Honour Among Drunks

On the Road again
He’d chosen this path and wasn’t at all unhappy about it. He could have bought a plane ticket with the last of his tree-planting stash and made it back to Ontario in time for Law school. He’d spent the fall and winter of the previous year studying for the LSAT exams while driving cab in Toronto. With fair test results, he’d applied and been given a place on the Lawyer’s slow boat to success. It took a spring and a summer in the Rockies to convince himself what a bad idea Law school would be.

It was just too easy. And another four years of uninterrupted study was just too hard. Being a lawyer just seemed way too predictable, and when it came down to it – Amos considered himself too complicated for such a “normal” path. No, he was much happier memorizing street maps, and Vancouver Taxi cab driver regulations. It was a three day course and he was set loose on the road – fresh meat for the Diamond cab company.

He signed up for his first shift at midnight the same day they gave him his cabbie license. Nights on the beach were getting cooler and the Youth Hostel staff were getting tired of him stealing showers. So, he began scratching and scrounging out a living as a tourist behind the wheel of a Vancouver cab.

He could speak English fluently– which was better than about a third of the drivers – new Canadians driving cab nights, practicing English, working day jobs too trying to get a foothold on the slippery slope of the Canadian dream. For $50 a night and the cost of gas you could rent a car and flog your wheels on the streets. Maybe another third of the drivers were young like him and using the wheels as a way of paying the rent until the rest of their life began – acting, writing, studying, pimping, pushing drugs towards any number of dream-lives just over the horizon. The rest of the drivers were career men. They owned their own cars and cab license plates - worth as much as a house. They’d rent their cars out for the night shift to guys like Amos and put in long dayshift hours feeding coffee to, and sharing tips with, the company dispatchers.

There was also the odd middle-aged guy who’d been spit out of a regular job and was trying to keep all the ends of his life still meeting. Everyone knew though, that the longer he spent hours behind the wheel of a cab, the greater the stretch became. Those guys had the wild-eyed look of a drowning man and were just no fun to be around. A few women drove too. They were tough chicks – like they’d grown up in a family of brothers and enjoyed the status of being treated like they had balls.

Amos had his own secret dream. It was maybe more like one of those endless, repetitive nightmares - he was driving, hunting, driving around the city trying to find the address for – “Amos Brown: Author”. He told no one and only admitted it to himself every time his mind turned another phrase or his brain started composing narratives of say - his drive across the Lion’s Head bridge. He carried a note pad around in his jacket pocket to jot down choice inspirations. The words in his head sounded true. He was sure only a mind like his could conjure them up. But the words stayed in his head. They faded away every time he picked up his pen. His dream of being a writer always seemed so profound and real until he picked up his pen - and the dream slipped away like smoke.

He saw himself as unremarkable. He couldn’t see - in the broad glaring light of day - that he had anything new or worthwhile to say. His comments had been covered. His story was common. His observations were only as smart and cynical as the next young poet’s. He wanted to produce something wise and worthwhile. But he was green and hadn’t yet earned his say. In spite of these self-doubts, he saw himself as a heavyweight. He just didn’t want to step into the ring and take the punches - not until his own punches were ready to throw. So, the pages remained blank and he filled hours with quick cab conversations, books between customers, tokes and tunes, and - plans for his season of skiing in the Rockies.

You see, dreamer that he was, Amos had another dream he was pursuing. It was his high-school idea of a successful life. What could be better than the life of a Rocky Mountain ski bum? While being a Lawyer, or a Writer, was miles and miles and years away, in just a few months there’d be snow in the Rockies and Amos planned to be skiing. Not that he was any kind of great skier. Never much of any kind of athlete, skiing for him was closer to dancing and he could dance – sort of. He had just enough rhythm and agility to get down the hill to his own suburban white boy satisfaction. He skied with music in his head and loved it – no team to let down – no pressure to perform for a coach – just him and the hill testing his turns.

So, Amos put the pieces in place to make that teenage dream come true. He needed to know that the things he dreamed up in his head – that he could step into them outside of his head. Before he could write a story, he needed to live a story.

