The Orange Sash by Harrison Kim

Sounds burrow in, fill Walsh’s craving mind.  The bus door opens, like a hospital emergency room.  He lunges on board, his orange sash of the Buddhist colours close to his cheek, hiding the scratches and whiskers on his face.  The bus driver doesn’t even flinch, hits the accelerator.  “Their Union tells them don’t get involved,” Walsh thinks.

“This will be my healing ride. Over the bridge to the other side.”

The drugs now vaporized in his lungs fell there to meld and embrace his spirit light, to leave him in the high space transcending, like he always told his college friends all those years ago “searching for the meaning, man,” although smoking meth is contrary to his conditional discharge from the psychiatric system, a practical aspect of concern.

No matter, he’s a rhyme rapper.  All he needs is a clean urine sample to present to his parole officer. He wraps the orange sash around the top of his head, like a scarf, then wipes his itchy face with it, again and again, the sash his brain blanket, protecting his thoughts from others who might listen in.

“This city must wake up!” he shouts. “You sleeping sheep will sink the ship.”

He loves them, he hates them, the seated ones on their bus berths of blue, all faces down to their phones, except the woman in white who watches his every move and there’s the bus driver glancing into his rear-view mirror.

“See, there’s cameras here, too!” Walsh points across and up to the fat red dome at the back.

“They’re recording what’s true!”

When he talks, he feels all the particles and bacteria and bits of human skin floating round the bus and into his open mouth. He pulls his sash over his face to keep the particles out, then whips the cloth around, staggers back and slams against the side of the bus with a straight back, reaches up to grab the grey leather loop that keeps him steady.  His face is criss-crossed with scratches from wiping his face repeatedly, he can see it reflected in the window as the steel mesh pylons of the bridge pass, all in slow motion one by one so when he moves it must be fast, but for this moment, keep it cool.  Find that clean urine sample.

He’s thin, bony, a writhing skeleton wiping his skin with the sash, he took from a donated pile of cloths for charity, this was the ultimate rag. He’d never lose himself in such a colour, it would lose itself in him and in fact, would be easily found.  Again, he wraps the cloth around his forehead. 

“That’s for a woman,” they said at the donation box, but no, a bullfighter uses a sash, and the world is the bull, he stands again and shimmers the sash in front of the passengers. 

“See?” he says, “This is me!”

The bus whips round a corner, not only does Walsh now perceive his eyes have moved to the side of his head and he can view right around him, but he also feels an aggressive force pushing back.  He sits down again.

“Are you fine because I sat here?”  He asks a dapper man in a matching brown corduroy suit. “You have nothing at all to fear.”

“You haven’t got any shoes on,” says the man. “What happened to your shoes?”

“You do not fear me,” says Walsh, rolling his shoulders up and down.  “Thank you for not fearing me.”

The man stands up.  “You need space,” he says.

Walsh’s body feels like a meat bag, loose and flopping, there’s a window to the side of him streaked with brown and through the brown is the passing view the world slipping by.

“Bring it back, back on track!” Walsh mutters, but it’s too late he can never go back.

“The filthier I am the more they’ll stay away from my space,” his feelings like furnaces burning from moment to moment, ticking on and ticking off, squirming into his brain and body.  He loves the people, then he fears the people, he’s master of his destiny, and he is nothing, he can’t escape, he’s funnelled into this bus tube, no stopping until the other side. 

“So, here’s my request,” he says to the dapper man. “Can you piss me a clean urine sample?  I will pay you ten dollars.”

“Sorry,” says the man, moving up to the exit doors.

“I need your urine!” Walsh yells, halfway stands then sits back down.

The doors open and the man jumps out. The bus lunges on.

Walsh rubs the sash against his cheek.  He pulls out his butterfly knife, from the side pocket of his green jacket, could be a hunting jacket, he thinks, he sticks the knife between his middle and index fingers the blade out about an inch then he hides it all with the sash.

On the other side of the aisle sits an old heavy lady with a walker covered in banana stickers.  The bus stops again, and she lifts herself, walks thumping towards the front doors.  The driver is lowering the ramp so she may exit without incident.  She says something to the driver.

Walsh whips his sash up towards the sky and feels the butterfly blade cut his cheek “Only slightly,” he thinks, then starts stabbing at the space between his thighs, where the seat cover is blue and solid.

“They love me, they love me not,” he repeats between stabs, nice to see the little puncture wounds all over the seat.  “Something I can do,” he mutters, “To be real and true.”

He knows he’s either going to die or piss urine in a different world, one much diminished, he can’t go back to serene, he ran out of hospital emergency with his sash and thick socks, solid rubber pants, strong enough to stop a bullet. 

He stands once more, as the bus is still stopped, and announces “This city has to awaken,

It cannot be a sleeping kraken.”

“You have to get off,” says the driver, standing far enough away so they both have room to bolt.  “This is your last stop.”

“I worked for a moving company.  I played the guitar,” says Walsh. 

His mouth is dry, then full of saliva, he spits into the sash, throws it on the seat.

“His cheek is bleeding,” comes a voice and it’s some little kid in a yellow baseball cap on which is written “Sweden.”

Walsh pops the butterfly knife back into his jacket.  These twitches distract from proper etiquette.  There’s a child here. He stands, clutching the silver pole that holds up the bus, this long room he’s moved in as far as the other side of the bridge, it’s been a journey with others, all these people on the bus awaiting his departure so they might move on, leave him behind.

He bends his head towards to this bus driver, sniffs and smells the fear, but isn’t sure if most of it is on himself.

“This is your stop, Mister,” the driver is thin and bald and has a lot of hair on the back of his hands.  

Walsh knows the driver knows that his twitchy passenger comes with the urge to move, and the right time is now.

“Thanks so muchly for this offer,” says Walsh.  “Thank you for your service.”

He lunges to one side, ducks out of the bus, and runs a short way down the street, there’s a lot of dark firry trees and this path should lead to the water.  But there’s something missing.  He stops and stands and looks back.  The driver closes the bus doors.  It takes Walsh a minute, as he stands with his arms dangling, as he shakes them from side to side, feels the push to jerk and twitch. He knows what he has forgotten – the orange sash.

“I cannot lose that” he exclaims, and swears and screams, and bolts back toward the bus, which swerves away, leaving him standing under the streetlight and the moon and the concrete side of the giant bridge.

“Running dog lackeys!” he yells, because he’s shouted that before, he spent a year taking political philosophy, that’s where he studied Plato and Mao, now Mao’s just a salad topper.

Walsh points and yells some more.  It’s all their fault, they kicked him off the bus and he forgot his sash of the Buddhist colours.  Now how might he wipe down his face?  He brushes his hand over his cheek, and it comes away a yellowy red under the ozone streetlight.  He screams again.  “Running dog lackeys of the bourgeoise!”

There is no chance here to locate a clean urine sample.  He runs down to the sea, the narrow channel that the boats pass through, and completes ten jumping jacks, then six push ups.  It’s so quiet. Lights shimmer on the water.

“I’m too much over the bridge, too far on the other side,” he shouts, then turns, runs back up the slope, lopes across a sidewalk.  He must jump another bus and ride back downtown, rejoin the noise and people, merge into the movement of the crowd.  At least there’s noise, and action to fill his lost spaces. He cannot find any peace at this edge of the water, and the orange sash is gone.

Harrison Kim

Image: Orange scarf from https://www.ipekevi.com