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Back in the year nineteen seventy-one, when I enter the bedroom, Anne is sound asleep. I put my yellow cap on top of the dresser, take my wallet and comb out of my back pocket and lay it next to the cap. On my side of the bed, I take off my shirt and pants, and hang them on the chair.
Crawling into bed, I put an arm around Anne and snuggle my pelvis into her soft warm body. I reach a hand for a breast. Anne pushes my hand away. ‘Not now, I’m trying to sleep,’ she tells me. I feel the emptiness of my hand for several seconds and then move it to Anne’s belly. I let it rest a couple seconds feeling the beat of her heart, and then begin moving slowly downward. ‘Come on,’ I have to get up at seven,’ she says and turns over.
It’s all a question of timing, isn’t it? Whether you’re in or out of time, I tell myself and think what a complex phenomenon time is.
It is thought that has made it so, says a voice inside my head. Time exists but not in the way that most of us imagine. Time, space, and thought are all the same thing. Time is the space between chirps as a bird lays a path for its mate to follow. Time exists in the rippling of the wind through a field of sparse headed barley. Follow the rippling and the chirping in the flow of time. Follow to a knurled, dark, leafless winter tree. See that empty space does not separate but joins the branches one to another, to the sky, to the birds, to all that exists. Watch a pair of red-breasted sparrows flit from branch to branch, from tree to tree, from sky to sky in the unity of empty space. Time is the mode on which we travel. Not- time is an ever-flowing infinite expansion with no beginning or end. Words have beginning and end, not eternity. Eternity is beyond the material mode in which language must mold all of its compression.
I lay on my back and think, Time is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is the word that separates us from the cosmos. It is the word that binds time in linear construct, straight lines which have become so all important. Man, creator of the word, the only rational creature in nature, the only creature who disobeys nature’s laws, the only animal that worships a straight line. The line that can be measured in time. Nature is inclined to the circle, the circle with no beginning or end.
I roll over on my stomach and think some more. Man is a part of the eternal circle, an infinite part of the All. We are joined to every other living thing through an infinite ever-expanding timelessness. In the timeless circle all life joins hands…. The spirit that gave life to my body as germ cells joined did not come into existence with my conception. Before I came, Life was there waiting to breathe existence into the cell. The life force always was, and I always am also. Jesus knew what he spoke of. His Truth lives on though words distort it. Time is the chopping up of life. Our rotation, revolution, and cosmic whirl though space happens in time creating night and day, and the seasons. Bit life is a never ceasing expansion. The Earth doesn’t tick off seconds, minutes, hours. The earth doesn’t wail of days, weeks, years, millenniums. It sings…. Sings of the eternal… .
I turn over on my back. It’s we who do the slicing and the marking. We try to verbalize it all. We lock time in watertight compartments. We measure her with precision instruments at Greenwich. We lock ourselves in our words, myself tells me.
I need more time! Time is up! Time has flown away! I’ m late…. I’m late…. All the stars are falling down falling down falling down….I have to get away. I need some time off!!!! Why can’t you ever be on time???? I ain’t got time to mess wid you…. Time has gone and passed me by…. It’s the wrong time…. I wasn’t born yesterday…. Yesterday! Yesterday! Yesterday! And, Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Just wait ‘til my ship comes in!
Time…. Time…. Time…. Tick…. Tock…. Tick…. Tock…. Tick … Tock…. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock…. Tick tock tick tock tick tock…. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Ticktochticktocktichtockticktockticktockticktockticktockticktockticktock. It’s time! If only we had the time. Quit wasting time. Time on my hands. What are you going to do with your leisure time? In the sweet bye and bye… in the sweet bye and bye. We will meet our precious Jesus in the sweet bye and bye. It’s time again! Ancient Time… Medieval Time….Modern Time…. War Time and Peace Time…. Your Time and My Time. One Time and Two Time…. Time on a Dime…. Take Time and Lose Time…. No Time like All Time…. Rum Time and Ball Time…. Coffee Time and Tea Time…. You Time and Me Time…. And, I Gotta Let Be Time…. Slow Time and Fast Time…. First Time and Last Time…. And, there’s No Time Like the Present Time…. I roll back on my stomach and think of the growing in time that Howell describes in his book War Dance, a growth which is all inclusive and ever expanding. The seed uses time in its metamorphose from dead fruit to fruit of the earth. In it’s time there is sleeping and waking. It grows in wind, rain, and warming sunshine. It takes its nourishment from the sun and returns it to the earth. Am I any different from the seed? I ask myself
Are we separated by anything more than the words we utter? myself answers.
A little quirk in time that must be noted, I tell myself here in 2008 as I write the final revision. The words that I thought about time were not thought as I lay in bed at the end of my cab-driving shift in 1971. I remember thinking those words at my typewriter in the backroom of the hundred-year-old ranch house that we rented from Milligan. We had been living on the sheep ranch in Byron for at least a year when I wrote those words in 1974 or ‘75. I remember Alex telling me that he really liked that section on time.
And, today in the year 2008 we are not yet done with time. Remember Krishnamurti’s description. It takes time to go from here to there. Time separates. Truth is beyond time. Time and the word are one. Time-space has purpose in the material world, but time-space has no place in the psychological world. Let me quote from him, ‘Thought is bound by time and time is petty; it’s this pettiness that prevents ‘seeing’. Seeing is always instantaneous, as understanding, and the brain which is put together by time, prevents and also perverts seeing. Time and thought are inseparable; put and end to one, you put an end to the other.’
And another ‘I’ inside my head adds, The dreams that I dreamed were not dreamed as I lay in my bed in Walnut Creek. The dream must have come from seventy- four or seventy-five recorded around the time that you wrote about time. Time is very tricky… trick trick trick trick tricky….
It is early morning. The sky is dark, but a pale glow of light washes River Road. The birds are still asleep in the broad-leafed trees as I jog toward my foster mother’s house two miles away. There’s a young black athlete running in front of me. He’s wearing a purple flowered shirt and a pair of corduroy cutoffs. I remember seeing him on other early morning runs, and that I always slow down to let him turn off the road. Today instead of slowing down, I make a definite decision to speed up and jog beside him. I pull up on his right hand side and we run in silence step for step. ‘You play basketball?’ I ask as we slow to a walk in front of his mother’s house.
‘I taught Karem Abdu Jabbar,’ he tells me. We make a date to play tomorrow afternoon.
‘I’ll bring a number,’ I tell him and take off in an easy jog.
I look to my right at the dark green shrubs and the narrow gray tree trunks. It’s not light enough to see the river, but I can sense its presence. I turn to my left and see a row of widely spread white wooden houses. A girl emerges from the closest house, and jogs by my side. I look into her face. Rosy cheeks brighten her lightly tanned skin. Our running motion blows her finely textured blonde hair away from her face. I focus on the sparkle of her big blue eyes. She looks into my eyes and says, ‘Are you sick? Aren’t you feeling well?’
Her words hit me like a stick of dynamite. My feet brake to a stop. The girl stops beside me. ‘You look so pale,’ she says in a soft friendly voice.
I turn to look at the river and tell myself, This can’t be. I’m in the best physical condition of my entire life. I turn my head back to the girl and find that she is gone.
