Running Late in Manehatten
Cabbie Blocks pulled his out-of-service cab up to his brownstone apartment building in the city he loved, the city that never slept; Manehatten. His kind of town. He smiled at the orange color of the brick in the gloam of the early evening. It reminded him of his son’s coat.
Cabbie had a tough day. Every day was tough but that was Manehatten for you. It was gruff and tumble, and most days it was everypony for themselves. But some days, the city blossomed with generosity. He smiled at the memory of the nice group of folks who helped him out of a jam last weekend by fixing his wheel. For free. While singing! Who does that?
He took another step forward and winced, losing his smile just as it came to him. His back left knee was spasming again.
He mentally kicked himself for forgetting to take his anti-inflammatory this morning on his way out the door. He forgot breakfast too. He really needed to stop doing that. He wasn’t a spritely thirty-something anymore. He smirked at himself and shook his head. He wasn’t even a spritely forty-something any more.
But he wouldn’t let a little knee pain get him down. Not when the end of the day was within his grasp. Cabbie was ready for a nice quiet evening at home. Maybe he’d grab a bite to eat at the local diner, and check up on the news. Hay, maybe Flashy wrote him back!
The stallion chuckled sourly to himself. No, probably not. Flashy had his own life now far off in the North. What would he need with hi—
He felt his weight shift and he grumbled under his breath. He looked over his shoulder, and sure enough, some inconsiderate pony had hopped into his cab. The strange unicorn stallion had a twitch in his right eye that made Cabbie cautious. The last thing he needed right now was a crazy pony or a saltaholic.
“Hay, buddy. Can’t you read?” Cabbie growled as he pointed a hoof to the sign on the side of his cab, “It says ‘Off Duty’. You know what that means, dontcha? It means tha—“
“Please, sir, I-I’m sorry,” said the yellow stallion eagerly, “I just found out my wife’s gone into labor and—“
Cabbie turned away from the stallion and looked back down the busy evening street. “What hospital?” he asked as he craned his neck to the left, eliciting a series of pops from his neck and shoulders.
“Our Lady of the Sun, on Elm and Mane!”
Cabbie nodded as he began to bob his entire body up and down. “Alright, buddy, you better hold on because today’s your lucky day.”
“Really? Oh wow, thaAAAAAAAA” the stallion screamed as Cabbie weaved his vehicle into traffic.
“I said hold on!” he shouted over his shoulder.
As he galloped through the streets of lower Manehatten, Cabbie considered the position of the nervous wreck in his cab. He’d been in that place once, almost twenty years ago now. Wait... No it was twenty three. Celestia be, had it really been that long since he’d held her? Since he told her he loved her?
“Watch out!” called the stallion in his cab.
Cabbie shook his head loose from the grip of the past, just in time to dodge a milk wagon.
“Hay, I’m drivin’ here!” he shouted as he passed the oversized hauler, only to earn himself an earful of Zebranian curse words from its driver. Cabbie laughed. Only in Manehatten, he thought with a smile.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught the street sign for Pine coming up on his left. He turned his head to regard his charge, “Hay you don’t get motion sick do ya, buddy?”
The stallion blinked back at him. “Uh n-no, not that I knooOOOOOOOOOO!”
Cabbie stopped listening at the word ‘no.’ Instead he put all his effort into a mighty angled leap, effectively lifting himself and the right side of his vehicle into the air. With only the left two wheels making contact with the pavement, the cab veered in that direction, cutting across through traffic between a monstrous stretch chariot and a ramshackle cart advertising turnips.
A second later and he hit the ground running, all four legs and all four wheels battering the pavement once more. Cabbie Blocks sucked in big gulps of air through his mouth and out through his flared nostrils. Sure, his work day should have ended about ten minutes ago, but he was ‘in it to win it’, as Flashy would say.
His heart raced and his legs ached, but he didn’t care. He felt good. He felt alive.
“Are you crazy? You almost got us killed!” shouted his passenger.
“Almost only counts in horseshoes and taxes, buddy. You wanna see your wife or not?”
