200th st.

200th st.

(1)

She's outside when I get there. It's a crappy neighborhood just off 312th in Federal Way. The whole street is just these vacant fourplexes with cars on the lawns. She walks up to the cab and I can see she's carrying something. At first I think it's a suitcase but when she gets in I realize its a boombox. One of those old school battery-powered types like radio Raheem got killed for.
"We going down to 200th street where the jail's at, "she says. I can tell she looks good even though I don't turn around. She's tall and dark. Her skin's the same color as an oak table if you shined it for an hour straight. I turn the cab and almost run right through this huge pile of broken glass that's just sitting in the middle of the road. I jerk the wheel too hard and we spin into a yellow pirouette. I can smell the rubber sizzling on the street.
"Damn," I say. "Did you see that?"
"What?" she says unimpressed. "Oh you mean all that glass? That's been there forever."


(2)

Last week my Aunt Rosa called the dispatch desk at Pacific Taxi where I work. Like most everybody else in my family she doesn't have my home phone number. It's not personal. I like Rosa. I just haven't talked to her in six years. Somehow she must have found out I was driving a cab because that morning the girl behind the desk handed me a cream-colored Post It note. It said Rosa: 206-334-9807 important. When I dial the number there's a raw ache in my teeth. rosa tells me that my Dad is dead and I say "uh-huh." Kind of like I was saying "cut to the chase" or something. Housekeeping found him over at the Legend motel in Des Moines. The girl had walked in and seen him lying on the bed. She was about to turn around and leave when she stepped on one of his needles that had rolled all the way to the door. She started screaming then, presumably in Spanish.
"I don't get it," I said. "Did the girl have on flip-flops?"
"I guess so," Rosa paused. "Can you imagine? At the Legend? I'd want steel-toed boots just to drive by that place." Then she seems to realize she'd called to tell me my Dad had died and we're talking footwear. My family. Christmas would be a real blast if we ever got around to talking to each other.
"I'm sure he didn't feel anything," She tells me.
"Why start now," I think. But that's pretty whiny, even for me. So instead I just say "I'm sure he didn't."


(3)

"You gonna take the highway?" She asks while she smears her lipstick.
"This time of day Pac-highway's faster."
Pacific Highway is the main drag south of Seattle. It runs through Kent, Des Moines, Burien and few other spots no one cared enough to name. Somewhere near the airport, the name of the street becomes International Boulevard. There's some truth in advertising here. You've definitely got your representation from every part of the world, particularly the parts where you pay for your wife in goats. Understand, this isn't the kind of "international" where you sample the different cuisines and you listen to all the different languages. If you're into that sort of thing there's the International District downtown. The Boulevard is more the "what the hell is that smell," kind of international. Mostly unfriendly folks running .99 cent stores and their teenage kids who dress like Achmed the missing Beastie Boy. So despite what you might have heard, that's all Pacific Highway is. Nothing to be scared of. Just a bunch of huddled masses yearning to sell unleaded and premium. And of course the hoes. After midnight, if it's breathing on this street you can probably pay to have sex with it. For people like me, who grew up around here, the tricks are sort of like de-facto mayors of the neighborhood. The town elders who just happen to give head in the KFC bathroom. Most of them are sweet girls really, even if they are strung out. Just like the rest of this road they're dirty not dangerous. I won't give them rides anymore though. None of them ever think they really have to pay cash. My second week driving, I picked up a girl in Federal Way who needed to go all the way to the Northgate mall. We were about a mile away when she told me she left her purse at home. "It's cool," she told me. "Once we get there I'll put my fingers in your ass or something."

"We got to get there by 5:30."
"Is that when they close?" This sounded funnier in my head. She looks through me to the windshield, maybe wishing it would drive. I decide to take it easy on the comedy. "No problem," I add. "We've got time."
"If you say so," she says. We pass some cherry-faced white girl in a dirty halter top and mismatching heels. She sticks out her thumb more out of instinct than anything else, but doesn't seem too disappointed when we don't stop. Up north the hoes tend to be a little more discrete when they're working. The Boulevard girls post up at the bus stops or wait on the corners and try to lock eyes with their potential customers. Not Here on Pac-highway. These girls could give a fuck. They're like the Jehovah Witnesses of selling pussy. They'll walk single file down the middle of the street if they feel like it, sometimes barefoot. It's like watching the world's most deluded supermodels showing off the new fall line of stretch marks and pipe burns. Always with that "you know you want me" look even when they're throwing up in the grass.