Setting out to look for the blue-eyed girl, I find myself in a strange house. The spacious rooms are crowded with middle-aged people dressed in suits and long dresses. I peer from the center room and see that all the other rooms open on to it. It’s just like the De Jung Museum in San Francisco, I tell myself. There is an air of expectation in the conversation as I walk from room to room. I look for a friendly face, but recognize no one. I am a complete stranger. I glance at my right hand, and see a large white number smoking between my fingers. I lift it to my lips and take a long hard hit. I hold my breath for a near minute and then take another hit. When I’m finished, I put the number in a blue ashtray that I see on top of a brown table. As I eye up the strangers that stand in groups of two or three a heavyset matron in long evening gown and expensive jewelry emerges from an archway, She begins to usher everyone towards the center room. ‘The company of singers is coming. They will be here at any moment,’ she says with a touch of excitement in her voice.
The center room is crowded with onlookers. There is a small stage in the front. On stage is a group of musicians in Spanish costume who crowd around a girl with long black hair. She is dressed in a long pink gown that is drawn in tightly at her slender waist. The chatter in the room stops as the musicians move to the rear of the stage. The girl takes center stage. In the silence you can hear the beating of hearts. The musicians begin to play a Spanish love song. The girl sings and the music becomes background. Her voice captivates the entire audience. No on is more captivated than me. Time stands still as I hang on to each note. I lose all sense of self as I become one with the music. It is not until a burst of applause rises from the crowd that I return to myself. I take up the applause and continue longer than anyone else.
The black haired girl comes off the stage and walks toward the rear of the room. The audience parts to form an aisle for her. I find I’m standing in its center. The girl comes toward me. Our eyes meet. She pauses for a moment, smiles, and continues to the rear exit. I turn to watch her climb into a horse drawn carriage. Through the glass-less window of her coach, I see her sitting with several ladies in waiting. ‘He’s mine. All mine. I’ve won him with my voice,’ she tells the others.
I catch sight of the blue-eyed girl who jogged beside me. Her head rest on a window frame in the next room. In her eyes and smile I read her thoughts. He’s not yours at all, the blue-eyed girl is thinking. As the carriage pulls away I smile in agreement with the blue-eyed girl and wonder when we will meet again.
I walk back to the table with the blue ashtray. The room is crowded. Voices are buzzing in praise of the singer. I wonder how I will be able to get the joint off the table without attracting attention. There may be a narc in here wondering who left it, I tell myself. I edge closer to the table and glance at the people around. No one is paying the least attention. I casually put my hand over the ashtray, scoop the joint up in cupped fingers, and knock the ashtray to the floor. As I sweep up the ashes with my left hand, I keep the number cupped in my right. I am very pleased with my cleverness as I return the ashtray to the table.
I walk up stairs to look for a bathroom where I can take a couple hits. I open a door and walk into our farmhouse kitchen. The farmer’s four daughters are gathered around the kitchen table. ‘Look, we taught Tony a new trick,’ the oldest girl tells me. Their brown and white pony is standing on the kitchen table. There is an up turned peach basket on the floor; Tony stands with all four legs together. He stretches a hind leg out to steady the basket. The next thing I know, he has both hind legs on the basket. He moves his rear and fore legs from basket to table and back again in rapid succession, I’m amazed at his performance.
‘He’s added another trick to his repertoire,’ says the oldest daughter.
The alarm clock is ringing in the distance. Anne rolls over and shuts it off. ‘Time to get up,’ she says in a sleepy voice. I feel her lift out of bed, and I relax and drift back toward sleep.
Before I reach sleep, Anne is leaning over to kiss me good-bye. ‘I reset the alarm so you’ll get up in time to take Stoke and Vickie to the baby sitter. Remember, Mrs. Hundui expects you there by ten-thirty,’ she tells me.
‘I’ll be there,’ I say and drift back toward dreamland. Before I reach it, another bell bursts in my ear. I sit up for a second and listen. God damm it, I tell myself figuring it’s a late call from the substitute secretary. Then, I remember it is summer, and smile. I leap out of bed and rush through the living room, dinning room, and into the kitchen. At the far wall, I grab the phone off its hook.
‘Hello?’ I ask.
‘Dis you, Jackie?’ comes a voice that I don’t quite recognize.
‘Yea, this is me,’ I tell the voice and search for a picture.
‘Yea, this is Willie. Your ole brother, Will.’
‘Hey, how’s it going? You calling from Philly?’
‘No, I’m calling from California. I got a job over here in Pacifica. Pacifica, California.
My foster brother, Willie?’ I ask myself.
‘Yea, we jus’ got into California ‘bout a week ago. I found dis job over here. We got us a apartment. Too dammed expensive sleeping in a motel…. Too damm crowded sleeping in de car. We tried it one night in de car, but it didn’t work out.’
‘What, your two buddies come out wid you again?’
‘No, I bought my two bothers and my sister Sally and the kids wid me dis time. Wid the wives and kids and everything dere’s nine of us.’
‘Nine of you came out?’
‘Yea, my brothers’ been bugging me to bring dem out to California. I found dis job wid a painting outfit in Pacifica. I guess we’re gonna stay here and all find jobs.’
A moment of dead silence follows. I can’t think of a thing to say. ‘Well, how’s things going wid you, Jackie. You found dat teaching job, yet?’
‘No, not yet. I should be getting into Mt. Diablo before school starts. There’s two or three openings. I subbed at all three schools, so I should have a really good chance. I had an interview for an eighth grade position last week….’
‘You still driving cab?’
‘Yea, I decider not to go back to the cannery dis summer. I’m beginning to enjoy driving cab. I even hate to give it up when I get my teaching job.’
‘You still living in de same place?’
‘De same house, but we moved up to the bigger front part. De other couple moved out. We got a little more room now,’ I say and give a little laugh.
‘Yea, well, I don’t wanna bother you or nothing…. I jus’ thought I’d see how yer doing. I was thinking I might take a run over dere after we get settled a little….’
‘Yea, sure. You still remember how to get here?’ I ask without too much enthusiasm. All the time I’ m thinking, Nine of them. Nine of them. And dere probably dead broke. How’s he gonna take care of nine of dem? His brothers have been living off him since he went back to Philly. Dey probably won’t find jobs here either. What if Willie loses his job? How could I feed nine of dem? Suppose dey want to stay wid us?
‘Hey, Jackie, I was meaning to ask ya,’ Willie’s voice breaks into the nagging of my mind. ‘You don’t got an old T.V. around you’re not using?’
‘Yea, we do got one out in the garage. It don’t work, but you could probably fix it. Must need a new tube or something.’
‘See we ain’t got no T.V. or nothing yet. We dis came out wid what we could fit in de car. I was thinking if you had one, maybe I could borrow it for awhile.’
‘Well, it ain’t working, but you’re welcome to it.’
‘Yea, well I could probably fix it alright. I rebuilt my color set back home. Dere not as hard to work on as ya think.’
‘What hours are you working wid de painting outfit?’ I ask wondering if he’ll come by himself or bring the whole gang.
‘We usually start at eight in the morning and go to four-thirty. I’m laid off today. Probably get called back tomorrow though.’
‘Yea, I leave for work around three myself,’ I say and wonder if I should invite him over. Shit, if he brings them all over. I wanna get some writing done. I could tell him I’m off tomorrow, I tell myself.
‘Well, I gotta get going, Jackie. I gotta run Jimmy and Eddie over to the unemployment office. Maybe I’ll get over to see you on Saturday.’
‘Yea, come on over. I gotta work Saturdays, but I don’t go in ‘til around three thirty. You could stop over in the morning. You still remember how to get here?’
‘Yea, I can find it alright. We always sleep late on Saturdays. Dat’s when we’re not working over time. Dey ain’t working no over time over here, yet. I’ll try to make it around noon or so.’
‘Yea, I’ll probably see you then.’
‘Well take care of yourself, Jackie. See ya later, den.’
‘Yea, O.K. See ya,’ I say and listen to the click of the phone.
