I stood watching the man for a while, trying to stare in such a way that his primitive brain would pick up my signals. I was attempting to activate that supposedly dormant sixth sense we all possess but so seldom use.
Either he didn’t have a sixth sense or I was missing mine. He didn’t move.
I knocked on the table.
The man opened his eyes and looked at me. “What do you want?”
“Well, I’m at a taxi stand. Say I wanted a taxi?”
“What for?”
“To go someplace.”
“What I mean,” said the old man, dropping his feet from the chair and sliding them under the table, “where would you be going?”
“That’s a good question. And I have an answer.”
“Yeah, well, good. Take this chair and sit in it while you tell me.”
I pulled the chair around in front of the table and looked at the fella. He appeared to be very tired, and maybe not as old as I had first thought, but certainly no spring chicken.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, “this here is a taxi stand, but I don’t really do much taxiing. I take Old Lady McCullers into Oklahoma City twicet a week and do some shoppin’ for her. I got a few more customers I do similar things for, though they ain’t as excitin’ as she is. She has a gas problem. I have to drive with the windows down all the way there. She don’t even say excuse me or nothing. I look back at her in the rearview, she’s lookin’ at me like I cut ’em.”
“So what you’re saying is you drive gaseous old ladies around, but you won’t drive me?”
He leaned and looked past me, through the glass, at Brett’s car. “We gonna hook up your car and pull it?”
“Yeah, well, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?”
“What you really want?”
“Oh, just curious about a little taxi stand like this. In a town like this.”
“Nothing else to do on a rainy day, so you just drive off I-35, come in here to talk to some local color?”
“Something like that.”
“I think you’re full of shit, mister.”
“Well, I could use your rest room, you got one.”
“Right back there, and don’t make a mess of it. I don’t normally allow customers back there.”
“Maybe you ought to,” I said. “That way they won’t fart in your taxi all the way to Oklahoma City.”
He laughed a little. “You might have a case there,” he said.
I went to the rest room, took a leak, washed my face, studied it in the mirror. It looked as tired as Mr. Taxi Stand’s. I went back and took my chair.
“Haven’t had enough charm for one day?” he asked. “Here, let me give you the five-cent story. Hootie Hoot used to not have I-35 out there. That was long ago. Used to be three, four little towns around here next to us. They weren’t real big, but they were bigger than we were. With one taxi I had a little business. Enough I could take care of my family. Towns around us died, and this one’s dead and don’t know it.
“You drive down the road a piece there, take a right first real road you come to, and you’ll go through a burg used to be three times this size, but it ain’t nothing now but empty buildings with the store glass knocked out by vandals. I hang on here ’cause I ain’t got nothing else to do. Wife died. Kid got married and lives in Tulsa. Me, I got a little war pension and a few bucks now and then from the farting lady and a few others, and it’s all I need. And I got a feeling you didn’t come in here ’cause you needed no taxi. I got a feeling you didn’t come in here ’cause you were curious how come Hootie Hoot’s got one.”
“You could be right. By the way, what’s with the town’s name? Hootie Hoot?”
“I’ve heard about twenty stories,” he said. “Not one of ’em worth a shit and none of them interesting enough for me to repeat, and I don’t think you really care one way or the other.”
I nodded. “All right,” I said. “I got a real reason. I thought as a taxi driver you might could help me with something. I’m looking for a place. A house of prostitution.”
“Ah,” the man said. “I should have known that. I’m losing my snap. It’s just I don’t get many drop-ins for that. Mostly they know where they’re goin’. How come you don’t?”
I studied him. There was a lot more going on behind those slow brown eyes than waiting for the Channel Nine weather report.
“I was just told it was here in Hootie Hoot.”
“Ah hah. Where you from?”
“LaBorde, Texas.”
“Ah. Texas. You drove all the way from Texas to Hootie Hoot, Oklahoma, for a good time at a whorehouse? What’s the deal? They don’t make pussy in Texas no more?”
“I wanted to be real private.”
“I don’t think you wanted to be hundreds of miles private. I think you, sir, may still be full of shit. Even if you did go to the john.”
I considered for a moment, took a flyer. “All right. I’m going to tell you straight.”
