A Taxi Driver, Chapter 6

*copyrighted material*

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    04:40 A.M. Two hours following Nooktown’s dog fight. Neon glows still reflected on a doused curbside at Wiley’s Hill Street. A howling, swarthy sky foretold the arrival of new duties and a spirit’s renouncement. Yorkwich city’s flooded avenues could not be easily traversed without at least some good juju and an umbrella. Good ol’ Wiley’s had a big neighborhood and humbly homed everyone’s favorite local doughnut shop. Dough Fries By Mitzy. Freshly frosted fried cakes and thickish, gooey espresso brews. The extravagant and dashing paraded around in this concrete jungle, furry coats and wool felt hats, expensive scarves, heels, or gloves. Businessmen in impeccable suits, sleek-haired individuals that owned every junction of the city with their luxurious limousines, and oxhide briefcases.

    The vibrant emerald traffic lights at the other side of the avenue reached a very particular pair of restless eyes, Wyatt Elsner cupped a hand over his gaze and sighed. Sitting next to the display window with the ceiling fans working at low speed, he complained under his breath about the noise of wet shoes against the squeaky clean flooring of the doughnut shop. He scratched his twiggy mustache and unsettled his front undercut strands. Taking a quick sip of his coffee, he

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could not unfix his eyes from today’s newspaper headlines. The Pioneer Chronicles lay flat on his table, staring back with shameless enthusiasm. He wondered if the group of editors at the Pioneer Chronicles laughed at every single word their writers wrote or if they had to pretend to smile and wait for the Roanoke Military to read through and approve those arse-lickers’ fruitless essays. The whole story revolving around Nooktown’s radio broadcast announcement infuriated him. The government had made its intentions clear decades ago. Suppression at all costs.

    Wyatt had been a stonewalling kind of creature once. One that had arrived at Roanoke’s capital, Yorkwich, with poor knowledge of what he was getting into. He’d left Nooktown on a French-flagged Dewoitine 338K aircraft along with a group of cheeky young men he barely even knew. The plane had been chock-full of unreasonable people with no directions, no plans, and undeniably lived by wicked intentions. Regardless, they were welcomed to Yorkwich with a well-deserved and brutal beat down. Stripped from all of their possessions, stranded in a mad-driven city by no other than those who had offered them the express ride. A drunken pilot and his trooper colleagues in exchange for trinkets or cash.

    Later on, it had come to his attention that Roanoke along with their battalions blatantly stole utility from other nations with no retaliation whatsoever. So the real question was when had the circle broken in the last thirty years of war?

    The events of Wyatt’s escape from Nooktown had occurred exactly three years ago, and now a changed fellow barely twenty-six. He had known how ill-considered and short-sighted his actions had been in the past. These days he looked for no one in particular except for his friend Archie. Who had helped him find a tiny room in an apartment building a few blocks away from downtown, where he kept a single duck feather pillow, a heavy blanket, and a few other scattered objects. An oil lamp, a pack of cigarettes always, a black pair of shoe cords, and a

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brown leather belt. With a limited wardrobe that consisted of two extra shirts, a sweater, a second pair of trousers, and a single pair of black polished shoes he was currently wearing. He’d have to buy socks one day, he assumed.

    His neighborhood resided amongst muggers and loan sharks, and about 47% of the city was in ruins due to the constant uprisings. The ruins had never been in abandonment, as in many parts of the country they’d become shelters of some sort. Gladly, Wyatt had gotten out of that situation with more than just a bit of perseverance. Still, protests took place every two to three days. Food markets, department stores, and a wide variety of shops had to put a halt to their scheduled working hours, hoping not to be robbed and vandalized while trying to earn some coins. Bandits took whatever they wanted, breaking openings and breaches, emptying cash drawers, and painting graffiti on the walls. These looters marked their territory with the Rootstocks’ insignia, two big and bold yellow letters. The first and last letters of the guild’s name, an ‘RS’, and a war-hammer of the same color painted on the back, enclosed in a circle. The veracity of such faction claims was still questionable and sometimes, the owners of the shops would simply vanish from one day to another, the circumstances of the disappearances were never clear either. 