The second I hang up the phone, I’m cussing myself out for being a dirty bastard. What the fuck’s wrong with me? I ask myself. He isn’t coming over Saturday. He wanted a definite invitation. I think about his brothers and sisters and tell myself it serves him right. I can’t afford to feed nine of them. I have my own family to think of. Maybe he’ll call again. I could invite them over for lunch…. What the hell, if he loses his job though?
I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down on the front room couch. He still hasn’t learned, I tell myself. Those brothers keep hanging on to him. What’s he doing back in California again? How long is he gonna stay this time? I prop my feet on the coffee table and think about his last visit. It was over a year ago, I tell myself. We were still living in the back part of the house. Yea, I must’a been subbing over in Pittsburgh. I remember coming home around three o clock. Anne tells me Willie dropped by around noon. ‘He and a buddy from Philadelphia. He said he’d be back tonight to see you.’
‘How’s he doing?’ I asked.
Anne told me he only stayed for an hour. She made breakfast for them. They ate and Willie told her about the trip out. He explained how they got stuck in a snowstorm in a small town somewhere in Montana or Colorado. Spent a whole week in a local bar, drinking and playing pool, but mostly just drinking, drinking and laughing it up with the town folks, drinking and watching the big snow flakes fall, drinking and counting their money, drinking and trying to dig their car out, drinking and watching the snow fall harder, and harder, drinking and counting the little that’s left. They came to blows with a couple locals, and got hustled out of town as soon as the first snowplows went through.
He told Anne that his two buddies are brothers. Their father lives in Richmond. They hadn’t seen him for over ten years. They came out with Willie especially to see their old man. They arrived at his darkened door around midnight. At first they were not sure if they should knock or not. The new wife opened the door. She’s not much older than the brothers. The father greeted them like long lost heirs. They broke out the bottles and began to celebrate. Everyone got roaring laughing drunk. The brothers were out in the kitchen filling their glasses. They got into an argument over an earlier slight. Danny picked up a butcher knife and stabbed his brother three times before he came to his senses. Willie drove like crazy to get the bleeding boy to the hospital. At emergency, they patched Donny up just enough to stop the bleeding. Because they had no money and no medical insurance, the Richmond Hospital wouldn’t admit the boy. They had to speed off to the county hospital in Martinez.
‘He looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week,’ Anne told me. ‘That friend of his didn’t look like much. Anyone who would stab his own brother. He never said a word. Just laughed and nodded in agreement to everything Willie said. They came from visiting the brother in the hospital. He’s in critical condition.’
‘Billy gonna stay out here dis time?’
‘He said they’re looking for jobs. There’ s no work for painters back East in the winter. I told him he could stay with us ‘til he finds something. He’s such a nice boy. He couldn’t thank me enough for the bacon and eggs.’
‘He gonna stay?’
‘He said he didn’t want to put us out. I told him he could sleep on the couch ‘til he finds something. I’m not sure if he’s coming for dinner or not. I told him we eat around five.’
Anne holds back dinner until five-thirty, but Willie doesn’t come. While we eat, I tell Stoke about his uncle Willie and listen with one ear for his car. His coming gets me thinking about the past. He wasn’t any bigger than Stoke, when I went to the foster home, I tell myself. I think back to my foster parents’ farm. I remember a couple days after my arrival; I was pulling Willie in his red wagon. Somehow, I got a little to close to the edge of the porch. He and the wagon toppled over. He fell to the ground screaming in fright. My foster mother came running from the house. She picked him up and hugged him to her breast. ‘If his arm is broken, I’m sending you back to Mrs. Murray,’ she screamed at me. I was not number one any more, Willie the youngest was.
After dinner, I sit in front of the T.V. with one ear on the news and the other on the front driveway. I see how small the room is. How crowded the four of us are. I think about squeezing in one more body. I wonder if Anne told Willie that I’m driving cab. I think it’s lucky it’s my night off.
‘I’m going outside for awhile,’ I tell Anne as Stoke changes the channel for his six o’clock show. She nods yes from her dishes at the sink and tells Stoke to turn it down a little. Vickie throws a rattle from her high chair. I stoop to pick it up and we play a little, laughing and making faces at each other.
Outside, fall is in the air. The aroma of burning leaves drifts into my nostrils. I sit on the cement walkway that runs around the house and rest my head on our living room wall. I can barely hear the noise of the T.V. I remember that it was the outside which convinced us to rent this converted four room back of a larger house. I think back to our return from Philadelphia. Dat was jus’ four months ago? I ask myself. I drove all the way back certain that I had a teacher’s job. I knew that the history position was just made for me. I remember looking for houses in Hayward, San Leandro, and Oakland, trying to find a place that was centrally located to where a job would come up. I learn that Mt. Diablo is the largest district in the whole Bay Area.
Looking over the back fence that separates our yard from the neighbor’s orchard, my vision stretches to the foothills some twenty miles away. I listen to the wind break like surf in the branches of the walnut trees. It grows peaceful and quiet inside me. I close my eyes and watch the color flow from dark black to red and then to orange yellow. Opening my eyes, I see a dark sparrow flit out of a tree. I follow the lace like pattern of the branches. There are still a few yellow-green leaves scattered about. Black clothed walnuts stand out clearly against the background of blue-gray sky.
Stoke come outside with his football hugged in his arms. ‘Wanna catch?’ he asks. We line up on opposite sides of the yard and toss the ball gently back and forth. I throw an easy spiral and watch its pattern.
Hey, that’s really neat, I tell myself. I remember that Willie and I use to play like this the first couple of years that I was with my foster parents. You even think of Stoke as being him sometimes when we’re out like this, I tell myself. ‘Good Catch,’ I tell Stoke.
‘How do you make it spin like that?’ Stoke asks.
I toss an easy spiral to Stoke’s outstretched five-year-old hands. He watches and returns one to me. ‘See the pattern it makes in the air?’ I ask. I never saw the ball spiral when I played catch with Willie, I tell myself.
How many years did Willie and I play together like this? I ask myself. I remember when we moved to River Road we shared the same small bedroom for a couple years. We didn’t talk too much though. I was in high school with an after school job. He was in sixth or seventh grade. We both had our own friends. I remember I traded my black leather jacket to him for a tire when we split for Alaska. The tire blew out before we were even out of Pennsylvania.
‘We got a new kid in school today,’ Stoke tells me. ‘His name is Bobby. Him and me are building a gigantic fort. He got no teeth in front.’
‘What are you gonna do wid the fort?’
‘Tear it down.’
‘What did you learn in school today?’ I ask with one ear on our conversation and the other cocked for Willie’s car.
‘Ahh… we didn’t learn nothing. All we ever do is play.’
At eleven thirty, my ear is still cocked for Willie’s car. I lie in our bedroom and listen through the bathroom that separates us from the kids’ room in front. I feel the closeness of the rooms pushing in on me. I picture the couch that Willie will sleep on against our bedroom wall. Dat’s not the same couch we had on Chetwood Street when Willie made his first visit to California is it? I ask myself.
No, that one folded into a bed, myself answers.
I remember Willie came to visit our flat on Chetwood Street with his first wife and their new baby. The navy had just transferred him from a base near Portland to one in San Diego. The first night of their visit they stayed in the Motel Five a few blocks away. I figured they wanted a bed to sleep in. The second night they slept on our studio bedroom floor. We talked and laughed away most of the night. Anne got up for the feedings of the little boy. Anne was five months pregnant with Stoke when we poised for Willie’s camera next morning. She slipped three new dresses to Willie’s wife when we helped them load up their car. I led Willie’s fifty-three Ford across the Bay Bridge to One-O-One and waved good-bye at the L.A. turn off.
