Cross-Town Taxi Jonathan Marcus 2001 A '64 Checker limo painted with three-eyed bulls romancing nine-breasted virgin whores from Barcelona blinked to a halt under a sunbolt on Third Avenue an invisible juggler tossed me through an open door into Pablo Picasso's cab heading downtown on the horizontal, mostly. He muttered between tosses of the steering wheel, "I hope you're not going anywhere 'cause you're along for the ride." Seats clad in nubby flax grabbed my butt while Pablo ripped round corners on two wheels his black marble eyes never blinked deftly or drunkly either way too fast or way too slow he coaxed the throttle like a favorite paintbrush and mashed the brake madly in the middle of Broadway "Open the door!" a brightly painted shout impelled me gold dust limbs supple as yoga poured in a mountain man in silk-soft fine-fringed buckskin eyes as pale as Picasso's were black and every bit as piercing all the way to far horizons fierce and calm he drawled as easy as breathing "The uniquest moment in the history of civi - li - zation That was my own life. Jim Bridger here." A long limb quick as a dagger swooped my way fingers compressed my fist like rawhide drying in the sun "My canvas was millions of square miles of virgin continent rippling herds hugged the prairie like patterns on carpet wild flocks stippled the keening sky, endless jumbo forests cushy with moss and humus, burly mercurial metamorphic mountains cut by mighty white veins buoyant to the sea. one foot in the Jurassic the other in the age of steam and telegraph, yep, that was my life --- my art form, gents, was mere survival deep in the lap of unknowable astonishment. Pleased to meetcha." Picasso's mood burbled now like April skies he squeezed the taxi into a gallant canter hard by The Hudson and began singing in a way he never had before, "I would paint everything differently next time I wouldn't scoff at the untamed sublime - -" A trumpet seared the other door like a torch on newsprint I opened it quick to keep from burning. Some bunched-up tangle of a human being coiled like a cobra round his horn as if the horn were the living being and this skinny fine-boned hunched-up fat-cheeked player, he just the hornblowerholder the one-piece unit of man and metal crunched up on the seat beside me by pure mysterious force of personhood he made his horn sing, "Miles Davis, man." Well Pablo stood on the gas screaming down The Bowery chasing the song he'd been singing and liking before Miles cut it up like the detritus of a collage in the cool august light of a winter day So Jim Bridger wraps his rawhide fingers round Miles' horn and snatches it free in a flash like it's the ripped-out heart of a mad menacing cougar nobody ever touched Miles Davis' horn in life without the horn there was no Miles Davis and the man crumpled in the seat like a popped balloon and Jim purrs calm as pure power, "Start talking, man, like you never did in life." Miles would have died if at all possible but he was already dead and had nowhere to go nowhere to hide 'cause once you're dead… well, you'll see and Jim Bridger leaned over me in the back seat so hard Pablo Picasso forgot to drive and the taxi just rolled around and Jim Bridger whispered as soft and loud as god, "Speak dammit, you wouldna survived a day where I come from, speak like you never spoke in life." Horn looking puny in his white-fingered grip, Jim looks and me and whispers loud, "If he don't talk, do I crush this brass?" He smiled as cold as arctic winds. "Do I?" he insisted. his eyes bore down on me as if I'd be crumpled next "Well, Jim Bridger," I'm looking for words, trying to tell the truth, "I haven't accomplished what any of you guys did when you were alive. you were all so amazing. I don't know what business I'd have telling you to crush the horn or not." Jim Bridger tilts his head to the cabbie and says, "Tell him, Pablo." "Your kind hardly ever pays any attention to our kind. The living get too busy with the worries of living they find the dead too quiet they don't bother to know what we know though it's knowable but we're kinda glad you're along for the ride we like to hear the sound of breathing again and you make us appreciate what we've got so it's not about what you conquered or got your name on we don't care about all that there were worthier folks than us when we were alive and you'll never hear of them…" Pablo made instant sense to me more sense than all the art that made him rich and famous so I looked at