Sharon’s driving for me tonight. She’s good, calm and quiet. I prefer that, I rarely speak when working. Passengers understand. Ever since Sharon came over she’s been volunteering to help. Compassion radiates from her. The driver never asks for tips, but Sharon will take them, if the passenger has to offer. It’s the small touches that make the trip easier. Black suit, black tie, white shirt, the uniform of a limousine driver or a boy going to confirmation. It helps when working a large crowd, people look right through you if they see you at all.
Sometimes the camouflage is too complete, and I have to work to get their attention. But I don’t just hold up a sign with their name. I like to keep things personal. The trip is always intimate.
We’re working Upstate New York tonight. The first stop is a nightclub. Sharon parks out front and waits. No one has ever challenged her, but she will always move the car if asked. It won’t take long.
The crowd swallows me. Lights, music, smoke, flesh, sweat, one long sweet song of pleasure. My passenger is on the dance floor, in the center, his shirt off. He’s proud of his body and he should be, he’s beautiful. The men dancing with him admire him, openly, covertly. He’s the object of longing and he knows it. He’s here tonight dancing with friends. They will be surprised that he’s coming with me, he won’t have time to tell them. I look across the crowd to the bar and see them, a small group of men in a sea of men, laughing, drinking. They love one another, its easy to mirror that back to them. There are always friends left behind. I have a job to do, its up to me to do it with love.
I move onto the dance floor, unseen between tall men blinded by strobe lights. The music drowns conversation, but I don’t work with words. My passenger is dancing. The lights make his black hair green, then blue. Sweat gilds the perfect olive skin of his chest. He doesn’t see me.
I stand in front of him and look into his face. Its important to show respect, to let the passenger become aware of you in their own time. Never reach out and grab them, the shock is jarring, and it is rude. From the first moment I keep the trip gracious and gentle. His eyes open and he sees me. Clearly he’s puzzled at a woman in a black suit gazing at him with a sweet, thoughtful expression in the middle of the dance floor. The change comes quickly, he tries to back away but stops the motion. He stares into my eyes, leaning forward, as if a world opens for him there. Recognition dawns on his face, fear, protest, then softly, he accepts. I never know what it is they see, but I understand what they have to go through. So I wait for them. His shoulders relax. Calm comes over him. He smiles just a little at me, sad and knowing, and goes to wait for me in the car.
Our second passenger is not far away, its only medium sized city. This circuit is one of my regular stops these days with the increase in traffic from the big city. Sharon pulls into the alley and parks. I open the back door. He won’t be ready to sit up, I can lay him down on the back seat. I walk down the ally and vanish like the light, a shadow of the afternoon reaching toward evening. There, behind the dumpster. This isn’t his usual spot, it has none of his things. Neighborhood starts to gentrify, the street people get driven out. Harassed by the cops, burned out of shelter they migrate. Driven away from his place, he came here. He’s dressed in layers even though the night is warm, wearing everything he owns. Knit cap pulled down over stringy hair, unshaven, dirt ground into his pours. Blue cast to skin usually tanned from exposure, eyes shut. The needle is still in his arm. I sigh. He can’t recognize me. Always harder on them that way. I lift him like a child and carry him to the car. The first passenger looks over the seat at him, then at me. We are all related now. I keep his head in my lap as we drive. If he wakes, let me be here to guide him.
The third passenger is due to meet us on a street corner in front of a convenience store. Iron bars like teeth cover the windows, signs for liquor and cigarettes peer through. The side of the building has a mural in brilliant metallic shades memorializing Tupac and Biggie, smoking blunts in heaven. He’s hanging with his boys in front of the store, by the pay phone. They’re doing business. It’s a slow time, no cars coming by. I look for him- there, with the red bandana tied around his head, with the platinum chains swinging against his Starter jersey. His jeans sag down well below his hips, showing his boxers. He has two pagers clipped on his right side. Not a day over fourteen.
One of his friends looks up as our car slows and squints, as if something hit his eye. Sharon looks at me, but I shake my head. We don’t have to move on. Its not unheard of for people who live closer to the trip to start seeing us early. They get flashes, hints. Its not yet his time.
My passenger doesn’t see the car. He’s joking with his friends, laughing at what he’s just said. They are constantly in motion, punching one another, shifting position, slouching, checking pagers, fooling with the phone. I walk across the street directly, something I don’t often employ. He turns his head away. I understand. He can feel me coming and refuses to see. Rare in someone so young. But he hasn’t been allowed to be young in any recognized sense of the word.
I walk right up to him. His hands give him away, the faint tremor. He won’t meet my gaze, turns his head away. Looks to his friends. This is harder than it has to be. I take his face in my hands and turn his head. He has to look at me now. His eyes go wide, acknowledging me. The fear is first, with a strong resistance. When they fight all you can do is remain still, give them nothing to struggle against. No pain, no fear, no suffering. Just the quiet and the calm. Slowly he starts to relax, he looks deep into my eyes. The hardness goes out of his face, he’s just a boy. Somewhere in him I can hear the music of church services. I smile at him. He nods, a little. Its better now. He goes to wait in the car.