It was almost a year later that I received his collect call from San Diego. Everything was going good he told me. He had a nine to five office job at the base. Took a second job at a gas station near where they lived. Making extra money to give Frannie all the things she wanted. Came home early a couple nights ago and found Frannie in bed with a couple of his navy buddies. They beat him up and kicked him down the stairs. Somehow he managed to get back inside and grab his little boy. He drove through the streets of San Diego with blood dripping from his face and the kid crying. Bought a pint of Four Roses to deaden the pain. Crashed into a parked car. Cops locked him up for drunk driving.
‘The navy got me out of jail, Jackie, ‘ he told me. ‘I explained all that happened to the lawyer guy. They’re gonna help me get custody of my kid.’
‘You gonna press charges against the guys who beat you up?’
‘Naw, Jackie, I tol’ myself the heck wid it. I jus’ wanna get my kid and get out’a here. I’m out’a the navy in another month…. ‘ There’s a moment or two of silence then Willie says, ‘Say, Jackie, I was wondering. Is dere much work around Oakland? I got a year’s experience pumping gas….’
‘Work’s kind’a tight around here in the winter. Though, usually you can get on at a gas station. It’s a lot better in the summer when the canneries start up.’
‘Yea, I don’t know. I jus’ might go back to Philly. I kind’a like it out here in California, though,’ he said with a weary whine in his voice.
It was the whine in his voice and the lateness of the evening that made me hurry up our conversation. I knew he wanted some direction from me his older brother. He wanted me to invite him out here to Oakland, to help him find a job. At the very least he wanted me to tell him what to do, to go back to Philadelphia, to stay in California. I did none of those things. I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want the extra burden. I had all I could do just to get my ass through school. It be different if I was teaching, if I had a steady job, I told myself after I hung up the phone.
In the morning, my ear is still cocked for the sound of Willie’s car. I look for his car in the driveway when I get home from my day’s subbing. ‘I guess we could let him stay wid us ‘til he finds something,’ I tell Anne as she prepares dinner. ‘Though, he might want to stay wid his friends in Richmond.’
‘He seemed like he wanted to get away from them. They must fight all the time from what he told me,’ Anne answers.
Just as we’re sitting down for dinner Billy arrives. I’m happy to see his friend isn’t with him. He explains that they didn’t make it yesterday because they were in Frisco looking for work. This morning, the cops picked up Danny and took him to the county jail in Martinez. They charged him with assault with a deadly weapon. The brother is still in critical condition. ‘Donny ain’t gonna press no charges, but they’re gonna hold Danny ‘til the hearing comes up,’ Willie tells us.
It’s over four years now since Willie left San Diego. He has a lot to fill us in on. Though dinner, he explains how he returned to Philadelphia. Moved into an apartment with his two brothers. A year or so later he got his divorce from Frannie. Married a girl that was already six months pregnant. She lived with him for about a year and then ran off with the guy who knocked her up. In the mean time, he got a job as a house painter. Made good money. Supported his brothers and his sister Sally. Acquired a new car, color T.V., and stereo. Got married again. This time the girl was a practical joker. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Jackie,’ he tells me as he takes a second helping of meat loaf and mash potatoes. ‘She use ta loosen de tops on de salt and pepper shakers. When ya go to shake it you’d get a big mess a salt all over yer plate. She use ta scramble de eggs wid hot pepper in dem. I nearly burned my tongue off a couple times….’ Willie laughs and tells us how he had to gulp glass after glass of cold water. I watch him run a hand though his short brown hair. He looks just the same as when he was sixteen, only a little heavier,’ I tell myself.
‘She’d wait ‘til I was in de shower, den she’d turn the cold water on full force. I’d be in dere getting scalded ta death. She use ta stick mousetraps in de dresser drawers. Hide ‘em in my underwear or socks…. She’s jus a little bit crazy, I’ll tell ya.’
He’s actually relieved when she leaves him about a year ago. He tells us how he got a new apartment with his brothers and sister. How he’s become an accomplished house painter. He explains how he nearly runs the business himself. ‘De boss is drunk all de time. Dead drunk. He can’t paint or nothing no more. Jus’ lines up de jobs. Got as many as six men on de crew in de summer. We usually finish off half a six-pack before lunch. Finish off the rest wid lunch, and den start another one. I can paint jus’ as good when I’m little sauced as I can stone sober….’
After dinner, we learn Willie’s real reason for leaving Philadelphia this time. For the past three winters he’s been driving an oil truck through the icy streets of his hometown. ‘See de painters ain’t got no work back dere for at least four months in de winter. I got tired of collecting unemployment,’ Willie tells us. He explains how a month ago he skidded in the ice. Hit a pedestrian. ‘Killed him. Died before he got to de hospital. It was only a nigger dat I hit. I don’t see what dey got so excited about. It’s not like I killed a white man or something,’ he says with a tiny laugh.
There is a manslaughter charge against him. His lawyer says that the worst he’ll get is a year’s easy time. It was an accident. Willie doesn’t want to do any time. He figures they’ll never come all the way to California looking for him. ‘Besides, my case doesn’t come up for six months. I can always go back. I jus’ don’t see why dere making so much fuss over a nigger. It be different if it was a white man. Den I could see it. Besides, it’s icy, cold, dirty, and ugly back dere in de wintertime. It ain’t like California, Jackie. California is different. I’ll tell ya, back dere de niggers is taking over. Dey don’t know dere place no more. Dere even going around wid white girls. But, ya know any white girl who goes out wid a nigger ain’t nothing but a whore anyhow!’
I’m not sure how much Willie told us was bravado and how much was real. He was kind and considerate while he stayed with us. He offered to help with the dishes, played with Stoke and Vickie, told us about his own two kids who were living with his brothers. He only stayed a couple days. The Red Barn told him he was too short to fill the counter man opening. The painters’ union was all filled up. They wouldn’t accept his card from the Philadelphia local. I told him I could maybe get him on with the cab. He explained that he didn’t know the streets well enough for that. Then, he confessed that he was still in love with his first wife. He wanted to go to San Diego before his money ran out. He wanted to look her up, make sure she was all right. He told me that they had been in touch off and on. He had sent her money on several occasions. The last time was about nine months ago. He had sent her three hundred dollars to fly back and see little William. He hadn’t heard from her since.
I didn’t tell him to forget her, when we said good-bye in the driveway next to his late modal Olds. I didn’t tell him to go back and face his manslaughter charge. I didn’t tell him that African- Americans are human beings just like him and me. Instead, we talked about the old days when we lived with our foster parents. We talked about the fun we had growing up on the farm, the chores that we did. We talked about how he, the youngest, was the favorite, how he could fool our foster mother every time.
‘I remember when we lived on River Road. I would go into de bathroom and turn de water on. I’d pretend I was washing up for school while I’d smoke a cigarette. De couple a times I almost got caught, she thought it was you dat was smoking. She never even knowed dat I smoked ‘til I moved to Philly,’ he told me.
He opened the car trunk and showed me the case of firecrackers they picked up on their way out. He gave me a couple boxes for Stoke. He told me about the time he and a couple buddies were out drinking. They jumped in to the cannel to get away from Morgan, the police chief. Morgan pulled them out and carted them off to jail soaking wet .He remembered how I had told him that Morgan should have something better to do than bother little kids.
He told me he couldn’t believe how our foster parents had aged in the last couple years. I told him about our short visit with the foster parents on our trip back East last summer, how I recognized the wallpaper after eight years like I had seen it yesterday. I described my walk down to the river and up the towpath with our foster father. I told him how our foster mother sat in her favorite chair; how we said our good-byes knowing we would never see each other again.
