The Pages of the People
A short story about a man who drove a taxi and tried to make sense of the madness he witnessed in the night.
The spiritual impetus
When the man was a U.S. Air Force security forces member in the Middle East sitting on top of a military Humvee with a machine gun in a turret, he didn’t foresee the possibility of being a taxi driver later in life. Now, many years later, he was driving a passenger van with a taxi availability marker on top and the name and number of the company painted on the sides.
After years of odd jobs dealing both with people and lonely nights of service, he was prepared to deal with the transient and unpredictable nature of the job. Even so, the cycles and patterns of the broad analysis went beyond his former capacity to make sense out of the murky miasma; the job was an enigma with sprinkles of absurdity and delight.
The 12-hour night shift would start with relatively peaceful fares from workers and city shoppers trying to get home before the storms of night activity began. Then the atmosphere would shift with expectation and anticipation as the fares morphed into a different crowd ready to revel in the night and commence their duties of rebelliousness and vain pursuits.
The passengers the driver would happen upon through random calls throughout the night would run…