    On the other side of the spectrum were the crooked ones. Uncertified sawbones and other medical practitioners, druggists, politicians, and executive officers in massive companies. The list kept going with moneyed kids, and their wealthy kindreds living on the Western side of Yorkwich. That portion of the city was restricted to all common citizens. It had once started as a luxury but when the city-folks turned violent and the rampage began, city hall decided to barricade all their entrances fully armed with machine guns.

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    Wyatt took off his jacket and tossed it at the table. He admitted, coming here was the second, worst mistake of his life. And the first one? Well.

    He picked up and stared at the steam coming out of his cup. The thought made him wince every so often. He’d convinced himself many times that leaving Nooktown had nothing to do with Vivian Bixbee. And he’d run out of other piteous excuses not to visit his brother at this point. Amending what he had done was no piece of cake not then, not now. He’d spent the first few days in the city running around doing all kinds of odd jobs, raising enough money to go back to Nooktown where he belonged. He worked collecting glass bottles from soda fountains to sell them back to the soft drink companies.

   Old Ronnie’s cola drinks were popular at the time and worth a lot since they were a deviant luxury, but he ran out of luck swiftly like many other outsiders in the city. He did raise the money, but he’d been naive enough to think just any plane would take him back home. Learning those kinds of flights across the country had been strictly prohibited by the military with highly sanctioned punishment for pilots. Rarely anybody took the risk and collecting more than a few bus and ferry tickets back to Nooktown sounded like an impossible mission. It was all a burning humiliation that came from a fleeting moment of grandeur with a devastating resolution. 

   The damage was done and even so, he sent letters monthly. Amongst the mail he had sent, he’d pick a small box for Calvin’s thirteenth birthday which contained a green scarf bought at a local clothing shop. It came with a pair of knitted gloves of the same color. To this package, he'd also added a red leather-bound book called Unraveled Theories of The Universe by a man called Hagan Mulhouse. A supposedly well-known Roanokean philosopher and cosmologist he did not know about. Wyatt only knew Calvin loved books. Physics, science, medicine, the boy picked anything. He’d got the book from a small bookstore that sold manuscripts about half their

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original price in exchange for market goods. But whether the mail was delivered at the right address or not, he wouldn't know since he did not obtain a reply for any of them.

    Wyatt took a long and noisy sip from his coffee. He had started working as a shoveler the moment he arrived at that town at the skirts of Mt. Mowaki. He had stopped attending public school at the age of sixteen. He had grown out to be a level-headed man, filled with gratitude for what little he had. The war had shaken his world and the rest of the misfortuned generations before and after him, but things had started looking better and brighter for him as an individual. He had gotten a decent job as a taxi driver from a large cab company. No more snow removal, no more empty glass bottles, and no more shoe shining. Yorkwich was one of the largest cities in the country after all and his new employment provided much more commodities than any other lower-order job. With the kind of generous income—compared to his last three jobs—he’d started collecting his savings to welcome Calvin into the city.

    “Here’s your double order of peanut butter doughnuts and coffee.” The waitress, a woman with short curls left the plates on the table and smirked. “Where is Archie? That kid is never late for an early meal.”

    “He might be caught up with something at work, he slept at the office last night.” He shrugged. “He is a hard-working fellow, just like Donna.”

    Archie was a promising twenty-four-year-old Renou descendent that worked as a photojournalist at a small and undetected magazine for the community. In truth an outstanding man for his young age. With an overgrown and supportive community behind him, composed of close and distant relatives as well as other Renou descendants tied together as a tribe, plus his immediate family circle. Wyatt had met Archie a couple of years ago as they both used to work as shoe shiners on the same street. Within their initial rivalry, it sparked a solid friendship. His

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first harvest holidays at Yorkwich had been well spent at Donna Dahlgren’s house. Archie’s mother, and also the mother of four kids younger than him. He had also met Ben Dahlgren, Donna’s husband, and Ben’s father, Ernest Dahlgren, or Grampa Dahlgren as everyone called him—the head of the tribe and official Renou representative in the city. The Renou Community of Roanoke as a whole had proposed the magazine project a while back in hopes to keep themselves informed under turbulent water. The likes of them had once been affiliated with the Rootstocks until the rebels’ priorities took a savage and fatalistic turn. The 1930s were ill-lit times for impartiality and wild times for ignorance.