Willie and I shook hands and promised to keep in touch with one another. We promised not to lose contact.
Now, after almost a year, his phone call is our first contact. God damm it, instead of inviting him over, instead of a warm welcome, I completely cut him off. What the fuck’s wrong wid me? I ask myself. Instead of answering myself, I pour another cup of coffee, and walk into the bedroom for my writing folder. I sit down at the dinning room table. I got my own problems, my own family. I’m trying to write, trying to find a teaching position. I can’t be solving other peoples’ problems. Besides, I couldn’t help anyhow. Every man’s got to do it for himself, I tell myself.
Stoke comes in and turns on the T.V. ‘Do I have to go to the baby sitter today,’ he asks when I tell him good morning.
‘Sure, what’s wrong wid de baby sitter?’
‘There’d nothing to do over there. No one to play with. I could stay at Collin’s house. His mother ‘ll be home all day.’
‘Naw, I’ll be off tomorrow. You can play wid Collin den. Maybe we’ll take a ride over to Palo Alto and see uncle Alex.’
‘Why can’t we wait ‘til you go to work?’ Stoke asks as he flips the channel.
‘Because, I need some time to write. Besides, Mrs. Hindu wants a full day’s pay….’
‘Colleen’s mother won’t mind if I stay over there. She told….’
‘Vickie comes out of the bedroom rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She sees me and a big smile lights up her face. ‘Pick me up, Daddy. Pick me up,’ she says as she runs over with out stretched arms.
I feed the kids their breakfast, and drive over to Hindu’s small two-bedroom apartment. As I park in the black top lot, I see that there is not a tree or a blade of grass in sight. Inside, the Hindu’s four small children and the other two children that they baby-sit are crowded in the tiny front room around the T.V. set. There’s a strong smell of curry in the room. The one small window is heavily curtained to keep out the shine light. No wonder they don’t want to stay here, I tell myself. I say hello and good-bye to Mrs. Hindu. What de fuck, three days a week. Dis is good for ‘em. Let ‘em learn a little about how other families live, I tell myself.
It’s near ten-thirty when I settle down to write. As I get into my days work, I forget all about Willie’s phone call. As I try to recall my cab driving experience of yesterday, I forget all about today. As I squeeze out the words on paper, I lose all contact with the worry in another part of my mind.
Even as I drive to work, I’m writing in my head the surface events. I realize how deeply I’m into my writing when I stop at the light and look around. I’m on Grand Avenue, I tell myself. I don’t even remember getting off the freeway The four P.M. sun is shining off the asphalt. I blink an eye and listen to a loud crashing noise from my left hand side. Someone else isn’t paying attention, I tell myself as I see the late modal car that has bumped bumpers with the car in front of it. The driver is a longhaired beat looking guy. He peers from behind the steering wheel with a puzzled look on his face. The guy that he hit, a hip looking young executive type with mustache, shaped hair, and wide neck tie, leaps from his car his face twisted with hate and hostility. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you,’ he shouts. ‘Just look what the fuck you done to my car!’ I sit with eyes agape. From the far lane there comes the sound of booming laughter. A young black, his Afro head and shoulders hanging from the window of his car, is laughing his head off at the anxiety expressed by the two white dudes who bumped fenders. His ringing peals of laughter are infectious. I can’t help squeezing out a small laugh myself.
The light changes. I swing right on Grand and give another quiet laugh. When I can laugh out loud like that black dude back there, then I’ll be free. Then I’ll have thrown off all the shackles, I tell myself. I speed up to catch the light on West and find that I’m holding the steering wheel in a death like grip. When did I learn to hold on to the wheel like this? Why am I trying to squeeze it to pieces? The tension I fee in my back and shoulders. Where is it coming from? My inability to laugh out loud, my constant holding back, what is it that has me in its grip? What part of me is in control? I ask myself.
How difficult to change the habits of a lifetime, to break through the conditioning, to change ones life long behavior. Do I compromise too much? Where do you draw the line? I ask myself.
The problem goes a lot deeper than you realize. It’s not enough to just want to change. Wanting to change, in fact, can get in the way, myself answers.
Alex was right, I tell myself thinking of our conversation from a couple weeks ago. I park two blocks from the garage and lock up the car. I remember Alex saying, ‘You still react to situations like you are the same person you were ten years ago. You still think of yourself as a nobody. You let your ass-hole aspect take control.’
I felt the pressure of Alex’s aggressive truthfulness as I answered him. ‘That’s what I’m talking about, Alex.’ I pushed back my plate and refilled our empty wine glasses from the bottle of Charles Krug. I glanced at the girls on the couch having their after dinner smoke and saw that their glasses were still half full. ‘That’s the reason for the inner struggle. I know that different aspects of myself are in control at different times. But… the inner struggle, the introspection that I do…. I t seems to be so much more important than anything else. I know that I don’t relate well to outer situations…. I spend most of my energy trying to get into myself.
But, that’s where I’ll find an understanding of my total being….’
‘Granted, Jack, this introspection is important, but you can over do it. You have to live in the world outside yourself. To be fully integrated, totally aware you have to know what’s going on in your relationship with other people. You have to listen to your own voice, feel your posture, know exactly where you are coming from. At the same time, you have to listen to the voice of the person that you’re relating to. See his posture, the way he holds himself. Know where he’s coming from. You don’t relate, man. You withdraw, hold back. You act like you are the same person that you were ten years ago. Like you are still in high school. You’ve acquired a deep inferiority complex that you’ve never shaken off. Then, you lived with foster parents. You were no good at sports. The in groups didn’t accept you. I know, man. I had it the same way. You’re a complete zero in your own mind.
‘So, what happens, then? You respond to relationships with half hearted thrusts. You don’t want to get slammed down any more. Instead of facing life, you withdraw inside your shell. Not to learn like you’re doing now, but for self-protection. You got programmed out of real relationship and you’re still reacting to the old clues. You’re not relating to the world from where you’re at now. You recognize your attributes. You know you’re above or equal to any man you meet. Why do you continue to be so meek? Why do you appear so disinterested, so unenthusiastic in your relationships. Why are you so afraid to show any emotion?’
Instead of showing how deeply I was stung by his words, I said, ‘ What you say is true…. But, if you’ve locked yourself inside yourself in chains of self-protection all your life, you don’t burst out all at once. It’s a long slow process. Even recognizing where you are at any given moment is an accomplishment. Letting go when you’ve been holding on for dear life all your life is no easy thing. Just to see the need is a big step. The rest will come, but it takes time. It has to come from within. You can’t force it.’
‘You’re separating inside and outside, Jack. You can’t do that. Just like you can’t separate mind and body. There is no separation. To recognize who you are you have to see yourself in relationship. You have to hear your voice, to be aware of your posture, be in tune with others.’
‘I know what you are saying is true. I agree with you. I’m jus’ saying you can’t force it. It takes time.’
‘You don’t have to force it, Jack. You can be a little more enthusiastic without forcing anything,’ Alex told me. I thought I heard a little anger creeping into his voice. I thought how he was into Gestalt, now, and wondered if wasn’t identifying with Fritz Perls. ‘You can be more alive in your relationship,’ he continued. ‘It takes time is just an excuse. You have to get into what is and stop worrying about what should be. You have to experience the what is fully. Man, you are burning up so much energy worrying about your inner self that you don’t have anything left for living. For example, man, you have a really nice physique. But, you carry yourself like you are still a hundred and ten pound weakling. You’re not aware of your physical assets so you don’t use them. A lot, most of the relating you do with another person is with your body. You have to be aware of it. You have to be aware of what is outside your skin. This world is just as real as the inner world where you spend all of your time.’