Our next stop is a bit more of a drive, out in the suburbs. On a cul de sac, where all the houses are stately and exactly alike. Sharon slows down, checking the address. I shrug. Can’t tell from the outside. I’ll do this the old way. I leave the car and walk down the street, slowly. I can feel him, waiting for me. I let him know I’m here. The door to one of the duplicate houses opens.
A man comes out on the front step, not sure why he is walking out. His Polo shirt is half tucked into his trousers, he was working from his home office. He's in his forties, looks strong, but the weariness lies under his skin like a spider’s web. He looks for me. At the end of the driveway I am standing. I don’t need to beckon, he’s coming. Everything in him is tired; I am rest. Of his own volition he finds my eyes and searches. The weariness drops away, he has found what he needs. The car door is open for him.
Last stop tonight, one more passenger. Sharon stops the car in front of the house. The car is nearly full now, I’ll have to sit in the back. Around the back of the house is a redwood deck and a swimming pool, covered now that summer is gone. She’s sitting on the edge of the deck with her feet swinging idly, facing the backyard. She doesn’t know I’m here. I watch her in profile, lit by a flood lamp from the house. Perhaps seventeen. Long hair, pushed back behind her ears. Holes where earrings might go. She’s deep in thought, it makes me invisible. I sit down on the deck next to her. Whatever it is, she is seething, burning behind the flat aspect. The pain reaches out beyond her skin. I wait. She becomes aware of me, looks up and says, “Oh!”
The recognition takes time, but she wants to know. She stares into my eyes, looking for answers, challenging me not to be a disappointment. I don’t know what she finds. At last she smiles, glad to drop her wariness. She hops off the deck, we walk to the car together.
She looks at the car, then at me. “That’s a hearse. Or a taxi,” she says.
I touch her shoulder. Everything is all right, whole and complete. She understands this and gets in the car.
Sharon knows the road. The earth opens up as we drive, the road winds down, past dirt and rocks and steel like a cut away cross section. Now my second passenger wakes, feeling what we have left behind. He writhes on the floor of the car, screaming, pleading. He is too distraught, he can’t be reached. I sit next to him on the floor and take his face in my hands until he looks at me. He is silent, but from shock. I wait, making sure he sees my eyes. Then I speak.
"I am peace. I am sweet relief. I am the grace that allows all love."
And he is quiet.
The road between unfolds around us. The car comes to rest. I’m not always sure of where we will end, the passengers decide that. Tonight we are at a summer camp, a cabin over looking a lake and sprawling green forest. Hills rise gently on all sides, the Catskills, the Adirondacks. My passengers get out of the car. They look around, at people playing volleyball, swimming, canoeing, barbecuing. People on the lake, on the grass. They ask me, “This is heaven?”
I say, “To people in New York State. You'd be surprised at how many people picture it just like this. In Southern California, they see it differently.”
It happens in stages. First one passenger will see someone they know, and the reunion will impress the rest. Soon they all go off to find friends and family.
My first passenger lingers next to me, amazed. “Heaven is full of gay people,” he says, as if this could not be.
I nod. Of course it is. He smiles, the world has changed. He is off to find his friends. I take Sharon’s hand and thank her. Another trip smoothly done. She goes to park the car.
I walk around. The lawns were full of recent people, sometimes they need more attention. There, mother and father who have their daughter in their arms. She has just come in, but she hasn’t adjusted. She'd had cancer, and she was appearing with the tumor blocking her mouth. She couldn't get past it. The parents are frantic. Her skin is gray, her hair is matted and full of dust. They find me, ask me if they should cut it out of her. In their haste they may do violence.
I say, “Let me.”
There is time, here. There is no need for pain, even if you bring it in. That’s a hard lesson to learn for some. Peace can be so quiet you don’t recognize the sound. I put my hand over her mouth and just hold it there, until the tumor comes away like a softball in my hand. The ragged edges of her mouth begin to heal. In a moment her eyes open, full of questions.
“Where am I?” She asks. Full of language, this one. I answer the same way.
“Heaven.”
“Is there a hell?” she asks. Her parents look concerned, but this is fine, this is her way of adjusting.
“No,” I say. “Not even for people who want it.”
As we speak her face heals, the gray color bleeds away, her skin gets brown again, her hair is braided and free of dust. Her parents, bolder now, ask me if there is a God.
I smile and point up to the sky. It is the brilliant blue of high summer, beautiful beyond question. They always ask me this, just as they never ask me who I am.
“Plenty. Just pray, and they will come down and walk in the forest with you, talk to you.”
I walk back to the cabin. It has been a good trip, gracious and thoughtful, gentle. Sharon meets me, there is a call. I wait for the news. Another trip, far beyond what I usually do. People gather on the lawn around the cabin. The ones who have been here the longest sense it first and form a loose ring. These are people who have worked with me, who know the sound of the call. Beyond them are more recent arrivals, even a brand new passenger or two, pulled by the call.
The job is big, like no other trip. I ask for volunteers, for people who are compassionate and wise and gentle. Now more than ever, we must make the trip an easy one for all of them. A teenage boy jumps up and down, stirred by thoughts of adventure. No. Too soon for him. I choose my volunteers by their eyes, by their silence and their grace. I call up the cars. I tell then, we have a big job in New York City.
So we go.
Note: This was a dream I had on Friday morning. I can't take any credit for it. Pass it along whenever you like.
peace-
Smitty