Tales From A Bus, jwilson136 [best e reader for academics .TXT] 📗

the sky and I swear to God that the sunlight shone right thru the whole the bullet left. We all had a laugh at this and then a bit of a cry over the friends we had lost.
While we waited for the support to arrive we did a quick clean sweep of the area making sure that they hadn’t left anybody behind. It was during this sweep that John was unfortunate enough to step on a land mine that had somehow remained hidden during the last three days we’d spent in the immediate area and all during the fight. Now mines aren’t just dropped anywhere in the hope that some poor bastard will wander along onto it, they are placed in an area that it’s known is well travelled. This mine was on the side of a road that I had walked back and forward on at least ten times over the few days we’d been there. There were nine men in the Platoon and they’d all walked on the same road as often as I did. Top that all with all the Gerry soldiers running back and across that same stretch of road and you’ve just gotta ask how come nobody stood on the mine before? Well I simply don’t have the answer to that one.
Regardless of all this that mine took his left leg completely off and also took the vast majority of his right one with it when it blew. I was standing about twenty yards away from him when it happened but in the three seconds or so it took for me to reach him he was dead. Now I know that this proves nothing in itself but I think that for whatever reason John knew that day, his number was up. When ever somebody says something about seeing the future I’ll always think about my old friend John Keanney and that unlucky land mine. I don’t claim to know ‘how’ or even ‘why’ he knew but I just know that when he woke up that morning he knew that it was his time.
My point to all this is that sometimes things happen that don’t make sense and that this bus journey was one of those things. I felt an uncontrollable urge to tell my tale and it was the last thing that I wanted to do. But something made me do it, I’m not one for karma our aura but something happened on that bus that day that made us all tell our tales. Destiny is a strong word but just as I’d say that poor John’s left leg was destined to meet that land min back in late summer ‘forty-two and that the five people on that bus were destined to be on it and once on it destined to talk.
So without even wanting to and without taking the time to think out (rationally) what I was doing I heard my own voice speak out;

“Well if none of you folks have any objections I’d like to tell you a little story that occurred a few years back, just to pass the time.”
I prayed for the objections to come, maybe that good looking woman would say that she preferred some silence, or that the baldy guy would turn away, hell I even would have been glad if that snotty nosed little punk down the back of the bus told me to “piss off granddad”. But I knew that they wouldn’t. They all had that same look on their face, more than likely the on that I had on mine. The face of someone who just gotten on a roller coaster and it was moving on up the first hill in preparation for the first drop and only then do you realise that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea and maybe you’d just prefer if they stopped the thing and reversed it back to the beginning so that you could get off. But there was no stopping this roller coaster, there was no stopping the bus and there was no stopping the stories. As I began to talk I was almost certain that my good old buddy John was sitting up in heaven with both his legs intact and was well into the process of laughing them both right off again.

“Truth be told some of the details of this story are more than a little hazy. Memory is a funny thing, you spend the majority of your life with it working 100% behind you and then quite suddenly when you hit my age you realise that you can trust it no longer. It’s like some perverted joke that keeps on tricking you up. You can remember that name of the dog that Bill Danbury ran over in his first car (a 1943 Dodge Coupe) back in 1950 but you be dammed if you can remember what you had for breakfast. All I’m saying is that not to be too surprise if I’m forced to stop this story half way through on account of me remembering nothing more. I haven’t given the events of that strange bus trip much in the way of brain time from then ‘till now and I’m not sure just how much I really will remember. But as long as you’re all willing to give an old man maybe four or five more seconds per sentence I’m sure that we can work this one out.
I was on some bus trip that at the time seemed of little or no importance to me. I was living well outta town and rarely got into the big smoke, the only time I did it was usually for something important but I just can’t seem to recall what this journey was for, memory playing up I guess. I was a lot younger than I am now and was at the age where you figure that you know it all, young enough to still have optimism but old enough to have it mixed with just the right amount of realism. I had been away fighting for my country for the last couple of years and I was the first chance that I’d had to see how much the old home town had changed. The bus ride was the perfect opportunity as it ran from the west side of the city right through the centre and then on out to the suburbs on the north east where I was living with my folks.
I love bus rides, always have. I love sitting up on top, near the back and just watching the people in the city go by. I always have a paper with me that I can turn my attention to if the outside world gets too boring. The bus ride back in those took about one hour and a half which is more than likely not much longer than it would take now but back then it was because of the roads being so poor and the buses not being all that fast. Today things are slow for traffic and not much else.
So there I was sitting in my seat reading my paper, looking out the window or dozing off in no particular order when the smell of paraffin came wafting across to me. I ignored it at first but it didn’t go away and in fact got stronger. I was really close to sleep at this stage so I was weighing up the options of just ignoring it and going full steam ahead into dreamland when I heard a woman scream. This brought me to and I turned in my seat to see what was causing all the commotion.
On the back seat of the bus sat a man on his own. He was dressed quite well and looked like he was in his early to middle forties. Sitting down he looked very small and I’d seen kids of fourteen that were bigger across the shoulders that him. The small shoulders combined with the way he held them (rolled forward and slouched) made his head seem way too big for his body. His face was thin and it sported a rather sad looking attempt at a moustache. The small covering of hair that he had was mostly grey but with traces of red still present. He kinda reminded me of a ‘has-been’ rather sick and rather old fox. When I gave him a second glance over I saw where the smell of paraffin was coming from.
He held a letter of some sort in his right hand and in his left was a can of the lighter-fluid used by some fancy types of cigarette lighters. As I watched him he sprayed the last of the paraffin on his face and chest, coughed and spluttered and dropped the empty can to the floor of the bus. It made an exceptionally loud clang as it hit the floor. People in the seats in front of him on the left and right had stood up and were moving gradually away from him towards the front of the bus. I could see from their faces that while they weren’t too sure what was going to happen next they knew for sure that they didn’t want to be sitting too close when I happened. I stood up in my seat and edged onto the walkway, but unlike the others however I slowly walked towards our paraffin drenched friend.
I seen men who felt, that life for them was over. I’ve seen guys with their arms and legs blown off and there is nothing anything that can be done for them and they know it. So many men have died in my arms, with their blood and intestines spilling out through my fingers that I almost became immune to it, I say almost. The one thing that I found the most disturbing was not the blood, or the guts, or the screams or the the hopeless plea’s from them to help you or even the futility of war, for me it was the look in their eyes. Any of you who ever been cursed enough by the good Lord above to see someone die over a minute or two will know what I mean. The worst thing and the most disturbing part of it is when you see the forthcoming death in the patient’s eyes. The moment when they realise that they will be no last minute miracles, that the governor will not come in with a phone call to put off the execution. That no amount of will power or determination or stamina or fitness is going to get them out of this one. That is the worst thing about having people die. And I’ll tell you that the look in their eyes when they see that all hope is gone is by far the most disturbing thing about war.
When I got to within maybe ten foot of that guy drenched in the paraffin I saw that he had that look in his eyes. As far as he was concerned there was no hope for him, as far as he was concerned he was already dead. He used his left hand, now free of the paraffin tin to reach into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a lighter. I found that I couldn’t move, I was watching frozen to the spot and this guy was preparing to torch himself.
Honestly I’ve never froze like that before, I’m not dead calm in situations like these but I never panic and I certainly never freeze. My mind was working fine and it was telling me to get the guy to talk and calm down buy my body just wasn’t moving. I didn’t freeze, my body just refused to move. Before I could bring myself to move or speak a man brushed past me and stood not