I nodded in agreement with Alex’s statement and divided the rest of the wine between us. Anne and Michelle had gone outside to gather the kids. I wondered if they’d be leaving soon, and thought how I had to get up early tomorrow for the interview with Mr. Bellumina. I nodded at Alex’s words that you need to listen to your voice, about how much a person’s voice tells about the person, how difficult it is to disguise the feelings in your voice. I nodded that I was listening and thought about the interview I had eight months ago with Mr. Rader. How close he was to Alex’s critique, I told myself.
‘I mean like right now, instead of reacting to my criticism what are you doing? Your mind is probably on the interview you have tomorrow. You’ll work it over inside your head instead of reacting to the actual situation,’ Alex told me.
We laughed and talked about the interview. We talked about how good my chances are to land the job. Alex reviewed the interviewing techniques that he learned at the two-week training course with the drug company. The kids were in bed. We had our after dinner coffee in front of the fireplace. All the time my mind was on the interview I had with Rader. He said almost the exact same thing as Alex, I told myself.
At the check out stand, I nod to a couple of drivers and wait for my trip sheet. The hip looking black guy who carries a Bible with him comes in to the little shack. I eye up his beard, leather jacket, and short boots. He has his Bible with his clipboard. We say hello and talk about Monday nights and how slow it is at the end of the month. ‘That Miller you carry around. Is he any good?’ he asks.
‘Henry Miller? Yea, I’d guess he’s the best American writer living today. Best writer I ever read.’
‘Yea, there’s another driver that reads him. He tells me that he’s very philosophical, spiritual in his writings.’
‘I think there’s a lot of the same kind of stuff in his works as in the Bible. I’ve been meaning to ask you about your views on religion. Miller, I think, is very Christ like in a lot of ways.’
‘Yea, well we’ll have to get together and talk. Maybe we’ll run into each other on the street tonight,’ he tells me just as the check out man calls my number.
The man behind the bullet proof glass gives me a late again look with my waybill. I go off to look for my cab with my thoughts sill on the interview with Radar. What, I put my application in with the district office when I was still up in Willows? Dat’s right. I interviewed with the superintendent during Easter vacation. I remember that I didn’t hear a thing from them until almost two years later. It was last November that I got the letter from the Cal-State placement office notifying me of the vacancy for a continuation high school position in San Leandro. I set up the appointment with Rader wondering if I really wanted to take the job. When I drove in the November rain to his office, I was still wondering. It’s an all white middle class conservative district. Shit we’d have to live in Hayward or nearby. We couldn’t find a duller place. You’re getting involved with the Peace Movement in Walnut Creek, getting to know Oakland and Berkeley. Why get tied up in the same kind of district that you left in Willows? I asked myself.
And in another part of my mind, I remembered running in the pouring rain across the Claremont Hotel parking lot. I took off my blue National Guard raincoat and brushed the water off my wrinkled dress pants. I found the real estate office and hesitated in front of the clear glass door. I eyed the expensive furniture and watched the water drip from my raincoat to the deep blue carpet. A young sharp looking secretary led me to Mr. Keller’s inner office. He explained that they have their own school, that I could attend the classes at night as soon as I paid the five hundred dollar tuition. No need to quit my present job. Lot’s of ex-teachers selling real estate. Handsome profits to be made. A business with a future. I’m too embarrassed to tell him that I haven’t a penny for tuition. I stammered that I would think about it and backed my way out the door stumbling over my feet as the secretary waved good-bye. You gotta land dis job. You gotta land dis job, this part of my mind told me.
I parked my Buick a half block from the school and gave thanks that the rain had stopped. As I walked up the wide steps of the nineteen thirties high school, I wondered if I should search out a restroom and comb my hair. I glanced at my watch and saw that I was seven minutes late already. It was quiet and dark in the halls. Most of the lights were out to conserve energy. I eyed the drab dark brown walls and thought of the bleakness of my own public schools. A wave of fear and self-doubt engulfed me. I peeked into an open room. A couple of high school boys stared at me and challenged my right to intrude. Dey might be my students in another week, I told myself. My footsteps echoed through the empty halls as I followed the arrow to the main office. An elderly gray haired spinster directed me to the principal’s den around the corner.
When I opened the door to answer his, ‘Come in,’ my heart dropped to my feet. He was an exact replica of my junior high school principal, Mr. Gilbert. The same bushy eyebrows over dark horned rim glasses, the same protruding nose, the same dark suit jacket and black tie, the same hefty paunch, the same commanding voice. I was as frightened as a schoolboy. I didn’t see the man who sat before me. I was in the principal’s office. What did I do? What’s gonna happen to me? ran through my mind.
I sat in front of Mr. Rader like a frightened child as he made a couple light introductory remarks. ‘What special qualities do you have that will make you a good continuation high teacher?’ he asked.
I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to answer him. I didn’t even know what subject matter I would be teaching. I only knew that I would be teaching a ninth grade class. The seconds rolled by as I groped for something to say. I pictured some of the dropouts I met at the job-corps camp outside of Willows. I pictured faces from my remedial eighth grade class. The memory of a confrontation with a big dumb junior at a high school in Pittsburgh flashed through my mind. I thought how difficult it was to work with the remedial students there.
‘Well, what do you have to offer us? What makes you think you can teach at our high school?’ he asked with a slight show of impatience in his voice.
‘Ahhh…. Well, I guess my best quality as a ahh teacher is de way I relate to kids,’ I told Rader, and paused for a second to look at the wall behind his desk. The bookcase was filled with darkly bound books on the theory of education, and green bound district directives. ‘I grew up in the same kind of environment dat most of dese kids come from. I worked at de same kind’a jobs dat dere parents work at, de same kind’a jobs dat they’ll have to work at .You know, factory jobs, non-skilled laboring, I think I can really get into what dere feeling. Really communicate wid dem. I mean, I come from the same lower working class background dat most a dese kids come from. I think I can really get into what dere feeling. I ‘ll know jus’ where dere coming from,’ I said and looked at he small round hole that had suddenly appeared in the sole of my shoe.
‘Why those kids would eat you alive in the classroom,’ Rader said in answer to my long pause. ‘You can’t even look me in the eye. You look over my head or down at your feet. You don’t show a spark of enthusiasm. How can you provoke any interest in your students if you are not enthusiastic yourself? Even Mr. Shields in the district office could see your lack of projection and he’s been out of the classroom for twelve years. He marked on your application,’ Rader said shifting his eyes to my file at the side of his desk, ‘Some question as to how he would perform in a classroom situation.’ I can tell by the way that you relate to me that he was right.’
He looked to my file and back to me. ‘Your papers showed that you resigned from your last position in Willows. Why I can just imagine. You must have been miserable there.’
‘No, that’s not why I left Willows,’ I whispered to myself.
‘Here it is mid-November,’ Rader told me. ‘I have a position to offer you. A position that you desperately need. You have a family to support. Yet you don’t sell yourself at all. There is a huge surplus of teachers today. If you can’t compete in the job market, if you can’t work up enough enthusiasm to earn yourself a teaching position, how are you going to get up an enthusiastic classroom approach?’
‘I think you can relate to kids without a lot of outward show,’ I said while my feelings made me doubt the truth of my words.
‘Your students have to hear you before they can learn anything. The learning process requires that you get their attention. Today’s classroom student needs a very stimulating and sophisticated prototype to identify with. The student needs to be charged with enthusiasm to learn. I’d think you would know. You’ve been out of work long enough. In today’s market you need good interviewing traits to acquire a teaching position. With a wife and family to provide for I’d think you’d be able to create a little more spark in yourself. There are numerous good books on the subject,’ he told me.
