Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab

by Dmitry Samarov

  Lost Souls

  Making countless passes up and down the thoroughfares, we begin to seek out landmarks as a way of reconfirming our own place in the city. Some of them turn out not to be prominent structures, but human characters that make an area their own through persistence and stubborn refusal to fade away. Most of them wouldn’t exactly be considered pillars of the community. In fact, they aren’t part of any block club, yet their presence marks the mental image of the locale they haunt more than any neighborhood booster ever could.

  The double-amputee at Dearborn and Congress waits patiently for the light to go red before wheeling up to the stopped vehicles, looking for alms. He’s been here for years and doesn’t hurry. He seems to know the precise second to hit the sidewalk to avoid injury and dirty looks.

  From the Magnificent Mile to Wacker Drive, a regular visitor will spot him sooner or later. He’s got brushed long gray hair and clothes that hang off him in that coat-hanger way, as if to prove that they were given to him rather than chosen. From a distance, he looks a bit like Daniel Day-Lewis, with the prominent nose and deep-set eyes; up close, the blotchy skin and bad teeth don’t seem like any movie star’s. He isn’t dirty, and his clothes, while not his own, are always clean, and I’ve never seen him ask for money or much of anything. Mostly, he fills his days crossing and re-crossing major downtown streets. It’s as if he’s been put out there to wander, cleaned up and re-dressed overnight, then told to do it again and again and again.

  She’s made Chicago and Western hers. Any of the bus shelters or benches in the vicinity are liable to hold her bundle of bags and rags. Her hair is dreaded into one ugly gray-brown clump to the side of her bent-over head as she makes her way slowly down the sidewalk. The object is to transport one or another of the many pieces of her self-styled luggage from one spot to the next. Sometimes it’s all gathered together to board the #49 or #66 bus, to the great annoyance of the CTA drivers and passengers; the operation takes many minutes, and she’s years past caring about any kind of recrimination. The picking up and putting down of all those worthless bits is just another way to bide away the time until the sand in the hourglass runs out.

  She patrols the six-way intersection of Damen, Fullerton, and Elston. Walleyed and slight, she staggers toward cars, holding out an oversize plastic cup. Her mouth hangs open and to the side at an unnatural cant, and the sounds she makes can’t truly be classified as words. It’s customary to make oneself pitiful to elicit sympathy and remuneration, but she takes it to an absurd extreme, if indeed it’s any of her own doing. That face wouldn’t be out of place in one of Hieronymus Bosch’s tableaux of hell. Her occasional replacement is a black man whose limbs all move the wrong way as he walks; a worthy substitute to play her part on that stage.

  These people, and many others less memorable, serve as signposts all across this town. There’s some kinship between them and the hacks who haunt these avenues; these forgotten shades serve as the only constant company on deserted streets at any hour of the day or night. Their presence reaffirms our own, while also reminding us of the merciless repetition of this work. Like them, we must return again and again to the same intersections, with luck to get just enough fortune for the chance to do it all over once more.

  MONDAY

  Monday is a day to pick up a cab if you don’t have one, or to get the one you have serviced. Odds are that what a driver makes this day will just cover the cab lease and get him closer to the more lucrative days of the week.

  There are long fallow periods—hours spent just wandering—and the occasional passengers that do appear are often odd or off; strange types that we sometimes wish would have just stayed home.

  Eighteen Hours

  2:42 A.M.

  I arrive at the garage, look at the waiting list for cabs, put in my chauffeur’s number: fifth on the list. I settle in with my back against the Ms. Pac-Man machine and start a drawing.

  4:08 A.M.

  The drawing’s done after a smoke break and some aimless ambling to and fro. Other drivers take turns sauntering up to the list, scanning hopefully for some progress, though the cashier hasn’t laid a hand on it yet. The empty time inspires a kind of magical thinking, where it’s possible to convince ourselves that subtle signs invisible to others have significance.

  5:02 A.M.

