The Bus Stop and “The Lord’s Prayer”

The Bus Stop and “The Lord’s Prayer”

By

J. Nobel

I.

Every time I go to the hospital I come away with some sort of lesson or insight. This time I came away to find Tommy Lee Wells at a bus stop going home. I was just out - hadn’t even taken the hospital wrist band off yet. Maybe it felt right to keep it on.

We had a beer at Union Station in Denver and I told him I would help him out if he would talk to me about the South and how it was that he was in Colorado, as he was from what I would consider the “deep south.” I told him I was a writer and I wanted to write about race relations in the United States, and that I wanted to get the South’s perspective. Since he was broke and on his way south anyway, I suppose even though I looked like hell out of the hospital, my offer was not that bad.

We made it to Colorado Springs where I already had a room at an Inn. I offered him a place to stay for the night. The entire time I sensed an uneasiness about him. He even said as much. While we were at Union Station he whispered when he talked about blacks, and as we drank, he seemed to wish for trouble.

I’m not sure what prompted me to invite this man of thirty-one years, this complete stranger, this felon, and ex-convict of late, into my often closed off world. When I asked him what he had been to prison for, he told me “robbery, burglary.” He knew I had some money but not much. I put my fear away and stood on my faith the Lord would protect me. He told me that he had come out from Alabama to find something better for his family; his girlfriend and her daughter but was vague about what that had been.

I got a strange uneasy feeling about all this. Clearly this guy had been bad, done bad, but was now sitting with me on the bus back to my life in the Springs and me offering my help to get him home to Alabama. Still, I felt compelled. Some force of goodness prompted me to offer my money, personal belongings, and friendship to a complete, and by his own admission, a “thug”, a convict. Now here we were, here drinking right around St. Patrick’s Day.

II.

After we got back to my hotel room, the southern drawl told me about his youth in the South and how in prison being a member of the White Supremacist; he said he had learned to just avoid "dealing with them (blacks"). He said he "wasn’t going to fight the reality that blacks in America would always be.", and said that now his goal was "to just live my life."

I asked a few questions and we had some more beers and I ordered some pizza. He said he’d been in the cab of a semi just before meeting me at the bus stop. This whole time we both wondered why we had been brought together this day. He wondered if I would kill him in his sleep, and I wondered the same.

He asked me why I was helping him, and I told him of a time long ago when I also was in a financial jam and had no one to call. A co worker of mine then at a local restaurant lent me the money to get an apartment and I could never explain why he had done that, but he had and now Mr. Wells was getting it back.

Somehow, I hoped to “pay if forward” to use popular vernacular. I suppose here was my chance, although there had been no plan for it – it just happened – by God.

That was why I had to know more – I wanted to know why there was such hatred of blacks in the South where he was from and why. I wanted to know if - in his mind, there was a way to a world without racism. These questions are profound, and he didn’t really have any insightful answers for me.

I listened to what he had to say, and he showed me some “white rap” music from his part of the country. Wells told me about rallies and small gatherings and how his friends and family all felt the same way about race.

“No,” I thought, “racism will be with us for a long time.”

The night went on, we finished our beers, and the morning would come soon; we decided to call it a night. I had a couch in my room and a bed, I slept on the bed, Wells, on the couch. Even though I was drunk and stoned, I didn’t really sleep. I was worried about what could happen. I looked forward to the morning sun.

III.

The next morning, I took a shower as Wells slept. I got us some coffee and as we began our day I noticed a ring he had on. I asked him where he had gotten the ring, he told me that on his travels a Preacher had given it to him, and who had told him to keep it on. The inscription on the ring was the prayer that Jesus himself told his Apostles to say, which is the “The Lord's Prayer”. I was very curious about the ring because I often said the “The Lord's Prayer” and I believe in its power. I have seen miracles after saying the Prayer often in my life.

I told Tommy about how the power of the Prayer worked in my life and that it was often the “The Lords' Prayer” that I said to bring protection or a feeling of safety. The Prayer, when said, and when said slowly - so that the words have time to be understood, should be said always when praying to Our Lord I told him. I spoke of how it had been no coincidence in his life that the ring, but more importantly, the Prayer itself, Christ’s own words, had ended up around his finger to remind him to say the Prayer whenever he looked at his hand.

Tommy listened and then reminded me about the truck driver who had picked him up and had been so kind to him. He said the driver had been one of the nicest people he had ever met. He said he’d been thinking about him since he had met me. I asked him why this was so, and he told me that the man, the truck driver, had been black. I sat there stunned and must’ve had some look on my face! I was even more surprised when Wells continued to tell me of his encounter with the truck driver the day before.

“The driver told me he could only take me so far, and that he would drop me at the bus stop where a friend of his would meet me.” Tommy said. “He said that this friend of his had just gotten out of the hospital and that’s how I would know him.”

IV.

As Tommy’s story sank in I remembered the wrist band and how I had somehow kept it on, how it had almost felt right to do so. I suddenly felt the rush of being compelled to help this man back to his family in Alabama. I had already ordered the bus ticket the night before this conversation and I knew then that the Lord had worked through me to help Mr. Wells. Not only was I able to help him, he helped me too. Tommy gave me some insight into a world I am not familiar with. He lives in the heart of a history and traditions that I don’t understand. We all have our own ideas about the way things are and how they should be, but when you live there in the midst of a cultural volcano, always on the verge of eruption, that is something else altogether.

Tommy’s bus would be leaving in a couple of hours, and we both tried to grasp what was happening to us, these shifts of thought – for me the way I felt somehow closer to the conversation about race in America; for him the idea that we are all one, and when we speak the words “Our Father,” He is indeed Our Father to all of us on Earth.

When Tommy Lee Wells left on that Greyhound heading back to Alabama, we both knew our lives had changed. We both understood that we had been brought to a different perspective by treating each other with trust and kindness. We both gained some insight from just a brief visit. I believe we were brought together by God. I believe I was compelled to help this man on his journey, and he was compelled to trust the Lord, to let me.