‘Well, it’s very difficult for me to project something that I don’t feel. I suppose I could work a little harder at it, though,’ I told Rader.
‘You don’t have to apologize to me. You don’t owe me anything,’ Rader returned.
His words hit me like a slap in the face. I knew he was right. There I sat apologizing for not being the man he thought I should be. I bowed my way out of the office like a child who had been given just one more chance. What de fuck’s wrong wid me? I asked myself .Why didn’t I tell him what I really feel? The dirty fucking bastard. Why didn’t I tell him to shove de fucking job up his fucking ass? Why didn’t I tell him dat it’s his phony kind’a thinking, his phony enthusiasm dat has fucked up de whole fucking system? Fuck his god dammed job. I wouldn’t work for dem if it was the last job on earth, I said in one part of my mind.
But in another part of my mind I was saying, He’s right…. He’s right. I couldn’t even look him in de fucking eye….
As I drive through the wash rack, I realize that it’s some eight months later and I’m still thinking about that interview. I’m still afraid to laugh. Still squeezing the life out of my steering wheel. ‘What de fuck’s wrong wid me? What de fuck’s wrong wid me? I ask myself.
I stop at the phone to call in going out. The dispatcher sends me to an address in the West Acorn Project. I turn out the garage down the weed flowering street and try to get into this summer night. The traffic whizzes by on the Cypress Street Overpass while I wait for the green. Why do I have to play dere games? Why can’t I jus’ be content to drive de cab and do some writing? Why do I have to find a mother fucking teaching job? I ask myself.
The light changes. I drive in the shadow of the overpass toward my fare’s address. Why do I continue to play de games? I answer dere questions. I say de right things. I still don’t fake enthusiasm, but I don’t level wid dem either. I draw up short, hold back. Dat’s the thing, holding back. I hold back wid my foster brother. I hold back wid Alex. I hold back with de principals and assistant superintendents. What does it take to quit holding back? Why can’t I tell de mother fucking assholes what I really believe? I tell dem that communication is the key to teaching. You have ta know the kid. He has ta know you. You have ta let ‘em know dey can trust and depend on you, love you. But, I don’t tell dem dat being honest is being honest. Being honest wid yourself. How can anyone love you, trust you, if you tell them half lies? And how can you tell the truth if you don’t know it yourself? How can you communicate with another human being if you haven’t examined the depths of your own soul? Can a student depend on someone who lies to him about life? Can he trust someone who pretends that God and sex doesn’t exist? Can he love someone who pretends that knowledge is more important than understanding? Can he love you if you teach him that getting ahead is more important than seeing where you’re at? Can a stuffed shirt bake an apple pie?
I laugh and tell myself, I’m right. Henry Miller is right. The things they tell me mean so much don’t matter! I feel it in my bones that I’m right where I ought to be. This is the place for me, driving cab, being a writer.
I park in front of a yellow and green concrete building that looks just like an army barracks, and look for my address. The smell of dinner cooking assaults my nose from every direction. Half of the silver plastic numbers are off some doors. I can’t find the number I’m looking for. I knock at a torn screen door and peek into a kitchen that looks a lot like the one that I grew up in. That’s funny I thought that this was the front of the house, I tell myself. A small brown skinned five or six-year-old girl peeks through the screen.
‘What you want?’ she asks. I tell her I’m looking for an address. ‘What number?’ she asks.
I give her the number. Her older sister comes to the door. She opens it and steps outside. She’s wearing a pink fluffy bathrobe. She points to a door across the street and tells me that’s it. ‘Mrs. Bowen call for de cab a half hour ago,’ she tells me and slips back inside.
When I knock at Mrs. Bowen’s door, I’m at the front of her house. Dat’ s a funny set-up, I tell myself. No one answers my knock, so I knock a little louder. Still no answer. I knock again.
‘She already done left. Henry took her,’ says a voice from behind the door.
‘O.K., thanks, ‘ I tell the voice. Dirty fucking bastard, I tell myself.
At the Greyhound, the stands are filled. I circle the streets of downtown Oakland looking for an empty stand. The streets are crowded with white-collar workers, and young executives hurrying to the bus stops and parking lots. Traffic is bumper to bumper. I wait at the light in front of Capwell’s and watch a swarm of sales people burst from the wide glass doors. There’s a cab on the stand there. There’s one at Trailways too. I turn right toward the Lake. Christ, it will take forever to get around the block. You’d think wid all dese people someone would want a cab, I tell myself as I step on the gas to cut of a guy coming out of the lot in front of me. As I turn off Twentieth on to Franklin, a flood of secretaries comes from the Kaiser Building. I take a long look at short skirts, long legs and laughing faces, and let two late modal cars slip in front of me.
There’s a cab on the Limington stand when I turn on to Nineteenth. I decide to spot second out. Might catch an airport or a trip to the city, I tell myself. I spot, and peek out of my windshield at the first out cab. He’s an older day shift driver waiting for his last trip of the day. I decide to stay in my cab and watch the crowd pass by. The first out driver gets off with an order. He got the blonde headed salesman from Capwell’s, I tell myself and spot first out. I reach for my copy of Nexus on the dashboard, but before I can open it the dispatcher gives me an order for a medical building on Pill Hill. Shit, I gotta fight my way in all dis traffic for a buck fifty fare, I tell myself.
Watching the sunlight reflect from the Kaiser Building as I wait for the light at Lake Shore, I lean my head out the window and see white puffs of cloud blow from the west. Behind is a deep blue sky. The breeze picks up. It feels good to be alive and out here on this summer night.
I stop at an older building just below Broadway. As I walk toward the lobby swinging my hat in my hand, the door opens. An elderly lady wearing blue bedroom slippers, and faded pajamas under a cloth coat is being helped outside by a middle-aged nurse. The old lady’s blue-gray hair is curled tightly against her head. ‘You be sure to put a warm water bottle on when you get home,’ the nurse tells her.
‘Don’t ever get old,’ my fare tells me as I help her into the back seat. Our eyes meet for a minute. A look of surprise flashes over her face. Though her face is worn and yellow, there is a sparkle in her eyes.
‘I got a long ways to go, yet,’ I laugh as I head to my side of the cab.
‘I imagine you do by the looks of you. I’ll be seventy-five day after tomorrow,’ the lady tells me.
‘Have you lived in California all your life,’ I ask after getting her address.
‘I came out from Buffalo, New York forty-four years ago. I haven’t been back since though I’ve been told it’s not the same anymore. When I settled in Pasadena, Los Angles had under a hundred and fifty thousand population. I came to Oakland fifteen years ago for my daughter’s graduation. She got married and left me all alone. I’m alone these past eight years since Harry died.’
All alone…. Preserve your memories, flashes through my mind. Forty years away from home,’ I tell myself. ‘What ever made you leave Buffalo?’ I ask.
‘You know,’ she says as a smile lights up her face, ‘you’re the first person to ever ask me that. No one else ever asked my why I left home. I came to California to write. I wanted to write for the movies. Frank Lloyd was the top Hollywood director then. He took one look at me and said, ‘You weren’t meant to be in motion pictures.’ He wouldn’t allow his daughter to become involved in Hollywood either. Before I left Buffalo, my dentist pulled two teeth and cut out the tumor without taking ex-rays. What a horrible experience. I got married and then the children came along. Leave the writing for someone else, I thought.’