  The whole time, every few minutes, drivers come in and stride purposefully toward the window. We all zero in, searching for the meter in hand; this would mean he might be dropping his car, thereby paving the path for our release. The ones who do turn in meters are all putting their cabs in the service line, meaning that they have breakdowns and their names will be put at the front of the waiting list, ahead of us.

  5:47 A.M.

  The overnight skeleton crew washes, waxes, buffs, and otherwise attends to the half dozen cars headed for City Inspection in the morning. If they pass, there’s a chance that they may be dispatched, though this prospect is hours away at best. It’s something to hold on to, a wisp of a chance to make the time feel worthwhile.

  6:00 A.M.

  A flurry of activity. The morning garage crew comes in, followed by the morning manager and the boss, who casts his jaundiced eye around the place before disappearing into the office. The lifts and other machinery spring to life to provide a soundtrack of grinding, hissing violence that tests our fraying, taciturn dispositions. Three cabs are assigned, though with all the accumulated breakdowns, the list is now longer than it was three hours ago.

  7:53 A.M.

  A walk outside reveals the high merciless sun, which feels no sympathy for those of us who’ve endured this sleepless night. The overnight cashier is relieved by three morning ones, all windows now ready to receive lease money and endure complaints and hard-luck stories. Those who protest vociferously enough are directed around the corner, through the manager’s office door, where their concerns are mostly ridiculed and ignored before they are dismissed and sent on their way. Periodically, one or another approaches to ask how long the wait has been, to sympathize or share their own troubles, making it all the more excruciating because the best we can do here is cast our minds elsewhere, to have an imaginary reprieve.

  11:01 A.M.

  Lunch break for the day shift. The roach coach pulls in to dispense coffee, candy, pop, tacos, and a Cuban sandwich so ancient it may’ve predated the Castro regime. The waiting-room table—previously cluttered with half-read newspapers, books, and the crossed arms of nappers—is now further littered with wrappers, crumbs, and empty Coke cans. A man with a work shirt monogrammed with the name Jose pushes piles of dust and detritus around with an old broom before collecting it into a dustpan and dragging it gradually toward a Dumpster.

  1:33 P.M.

  ID numbers are called out, inspiring a rush toward the window whether the numbers match our own or not, the cashier telling the stragglers to sit back down; those not present when their turn is called are crossed off the list, those just arriving informed that no more will be taken this day. Some loiter around anyway, chewing the fat with their buddies or playing halfhearted games of pool, punctuated by loud disputes about the true rules of the game. When the list is taken down, we brace anxiously for some bit of progress, studying the worn sheet of crossed-out and newly added digits, as it’s returned to its place next to the row of cashiers’ windows.

  3:53 P.M.

  My attempt to purchase Munchos from the vending machine is temporarily thwarted as the bag lodges horizontally aloft above the door slot, refusing to drop any farther. Banging and shaking doesn’t do a thing, neither does the purchase of Bacon & Cheddar Potato Skins, bought in the hope of jarring it loose with their own fall. Another driver saves the day by getting his own Munchos. “Problem solved!” he states proudly. I smoke the last of my American Spirits in the unshaded glare of the afternoon. Trips to the washroom to throw water at my face only serve to emphasize the extent of sleep deprivation.

  6:30 P.M.

  The office is now darkened, the higher-
ups’ day done, but the parade of payers rarely slackens; they jostle each other, feigning outrage as they squeeze toward the slots that relieve them of their earnings. I’ve tried every possible place to sit, lean, or slump over. What’s left, more often than not, is a dazed and wavering stance with eyes unfocused; a zombie-like existence that feels as if it has neither beginning nor end.

  8:37 P.M.

  A beckoning finger draws me toward the window, followed by the clink of a car key hitting the metal basin of the slot. With the fee for the remaining hours of the evening collected, I’m free to go forth and seek my fortune. Eighteen hours at the garage, thirty-three since I last slept, lucky not to have driven into a light pole on my way home; dead to the world before head hits pillow.

