As I climb aboard, I fumble, and my ticket drops to the ground. Cursing, I turn to pick it up. But he's already stooped down, and he has it in his hand. Returning to his feet, I realise just what a unit he is. Not all that much taller than me, but solid, muscular. Thick around his middle and his chest, enormous arms with scary tatts. Probably about 60, I suppose. But he's softly spoken. I thank him, turn again, and validate the ticket in the machine.
Behind me, he looks at the driver and says "One ticket to anywhere."
The driver looks confused, and he tries to clarify.
“Where would you like to go?”
"Oh, wherever... Bondi?"
I sit down near the back of the bus, reading some mind-numbing article on my phone to pass the time. He sits opposite, just one row back. I wonder where he's going, what his plans are. Where will he sleep tonight? But my thoughts soon return to my nausea. It seems my thoughts haven't drifted too far from there in recent days. I really just want to be in my bed.
As the bus approaches my stop, he's looking out the window, all around, like a meerkat on his guard against a predator. I climb to my feet and head for the door. As I step off, to my surprise, he follows me into the crisp winter night. Much colder than tropical Brisbane. I stop to get some cash out of the ATM. The bus sails into the distance, leaving silence in its wake. He wanders off down the main road, looking around at Maroubra Junction- everything closed, everything quiet. 11pm on a Tuesday.
Turning from the ATM, I set off on the 15 minute walk home. Less than a block down the road, I come to a pedestrian crossing. And there he is, standing at the traffic lights. Still looking around. Still obviously very unsure. I'd known back on the bus that I should ask, but I'd been arguing with God in my mind. Surely with this nausea I'd be justified in having a night off? But in this moment, waiting at that crossing, the words tumble out almost automatically. "Do you need a place to stay tonight?" I ask, as we wait for the lights to change. "Oh that would be unreal!" he says enthusiastically.
I don't really have a spare bed, but there's a single mattress on the floor. There's nowhere else he could possibly go. Even if he has any money, which seems doubtful, there's simply no accommodation around. And so we set off together into the dark night.
Steve. I'm Brad. We introduce ourselves and begin chatting. About 30 seconds later, I interrupt him:
“I'm sorry, I've already forgotten your name.”
“Steve. You're Jack, right?”
“Brad.”
We smile at each other. He's from Queensland. But also from Western Australia. It's a long story. His mum lives in Wollongong, and he's down from the Gold Coast to visit her. One of his sons lives in Sydney, but he's overseas on holiday at the moment. He'd been trying to get back home to Queensland, but he'd missed the last flight of the day.
As we wander past my church- closed, locked and bathed in darkness- he tells me he's a Christian. “Me too!” I say enthusiastically. And all of a sudden we’re family. All of a sudden my brother is sleeping over. Our route takes us across the football fields, pitch black, and spits us out into the streets of my neighbourhood. From there its only 100 metres to my front door.
Although its very late, my sickness has long been forgotten. We’ve well and truly settled into the lounge. Tea and chats are now the order of the night. The stories flow thick and fast. I'd invited the most interesting man in the world into my home!
In the 1990s, Steve had bundled his wife, kids and dogs into a modified double decker bus and driven the breadth of the continent, from Sydney to Perth, over the course of about three years. The crappy old bus barely handled the steep, windy passes of the Victorian Alps, and by the sound of it it, it didn't fair a whole lot better across the tedious Nullabor! The kids went to school at whichever town they pulled into, and Steve and his wife would find work to keep them going.
Steve had also been involved in growing drugs for bikie gangs. He'd been all over Australia, his expertise in growing cannabis critical to securing the much needed revenue streams the gangs rely so heavily on. He'd had a tough life, and I got the feeling he'd seen more than his fair share of violent conflict.
It was after one such conflict that Steve found himself sentenced to prison. And it was there, in his deepest, darkest moment, that Jesus first reached out to him. It was in prison that he first experienced the transformation of body, mind and spirit- the life in abundance- that Jesus promises. It was there in prison that God picked him up from the miry clay and set his feet on a rock.
At this point, the conversation finds a natural ebb. We each take a deep breath and settle back in the lounge with our umpteenth mug of tea.
After a gentle pause, I break the silence. “What was it like for you when you first met Jesus?”
Steve thinks long and hard before he answers...
“It was like I'd met a new girl I really liked, and I just didn't wanna fuck it up!”
*****
It's after 1pm the next day, and Steve still hasn't surfaced from the spare room. I consider going in to make sure he's OK, but he'd been falling asleep mid-sentence the night before, so I assume he must've been tired.
Eventually he emerges, bleary-eyed. He wants a shower, and I'm keen to cook brekkie. We eat, and drink more tea. The Spirit once again carries us away in conversation, like the long lost brothers that we are. We chat all afternoon, and all evening, and all night. Its too late now to drop Steve at the hairport. He stays a second night on the mattress on the floor, and I'm exceedingly glad.
The next morning, we rise early and prepare Steve's things. We linger over one last cup of tea, saying goodbyes and blessing one another as we prepare to part company. At the last moment, we set off on the short drive to the hairport.
On the way, Steve tells me he'd prayed to God for some kind of direction. And he couldn't help but feel that, through our conversations and through my hospitality, he'd heard God's voice answer him. I ask him when it was that he'd prayed for direction.
“It was Monday. The day before we met.”
(I originally wrote this story in June 2015, about events which took place 23-25 June 2015)