"In this life there are no beginnings, only departures called beginnings"
—Delmore Schwartz
After killing a little time shooting 8-ball and discussing God around a beer-soaked bar with a bunch of hipsters and mad bikers, I drift out of "Lucky's Lounge" and into the dull, rainy streets of a Savannah Saturday night. The neon donut in the window of the all-night café across the street blinks zero… zero… zero…
My name is Leon Stone. I drive a taxi for the Miracle Seven Cab Company—the graveyard shift. When I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot, but just the thought of flying brought on a dizziness I still don't understand. My mind simply would not picture things from a great height. So I drive. Leaping back and forth across town—mile after mile of mind-numbing driving until my mind shuts down and I work myself into some kind of altered state where something clean and untainted begins to appear; a kind of curtain that temporarily separates my empty life from chaos—the motion keeping me alive. Day after day of playing out the fucked-up implications of a "normal life"—destination, even someone else's, giving me purpose.
My cab is just up the street, and when I get back to where it's parked, there's a guy waiting in the rain. A dark apparition carrying a beat-up old briefcase—emaciated, wearing a stained black raincoat about two sizes too big, blank eyes sunk back in his skull—totally oblivious to the shitty weather conditions. With his long hair and beard, he reminds me of one of those pathetic pictures of Jesus I used to see in Sunday school when I was a kid.
"Are you waiting for me?" I ask.
"Yeah, can we get in out of the rain?" he says.
"Sure thing," I say, and press the remote device on my key ring to unlock the doors.
As soon as we're inside, I start the engine and turn on the windshield wipers. When I glance in the rearview mirror, I catch a quick look at the man's face as he lights a cigarette. For a split-second, something flashes through my brain. Fear? Dread? My grandfather used to say, "like someone walking on your grave." I also notice a tattoo on the back of his hand—I can't quite make it out. It looks like some kind of animal.
When he gets the cigarette lit, he leans back in the seat, catches my eye in the mirror, and says, "Leon, I've got three hundred dollars in my pocket, and it's all yours if you'll drive me to Charleston."
Using my first name catches me by surprise, until it occurs to me he's noticed my name on the hack's license posted on the dash. Charleston, South Carolina is about 120 miles from Savannah, but three hundred dollars is a lot of cash, and I don't mind the drive. I reach over, turn off the meter, and say, "Dude, you just bought yourself a driver."
"How long to get there?" he asks.
"In this rain, a couple of hours."
*
I take GA-21 North to I-95—I'm starting to feel pretty good about heading somewhere out of the ordinary. Meantime, Jesus hasn't said a word. So just to break the ice, I ask where he lives in Savannah, and he tells me he has a room downtown. When I ask about family, he just sits and stares out the window.
The only other words spoken over the next hundred miles are when he leans up and asks if I'll turn down the radio. I turn the radio off, and drive on through the rainy night toward Charleston, wondering what kind of misery and squalor could account for this pitiful pilgrim.
*
About a mile out of Charleston, I ask Mr. X where he wants to go when we get there, and he says, "Take me to the top of the Cooper River Bridge."
"Did you say the top?"
"That what I said, Leon."
"What the fuck for!"
He looks out the window for a couple of seconds then says, "To kill the bear."
"What goddamn bear? Are you mad?"
"What's madness, Leon, but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? The bear goes with me everywhere I go," he says, "and tonight I have a special place to take him."
"Fuck this man, I'm not taking you up there," I say.
At which point he produces a pistol from his coat pocket, leans forward, points it directly toward my right ear and says, "Leon my friend, we made a deal."
*
As soon as we reach a spot somewhere near the highest point of the bridge, he leans forward, drops the three hundred dollar fare onto the front seat, and says, "Right here is good enough."
I stop the cab. He opens the rear door, gets out, and walks to the railing. He climbs up, looks once, straight up into sky, and dives up and out as far as his scrawny legs will push him—a kind of clumsy swan dive. He seems almost to be flying for a second. Then the outward motion stops and he falls silently along with a million raindrops toward the Cooper River as it goes about its watery business.
Meanwhile, I've been sitting, mesmerized, watching the whole thing unfold through the passenger window of my cab—living every second of what seems to be a new kind of extremely realistic television. I consider going to the police, but quickly change my mind. Who knows what they might make out of my part in this crazy thing.
I know I'm not up to coming back across this bridge again tonight, so I decide to get a room in a motel on the other side, and lay low until morning.
*
I pull into a parking spot in front of the Dixie Motel, switch off the engine, open the door and start to get out. That's when I notice the briefcase in the backseat. I get back in the cab, close the door and turn on the inside light. I reach over the seat, and retrieve the beat-up briefcase—inside, a stack of papers held together with a metal fastener.
I remove the clip and read the first page. As I browse through the other sheets, I discover that each one is the beginning of the same unfinished story. One after another, the tale of a decorated war veteran who returns home angry, disillusioned and dragging a hard drug habit.
At the very bottom of the briefcase, I find a wrinkled photograph. It shows a group of very young guys standing in front of a sandbagged bunker in what had to be Vietnam.
Suddenly, a fit of dizziness washes over me as the blood rushes to my head. My mind runs like a wild dog as I struggle to hold the picture steady in my hand. Standing at the center of the photo trying to look dangerous, is Lance Corporal Leon Stone surrounded by a group of guys he once knew and loved as brothers: Outcasts—black brothers and poor white trash—unfortunate sons—comrades-in-arms.
As I scan the faces of these mannish-boys, the names come spinning back. Forty years fall away like so much red dust. And there, standing at the far right, looking off into the distance—the lost old man I'd just watched go over the rail.
Our savior, the one person in that long forgotten place we had all looked up to. He was on his third tour in that inconceivable shithole, and he knew how to stay alive. We called him "the snake" because of the way he could slither through the jungle without making a sound. We hung on every fucking word he had to say. And when the shit hit the fan we stuck to him like blood-sucking leeches. "The snake" was untouchable—a goddamn hoodoo man.
*
I put the papers and photo back into the briefcase and close it up. Holding it under my arm, I open the door, and step out into the early-morning drizzle. I look up toward the sky, and watch the gray clouds pushing past. Tiny rain-rivers wash the tears down my face as I stand in the perfect quiet, and try to work some angle of reference.
I should have recognized him—even after all the sorry-ass years had taken their toll. I should have noticed the eyes. Had he come to me hoping to find someone to pull him out of his rapidly constricting universe—a part of the family—the inner circle? Maybe my failure to recognize him had turned any desire he had to communicate into a colossal silence—his mind totally exhausted from trying to defend itself.
I struggle to fashion my sadness into some kind of shape—a bit of hope that maybe, halfway down, he became aware that the bear was gone—the matter for him finally fully settled. As for the rest of us, the powerless figures still sleepwalking through this twenty-first century wasteland there is no epiphany. There is no universal love waiting to redeem us at the end of the long tunnel. There is only the maddening "dream of salvation" that we all share, and cannot seem to shake.
Originally from South Carolina, DB Cox resides in Watertown, MA.
At the age of 14, picked up the guitar, and a couple of years later played his first paying job with a band. After a 4-year stint with the Marines, spent a few years in the southeast playing in clubs and bars. In 1978, moved to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music. Eventually found the blues circuit in New England.
He enjoys writing poetry for the same reason he loves playing the guitar; a way to communicate how he feels, at a given time, on a given day.