Taxi Driver (9 page)

Wizard looked very sad just then and sorta leary of me too, but he tried to be nice. “Travis, I dig it,” he said. He shook his head at the sidewalk, said, “Look, you choose a certain way of life. You live it. It becomes what you are . . .”

Wizard said, “I’ve been a hacky twenty-seven years, last ten on the night shift. Still don’t own my own cab. I guess that’s just the way I liked it.”

He was nodding his head and shaking it and seemed to be very much lost in his own thoughts. He seemed to know me but there was something on his own mind, too. We’d have to have an exchange.

He said, “Look, a certain person does a certain kind of thing, that’s all there is to it. It becomes what you are. Why fight it? What do you know? How long you been a hack, a couple of months? You’re like a peg and you get dropped into a slot and you got to squirm and wiggle around awhile until you fit in.”

Well, I guess he just wasn’t hearing me. It was too late and he was too tired. I told him so. Said, “Wizard, that’s just about the dumbest thing I ever heard . . .”

“I got hemorrhoids,” he said, “and a polynoidal cyst, so what do you expect, Bertram Russel? With all those holes in my ass? Travis, I’ve been a cabbie all my life, what do I know?”

Wizard’s shaking his head no like a windshield wiper. He says, “Travis, I don’t even know what you’re talking to me about.”

“Neither do I, I guess.” Giving up on him. Well, I guess he thought he done me wrong . . . hurt my feelings somehow because he tried to reassure me. Said, “You’ll fit in. It’s lonely at first, rough. But you’ll fit in. You got no choice, Travis.”

Well I didn’t even try to respond to that. I said I was sorry to Wizard. Said, “Sorry, Wizard.” Well, I could feel a little twinge in my heart when he told me, “Don’t worry, killer, you’ll be all right.”

Wizard said, “I’ve seen enough to know.”

“Thanks.” He gave me a short wave and then got inside his cab and drove off, leaving me there with the pimps and the whores.

A New Face in the Crowd

I have no clear recollection of the days that followed this being with Wizard except that the weather was bright and clear and warm and I was all the time feeling like I had sinkers attached to my body all over. Huge metal weights.

Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, I know I drove everywhere in those days. I had gotten into the habit of tracking down every single Palantine rally. Making an appearance there. It just was important to me to be Johnny-on-the-Spot. To see the candidate in action. If I was to go down in history I had to make an appropriate plan.

Looking back I don’t know whether I got to certain places on my own or because I arranged to take a fare there. Can’t even recall any of the words Palantine said those days. I can remember the city, though feeling very much like in a cage. Doors everywhere. You squirm around to get what I needed, and I needed to see Betsy again. Needed to be on the scene with Palantine.

Once, on Avenue of the Americas, in the Fifties which is all new glass buildings, a rag of a man fluttered for a moment from a high window on the facade of this all glass tower like a big butterfly and then he seemed to fall heavily downward with a kind of loose sacklike speed.

I drove on, calmly watching him drop. There seemed no way of knowing the expression on the man’s face except to note those of the pedestrians on the busy street, the people in cars, people sitting in the plazas near fountains, or coming out of bars.

People seemed so hard and clear, as if they all had purposes to lose themselves in, all those determined city striders they seemed stamped against the building fronts like pressed tin.

The man high up momentarily waded in the air and moments later I thought I heard his screams as conversations of shoppers drifted back at me to the din of traffic horns from the various arcades.

The woman in the back of my cab she said she thought “I saw something, did you see something, Driver? A man falling?”

“It was probably just newspaper,” I said, “blown up there by the wind. Just newspaper, ma’am, that sometimes happens, you know, on days like this.”

Well I was feeling pretty shakey, I guess, and that same afternoon in Queens there was this rally for Palantine in the parking lot of a supermarket. Everything all dressed in red, white, and blue bunting.

Maybe five hundred people milling about. Piped country music on loudspeakers. I had gotten so I could recognize the secret service men from their distinctive metallic gray suits, their sunglasses, and big linebacker physiques, and I knew how to position myself so as to stay always out of notice. Especially when I was carrying so much hardware.

