Free Taxi Driver by Richard Elman Page B

“Oh, sure.”
    Maybe I was being photographed by somebody too because I saw him motion in his little sly way once. I said, “The name is Harry Krinkle . . . that’s with a K. Krinkle. I live at thirteen and a half Hopper Avenue, Fairlawn, New Jersey. Zip code o-seven-four-one-o. Got that?” Really jabbering as he was taking it all down. Said, “Sure Henry, I got it all, we’ll send you all the stuff, all right?”
    “Hey, great,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
    There would be eight more rallies in six more days. My time was coming. One way or the other.
    Like I recalled how I used to say as a kid, someday I am going to do something and nobody is going to stop me. Ever. I honestly felt that I could, if only I dared to, because there was nobody who dared to stop me. You know. Well, once I came in contact with those S.S. I didn’t feel that way anymore. I thought they could stop me, if they wanted to. They could stop me, but I just might do it anyway.

A Remembered Face
    Well, it was in the next couple of days that I started cruising again down off Tompkin Square. I thought I might see that girl again, that very young one. The chippy. Something about her look made me think she would help me if I could help her. Something about a friend in need.
    It didn’t take me too long to find her. I almost knocked her down with the cab. Don’t know that she recognized me at first but I recognized her. She was with a girlfriend, another hooker just like her. And they were hot-to-trot with anybody standing on the street corners.
    She was wearing this big floppy hat and thank God there was so much traffic that night because I was able to crawl along behind her and her girlfriend afterwards as they walked slowly down the sidewalk. Then I saw them stop and chat with a guy in a doorway, this shadowy figure. I couldn’t make out his face at first but I saw that fringe of suede jacket and the glow of a cigarette, and then she turned and looked at me in the cab and then walked on, her fat friend following her.
    There were also two dudes from college standing on the street corner in clean, faded jeans and bright shirts. Looked high on something or other. They seemed to have their eyes on all the girls.
    After a while these girls spotted the guys . . . these two guys and walked over to them. They exchanged some small talk together and then they walked off as couples. I saw them turn around the corner and I tried to follow but the traffic was heavy.
    At a forty-five-degree angle from the curb I noticed this other little girl has been watching me eye the chippie and her friends. She walks over to my cab, leans in the open front window, and with a face full of smoke says, “Hey, cabbie! you coming or going?”
    Well I felt like I’ve been caught with my hands inside the cookie jar. I knew what she wanted from me. So crass. Well I took off.

Campaign Promises
    The next day was hot, even for June. In Harlem it felt like inside a potato baker, and all the little kids’ faces looked like baked spuds, charred. The streets stuck to the bottom of your shoes, tar, asphalt, bubble gum.
    “The time has come to put an end to the things that divide us: Racism, poverty, war,” said the voice of the Senator Charles Palantine over a PA from a block away from where I sat in my cab with the off-duty sign on, the only white man on that block aside from some cops, the S.S., press.
    “Never have I seen such a group of high officials from the President to Senate leaders to Cabinet members so openly cause disunity and racial hatred . . .”
    I sat behind the wheel with sweat tracing down along the old scars on my body, making channels across my brow and upper lip, inside those mirror sunglasses, my hair clipped up short just like a warrior. I had on that army jacket again with this big bulge on my left side, the .38 Smith and Wesson.
    Senator Palantine said, “ These men pit black against white, young against old, sow anger, disunity, and suspicion—and all