The Driver
Paul Faur

I. 
Ten minutes on the road: Carelessly, without signaling or even bothering to look for oncoming traffic, the driver rounded the corner to make the turn onto the boulevard, accelerating as if he were all alone on a rural highway rather than stopping altogether for the flashing red light. Oliver felt the muscles in his thighs tighten as he instinctively pressed his feet to the floor to brace for the impact. It never came, although the wailing, discordant car horns protesting behind them (dropping one-by-one out of earshot now as though out of breath), the shrill "What the fuck you doing man?" that had emerged from the backseat, and his own stream of profanities forced out through clenched teeth, demonstrated that it had been closer than he would have cared to have seen, had his eyelids not been welded shut. The driver, a bland-looking white man of indeterminate age, let a slight smile brush his lips, before resuming a meandering but enthusiastic monologue on the mystical significance of the number five, and its influence on the works of James Joyce.
Oliver (who had some time ago conditioned his friends to refer to him simply as "O") shifted tensely in the passenger seat, watching the neon lights in the club windows sailing by. He fiddled with his fingers, cracking the knuckles in every conceivable way, but quietly, attempting to appear collected and in control of the situation. It would not do to show weakness. Not during his first hold-up. He had a certain reputation to maintain among those in the neighborhood who, through the misinterpretation of certain incidents (which, it had to be said, Oliver himself had done little to shed any light on), believed that he did this sort of thing two and three times a week.
The driver rambled on, somehow tying James Joyce into the song playing on the radio.
"Guy’s a loon man," muttered Terrence from the backseat, directly behind Oliver. "Real fuckin crazy. O, you listenin to this guy, he been smokin somethin aint he." Terrence was trying to pull off some kind of yo-yo trick. And failing, if the dull clunk that sounded at regular intervals was any indication. Oliver’s younger brother Cyrus sat next to Terrence in silence, partially unwilling to break into Terrence’s babbling, partially absorbed in the driver’s speech (for he took an interest in such things as numbers and books and music), and partially looking to Oliver for his cues.
(The driver, pleasantly: "I once saw an old man with huge buzzard wings imprisoned in a chicken coop down in a little farming village down in Central America. [Oliver is not paying attention.])
"There’s a bank coming up on the left," Oliver said, trying to sound deadly cool, but the words came out too quickly, betraying his nerves. Deep breath, then: "Pull over to the ATM, draw us out some money."
"All the money man, all the money," Terrence rattled. (Clunk.)
"I’m not taking you to the bank," the driver stated blandly, as if he was sparing them an imposition.
Oliver looked at him. Shit, man, oh man, no. What if he takes us to a police station--
"You take us to the bank mothafucker or we blow your brains out motha fucker—" Terrence leaned on the k sound heavily, the way they said it in the movies.
(From the backseat, nervously: Clunk, clunk, clunk.)
"You don’t have a gun," the driver stated patiently.
"We do too! We do too got a gun we got a gun we gonna blow your mothagoddamnfuckingsonofa—"
"You would have shown it to me by now."
"Mother…"
"Anybody hungry? Cyrus? Oliver?" said the driver.
Cyrus, in a small voice, answered: "Yes."
"Good. I like food," said the driver. It seemed to Oliver, as he stared at him dazedly, that his complexion was more yellow than when he’d first approached him.
No. Not yellow. Golden.
II.
3:00 AM: Oliver approached the man in the car with as friendly a manner as he could muster, the back collar of his sleeveless white t-shirt pulled over up to his forehead (making his face look like it had been painted on a canvas, as the man in the car would later remark to an associate) and denim shorts slung low about his waste. The man looked up and started rolling the window down lazily, smiling affably the whole time.
The car was beige, with a matching interior (Old lady car, Oliver thought), a mid–eighties model Chevy, almost as nondescript in appearance as the man himself. He wore a simple, elegantly tailored black suit, a white, collared shirt, and a black tie. His skin was ashen.
