THE HEALER
(TALES FROM A BUS – TALE IV)


When he finished his story there was silence on the bus. Even the bus itself seemed quieter as the engine noise dropped well into the background. He sat back in the seat and looked around at us all with a odd look on his face. He seemed pleased with the reactions his story had produced yet at the same time he looked saddened and perhaps even a bit frightened. I think that we all knew at that point that the stories were changing, getting stronger as we moved along. Myself, I felt I was just being drawn by some strong, invisible force. Drawn onto the bus, drawn into telling my story and drawn towards somewhere that I was not so sure I wanted to go to. I guess that we all had that same odd look on our face.
The old man lit up another cigarette. If there’s one thing that pissed me off it’s a chain smoker and the he was one of those. The lady spoke up “Mind if I take one of those on you?” she asked. He didn’t answer her but just tipped the pack towards her. She took one and when he didn’t offer her a light took a packet of matches from her bag and lit up. I noticed that her hand was shaking. She had changed a lot since I had first noticed her on the bus. Most of the confidence seemed to have vanished from her, and she looked younger now than before, its funny how confidence can change the very way you look.
I felt like a smoke now big time. I’d be kinda fighting with the idea of giving them up for a long time and had recently stopped buying pack of twenties, I still however bought packs of ten on the odd occasion. Buying smaller packets made me feel as if I was at least moving in the right direction, but the thing was overall I still smoked the same amount each day. Regardless of whether it was one pack of twenty or two packs of ten I’d still have nine cigarettes left (seven if it had been a bad day) at bed time each night. Story of my life really, spend too much time thinking about something and then when I do get around to it only do it part time with little or no effort. Still I found a battered packet of ten with a fair few left in it in my packet and drew one out. I looked across at the driver in his rear view mirror to see if he minded me lighting up. I saw that he had one in his mouth and was busy puffing away on it while looking at the dark road ahead. Apparently the NO SMOKING sign lit up above his head held as little sway with him as it did for any of the few passengers on the bus.
I don’t really know why but I was really looking forward to telling my story. It had happened so long ago but I had never told anybody about it. I was waiting my time to really get the others attention so I bided my time and let the silence and the cigarette smoke take centre stage for a few moments. When the silence almost reached unbearable level I spoke. I blew out the last of my smoke and I must say the effect was quite dramatic. Without doubt I had their undivided attention.

“The exact year this all happened I’m not so sure about. I suppose I could figure it out without too much trouble, like it was my first summer after college which was four years after I finished secondary which was five years after primary etc. etc. etc. but I don’t really want to find out how long ago it was, I know I’ll only get depressed.
I had recently finished college and it was during the summer that followed that I got my first year job. The job itself was in a bank and before you ask if it was a boring job or not the answer is ‘yes’, it was an exceptionally boring job. In fact the only thing that distinguished it from hundreds of others of its kind is the fact that it was so boring. I suppose I should think myself lucky in a way really, I knew plenty of others who had jobs that were too dull to be boring if you get my meaning.
The bank I worked for was located in the city centre and every morning I’d get up at the same time, dress in a carbon copy of the suit that I wore the day previous and eat the same breakfast. Each day in work was pretty much the same as the last and the problems I had on my desk each morning were pretty much the same as the ones I’d cleared the evening before. My life at the time as you may have guessed was a bit monotonous.
Since the leaving cert things had always promised a lot but delivered little. Collage, girl friends and a career had all been one anti-climax after another and to be frank if I’d taken the time to really think about it I might well have killed myself. Strange really that, it’s only talking to you all now that I realise just how much of a rut my life was in.
I got one of these X buses in and out of the city everyday, you know; point to point non-stop. I didn’t have a car at the time but for some reason I would like to think that even if I had one I would never have driven in through all the rush hour traffic in the morning only to do it all in the evening. Dublin had then, as it has now, an awful problem with traffic. The morning and evening time was pure hell, godshites, morans and blind bastards seemed plentiful on the roads each and every day. So the result of all this was that I got bus in every morning and the bus home every evening. Those X buses were grand really, I’d hop on at the terminal and slip on the headphones and then all the traffic in the world never bothered me. The sound from the walkman (a Sony of course) would just take me away and most times I’d dose off after a few minutes and wake up at my destination. From there it was a five minute walk to the office where my dull day began. I never took a book onto the bus, reading in a moving car, bus, train or plane gives me a fucker of a headache.
