Air Lines
written by Ruth
Rating: FRC
Spoilers: To ‘Bargaining’ only, after Buffy’s death in The Gift, but before a certain spell.
Summary: A plane journey – and a grief – observed.
Feedback Author: Ruth
People. I could watch them, think about them, all day. It’s one of the great things about my job, sorry, vocation;
my *priestly anointing*. Despite all the frustrations and disappointments, the folks who let you down when you
trust them, bad things happening to good people, the times when you just wanna yell “Lord? You *listening*? You
*there*? What the %*#* you playin’ at?” I love people. Every once in a while they repay you in spades. Take my
parishioners: it’s a tough part of LA, my patch, people working their, excuse me, asses off to keep the landlord
sweet, tryin’ to keep their kids away from the gangs. But when they learned of my condition, *thank you * Mrs.
Rosario-can’t-keep-her-mouth–shut-for-two-minutes, what did they do but break into what savings they had and send
me on this trip? Gimme a chance to see my sister and her family again before…well, before I can’t see them any
more.
He was already on the plane when I boarded at LAX. Early middle age, worn hard and long around the edges. The kind
of person you’d like to have known when they were last happy. I took the seat directly across the aisle from him
and we caught each other’s eye. He nodded politely, acknowledging me without quite accepting me. Usually there’s
two kinds of reactions I get when people see the uniform, the cassock and the backwards collar. Some back off,
scared you’ll convert them or you’ll turn up your nose at the smell of liquor or a short skirt. Then you get the
instant priest syndrome, and they’re telling you their life story (edited), trying to confess to you for anonymous
absolution, when they’d do far better finding the person they hurt and fix it with them. Even if it’s themselves.
‘Course, when they turn to me it’s usually because it’s too late for that, the person’s gone, or they are past
forgiving themselves: the guilt’s too terrible. Or too comfortable.
Hey, sorry, where was I? Oh, yeah, this guy, well he wasn’t in either category. An unbeliever, strictly speaking,
though I could sense…power, the spiritual kind, not exactly ‘kosher’ if you know what I mean, but not… bad. That’s
what comes of the Celtic inheritance. My family has always been…sensitive to the supernatural, to what lies
beneath. It led me to the priesthood, and it’s saved my life more than once. You would not *believe* some of the
things I’ve seen in LA, round street corners, in deserted back alleys. Not to mention after dark…
He greeted me: “Good evening, Father.” British, I mean *English*. But when he bought a copy of the London Times
from off the trolley he handled the bills and the change comfortably, so I guessed he was more than a tourist, had
spent at least a few years in…Sunnydale, it must have been. That’s where the flight had come from. Not enough years
to pick up the local way of speaking, not like me after forty years over here, in the seminary and out in the
world.
I could tell he didn’t want a conversation, so instead I indulged in my favourite pastime and just watched him at
the edge of my vision, taking advantage while I could, use it or lose it as they say. Use it and then lose it, in
my case. He read the paper from cover to cover, even the personal ads, with a disturbingly intense concentration.
Some of it was just the way I guess he always read, shutting out his surroundings to wring every scrap of
information or enlightenment from the printed page. But there was extra tension in the way every so often his
knuckles whitened around the edge of the page, creasing it, before he shook the paper and himself and carried on,
that had nothing to do with the news he was reading and everything to do with a recurring thought that he couldn’t
shake off. A thought that troubled him to his bones.
It’s a ten hour flight across America and the Atlantic, and there’s only so much time filled by the paper, the
airline meal (I had one of Mrs. Flanagan’s hearty pork pies to keep me going, bless her) and the in-flight movie.
The English guy obviously had the same thought as me about “What Women Want”. We snorted in disgust at the same
time and shared another little moment of contact until our gazes shifted away by mutual consent. We both dozed for
a while: I woke before he did, and watched him toss and fidget. The seats didn’t leave him enough room; he was a
tall guy, long legs, not like me. But that wasn’t the real source of his unrest. His brow was furrowed even in
deep sleep; when he dreamed, they weren’t happy fantasies or crazy hopeful plans. Pain, helplessness, and loss
were the currency of his nights lately, and he woke this time with a start and a cry, reaching out with one hand.
“Buffy!” A name, one of those cutesy nicknames belonging to Valley girls or toddlers. Whoever she was – lost lover,
absent child, missed opportunity - she’d been the centre of this one’s world. A couple of other passengers were
looking at him curiously and he cringed away from their glances, red in the face and angry with himself for the
slip. I made sure when he got to looking over at me that I was checking my flight bag under my seat, and I gave
him a good long while before risking another sweep.
He’d taken a hip flask out from somewhere and was taking a swig or several, keeping an eye out for any snooping
flight stewards. Good single malt from the smell, like Father Murray keeps on the dresser in the presbytery for a
nightcap after Compline. He let it burn a trail, then rooted round in the inside pocket of his suede jacket for…
one of those rubber finger puppets the altar boys are always bringing in to chase each other with and waggle
behind the Bishop’s back when he comes to preach.
He sat with it perched on his forefinger a few inches from his nose – he hadn’t put his glasses back on after the
nap - and moved it half-heartedly, murmuring something to himself that I couldn’t quite catch: “Grr, Argh”,
something like that. Sounded kinda childish for a feller who looked to be pretty smart, and it only made him smile
for a second or so, then he closed his eyes and put the thing away, chewing on his lip and blinking a lot. I
started to wonder again who he’d left behind in the States, and just how long he planned to be away. Maybe it was
a bad break up and he’d had to leave this “Buffy” behind with her mom. Or she’d died, and everything had fallen
apart after that: could account for the dream.
