The Cab Driver
By Anonymous
There was something odd in the tone of the dispatcher’s voice (Why?)when he called to tell me a person needed picking up at Bramlett Road late one summer night in 1947 (1947? they had cabs back then?). I shuddered when I heard the name of the street. I did not want to go anywhere near that area, especially at midnight (Fishy). But I drove a Yellow Cab, and it was my job to pick up a call when it came (I thought the dispatcher told him?). So I swallowed and headed toward Bramlett Road and the slaughter yards (Slaughter yards always the slaughter yards. Jeez).
I’d been out of town when “the incident” (Nice use of quotations) happened. I call it an incident, but it was murder (Nevermind), plain and not so simple. A fellow name of Brown (Why brown why not blue?) who drove a cab with our company was robbed (Why rob then kill why not just kill and then rob. So much simpler) and stabbed to death in his cab. Next day a man named Willie Earle was picked up by the police the very next day and put in jail for the crime, though he denied doing it.
Then a bunch of hot-heads (I can just imagine the steam coming out their heads while they eat airheads) who drove cabs for our company gathered together, passed around a bottle of whiskey and talking about “getting” (Nice) the fellow who’d stabbed Brown. One of the men went out and borrowed a shotgun, and the mob drove to the jail, grabbed Earle and threw him in the back of one of the cabs. The hotheads (Again steam ears) took him to the slaughter yards and they dragged Earle forcibly from the cab and started beating him. A man pulled a knife and waded into the mob with it, and Earle shouted: “Lord, you’ve killed me!” (Close but it was just a drunk man) That’s when the fellow with the shotgun put a bullet in his head (I can imagine him simply, delicately placing a bullet on top of his head), reloaded, and shot him twice more. (Ahh the triple kill, what are you doing? Wasting bullets?)
When the mob was sure he was dead, they climbed back into their separate cabs and fanned out, each heading back to the city by a different route. Eventually word got out and thirty-one fellows were arrested for the crime. But they were all acquitted by a jury of their peers.
After the incident, the slaughterhouse section of Bramlett Road got a bad reputation. No one in the cab company much liked driving there, especially at night. Folks claimed it was haunted by the ghost of Willie Earle.
I shivered as I pulled onto Bramlett Road and slowed down to look for my passenger. No one was there. I parked the cab and got out to have a quick breath of air. While I waited.
All at once, the temperature around me plummeted.(Really?) I froze in place, suddenly terrified, as someone moaned in terror from the other side of the road. The sound scraped my nerves raw. I could hear the unmistakable thud of hammering fists and the darkness was filled with swirling black silhouettes pounding on something…or someone. I fumbled for the icy-cold door handle as a man shouted agony: “Lord, you’ve killed me!” I threw myself inside the cab as a gun exploded, cutting off the man’s cries. The shot was swiftly followed by two more.
Edited by: Graham Ferguson
I chose this story this week because I was reading it while I was in a cab. Now my favorite part about this story is the fact that this is story is about a cab driver. I think that this is cool because whenever I imagine cabdrivers I always think about them as men/women who drive around all day and nothing bad could ever happen. Now that I’ve read this story I’ve decided that I’m never going to be a cab driver, partly because I get tired really easily and driving all day would probably make me really tired. (Plus I don’t know how to drive.) Now I’ve made a few comments throughout the story to tell me what you think of the story E-mail 20grahamf@lrei.org and I will pick my favorite comment to put on next weeks post.Or, if you want to give me advice do the same. (But I will not put that on my entry). Or you can contact me by meeting me after school at Lynns homeroom. But please don’t bring weapons of any kind I do not want to die, just yet.