This routine went on Monday to Friday for well over a year and I got used to, almost immune to the monotony of it all. I sat on the same seat each day and the days I didn’t fall asleep I wasted the time looking around at all the regular faces on the bus and made a guess at what kind of life they had; what job they had and where they happy in it ? What kind of social or even sex life they had and were they happy in that, did they get on well with their friends and family, did they cheat on their wife, you know anything to pass the time, but as I’ve said most time the music from the Walkman put me asleep, it suited me fine. Anyway on with the tale.
The particular day my story takes place was a Tuesday evening. I remember this well because for me Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning are the very pits of the week. It’s too late in the week to live off the memories of the previous weekend and it’s too early in the week to plan for the forthcoming weekend. It is my considered opinion that of all things dull and boring there is nothing worse than a Tuesday evening.
The weather on that day was in traditional Irish style overcast and for the whole day it had threatened to rain, the rain had, so far, not yet arrived. I’d had an entirely shitty day in work and was really in a foul mood when I got on the bus. I even had to run for the bus and the run reminded me of how totally out of shape I was. Getting back into shape was yet another thing in my life that I had spent a long time planning to do but as yet had not yet gotten around to doing it. I paid my money to the driver and noticed with annoyance that he was not the usual guy, when I’m in a bad mood even the slightest thing pisses me off even more and the fact the Dublin Bus couldn’t even provide the proper driver put me in even worse form. When I got upstairs I noticed that the bus was nearing being full but it lightened my mood a bit to see that my regular seat was still free near the front right side of the bus. I took a little longer then I expected to get my breath back, and the bus was moving before I reached into my brief case and took out my Walkman. As I put the headphones into my ears I was knocked against as someone sat down on the outside of my seat. I didn’t look to the person who sat beside me but I did then notice that sitting in the seat of me was a young boy, maybe nine or ten but he was a small nine or ten if you know what I mean. His skin I remember noticing was very, very pale and he lacked that certain life-fullness that all kids kinda have. It’s difficult to explain but you’d know what I mean if you saw the boy. A middle aged and overweight woman sat on the front seat across from the kid, a very average man sat beside her. I could tell straight away that they were the boys parents, the woman looked like she was carrying the worries of the world on her shoulders, the man looked as her he wanted to be someplace else. As the bus revved up and pulled away the rain finally began to fall, but even then it didn’t give itself full over to it and only a pitiful drizzle fell.
By five minutes into the bus journey I knew that my Walkman would not last the distance, the tape was already beginning to sound warped and the auto-reverse button was clicking itself on and off the way it does when the batteries are just about dead. The thing was I remember putting a spare set into my brief case that morning, or at least I was almost sure at the time that I did. I suppose I swore to myself at first when I had to go to the bother of replacing the set in the Walkman but I did smile smugly when I remembered the set I had spare in my briefcase. I’m not the real modest type and often people think of me as being arrogant and I admit it, at times I may well be arrogant. So every once in a while God does little tricks like this just to remind me that I’m human and when I confidently reached into my briefcase to where I was sure I had placed the batteries and found them no longer there I did curse aloud. Loud enough so that the man sitting next to turned first to me no doubt to say something but perhaps seeing the look on my face thought better of it and turned back to his own world. It was then, in the height of my humour, that I first heard the boy cough.
When I was twelve years old my Granddad died. I have never been exceptionally or even very close to anybody else in my family but I loved my Granddad with an intensity that really surprised me. He had smoked all his life, first cigarettes for the first thirty years of his life and then when the quacks told him he had to give up the smokes he took up the pipe and smoked that for the other forty-three years or so that remained. Lung cancer got him in the end but as he pointed out to me whenever he got the chance, (like for example when my mother wasn’t around,) it took him over seventy years to develop lung cancer and he smoked from about the age of ten on whereas some others died of it before they had even reached middle age. Anyway for me the worst thing about my Granddad’s death was seeing him in hospital just before he died. I remember this one time going to see him and coming home in tears, I was too young to be told everything but I knew that he was well on the way up the Crow Road.