For a long time after that he just sat, looking around without real interest at the other passengers. I thought
maybe one face in particular would be what it took to spark him into life again, and it wasn’t here; or anywhere,
any more. Someone a couple of rows ahead realised we’d passed the halfway point and told her seat mates with
excited laughter. Said she just couldn’t wait to make it to England – her first visit. My subject smiled at her
enthusiasm, a flicker of sunshine before the clouds rolled back again with a vengeance and his face was suddenly
so desolate I couldn’t stand to see it. I tossed up a prayer for him then. When I opened my eyes again I felt that
prickle, when you know you’re in someone’s sights, yeah? Maybe he’d realised what I was doing and why, but he
didn’t say a word, just shook his head gently and turned away. I felt guilty at that: I’d invaded his privacy in a
way, however good my motives might have been.
I left him alone for most of the rest of the flight, not looking or listening out even though I was dying of
curiosity. Say five Our Fathers for the sin of coveting the secrets of another man’s heart. Because I crave
knowledge about people most of all, and I don’t know what there was about this man but I could sense he *mattered*,
in a way I don’t, not really, for all I stand in church each Sunday and offer the Holy Sacrifice. I fall, I die,
the Church goes on, remains the same. This one… I *so* wanted to know his real significance, it was a sin. Hail
Mary, full of grace…
Somewhere between saying the evening office and the end of a long day and night I slept again in my seat. Waking,
I dared a little peek across the aisle. He was writing in a notebook, small enough to hold cradled in one long
hand as he wrote with the other. He stopped and sighed impatiently, and then in a flash he’d torn the page out
where he’d written and scored through words again and again. I thought he was gonna throw it in the trash but he
carried on staring at the loose sheet as if daring it to answer back. His mouth was a thin line as he folded the
paper, turned it and folded again, turned and folded until it was a thick stiff block that he had to force to stay
square, squeezing it with convulsive violence in his fist.
He paused with it halfway to his jacket, eyes far away once more, and then let his hand fall open and the folded
page jump out silently. The hand continued its journey to his pocket and he took out one of those jeweller’s boxes,
three or four inches square. The fact that inside was a tightly braided lock of blonde hair ought to have been
corny; so should the way he caressed it with a fingertip before putting it and the box back. What can I say? The
empty agony in his face, my God, that was authentic. I hoped to God, and without blasphemy then or just now, that
he had friends to meet him at the end of this journey.
Which it almost was: the end. We crossed the Irish coast as we crossed into daylight again, a flash of grey-green
sea below and then we were over England – another spasm of excitement from the lady up ahead – banking round to
approach Heathrow through the clouds that promised an English autumn rain for later in the day.
I had a bit of a struggle getting my coat; speared between manners and haste by an Italian momma who insisted in
fractured English that I (as a priest and presumably therefore equivalent to the sick and infirm) should go first
before her out of the plane when in fact I wanted to wait to go back to the overhead locker to get my things. The
Englishman had already left, but wedged in the folded up armrest of his seat was the bit of paper. Not thinking
too hard, I picked it up and took it with me. Theft definitely not on the agenda: in fact I caught up with him in
baggage reclaim.
“No…thank you,” he told me quietly when I offered him it back. “They’re just…notes…for a-a story,” he finished,
not meeting my eyes, needing and despising the lie.
“Good luck with the rest of it, then.”
He looked at me sharply, angry at fate and maybe at me for suggesting that there was a ‘rest of it’.
“That …story’s finished now.”
He leaned across me abruptly and snatched up his case from the carousel.
“Excuse me, Father. Goodbye and good journey.” Then he was gone.
No-one came to meet him at Arrivals. The last sight I caught of him, between my sister’s tears and the babbling
and hugging from my nieces and great nephews, he was pushing his trolley fast, taking as long strides as he could
manage in the crowd, taking in the people, the noise, the questions for the future and steeling himself for them
all.
We drove to my sister’s flat – next door to the church, she can’t keep away from the supernatural either. While
she fixed us all a big cooked breakfast I slipped away to the Big House for a quiet moment to say thanks. I came
up to the altar, the painted wood a little shabby like the furnishings, but both well worn, well loved. The Englishman’s
paper was still, somehow, caught in my hand, had been the whole journey in to Kilburn. Everyone had competed for
my bags, I’d not needed to carry or take up anything: my hands were idle but my arms and heart had been full. I
remember thinking then that *he’d* be needing to keep his hands busy.
I was going to leave the page just as it was, on the altar, offering up whatever thoughts he’d had to a God in
whom he probably didn’t believe, because in some ways it makes no difference to Him being, or acting. Then I
thought, he deserved openness in this place if anywhere, so I unfolded the sheet and placed it face up, without
reading it, and left.
After breakfast the cleaning woman brought it back, asking if I’d lost it by accident, she didn’t feel she could
throw it away, and was I quite all right? She seemed so relieved when I assured her that it was nothing to do with
me that I guessed she had read what he’d written. Then I read it too. It’s not as if I had any idea who or what
the man was, and after, I was none the wiser for his words, the few stark lines that stood out among all the
erasures.
//They didn’t warn me, but even if they had, I would still have accepted this calling. There remains the distinct
possibility that the rest of my life now – twenty, thirty, perhaps even forty years – may be nothing but
anticlimax, nothing but falling from the heights; the possibility that I have nothing in me to break that fall.
Memory will fail. The keepsakes will fade and wear. The reality, and the connection we, she and I, rarely
acknowledged and only half explored: that endures. It must be enough. //
Y’know, I think he was wrong, standing forlorn in that baggage reclaim hall. I truly doubt that that ‘story’ is
over. Don’t ask me how I know: I see things, still, that other people can’t. Even when it gets dark for me, some
things I’ll always see clearly: that creased up paper, that Englishman’s face, and the fact that their story isn’t
finished. I’m not blind, not yet.
END