Call Me a Cab

25

Sooner or later, when you’re traveling, you have to think about laundry. Katharine and I were driving along, discussing the idea of doing our accumulated laundry today during our lunch-stop if we could find a laundromat open on Sunday, when all at once she frowned past me and said, “That fellow’s signaling at you.”

“Fellow?” Looking to my left, I saw a blue Mercury in the next lane, with a cheery round-faced thirtyish man grinning and waving at me. Another case of astonishment at a New York City cab way out here, etc? I smiled and waved back, but that wasn’t enough for him; grinning, he pointed at his ears, then held something up, then pantomimed speaking into his hand.

No; into his microphone. That’s what it was, a microphone he was alternately waving and speaking into. Intrigued despite myself, I switched on my radio and went from channel to channel until all at once a voice heavy with static spoke loudly, saying, “—ears on?”

Was that him? Glancing in his direction, I held up one finger. He nodded and grinned and spoke. The voice on the radio said, “One.” I held up two fingers, and the voice said, “Two.” Then it said, “Well, good buddy, now you’ve got your ears on.”

My ears on? The CB craze had swept the nation without catching me in its toils — if you spend ten hours every day with Hilda the Dispatcher snarling at you from a radio next to your knee you don’t particularly need a lot more radio in your life — but I did know enough to recognize that the sentence, “Well, good buddy, now you’ve got your ears on,” meant, “Hello, friend, you’re receiving my signal.” So I unlimbered my own microphone and said, “Yes, I’ve got you.”

“Ten-one, good buddy,” said the voice. “Give us more volume.” Simultaneously, he was dropping back, pulling into my lane behind me.

“Okay,” I said, speaking more loudly. “How’s this?”

“Ten-four. And hello to the seatcover.”

I frowned at the Mercury now in my rearview mirror. “Beg pardon?”

“The beaver,” he said.

I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about. “Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

“Nice to eyeball you,” he said. “I’m Screaming Eagle. What’s your handle?”

Handle; nickname. “Umm, the Yellow Cabby,” I said.

“You’re from the dirty side, huh?”

Was I? It’s true the cab wasn’t the cleanest vehicle on the road, but was that a fit topic for conversation? “I guess so,” I said.

“Where you headed?”

“California.”

“Shaky side,” he commented.

“If you say so.”

“Ten-nine?”

That was a question, obviously, but what question was it? “I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.

“We’ve got a ten-one, good buddy. We may have to back out.”

“Well, you’d know best.” Ahead was an exit; we’d been planning to stop for lunch soon anyway, and I was more than ready to say goodbye to my new friend. “This is our exit,” I told him.

“Ten-four, good buddy. All the good numbers.”

“Uh huh.”

I was slowing for the exit. This madman passed me, waving still with his cheery smile. His voice came one last time from the radio: “Don’t feed the bears.”

“Oh, I won’t,” I promised, and rolled around the curving exit ramp.

Katharine said, “What was that all about?”

“You know just as much as I do.” Putting my mike back on its hook, I stopped at the red blinker and studied the sign across the way, giving town names and directions and distances. The nearest town was apparently one mile to the left, so that’s the way I turned.

Katharine said, “That was fascinating. Do you mind if I fool with the radio? Maybe we could pick up some more conversations.”

“You liked that conversation? Go ahead.”

“Well, maybe we’ll find somebody who speaks English.”

I drove on into town while Katharine fiddled with the radio. I wanted a laundromat first, so I turned where a sign pointed to ‘Town Center,’ finding myself on a curving blacktop road in a well-to-do residential neighborhood; large new houses with attached garages set well back from the road on both sides. Katharine was picking up static, stray bits of broadcasting voices, but nothing particularly coherent or interesting. We drove along, rather slowly, and then I became aware of something odd happening in my rearview mirror. I peered more closely, then double-checked in my outside mirror, and said, “Omigosh. Katharine, turn it off.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Look behind us.”

She did. “Are we doing that?”

“The radio,” I said.

Down the road behind us, every remote-control garage door was going crazy: o-pen-and-close-and-o-pen-and-close-ando-pen-and-close-and—

“Turn it off, Katharine!”

“I don’t know how! Which switch?”

So I turned it off myself, then looked back to see all those garage doors finishing whichever part of the cycle they’d been on. At last they all stopped, but not exactly as before; some that had been closed were now open, and some that had been open were now closed. And from the houses baffled people were emerging, looking at their garages and at one another and at the sky.

Katharine was laughing. I said, “Don’t laugh, this is serious. We may have started a new religion.”