Young Woman on the Blue Line in the Jackie-O Glasses with the Earbuds and the Flip-Top Gloves, Today Your Name is Jesus.

Sometimes, I really think the train is a magical place. It’s like this purgatorial neutral zone where all the inhabitants are stuck waiting and it can bring out and heighten what lurks within. Some embrace the wait by focusing on the future, others by attempting to soak in some value held in the relative calm of the intermediary. A few seem confused, uncomfortable, or agitated by where they have just come from.

His name was Terry, but it took nearly ten minutes of listening to his booming rant for me to discern that.

I don’t know what her name was, but she had his name out of him quietly ten seconds after sitting next to him.

It was the last car on the train, so I was happy to slip in it just before the doors closed. Seconds after sitting I hear a booming voice howling indiscriminately behind me in a rant the only words of which I could make out were:

“Never, EVER, never…”

It was clear by the looks on the faces of those around me that there was someone in the rear of the train causing a ruckus behind me. I did what others do. I ignored it and kept my eyes forward.

Some words began to be clear.

“Maybe they just want Terry to die!”

and

“Maybe Terry should keep smoking and die of cancer!”

and

“Don’t they know the cost of COBRA?!”

Keep in mind, these tidbits were mixed in with garbled yelps and howls and stuttering strings of loud consonants and uneven swears directed at various riders on the train.

Even so, most people did as I did and averted their eyes despite the obvious call for attention. The last car on the Blue Line CTA toward Forest Park is usually filled with people who get on at O’Hare, luggage in tow, many new to the city and the trains. It’s not easy to get involved when you don’t live here and ride these trains everyday. Harder when you do.

One never knows what can of worms might be unleashed should one try to engage a person in such an agitated state. Even the most well meaning souls have found themselves victims of violence and this man was obviously very frustrated.

With each stop of the train, more riders moved away from the rear of the train, and those who got on took their cue from the faces of those already on the train and avoided his section of the car — even if it meant standing.

She entered the train with headphones on in the midst of a lull in his yells and clearly didn’t notice him but settled in front of me in one of the few remaining spots away from him. I could see her but still had not laid eyes on him at all.

In her Jackie-O glasses with flip-top gloves and thumbs poised to hammer out what appeared to be a text message rant of her own, I wondered what her reaction would be once he started in again, which he soon did. His voice was literally straining under the weight of his expressions.

As he did I listened more. He was ranting about lesbians and gays, about the natural order of the world, about the Red Eye newspaper, about all the things everyone else was using as a distraction to keep from giving him what he so obviously was desperate for — someone to listen.

As the train moved faster and the roar of the tracks got louder, he also seemed more agitated in his efforts and more commuters evacuated toward the opposite end of the train away from him. He was about to reach a fever pitch that might make one wonder (it certainly had me on alert since I was facing away yet close to him) if some violent act might be about to follow, when suddenly I was startled by movement, this time in the opposite direction.

Someone had gotten out of their seat and actually gone toward him but I hadn’t noticed who.

Within seconds you could hear him calmly explain his name was Terry and he just wanted people to understand he had almost died.

Her open ear was like a salve on an open wound as everyone on the train took a collective sigh of relief at his drop in tone.

He was fifty-six years old and afraid of being at the end of life.

He had lived in Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and had been in the military.

It was pouring from him and all she had to do was be there. I could hear her gently prompting him but could not make out her words and still didn’t want to turn my head and look for fear of upsetting the delicate balance she had created with her act of compassion.

It was awkward — he told her she was attractive, asked if she had a boyfriend, and wanted her to know that he masturbated because of his addiction to crack cocaine.

Twenty-eight years he had been an addict.

With hindsight, he said, he would have never touched the stuff after coming out of the military.

His voice was suddenly lucid, mature, focused. He was not slurring his words. He seemed genuinely happy to have someone to share his fears and experiences.

In all, only a few stops had passed on the train since the time she sat down next to him, but so much had happened as a result.

How brave this young woman was to approach this man with compassion.

How cowardly the rest of us were to let him go unserved so long and so habitually.

His name was Terry and as he left the train she told him to focus on a positive moment from his past he had shared with her.

“Hold on to that,” she said. “Don’t let that go,” as the train doors closed behind me while I followed Terry out.

He had thanked her profusely on the way out and she was glowing, this young woman with Jackie-O glasses. I wanted to look her in the eye too, and let her know how awesome and brave she was for what she did, but her eyes were already on her phone.

Looking on him for the first time as I followed him up the stairs, I could see the silver of his beard against the darkness of his skin. He wore a brown fedora and a light brown camel hair trench coat with black track pants and black tennis shoes.

I wanted to call his name.

“Terry,” I thought. “Did you catch that young lady’s name?”

By the time we were at the top of the escalator, his smile had faded and he had returned to the violent mutterings of frustration that had been so soothed by her listening presence.

He moved off in one direction and I in another, huddled over in the cold of a lingering Chicago winter.

Young lady on the Blue Line, with your earbuds and your flip-top gloves who put your Jackie-O sunglasses on your brow long enough to make eye contact with Terry the fifty-six-year-old twenty-eight year crack cocaine addict who had recently almost died and had no money for health care — today your name is Jesus.