I was walking down the corridor to his room when I heard a terrible sound, it was the sound of death if I ever heard it. It was my Granddad coughing and I could tell there and then that he would never leave the hospital vertical so to speak. The sound of that deep, wet and sorrowful sound stayed with me from that day on and I never again wanted to hear anything like it. With the batteries running low on my Walkman and the sound from the earphones alternating between Blur and some other Indie band whose name escapes me at the time I heard the sound again, and I could feel death close by.
It was a natural reaction to look up and see where the cough was coming from but I felt a bit disorientated for the noise seemed to be coming from somewhere in front on me but the only person in front was the small boy and he was far too young and small to produce such a sound and besides he seemed to be shaking with laughter. My hand, without me telling it to, ran down to my belt and switched the Walkman off and it was only then I realised that this young boy was indeed the source of that horrible sound and he was not shaking with laughter but rather he whole, thin and slight body was being racked by the sickness that was within his lungs. I’m no doctor, but I knew then, as I knew with my Granddad, that the boy was sick. Sick well beyond the limits of medical science.
I’m not sure how long I stared at the boy for but when my concentration broke I looked around the bus and saw that I was not the only one to notice the boy. Every other passenger on the bus seemed to know that this poor kid was sick but they were all looking away. Not one of the other passengers looked ahead, some stared out windows, others at the roof, others at the floor and even others looked at others looking at the floor. One man was giving his wallet a detailed examination, while another was reading the makers guarantee on his briefcase. Nobody wanted to look at or even be on the same bus as this boy. The only person who’s eyes met the boys were those of his mother, and hers were filled with tears. The boy when he finished coughing wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket the way kids do and smiled across at his mother as if to say ‘look mom, it’s no big deal, I’m grand now’. But the mother only nodded her head slightly and when the boy looked back out the window she buried her face in her husbands shoulder.
The bus journey seemed unnaturally long and quiet and the only breaking in the silence was when the boy coughed. Again it seemed that his lungs were on the point of collapsing. I didn’t take my eyes from the kid but I didn’t remove my headphones either. Somehow I felt that if I had the headphones in I could pretend to all the others on the bus that I didn’t hear the kid and so didn’t have to do anything for him. But the thing was I desperately wanted to help somehow, even if it was just to go up and sit beside him and talk to him. Not as a healthy adult to a sick child but just as one human being to another, but I couldn’t. For a while afterwards I tried to fool myself into thinking that I would have eventually picked up the courage to talk to the boy but I know that I was only fooling myself, I could never have spoken to that boy if the bus journey was to Florida and back. I think I felt bad for him, how this kid had done nothing wrong and yet you could almost see the life draining away from him with each breath that left his lungs. It made me fell very sad and guilty about all the stuff I’d put into my body over the years, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and how I was still being allowed to live. I sat there on the bus, feeling depressed and doing nothing. The bus journey went on and I felt worse. At the airport the bus first slowed and then stopped. I could see the long before we stopped the reason why.
The road ahead was blocked with what looked like a serious accident. At least three cars were involved and the blue flashing lights from the police, fire brigade and ambulance vehicle filled the night sky. The crash was on the far side of the bus but I got a good view as I was near the front, I don’t really consider this luckily but I was none the less a bit pleased with my good seat. After all I had the best view, if there was any blood on the road well shit then I’d see it! As it happens there was blood and quite a bit of it too. The bus moved in spurts as the police controlled the two-lane both direction traffic into a single lane. I could clearly see the firemen working with cutting equipment on one the cars, its body twisted well out of shape to an almost unrecognisable lump of metal. A woman stood by one of the car with a blanket thrown over her shoulders, blood was visible from a cut on her head. One of the ambulance crew was doing his best to treat the cut but she would not be moved from her spot beside the car. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Homles to figure that she was concerned about the occupant sitting trapped in the drives side of the car. The bus stayed at the scene for maybe a minute or two before the Garda stopped the traffic going the other way and waved us on.