Jim Bridger and said, "Well, then, crush it. Crush the horn if he won't speak." An arm arose from the limp lump of the former Miles Davis his mouth opened impelled by the same desire the desire that squeezed air through brass tubes in the art of a certain kind of audio brain surgery Pablo Picasso coasted to a perfectly imperceptible stop so Miles could find some words but in a private Levantine bout of tempestuous over-enthusiasm Pablo lost the shape of reverie and accidentally hit the radio button "This just in!" boomed a perfectly coiffed news anchor -- his hair shone through the dashboard speakers -- "A startling epic was just completed in a foreign language nobody speaks. Too bad because this is the literature that could change your life if only you knew what it meant!" Without removing his eyes from the unformed interior of Miles Davis, Jim Bridger with his other hand -- the hand not torqueing Miles' brass -- thrust Pablo's nose into clean hard contact with the power switch of the radio thus restoring an atmosphere conducive to the baring of Miles Davis's soul. Jim Bridger probably used similar persuasions while conversing with Indian tribes, military brass, grizzlies and Old Faithful. He was a very persuasive fellow. He had four Indian wives, and outlived them all. Miles stammered while he looked for his voice and then Miles Davis found some words. And the words were good. "The horn was my money tree, man. You know what they say - 'A big pile of money makes most people smaller people… ' The horn was my pile of free money. It was my free pass. I got hooked. The horn was my life. It was the only time I was alive. It was my excuse, my refuge, my curtain, my addiction the horn was my magic pass though life my ticket to women fame fortune drugs and the fanciest threads so I passed the rest of my moments in a funk or a rage the rest of life beyond my horn my horn which treated I with surgical care the rest of the time I was just shards of a mirror a sliced-up sack of reflections of nothing Jim Bridger and Pablo Picasso and I sat in the taxi in repose in silence the truth can slow you down like that and Miles looked at Jim Bridger and said, "I always wanted to be like you, man. You didn't need a horn. You just went out there in the wild where the sky and the earth and the horizon formed your abode, where exotic beings all came in your house you didn't need to dream at night because what dream could approach a life like that? you didn't need a horn the horn it was my blessing and my curse I woulda traded my horn and my wardrobe and my fame and money and all the babes for one walk across North America with you. . . imagine that - - an art form so quick so light so vast it has no form. . ." Jim Bridger smiled and relaxed his fierce grip lifted the horn to his lips he forced a stout column of air through the brass labyrinth a solid sound did come out but it was only solid it wasn't liquid like music it sounded like rehearsal for middle school band class "Gimme that thing," whispered Miles Davis hands like magnets drawing the horn to his chest he was suddenly alive again like Miles Davis in blazing lights his lips welded the mouthpiece his brow turned fierce a sound and riff swelled the taxi and all rose on the rogue sound wave it wailed with bottomless sorrow and feral longing In the echoes Jim Bridger whispered back, "Nice . . . Sounds like . . . Montana . . . before it was named . . ." Pablo Picasso, about to explode, hopped from the cab In his own personal Chinese Fire Drill shouting, "Clear as my eyeball no more three-eyed people in my art! I'm going to paint the life I missed . . . I'm going to paint the invisible the glimpses of soles of your feet as they lick the gods of gravity . . ." The ride was over now we three exited the back seat as Pablo painted over the three-eyed bulls romancing nine-breasted virgin whores from Barcelona he asked, "So what? No tip? For a ride like that?" Jim Bridger, still quick on the draw, winked at Miles and me and said to the cabbie, "Sure, I got a tip. When you're fortunate enough to plant seeds that grow, remember they cannot grow as you have imagined. It's a natural law." And Miles added, "Let your brain be fecund like life itself." And I said, "The answer is Yes. Be flexible on the question." As the marvelous dead men faded from view, the downtown streets grew loud again all a-bustle with high-energy mission-tethered beings but when I looked into their faces they all seemed all too lifeless.