  Bus, Bike, Walk

  If cars are the fish, then city buses are the whales in the water of the thoroughfare. Slow, lumbering, and able to go where and when they want, they put the rest of us in our place simply by their girth. During rush hour, they mass in the right lane to form an impenetrable wall; God help the lowly sedan hoping to make a right turn. When these behemoths are ready to stir, they’ll take up two to three lanes to make their move, causing an absolute stop behind them while the road ahead is all clear. The worst offenders are the accordion buses, which hamper passage like nothing else on wheels. A few weeks ago, one overshot its stop, then turned its front half toward the curb to block both lanes while disgorging its contents. When it eventually pulled forward, I went around and slammed on the brakes, making him halt, to communicate my displeasure. The irate bus driver threw it into park at the next red light, ran up to my passenger-side window screaming bloody murder, turning an unflattering crimson shade that made me fear for his health. The gist of the rant was that he’d had it with cabdrivers getting in his way and flouting the rules of the road; laughable considering the mismatch in size and potential for damage and distress between the two vehicles. All the same, any opportunity to cause a CTA bus a bit of annoyance can’t be passed over by any self-respecting taxi driver.

  Lower on the food chain, but presenting their own special problems, are the cyclists. The regular riders downtown often seem hell-bent to squeeze through any available inch between vehicles while simultaneously giving only cursory attention to streetlights and stop signs. Bike couriers, of course, elevate this dance to an art form. A while back, one of them wrote a memoir comparing their vocation to that of ninjas, medieval knights, and other mythical warriors; nothing like self-delusion to get one through the drudgeries of the day. As a lowly fellow servant to the moneyed class, hearing such claptrap mixes funny with sad. Last week one of them yelled, “YOU’RE A DOUCHE!” as she took exception to a U-turn I’d made, which, coming as it did within thirty feet of her precious fixed-gear steed, apparently presented some grievous threat. Pulling even and telling her that it takes one to know one got a half-smile out of her; we hopscotched back and forth for at least two miles down Damen, with more chatter and gesticulating. If it wasn’t quite understanding, it was at least détente.

  Pedestrians are the frailest yet most dangerous creatures of the road; the gentlest nudge with the bumper may mean the end of one’s workday, not to mention the time-consuming cleanup. At times it takes heroic self-control not to mow down a dozen or two just on general principle. When the quitting bell rings, they swarm the sidewalks, often spilling over into the roadways. They cast dirty looks at motorists who deign to remind them to retreat back to their part of the street, then test brakes by not breaking pace no matter the shade of the traffic signal. Some fancy themselves amateur crossing guards, windmilling their arms at moments of their choosing, further enraging many a veteran wheelman.

  These little run-ins are an ideal way to relieve the frustrations of the day; we can sense when the driver, the cyclist, or the pedestrian is poised on that precipice—ready to explode at the slightest provocation. After a time, it can become a sort of game to set them off, if not a source of pride at least; a method to soothe one’s own rapidly fraying nerves.

  White Eagle

  I am first in line outside McCormick Place to pick up the hordes leaving the Chicago Auto Show and watch as she teeters toward the cab on her frail birdlike legs. Her destination is the nearest bar, which she croaks slurring, sounding more drugged than drunk. Outside a tavern some five blocks away, told that I wouldn’t be joining her inside, she instructs me to take her to Naperville.

  What does she look like? Well, if Britney Spears makes it to her late sixties, or maybe even her early fifties with enough abuse, that would be her. Black leggings and top, bleached-blond hair, and enough makeup to make a corpse pomaded by an undertaker look tasteful by comparison.

  The ride through rush-hour traffic mostly passes with her drifting in and out of consciousness, wondering if we are there yet, and yammering in a surprisingly coherent tone on her cell. In downtown Naperville, she asks to stop at a tavern and for me to wait. A half hour passes as the meter ticks on and on. Finally, I go inside to find her slumped over, muttering to her neighbors at adjoining bar stools. They help her out to the cab, and we pull out. It’s not long before she tells me that she doesn’t know where she is. When this happens in the city, it’s not a problem because it’s laid out in a grid, so one’s got to really try to get lost; the suburbs are another story, between the winding roads, endless trees, and countless interchangeable strip malls.