I got there just as a whole bunch of local political types and some of the Palantine workers were being seated on the platform and I saw old Tom reading from a clipboard and there was Betsy and she was talking to another worker. Looked beautiful as ever. You better believe it.

Well, as I say, I was trying to be inconspicuous as hell but that Tom he looked up for a moment to his left and then back down into his clipboard and then he seemed to look my way again. Watching me sort of very closely and I didn’t dare to hide. After a moment, I saw him go over to Betsy and point my way, they started whispering together. I could just imagine what they were saying. I saw Betsy shaking her head, but she was staring at me, as if she didn’t see me almost, and I was all in a sweat in this bulky, bulged-out army jacket . . . fatigue jacket, with my new brush-cut hair standing up on end like a Mohawk.

I had cut it that way to get down to business, really take care of business, but I didn’t like being seen by Betsy looking so very unattractive, you know, so I tried to vanish into the crowd and I almost bumped right into this S.S. guy. The usual sort, a gray suit, ever-roving eyes behind sunglasses. Talkative as the sphinx.

Better I thought to brazen it out, if I could, hardware and all.

“Oh say, pardon me,” very boyish, “are you a secret service man?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well I’ve seen a lot of suspicious-looking people around here.”

The S.S. gives me this very chilly look for a moment and then he asks, “Who?”

“Oh, lots. I don’t know where they all are now, there used to be one standing over there.” And I pointed over to where I’d been.

He followed me with his look . . . actually followed the tip of my finger for a second and then he was staring at me very hard and I just had to improvise fast. “Is it hard to get to be a secret service man?”

“Why?”

“Well I kind of thought I might make a good one,” I said. “Because I’m very observant.”

The S.S. was getting really interested in me now in his sly way. “Oh?” He was looking at me very, very hard and cold.

I said, “I was in the army, you know.”

I’d gone over the line on that one and was on his hit parade now of suspicious characters because he started asking me some questions, as it were, in his own way, of course.

Said, “Listen Mister, if you just give me your name and address, I’ll make sure we send you the information on how to apply to the organization.”

Thinking of what to do next. Said, “You would, uh?”

He took out this little black pad and said, “Oh, sure.”

Maybe I was being photographed by somebody too because I saw him motion in his little sly way once. I said, “The name is Harry Krinkle . . . that’s with a K. Krinkle. I live at thirteen and a half Hopper Avenue, Fairlawn, New Jersey. Zip code o-seven-four-one-o. Got that?” Really jabbering as he was taking it all down. Said, “Sure Henry, I got it all, we’ll send you all the stuff, all right?”

“Hey, great,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

There would be eight more rallies in six more days. My time was coming. One way or the other.

Like I recalled how I used to say as a kid, someday I am going to do something and nobody is going to stop me. Ever. I honestly felt that I could, if only I dared to, because there was nobody who dared to stop me. You know. Well, once I came in contact with those S.S. I didn’t feel that way anymore. I thought they could stop me, if they wanted to. They could stop me, but I just might do it anyway.

A Remembered Face

Well, it was in the next couple of days that I started cruising again down off Tompkin Square. I thought I might see that girl again, that very young one. The chippy. Something about her look made me think she would help me if I could help her. Something about a friend in need.

It didn’t take me too long to find her. I almost knocked her down with the cab. Don’t know that she recognized me at first but I recognized her. She was with a girlfriend, another hooker just like her. And they were hot-to-trot with anybody standing on the street corners.

She was wearing this big floppy hat and thank God there was so much traffic that night because I was able to crawl along behind her and her girlfriend afterwards as they walked slowly down the sidewalk. Then I saw them stop and chat with a guy in a doorway, this shadowy figure. I couldn’t make out his face at first but I saw that fringe of suede jacket and the glow of a cigarette, and then she turned and looked at me in the cab and then walked on, her fat friend following her.

