Though terrified to a primal level, I smiled slightly from the ironic humor of the situation. I felt as if I were thrust into a Buster Keaton film without my prior knowledge or consent. Were anyone to observe this absurd caravan they would have to have found it humorous or at least puzzling. I pictured a homeless guy, huddled in a wet, corrugated-cardboard shelter, shaking his head thinking "…and they call me crazy".
Despite this hair-raising ride, I felt relatively lucky. Several minutes earlier, the car sat abandoned under the George Washington Bridge. We had pushed it around Greenwich Village for what seemed like a rain-soaked eternity before a cabdriver gave us a jump-start. The car didn't seem very enthusiastic as we headed north, but we thought we could at least make it to Riverdale, a relatively safe place to leave it. From there, we could get a cab to Yonkers. As we approached the bridge, Ralph inexplicably decided to ascend the ramp that would take us to the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ralph frequently did things like that; when given a set of circumstances, he would have some compulsion to finagle an improvement. We would have perfectly fine seats for a Mets or Yankees game, but he would insist on moving closer, where it was a matter of minutes before the ushers expelled us. He would also drive around the Village for extended periods, looking for a space, since he refused to park in a lot. Bobby and I, noting the impending demise of the car, implored him to get back on the parkway, since breaking down anywhere along the expressway could result in adverse, life-altering events for us all. We rolled down another ramp and had just enough momentum to get under the bridge. While I had passed under this bridge thousands of times, I had never actually stood beneath it; I was awed by how enormous it really was. The area - Washington Heights - was once a pleasant, desirable neighborhood, but by then had become another urban casualty, struck down by violent crime and cocaine dealers - not a good place to be stranded. The rain and the remoteness of our location gave us temporary safety, but soon there would be a swarm of car-strippers there to feast on this automotive carrion. Flagging down passing cars was beyond futile so we decided to ascend the ramp to the hospital that loomed up the hill. Ralph suggested that I stay and watch the car, but I immediately reminded him that under no condition would I stay there alone to stave off a committee of tool-wielding vultures. We made our way up to the street and wandered around the hospital, looking for a pay phone. At that time, mobile phones were those expensive, black, brick-like objects that looked like radio surplus from WWII. Only doctors, lawyers and other ostentatious types with disposable income had them. We stood near the entrance to the hospital, hoping to flag by a passing taxi. Occasionally carloads of young Dominicans would drive by, staring at us with curious expressions that said, "What are those two white guys and black guy doing standing out in the rain in our neighborhood?" We flagged down a taxi, but he refused to take us down to the car to jump-start it. It began to look increasingly bleak and I thought to myself, "I have one more week before I move to North Carolina. Thirty-two years in New York, and I'm going to become a Washington Heights crime statistic in my last week here".
Just then, another cab drove by - it was Jesus.
"Can you give us a jump-start?" Ralph bellowed as soon as the car window descended.
"Where's your car?" the driver asked.
"It's under the bridge." All three of us chimed in unison.
Jesus thought for a moment, looking the three of us over. He probably noticed, through some heightened awareness (necessary for cab-driving survival in NYC) that while Ralph was relatively dry, Bobby and I were completely soaked.
"Okay." He muttered, allowing us to exhale, "Get in."
Once in the cab, I looked at the hack license. Fortunately, the picture matched the driver and I read the first name "Jesus". We drove down to the Celica, which was amazingly still intact (the rain had one mitigating attribute) and tried to jump it. We would later learn that the battery, though relatively new, was defective, and could not hold a charge long enough to power a cheap watch for more than one revolution of its second hand. The car would not even start this time.
Bobby and I assumed that we would just get Jesus to take us all home, but Ralph, understandably, was not ready to sacrifice his car, and was suddenly struck by an astonishing epiphany.
"Can you push my car up to The Bronx?"
Bobby and I stared at each other, with an unspoken, yet shared inquiry.
"Has Ralph lost his mind?"
Jesus pondered again.
"Where in The Bronx?"
For some reason, I became committed to this preposterous idea.
"Just straight up the parkway and across the bridge." I assured Jesus.
He asked if we had enough money and Ralph assured him he would pay whatever it cost and we began our journey.
Once we had come out of the curvy part of the parkway, we could see the Henry Hudson Bridge just ahead. The bridge was one of those phlegmatic structures built in the nineteen-thirties, during the unrestricted dominion of Robert Moses. That night, though, it was one of the most welcome sights I had ever beheld, crossing the junction of the Hudson and East Rivers at "Spuyten Duyvil". The bridge's only adornment was a coating of "Columbia Blue" paint, and that was probably because the university's football stadium was nearby. I imagine Moses, standing in some boardroom, in a cloud of cigar smoke, explaining the bridge to his ever-compliant city planners.
"It needn't be anything fancy, mind you, it's only going to The Bronx - and not even the side where the Yankees play."
"Hear, hear." the bureaucrats affirm through their walrus moustaches.
As we approached the tollbooth, Jesus pushed us to the window before braking just behind us. The collector gazed over the car, then peered through the window with a curious look on his face. His manner made me worry that there was probably a law that prohibited the pushing of a non-operational vehicle across a municipal river crossing. His expression, though, was not as peculiar as the astute observation he muttered to us.
"Your lights are out."
"Yeah, I know." Ralph sighed. "My battery's dead."
This revelation seemed to have completely flabbergasted the clerk.
"How are you driving then?"
"That cab is pushing us." I yelled across Ralph, refraining from using a colorful expletive at the end of my sentence.
I thought to myself that this guy's job must really suck, and he too, probably had a long night. I had frequently heard rumors that toll collectors had high suicide rates, apparently due to the abject isolation, then another explanation struck me. What if in an extreme case, the isolation manifests itself by making the subject so tunnel-visioned and inobservant that they cannot avoid otherwise mild dangers - like the ones specified on warning labels? I imagine the headline in the tabloids: Toll Collector Kills Self with Dry Cleaner's Bag. Perhaps he thought it was a toy.
Anyhow, Ralph had another brainstorm - to have Jesus push us all the way to Yonkers. He got out of the car once we were past the raised toll arm and spoke to Jesus through his window. I could hear him explaining that it would be easy to follow us there since he would only be several inches behind us at most. We rolled over the bridge and got off on Riverdale Avenue, which would go to downtown Yonkers, where Bobby lived. After that, we had him push us to our old neighborhood where we left the car and got in the cab. Ralph lived on the east side of the city and we could tell that Jesus was worried about getting lost up there. We explained that it was near the thruway that would take him back to east Manhattan. We got to the Route 87 overpass and told him to stop there and we would walk the block or so remaining. The meter was about thirty bucks and Jesus meekly suggested that we give him fifty. Ralph gave him about eighty dollars and showed him the ramp to the southbound side of the thruway.
"I would have given him a hundred dollars for helping us out." Ralph said. "Did you notice that his name was "Jesus"?
"Yeah, I looked at his license as soon as we got in the car."
"By the way," he chuckled, "was that you who farted just before we stopped."
"Yeah." I laughed. "It's been a long night."
