![]() “Man, can you wait here a minute? I’m just gonna look-see inside.” The one catalpa tree is either blighted or a late bloomer. The lawn is that bright-green ryegrass with brown jigsaw pieces where somebody sprayed ant poison. Somebody has stolen the garage door, and a plastic wave of kid junk is cresting into the driveway. Our destination turns out to be a beater house. I laugh and tell him, “I know guys drive ninety.” “Seventy hours? Man, that sounds kinda dangerous.” I mean, as long as I put in my seventy a week, I do.” “Damn,” my fare says, as the Lincoln bottoms out on a speed bump. It has a suburban facade fronting the grim rows of public housing. I’ve never used an Uber and don’t understand how that works, but my hope is that when they come into town next month-it’s not just a rumor anymore-they’ll shun the projects the same way all the other cab companies in town do.īethune Woods is one of our nicer projects. As I do this I’m wondering if Uber will steal all my rides from the projects. ![]() It’s a late spring midafternoon but already feels like summer as I drive under the Fordice Bridge past campus. ![]() These projects are arranged like black moons around a white planet, and it’s my job to ferry kitchen workers into the city square or wherever it is they work, a twenty-dollar bookend on a job that pays them maybe nine bucks an hour. We hit the four-lane and head east toward the largest of the five projects, which I didn’t know existed before I started driving a cab. She’s probably been married and divorced twice.” “Man, I don’t even know her number been so long. “Maybe you should call her first?” I suggest, looking into the rearview. We’re at the Mobil station near West Gentry Loop waiting to pull into traffic. “Man, is she gonna be surprised to see me,” he adds. He’s carrying a twelve-pack of Bud Light when he slides into the back of my Town Car and tells me he’s just been released from Parchman and then gives me the name of some street in the Bethune Woods Project, says it’s an old girlfriend’s house. This one’s a handsome white dude-mid-thirties, a few missing teeth, a few prison tats-who’s in a fantastic mood. They never tell you what they were in for-only that they just got out. The novel, which tells the story of a cab company in Northern Mississippi, was published last month by Tin House Books.
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