There were also two dudes from college standing on the street corner in clean, faded jeans and bright shirts. Looked high on something or other. They seemed to have their eyes on all the girls.

After a while these girls spotted the guys . . . these two guys and walked over to them. They exchanged some small talk together and then they walked off as couples. I saw them turn around the corner and I tried to follow but the traffic was heavy.

At a forty-five-degree angle from the curb I noticed this other little girl has been watching me eye the chippie and her friends. She walks over to my cab, leans in the open front window, and with a face full of smoke says, “Hey, cabbie! you coming or going?”

Well I felt like I’ve been caught with my hands inside the cookie jar. I knew what she wanted from me. So crass. Well I took off.

Campaign Promises

The next day was hot, even for June. In Harlem it felt like inside a potato baker, and all the little kids’ faces looked like baked spuds, charred. The streets stuck to the bottom of your shoes, tar, asphalt, bubble gum.

“The time has come to put an end to the things that divide us: Racism, poverty, war,”
said the voice of the Senator Charles Palantine over a PA from a block away from where I sat in my cab with the off-duty sign on, the only white man on that block aside from some cops, the S.S., press.

“Never have I seen such a group of high officials from the President to Senate leaders to Cabinet members so openly cause disunity and racial hatred . . .”

I sat behind the wheel with sweat tracing down along the old scars on my body, making channels across my brow and upper lip, inside those mirror sunglasses, my hair clipped up short just like a warrior. I had on that army jacket again with this big bulge on my left side, the .38 Smith and Wesson.

Senator Palantine said, “
These men pit black against white, young against old, sow anger, disunity, and suspicion—and all in the name of the good of the country. Well, their game is over . . .”

The jigs applauded him because he was an excellent speaker, and they like oratory. Palantine could orate and somehow seem sincere. He drove hard toward his arguments, crashed down on all the main points. His voice sounded strange, but it rung with anger and sincerity:
“All their games are over
. . .”

Well I was listening, but only half listening to that little white stick figure on the platform among that array of black dignitaries about three hundred yards away on this little bleacher outside his uptown campaign headquarters, and with the rest of myself, I was writing a letter home to mom and dad.

“Now is the time to stand up against such foolishness, propaganda and demagoguery. Now is the time for one man to stand up and accept his neighbor for one man to give in order that all might receive. Is unity and love of common goods such a lost thing?”
asked the Senator, with his shirt sleeves rolled up and the audience like a gospel chorus said, “You tell it Senator, you tell it.” And they clapped for him.

“Dear Father and Mother,” I wrote, “June is the month I remember which brings not only your wedding anniversary but also Father’s Day and Mother’s birthday. I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact dates, but I hope this card will take care of all of them.”

Senator Palantine said,
“They say this is the election of the greedy that everybody wants to get something for nothing. Well, I don’t believe it. Of course we all want
—
demand—an end to the raw deals we’ve been getting year after year . . .”

Again, applause distracting me as I write, “I’m sorry I again cannot send you my address like I promised to last year, but the sensitive nature of my work for the Army deserves utmost secrecy. I know you will understand.

“I am healthy and well and making lots of money. I have been going with a girl for several months and I know you would be proud if you could see her. Her name is Betsy, but I can tell you no more than that.”

More applause, a couple of black kids tapping on my windows and pointing behind the cab where a policeman walks up along the side . . . along side to my window.

Senator Palantine says,
“Most of all we desire a chance to become one again, to become a strong single solidified country . . .”

The police says, “Hey, cabbie, you can’t park here.”

I say, “Sorry officer.”

The police says, “Are you waiting for a fare?” He leans in through the window and my hand went into my jacket pocket to my revolver, but I say, “No officer.”

“All right, move it.”

Senator Palantine is saying,
“Their game is over, all their games are over. Now is the era for the common man,”
as I drive off.

Later in my place I finished that letter home: “I hope this card finds you all well, as it does me. I hope no one has died. Don’t worry about me. One day there will be a knock on the door and it will be me. Love, Travis.”