curled in a ball in the warmth of the car, and he tips me $300 and says "the rest of those motherfuckers wouldn't even take my dog".

III.

My first week on the job, and I'm hustling, but making next to nothing, in fact it's costing me money to put gas in the cab. It's late, the bars are closing, and I'm flying - taking short hops from bars to house - two and three dollar trips, most of them beligerent or hardly conscious, and I'm being mostly civil and taking abuse. Finally, I get a good trip of about 10 dollars. It's a woman who stopped being young many years ago wearing a beautiful fur parka that she made herself. When I pull up in front of her house the meter says $10.60, and she tells me -without even checking - that she's got no money. I'm pissed now - this is premeditated - and before I can even ask about whether anyone inside the house has money, she has unzipped me.
 
IV.

When you lie down with dogs, you are a dog, and you should not be surprised when a dog bites you.

 I drove to her place to collect on about $200 in rubber checks that I accepted when I was still the stripper's driver, and knocked on the door and discovered a very tall man waiting there for me.

He was 1) wearing the colors of a certain well known motorcycle club, 2) holding a nine millimeter pistol directly up to my left eye, 3) holding a business card up to my right eye, and 4) saying that he'd been hired to do a job and my body would never be found.

I was 1) realizing that I was friendless and alone in this cold world, 2) noticing that my thought process slowed to a crawl, and I was not afraid - I was stupid, 3) remembering the name of one of my fellow cabbies who was loosely affiliated with this particular club. Then I was talking quickly but very calmly saying that this guy could vouch for me.
My tall aquaintance gave me 24 hours to make this happen, and I left feeling mildly sick and sort of dizzy and I felt as though I was painted flourescent orange in this endless and unbroken expanse of white.

V.

I went to my room - as transparent as a fishbowl - and sat on the bed and gagged weakly. Every face I saw was twisted and horrible and the sun rose just above the horizon and then went down again like some search plane completely indifferent to my wet matched signal fire and frozen stumps. I used the pay phone to call the dispatcher and asked for Crazy Rob, who by some miracle was driving this day and by a second miracle promptly called me back. I told him about my meeting and he was quiet for a minute and then said,

"You're fucked...don't go anywhere"

I must have fallen asleep, startled awake in darkness, realized I was alive, got dressed, and went in for my shift. I drove in this sort of ghost world, my head feeling scoped - like JFK, every fare was an assassin, and I was stiff and resigned to death.

"Zero Nine, go to two", said the radio - my cab number being invited to an alternate frequency.

I went, what else was there to do? - "This is Nine, go."

Crazy Rob said, "Someone wants to talk to you, Nine".

It was the tall fellow in the leather jacket,

"Yeah, don't worry about that shit back there, but you might want to avoid the bitch, she's got a .38 on the table waiting for you and a story that you tried to rape her. If I see you again, I'll get you a beer"

"Roger that," I said,"you won't".

More from Fairbanks

On this night, Lorraine was drunk like I never saw her and spilling out all over. She's one of the bar tenders that very nearly had me killed because I was a clean-cut white boy from nowhere who showed up driving the bar trade around nights in a cab - FBI or some kind of narc, for sure. Tonight, her tongue is loose because she's facing an indictment for dealing coke out of the bar, and she's scared and naming names, but only to me, and here is where I'll prove I can be trusted. My cab is a confessional and a crime scene and I am bound by a special kind of confidentiality, the kind that keeps you breathing. I carry her down the icy walk into her place - she gives me the keys - and straight to her bed, where I pull off her boots and she starts to unbuckle my belt disoriented and misunderstanding the transaction entirely. I sit with her and talk to her quietly, holding her hand, stroking her hair - she's crying now.

She quieted down after a long time of crying with me making all kinds of reassurances, and I promised to drive her to the court myself tomorrow to help her get through it. She kissed my hand and said alright, that she was fine now and going to sleep, so I took my leave. I'd been tied up with her for a couple of hours now and I'd be lucky if I'd even make gas and lease by morning, so I was ready to get back to it. Something told me to go back though, and I wasn't clear if it was the voice above my waist or the one below that was talking, but I went back. I still had her key, so I opened the door softly just in time to see her take a little .22 caliber Derringer out of a drawer. When she saw me she took off, with me lighting out after her, and she put the little gun to her head.