Next step, up at the University, he found an ad - someone named Helen was looking for a female student to share a basement apartment in Kitsilano. He called and must have sounded harmless enough - Helen invited him over for tea. In the kitchen, where you could just barely see sky through the window over the sink – between the top of the back alley’s hedges and the bottom of the first floor apartment’s deck - Helen and Amos worked out an arrangement. She was a third year biology student from New Zealand. She was quiet, and serious, pretty in an old black and white English movie kind of way. She had a good sense of humour. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of him and spunky enough to return his teases with a taunt of her own.

Helen thought Amos seemed pretty normal. He told her about his travels to New Zealand and wandering through the Pacific Islands. He told her about his university days studying poetry and philosophy and his trail out to B.C. where he’d ditched the idea of being of a lawyer and instead - just wanted to ski. She was a little bit charmed by his boyish sense of adventure and she was a little bit worried about the way he tested her with a party-animal story thrown in – watching her for reactions.

But he listened and paid attention to her in a way she hadn’t encountered among many Canadian boys. Amos asked her questions in a gentle kind of big brotherly way. Helen wondered what her folks back in Kiwi-land would think about her shacking up with a strange man. That thought was what sealed the deal. She heard herself agreeing to share the little basement flat with this water-eyed man.

Amos and Helen were both far from home and, for whatever other reasons, were here to cut their own paths beyond the reach of parental approval and protection. For Helen, pushing past her parent’s idea of a proper roommate was proof to herself that she really was her own person and not just a child waiting to grow into her mother’s image.

For Amos, Helen’s respectability offered some ballast to his small sailing craft being tossed about in the ocean’s big, deep, swells. He knew the ocean recognized no names and no credentials and tested every man the same. He wasn’t looking for a lover, or a party, just a place to roost and write and become whatever it was that he was becoming. He knew that winter storms were coming and that a safe harbour – one that would draw out the gentleman in him – just felt right.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Honour among Drunks
What did he have to lose? Amos tried to calculate the gamble in his head. In exchange for maybe 15 minutes of prime rush hour chances to catch some quick choice cab fares, he was going to follow up on a three week old drunken promise. It was a crazy long shot he concluded. When you’re driving cab, timing is everything. You don’t want to interrupt the flow if it’s happening and Amos had already had a good start to his day. First trip out, a radio call from his zone took him way out across the Lion’s Head bridge to North Vancouver. A nice $18 fare and two buck tip to start the day. So, why was he now considering wasting precious minutes on a lost cause?

Maybe it had something to do with the taste of fate in this coincidence. That first fare took him right to the same street, same spot he’d been just weeks before. He recognized the building across the street as the place he’d dropped those two drunks. Talk about a wild goose chase. He’d played out quite a little game with those characters trying to get his fare from them. It was pretty funny – now - looking back at it. At the time he hadn’t been too amused. They’d told him to come back. They’d sworn that if he came back – they’d give him his money. And now - not only did they waste his time three weeks ago - now Amos was going to waste time again standing there knocking on the door to apartment #112.

********************

I’d only bin out a week and was makin up for lost time. The pogey cheque they spring you with didn’t last 48 hours. A hundred dollar hooker, a bag of Johnny-pills, a few quarts of whiskey and I had me a comin-out cel-bration. I didn’t have no worries ‘bout spending the $600 they give ya on rent like you’re supposed to. My bud Frank had an apartment in North Van and he owed me. Yeah, he owed me for keepin my yap shut about that other guy the witness saw comin outa the house wit me.

If those damn people had shovelled their walk, I never would’ve felled on me ass with that TV in me arms. Who ever heard of snow in Vancouver in November? Just my fuckin luck. I don’t blame Frank for leavin me there. The alarms were goin like crazy, and a big fuckin German Shepherd was comin round the corner. That was the way we did things – if shit happened – and you had the toilet paper to get a clean break – you took it. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way it went down.