Just as the bus moved off a man approached the crash site. The first thing that I noticed was how well dressed he was and that he moved through the carnage without the flustered to-ing and fro-ing of the other people. He walked passed the police as if they weren’t there and went straight to the car that the woman was crying beside. The fireman with the cutting equipment put down the saw and went to talk to his superior about some problem that he was must have been having. The man in the suit took his place by the car and they passed each other without so much as a nod. This all seemed a bit strange to me but what I say next left me speechless.
The man in the immaculate suit looked into the car and it seemed began to talk to the trapped person in the car. Time seemed to stand still at this point and then the man reached into the car and put his hand on the forehead of the trapped driver. It stayed there for a moment and then it began to glow, not the hand now nor the head, just the space where contact was shared between the two. A very soft blue glow seemed to radiate from the area. My mouth hit the flow and I came closer than I ever have come to losing control of my bladder. I felt physically weak and think that I almost passed out because when I looked back the man was gone and the fireman with the cutting saw was walking back to the car. When he reached the car he looked in for a moment and then put down the saw. The woman beside the car started screaming crying and had to be pulled away form the car. When the police moved in around the car I knew that the driver was dead.
I looked around the bus wanting to stand up and shout out if anybody else had seen what had happened, but my voice had deserted me and my legs would not have supported any weight. It took everything I had to keep my lunch down. And even if I had asked I know from the faces of all the others on the bus that they had not seen what I had. The bus began to move again and it was a buzz with the sound of conversation and people who had sat beside each other for months on end and had never once said a word before began talking as if they were the best of friends. There’s nothing quite like a bit of death, a bit of suffering or even just a bit of gossip to get the worst of enemies talking again now is there ? Me, well needless to say I said nothing. I was still trying to come to grips with what I had seen and my stomach was still trying to come to grips with my lunch. I took the air in through my nose and out through my mouth in big slow lung full. I thought that I was just about to regain control when two things happened. The first thing was that the boy coughed that sickening, wet and raspy cough and the second thing was that the bus stopped and the doors opened either to let someone off or to let somebody on.
When I heard the footsteps on the stairs I knew who it was. Now I know that there was no way that I could have heard the footsteps of someone coming up the stairs on a moving bus full of people but I’m telling you now that I did. I wish, Jesus I’ve wished so many times that I didn’t, that the normal laws of physics had applied on that bus ride but they didn’t and the sound of those footfalls coming up the stairs was the worst and most frightening sound I’ve ever heard. I broke out into a sweat and started to look around the bus in a panic, nobody else seemed to care but me. The boy was still coughing but that now seemed of secondary importance to me now all I was concerned about was getting off the bus anyway I could. The man sitting beside me looked visibly concerned at my behaviour and I’m sure that I looked weird, pale faced and more that likely mumbling to myself about getting off the bus but I froze when I saw the figure at the top of the stairs.
For the first time I got a clear look at his face. I think that many would have considered the man good looking but to me there was something that I wasn’t sure about, something that I would always consider, well I don’t know how to explain it. Like the man, as I’ve said was immaculately dressed, clean shaven, his hair was perfectly in place and even his hands were manicured to the point of perfection. Every aspect of his face was perfect but for some reason when you put it all together it didn’t look right. All he did for me was make my stomach do another loop-the-loop. He looked around the bus at all the passengers, passing over me as if I wasn’t there and then walked purposely towards the front of the bus, towards where I was sitting. He reached my seat, paused and then very slowly turned his head. I know that it sounds almost foolish for you to hear this now but the look that he gave me, with those ice blue cold eyes, and the perfect hair that sat like a work of art on his head and the way that the corner of those thin lips of his almost curled up into the trace of a smile stopped my heart and took my very soul away to a place where I never ever want to go again. His eyes held mine for what seemed like an age and then he moved on to sit beside the boy with the bad cough.
