Named Montana

Journal entry: August 5, 2006

By the time my taxi appeared on the street outside University Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, rain fell so ferociously about me, I saw little more than a dark blur.  I had been waiting under a red canvas event canopy for about ten minutes.  Only two minutes before the van arrived, a thick stream of runoff appeared on the nearby sidewalk and forced me to retreat deeper under the canopy.  I sat on a wobbly table trying to remain dry. 

The rainwater stream now occupied the entire sidewalk and half of the street.   Leaves, gum wrappers, and darker whatnots flowed overtop my shoes and around my ankles as I waded out to catch my cab.  I could not even make out mortar lines on the brick building immediately across the street for the heavy rain.  The tempest immediately drenched me.

“Does it do this often?” I asked the woman driving the van.  She was sturdily constructed, if not round in shape, and not long out of her twenties.

“Nawt ever,” she answered.  “Aye never seen this bee-for.”

“Me either.”

We crept away from the center and entered a dark green canopy of trees and rain.  Thick curtains of water fell against the windshield.  Heavier volleys blocked our vision as effectively as baskets of blue jeans dumped against the glass.

Naturally, my windshield wiper did a better job of clearing the rain than did the driver’s side.    

“I ain’t gunna take Cumberland,” the cabbie announced.  “It’s purty well flooded out where I come frum.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said, dripping all over her cab.

“This here storm,” she added, “this is frum the devil.  I’m a God-fearin’ woman, and he would never do this to us.”  As she spoke, rain hissed against all sided of the van.

We climbed a hill and dropped down into a heavily flooding section of street.  The taxi’s communication radio cracked out a nonsensical series of dispatch messages.  Those ended with a message that power was out citywide and streets were closing.  And, finally, so and so cab died after attempting to plow through flooding on a freeway off-ramp.

For many blocks, we slithered along at no more than fifteen miles per hour.  We pushed through standing water the whole way.   A blinding, jagged sword of lightning slashed into some nearby buildings.  The radio cracked sharply in response.

A half-block later, the driver asked, “Did you see that?  That stupid girl that wuz drivin’ by wuz talkin’ on her cellphone.  That’s stupid.  I watched me a show on tee-vee where if lightning wuz to strike the cell tower and you wuz on yer cellphone—that lightning would go right in yer ear.”

“Really!”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is pretty wild,” I remarked as we splashed through a mini lake across the roadway before climbing a ramp onto divided freeway.

A male voice scratched across the radio: “I ain’t never seen it go black like this!”

Remarkably, the rain thinned as we sped through Tennessee’s leafy trees and invasive walls of kudzu.  And then, at once, we exited the rain—as if jumping though a parting curtain—and entered a perfectly dry day.

“How about that!” I blurted.  I could see the highway extending into the trees far ahead of me.  Not a single drop of water before us.

“Yes, sir.”

“This is amazing.”

“Whar are you frum?” the cabbie asked.

“Montana.”

“Montana!”  She grinned broadly.  “That’s my little girl’s name.”

“No kidding.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you come up with the name Montana?”

“Joe Montana,” she answered without hesitation.  “He threw that sixty-seven yard pass to win the Super Bowl.   He’s got those pretty eyes, too.”

“I see.”

“My momma wuz nun too happy when I told her that I wanted to name my child Montana if it wuz a girl.  I told her she’d better pray to the Lord for a boy, ‘cause that’s jest whut I intended to do.”

“Montana is a nice name,” I assured the cabbie.  “I like it a lot.  Don’t hear that name a lot.”

“I thought so, too.  But when I sent my daughter to school, there wuz a whole bunch of them.  Both boys and girls named Montana.  My girl wuz not happy ‘bout that.  And you know whut—her best friend is named Montana.”

“Who could have guessed that?” I remarked.

When we arrived at the airport, I stepped out onto dry concrete.  A dark, wet spot quickly developed at my feet.  Passersby stared at me.   I looked as though I’d just stepped out from underneath a showerhead.  “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

“Twenty-three dollars.”

I fished two twenties from my pocket and handed them to the cabbie.  “Keep all of it,” I told her.

“I can make change.”

“No.  Keep it.”  I laughed.  “We had a heck-of-a ride.  Now we have a story.”

“I’m never gunna for-git this fare.  The man who swam to get into my cab.”

“Trust me.  I won’t be forgetting this either.”

—Mitchell Hegman