"So, is today visiting day or something," I ask.
"Huh?...Oh no, none of that. I got some open cases myself I can't go up in there." Then, like she figures she owes me an explanation she adds "my man's up there. Saturday's I dance for him 'bout this time. They be cleaning the J tier on Saturdays til about 5:30. He can see me from there."
"How long have you been doing that?"
"Every Saturday, nine months now."
"How'd you get the idea?" Beautiful women make some men crazy and some men stupid. Me, I turn into a reporter for the school paper. It's a reflex. One that's always been there. Like I think I can whowhatwhere my way into some ass.
"I'm sorry," she says. "You say something?"
"Nothing," I tell her. I don't know much about women, but this one in my back seat; she could give a fuck about a "good listener." A block goes by and then she says "he told me he didn't want no letters." The words surprise me, the way they just fall out.
"Is that right," I say.
"He said 'letters don't help nothing.' Pictures were cool though."
"What's he in there for?" She snorts a laugh when I ask this.
"Same thing all those motherfuckers are up in there for. Getting caught." The city hates Pac-highway. Its a big embarrassment having an open air ass market all the tourists notice when they get off the plane. Wanna see one of those whales everybody gets so excited about? Drive two hours through some old Navy base, pay fifty bucks, jump on a ferry, wait another hour, if it's not too foggy you might see his tail. Want to see what chlamydia looks like if you don't treat it for forty five years? Turn left. Without the hoes though, I'd die of boredom. Take them away and this is just twenty-five miles of airport parking and karaoke bars named after fish. Plus, me personally, I could give a fuck about the tourists! Every single one of them jumping off the plane from Nashville or wherever and into my cab. All of them making the same stupid joke about "hey, is there any place around here a guy could get a cup of coffee." All of them thinking they're some kind of hot shit philosopher kings because their business card has the words "web design" in it. Fuck you Michelangelo. I hope someone throws you a fish with Ebola.



"I hear federal time's the easiest to do." I flex my street muscle. She doesn't notice.
"It ain't"she says. "People say that but nah...they feed you a little better but that's about it. Plus, they make you do like eighty percent of your bid."
"Better than those state pens though."
"The way I heard it," she says, "time is time." She starts to fiddle with her boombox but then she stops. She's looking at me with a wolfish smile in her eyes. She's looking at me hard, like I got no place to run.
"Why? You ever caught a bid baby boy?" The more I drive this road the less I notice the hoes working Pacific. After a while they don't seem any different than those planes flying out of Sea-tac. Just another life passing by. Just another light changing colors.
"Once," I say. "When I was younger." I don't know why I tell her this. It isn't true at all.

(4)

I surprise myself by going to the funeral. Aunt Rosa practically begged me to come. When that doesn't work, she does beg me. Finally I say yes and even though I'm lying when I say it, I still show up at St. Ezekiel's in Burien. There's a white guy outside that I don't recognize in a dark suit. At first I think he's one of Dad's NA buddies, but he's actually from the funeral home.
"Are you the 2:00?" He asks. He nods me into the church and I find a pew in the back. About twelve people show up for Dad's funeral. A few of them I recognize as uncles or cousins, the rest are strangers. None of the other kids are here. In fact I'm probably the only one of his kids that even knows he's dead. My brother JJ's been AWOL for years now. More than likely he's out somewhere trying to scoop up whatever smack Dad couldn't fit in his 2go box. I got a half sister somewhere in New Jersey whose name, I think, is Carol. Someone'll probably get around to calling her next week.