    The sky lit with bolts of thunder. Pedestrians sprinted, covering their heads with whatever they had in their hands. Wyatt watched the rain tug from side to side as if the drops were being pushed and pulled in harmonical directions by long strings that came from the firmament and touched the concrete. Gusts twisted, and the rain followed. He stared at the hypnotic movement of nature’s power when a sudden and violent thrust of the shopkeeper's bell made him jump on his seat. He turned towards the doughnut shop’s front door and found it wide open. The lanky figure of a man with olive skin and long jet-black hair soaking wet under its frame. His hat, suit and coat, leather satchel bag, and even his camera, a Graflex Speed Graphic model—clumsily shoved in its inside—were dripping with rainwater. He stood there, gasping for air as if he’d run for dear life for miles.

    “Archie? You okay, buddy?” Wyatt scanned his friend from head to toe. Archie looked back at him with small disquieting eyes. Everyone at the fried cake shop watched him with utmost curiosity, but the young photojournalist was too focused on cleaning the lens of his photographic device to ever notice. When he was done, he walked to the table with quick steps and plopped on his seat as everyone in the room went back to their own business.

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    “Wyatt, we need to get you out of here.” He said under his breath.

    “From the shop? I just ordered our food. See? It’s still warm.” Answered the cabbie, reaching for his steamy peanut butter donut. His friend snatched the plate away before he could ever touch the food and placed a finger on his lips.

    “I’m not talking about the shop.” He grabbed his friend’s copy of today’s newspaper and skipped through the pages just before landing a finger on a crowded column packed entirely of crimson names, the page’s distinctive red-inked layout suddenly made Wyatt lose his appetite for a moment. The Red List was something he didn’t want to talk about so early in the morning.

    Archie pushed the newspaper towards his friend and waited to see his reaction as he guided him with that same finger to a specific name on the list. 

“That’s not him,” The cabbie said, drinking the last of his coffee. “He is dead. Gone.”

    “This is your father!” Archie’s look of disbelief matched his attempt to keep his voice from rising too high. “You know what this means right? Sooner or later they will come for you and Calvin as well.”

    “The man is history, vanished ages ago . . . This is—”

    “This is happening, believe it or not. Do you know who showed me the newspaper? My grandfather. Yes, Grampa Dahlgren himself. He knows about this kind of stuff, he’s been around more than any of us in the community, okay?” Archie reached for something from his coat pocket and carefully placed a pistol on the table, pushing it towards his friend’s hands with discretion.

    “Archie, hide that thing!”

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    “Shhhh!!” Archie urged him to lower his voice. “It’s fake, did you think I’d buy a gun? Hell, no! It’s Todd’s.” He concluded.

    “Your little brother? He is eleven—”

    “It’s a toy gun for God’s sake!”

     “I’m still not taking that with me in the taxi.”

    “You are supposed to run away with it, you idiot! Didn’t you ever play cops and robbers? Because I’m starting to think your mom dropped you when you were an infant.”

    “Listen. I can’t run away just like that.” He looked out for a minute. “I finally have a stable job. I can make a better living for Calvin and me, after so long. If they come looking for us I’ll provide all the information I can to save our asses. Calvin and I . . . we are victims, and you know it, we’ve talked about this before. You all know it, discussing it with the authorities might prove to be enough.”

    Archie said nothing. Wyatt looked down at his empty mug and continued, “You don’t know . . . this man’s shadow has been following me for years. I was sixteen when I last saw him . . . that piece of shit . . . ” He shook his head. “My father is not going to take away from me what I’ve fought for, it’s out of the question. I’m going nowhere, okay?”

    “Are you sure about this?” His friend sighed and pressed his back onto his seat. “Are you planning to bring Calvin to Yorkwich?”

    “I think it’s time. He deserves a chance, the few benefits I’ve acquired in the last three years. An education too. I’ll give him everything I couldn’t in that town.”

    “Did he answer your mail, already?”

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    “Eh . . . no.”

    “No?”