The unicorn didn’t respond, and Cabbie chanced a quick glance over his shoulder at the stallion to make sure he was still there. He was. He sat there staring straight ahead thin-lipped, but smiling with determination.
Finally, he spoke. “Yes I do. Can this thing go any faster?”
Cabbie shook his head and faced the road once more. “I thought you’d never ask!”
Cabbie Blocks was a runner. He’d always prided himself on his speed. Heck, a few decades ago he would have been a shoe in at the Equestria Games. But he had responsibilities. He had to take care of his boy. He had to help him reach his dreams. It wasn’t Cabbie’s time anymore. It was Flashy’s.
The old dusky orange stallion pushed himself as hard as he could, ignoring the protests from his old joints. He urged his body forward at a pace that he knew he couldn’t keep, but he did it anyway. This guy was gonna be a dad, and Cabbie was going to make sure he made his appointment on time.
Being a dad was important. In his opinion, it was the most important thing a stallion could be. And he wasn’t going to let his passenger miss a minute of it. Up on his right was Mane. He ran right past the intersection.
“H-hay! You missed Mane!”
Cabbie nodded, “Did you see the traffic back there? We’d never get anywhere in that molasses. Don’t worry I know a shortcut past the Police Station.”
Cabbie Blocks was runner, but he was a cab driver. It was his calling. As such, he had long since memorized the streets and throughways of Manehatten. Throughways being the keyword here. Just past the local police station, there was something new. Something recently built. Something new and recently built with his tax money. An underground railway of sorts.
They called it a subway, but Cabbie knew what it really was. A straight line from Point Passenger to Point Pregnant Wife. The subway’s grand opening was next week, so as far as Cabbie was concerned, this was the perfect shortcut.
“Hang on!”
“Again?!”
Cabbie smirked at the panic in the other stallions voice. His jumped into the air a second time, but leaning right with all his might this time around. The two wooden left wheels lifted into the air, and the old axles on the underside of his cab groaned in protest.
“Hold together, baby,” he whispered to his cab, “It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
Cabbie took a deep breath and pushed forward, down the steep stairs on the other that lead down to the passenger platform of the south central station stop of the new Manehatten Subway.
“I-i-is th-is r-rea-lly f-f-aster-r?”
“T-t-t-rust-t m-me, I-I’m a C-c-abb-b-ie!” he answered back as his brain rattled in his head.
Mercifully, the stairs were over soon, and the vehicle was on solid ground once more. Now the only hurdle was—
Cabbie’s vision was filled with red and blue flashing lights. A new voice, a voice of authority called out. “Pull over!”
He turned his head to the left and was staring back into a pair of heavily tinted aviator sunglasses. They were resting on the muzzle of a thoroughly unhappy looking pegasus. A pegasus with a badge.
Cabbie gave the officer a deadpanned look as he continued to run along the platform. “What seems to be the problem officer?”
The pegasus answered him by raising a single eyebrow.
“Sir please,” pleaded Cabbie’s passenger. “My wife’s gone into labor, at Our Lady of the Sun.”
The officer regarded the passenger for a hoofful of seconds, before nodding solemnly. Then he did the darndest thing. He flew ahead of the cab, pulled in front of it, and turned off his lights.
Cabbie smiled and tossed a quick look over his shoulder. “Looks like it really is your lucky day buddy, not everypony gets a police escort!”
The passenger nodded his head and grinned fiercely, leaning in to the wind as it whistled past him. “I’m comin’ pretty lady, just you wait.”
Cabbie ran on, keeping his mouth shut. His passenger triggered a chain of memories within the stubborn old stallion. Memories of taking one last fare before going to the hospital; A fare that took him clear to the other side of town. Memories of running back through an unforgiving town; of silent promises to be there soon ‘just you wait’. Memories of showing up too late.
“Gap!” shouted the officer.
Cabbie reprimanded himself. Now was not the time to dredge up the past. Now was a time for action. He jumped into the air and felt the cart behind him lurch down to the three feet to the train tracks below the end of the platform.
He was puzzled by the ground beneath him. It was good old solid earth, with two deep grooves running parallel with each other. They were spread farther apart than the wheelbase of the cart, but that was fine with him. He loved running on dirt. It reminded him of his childhood back in the old country.