So now Frank owed me. He was puttin me up at his place til we could get some new jobs happenin. Share and share alike – like it or not. Just when my cash ran out, Frank’s pogey cheque arrived and it wasn’t long before we’d worked our way through that too. We spent the last of his cheque drinkin at our fav-rite waterin hole - the ol’ Queensway Hotel. Really, our fav-rite was the Dunsmuir but we’d bin barred from there since ’79 when that waiter got just a little too lippy for his own good.

So anyways, we go strollin out of the Queensway, into the daylight to catch the number 98 bus home, when Frank flags a cab. I’m thinkin –we got no money for that- but Frank’s already climbin in the back seat so who am I to question why?

The driver’s this young pup with curly long hair and beard. He’s the kind to show off his street smarts but you know that his mother still folds his fuckin underwear for him. So I get the jump on him with a little intimidating. Before I put me ass in the seat, I leans over into the front seat. I pins his right shoulder back hard with my right hand while my elbow’s pinning his arm down too. I stick me face into his and the kid pulls back as far as he can – which ain’t too far. I give im my best junk yard dog growl - “I’m the meanest son-of-a-bitch you’re ever gonna meet. I’m so mean – even my mother hates me.”

I could tell he was scared eh? His eyes went wide and for a second there I thought he was gonna cry. But, then he puts this grin on his face and he says to me, he says “Even your Mother?” He’s acting all kinda surprised - but pullin my leg like. And shit - he had me – I had to laugh.

I weren’t expectin this young pup to be pokin fun at me - and that mighta pissed me off but - I could tell he weren’t laughin at me – he was jes jokin wit me. What’re gonna do when yer bluff gets called? He was bettin on my good-natured side. Made me think of me dear old mom - ol’ Evelyn, that drunken bitch who‘d slapped me into this world. So I has to laugh and I says to him, I says “NO - not me mother. Sure she loves me – in her own way.”

When I’m that pissed y’know, I gets all tender-hearted like and sappy and this kid had hit me there where I weren’t expectin it. I could tell eh - the kid had heart. From any other college-smart-ass that remark mighta come across cocky-like and earned him a cuff. But this kid weren’t puttin me down – he was just gettin down wit me - and joinin in on our little party.

*************************

So Amos drove them all the way across the bridge to a run-down little apartment building that’d seen better days. All the way they’re telling Amos tall tales about a cop they’d nearly killed and a bank they’d nearly robbed and how much money they could make robbing houses in West Van where the insurance companies just buy the people newer stuff. These guys are a couple of jokers thought Amos. Eugene, the guy doing all the talking, had an oily Elvis slick three decades old. Frank didn’t have enough hair left for that and had had to settle for a greasy comb-over. They both wore button up patterned polyester shirts over beer guts and under hip length leather–like jackets. They were a real comedy team. Intent on impressing Amos with their gangster status and mostly just coming off like barking dogs who’d lost too many teeth to bite. They were probably dangerous enough in their day, Amos noted. And you still wouldn’t want to push them too far – no telling how deep a mean streak ran in guys like that – what was one more assault charge to them? But as pickled as they were today, it was just a matter of keeping them talking about how bad they were and they’d be as happy as a pair of puppy dogs with old shoes to gnaw on.

**********************

“So, when we gets back to Frank’s place with the kid, I’m honestly feelin pretty bad ‘bout telling this kid that we gots no dough. He was just a workin stiff and here we were stiffing him more. As Frank’s breakin the news to him, I gets an idea. I says “Hey bud, you just wait here and I’ll get some cash from the landlord for ya.”

Well, now the kid’s havin a laugh at me and I can’t blame him eh? How many times has he heard that one eh? So I says to him, I says “Come in wit us then – we’ll get you the cash.” Frank’s lookin at me sideways like, but we all pile out of the cab and in we go.”

The door to Pete’s apartment is never locked. As shitty a landlord as he is, ya gotta give him one thing - at least he’s got an open door policy. In we go shouting out his name, but he’s not around. Frank’s heading for the door but I head for the bedroom and the Cabby, well he’s following me step for step. Sure enough, Pete’s in bed so I gives him a shake and tell im we needs some money.