    “I was thinking maybe I could—”

    “No, you have to go after him yourself.” Archie insisted. “Think about it. Like it or not, the person on that list could be your father. Take it into consideration before you walk out that door. These are serious accusations and the government will do ANYTHING to reach out for you.”

    Wyatt tapped his fingers on the table. “Fine. Do you want me to take the toy gun? I’ll take the damn toy gun.”

    Archie passed the toy under the table with a white smile. His friend rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell my grandpa I gave you a toy gun. He’d laugh at me for weeks . . . ”

“Eat your damn food!” Wyatt snickered. “Donna is going to kill you when you get home with the suit she bought for your birthday all wet and sweaty, might as well eat your last meal pal.”

    “Ha! I’ll tell her you splattered water on my suit with your taxi!” He joked, grabbing a bite from his peanut butter doughnut. Wyatt snorted, asking for another cup of coffee. 

    They had both found stillness in the occasional reunions at the doughnut shop so early in the morning. Late nights were spent hanging out by the street food vendors and eating supper while the cabbie waited for clients to show up on the sidewalks. 

    Wyatt Elsner had met all sorts of clients on the job, he’d turned out to be a great listener, and he’d mutter sometimes if needed. From all of those folks, there were a few that stood out from the usual passengers. To his mind came the image of an aged and statuesque woman that wore nothing but burgundy garments, makeup powders on her hollow cheekbones, and a vast

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collection of pearl collar necklaces and earpieces she loved to brag about. Infamously rich, known by many as Marion Sismore or Lady Marion. Slim-framed, narrow eyebrows and wavy long hair with front pin curls. He had met the white-haired woman outside a large department store after spotting her with a handful of shopping bags and her leashed canine friend, Ocean, a perfectly black Great Dane with sea-green eyes. 

    Wyatt had humored her greatly in their first encounter, he’d wrestled his way into the cab stuffed with silky bags at the back, Ocean riding beside him at the front. Ever since then, she’d call the cab company to ask for his services only. But with this woman, he did not speak a word. There was something wrong in her presence. She’d stare out the window with her gaze lost in traffic on the ride home as if death awaited her behind closed doors, except when she spoke about her precious pearls. It tugged away a smile from her lips every time. There were simply some layers of sadness in life that were revealed to be too real and contagious.

    A man in a velvet mustard cardigan holding a suitcase walked up to Wyatt and pointed out the doughnut shop’s window. “Are you the driver?” The stranger was referring to his taxi parked by a tower mailbox.

    With a mouthful of the doughnut to swallow and a mustache caked with peanut butter frosting, he addressed this new possible client fast enough, cleaning it all away with a napkin.

    “Yes, sir. How can I be of service?”

    “I have an . . . important meeting in the Northern district of the city. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

    “Sure, no problem sir.” Wyatt stood up and looked at his friend. “Wait here, I’ll take you to work when I come back.”

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    “I need to go back to the office now, I have to develop some headshots at the studio, the magazine is on my back and I need them before 09:00 A.M. I’m all good.” Archie showed his palms and gave an empathetic nod.

    “Okay. See you tonight, I guess?”

    “Sure.”

    “I’m in a hurry . . . ” The stranger persisted.

    “This way, please.” Wyatt grabbed his jacket, the newspaper and opened the door for the man. The rain had not ceased one bit. His shoes splashed in a pothole on the sidewalk, Yorkwich’s superstructures concealed part of the dull firmament while the owner of the trinket store in front turned around the hanging ‘closed’ sign to its welcoming face.

    He reached for the backseat door and welcomed his client into the vehicle to later find his seat in front of the steering wheel.

    “Where exactly are we heading, Sir?”

    “Moorlynd Boulevard. P—please.” Wyatt took notes at the sudden wanness that had washed away the healthy colors from his client’s features.

    “Sir is everything—” He shut his mouth mid-sentence as he felt the notch of the kitchen knife at the side of his throat.

    “S—stick to your job, cabbie. Start the car.” The man barked. One shaky hand wrapped around his neck while the other held the sharp tip against his Adam’s apple. Wyatt turned on the engine, a bright yellow Dodge Brothers DD model taxicab with sixty-one horsepower. He proceeded to make a U-turn to access the opposite lane hoping someone at the doughnut shop would look out

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the window panels. But no one did. The cab driver took a last glimpse of Archie talking to the waitress and then he had to look out at the road again.

