Goat's Taxi

A telephone sat off the hook inside a taxi dispatch office. Shelby leaned up in her collapsible lawn chair and turned up the volume knob of the little black and white t.v. which sat on top of an unused filing cabinet. She lit a cigarette and settled in for her daytime stories.
The phone lines had been blowing up all afternoon thanks to the President’s speech scheduled for later that night, and she had almost completely missed her first two hours of soaps. She felt entitled to a solid fifteen minutes of uninterrupted viewing, and that meant leaving the phone off the hook. A small price to pay she thought.
The bell attached to the top of the front door dinged as an old man with a fishing hat meandered into the office. Shelby jumped out of the flimsy lawn chair awkwardly causing it to fling into the empty filing cabinets. She then tripped over it again scrambling to turn down the television, put out her cigarette, and hang up the phone.
“Mr. Morgan. What brings you in today?” she tried using her cutesy voice.
“Well let’s see Shelby. I was just doing a little jogging through the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to see your pretty face. Huh?”
“I didn’t know you was a jogger Mr...”
“Shelby,” he interrupted, “Shelby. I only came down today to make sure we were gonna have everybody tonight. I was kiddin’ around about jogging.” He rolled his eyes and sighed as he examined the driver roster for the night. “Where’s Goat?”
“He said he was coming a little late. He sounded drunk again.” She looked away sheepishly.
Morgan sighed again and continued to scribble some things on the roster. The bell on the door rang again.
“Hey Goat,” the old man said without turning to greet the man.
“Good evenin’ folks. Herman, Shelby. I sure am glad to see yall,” the skinny man nodded to them enthusiastically. “We gonna make some money tonight ain’t we. Got the prez in town and all. Shit, I better make at least a hundred bucks.”
“You really think you can drive like that? You looked totally sauced.” Shelby asked bug-eyed with her lip kind of snarled.
“You still don’t get it do you Shelby? DO YOU SHELBY?!” Goat looked hurt as he asked. “What’s the Goat stand for Shelby?” he waited a couple of seconds and whispered the same question again. “Herman why don’t you help her out, she’s having trouble today.”
“Greatest of all time,” answered the man quietly.
“That’s right. Ya hear that Shelby? Greatest of all fucking time. No, wait. That’d be Goaft,” he roared at his own joke.
“She might be right this time Goat. It’s one-thirty and your already toasted. I know times is tough for you right now, but I got a business to run. Why don’t you get some sleep, and come on back tomorrow?”
“Herman, don’t worry about it. I got this,” he pulled the old man close to his face, “I got this.” he looked into Herman’s eye’s with a fierce intensity.
Goat released Herman’s sweater and scooped the keys to number 33 cab off the rack and slid into the garage. Shelby and Herman looked at each other and shook their heads in disappointment. Goat made sure he peeled out of the garage to emphasize to the other two he had control over his automobile.

Goat’s name was actually Thomas Berry, but no one had called him that since grade school. His childhood classmates originally gave him the nickname because of his huge front teeth. Initially the name bothered him, but then he read about a legendary streetballer from Chicago who had used the name as an acronym. It stood for “greatest of all time”. From that point on, Thomas Berry would not allow anyone to call him anything but Goat.
Being a white man in America is the most enviable living situation a modern day human could hope to be born into, but for Goat it presented some unusual challenges. He grew up in a black neighborhood in Cincinnati. He went to black schools and had black friends and dated black girls. Although he was occasionally bullied around the neighborhood for being white, and old men would sometimes get drunk and yell at him about slavery, the hood really didn’t mind having Goat around.
He grew up in the West End, which was once considered the ritzy part of town. Prior to WWI, a bunch of rich German families decided to cram mansions as close together as they could manage throughout the West End. They called it Over-the-Rhine, pretending the Ohio River was their native Rhine River, which was in fact still in Germany. After a few global wars, and the invention of highways, those German families became very American families and moved to the suburbs. Highways.
The thing about the highways was that only people with money had use for them. So the people with money figured it made sense that they should use this concrete thing the United States Army Core of Engineers had built specifically for them. They drove their cars onto the highways and on the other end they found the country. And they found that they liked the country. They found other people too. People who already lived in the country and had liked it first. The new people used the highway to build their own houses in the country. They left stone homes with marble staircases for aluminum siding with lawn-jockeys and pink flamingos in their yards. The people who already lived there liked the country less because it was no longer the country to them.
Then came the super markets and the video rental stores, and naturally, fast food. The country side became ravaged by commercial locusts. Forests feared terms like imminent domain, and corporate interest. The families celebrated their new found territory by driving around a lot on the highways. The called their new conquest the suburbs.
While the richer white people were enjoying bothering the poorer white people, the black people acquired the vacated West End and enjoyed the new space. Property values plummeted from the great white exodus, and once top-notch homes were affordable to the working black families. Crime rates went up, drugs and guns became more available on the streets, and the public schools fell apart. There were some highlights though. The main artery to the West End, Linn St., became known as the longest crosswalk in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records, due to the total disregard to any jaywalking statutes the city obviously didn’t care much of in the first place. The speed limit was set for eight miles-per-hour to ensure avoiding any lawsuits from potentially struck pedestrians.
Goat strolled across the middle of Linn St. almost in slow motion. Everything in the hood moved slowly, especially in the summer. No one had any air conditioning so everyone packed the sidewalks and would jockey for positions in the shade. Goat slipped passed the thick mobs along the sidewalks and into the corner store to buy a pack of Kool Menthols and a fifth of Wild Irish Rose. Inside two kids ran around the narrow aisles play-fighting. One knocked into Goat as he entered.
“Whoa! Watch it little man.”
“Shut up cracka!” replied the kid. As he said a huge woman in a moo-moo emerged from the adjacent aisle. After the boy smarted off and felt proud of himself, his mom whacked the back of his head.
“Boy, you better watch yo goddamn mouth fo I really smack the shit out you. You hear me.”
“Yes ma’am,” the boy said sheepishly rubbing the welt on his head.
“You don’t even know that man. What if he was the police, then what? I ain’t pickin yo ass up from jail, Tycho. You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am.”