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It’s Sunday night, 6:00 p.m. when I start. It will be 6:00 a.m. when I’m done. Sundays are usually slow. I can only hope.
The first guy is a man with bad legs out at the low-income housing project. He walks with a cane and carries a money bag, wants to go to United Supermarket. Wants me to wait while he’s inside. It’s hot and he needs some Arid, but he’s a nice guy. Talks about the weather. Doesn’t complain about his health—which immediately makes me like him. I hate to sound unsympathetic (well, I don’t really hate it), but I get so damned sick of picking up people who start listing their ailments before their butts are even settled in the back seat. Please, when I get old, somebody, if you still know me then, if I start whining about being sick or rheumy all the time, please, just blow my head off. Thank you. I wait about three minutes at the grocery store. He comes back out with a sack with only one thing in it. A 64-ounce bottle of some piss-colored beer.
Second ride is a chick who goes down to the Solo Club pretty regularly. She’s pushing 60, fixes her hair and wears clothes like a teenager, and smells of smoke and cats. She’s nice, too. Though a twenty cent tip is not going to help my mortgage any.
Third ride is a guy who’s going to the hospital. This is about an eight-minute ride from his house to JPH, and in that time, I learn this: His wife is at the hospital with kidney stones. She went in that day, and she will be there two more days. Probably. He has a brother who lives in Idaho, a trucker who has an 18-month old daughter. This guy likes to stay put, but his brother is always moving around. A few months ago, his brother came down and wanted to go out someplace, so they got a baby-sitter and went out to a nightclub in Coffeyville where the music was “okay.” Two dollar tip.
Next—out to Blockbuster to get two Japanese guys, Phillips 66 visitors (they’re still wearing the ID badges—wonder if they sleep in them). They’re staying at the Best Western. When I get there, I have to wait about ten minutes. Finally, they come out, but no movies. When they get in, the one who speaks the best English tells me they won’t let them rent a movie without a U.S. driver’s license. They wouldn’t even take their passports as IDs. I take them by Wal-Mart where one of their buddies is supposed to be waiting. He isn’t. So one of them has to go in and get him. Five minutes later, they come out and all three are in the back seat now. We go on down to the motel, and two of them get out and then one remembers that he left a bag at Blockbuster, so I take him back. When I finally get him back to the motel, the meter’s almost at thirty dollars. $1.10 tip.
I get a call to go out to Dewey Place. I recognize the address. It’s usually a woman with two spoiled kids who I want to lock in the trunk because they’re such mouthy gits, and the mom is totally helpless in their presence. Luckily, the mom is alone. Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord. She’s got a laundry basket and a list of instructions. First, we go by her stepmom’s house and drop the basket off on the porch. Then we go out to United again so she can cash a check. She tells me her