I slapped that gun out of her hand hard - we both scrambled for it across the floor - and she was wild. I came up with it, and she pounded and slapped and scratched on me until I had to pin her to the bed. She started the crying again, and I laid there with her until she finally passed out, then I sat in a chair a while longer and felt this good and bad thing pushing and pulling again, so I took the pistol with me and left.


The court date came and went and she never spoke of that night or any of it. But when she called for a cab from the bar for one of her customers, I never heard anymore comments about narcs or FBIs. About a month after it all blew over, I ordered a beer from her after my shift and paid her with two bucks and a little pistol.

Devil's Highway

For his last birthday in Southern California, a place he had spent 4 years feeling something like the sad kid at the carnival, his friend slipped a Taurus .38 snob nose into his hand. "Take this with you, for the road" his friend said, as though it was some talisman of protection. "I'll eat it before I make the state line" and he left it behind with a shiver, knowing he would do just that. His friend meant well but couldn't see the terrain he was crossing, even now before setting out - nobody could, not even him. He drove in a daze, hardly blinking, through the night until crosswinds blew his VW bus across the double yellow lines repeatedly and all at once the sky opened up sounding like it meant to press the roof down and crush him, blinding him and overrunning the windshield wipers instantly. Lightning lit up the empty world like a strobe illuminating the huge and horrible stone monoliths of Monument Valley, but he could not see the road and soon left it completely, rolling to a stop in this the place where his bottom was about to fall out - Highway 666.

The rain pounded down with a supernatural force so fierce he could not hear his own screaming as he punched the dashboard, the stearing wheel, the windshield, and he was terrified in the small child way, crying out for God to save him. Afraid of himself now, he stumbled from the van into the desert darkness, out among the lightning forking in all directions across the sky, striking down at the rock formations, and both feared and hoped it would swallow him whole. He ran at first, and then walked as the rain slowed and suddenly stopped, thunder still rumbling and strobe lightning disorienting him further until he sat on the ground. The immense space reduced him to less than what he felt like and stared at him with malice until dawn. Light came slowly, proof that some of him was still here - he was almost glad, in a hollow way, for not bringing the gun - and he walked back to the highway, and the van stood there very still, undamaged, alien and terrible.

 "You going out on to The Nation?"
Hearing the attendant speak startled him, he didn't want to see people but needed the gas and wanted coffee, "Yeah".
"Better not, there's been trouble.. just yesterday..some killin'. Ain't safe for a white man on the Navajo Nation now."

He was back on the road headed north on 666 oblivious to the warning, now almost invisible to the staring desert, under the glare of the mid-day sun. After maybe an hour, he passed a boy on his right on horseback facing the highway with a sign on the ground in front of him that said PICTURE $5.
After more hot miles, passed by occasional pickup trucks overloaded with Indians, he saw a sign for Shiprock and RODEO and turned in off the highway.

He didn't know it then, but Shiprock is the capital of the Navajo Nation. He parked outside the fairgrounds and got out of the van, and if his center wasn't missing, he would have felt a twinge of fear or at least a heavy dose of anticipation. There was a lot of activity and a big crowd roaming the grounds, but it was relatively quiet and noticeably free of Whites. He walked up to a food stand and ordered a Navajo taco with beans and chili on frybread and a cold Coke. He walked and ate and watched and listened, and not one person looked at him in the face or took any notice of his presence. "I am a ghost", he thought after awhile, taking a seat in the bleachers to watch a brave Indian dressed as a cowboy ride a brave bull, and for the first time in months, he relaxed.

