Crazy Bus Man...

Today I took the only seat open on a crowded line 9, and there’s one of those guys sitting there reeking of booze and getting chewed on by some other washed out and useless whose conversation he jumped into, unwelcome.

No one wants to sit next to that guy.

But I do anyway. He says he wont bite. Almost looks like he’s grateful, to me, just for sitting down. Starts talking my ear off, old timer, 60 but looks like life’s been hell, he smells like hell, I can see the bottle peeking out from behind his coat, a bottle with a cap like mouthwash, but he reeks of hard booze.

But he has a smile, and a soft careful gentle about him. I can tell he’s harmless enough for 50 blocks, and I want to sit down. So I listen, put on my nice smile, he’s gonna talk, and I wanna sit, so ill listen.


Said he’s got cancer.

Had hair down to his ass, but cut it all off and gave it to the kids at st. judes.

"But I don’t want to go up to pill hill and get the microwave – that’s what I call it - they gave me some pills, but I quit ‘em, ill let the vodka do the job."

"I’ve got a real nice apartment, I get my check direct deposit and I put a nice parachute over my bed and one of those folding Japanese things and a real nice view and… I just want to die at home."

"I rode the rails when I got back from killing viet cong for a living,. 70’s and 80’s, went all over, till I came back to here and got in that fight over around Lloyd center. They called it murder, but I was just defending myself. They gave me a lawyer and he said, ‘just sit on your hands and don’t talk’., so that’s what I did. ‘ I wasn’t doing so good back then"

He shows me how kept quiet and just sat on his hands.

"I wasn’t convicted, though. They told me to take a plea. They called it manslaughter. So I went to prison. For ten years. "

Then his blue eyes just lit up... he was smiling, remembering prison.

I was not more than a few inches away from those eyes. You get real close to another person on a public bus. Temporary, but distance can just melt away. He’s glowing, now. While he tells me his story.

He built a garden while he did his ten years. The officers and the inmates aren’t supposed to get involved with each other. Keep their distance. But the guards brought in 40 tomato plants, and he built a fence for the string beans to crawl up.

He’s shining like a little boy, his bright blue eyes are dancing.

One time a hummingbird landed on him… and when he was telling it, remembering it he was back there, he was full of pure sweet satisfaction and love and joy. He held out both hands, 9 fingers, and he showed me where the bird landed, right on him, loved him for his prison garden.



I see my stop coming. I like this old guy. He calls himself an old hippy, talks about playing cat stevens on his guitar in the same breath he talks about killing in Vietnam.

He's still rambling on, while my stop is getting closer.

“And now, our guys coming home, they keep putting guns in their mouths and pulling the triggers. 6000 of em so far, just can’t handle being back because the government isn’t helping them get home, they get here, and they don’t know what to do. Just like Jimmy and Charlie, and Rob.. guys I grew up with, they did the same thing, just couldn’t take it. We all volunteered, then we got home, and…. you think they would have learned. I guess I’m just not as sensitive as them. I miss those guys.. but”

… he's closed his eyes and he says…

“About all that, I , … I only think about the good times.

But I’m watching his eyes get wet and I hear his voice drop low and he whispers… ‘I love everyone on this bus’


I should have stayed just a little while more. What does it matter to me, really, if I have to cross the street and catch the line back. The timing was all off… I left him alone when he had picked me to talk to. Who cares if he’s crazy, or he killed someone, or if I don’t know him so he shouldn’t matter. He picked me in that way we sometimes need to, just talk to anyone, someone, anonymous. He was starting to talk about that shot he took, aimed a little off, killed that whole family, but he didn’t mean to. The difference in his eyes between the hummingbird and that hellish war.


He didn’t mean to, just aimed a little off. Blue eyes sad and wet and trying not to cry.

He’s dying of cancer, and giving his hair, and some of his check each month, to those kids up on the hill, and just letting the vodka do the job because he just wants to die at home.


And I pulled the string.

I Went one stop, two blocks, past where I would have usually. I should have given him more time. Should have tried to get him back to that hummingbird, behind the prison wall.

His tomatoes and string beans, and watermelons this big, and the guards sneaking his seeds out to plant in their gardens at home. The way his eyes lit up, pride. Acceptance, he accomplished.


In that temporary moment of no distance between us, but still anonymous, free to just say what you need to, he talked to me about things I will not ever know myself.

Between Vietnam, and riding the rails, and manslaughter, and dying of cancer, that hummingbird in his prison garden is the place he goes back to, the place where he was accepted and accomplished and proud.