I didn't meet my Dad until I was fourteen. He spent the first eleven years of my life in Monroe on a weapons charge. We really only hung out a few times off and on. Those were decent memories, I guess. He was a skinny little guy with a bunch of tattoos. He always seemed pretty harmless even if he had shot two people. We'd drink beer up in his motel room and watch basketball games (he still called it the "ABA".). He had a lot of funny stories about prison, which to hear him tell it was a pretty hilarious place, all things considered.
When the preacher asks who would like to share a remembrance of the deceased all you hear is some toe tapping. I feel kind of bad for the preacher. Its like watching a stand-up comic bomb onstage. But he's not getting any help from me. The only other memories I've got are from my sophomore year of high school when he showed up on campus trying to buy weed. And my senior year when he beat the shit out of me in front of my girlfriend because I still owed him $20 for the brakes he put on my car. When I graduated, I got a check in the mail from him for fifty dollars. The check bounced and so did he, violating parole like a motherfucker out in California. A few years later he got popped again on a conspiracy case and took himself out for another four years. To be honest, if my Aunt hadn't called my job last week I'd have assumed he was still there.
Finally a few people do try to speak. A few others cry politely. About the time the preacher drops his fourth chorus of "God loving God's children and the way God's love is in His holy plan," I make for the door. On my way out I pass by Aunt Rosa. I wave goodbye but she doesn't see me. She's being yelled at by a dark, frizzy-haired woman. The woman is wearing a very long t-shirt that covers her ankles. The shirt has a picture of some rabbits and the caption reads: SOME BUNNY LOVES ME VERY MUCH. As I leave, I hear her yelling at Rosa. "Yes bitch, I know he's dead. I'm not stupid. That don't change things. Five hundred dollars is five hundred dollars and best believe I'm a get my money."

We pass by the Legend and I point it out.
"You giving a tour now?" She laughs. It's a real pretty laugh. Prettier than I would have thought.
"My father died up there last week."
"Oh, for real? I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's all good. I didn't really know him all that well anyhow."
"He get killed up or something?"
"OD, fucking with that 'ron." See baby, see where I'm from. She looks out the window again.
"I remember back in the day, me and my homegirls would be up at Cafe Arizona then after it closed we'd be partying over at the Legend. That place was cracking," She shakes her head a little.
"Yeah, I had to go and see all my family. I hadn't seen them in like forever."
"You don't talk to your family?"
"Not so much to talk about," I tell her. "They pretty much all strangers to me. Unless one of 'em needs an alibi or a kidney." She laughs at that. A good long laugh that stuns me for a second.
"I hear that, baby. Where you going I done been." She says this so soft I almost think I imagine it. Her voice puts air in my lungs. We're at a red light. All the traffic's stopped.
"Damn, The Legend. I ain't thought about that place in hella." And then it's all gone. She steps back into whatever that place is where people like her go. Her eyes start to read the street signs. 216, 210, 204.
"Hey," she says. "You got to turn here."
"Yeah," I snap, "I know where it is."

(5)


She pays me and says "wait here." There's a field about a hundred yards away. I watch from the road as she walks into the grass and sets the boombox down. From here it looks more like a hospital than a jail, but I'm not getting any closer. She takes a minute choosing her spot, trying to find the place where she can be seen. I don't know how she can tell if there's anyone back there. The sunshine is pasting those windows, blinding it. A spider web of dirty lightning jumps off the building and slices something inside my eye. She starts dancing then. The CD skips a little at first, like it's as nervous as I am. It's one of those tired girl-rap songs they play constantly on the radio and in the clubs. So I don't pay much attention to the music. Everybody I know has heard this song a million times. But, I do watch her. I won't lie about that.

She's killing the beat, bullying it almost. And she's beautiful, but not the way you'd think. If I was her man, I don't know I could stand to watch something like this. Not because I was locked down. I couldn't handle someone that ferocious. Hell, let's be real: I couldn't handle mattering that much to someone. She starts popping her chest and popping her ass, making it twitch. She drops in the grass and then comes back up. Hurricane rolling her hips, like those Puerto Rican girls roll their 'r's. It’s like watching the wind move through the rain. The whole time she's smiling, like to say "it ain't no thing. This is what I do." I guess I'm a little tired because there's a second, a split second, that she disappears. Straight vanishes in the sunlight! Then she's back, arching and flipping. Laughing all the way. Her whole body collapsing into itself like it was made of shadows. When it's over, she puts her hand over her eyes and stares up into that gray glass. It's impossible to see if anyone besides me caught her act. The windows are just big vertical swamps burning in the spotlight. So, no, she can't see anything. But she stands like that for a long time.


(6)


My Dad had one good story. That's about how it works. Live forty-seven years, get three kids, a couple of diseases and one really great story. Don't like it? Get your money back at the door. I only heard him tell it once. The time that he got picked up on the weapons charge he'd been wearing this old black coat. It was a cheap tired type coat with big pockets and a wide zipper a lot like the kind little kids wear. Dad had bought it at the Salvation Army for two dollars. Anyway, he'd been coming back from his supplier's house when these two rollers (he called them "jumpouts") popped him for an old warrant. Maybe they recognized him on sight, but probably they'd been watching his friend's house. This was downtown near the space needle.