Three More Fairbanks Taxi Sketches

Andy
Andy is another who stands out clearly more than 15 years after I saw him last. He was this hulking, sweet-natured Viking with shoulder length yellow-blonde hair, soft facial features, a gentle voice, and a very even temper that I'm pretty sure he has never lost. Andy lived with his Native wife from Fort Yukon in a trailer off the highway outside North Pole, her eyes and hair were jet black and she had that same gentle, smiling nature. Andy wasn't damaged or crazy, at least not so I could see, and he was both very funny and very smart. He didn't really figure as a cab driver, and he certainly had the brains to make a life for himself anywhere he felt like. They say only two kinds of people choose to live in Fairbanks: those who wouldn't live anywhere else and those who couldn't live anywhere else - Andy was one of the former.
 
The Bad: Right Hand Man, Jughead and Klan
 
When America's Most Wanted first came on the air, word has it there was some radical shifting in Fairbanks demographics. Right Hand Man was a one-armed cab driver who was about as slippery an individual as I ever met. His preferred clientelle were cut from the same stained cloth, and his girlfriend, Marla, was known far and wide as capital-T trouble. Jughead was an idiot who carried a big gun wherever he went and still seemed to always find himself in some kind of confrontation. Klan is the name I assigned this guy who rarley spoke and just radiated hatred and violence like some prison gang Nazi . In the cab, he was always armed with more than one weapon and frequently found himself having to "protect himself" from someone non-white, drunk and near helpless.Fairbanks is the city at the northern terminus of the highway, and it's got more than it's share of people who go only by a nickname for good reason.
 
The Ugly: Catfish

Catfish, I named him, because I never asked him his name and never wanted to know. He smelled bad, his clothes were food-stained, and if he happened to eat in front of you, you'd never want to eat again. Catfish, like one of those horrifying, giant catfish brought up from the muddy depths of the Mississippi or the Mekong, big enough to swallow a full size human. He was a bottom feeder, a scavenger, a predator - he took advantage - that was his niche in the food chain. Once, at close to 40 below zero, he charged me $35 for a jump when he was driving right by me anyway, and I was capable of defending myself. Catfish, because he never gave his name, most likely because it -along with his face - was on certain registries of the dangerous and unwholesome in the Lower 48.
 

Fairbanks Taxi - three installments.

Fairbanks Taxi

Cab drivers are a tough bunch to pin down. Sure, they're hustlers, but that has more to do with getting by than getting rich. There's something about driving through ice fog with a multitude of strangers - most of them altered by drink, drugs or madness - for twelve hours a night that reveals portions of one's character. But I was just starting out - a Cheechako, a rookie - and a good bit closer to innocent than I am now. The winter to come would prove the cure for all three conditions. My fellow drivers - gypsies, pirates, comedians, outlaws, predators, ladies and gentlemen - would be my spiritual guides through seven darker circles of cold.

The Good: Wild Bill

The dispatcher on the radio my first night went by the name of Wild Bill. He was a great big bearded old-time Alaskan, probably in his mid-60s, still sharp eyed, quick witted and strong as an ox. A former navy man and merchant marine, he wore a captain's cap all the time, just like the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. Wild Bill, (there's one in every crowd, right?) - they all said he'd earned his moniker the hard way working boats, bars, The Pipeline, prospecting, trap lines, card playing - he was tough and able and pretty damn good at just about everything he tried his hand at - except marriage. It was my good fortune that Wild Bill was also a natural and patient teacher, even though that wasn't part of his job description, frequently sending me to an alternate radio frequency to walk me through a call, explain complicated driving directions and warn me of impending trouble. I learned the city and surrounding geography by driving it and, in exchange for a slightly discounted fare, asking my customers for directions to their destinations, but I started to develop my feel for the place by listening to Wild Bill.

The Good: Fargo, Tim and Nancy

I remember these three as a single entity because they had the look of a crew of middle-aged grifters. Fargo was their leader, a tall and stern transplanted Okie, about six foot three, who looked a lot like a mean Abraham Lincoln or Gregory Peck. Tim was the sidekick by stature - a five foot three chain-smoking, hard drinking, ready-with-a-laugh gambler who painted houses in the summer if he felt like it. You might be fooled into thinking Nancy, with her Anjelica Huston looks, was just the garnish on the plate. She was probably twenty five years older than me and sexy in a cool, silently intimidating sort of way - guys got quiet when she came around. These three were the top shelf among night drivers - celebrities - and I was a little star struck right away.