“Okay, buddy. We’ve got a straight shot. Just sit tight and we’ll be there in no time.”
“I can’t thank you enough! What do I owe you?”
“Forget about it, I’m not gonna charge you.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah, you’re gonna need that money for other things. Diapers, formula, towels... Yeah it’s gonna be messy.”
The stallion paled. “Oh. Oh wow, you’re right.”
The air in the subway filled with an uneasy silence. So much so that even the pegasus police officer looked over his shoulder, trademark eyebrow raised, of course.
“You doin’ alright back there?”
“I don’t know if I can do it. I mean... Everything’s going to be different now, isn’t it? Nothing’s going to be the same!”
Cabbie’s mind was once again torn away from him by the cruel talons of the past. He remembered bursting into the delivery room, and panting heavily. What he saw, knocked the last of the wind out of him. His wife, oh sweet stars above, his wife. She was laying there. Smiling. Smiling but not moving. Smiling but not breathing.
Cabbie remembered looked at the attending doctor numbly, and watched as the doctor shook his head, but refused to make eye contact with the stallion who was now a father, but no longer a husband.
He felt like he was in a tunnel, the world fading around him, all he could see was the body of his wife. She was still smiling. Why was she smiling? Why did she go?
Cabbie Block remembered the shrill cry that pulled him out of that tunnel. That brought him back from the edge. He remembered the sight of his newborn son in the nurse’s arms. She cooed him softly, but he continued to cry.
Cabbie recalled how he stumbled over to the bundle. It was boy. He had his grandfather’s coat. Then his newborn son flashed those beautiful blue eyes at his old man for the first time. They were his mother’s eyes.
The baby cried. He cried. They both cried. The nurse offered him his son, and he took him in his arms. He felt his warmth and weight. Cabbie remembered that in that moment he knew what he had to do.
Back in the present, Cabbie spotted the platform for Elm and Mane coming up on their right. “No. Nothing’s going to be the same. But that’s not a bad thing. You’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you. And your kid’s life. A-and your wife’s life. Today you’re part of a family.”
“But—“
Cabbie laughed at the persistent pessimist. “Look buddy, you wanted a cab driver, and you picked me. Whether or not that was a good idea, I’ll leave that to fate. But I’m not gonna let you out of my sight until I’m sure you’re willing to be the dad that kid deserves.”
The stallion didn’t answer back immediately, so Cabbie continued. “If I have to drag your sorry flank into that hospital myself, I will.”
“Not if I drag him in first!” shouted back the cop with a smirk.
“You’re right,” The stallion replied with a gravelly voice and a telling sniffle, “Thanks guys. I’ll do my best.”
Cabbie snorted as his cab made its way up the wooden ramp on the side of the unfinished platform that lead into the hospital from below. “Do better.”
It was eight o’ clock that evening by the time Cabbie had dragged his sore body back home. He hurt and he was hungry, but he didn’t care. He made it. He had finally done what he’d been unable to do some twenty three years ago. He got there in time.
He had waited around in the lobby for an hour or so and chatted with the cop for a while. Nice guy, an old war vet, but the guy was crazy about jelly doughnuts. Whoever heard of a cop with a doughnut fixation? Takes all kinds to keep this city ticking.
It wasn’t long before the yellow unicorn stallion passenger, whose name actually was Buddy, came rushing down the stairs, excited as all get out. He was father to a beautiful pegasus girl. Congratulations were had, pats on the back were shared, and citations were issued. All in all, today was a good day.
Cabbie parked his cab and unhitched himself, careful of the tender spot on his left. That hadn’t started hurting until his hop off the platform. He just knew that was going to ache like Tartarus in the mor—
A brown paper package tied with twine caught his attention. It was resting against his door, number 502c. He hurried over and picked it up. He looked at the return address and smiled.
Flash Sentry
Crystal Palace Barracks
Crystal Empire
Cabbie laughed and wiped a small tear off his cheek. “You do your old man proud, Flashy,” he said to the package. “Thanks for writing back.”