"What’s up?" Oliver asked him pleasantly.
"Hey," said the man, with an odd little half-smile on his face. (Strange smile…)
"Look, hey, can you help me out, man? I need bus fare here…"
"You realize the bus doesn’t run for three hours, don’t you?"
"Gimme them keys man--" Oliver grimaced, reaching into the car through the open window, aggressively. The man offered no resistance, and Oliver released the keys with little effort.
["Look, hey, can you help me out, man? I need bus fare."
Oliver inhales deeply, to calm the buzzing in his arms and pounding in his chest, putting all thoughts of getting bitten or stabbed out of his head. Exhale. Deep. Inhale. Deep. Reach in. Pull out. Inhale. Exhale. In. Out. In. Out.
"You do realize the bus doesn’t run for three hours, don’t you?"
In. Out.
"Gimme them keys man—"]
"Geddismoney, O, get allis money man—" Terrence bounded out of the alleyway, Cyrus running behind him, like a wounded deer. "Give us all your money mothafucker--"
"I don’t have any money," said the driver.
"Gimme your fucking wallet," Oliver demanded, taking more care to enunciate than usual. Like you do it everyday. "C’mon. Wallet. Motherfucker."
The man complied, handing Terrence his wallet.
"Nothing in it man. No money. Some pictures, man, license… some wack playing card…" Terrence held up the Ace of Spades.
"Playing card. Fuck." Oliver stared at it. "He got a bank card or somethin’?"
"Yeah…"
Oliver looked at the driver, then at Terrence, then at Cyrus. "We’re goin’ for a ride. Take us to an ATM. You’re giving us all the fuckin’ money you got."
"What if I don’t want to?" the driver asked casually.
Terrence started saying, "We’ll blow your brains out, man, we gotta gun, blow out your fuckin’ brains…" till it became a strange kind of invocation. The driver simply shrugged. Cyrus nervously tapped at the car’s back window.
Oliver climbed over the hood of the car and unlocked the passenger side door, reaching around the seat to unlock the back for Terrence and Cyrus. Oliver slammed the door and half-punched the driver’s shoulder as the signal to move. The car kicked into reverse.
"You ever hear the one about the kid who finds the welder’s mask?" the driver asked suddenly.
"…brains…" Terrence kept repeating. Cyrus said nothing.
III.
2:58 PM: Terrence’s yo-yo scraped the concrete for the third time in as many minutes. "Shit man, fuck man," he muttered under his breath.
"Man, you can’t yo-yo for shit," Oliver said (for the third time in as many minutes). "Lemme show you how to do that…"
"You a asshole O," said Terrence. "Maybe one day I can show you somethin’, like how to fuck a beautiful woman, or maybe I’ll show you somethin’ you actually find useful at some point…"
"Bitch." Oliver punched Terrence in the arm. Some feet back, Oliver’s brother Cyrus, five years Oliver’s junior, lagged behind the two, looking towards the sky, a library book under one thin arm.
"Check it out checkitout," Terrence started, as they cut through a vacant parking lot. "You see that man?" A single car sat idly in the parking lot, lights on.
"Let’s take im," Terrence said excitedly.
"Man, no," Oliver groaned. "Not tonight. I gotta get the kid home…" He gestured toward Cyrus. "Old man comes back from the shift at four."
"Kid’s gotta be a man someday man. Shit man…" Terrence’s yo-yo hit the ground again.
"I don’t want to be muggin’ anybody tonight, man…" Oliver pleaded. "No reason…"
"You the same Oliver Gates said he’d be takin’ whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted, anytime, anywhere? Same Oliver Gates once held up a priest?"
"Man…" Oliver stammered. It wasn’t strictly true that he’d held up a priest. More like, he’d found a priest’s wallet in a laundromat and decided to keep it. But that didn’t sound quite as hard. So the rest filled in itself, and he ended up holding up a priest.