‘So, you wanted to be a writer?’ I answer turning to take a closer look at my fare. ‘I’m trying to do some writing myself.’
Writing is writing,’ she tells me. I don’t want to sound Gertrude Steinish, but it’s true. I know.’
How true… how true, I tell myself. Haven’t I found that out in the last few years? You learn to write just like you learn to do anything else, by doing it. You have to invest your time, your apprenticeship. Anything else is just so much bullshit. There are no short cuts. No magic formulas. Good or bad, you just keep writing….
‘Yea, I know what you mean,’ I tell the old lady.
‘I’ve always been an inspirational writer, myself. I wrote only when the Lord inspired me,’ she tells me.
‘Have you ever read Henry Miller?’ I ask. ‘He writes about the inspiration he got for his Tropics. How it came from within somewhere. How at times he couldn’t turn it off. I get the same kind of thing with my watercolors. I’ve only been doing them since Christmas. When I do a good one, it’s like someone else is in control. I can’t believe that I really did it when a good one is finished. That’s just what I’d like to be able to do with my writing….’
‘What kind of writing do you do?’ my fare asks.
‘Well, it’s hard to say. It’s autobiographical, and philosophical, I guess. I’m writing about myself. You know, one man’s struggle to find the truth, or wisdom, or whatever you want to call it. I’m writing about myself and discovering myself at the same time. It’s kind of fun. You know, the times are not very supportive of a quest to discover more about the human condition. It’s a struggle…and an adventure finding out who you are.’
‘I read a lot of philosophy when I was young. I was interested in discovering life,’ the old lady says. She pauses for a moment to look around. I watch the light change from green to orange and hit the brakes softly. ‘Dr. Frank Slaughter is a very good author. He writes novels as well as histories, both equally good….’
I drop my fare off at a well kept older looking home off Grand Avenue and kick myself for not listening more to her. Why should I have been telling her my story? I should have been listening to hers, I tell myself.
Your story and hers are not that much different. You and she are part of the same myth, myself answers. My mind flashes to what Jung says in his autobiography. We each have our own myth. A myth is a man’s total life story. It is created in part by his physical environment, both inner and outer, by the spirit of his time. We are tied together by our time, and separated by our predilections. Jung’s myth is different from mine. He grew up in pre First World War Europe. He is steeped in the tradition of two thousand years of European history. His dreams and visions are colored by strong tradition. My myth is of the new world, a world of freedom and independence from tradition, a world of westward movement and individuality.
In another part, the myth is created by the metaphysical, the forces from the dark mysterious unknown. Even the unknown is shaped by the spirit of one’s age. It is brought to light in the terms we know. Jung is tied to the more scientific academic flow. For me the unknown comes from a more romantic bent. Our dreams, visions, and revelations come from a different evolution. And, still, there is the deeper level of dream, the deeper level of reality that rarely comes to light. Can this level be individual? Or does this deeper stream flow beneath all mind?
Every man’s myth is different. And yet, each man’s myth is the same. The old lady’s story, the myth of the writer searching for meaning to life. How is her myth different than mine? How is Jung’s myth different than mine?
Each man must live out his own myth in order to further the life of the universe, myself tells me.
Live out your own myth? I ask myself.
To find that unique self which is you; you must discover what other people are doing to that self to shape it into the image though which they see you. Your parents, your teachers, your playmates, and lovers each shape you into the specific image that they want to see, an image that is distorted by the lies that they take to be their own image. To know oneself in naked wholeness is the only task that one need under take. Your myth is a part of your evolution. It is not separate from your day-to-day existence. Consciousness expands as we grow in time and so does our unconscious. We add to our myth, which is the story of the universe in time as we each live out our unique existence no matter what that might be! myself tells me.
The voice of the radio breaks into my thought. He calls for a cab around Grand. I call in going to Two-O-Two.
‘One-Five-Eight, a fare at the Safeway in front,’ he tells me.
When I pull into the lot, I spy a heavyset black woman waiting at the curb. I park at the yellow lines and jump out to open the trunk. She pushes a cart filled to the brim with brown shopping bags.
‘Been waiting long?’ I ask, as I begin to pack away the bags she hands me.
‘Not too long tonight,’ she says and heaves a sigh as she hands me the last bag. ‘Some nights I waited as long as an hour.’ I take a peek at the Danish nut roll in the last bag, and think of the driver the other night who told me he made his own tips by taking the most choice edibles out of the bag and leaving it in the trunk.
‘Put on near ten pounds in the past two weeks,’ he told me.
The lady gets in back and gives me an address about four blocks away. We ride in silence and I wonder what her myth might be. I shut the meter off at ninety cents and help the lady to the porch with her groceries. She gives me a smile and a quarter tip. ‘What might her myth be? What might she say if she opened her mouth? I ask myself as I ride toward Two-O-Two.
There are two cabs on the stand when I reach Two-O-Two. The radio is silent. I park third out and fill in my weigh-bill. Might as well wait here as anywhere else, I tell myself. Getting out of my cab to stretch my legs, I look at the two older drivers up front and decide to get an ice cream cone. I think of my first few months driving cab. I remember the stand in front of the California Hotel. How I was introduced to the prostitutes and pimps and the crowd that hangs around there. How they were in and out of my cab two or three times a week, the faces constantly changing but the action always the same. I hurry across the street toward the Baskin Robbins and think how I was just a means of transportation for the whores and pimps and confidence men. They were in and out of my cab, barely touching my life and yet they left an indelible imprint. I carried the girls to their steady customers, to motel rooms, apartments, and houses, and back to the street. Watching them poise in front of the hotel I had one ear cocked to the radio, and the other ready to escape. I saw the pimps take command, sweet talk, and make promises.
And it wasn’t just the Hotel California. The action spread from one end of San Pablo to the other. At the Hound, I’d watch the young bad asses. I’d see them pick their targets and make their hits. I’d watch the cheap hustlers work their tricks. I listened to their jive and chuck. Pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, service men and regular working stiffs, I carried them from the Hound to the S.P. station at Sixteenth and Wood, to the Army Base off Maritime, to the Navel Air Station in Alameda, to the neighborhood bars on Fruitvale and East Fourteenth, to Grove, Alcatraz, Ashby, and University. I saw them at work and at play. I saw their homes and families.
The double pull, the double pull of excitement and fear…. I felt it back then, and I feel it even today, as I lick my double dip of banana-nut. Scared as I was I stayed with the cab, didn’t I? What is it that keeps me here? I ask myself. I think of the strangers that entered my cab and taught me the streets of Oakland. I think how they told me their stories when they were alone, how they acted them out when they entered my cab in twos and threes, how their stories seeped under my skim.
I get back into my cab and turn on the radio. As I listen to the static, I try to remember when the pull of excitement began to out weigh the pull of fear. The first out driver gets off with a radio order. I check in second out and tell myself, Some of the girls were really beautiful weren’t they? A picture of a longhaired white girl floats in front of my closed eyes. I wonder what ever happened to her?
I remember the first time I picked her up at the Hotel Five. It was still daylight, nearing six o’clock. I found her room number and looked in through the open door. She got up from the bed before I had a chance to knock. She was wearing a light trench coat. Her long black hair fell in waves over her collar. ‘Cab,’ I said waving my yellow cap. She smiled and I looked into a pair of sparkling green eyes. I figured she must be the motel owner’s daughter or something. As she followed me to the cab, I smelled her lightly perfumed body. I opened the back door and watched her coat slide up slender thighs.
‘The bus depot on San Pablo,’ she told me.
‘On the other side of Macarthur?’ I asked nodding my head towards the covered A.C. Transit. She nodded her head, yes, and s