    “Show me the paper.” The stranger commanded. The cabbie grabbed his copy of The Pioneer Chronicles from the passenger’s seat and handed it over. He snatched and let go of his throat. Stunned, he heard him going through the pages. And as if this unknown fellow had just remembered he was a wrongdoer, he pressed the knife against the back of his driver’s head while he flipped through more sheets. The tip of the blade poked against his neck hairline with the car’s motion.

    The stranger’s eyes rose back and caught him staring through the rearview mirror, he glared back. “Look away or I’ll cut your windpipe!” 

    Wyatt did so at first but eyeballed quickly enough to see his client stab the front seat, leaving the sharp object stuck. He took out a silver nib pen from his suit pocket and the cab driver was ready to turn and break his nose. Certainly, he would have if his head had not collided with the steering wheel. Completely overwhelmed, he did his best to regain control before hitting a fire hydrant on the next street. A tongue of blood was streaming down his forehead when the next hit arrived and rattled the vehicle a second time.

    “Don’t let them take me! Please!” The sniveling man reached out for Wyatt’s collar to plead with him.

    “The hell is going on?!” He punched the man square on the jaw, shifting his eyes towards the wing mirror on the right. A flat black funereal automobile, a Vauxhall Cadet was pursuing them from a very tight distance. The front was somewhat damaged, having lost one of its driving lights on the first collision.

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    “Oh brother, what did you get yourself into?”

    “The Visitors . . . they want me out of the picture. I struck a bargain, and bought a local drugstore from this nutjob some time ago. They . . . they didn’t like that.” The Vauxhall speeded in an attempt of another attack, Wyatt picked up their moves fast and pushed the gas pedal to the limit. They’d barely avoided the impact when bullets came after them in retribution. The Visitors? That was one mafia gang Wyatt hadn’t heard of. 

    “Get down!” The cab driver managed to shove his client’s head down before the bullets could reach them both. The rear window detonated and Wyatt fearlessly turned the wheel taking the next intersection to the left. Losing a wing mirror in the process against another moving vehicle. When it seemed they had lost their aggressors in that turn, another Stygian Vauxhall ambushed them from a grubby alleyway.

    Wyatt witnessed the windows turning into shattered glass dust, and the car’s steel frame twisted the sides and folds of the taxicab as it rolled and rolled on the pavement. Once, twice and finally, a third time.

*** 

    He woke up to noises. Screeches, wails, and the pyretic taste of gasoline. His eyes rolled in his sockets. He was kissing the floor on the wet sidewalk. Soon he realized he’d been pulled out of his cab, and that those screams came from pedestrians and drivers abandoning the car crash spectacle.

    The Visitors were still guarding the scene. Units clad in ebony suits. Trousers, boots, gloves, and hefty parka coats. With hoods and aberrant leather masks. As part of each mask, a solid pair of glass goggles welded by two circular gilded rings attached by a piece for the nose bridge. Two

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of them stood nearby, facing away and holding rifles while the rest of the team dragged the drugstore owner out of the taxicab. Kicking, shrieking, and bleeding. Another retrieved the man’s suitcase silently.

    Kneeled and frightened, the man quivered in place as he was forced into that position by two of them, crouched and holding his arms stiffly at his sides. A third one walked up to him and said something to his ear, placing his grappling gloved hands around his trachea. Then squeezed with his fingertips and with an adept turn of his wrists broke his neck in a single move. Just as quickly, they carried the corpse and tossed it into the trunk of one of their cars. 

    Wyatt shut his eyes close, heard their footsteps fade, and the sound of the Vauxhalls’ ignition taking place. Like that, they were gone.

    He found the courage to open them again. Blood on his face, adrenaline driving itself through his veins. His copy of The Pioneer Chronicles had spilled on the pavement. He crawled and reached out for its pages. The now-deceased man had circled five names on the Red List, the sheets were dry enough to distinguish them.

    He stood up. Felt the toy gun still in his jacket and limped away. He needed to find a public payphone fast, Calvin’s and Wyatt’s bright future in Yorkwich had gone to waste with the storm.

END OF CHAPTER #6