"Shit man, let’s take ‘im. Fuck man. We’ll tell ‘em we got a gun man…"
"No—"
"Man, what’s wrong with you? Get the fuck out there."
And so it was that Oliver, Mugger of Priests, found himself tenuously approaching the lone car, involuntarily pulling the back of his shirt over the top of his head as he always did when he was nervous.
"What’s up?" Oliver asked the driver pleasantly.
IV.
3:22 AM: Everyone in the little diner stared as they entered. One nicely dressed, thirtysomething white man and three teenage black kids. Jesus. They all think he’s our sugar daddy, Oliver thought, registering Terrence’s similar unease.
An old, haggard-looking woman with a face covered in strange blemishes was there to wait on them almost as soon as they sat down.
"Anythin’?" she asked flatly.
"The usual," the driver stated sweetly.
"Which is?"
"Whatever you usually get anyone else."
After that, the waitress took the rest of their orders with a roll of her eyes for all of them. The driver noticed Cyrus’ book.
"The Phantom Tollbooth. Wonderful book. You like books?"
Cyrus nodded.
"Be grateful to them. They’ll provide for you one day…"
"Man, who the hell are you?" demanded Oliver. "How do you know our names? What was that shit you were talking about in the car? You some kind of writer? Detective? Dope addict?"
"In descending order, I am neither a dope addict, nor a detective, nor a writer. I," he said with a slight flourish, "am a driver."
"Shit," muttered Terrence, fondling his yo-yo. "Pure bullshit."
"I have an appointment to keep with one of you." He smiled. Oliver noted that his hair seemed darker now, and thicker, his features sharper. "I have an appointment to keep with one of you." Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid games. Their food arrived. They ate in silence.
V.
4:05 AM: Oliver never even saw the bus coming out of the darkness. The driver couldn’t have seen it either, but as it skidded closer and closer to them he seemed calmer and calmer, even seeming to take his feet off of the pedals altogether. It seemed strange to Oliver how his eye for detail could be so sharp in a crisis like that. And when finally they collided he didn’t even feel a thing, though he knew the car must have been crushed like tin foil and him with it, although he could tell from somewhere far away—six feet maybe, or sixty—that the car seemed okay enough, and that Terrence and his brother seemed okay crawling from the wreck, and that he himself felt okay too, but different somehow, everything was as light and music to him, and he was aware dimly of the driver pressing a set of keys into his hand and saying, Pleasure working with you, Oliver.
And he realized that he was still in that wreck somewhere.
You killed me, he said blankly. You son of a bitch, you’ve gone and killed me.
I didn’t kill you, he heard the driver saying. A brick might have fallen on your head on your porch, or maybe you’d have fallen down an open manhole, or been gored by a wild bull in an alley or something, something would’ve gotten you today. Your time was up. They just happened to need another driver. Someone to take people across…
But… I don’t even know how to drive, said Oliver.
So what? You think I did?
So what the hell are you going to be doing then?
Retiring, said the driver, walking toward the bus. Now remember, the left pedal makes it stop, the right one makes it go. Don’t worry about the gas tank or anything. Any other questions you have, look in the glove compartment for the answers, huh?
It’s a pretty self-explanatory job, Oliver, he said finally, as the airbrakes on the bus kicked off, but you have to pay your dues…
And as the bus began to roll away, and as his brother and Terrence staggered away from the wreck, Oliver, now wearing a simple, elegantly-tailored black suit, a white-collared shirt, and a black tie, sat there thinking about his first hold-up and that car in that parking lot and that song and thinking, How was I to know?
How the hell was I to know?

Paul Faur <mailto:RoganGosh@aol.com> fidgets a lot and laughs at inappropriate times. He currently resides in a small apartment in St. Louis, MO with a dog, a cat, and a roommate only he can see. If you see him coming, we recommend that you cross the street quickly while taking care not to make eye contact.