Three today

Suddenly

Here in New England we leapt straight from a wintery rainy season into today's close to 90 degree sunshine only tapping one toe on the lilly pad of Spring as we flew over. Of course, there might well be a blizzard still out there waiting for me to relax and drop my guard. Just like in other places, the sun here brings out beautiful women in large numbers very suddenly - a lot like mosquitoes, now that I think about it. That's New England, for each seasonal plague there is a tonic. It won't cure you, but it might be just enough to keep you interested. In a moment, I'll take a stroll through the courtyard - squinting, pale as a grub, grinning.

Fairbanks Taxi

I arrived on the train in late September, which was already winter, and the 40 below zero temperatures were close at hand. I had about two grand saved from working in the salmon processing plant, so I rented a room by the week in the linked-up trailers that formed Noah's Rainbow Inn and went down to City Hall and bought myself a chauffer's license for a hundred bucks. The clerk there tried to get me to apply for the local police instead. Inside of a week I was driving 12 hour night shifts for Fairbanks Taxi - 6 pm to 6 am. It was dark most of the time and the bars almost never closed. Fairbanks, even under the Northern Lights, can be a mighty lonely, dangerous place for a clean-shaven white man from nowhere suddenly showing up in the thick of it.

Narc

You find yourself right in the thick of it whether you want to know about it or not. I just wanted to pay the lease and gas and hopefully go home with a hundred in the morning. The preferred mode of transit for both sides of the cocaine trade was the 24-7 fleet of cabs, and certain high traffic addresses started to stand out to me. It began in the form of probing jokes, "what are you, FBI or something?" But cocaine and paranoia careen along hand in hand, and the most active imaginations among them couldn't explain a young guy living in a rooming house, driving a cab in a town in the middle of nowhere at 40 below. White man's got to be a narc, there's no other explanation, and that fixed belief very nearly cost me my life.

As The Crow Flies

1.  Crows are whirling way up there in the thermals. A scout is posted nearby eavesdropping. It's that girl with the beautiful hair dancing her peculiar-to-crack-cocaine-pantomime. The headlights hit her - head snaps back, eyes and tongue roll -like she can feel the light. Her wild senses are aware of me and zero in eventhough her conciousness is off in some momentary Limbo. Her feet are planted in a fighting stance, but ruin twists and climbs her like a vine.

2.   Don't look so smug, Crow, as you pen another entry into my catalog of shame - it was the fourth time I'd seen the kid in 48 hours. He's 22 years old and languishing for something like two years in a homeless shelter, stealing and drinking cold medicine everyday - dextromethorphan (DXM). His brain is probably as Swiss cheesey as Sponge Bob at this point, and he looks at you blankly again when you ask him what the hell he's doing back here at 4 am on Easter morning while my kids are waiting for the Easter bunny to come. He hits you up for train fare and asks what kind of sandwiches they have here. Yes, Bird, I called him "shithead" right there in front of the entertained ER staff and the invisible, newly risen Christ. Did you think I missed it?

3.   The raven is Crow's Northern cousin. In Bethel, Alaska - a Yupi'k tundra town where I saw human expressions on the faces of dogs, where fish fled from my impatience and gave themselves to the gentle, smiling old women, and where people who had every reason to hate me taught me how to laugh - I took a walk with Raven. We walked together out of town: me in the road and Raven on the light poles and electric wire. He showed me in an hour the connections - the relations - between people and animals, spirits and wind, grass and sky. Raven told me that all things living and nonliving are held by, and bound to, the Earth (even me). And for a moment, with spirits rushing through the tundra grass all around me, I knew it. I still feel a hole in myself where the spirit of that place once blew through.