  The only clue I have are the words “White Eagle,” which she intones any time I ask again where she lives. We meander about, unable to find that secret locale for another twenty minutes before my third attempt to get directions from a White Hen Pantry finally pays off. It turns out to be a golf course/country club/gated community kind of place. She pays and staggers toward a well-lit house as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.

  Oyster Crackers

  It’s pouring and the crutches soften my heart enough to stop. He gets on his cell and says, “Damn, baby! All’s I wanted was some oyster crackers . . . You know I cain’t have no chili without ’em . . . You couldn’t do that one thing fo’ me . . .”

  He hangs up and explains that his lady has made chili, but all her cooking is bland like school cafeteria food. He needs some flavor in his chili, some hot sauce and oyster crackers. Now she wants her son, who’s no kid (he’s eighteen; she’s thirty-five), to go to the store. “I got a married bitch too,” he says. “That blew my mind . . . men cheat because they can, women because they want to . . .”

  Having shared his wisdom, he hobbles out to spice up his bland chili.

  A Smoker

  She pulls the rolling suitcase wearily toward the top of the cab line at Terminal 3, leaves it by my trunk without so much as a word, and gets into the backseat. “Marriott Downtown,” she says, breaking away from her phone conversation momentarily, then resuming it in a voice so loud that I can’t help but overhear. We melt into the inbound Monday-afternoon traffic from O’Hare with her words providing the soundtrack. The subject seems to be someone close to her and his inability to manage his finances. Checks bounce and a new strategy has to be devised so that life can be led more responsibly. “My phone’s about to die. I’ll call you when I get to the hotel room. Love you,” she finishes, hanging up and turning her attention my way.

  The flight had been turbulent. So much so that she’d had to go into the airport bathroom to re-iron her hair. “What I need now is for you to stop somewhere so I can buy me some cigarettes. I don’t really smoke. I’m a doctor too, not a medical one, a psychologist. Even Obama’s gotta hide it . . . Me and my best friend had a deal—we’d share one pack a month, but since she got divorced, she doesn’t need to keep it from her husband and has as many as she wants. Anyways, they’re at her house. Know how hard it is for us in California? We have to creep around behind everyone’s back.” I tell her that I know that need too well. Having kicked the habit after almost twenty years, there is no way I’ll stand in the way of anyone needing to scratch that itch.

  “It has to be a parti
cular brand and a certain time of day for me,” she explains, as we pull off the Kennedy at Irving Park and turn into a Shell station.

  She emerges with a pack of Benson & Hedges 100s and a purple Bic. I tell her she’s welcome to smoke in the cab, but she prefers to indulge out on the curb just to the side of the store’s doors.

  “I’d have to crack the window, and my hair would be ruined again. Anyway, I don’t want you to watch me sin. Please look away.” She lights up, and a quarter of the cigarette’s length turns to ash with the first hungry inhale. Her straightened black hair looks like it is just barely holding on, stray strands rebelling against the ironing and product and sticking out from the hardened shape of the rest.

  “Feel so much better now,” she announces, getting back in. “Never used to smoke until I had kids, then everything went to hell. You know, they don’t tell you this, but they get to be teenagers and they become assholes.” She wants to know if having a cigarette every once in a while makes her a smoker, and I answer that to me it’s like being a little bit pregnant—that is, if you smoke, then you’re a smoker. This doesn’t please her but does make her laugh.

  Her craving satisfied, she wants to know how the shopping is near her hotel. She’s pleased to be deposited in the middle of the Magnificent Mile, where one can max out a charge card in minutes with very little effort. Maneuvering into the Marriott’s narrow drive on Rush Street, I run her credit card, then pop out to help with her luggage, but the doorman has already gotten it and she’s some ten feet away, hiding behind one of the columns to light up again.