Well, ol’ Pete was a little less than hospiti-able about the whole thing. After he tells us to fuck off about six times, he gets his ass outa bed and staggers into the kitchen. The cabbie’s lookin at me like “what the fuck?” but I’m on Pete like a dirty shirt – I know he’s always got cash – he’s just tighter than a friggin Scotsman.

Pete gets to his kitchen and he’s in the fridge – it’s empty. He slams the fridge door, looks around, lifts up a quart of whiskey off the counter – it’s empty too. Then he heads out the door and down the hall -the three of us followin along like a bloody Labour Day parade. He goes straight down to #112 and uses his pass key and lets himself right into Frank’s apartment. Franks like “what the fuck?” but by the time we get in the door, Pete’s already got our forty-pounder of C.C. in his paw and he’s pourin himself a tumbler full.

By now, I can see that Pete’s not carin diddely bout payin off our cab fare. Frank’s gets a couple more glasses out and sits at the table with Pete pourin himself a cupful. So, what the hell eh? I takes a seat and pour out one for me and I turns to the kid and says “I’m sorry bud but you can see we ain’t got the cash. Ya wanna a drink?”

It was the least I could do – be a little hospiti-able - and this fuckin kid – y’know what he has the balls to do? He walks over to the table and grabs the bottle and tells us, he says “No, I’ll just take the rest of this and we’ll call it square.” Well, you never seen three old dogs jump faster. You don’t take no bone away from no hungry dog – never mind three of em. That young pup was crossin the line there. He had no idea what he was gettin in fer – whoa baby!.

He takes a coupla steps back towards the door but he smartens up and lets me take the jug back outa his hand - and he’s got this big grin on his face again like he was jes pullin our leg with that little stunt. But I can tell that he’s pretty pissed at us too - bout being jerked around. This kid’s surprisin me. He’s got some spunk. I like him and I tell him so. “Listen, you little fucker - you’re a good kid. You come back here at the end of the month and I’ll have your fare for ya.”

He gives me a look like “what kind of sucker do you take me for?” and that makes me say “Really, I swear on me mother’s grave. You come back at month’s end and I’ll have your cash fer ya. You come back – you’ll see.”

******************

So Amos knocks on the door. It’s the end of the month. It’s a busy time for cabbies. Folks who can’t afford cars, with pogey cheques to cash, are calling cabs. He waits thirty seconds. Then he gives the door a pound and waits some more. He’s just giving up and leaving when the door opens and there he is. Eugene’s in his underwear and looking like he’s just been washed in with the last tide. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and he’s obviously sleeping off a drunk so Amos figures – “yup, I’ve wasted my time.”

But right away his drunken friend recognizes him and he says “Jes a minute, jest a minute” and disappears back into the apartment. Amos wonders what new wrinkle he’s gonna pull now but he’s already invested this much time in the mission. So, he gives ol buddy boy yet another precious minute and he comes right back. He’s got a crumpled up ball of toilet paper in his shaking hand and from inside it he pulls out a crumpled twenty dollar bill. He hands it to Amos and says “there you go kid.” and closes the door.

Amos stood there in the hallway looking at that crumpled twenty for an age and a half. He couldn’t believe this guy had actually come through with the cash. But - he had believed in him - just enough to get Amos away from his cab and up to his door – and here that belief had paid off - unbelievably.

Amos wondered what kind of resolve it took for that guy to put that cash away. The toilet paper ball was a stash that he’d hidden away from himself – and from the claims of his brother thieves - so he could keep his word to a cabbie he didn’t even know.

That was one of the best nights Amos ever had driving cab. It was like there was a Big Dispatcher in the sky just lining up fares for him - sidewalk flags that took him out to the suburbs where a few blocks away a customer had called and was waiting to take him right back downtown where bingo, he’d get another flag, then a call, then a flag, then an airport run - and so it flowed all night. He had a ball. The full moon was a coin in his pocket. Everyone was in a good mood and wanting to talk and have conversations that flowed with the music on the radio – gentle and jazzy, staccato and rocky, deep and classy – every time he changed the station the next passenger picked up on the vibe and added to it. When it flows it flows. Some days having faith is just so easy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++