The boy, who now looked younger and more vulnerable than he had at the beginning of this almost endless journey seemed to see the stranger in a totally different light than I did. The stranger and the sick boy exchanged smiles and while I saw the whole spectacle of one of complete horror those two seemed to be enjoying each others company. I very nearly screamed there and then and I think if I’d been able to I would have screamed, a scream that maybe would never have ended but I didn’t scream or maybe I couldn’t scream. Either way I remained silent and those two in the seat in front of mine, the odd couple continued to smile at each other and their own private little joke. I looked across at the boy’s mother but she seemed to be almost in a trance staring out the window of the bus, so did her husband. The two of them oblivious to the man that was sitting next to there son. The man, who as I was looking around for help, was reaching ever so slowly for the boy with the same hand that touched the car crash victim what seemed like hours ago.
From there on in everything seemed to go in slow motion. I saw the man’s hand reach very slowly reach towards the boy’s chest. I tried desperately hard to cry out but all I manage was a strangled cry. The man on the seat beside me turned in my direction, I heard him mumble “Are you are right buddy?” His voice seemed distant and somehow muffled so I stood up. People on the bus turned my direction and were giving me strange glances but still I couldn’t get through to them what was happening and still the stranger’s hand reached towards the boy’s chest. Now it was only inches away and I could make out the faint blue glow starting to grow from the stranger’s palm. The man beside me stood up too and put a restraining hand my shoulder.
“Pal are you sure your OK?”
I laughed out loud and then began to cry. I felt stranger than I’d ever felt in my left and stranger than I’ve ever felt since. My emotions ran riot, I was laughing one moment and then crying the next. I raised my hand and somehow managed to point to a finger in the direction of the stranger. But instead of drawing attention to him my arm was grabbed from behind and pinned by my side.
“Somebody give a hand here!” I heard the man beside me shout and “Somebody phone an ambulance, I think he’s having a fit.” called another.
The glow from the strangers hand was painfully visible and just before I got pulled down to the floor I saw the hand make contact. There was a brief flash of light and then I clearly heard the boy sigh. It was a sound that reminded me of the way a woman will sigh smugly to herself just after having some great sex. It was that type of sigh. Then the boys head lolled to the side and for perhaps the first time I could clearly make out his face. And then, then I saw him smile and that smile was the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing that I have every seen. It was the smile of a sincere old man on the face of a young boy full of innocence. The stranger continued to hold his hand against the boy’s chest and I could make out a black shadow type form moving across from the chest and down the hand and then the arm of the stranger. This continued for God knows how long but when the blackness stopped coming then a red mist replaced it.
By now I could feel the pressure of my fellow passengers trying to hold me down and I knew that I was shaking uncontrollably, moaning, crying and laughing all at the one time but I had to stay on my feet to the end. The boy was looking pail now and the redness was moving at a much slower pace. Suddenly it stopped and the stranger withdrew his had. The boys head fell back against the railing and he stared at me with lifeless eyes. Then the screams did come.
I must have caused some amount of noise because the other people on the bus probably figuring that I had gone mad gripped me tighter and began to draw me to the floor. I heard them ask and then tell me to calm down but I wasn’t listening. Just before their combined strength managed to draw me down I saw that the stranger had risen from the seat and was turning to walk towards me. I screamed some more, and then some more again. Then I blacked out.

“Is he gonna be OK?”
I awoke to the sound of people all around me and opened my eyes slowly.
“Hold on he’s awake !”
“Give him room there, back off a little. Come on people let him breath.”
“Pal, are you OK ?” I recognised my companion from the seat next to me.
I tried to speak but before I could the head of the stranger appeared from the back of the group.
“Oh yes.” he said, “He’s gonna be just fine for a long while yet.”
And then he was gone. Before I had time to ask if anybody else had seen him the bus was once again disturbed by the sound of someone screaming. This time it was the screams of a woman. I was discarded quite quickly as my would be rescuers turned their attention to something of a little more interest. I knew without looking that the screams were those of the woman, who had just discovered that her son was dead.
And that’s my tale. The boy was dead and I haven’t seen the man since but I’ll tell you, every time that I see a man, of above average height but below average weight, who is wearing an immaculately turned out suit and had hair to match; I always avoid eye contact because I know that the next time I see those steel blue eyes looking back at my brown ones that my time on this earth will be at an end.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.01.2011

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