Somewhere, deep in that coat pocket my Dad had a fresh ounce of dope. Already rocked up and ready for sale. For some reason, Dad kept toilet paper in his coat pockets. Lots of toilet paper. I have absolutely no idea why. When the duty officer took his coat for inventory he started emptying out the pockets and he kept pulling back sheet after sheet. The cops all laughed, made some jokes and finally set the coat aside as inventory. They never found the rocks. My Dad did those eleven years at Monroe knowing that at the end of his bid, the state would return all of your belongings you had at the time of your arrest. They tell you horror stories in prison. Stories about how on your last day they'd process you and walk you to the gate. And then just before they'd release you, the warden's voice would come over the intercom and call you back. They'd find some infraction, usually minor ( a recommendation for parole got filed late. Something like that.) and you'd get put back in the system, sometimes for another couple of years. My Dad knew that on his last day he was going to take a brand new charge for what was in that coat. Possession with intent-six to eight automatic. When his release date finally came, they walked my father into a small room on the far end of the prison. They gave him all his things. They brought out a cardboard box with his inmate number and the words PERSONAL BELONGINGS written across. They let him change into the same clothes he'd been arrested in; they said goodbye and they walked him to the gate. My dad said he wasn't even excited. He knew that at any moment the deputy warden's voice would come crackling over the loudspeaker asking him to please report back to his unit. He kept his eyes on the ground, trying not to look at anything on the other side of that fence. He was still looking down, when they rolled away the gate.

At Monroe, once the gate opens you walk about a half mile down a wooded trail and then you board a bus. Dad said "I got a little ways down that trail and then I reached real deep into that coat pocket. It's summertime, right, and I'm already sweating and I'm wearing this bigass heavy black coat. But I reach in it real deep anyway...and Damn! Ain't nothing changed!" His sack was still there. No different than the day he'd gone in. He didn't take his hand out of that coat until the bus reached Seattle.

(7)

It wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't tell you about the dream. I was gonna leave this out, but it's part of the story too. It goes pretty much the way you'd expect. In the dream, she takes my hand but I guess that's not much of a surprise. She takes my hand and leads me into the field. Then she puts her hand over her eyes to keep the glare out. But this time she's not looking at the jail. She's looking at me. And I'm scared because I'm not a dancer. But I try. I do my best. And in my dream, we're there at 200th street, dancing. Trying to find faith in the sunshine. Waiting for the places where the music forgives. Sometimes in the dream, I'm back at St. Ezekiel’s with my aunt Rosa and the big nervous preacher. But I skip the service altogether and just walk outside. And then she's in my cab and we're driving. We go back up to the jail, but this time we go right up to the door. We drive alongside the walls, inside them even. But no matter how close we get it's always just more windows, more glass. And I know its a dream because sometimes she'll say things that I don't understand. And sometimes we never get to where we were going. But no matter what, it starts off the same way. She's in the back and I'm at the wheel. I'm always driving. That never changes.

(8)

I'm not sure what it is I love so much about my father's story. They say the guys that do the most time, are always the one's with the stories about how lucky they are. And probably, that's all this is. Just some junkie fairy tale about getting over on the system. But for me, I think there's something else there. I couldn't tell you what. Maybe it's the way we keep our secrets close to our heart even when we're walking towards freedom. I like that. It's poetic, but it isn't true. My Dad never really had many secrets. Didn't see the use for them other than contraband. But that image. Him, the coat, the gate, the bus; you can't tell me there isn't something there. Something that‘s important, whether or not I understand it. Something, about the way the past, the present and the future are all accounted for. The sum total of your life intersecting with the day of your release. And that’s all I want really. Just a signal every once in a while. A quick look at the shape of things. You see, me, I drive a cab. You'd think I'd have a million stories, but really I don't have one. I just take you there. I don't go inside. Me, I’m still in Monroe. Standing at the gate, steeling myself against hope. I'm still waiting for my name to be called.


"I got to get going," I say to her.
"Then go, if you want to," she snaps without even looking at me. "You can go. The 174 runs every half hour. I’m a gonna be here for a minute. I’m gonna be right here.”