Tales From A Bus by jwilson136 (i can read with my eyes shut .TXT) 📖

five feet from the guy with the lighter. The two held each others eyes for what seemed to me for at least a minute but in reality was maybe a couple of seconds before one spoke.
“Put away the lighter friend. There is always another way.” Our would-be hero was a fair size bigger than our would be suicide victim. He must have been a bit over six foot tall and was as wide across the shoulders as the other one was narrow. I didn’t get a look at his face until later but his hair was light brown and a lot longer at the back then the style of the day. He was dressed in a suit that looked of good quality but was otherwise unremarkable.
“You know nothing about me!” the guy with the lighter screamed back at him. “What the fuck could you know about this?” he held the letter up. It was crumpled from his grip but I did catch part of the heading and it seemed to say The Green Door Co., the rest was obscured from view by both the man’s hand and his waving motions. Our would-be hero looked calmly at the letter and then as casual as you like sat down on the seat just in front of him.
“I know enough to know that what you are planning on doing is wrong, to know that it’s a waste of a human life that can be put to better use. I know that you feel that there is nothing for you, that your life has no meaning, no direction and has no point, but I also know that this,” he pointed at the lighter, “is wrong. There are always other ways.” His voice was calm and soft and reassuring. But there was a tone to it that suggested he was well used to getting his own way.
The guy with the lighter seemed to hesitate, and for just the briefest of moments I thought that I saw a flicker of life return to his eyes but he crumpled the letter in his hand and threw it on the floor of the bus and sobbed, “I have nothing, there is no point.”
At this stage I was full sure that he would touch the lighter to himself and I was figuring out my plan on how to pull the good Samaritan away from the ensuing inferno with the minimum of danger to myself. Instead of pulling away, the Samaritan bent down and picked up the letter. He un-crumpled it and did a good job at smoothing out the creases but he didn’t read it. It was instead folded neatly in two and then folded neatly again and he held it in his hand. All his movements were slow and precise, almost deliberately so. He spoke again in that voice that I’d have bet was capable of putting Rottweiler’s to sleep.
“Friend, there are always options and we always have choices. You, in your grief are blinded to them that I can see so clearly. And believe me Stephen when I say that I can see another path for you take other than this one if you’ll just listen to what I have to say. This,” he motioned to the folded letter, “is not the end of all. What they say,” again he motioned to the letter that he had not yet read, “know little or what I know. It may seem that your life has no meaning now but please don’t waste it, allow me to give it meaning. Please put the lighter down and let me tell you of meaning.”
This was the make or brake stage of the standoff. I knew that the lighter was closer now to the fuel then perhaps it ever had been but it was also quite clear to see that part of the guy so close to his own death wanted desperately to hear what the stranger had to say. That he desperately wanted to have a reason to put the lighter down. The odd couple continued this stand off for a few more seconds before the hero made his move.
He slowly leaned forward in his seat and began talking to the man, they spoke for maybe three minutes and for that whole time I remained frozen to the spot. I wanted to hear what the Samaritan had to say but I just couldn’t move. So I stood where I was and watched one talk to the other. Then to my surprise (or was I really surprise?), I saw the man close the lid of the lighter and then let it fall to the floor. Then the two men embraced for a long while. Then they stood up and walked to the front of the bus. As they passed me the guy who had been on the verge of taking his own life looked at me and I saw that he had the spark of life back in his eyes. As he reached me he nodded his head in acknowledgement that had I been able I would have helped him and then I heard him whisper to me (I think), “There are always options.”
The bus stopped and the two got off and I never saw either of them in the flesh again.
Perhaps a month or so after this there was a very bad fire down at a pub on the docks called Graysons. I remember reading about it in the paper. Back in those days the pumps that gave us all our fresh beers were powered by gas. One of the taps had developed a clot and a young barman, lacking that little bit of experience went about clearing the blockage with a screwdriver. And clear it he did but when he flicked back on the light switch the gas caught and blew the poor fool right through a wooden glass divider and out the front window. His shredded body eventually ended up in the front window of a shop across the road and when the paper said that when the ambulance crew went and picked him up one of his legs and his head just fell clean off. Considering the power of the fire many would say that he had the easy death.
That old pub, nearly all wood, went up like a torch and within seconds it was a blazing, smoke filled inferno. And while seven people died witnesses said that it would have been much worse had it not been for the bravery of one passer-by on the street who had ran into the blazing inferno no less that eight times to drag people from the flames. There was about forty people in that pub when the fire started and well over half of those that survived claimed that they owed their lives to the stranger that was a force of order in the chaos, pointing the way out of the flames to those who could walk and hand carrying those that had lost the use of their legs.
There was a nurse on her way home from the night shift who arrived at the scene first and was giving what emergency first aid treatment that she could on the street said she begged the man to stop going back into the blaze after he had came out the second time. She said that he just smiled and said he would be fine, his hair was on fire as he spoke. When he returned from his fifth trip his clothes had all been burned off and his skin was blistered with the heat. The nurse who had treated burn victims before said it was a miracle that he had not passed out with the pain. On returning from his sixth trip he was actually aflame. A young boy who watched most of the fire develop said that he looked just like one of his hero’s “the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four”. When he came out the seventh time he was no longer recognisable as human. He did not return from his eight trip.
The man had not been identified as yet and the paper said that the police were looking for anyone with information to come forward. There was an artists impression of him at the side of the story. This was in the times before you had computers do up the drawing so it may not have been an exact match but I feel it was pretty close. It was the eyes that really convinced me, the artist had got those perfectly.
I considered looking for the nurse to see if she had anything more to tell me but I knew it would do me no good and more than likely harm to her so I left it at that. It looked like he had found a reason to live after all.


TALES FROM A BUS
II
HIGH NOON

I looked around from one guy to the next. Waiting to see who, if any of my fellow companions would be the next to speak out. I was guessing that if I was to leave it long enough the good looking guy would talk. He hadn’t said anything much on the trip as yet but he gave off the air of quiet confidence and you could just tell that if it push came to shove then he’d have no problems with standing up in front of a group of strangers and talking.
The old man, now finished his piece for the evening lit up another cigarette, and without offering anyone one sat back in his seat to relax. He looked like the type of guy that could relax anywhere. I’d caught him on more than one occasion straining his neck to get a look down the front of my blouse. When he’d seen me looking at him looking at me he didn’t shy away as most men (and in some cases even woman) normally did. He’d continued to look from my face to my chest and then back again, ant then slowly he looked away. He didn’t lower his eyes or anything, just looked away as if he’d found something else more interesting to look at. I’d seen guys try this before and only the most arrogant of them could pull it off. I’d say that old guy could have gone on with another story if he’d been prompted to, but so far no one was prompting.
Other than that options were fairly limited. The young student type guy that sat behind seemed to have little to offer in the way of communication skills. He looked like he’d last seen a bath a couple of weeks back and while I’d yet to confirm it (thank God) I would bet my moral reputation that if you got close enough to the guy that he’d smell just as bad as he looked. He’d spent the entire bus journey so far mumbling to himself and giving all the other passengers (all four of us, five if you included the driver) odd looks. Once or twice I think that I’d heard him hum but over the noise in the bus it was difficult to be really sure.
My afore good looking friend, who sat across for me was still keeping himself to himself. When the story telling session was talked about he’d seemed to shy away from the idea. But looking at him you could tell that he had a story to tell. I can tell you that I was looking forward to hear his story but for the moment he was keeping very quiet.
And finally the middle-aged man in the business suit and briefcase who had at first scoffed at the idea was sitting forward in his seat just waiting for someone to begin. More than likely had no excitement what